Father McKenzie

Next: "Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella"

2012-01-29T10:43:00.001+10:00

Next: "Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella"

Gone a'hunting

2011-11-28T01:11:00.002+10:00

Memo to self: Don't use "John Bunting" as an alias.

Blog Update

2011-08-16T17:12:00.000+10:00

Dear Father McKenzie Blog lovers

This blog has been redirecting to Brisvegas bloggers, a blog ring that we subscribed to a while back.

Unfortunately our page has been hijacked by their javascript and so it has had to go.

Please clear your cache and refresh your browsers accordingly.

Yours sincerely

The staff at Father McKenzie

Husband of ([1 - 1] + 1 =) 1 Wife

2011-05-20T09:11:00.003+10:00

The curious personal life of a Republican US State Governor. - Nor, nordt zadt vun.

(Who'd have guessed that the infamous "condom filled with walnuts" would turn out to be all walnuts, no condom?)

(Or predicted that two of the USA's four most prominent Arab-American politicians would independently share the very non-Arabic-sounding name "Mitchell"?)

PS: Now Marie Osmond's done the same two-step. Talk about "sealed for eternity"!

Ackroyd on ghosts...

2011-01-23T07:16:00.001+10:00

... Peter, that is. Not Dan.

Memo to Bill Gates...

2011-01-20T14:58:00.000+10:00

Dear Mr Gates,

1. If I click "Shut Down" on my computer, and - trusting on the screen telling me "Do not switch off your computer. It will turn itself off automatically when it is ready" - I walk away and leave it unattended for an hour or two (or in some cases, overnight)... but then return to find that it didn't shut down after all because "[PROGRAM ABC] is not responding. Do you still want to shut down?" (which means that, if it we're talking about a laptop that I unplugged from the power point, its battery will be nearly flattened)... you can safely assume that 98% of the time, yes, I did want it to shut down. There may be situations 1% of the time - 2%, tops - where someone takes a few hours to decide whether to force a frozen program to close or not. But these are not me.

2. If I'm trying to use the mouse to drag half a dozen files from Small Working Folder X to Big Backup Folder Y - and, in doing so, I let the mouse hover for a second or two over Big Backup Folder Y before I actually click on it - this brief delay does not, repeat not, mean that what I really wanted to do was to copy all the 500 or 600 files from Big Backup Folder Y back to Small Working Folder X. If I'd wanted to do that, I would have opened Big Backup Folder Y, selected all the files therein, and then dragged them back to Small Working Folder X. Two quite different actions.

Kapeesh, mi hombre?

Yours sincerely,
A Microsoft User Who Has Resisted The Siren Call Of The Mac For Many Years

Wild about Hari

2010-12-10T15:14:00.003+10:00

Now this is bad: Emmerich does Dornick.

We originally announced last summer that Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy was headed to the big screen. After bouncing around between multiple production companies, the master of disaster, Roland Emmerich, and Columbia Pictures won an auction Thursday for the screen and development rights to Foundation. Best known for his disaster blockbusters (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and the forthcoming 2012), Emmerich will be using Foundation as a directorial vehicle - this time on a galactic scale. Emmerich and Columbia won the rights over others like Alex Proyas and Warner Brothers.

Foundation is an epic saga spanning hundreds of years where humanity finds itself scattered throughout the galaxy under the oppressive rule of the Galactic Empire. Originally published in serial format as five separate short stories beginning in 1942, Foundation tells the story of a group of scientists, the Psychohistorians, who are doing all they can to preserve knowledge as the colonies around them steadily regress. The study of psychohistory equates every possible outcome of a large society into readable, predictable mathematics, allowing its practitioners to accurately predict long-term events. Through this insight, a discovery with disastrous consequences is made and a plan is set in motion to avert it.

Although Columbia did acquire the rights to the trilogy, there's been no word yet on whether Foundation will be a single film venture, or if the entire Foundation trilogy will eventually make its way to the big screen. We're expecting Sony to test the waters and see how this first film does before they greenlight any sequels, given the size of the production. Whatever the case, Emmerich seems to be the perfect fit. However, I am weary of the difficulty to adapt Asimov's saga. With such lengths of time and a plot reliant on long-term, plodding effects, can Emmerich make it exciting while still being faithful to the source material?

- Brandon Lee Tenney, " Roland Emmerich Directing Asimov's Foundation Trilogy" (16 January 2009)

You don't need a pocket-calculatron covered with psychohistorical equations to predict another Bicentennial Man/ I, Robot- style galactic-scale frak-up coming to the box office with this. The mention in passing of "the oppressive rule of the Galactic Empire" shows someone completely missed the point... Others, too, foresee looming disaster:

"... My prediction is that the story will be dumbed down to Galactic Empire vs The Mule (an evil mutant rendered in CGI like Gollum), and the Foundation will be a secret defence force set up many years ago by Salvor Hardin that will swing into action using its awesome Psi powers. No need to mention Psychohistory, and certainly no role for Hober Mallow. ..."

To dull the pain (and, hopefully, to avert particularly egregious disasters on the principle that "whatever you foresee, will not come to pass"), I propose we gain some solace by predicting what scenes Roland Emmerich will graft onto Asimov's original story: eg...

* Nobody listens when Hari Seldon tries to warn the people of Trantor about the giant tidal wave that is about to destroy the First Empire. A sneering redneck Mayor mocks Seldon in a whiny voice. Later, audience cheers as said Mayor drowns in a spectacular sea of lava from the ice asteroid's impact while Seldon's infant son is rocketed away from the dying planet.

* Limmar Ponyets defeats Bel Riose by planting a sonic grenade in the exhaust pipe of the Imperial Fleet's flagship. Ponyets then escapes by holding his breath and free-falling down to the nearest planet, out-racing the growing fireball from the spectacular explosion.

* Hober Mallow shorts out the droid armies of the Korellian Republic using a computer virus program written by a wisecracking genius kid from the ghetto. The droids then explode spectacularly.

* Han Pritcher takes spectacular and bloody revenge on the Baroness - the ruthless, whip-cracking dominatrix who commands the Second Foundation's elite Death Skull marines - for killing his family and burning his farm to the ground.

* The Mule (Michael Clarke Duncan, with Ron Perlman playing his second head and Billy Crystal providing voice talent for his mutilated third head) spectacularly strangles his admirals one by one, using his prehensile scorpion-tail, as they fail to re-capture Arkady Darrell. Little do they realise that our spunky heroine is hiding inside an exhaust shaft, where they will never find her.

* Salvor Hardin punches out a Martian invader.

Take my water/ Take my land/ Just don't touch my/ Free broadband

2010-11-01T12:41:00.004+10:00

Am typing this sitting in a McDonald's cafe. Macca's restaurants used to give you water (with ice, in a paper cup) for free, on request. Now, however, they charge $1.65 a cup. On the other hand, you can have broadband wireless Internet for free as long as you stay here. (Notionally there is a 50-MB limit, but if you run out, you just log out for a few minutes and then log in again and your slate is wiped clean.)

Free Internet, but charged for water. I don't want to sound ungrateful, since I guess one can always make up a water deficit from a tap in the park for free, whereas Internet usage is invariably user-pays elsewhere (eg, Zarraffa's cafes give you 15 minutes with each cuppa, but then charges for additional). But it seems incongruous.

Ironically, I would say the abolition of free safe water on demand has made me spend less at the temple of the pale orange clown than I otherwise would have. Firstly, because there's no way I'm paying $1.65 for ordinary H2O, even with ice, when I have water bottles in the car. Secondly, a sense of resentment that Macca's has instituted this penny-pinching change - it's not as if giving away free water was sending them bankrupt, and the amount of money I've spent at McDonaldses in my lifetime would be well into four figures now. Broadband is an indulgence for adults - nice, but dispensable. Hydration is a non-negotiable for children. And thirdly, the effort of packing up one's kit and escorting one or more children out to the car to drink for free from the water bottles is so substantial that it doesn't seem worth the effort to come back into the restaurant again once they're quenched. (Particularly since such effort is such a hurdle that one puts off rehydrating the children until later in the session than one would if the task was less effort). So I end up staying for a shorter time, and therefore spending less. Maybe this was an anti-obesity measure instituted by Mayor McCheese.

Ideally, of course, every cafe or food court would have a washbasin with a liquid soap dispenser and some paper towels right there in its main eating area, so that children can rehydrate - and rinse their food-sticky fingers - without having to go to the bathrooms and touch toilet door handles on the way. So far, however, only Nando's Grilled Chicken has this. Don't the toy stores and newsagents, at least, have an interest in pushing for this? Is a drinking fountain near the eating area - at the very least - asking too much?

UPDATE (2011_11_21): The $1.65-a-cup charge for water seems not to apply to all Macca's outlets. Most I've been in lately seem to be happy to give free water if you request it when you make a paying order, or if the counter staff can remember you having recently made a paying order. Perhaps charging money only applies if they think you haven't made any other purchase. Given how often I've observed people waltz in to make use of McDonalds' toilets, then waltz out again without buying anything, I think it's justified to have some policy to stop the free riders. However, on the couple of occasions where we were charged $1.65 a cup, we had made a purchase (in double figures, too). In fact, I think my offspring had proferred an emptied soft drink cup to be refilled, thereby putting proof of purchase beyond dispute.

Pay money, take choice

2010-10-31T21:00:00.004+10:00

"After all, in whose hands would the Australian people prefer to leave their Constitutional fate: the author of the J-curve and the L-A-W tax cuts [Paul Keating], who had the previous week revealed an intention to jail journalists for revealing inconvenient Government secrets; or the man the Australian public [sic] had christened 'Honest John,' and whose decency has been a shining light through all the pitfalls of public life?"

- Tony Abbott, The Minimal Monarchy, And Why It Still Makes Sense for Australia (Wakefield Press, 1995), p 13.

Very well, then: let the Diogenes-es of the Liberal Party hear from this honest man:

'Asked about the level of support for the Greens, which he calls a passing phase in his book, Howard calibrated his view in a significant way. He noted that in some inner city electorates, voting Green could become institutionalised through Greens-voting families passing the habit down through generations - in the same way voting Labor or Liberal was a family thing a generation or so ago.

'And while he didn't say as much, he suggested one way to institutionalise the Greens vote would be for Liberals to allocate preferences to the new party in a bid to oust Labor MPs in soft left inner city electorates - as when the Liberals gave the Greens preferences in the federal seat of Melbourne, which led to the election of Adam Bandt. Howard pointed out that if a Greens politician was elected instead of a Labor candidate it would have the same outcome: one less number for the non-Labor side in Parliament...'

- Dennis Atkins, "It may benefit Libs to heed Howard's advice," The Courier-Mail (28 October 2010), p 11.

(The same outcome? I'd dispute that. Three important differences between a result of "80 Labor MHRs, 70 Coalition" and "65 Labor MHRs, 15 Greens and 70 Coalition", even if a Green/Coalition coalition is unthinkable: (a) Parliamentary logic. The Coalition might be able to defeat Labor on specific issues by peeling away the Greens, especially on "transparency" matters: see Tasmania since 1989. By contrast, they won't dent a solid absolute majority of Labor MPs. (b) Electoral logic. There will be Labor MPs who are nervous about Greens defeating them on Liberal preferences, and vice versa. Sows the dragon's teeth of discord on the left side of politics: compare the Liberals and Nationals in Queensland. (c) Moral ambit claims. "We won more Reps seats than any other grouping - 5 more seats than Labor and a whopping 55 more seats than the Greens" sounds very impressive if you don't analyse it too closely, and if there's another hung Parliament with a combined Liberal/National plurality - the Liberals will almost never, of course, be that largest single party on their own - this trope, repeated endlessly by Murdoch journalists, can be used to make a Greens/ Labor alliance seem illegitimate and anti-democratic.)

'The former prime minister, John Howard, has urged the Liberal Party to avoid doing preference deals with the Greens, even if it puts the Coalition at a tactical disadvantage. Speaking at the National Press Club yesterday to promote his autobiography, Lazarus Rising, Mr Howard said ultimately the Coalition had nothing to gain by helping the Greens take seats from Labor. This was because the Greens would always support Labor and their agenda was more extreme. ''I think my side of politics has got to be very careful about giving preferences to the Greens. In my view the Greens are worse than Labor,'' Mr Howard said. ''The Greens are fundamentally anti-free enterprise. They have terrible foreign policy attitudes and they have a lot of social policy attitudes that a lot of Labor people would find abhorrent.''...'

- Phillip Coorey, "Don't give preferences to the Greens, says Howard", Brisbane Times (28 October 2010).

Okay. Can someone please tell me, yes or no: Does JoHo think the Liberals should preference the Greens ahead of Labor, or does he not?

"The shooting of The Hobbit will begin in February..." - no, nothing to do with the Pill, Third Rite Reconciliation, or tariff protections (thankfully)

2010-10-27T11:21:00.002+10:00

"Yiss, thut uzz how we got over-stoffed. I unushully iggrid to take jist one ixtra kimera-min, bit thin huz brither turned ip too ind knocked on my door, ind thin huz brither dud too, ind huz brither, ind huz brither, ind so on untul we hid twilve pipple there and I couldn't rilly till inny uv thim to jist git lost ind go away."

The shooting of The Hobbit will begin in February with Sir Peter Jackson in the director's chair. Director Peter Jackson launched a fresh broadside at actors' unions Wednesday, as Hollywood executives and the New Zealand government continued talks on keeping "The Hobbit" in the country. Jackson said he was "incredibly angry" at the NZ Equity actors' union for launching industrial action which threatened his $500 million project without properly consulting its members. The Oscar-winning director also disputed NZ Equity's assertion that it called for an international boycott of "The Hobbit" last month after he refused to negotiate with it on minimum conditions for actors on the set. Jackson said the union called the ban, which has since been lifted, before contacting him about its concerns. [...]

- "Unions held gun to my head: Hobbit's Jackson" (27 October 2010)

This'll hard be

2010-09-28T08:54:00.001+10:00

"Lesson I: The second person pronoun, whether singular or plural, whether the subject or the object of the verb, is 'you', not 'y'all y'all..."

Oh, wait. Wrong Georgia. Okay, then, maybe this will work.

Yes, that's what the voters want these days - politicians who are 100% on-message and predictable (see: 2010 federal election, results of)

2010-09-26T06:41:00.000+10:00

The Queensland Opposition Leader has sacked a policy adviser and reprimanded several others for jokingly proposing that teachers should be issued with Tasers. John-Paul Langbroek says he is angry at the staff members for creating a joke policy proposing that Tasers be used as form of behaviour management in schools. He says it was in extremely poor taste.

"It's conduct that does not accord with the high standards that I expect from my office," he said. "I've got a history in my family of a father who's a retired teacher, a mother who's a retired library aid and of course it's not anything the LNP would seriously consider as a policy for behaviour management in schools. I think it's very disappointing that sometimes in an office situation people can lose sight of the main game and in this case clearly that's been done. It's not to the standards that I expect and that's why action has been taken and will be taken."

- "LNP staffer sacked over joke Taser-for-teachers policy", ABC News (26 September 2010)

Hey, Jean-Claude... this was obviously a joke, okay? No normal person out there in marginal-seat land really, actually thought this was a real actual, LNP policy. We're not idiots. We realised full well that it was meant as some light amusement, like Bill Hayden's "drover's dog" comment, or NaSto Despo's "Men Of Senate" calendar, or Joh Bjelke-Petersen telling the media he was going to award himself a knighthood, or... oh, never mind.

I did not know till now that the usages of Sulva were so common among you

2010-09-10T22:04:00.001+10:00

A SEX-starved businessman was so hung up on his ex-girlfriend after she dumped him that he paid $18,000 to recreate her as a life-sized sex doll. The 50-year-old man put together a collection of photos of his ex and told Italian adult toymaker Diego Bortolin: "I want it just like her but with bigger boobs," Italy's Il Messaggero newspaper said. Mr Bortolin, who hasn't named the man, creates extremely realistic sex dolls at the factory behind his shop, named "Temptations" in English, in Treviso, Italy. "She was a smiling blonde girl but he wanted bigger boobs and a curvier backside," Mr Bortolin said. "Our normal dolls are very realistic and everything works just like the real thing. Mr Bortolin said he usually charges around $US 5000 for the dolls, but that this particular project was more expensive "because we had to replicate everything, right down to the shape of her nails and teeth." The doll weighs 58 kg and is about 1.6m tall. Mr Bortolin said the doll is fully flexible and can take on any movement or position a human can. "She is now the perfect girlfriend as far as I can see," Mr Bortolin said.

- " Man replaces ex-girlfriend with custom-made sex doll" (2 September 2010)

Hungo

2010-08-24T18:25:00.003+10:00

This blog has on occasion made mock of Mungo MacCallum in these his declining years, but occasionally he has seen his predictions come true. Admittedly, not in 1992, when he wrote in the Weekend Australian Magazine just before the Tasmanian election that the State's Hare-Clark electoral system ("also known as the 'Hare-Brained System'.... ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Brilliant! Never heard that one before!) was certain to deliver a hung parliament.

But back in the day, at the height of his powers, Mungo was indeed a journalistic force to be reckoned with, for in 1977 he managed to predict the result of an election one-third of a century later:

"... Win, lose or draw (a very real possibility which must be causing the incoming Governor-General, Sir Zelman Cowen, the odd sleepless night)..."
- "Malcolm's Last Joke," Nation Review, 1-7 December 1977), repub as Chapter 21 in Mungo on the Zoo Plane: Elections 1972-77 (UQ Press, 1979), p 196.

As did John Howard's former chief of staff, Grahame Morris, back in the now-expunged era of the Latham Ascendancy:

"There is every chance after the election the Prime Minister will have to wake up every morning worrying about what Bob Katter had for breakfast."
- Glenn Milne, Hamstrung by the minors," The Australian (6 September 2004).

"Heaven's gate" - always a good omen (so to speak) for an ambitious film producer

2010-08-15T17:42:00.001+10:00

Okay, well, the much-trumpeted (so to speak) Paradise Lost film doesn't seem to be happening after all (surely not copyright claims? I knew the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act had a long reach, but even so...). However, all hope do not abandon. For in lieu thereof, there is another: Lucifer: The Movie, to be directed by conservative activist Ray Griggs. Preview clip at YouTube here.

My verdict: The CGI's brilliant. Depicting heaven as Pandora-meets-Lothlórien, as an Edenic forest-island floating in the clouds, is inspired (so to speak). Establishing Michael and Lucifer as besties who later become deadly enemies during the War In Heaven does not come entirely out of left field (even as a mortal bound by linear time, I foresee the line "You were like a brother to me!" being uttered at some point *) but it can certainly make the characters resonate if done properly. The dialogue could do with some trimming, and please, not Warwick Capper/ David Lee Roth as the soon-to-befallen archangel. But this is a promising start, and hopefully the hairstyling budget can match the CGI budget on the final cut.

___________________________________________________

* And then, when Lucifer is kicked out of heaven, he - hmmm.... - falls into a pit of molten lava, and emerges looking all burned and hideous, with his skin stripped off. Something like the attached artwork by Ong Chew Peng, which I have christened (so to speak) "Eric Bana arm-wrestles a flayed Malcolm Heather."

"It's an invasion..."

2010-07-26T12:05:00.001+10:00

Islamophobia is even more widespread in Australia than anyone had expected.

Didn't Labor already have a frank Tudor as leader...?

2010-07-20T17:16:00.001+10:00

I wonder if you can

2010-07-19T00:23:00.004+10:00

"... proletarians [were]... subjects of governments founded on the inequity of power, ... individuals who were inevitably exploited by and exploiters of others, because they had consented to be elements in the State-Machine...

"... The Odonian society called itself anarchistic, he [Atro] said, but they were in fact mere primitive populists whose social order functioned without apparent government because there were so few of them and because they had no neighbor states. When their property was threatened by an aggressive rival, they would either wake up to reality or be wiped out...."

- Ursula Le Guin in 1974 (The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, pp 109, 203).

"... But we cannot have free and open dissemination of information and literature unless the use of written material continues to be controlled by those who write it or own legitimate right in it. We urge our government and our courts to allow no corporation to circumvent copyright law or dictate the terms of that control."

- Ursula Le Guin in 2010 (Petition Concerning the Google Book Settlement).

"Iran unveils human-like robot"

2010-07-06T14:20:00.003+10:00

Iran, huh.... So's that mean that, when the nukes start flying like maybugs, an android woman will say "God told us to do it, Gaius"?

IRAN has developed a new human-like walking robot to be used in "sensitive jobs", a government newspaper reported.

Soorena-2, named after an ancient Persian warrior, was unveiled by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It is 1.45 metres (4.7 feet) tall and weighs 45 kilograms (99 pounds), the report said.

"Walking slowly like human beings with regular arm and leg movements are among its characteristics,'' it said.

"Such robots are designed and developed to be used in sensitive and difficult jobs on behalf of a person or as help.''

The report did not elaborate on the robot's capabilities.

Iran has pursued a number of scientific projects in recent years such as cloning, stem cell research and satellite technology while it has come under increasing international pressure over its controversial nuclear programme.

- "Iran unveils human-like robot", AFP (4 July 2010)

I read the news today - oh, boy

2010-07-04T17:51:00.005+10:00

FAMILY First Senator Steve Fielding was accused of base politics yesterday after he claimed the Government's paid maternity leave scheme would encourage late-term abortions by drug addicts and welfare cheats seeking to rort the system... Senator Fielding claimed women would get the benefit even if they had an abortion. "Drug addicts and welfare cheats can get themselves pregnant and then after 20 weeks have an abortion and still pocket the Government's cash," he told the Senate. "There may be mums out there who want to cheat the system in a horrific way."

His comments were rejected by fellow Senators as sad and pathetic. The Government said only parents of stillborn babies would be eligible. "A stillbirth is required to be certified by a medical professional," [Health Minister Jenny] Macklin's office confirmed. ... Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce said Senator Fielding was the most minor pawn in the Parliament who had base political motives. Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young accused him of "dirt politics," and Greens leader Bob Brown said he was "almost irrelevant."...

- Ben Packham, "Senator Steve Fielding scorned over abortion jibe," Herald Sun (17 June 2010)

A woman has been sentenced to 10 years' jail for prostituting her 12-year-old daughter to raise cash, in part with the stated aim of buying two new Commodore cars. The Tasmanian woman, who cannot be identified, pleaded guilty to a series of charges associated with helping to prostitute her daughter, initially at a hotel and then a private house...

- Matthew Denholm, "Mother jailed for prostituting daughter, 12, for cars," The Australian (14 May 2010)

A Victorian father has been jailed for 13 years after prostituting his own teenage daughter to his truckie mates. The man, 58, was also sentenced for molesting the girl himself, the Age reports...

- "Man jailed after prostituting daughter," NineMSN News (8 June 2010).

A Gold Coast woman who prostituted her own daughter has had her jail term increased. Earlier this year, the woman - who cannot be named for legal reasons - was sentenced in the District Court at Southport to six years' imprisonment. She had pleaded guilty to more than 60 offences relating to her 12-year-old daughter. The woman's trial heard that on one occasion she told one of her daughter's clients that he could do whatever he wanted...

- "Increased sentence for mother who prostituted daughter," ABC News (1 August 2008).

A MOTHER has been charged with sending her 16-year-old daughter to work as a prostitute at a brothel in Sydney's eastern suburbs. The Wollongong District Court was told yesterday the schoolgirl was taken by her mother to Liaisons Executive Retreat, a brothel in the eastern inner-city suburb of Edgecliff, and was made to work there for two weeks...

- Sallie Don, "Mother 'sent daughter to work in brothel'," The Australian (28 July 2010)

Well, of course there won't be any...

2010-07-01T12:11:00.005+10:00

... if you introduce yourself with "Hi, it's me... Poindexter! ":

THERE is no room for romance on board the cozy confines of the International Space Station, a NASA space shuttle commander said when asked what would happen if astronauts had sex in space.

"We are a group of professionals," said Space Shuttle Discovery commander Alan Poindexter during a visit to Tokyo, after a reporter asked about the consequences if astronauts boldly went where probably no others have been.

"We treat each other with respect and we have a great working relationship. Personal relationships are not... an issue," said a serious-faced Cdr Poindexter. "We don't have them and we won't."

Cdr Poindexter and his six crew members, including the first Japanese mother in space Naoko Yamazaki, were in Tokyo to talk about their two-week resupply mission to the International Space Station.

The April voyage broke new ground by putting four women in orbit for the first time, with three female crew members joining one woman already on the station.

Sex in space may appear out of bounds, but astronauts have been known to succumb to earthly passions.

In 2007 former NASA astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak allegedly wore adult diapers when driving hundreds of kilometres across the United States without bathroom breaks to confront a suspected rival in a romance with a fellow astronaut.

- "No space for sex in space, says shuttle commander Alan Poindexter", AFP (28 June 2010)

Finally... a reason for the enormous pendant on gold chain

2010-06-21T21:40:00.002+10:00

Geoff Shearer, "Real estate agents use hypnosis to seal property deals", The Courier -Mail (10 June 2010), p 15.

Abrams tanks

2010-06-15T22:52:00.013+10:00

Okay, so JJ Abrams and Damien Lindelof have renounced the Tower (thereby leaving Anton Yelchin as the sole link between Star Trek and Stephen King's Iliad of Gilead). But is there another producer/ director with the courage to do his dinh's will? Aha! Another there is! And it is... huh? Ron Howard?

Be careful what you wish for, perhaps. A cameo as his twinner, Arnie; Arthur "the Eld" Eldarelli; and "you have crossed the White and I, Chachi son of Chachi, consign you to the Black, maggot."

But aye, dear gods, not Tom Hanks as Roland...

UPDATE (1): Having now seen the first 11 minutes of Toy Story 3, I owe Mr Hanks a semi-apology. Seems to me that if you gotta see six-shooters versus laser beams on a train track crossing a vast desert, he's your go-to guy.

UPDATE (2): Although a second Hamm connection would have been too much Toy Story.

UPDATE (3): Javier Bardem, then. Sounding good. Especially appropriate for a knightly warrior named Roland to be played by someone born in Spain, even after it turned out that Chretien n'avait pas droit after all. And there's this...

... Another smallholder rose - Bucky Javier. He had bright little blue eyes in a small head that seemed to slope back from his goateed chin. "What if we left for awhile?" he asked. "What if we took our children and went back west? All the way to the west branch of the Big River, mayhap?" - Wolves of the Calla, Chapter 1.

Hanna-Barberism

2010-06-11T23:05:00.002+10:00

Hunting Randall, are we...?

2010-06-11T22:33:00.001+10:00

Dust gets in your spell-checker

2010-05-10T14:38:00.013+10:00

The previously-observed, already-high degree of Stephen King/ Phillip Pullman convergence [*] has grown even higher of late. King writes about "The Good Man" and "the Man Jesus", so... what does Pullman title his latest novel? The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. I've not seen such shameless pilfering since Peter Jackson directed The Menacing Shadow of the Past (2001), Always Two Towers, There Are - No More, No Less (2002) and The Revenge of the King (2003), stealing from George Lucas the idea of having a respected Scandinavian actor speak the line "What does your heart tell you?" with a straight face. Having said that, ever since Doctor Who Season 2, Pullman has been much more sinned against than sinning in the pilfering department, so surely he's entitled to do likewise unto others and thus restore the cosmic balance.

Intriguingly, something about Pullman's Bultmannish new Anne-Rice-channels-Joseph-Smith pastiche seems to cloud the minds of the proof-readers:

'Like many atheists, the novelist Philip Pullman has emphatic and complicated religious beliefs. Pullman used His Dark Materials, his masterpiece trilogy, to deliver a savage beating to the Catholic Church (the thinly disguised "Magesterium" [sic] in the novels)...'

- David Plotz, "The Gospel According to Philip: Philip Pullman tries to repair the most sacred story ever written," Slate (2 May 2010).

... But unfortunately those dumb fundoes in Harry-Potter-burning flyover country won't appreciate Pullman's literary genius, because their too alliterate. Maybe Slate better install Firefox spell-checker in time for installment #627 of its "How Dumb Is Sarah Palin?!" series.

But let's not single out the Kinsley Report to pick on. Even The Australian itself has succumbed to Spectres munching on the brain cells, as the Millar told his tale:

'... Uncannily, in his new book Pullman seems to have been at work on the specific charges laid against the Vatican hierarchy. One wonders if Geoffrey Robinson [sic], the Australian human rights barrister preparing the case for Hitchens and Dawkins, will be able to put it any better than the speech Pullman scripted for "Good Man" Jesus, arguing against the establishment of a church in his name: "Any priest who wants to indulge his secret appetites, his greed, his lust, his cruelty, will find himself like a wolf in a field of lambs where the shepherd is bound and gagged and blinded... and his little victims will cry to heaven for pity, and their tears will wet his hands, and he'll wipe them on his robe and press them together piously and cast his eyes upwards".'

- Bruce Millar, "Double take," The Weekend Australian (1-2 May 2010), Review pp 4-5.

Great quote, by the way. It seems that Pullman - after so zealously thwacking the stuffing out of Inter-Testamental Judaism in His Dark Materials - has lately realised that this "Christianity" thingumajig offers a much more topical, and therefore more appealing, target for his neo-Voltairean pen. (We await with keen interest the Great Questioner's forthcoming The Charlatan and Impostor Muhammad Exposed and Refuted, due in late 2013 or early 2014, dependent on publishing schedules.) So Pullman is now zeroing in on one of Christianity's chief weaknesses, as previously noted by Nietzsche and Marx: that the Sermon on the Mount constitutes unilateral disarmament by the exploited, ordering them to turn the other cheek to their exploiters rather than resisting them. Vide GK Chesterton's Jake Halket, the radical trade union leader who confronts Father Brown in "The Ghost of Gideon Wise" (1926):

[Someone] had uttered some casual and conventional phrase about "Heaven forbid" something or other, and this was quite enough to set Jake off with a torrent of profanity. "'Heaven forbid'! and that's about all it bally well does do," he said. "Heaven never does anything but forbid this, that and the other; forbids us to strike, and forbids us to fight, and forbids us to shoot the damned usurers and blood-suckers where they sit. Why doesn't Heaven forbid them something for a bit? Why don't the damned priests and parsons stand up and tell the truth about those brutes for a change?..."

The word "Christian" appears, I think, exactly twice in the Dark Materials trilogy and there are no references to Jesus at all that I remember. Many of PP's Christian critics have viewed this as an implicit admission by him that Jesus won't fit into his imaginary universe, and that this is a flaw in his theology. Yet this seems too easy. How hard would it have been for one of the rebel Angels to tell Will or Lyra something like:"There was another angel, two thousand years ago, whom the Authority loved dearly, even like his own son. Yet when this angel sought to intercede and plead for mercy on the humans' behalf, the Authority had him tortured to death on a cross. And then promoted Metatron as regent in his place." Bang! Then at one blow, you've made Pullman's God even nastier and more malevolent than the Christian God. (You've made him, in fact, into the Arian/ Jehovah's Witness God). Pullman would have deflected the "But what about a merciful, humble Jesus?" counter-argument using a variant of Rita Brock's and Brian McLaren's " cosmic child abuse" interpretation. So Pullman could have: why didn't he? Was he saving his ammunition for this book instead?

[*] King and Pullman have similar views about organised religion: ".... God o' the Cross was just another religion which taught that love and murder were inextricably bound together... in the end, God always drank blood" ("The Little Sisters of Eluria"). Interestingly, though, while they agree that three centuries ago Everything Changed, they disagree strongly on whether the Enlightenment/ Scientific Revolution was a Good Thing. Pullman sees it as the start of humankind's war of liberation against its angelic oppressors, and the dawn of the "Republic of Heaven", while King labels it "The Age of Poisoned Thought." - ouch.

Robots and Jedi

2010-05-10T14:33:00.002+10:00

Sell on Michael eBay!

'[US] FEDERAL regulators should address the "casino environment" on Wall Street where computerised high-frequency trading can trigger market-shaking turmoil, a US senator says. Senate Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd pointed to the new phenomena of automatic programs - trading robots - buying and selling stock in nanoseconds as a possible cause of last week's meltdown that was felt around the world....'

- AFP, " The 'robots' that could ruin Wall Street" (10 May 2010)

Help us, Obeid/ Whan/ Kenneally! You're our only hope!

'Army reservist Christian Emmery, who turned 20 several weeks ago, is standing as Labor's candidate for the southern and far-western NSW seat of Farrer, a safe Liberal seat held by frontbencher Sussan Ley. Mr Emmery said he was single, lived with his dad in Albury and worked at the local Coles. The self-confessed Metallica fan is active on Facebook, where he lists his religious view as "Jedi"....'

- "Labor's Jedi knight Christian Emmery wants your vote," Daily Telegraph (9 May 2010).

UPDATE: And from the land of Lucas and Hamill... "Only a master of evil, D'Ath!" (Yes, that is exactly how it's pronounced in Australian). - The Senate will not sit still for this...

... while agreeing to an NYT interview that gets posted on the - what's that phrase? - "World Wide Web." Yep, that'll work

2010-05-10T14:02:00.005+10:00

'Min Liu, a 21-year-old liberal arts student [Do conservative arts students exist? - ed] at the New School in New York City, got a FaceBook account at 17 and chronicled her college life in detail, from rooftop drinks with friends to dancing at a downtown club. Recently, though, she has had second thoughts. Concerned about her career prospects, she asked a friend to take down a photograph of her drinking and wearing a tight dress. When the woman overseeing her internship asked to join her FaceBook circle, Ms Liu agreed, but limited access to her FaceBook page. "I want people to take me seriously," she said. The conventional wisdom suggests that everyone under 30 is comfortable revealing every facet of their lives online, from their favorite pizza to most frequent sexual partners. But many members of the tell-all generation are rethinking what it means to live out loud....'

- Laura M Holson, "Tell-All Generation Learns to Keep Things Offline," New York Times (9 May 2010), p A-1.

Walt's and my Tilda

2010-05-10T13:15:00.005+10:00

'If one were casting a Hollywood film about Australian politics (an unlikely project), it would be hard to go past Philip Seymour Hoffman for the part of Kevin Rudd. (Don't you love these games?) Tony Abbott would be harder, but I think I'd go for William H Macy. George Clooney might be credibly disguised as Malcolm Turnbull and Tilda Swinton would be a natural for Julia Gillard...'- Evan Williams, The Weekend Australian (24-25 April 2010), Review p 19.

Oh, yeah, Swinton as Gillard is a no-brainer (see photo). Throughout Lion, Witch & Wardrobe I kept waiting Jadis the White Witch to start expounding on school rankings and the repeal of WorkChoices, and expecting the line " I have no children of my own" to be discreetly dropped from Anne Peacock's script.

Casting other State and Federal politicians in Baz Luhrmann's forthcoming History of the Australian-Speaking Peoples should be straightforward. Obviously, you'd cast Danny de Vito as John Howard. I mean - obviously. For Brendan Nelson, either Billy Bob with his Mr Woodcock 'do or else whoever played the President in X-Men 2. Likewise Callum Keith Rennie as Anthony Albanese; Liev Schreiber as Teevee Goneboy; Tom "Forrest Gump" Hanks as Chris Pyne; Seth Rogen as Barnaby Joyce; Eric Bana as Laurence Springborg; Humphrey Bogart as Rob Borbidge; Lance Henriksen as Bob Carr; Ian McKellen as Bob Hawke (sorry, David Field and Richard Roxburgh); Greedy Smith as Paul Keating; Gina Riley as Anna Bligh; Antonia Kidman as Paula Wriedt; Jake Gyllenhaal as Cameron Dick. No obvious matches, unfortunately, for Australia's own "Charisma" Carpenter.

But... the rest of the Evan's casting? Macy as Abbott, while Daniel Craig still draws breath? And how could anyone could go past the world's second most famous Kevin as Rudd himself?

PS: No, not Sandra Bullock as Sarah Palin. Wendy Hughes.

PPS: Robert Duvall as François Mitterrand.

PPPS: Wm H Macy can still get a slot... as David Laws.

Deep cleavages in the societal compact

2010-05-06T08:41:00.006+10:00

The text of this editorial is worth reproducing in full, partly to spare readers from opening a page with graphics that are definitely NSFW, but also because it's not every election that one sees John Locke quoted to defend topless "Page Three" photos against a renewed Clare Short-style ban:

SIXTEEN Page 3 Girls in all their glory represent the very image of freedom in this country. But if Labour or the Lib Dems win the election, this could be the last time they are allowed to pose together. MPs Harriet Harman and Lynne Featherstone will move swiftly to change the law and ban Page 3 forever. Our national treasures - who even enjoy the Royal seal of approval from our future King Prince Charles - will be no more. And at a stroke the very liberties that put the Great into Great Britain will be torn asunder. The radical ideas of the 17th-century philosopher John Locke helped shape our freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights and, later, America's Constitution. Lib Dem frontbencher Featherstone was cheered by women's rights activists when she declared she would "love to take on Page 3". But our Poppy said: "The basis of Lockean thought is his theory of the Contract of Government, under which all political power is a trust for the benefit of the people. His thinking underpins our ideas of national identity and society. Please don't let those who seek to ban our beauty win. Vote to save Page 3!"

- "Save these girls from dole queue", The Sun (6 May 2010).

(In classic Murdoch tabloid style, every sentence was a separate paragraph in the original. No, don't click the link to check. Take my word for it.)

(No, I found it by clicking on a headline titled "Keep These Girls Off the Dole Queue" in the "UK Elections" section of Google News. Why, what did you think?!!)

One suspects that, uncoached, "Poppy" would be more likely to free-associate "Hobbes" with "Miranda" than "Thomas", and "Locke" with the Smoke Monster, but still... If we can't rely on Prince Charles as our Supreme Arbiter of acceptable standards of sexual propriety for British women, who else is left?

PS: This is not, in fact, the only result that Google gives for "laws of england bare breast", although it doubtless gets more traffic than Sir William's Commentaries these days.

"Abbotar"

2010-04-21T15:39:00.001+10:00

One is Cameron's political fantasy... The other is a largely CGI sci-fi movie that has nothing to do with Anglo-Australian conservative parties.

No Moses in this one...

2010-04-20T20:57:00.001+10:00

Grand harmonic convergence...

2010-04-10T08:57:00.002+10:00

... of two separate blog posts:

'... According to the unsworn declaration, Bombshell says, "I do NOT have a swastika tattoo on me."..."

When the watch says, "It's Time..."

2010-04-06T14:35:00.002+10:00

RIP Lady Sonia (or Sonia Lady) McMahon... you knew there would be a superhero angle on her death, though, didn't you...

Mungo, mungamus, mungant

2010-04-05T07:11:00.001+10:00

"It was left to a more literate conservative, Sydney Kings School headmaster Tim Hawkes..."

Take that, stupid illiterate conservatives!

"... to point that just 39 of the 237 content areas in the [national schools] curriculum contained any reference to Aboriginals [sic]..."

- Mungo MacCallum, "When a problem comes along, you must whip it; whip it good," 16(10) The Northern Rivers Echo (18 March 2010), p 16.

Do go on, Mungo, keep us informed whether these illiterate, hangover-from-the-1950s conservatives also complained about the Curriculum's coverage of Negroes [sic], Jewesses [sic], and Asiatics [sic] too.

UPDATE: Some free counsel for literate conservatives out there. If your blurb introduces you as "Director of [the? Boris and Natasha, call office] Melbourne-based Education Standards Institute", you don't want any genitive mutilation in your very first sentence:

"There’s nothing new in the Australian Education Union’s campaign against the Liberal Party and it’s attack on Tony Abbott...."

Moreover, if Star Wars had been made...

2010-04-01T22:27:00.008+10:00

... by this George Lucas - if Mayhew, Mark/Luke, and John had joined forces with the other Fisher and Cushing - then the Marvel (1977) graphic novel of A New Hope, the one with Obi-Wan Kenobi on the cover, [1] would not have Luke (extracanonically) channelling Luther. [2]

It might also have been drawn by someone who had actually seen the movie... [3]

----------------------------------------------

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Of course, had you asked a newsagent in 1977 for a copy of "the graphic novel of A New Hope, the one with Obi-Wan Kenobi on the cover," she or he would have looked at you blankly until you translated this into "the comic of Star Wars, the one with Ben Kenobi on the cover."

[2] C/f both Luther Coy "Luke" Perry and Luther "Luke Skyywalker" [sic] Campbell.

[3] That's not snark... at least, it's not merely snark. When the Brothers Hildebrandt were commissioned to paint the SW:ANH movie poster - a change from these telempathic twins' usual shtick of bronzed dragons, buff elves, etc for gaudy covers of fantasy novels written by blokes named Terry - they hadn't actually seen the film either (this was pre-Internet, remember, and even largely pre-VCRs) and had only some still photos to work from. Hence the iconic 1977 poster of Luke wielding a cross-shaped lightsabre (Krull meets Braveheart), his muscled chest popping out of his tunic, Leia hanging off his leg (ahem), and Darth Vader looking like a robot dog in the background. Still, better than a green Vader who looks more like Bug from The Micronauts... The Hildebrandts may have produced a different sort of poster if commissioned by The Other George Lucas.

PS: In 1979, I read in a primary-school English textbook (American, printed in one of those exotic-sounding seats of publishing houses like Engelwood Cliffs) a story about two modern Amish kids going to a State Fair. Being barely-assimilated Pennsylvania Dutch, they referred to their parents as Moeder and... Vader. Huh? I thought, THIS is a Star Wars spinoff?! (not wholly implausible - these were every bloody where in 1979), but then I checked the publication date (1960s), and eventually deduced that Vader, like German Vatter, is cognate with English "Father". Boy, thinks 1979 me, what a funny coincidence! The Dutch word for "Father" is spelled like the name of "Darth Vader", whose name obviously symbolises something quite different - "Dark Invader." (I was among those who subscribed to the "Vader is really an alien overlord, with an oozy green head under his helmet" theory).

PPS: Then, in early 1983, just as fandom everywhere were buzzing with speculation about how Revenge - err, Wrath - err, Return of the Jedi might be resolved, I read somewhere (StarLog, maybe? Like I keep saying, this was pre-Internet) the perfect theory. It was set out at length, and this is my paraphrase of what I remember of it, though over 27 years I would not rule out the possibility that some of my own speculations have gotten enmeshed with it. I can't find it on the Web but I think it's too good to slip down the memory hole that awaits all paper-based fanfixes from pre-1998. I would claim at most only some claim of the credit.

Okay, goes like this:

Obi-Wan's and Leia's passing reference to the Clone Wars was not, as we all assumed back then, just another piece of Lucasian colour thrown into the dialogue - like "the Spice Mines of Kessel" or "wrestle a Gundark" - to give a Nivenish depth to his imagined galaxy. Rather, there had in fact been Clone Wars before the rise of the Empire; these might possibly have been important to the back story (- ya think?!); and they might have involved clones. Like the name says. (How long was the Hundred Years War again?)

Vader was not Luke's original father, but an evil clone that Senator Palpatine secretly made from the modified DNA of Anakin, a good man who was the greatest Jedi warrior and star pilot ever known. (Post-prequels, you could embellish this by having Anakin defeat Jango Fett - the template for the original clone troopers - and thus convince Palpatine that Jango was only the second-greatest warrior in the galaxy after all).

Palpatine got himself elected President of the Galactic Republic (refer Alan Dean Foster) and then declared himself Emperor and used the evil Vader clone to defeat all Jedi who resisted. When Skywalker père found out that Palpatine had misused his genetic stock in this fashion, he came out of retirement, left his new wife and baby son Luke in hiding with his brother Owen on Tatooine, clipped on his lightsabre again, joined the nascent Rebellion, and tried to kill his own clone (is that suicide, or filicide?). But Vader killed Anakin, by feigning sympathy to the Rebellion to trick him into lowering his guard (Vader would have all of Anakin's memories up to the time of cloning).

Which means it was true in a very real sense that, as Obi-Wan told Luke, "He [Vader] betrayed and murdered your father."

But also that it was true in a very real sense that, as Vader told Luke: "No, Luke. I am your father."

So that, at the end of Return of the Jedi, Luke manages to overpower and disarm Vader, and has him at his mercy. But he realises that the clone, even though corrupted, is still an exact copy of his father and "there is still good in him". So Luke spares Vader's life, and thus escapes ensnaring by the Dark Side. Palpatine mocks him and brings on the Force-lightning, but Vader rises up ("Respect for human life is not a weakness!") and turns against his own dark master. Cue Ewoks drumming on helmets, etc.

Okay, it's elegant, and has an "aha" moment as good as Éowyn telling the Nazgûl Witch-King "I am no man". (Which was a nice Wagnerian allusion - we know how much JRR loved those - but it did (a) depend on the old "Here's an ancient prophesy that a seer once uttered out of the blue, which doesn't relate to the rest of the plot but solves this particular dramatic tension quite nicely"; and (b) sit uneasily with Tolkien's frequent old-school use of "Men" throughout The Lord of the Rings as a synecdoche for "humans"/ "homo sapiens" in general... ("The Age of the Elves has passed! The Age of Man begins! Wait, sorry, Éowyn, the Age of Woman won't be for another 5,217 years after that.")

It also elegantly explains who "The Other" is (it's obvious that "Hey, guess what, it's Leia and she's Luke's sister, not that she actually does anything" was pulled out of Lucas' ass some time around September or October 1982 - you can't tell me otherwise he wouldn't have cleared his throat in 1979-80 and said "Uh... Leigh? Lawrence? This smouldering kiss that Leia gives Luke in Empire, Scene 10... Can we, uh, make that a hug...") AND also why Yoda was coy about explaining The Other's identity to Obi-Wan (maybe Kenobi didn't realise Vader had been cloned from Anakin; maybe Palpatine kept it top secret, but Yoda sensed it and guessed, which was why he wanted Luke to be ready for the dilemma it would present... Luke may have the fighting strength to kill Vader, but not the emotional cojones to be a virtual patricide).

But all that will now have to wait until Star Wars gets re-imagined, and that usually takes about two decades since the last original episode aired. So, 2025...

''Jesse James, it was a fact, He stabbed Sandra in the back, By sneakin' round with some be-tattooed hussy...''

2010-03-22T11:16:00.010+10:00

One really needs to click on the link to see and appreciate this gal's tatts.

Sara Nathan, ''Sandra Bullock pulls out of The Blind Side premiere in UK as tattoo model claims she had affair with Oscar winner's husband Jesse James,'' Daily Mail [UK] (18 March 2010)

Sandra Bullock as a lass, was in Demolition Man
But as she grew up, her roles became more choosy
Told her agent, "Be selective - I can play a tough gal detective,
Or even rom-com heroines named Lucy."

But Miss Bullock with her men, she'd get burnt again 'n' again
Her problem was, she wasn't very fussy
Jesse James, it was a fact, he stabbed Sandra in the back
By sneakin' round with some be-tattooed hussy

CHORUS:

Oh, Jesse had a hide to go cheatin' on his bride
And she ought to Bullock-whip this damn impostor
That dirty little coward! while his wife was with Ron Howard,
Emotively acceptin' of her Oscar...

Now Jesse he was bold, cut right from the K-Fed mould
And clearly was a dodgy stupid donkey
But Miss Bullock she was smitten, and (as all the tabs have written)
Thanked the gods at least he weren't Matthew McConaughey

Though Sandra Jesse trusted, came the day that he got busted
And at last she was aware of Jesse's sin
He'd betrayed her indiscreetly - so she whispered, smiling sweetly,
That "I'm gonna put a needle through your skin"

CHORUS:

Oh, Jesse had a hide to go cheatin' on his bride
And she ought to Bullock-whip this damn impostor
That dirty little coward! while his wife was with Ron Howard,
Emotively acceptin' of her Oscar...

Another Hart-Fuller debate; or, [N]orm is [N]orm?

2010-03-05T06:24:00.003+10:00

Either some poor academic's Jurisprudence I exam paper leaked into the In-World's reality, or else I have been mistaken and "Norm" is not a first name as such but a title that one adopts upon assuming an office, like "Pharoah" for ancient Egyptian kings, "Caesar" for Roman Emperors, and "Anna" or "Kate" for female Labor politicians (depending on whether born before or after 2 December 1972).

"PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd is at the centre of a fierce debate over whether parents of bullying victims should confront the mums and dads of their child's tormentor. ... Queensland Association of State School Principals president Norm Hart said he agreed with most of Mr Rudd's comments but urged parents to be sure they had the full story before contacting another student's family. ... Queensland Secondary Principals Association president Norm Fuller said he understood what Mr Rudd was saying, but he also held concerns some parents may react violently to the intensely emotional issue...."
- "Experts slam Kevin Rudd's advice on bullying," Courier-Mail (4 March 2010)

Strictly evidence-based

2010-02-16T09:44:00.009+10:00

'... I am trying to call attention to the elephant in the room that everybody is too polite - or too devout - to notice: religion, and specifically the devaluing effect that religion has on human life. I don't mean devaluing the life of others (though it can do that too), but devaluing one's own life. Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end. If death is final, a rational agent can be expected to value his life highly and be reluctant to risk it. This makes the world a safer place, just as a plane is safer if its hijacker wants to survive. At the other extreme, if a significant number of people convince themselves, or are convinced by their priests, that a martyr's death is equivalent to pressing the hyperspace button and zooming through a wormhole to another universe, it can make the world a very dangerous place. Especially if they also believe that that other universe is a paradisical escape from the tribulations of the real world. Top it off with sincerely believed, if ludicrous and degrading to women, sexual promises, and is it any wonder that naive and frustrated young men are clamouring to be selected for suicide missions? There is no doubt that the afterlife-obsessed suicidal brain really is a weapon of immense power and danger.... To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used...'

- Richard Dawkins (Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, University of Oxford), "Religion's misguided missiles: Promise a young man that death is not the end and he will willingly cause disaster," The Guardian (Saturday 15 September 2001)

'The gunman who went on a deadly shooting spree at a Finnish high school overnight posted a video clip on the video-sharing site YouTube that signalled his intentions. The video, entitled "Jokela High School Massacre - 11/7/2007," was posted within the past two weeks under the pseudonym "Sturmgeist89", who identified himself as Pekka-Eric Auvinen, 18... In his profile posted alongside his YouTube videos, the teen describes himself as an "cynical existentialist, antihuman humanist." "I am prepared to fight and die for my cause. I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see [as] unfit, disgraces of the human race and failures of natural selection," he wrote... In another video, he sports a tee-shirt with the text "Humanity is Overrated."... "I don't want to be part of this ... society," he wrote, criticising "corrupted governments" and the "rule of idiocracy [sic {sic}]." "I am ready to die for a cause I know is right, just and true ... I will rather fight and die than live a long and unhappy life"...'

- AFP, "YouTube gunman kills eight at school," ABC News (8 November 2007)

UPDATE #1:

"... Of course, it is not unusual for homicidal maniacs to cite great writers when seeking to justify their crimes. The Chicago spree-killers Leopold and Loeb (the models for Hitchcock’s 1948 film, Rope) claimed Friedrich Nietzsche as their muse, as did the Moors murderer Ian Brady. Other deranged misfits have nominated Albert Camus, Jean Genet and André Gide. But it may take a keener intellect than was possessed by Harris, Klebold or Auvinen to negotiate such a reading list. The basics of evolution are much more accessible and are taught in every high school, so it should not be surprising that Darwin seems to be emerging as the inspiration for the more dim-witted schoolboy sociopath..."

- Dennis Sewell, "Charles Darwin and the children of the evolution: The naturalist outraged the church, prompting a bitter debate that still sets creationists against evolutionists. Now a sinister link has emerged between his work and the recent spate of high-school killings by crazed, nihilistic teenagers," The Sunday Times (8 November 2009)

UPDATE #2:

Now that's cosmically bad timing for a boast of this sort:

"Something you will never see: an atheist boarding a plane with a bomb strapped to him, waving a copy of On The Origin Of Species, before he blows himself up in a violent attempt to further his cause. So says David Nicholls, the head of the Atheist Foundation of Australia..."

- Jacqueline Maley, "Atheism's true believers gather," Sydney Morning Herald (13 February 2010).

If CS Lewis had converted to a religion other than Anglicanism…

2010-01-11T16:29:00.002+10:00

Everyone wants to claim CS Lewis - from Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, though Southern Baptists (apparently Wheaton College has a shrine to the master on its grounds), to Mormons. But what if he had actually converted...?

Baptist: The Wise Man (Or King)'s Nephew

Brethren: The Last Battle (Of This Particular Dispensation)

Eastern Orthodox: The Ornately Bejewelled Silver, Gold, Diamond And Lapis Lazuli Chair... So Beautiful... How Could It Possibly Be Evil?

Lutheran: The Voyage (Not Being A Pilgrimage or Any Other Specie of Good Work) Of The Dawn Treader

Presbyterian: Junior Vice-President Caspian

Roman Catholic: In The First Place, Treating Of The Lion; In The Second Place, Treating Of The Witch; And In The Third Place, Treating Of The Wardrobe

Uniting/ Unitarian: The Horse and The Companion Human Accompanying Her or Him

"Failure to Grasp the Concept" Competition - Inklings Division

2009-12-07T21:40:00.001+10:00

THE WINNER: WELLINGTON CITY COUNCIL, NZ

"The day The Lord of the Rings opened at the Embassy Cinema in New Zealand's capital, Wellingtonians awoke to discover that overnight their city had been re-named by government decree. To honour the achievement of their local film industry, Wellington was for one unique day exchanged for 'Middle-Earth' on signposts and public buildings..."

- Foreword by Sir Ian McKellen in The Lord of the Rings: The Making of the Movie Trilogy by Brian Sibley (London: HarperCollins, 2002), p 7 [emphasis added].

RUNNERS-UP:

(a) The Return of the King movie promotion contest for which first prize was... a car. And not just any car, but a massive four-wheel-drive SUV. ("Ranchero! It didn't ask! It just took!"). Yep, that's how you market a film based on a book written by a man who could barely even tolerate the Model T: raffling a 4x4 toddler-squasher...

(b) The Lion Witch + Wardrobe tie-in contest that marketed... Turkish Delight.

PS: Welcome to Mr Sibley himself!

PPS:

"It's ironic that Disney is filming The Chronicles of Narnia, because Jack [CS Lewis] negatively cites Walt Disney in Surprised By Joy as an artist who betrays beauty. He disliked Dickens' novels, for example, because the illustrations in them that he pored over before he could read represented, like Disney's art, "simpering dolls intended for our sympathy, which really betray the secret."

- Jon Kennedy, The Everything Guide to CS Lewis and Narnia (Avon Media, 2008), p 41.

A biography of Lewis by someone named "Jon Kennedy" is nearly as apt as one written by a Coren.

Freakonomics moment

2009-11-24T17:46:00.000+10:00

I had a "Freakonomics" moment last week. Asked sandwich bar if they
sell 50 cent pork rinds like others do. No, told, but you can have
two for free! Now realised I can't go back to that sandwich bar ever
again because I would have to ask for free pork rinds (rather than
buying them), which imposes considerable psychic costs.

... By a drunken Milesh O'Brien?

2009-11-09T06:06:00.000+10:00

"Kardashians punched in the face for charity"

http://celebrities.ninemsn.com.au/blog.aspx?blogentryid=529162&showcomments=true

Que un zapatero haceria tales zapatos!

2009-09-29T11:11:00.001+10:00

Ay, ay, ay! Las hijas primeras son goticas!

!Rodrigo, llama tu officio!

As he stood for photographs with his teenage daughters beside Barack and Michelle Obama, a smiling Spanish prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, must have thought he was getting the ultimate family album picture.

It did not occur to him that official Obama pictures are uploaded on to the US state department's Flickr page, or that the black clothes and calf-high boots worn by one of his offspring might brighten the lives of Spain's adolescent Goths.

Yesterday his office was scrambling to remove all traces of the snaps, alleging that - unlike the Obamas - Zapatero has always kept his daughters, Laura, 16, and Alba, 13, out of the public eye. Officials also persuaded the state-owned Spanish news agency EFE not to distribute photographs of the two girls at the UN.

They reportedly reminded the agency that the law allowed Zapatero and his wife to insist images of their underage children should not be published - even with their faces pixilated out. However, the photograph was on the front page on several national Spanish newspapers- for many Spaniards their first glimpse of the prime minister's full family.

EFE confirmed it had decided not to distribute pictures of Mr Zapatero's daughters as soon as it received them because "they should not have their personal rights prejudiced by the prime minister's decision to take them to New York."

- Giles Tremlett, "Pictures of Spanish PM's daughters get thumbs up from Goths: Spanish prime minister tries to stop publication of pictures of daughters at White House wearing black clothes and high boots," The Grauniad (25 September 2009).

UPDATE: Preserving the anonymity of famous people's children seems to be a Spanish custom.

Gee. Funny that, eh

2009-09-18T15:02:00.000+10:00

''Episode IV - A New Hope and Change''

2009-09-17T14:43:00.001+10:00

... I suspect "The Empire Strikes Back" due for release soon, followed by "The Revenge of the Jedediahs".

Some say Michelle O looks like a Klingon woman but I say she looks more like Kassidy Yates, Sisko's galpal in Season 3 of Deep Space Nine (who was played by an actress - Penny Johnson - who, interestingly, also played Condi Rice. Who has also been played by Thandie Newton. Who played, in Chronicles of Riddick, the woman unto the character played therein by Karl Urban. Who has also played both Eomer and Leonard "Bones" McCoy. All very incestuous - and not in the sense that attracts people to the idea of moving to Tasmania).

Godfried Daneels, meet Anthony Daniels [corrected]

2009-08-27T10:36:00.015+10:00

THERE IS ANOTHER: Recently I learned of the existence of a second George Lucas. No, not a clone, but the Catholic bishop of Springfield, USA, which means his ring and crozier may feature a three-eyed fish. This got me thinking... What if he'd been the George Lucas who'd created the Star Wars trilogies? How far might his Catholic episcopal influence have counter-balanced Hollywood's recent spate of anti-Catholic movies (The Magdalene Sisters, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, The Golden Compass, Luther, Serenity, The Nativity, The Da Vinci Code)...? What would Star Wars have looked like if...

1. All post-1965 editions of the script, working from earlier and more accurate manuscripts, transliterate "Ben Kenobi" as "Bar Aknubi."

2. Luke renamed "the Lucan Authors".

3. When Leia asks "Would it help if I got out and pushed?", Han replies "No! - for that would transgress the Seventeenth Canon of the Third Council of Cato Nemoidia, which declares in perpetuity that the Senate has no power to permit Women to pilot vehicles."

4. Anakin sets out his views on democracy and governance. "Then they should be made to agree." When Padmé asks "What if no one can make them agree?" Anakin explains "Then the Chancellor purges from office all Senators who vowed against his proposal. Bingo! Now you've got unanimous consensus - against which shall none dare to presume to set his private judgment."

5. Palpatine orders Anakin/ Vader "Take a squad of troopers and purge the Temple. Leave nothing alive." Anakin: "Isn't that a bit extreme, my master?" Palpatine: "No. For it hath been profaned by the presence of Natalie Portman, Kenny Baker and Anthony Daniels - that is to say, by a Woman, a Dwarf, and an man which hath crushed testicles." Anakin: "Aieee! Abomination! Abomination! It shall be cleansed forthwith!"

6. Yoda's word order now matches that of normal English speakers ("Therefore let the Jedi apprentice approach Our precious hut, in humility and with a teachable spirit", rather than "Let therefore the Jedi apprentice, in humility and with a teachable spirit, Our precious hut approach").

7. When Leia says to Vader, "Darth Vader. Only you could be so bold. The Imperial Senate shall not sit still for this!" Vader replies, "Don't act so SURPRISED, your highness. The moment you removed your faux-Benazir-Bhutto head covering in public, that gave my troops complete authority to use non-lethal force upon your person, pursuant to the Suppression of Vice and Promotion of Virtue Decree (Imp.) of 1 BBY."

8. When Obi-Wan says "Millions of voices cried out in terror - and were suddenly silenced", Luke corrects this vilification of the Empire: "In fact, recent scholarship by unbiased researchers has proven conclusively that (a) fewer than 300 or 400 people overall died in the destruction of Alderaan, (b) of those who did die, at least 90 billion were engaged in aggressive terrorism against the Empire, so killing them was an act of self-defence, (c) officially-sanctioned translations of the Death Star plans into Standard Droidspeak were circulating at least two or three centuries before Alderaan was allegedly destroyed - which proves that Alderaan was in fact destroyed by the Rebel Alliance, not by the Empire. That is, if it ever truly existed."

9. Palpatine tells the Clone Troopers "Execute Order 66." Anakin: "Wow, that sounds, like, really sinister and evil." Palpatine: "And rightly so, my young apprentice. For indeed, it is the sum of the numerical values of the letters on the triple crown that is worn by the President of the World Federation of Seventh-Day Adventist Churches when pilgrims arrive at his palace and kneel before him to kiss his ring."

10. "General Grievous" renamed "Generalised Grievance" and played by William Donohue.

11. When Moff Jerjerrod says "I assure you, Lord Vader. My men are working as fast as they can," and Vader replies ominously, "Perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them", he means nothing more sinister than inspiring them with the story of St Ergonostres, an historical figure who was reliably attested by thousands of eyewitnesses to have worked an ultra-supererogatory 25 or even 26 hours in each per day.

12. Obi-Wan explains "Sandpeople always ride single file... partly to hide their true strength from any observers, but mainly so they can periodically stop, kneel and flog themselves until the blood flows. This is because they believe in a loving God and reject the cruel doctrine of double predestination."

13. Obi-Wan tells Luke of The Force: "It is difficult to explain, but it links together everything in the universe." "Aha", says Luke. "So it's like Humanae Vitae then."

14. Han Solo: "Besides, going up against that thing ain't my idea of courage. More like... suicide." Luke: "Although death to oneself is an entirely foreseeable consequence of attacking the Death Star in a small, one-person fighter, it is not the primary intention (intentio primaria) thereof, nor is it willed by the actor."

15. Vader tells General Tagge, "I find your lack of faith disturbing. I find your lack of works, however, even more disturbing."

16. "Organa Solo" not only a political dynasty but also a theological slogan.

17. Leia corrects Han Solo so that he stops calling her "Your Worshipfulness" and starts calling her "Your Venerationfulness" instead.

18. Luke now understands that, when Obi-Wan says Vader was "a pupil of mine until he turned to evil," use of the word "until" (heos hou) doesn't mean Vader ever actually ceased being Obi-Wan's pupil, and that even now he remains, eternally, Obi-Wan's pupil.

19. When Palpatine tells Anakin "I want you to be my ears and ears on the Council", Anakin replies: "Can't you just send along a gang of disgruntled Latin Mass barristers with notebooks?"

20. Governor Tarkin: "Charming. You don't know how hard I found it to sign the order authorizing your life-annulment." Leia: "I'm surprised you had the courage to take the responsibility yourself." Tarkin: "I've ordered that you be declared a formal heretic and turned over to the custody of the secular power." Leia: "But they'll torture me, and then have me burned to death at the stake!" Tarkin: "Yes, but then the responsibility won't be mine, will it? I mean, be reasonable...."

21. When dodgy one-eyed cantina guy tells Luke "He - doesn't like you! I - don't like you either!", Luke replies "Rather, instead, is he motivated by an all-consuming prejudice and hatred against our ancient Faith."

22. When Kenobi says "That's no moon... that's a space station," Solo corrects him: "It is disappointing that you exhibit a simplistic dualism born of degraded late-mediaeval Nominalism. Whereas - if only you possessed the fullness of the Oral Tradition, you would understand - that a moon can also be a space station, without in the least adding anything to, or taking anything away from, its essence as a moon (essentia quam luna)."

22. ~~When Lando asks "How can you alter one side of a bargain?", Vader explains to him the concept of Mental Reservation~~.

CORRECTED: Apologies for my confusing Lando Calrissian with Count Baltar, the Imperial Lord with the Imperious Leader. If you can remember 1977-78, you weren't there... This should read:

22. When Vader says "I have altered our agreement. Pray I don't alter it further," Lando points out, "I can't pray for that! To grant such a request, the importuned deity would need to interfere with the freedom of your will - something that not even the most omnipotent of gods are capable of."

23. When Palpatine says, "The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be... unnatural", Anakin says "Hey, if it doesn't involve pills or rubber, then who cares?"

24. "Admiral Ackbar" would be renamed "Admiral Allahu Ackbar" and "Padmé" renamed "Ave Mari Padmé Hum La Ilaha Ill'Allah." Admiral Piett renamed "Admiral Piettà", although this would require his character to be rewritten as a woman.

25. C3PO tells R2D2: "You can't go in there. It's restricted to humans. Artificial forms of intelligence are intrinsically forbidden."

26. When Palpatine announces "If elected Chancellor, I promise to put an end to corruption", Jar Jar starts running about shrieking "Oh nooooooo! Himsa gonna paste alla da priestermans!"

27. When Owen Lars says "I guess that makes me your brother", Anakin replies: "Ah. Well. Given that (a) I was a virgin birth, and (b) you and I share neither a father nor a mother, maybe the term 'cousin' or 'close male relative' would be less likely to mislead the theologians of future centuries."

28. Tarkin to Leia: "Don't wowwy – we will deal with your Webel fwiends on Dantooine soon enough." Leia: "I sure hope that you're using 'deal with' here as a euphemism for 'mass extermination,' and not for masturbation, since the latter would be a gravely intrinsically evil act, regardless of exigencies."

29.Vader's actual words in the Original Manuscript were “I sense the presence of my old master... I must face him." However, in later editions, someone (and I'm looking at you, LT To LV volume of the phone directory) altered this to “... I must face him – alone," which completely reverses its meaning.

30. Obi-Wan points to Artoo and tells Luke, “Plug him in. He should be able to interpret the entire Imperial network... provided, of course, that he acts in obedient subjection not only to Sacred Scripture but also to [the] Tradition, to the Decrees of Ecumenical Councils, to Bulls issued by the Holy Father (provided that such bear the clear marks or indicia of an ex cathedra statement in relation to faith and morals, and intended to be infallible), and to Dr Scott Strongstaples' 2007 bestseller, ‘How Moses, David and Ezra are All Antitypes of the Blessed Virgin Mary'."

31. The Emperor's Royal Guards' uniforms would be brown polyester, not red velvet.

32. A Nunn would never be passed over for the role of Princess Leia.

33. Why can't the Wookey win?!

Strange wimmin' distributin' swords

2009-07-17T13:28:00.000+10:00

Speaking of Merlin, my search for the Wikipedia page on the TV series also turned up this interesting character:

" Merlin Hanbury-Tracy, 7th Baron Sudeley... was a very active member of the House of Lords for over thirty years... In 1985 he was elected a Vice-Chancellor of the International Monarchist League..."

Shouldn't that read something more like "In 1985, his army defeated the forces of all rival candidates for Vice-Chancellor of the International Monarchist League, after which he had them executed or imprisoned for treason, and their families exiled, and then declared that he had inherited the position by the grace of God"?

John Faa vs John Farson; or, King vs Republic

2009-07-16T12:12:00.049+10:00

(WARNING - CONTAINS SPOILERS)I've just finished reading a very lengthy, best-selling fantasy series. I was fortunate, in some ways, because I only started reading the first book after the last had been published, so - unlike many thousands of this writer's loyal fans - I wasn't left hanging in suspense for years, wondering if the final book in the promised series would ever be published (it was long overdue). The final opus is a fat bookshelf-buster, which loses some steam towards the end (especially in the final volume), but which at its best reaches the summit of fantasy writing.

The novels are filled with vivid, memorable scenes and ideas... alongside some clunky writing, padded chapters and embarrassing self-indulgence by the author, which I suppose you can get away with if you're a celebrity superstar.

Foremost, this opus - like Narnia, like Raymond E Feist's Magician, and like Alan Garner's Elidor -- is a travel-between-alternate-universes story. Another world, like our own Earth but not quite. Familiar words spelled differently (eg, replacing "e" with "ae" to get ye Olde Englishe atmosphere); Hebraic place names; minor but oft-repeated differences in dialect (trying to think of examples but there ent ary as come to mind).

We follow the heroes' quest across many parallel worlds, seeking a mysterious citadel where the enemy sits enthroned.

The male hero carries a weapon of special power, re-forged from a magical blade. He has two fingers sliced off early in Book 2 of the series, and he has serious issues with his long-absent father. One of his allies, a former Catholic cleric who's lost faith in God, has been wandering - on foot - through rifts between worlds, eventually settling among peaceful agrarians whose bucolic idylls are regularly disrupted by raiding predators. The rifts in the cosmic fabric are spreading, because the various universes are collapsing into chaos; the process is accelerating; spectral monsters are escaping through the cracks and preying on humans, consuming their brains. Our heroes must stop and reverse the collapse and restore the fabric of space/ time. To do this, they need to ascend to the very top of a mysterious tower, built by ancient scientist-magicians.

Innocent children are kidnapped and mutilated in a hidden scientific laboratory, until the good guys intervene and destroy it. In the devastated ruins of a once-great city, destroyed by the hubris of its own scientists, roving gangs prey on the visitors.

Giant sentient fighting bears make fearsome guards - but they have their own weaknesses, which our heroes can exploit. A talking animal companion provides some cuteness and comic relief. Children, hiding in cupboards after filching food from the castle cook, overhear plots to murder with poison.

One of the good guys - a quasi-cowboy whom, the author tells us explicitly, was inspired by spaghetti-western actor Lee Van Cleef [1] - wields the biggest, longest pistol anyone has ever seen, and reminisces about his alternate's world's version of the Battle of the Alamo. [2]Characters quote a weirdly altered version of the King James Bible. The dominant religion is supposed to be Christian but doesn't bear much relationship to it in the world we know, apart from passing allusions to Methodist hymns.

Computerised machines are possessed by, and speak with the voices of, disembodied intelligences. Semi-visible spirit-beings desire sexual union with humans. Characters who die in one world wake up in another, parallel universe and live on. Tarot-like symbols can be read to prophesy the future.

The malevolent villain, known by many different names in different worlds, possesses some supernatural power but falls short of the godlike status he desires. In the end, he dies an undignified death.

The main character's mother, a promiscuous noblewoman, philanders with a supernatural villain. There's even a doomed teenage romance as well; young Will's destiny means he must be tragically separated from the girl he loves, forever, although he can never forget her. If Hollywood does (as anticipated) get around to filming the entire opus,[3] the two young lovers' ages will need to be discreetly revised upwards.

And finally, the author places great emphasis on a monosyllabic concept as an excuse for the most bare-faced plot short-cuts, coincidences, and dei ex machinis. But despite all this, I found myself addicted to reading the books in his Dark...

... Phillip Pullman? Who he? No, I'm talking about Stephen King's The Dark Tower heptology, of course.

... Well, actually, now that you point it out...

Both King and Pullman acknowledge that it was Inklings who gave them the itch they needed to scratch. Pullman has famously excoriated CS Lewis for religious preachiness, ethnic and gender stereotyping, and glorification of death (which is rather like Quentin Tarantino attacking Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones for being excessively violent), whereas King reminisces fondly about his urge to write a Tolkien-inspired epic quest that wasn't just a Terry-Brooks-style Lord of the Rings knockoff. Watching spaghetti westerns inspired him to create the Gunslingers of the ~~Barony of Gilead~~ city-state of Gilead in the Barony of New Canaan, descendants of King Arthur's knights, who now pack six-shooters instead of swords: The Good, the Bad, and the Uglûk, do ya please.

But what surprises me most is not so much the list of similarities (you can also spot several Dark Tower parallels with Firefly, for example, a.k.a Torres and Glass),[4] but the fact that, amongst all the tens of thousands of words I've read discussing Pullman's three novels and King's seven, no one seems to have pointed this out. Try a Google search: most of what you get is book catalogues. They who read of Tull and they who read of Tullio seem to be nearly non-overlapping sets.

Both authors have found success through genre-blending. Pullman combines (largely successfully) Narnia-style talking animals fantasy with faux-19th century Jules Verne-style steampunk. King's great insight was that the Western - despite its veneer of gritty, unsentimental, taciturn realism - draws on much of the same iconography as mediaeval and fantasy fiction does. Horse-riding; dusty fields; desolate paddocks; failed harvests and reaptide bonfires; gallows; cows' and birds' skulls nailed to trees; Old Testament allusions; itinerant fighters, bound to a taciturn code of stoic chivalry; damsels in distress; counties and (cattle) barons; solemn, even high-falutin' diction.[5]However, King does (to my mind) dilute the power of this iconography somewhat by moving from the Mid-World to our own prosaic Earth. (In the later novels, King even includes himself as a character - which highlights the silliness of the standard legal disclaimer, which prefaces all seven books, that "all characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental". He also portrays his near-killer, redneck road menace Bryan Smith, with savage parody - which is understandable, if not the height of chivalry). Robin Furth, who is to King what Bjo Trimble was to Gene Roddenberry (right down to publishing the official Concordance), has loyally defended her dinh's metafictional crossovers... but still, I have to say, the chapters set in backwoods Maine are not those I find myself opening to re-read again and again. And there can't be many epic fantasies where saving the universe from chaos involves not only shooting down vampires, mutants and robots but also travelling between parallel worlds and... setting up a corporation to buy a vacant lot in NYC: Lawyers, Guns and Manni, anyone?

However. It still moves. The only really annoying side-effect of reading the adventures of Roland Deschain (by the way, what sort of rough-riding cowboy has a poncy French name? Louis L'Amour, wire your office!) has ruined both ordinary fantasy and ordinary Westerns for me. Each, on its own, is now lacking. So these days, when I watch Sky One's Merlin, I'm thinking: "Where's Black Thirteen? When's Arthur going to melt down his sword to forge the Guns, or destroy the ancient war machines left by the Old Ones?" and if I watch HBO's Deadwood, I want to know what demons abide in speaking circles on the road to Spearfish, and which of the West'ard Baronies is plotting to annex the Black Hills of the Dakotas.

============================================

[1] "Some [characters] just appear... Others I have to make up. Lee Scoresby, for instance: the Lee part comes from the actor Lee Van Cleef, who appeared in the Dollar films with Clint Eastwood, because I thought my Lee would look like him..." - Philip Pullman interview (2000).

"On a movie screen, projected through the correct Panavision lenses, [The Good, the Bad and the Ugly] is an epic to rival Ben-Hur. Clint Eastwood appears roughly eighteen feet tall, with each wiry jut of stubble on his cheeks looking roughly the size of a young redwood tree. The grooves bracketing Lee Van Cleef's mouth are as deep as canyons..." - Stephen King, "Introduction: On Being Nineteen (And A Few Other Things)," in The Dark Tower, Vol 1: The Gunslinger (2005 revised edition), p xiii.

[2] In fact, the fansites that were dreamcasting JJ Abrams' formerly-anticipated [update: but now abandoned] Dark Tower screen adaptation seem to favour Sam Elliott (Lee Scoresby in the Golden Compass film, also the Marlboro Man cowboy guy in Say Thankya For Smoking) for the role of Steven Deschain, Roland's father.

My own first choice would have been John Costelloe, who played Jim "Johnny Cakes" Witowski (seen on screen lovin' lo Vito loco in Season Six of The Sopranos). Costelloe has exactly the sad eyes, the painful thinness and the drooping handlebar moustache that King described; but in December 2008 he killed himself using, err, a gun.

So my next choice is Christopher "Dr Who #9" Eccleston - partly because he'd have the right note of melancholy, partly because it would be cool and self-referential in a Lawless-Stockwellian-Hatchian kind of way, and partly because Eccleston can be relied upon to pronounce both "Gunslinger" and "Stephen King" so as to rhyme with "finger".

[3] If ~~JJ Abrams~~ Ron Howard does go ahead and turn The Dark Tower into a film and/or a TV miniseries, I have a few scattered suggestions. (You listening, JJ? All SAG fees hereby waived, just include me in the credits.)

* Gilead flashback scenes should be in sepia, a la the opening credits for True Blood. So, at the very beginning, we see an introductory scene where Arthur Eld (would using footage of John Wayne be overdoing things?) is seated at a throne around the Round Table, with a dozen knights raising their swords to salute him. This dissolves/ morphs to a scene at the same table, and a dozen gunslingers in "modern" dress (long frock coats, American Civil War army jackets) raising their pistols to salute the (now empty) throne. The opening 5-10 minutes of Ken Branagh's 1993 Much Ado About Nothing should provide inspiration.

* The Gunslingers' weapons, etc, should not be taken straight from the existing "Westerns" section of Props department, but should be subtly different - about 50% Western, yes but 30% mediaeval and 20% Eastern/ Japanese (reflecting the Arthurian and samurai echoes), eg, Roland's gun belt should be intricately tooled, like a Viking's sword belt, and he should be wearing the ragged remains of a Civil War-style military uniform under his Drizabone trenchcoat, with a small (largely ceremonial) metal breastplate over the top of his chest. His hat should be a battered US Cavalry-type with a badge showing the banner or sigul of Gilead - Llamrei, Arthur Eld's horse (like a stylised chess knight), rampant over two crossed pistols.

* The theme song should be by Bruce Springsteen - either This Hard Land (1995) or else one composed by The Boss especially for the series (".... The world has moved on now/ the Beams, they are hollowed/ While the man in black fled/ And the Gunslinger followed"). A banjo-and-fiddles ballad, but with eerie Celtic pipes in the background, and a mediaeval-sounding lute or lyre (as in Dire Straits' Romeo and Juliet).

[UPDATE: And get this guy a gig on the soundtrack. Pure brilliance... Ennio meets Enya and they dance Ravel's Bolero].

* And on that note (so to speak): Susan Delgado should have an Irish or Welsh accent. Can't say why, she just should. Imagine, say, a younger Tara Fitzgerald speaking Susan's lines from Wizard and Glass with a Celtic lilt ("And you'll not be pert with me, sai Dearborn!").

[4] "Gina Torres should play Odetta/ Susannah, for two reasons: 1. Her surname means “Towers” in Crunk – err, Spanish. 2. She already has experience playing a butt-kicking black chick who (a) marries a pasty white guy (who gets in over his head with gangsters) and (b) hangs around with a troubled teenager who sees disturbing visions; an ex-cleric with a shady past; a private-school boy who detests his wealthy father; and a disillusioned ex-soldier who, after his side loses the civil war, wanders around New Canaan and other worlds killing mutants with his six-shooter, all the while speaking a folksy David Crockett-style argot interspersed with Asian words." (here)

It's ironic that the best two Westerns I've ever seen at the cinema weren't actually Westerns at all: The Two Towers and Serenity. Now that cigarette advertisements are banned, it's oddly ironic that the closest thing to the glorious vistas of the old Marlboro Country ads are brought to us by a director named Peter Jackson.

[5] Daniel Grotta (no, that's not a Russian Hogwarts ripoff), in his JRR Tolkien: Architect of Middle Earth, mentions that, as an Oxford undergraduate, Tolkien was fascinated by tales told by Allen Barnett, an American fellow-student, about growing up in rural Kentucky. And certainly there's something very Huck Finn-ish about the Hobbits, especially as Jackson portrays them.

PS: Add to the above list of similarities that 'Both refer to [the] Christ as "the... Man Jesus".'

Until Kristen Stewart sprang with superhuman speed between him and the taxi, denting its metal hull but saving his life

2009-06-19T12:23:00.002+10:00

Paul Chi and Lisa Ingrassia, "Robert Pattinson Hit by Taxicab," People Magazine (Thursday 18 June 2009)

UPDATE: Great minds think alike.

(Fal)Staff Training Sessions

2009-06-16T14:40:00.002+10:00

Prince Harry has been ordered by his British army bosses to enrol in an equality course after calling a fellow officer a "Paki". The 24-year-old is understood to have been formally disciplined by army chiefs for making the offensive remark and told he must realise his behaviour was unacceptable...

- "Prince Harry to attend equality course," NineMSN News (Thursday 12 February 2009)

One here pictures Hazza's tutor bowing low before him and saying "If it please Your Royal Highness, might I may be so bold as to venture to instruct your Royal Highness that the equality of all subjects - from the highest nobility down to the merest commoners - is deeply, deeply, embedded in the laws, usages and customs of Our Sovereign Lady Your Most Majestic Grandmother's realms, lands and dominions, wheresoever situate."

Because it's not always the red shirt who gets dismembered first

2009-06-16T14:04:00.002+10:00

Problem A: younger offspring loved the figures from Wiggles [TM] keyboard so much that ended up pulling off the top half of Greg the Yellow, leaving him a legless corpse like the android Bishop. [*]

Problem B: older offspring loved various Wall.e toys so much (Wall.e being to our TV room floor what Elvis is to a typical Beenleigh pensioner's lounge room wall) that frequent dis-assembling thereof left one with a missing head - presumably vacuumed up weeks ago (dark grey being vary hard to see on the lino), and so gone forever.

Solution: a Greg/ Wall.e cybrid (cyborg hybrid) - with a curious resemblance to a sort of robotic Mr Tumnus....

[*] That's Lance Hendriksen's character in The Aliens (1986), not Baths.

Kylie Eleison

2009-06-16T13:54:00.002+10:00

'Singer Kylie Minogue is so desperate to wed Spanish model Andrés Valencoso in a church she is considering converting to Catholicism. The 41-year-old singer reportedly has her heart set on a traditional church wedding and may adopt his faith in order to have the ceremony of her dreams...''

- "Kylie Minogue wants to convert to Catholicism for dream wedding", The Courier-Mail (15 June 2009)

Hmmm.... Australia's Sweetheart decides that the theological subtleties of Unam Sanctam are unimportant compared to the fact that she really, really loves her latest overseas heart-throb. I'm sure this will end well... I was going to say "At least this time there won't be any disparity of cult, if she converts", but apparently some Protestant UQ Medical Student referred to Scientology as a "cult" years ago and Tom Cruise has needed counselling for it ever since.

Nay, sai, 'twere Jack McCabe

2009-06-08T18:16:00.001+10:00

"KUNG-FU cult hero David Carradine may have been killed by a secret society of martial arts assassins, his family's lawyer claims...."

- NEWS.com.au (8 June 2009)

Who the hey is my neighbour?

2009-06-01T10:43:00.001+10:00

'HARE Krishnas and Baptists seem like odd neighbours but both religious groups are planning massive developments on land in the same short, pot-holed and overgrown street in Brisbane's southwest. Sundays in Seventeen Mile Rocks may never be the same again. Locals fear the imposing Hare Krishna temple, with its Indian-style architecture, three conical altars up to 15m high, restaurant, shop, and six accommodation "ashrams", will become an imposing blight on an escarpment overlooking the Rocks River Park. The escarpment has views all the way to Brisbane's CBD....'

- John McCarthy, "Hare Krishnas and Baptists may be neighours," Courier-Mail (1 June 2009)

Baptists and Hari Krishnae. One lot shave their hair short, bail you up in the street, and repeat repetitive phrases during their worship services, while the other... Anyway. Sounds like Seventeen Mile Rocks (or, as it is known to those who reject the Protestant heresy of "Sola Scriptura", Twenty-Three Mile Rocks) is nearly as theologically diverse these days as Cordelia Street.

The biggest colluder?

2009-05-28T21:42:00.001+10:00

There's the forgivable type of price-fixing cartel. And then there's the unforgivable type.

From JJ Adams to JJ Abrams, or: "First DeForest, then Urban" is not a zoning by-law

2009-05-12T10:20:00.005+10:00

(Warning: possible spoilers)

"Remember a movie called Forbidden Planet? It was made in 1956, long before Star Trek was ever conceived... Leslie Nielsen's JJ Adams and William Shatner's James T Kirk would be equally at home on each other's spaceships."
- David Gerrold, The World of STAR TREK (NY, Ballantine Books, 1973), pp 204-05.

Curiously, the last two films I've seen have related to Brother Gerrold's book:

Last week, Martian Child (2007) starring John Cusack, based on a fictionalized version of Gerrold's own life.

Then, this week, saw Star Trek XI and was, as the reviewers warned, blown away thereby. It's better even than First Contact, I'd say.

Only two flaws I could point to:

(a) one bi-i-i-g plot coincidence, in a scene that seemed to have been borrowed from Monsters Inc; and

(b) a problem not so much with this film on its own, as with its place in the ST canon as a whole. That is, most of the plot points in "XI" are good and make sense in this film, BUT have been used before in previous Trek films. Vengeful Ahab-like villain? Check (II, VII, X). Sinister Romulan with family issues, personal vendetta and enormous super-ship? Check (X, XI). Unstoppable alien force travels back in time? Check (VIII, XI). Heads towards Earth? Check (I, IV, VII, X). Starts huge ruckus in San Francisco Bay? Check (VI, X). And so forth.

Having said that, one can construct a similar list of similarities for, say, rebooted BSG (if you cite Trek DS9, Blade Runner and The Terminator, you've pretty much covered the field) yet that is not to deny that the re-user may come up with a much better production than the original.

Four more points of note:

*       Good to see Amanda - Spock's mother and she who is (wave arm benevolently in her general direction) Sarek's wife - wearing a head covering. As Jane Seymour proved playing Serina in the original BSG, a simple shawl/ scarf is successful in wholly nullifying a woman's sexual attraction to males.

*       The Quinto Element.

*       Sulu putting the "slash" into "Star Trek slash fiction". How weird is that?!

*       Now that Abrams has struck cinematic gold with Trek XI, he should get the go-ahead from the studio money men for his next project - Stephen King's Dark Tower, praise the Man Jesus.

Kingsryche

2009-03-31T09:27:00.001+10:00

'Britain may allow the monarch to marry a Catholic and give female heirs an equal claim to the throne, the Government said, in what would be a reversal of discriminatory laws going back 300 years.... Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Queen Elizabeth have held talks on changing the 1701 law on succession to the throne that was drawn up at a time of widespread hostility to Roman Catholics.... The Act of Settlement bars royals from becoming king or queen if they "profess the popish religion or shall marry a papist"....'
- Reuters, "UK flags reversal of discriminatory monarch laws," ABC News (28 March 2009)

Vatican spokesperson Cardinal Aircraftcarria praised the move. "We are pleased that perfidious Albion has at last dragged itself into the 21st century", he was quoted as commenting. "Restricting the office of Head of State to a particular religion is as unacceptable as restricting it on the grounds of gender. Neither should be tolerated in the laws of any sovereign state."

"The much-married Newt Gingrich converts to Catholicism this weekend - and I'd pay a year's salary to have been a bug on the wall during his religious instruction....'

- Christopher Buckley, "The Audacity of Poping," The Daily Beast (26 March 2009)

At least that'll push the Herbert W Armstrongites off the first page of hits next time someone Googles "Catholicism + Beast".

Article #1 above will be good news to Catholics everywhere. It raises the intriguing possibility that, when the Airstrip One Regional Consultative Council (formerly the "UK Parliament") proscribes Love and Responsibility as "hate speech" in a couple of decades' time, the Royal Assent to the Bill could be given by a Catholic King or Queen.

On the other hand, as Article #2 shows, it also creates a risk of Noot the Grinch eventually taking the Throne at Westminster in a "King Ralph"-style comedy of errors.

Episode 5.1 title leaked...

2009-02-17T13:10:00.001+10:00

"Dr Who and the Planet of the Pyramids of the Spiders from Life on Mars"

Now that's not wholly fair...

2009-02-04T12:56:00.003+10:00

... it wasn't until "As If" that Sara really sold out to the commercial devil.

"Coal Mine Blamed For Causing Diarrhoea," NineMSN News (9 January 2009).

Leadership Beyond Politics

2009-01-08T08:01:00.000+10:00

"The mother of Denmark's Prince Frederik tempted her son with two eligible European princesses in an attempt to lure him away from Tasmanian Mary Donaldson, a new book claims...."

"Romeo Dhakhotah" was already taken

2008-12-16T09:25:00.002+10:00

"A Pennsylvania man has complained a local grocery store refused to decorate a birthday cake with his young son's name: Adolf Hitler Campbell. Heath Campbell, 35, who denies the Holocaust took place and decorated his home with swastikas and Nazi paraphernalia, said The ShopRite supermarket in Greenwich Township refused to print his son's name on a cake to mark his third birthday, the Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) Express-Times reported Monday. Campbell said the store has also refused to decorate cakes with his 1-year-old daughter's name -- JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell...."

- UPI News, "Store: No cake for Hitler" (15 December 2008)

"Och, yeer damned right theeere, mon", the supermarket's manager, Angus Ian MacDonald, told press Monday. "I'd sooner defile yon cake with tha poop of a wee doggie than with that accursed name - Campbell."

... And It Will All Happen Again

2008-12-08T10:29:00.001+10:00

We've all seen Exhibit A a zillion times since August '08. Exhibit B,
however, shows that this thing is really getting out of hand....

Life, alas, imitates art

2008-11-28T12:34:00.001+10:00

Well, kitsch pop art, anyway:

Clone Wars

2008-11-22T23:13:00.006+10:00

Couple of thoughts on the new "Clone Wars" series (after seeing the
pilot at the movies, and chunks of the first 2 episodes on TV today):

1. Good move to take control off Lucas and let others have a crack at it - this was how "Star Trek" and "Battlestar Galactica" both improved enormously, by changing the guard (NPI) (and you don't even need Ron Moore to take over, as I earlier thought!).

2. Also good to have SW episodes that are just meant to be an entertaining Saturday-afternoon adventure serial - crashes on jungle planets, secret plans, kidnappings, battered spice freighters, pirates, etc - as it was originally supposed to be in 1977-78, unlike the films where, after 'ESB' in 1980, every episode had to be Great Art freighted with heavy moral and historic symbolism (ie, Joseph Campbell; Jedi Temple = 9/11; Anakin = Dubya Bush; etc). CW reminds me of the SW comics (Marvel, pre-Dark Horse, ie costing less than an actual horse) which I used to buy religiously (NPI) back in 1982-83. Intelligent good fun, but no pretensions. Screen science fiction is never going to be critically acclaimed like "Taxi Driver", no matter how waaaaay dark you make it. So just give us Senator Palpatine, not Senator Palatine.

3. Lucas would have put enormous attention into, eg, making the spaceships look a certain way (to pay homage to some obscure detail in "Forbidden Planet"), but would not have thought up the entertaining human character touches that Dave Filoni did - eg, that the Clone Troopers, despite being identical copies of Jake The Muss, have expressed their individuality by giving themselves different haircuts, from bald to Milhouse-style bleaches to Marines jarheads.

4. Don't confuse "Clone Wars" with "THE Clone Wars" - entirely
different Star Wars-based animated TV series. (That stray definite article can make a big difference. Ask Scorsese whether anyone went to see "God the Father, Part II").

PS: Speaking of The Godfather... "Filoni." "Jabba's wicked uncle plotting to have him killed." Hmmm.

"Beatles' Tribute to 'Father McKenzie'"

2008-10-25T07:05:00.001+10:00

"FOLLOWING last week's Guardian report on Northwich Memorial Hall's 40th birthday celebrations, tributes have poured in for one man who was at the heart of everything good during the early days. Tommy McKenzie was the hall's first compere and was responsible for bringing many of the top acts to perform at the venue. He lived in Rudheath, but originally came from Liverpool where he befriended The Beatles. Such was the bond between them, that the most famous band in music history called Tommy 'father'. The more avid Beatles fans will spot how much Tommy meant to the band. He was Father McKenzie in the song Eleanor Rigby..."

- "Beatles' Tribute to 'Father McKenzie'," Northwich Guardian (8 June 2000)

Let all men [sic] know, that this blog does not endorse non-centuries-old transgressions of Jesus' command in Matthew 23:9.

Sorry we ever doubted you, Ira Levin

2008-10-25T06:59:00.000+10:00

No word yet of Templars, aliens or Kali-sacrificing Thuggee, but there's still much excavating to do.

And here I was thinking Douglas V Duff's On the World's Roof had conclusively located them in Tibet. Cancel Brad Pitt!

Nazi graveyards have been rediscovered deep in the Amazon rainforest during research for a book that chronicles the fanatical regime's plan to create a secret colony for a master race in the 1930s.

Totem-pole like wooden structures, standing at around 2.75m tall and with swastikas carved into them, mark the graves of the Nazis at Jari River, a northern tributary in the Amazon river.

The grave markers are believed to have been built by the Nazis but were forgotten about for decades, the UK's Daily Mail reports.

It wasn't until Jens Gluessing, author of The Guayana-Projekt: A German Adventure On The Amazon, began investigating the sites that he uncovered the wartime graves.

His book claims Hitler's henchmen believed they were destined to start a super colony in the jungle and that they were destined to settle the world like pioneers of America's wild west.

On one of the graves, an inscription says: "Joseph Greiner died here on 2.1.1936, a death from fever in the service of German Research Work."

Mr Gluessing discovered Greiner was one of three explorers sent to the jungle by the secret service to explore the region with the idea the Reich would eventually populate it.

Greiner's team sent information back to the Nazi headquarters in Berlin detailing how soldiers could live in Brazil, even though their cover story was that they were collecting wildlife samples.

In his notes to Heinrich Himmler, he said: "The two largest scantly populated, but rich in resources, areas on earth are in Siberia and South America,' he wrote to Himmler.

"They alone offer spacious immigration and settlement possibilities for the Nordic peoples."

"Amazonia" was the best place to begin colonising, he wrote.

"For the more advanced white race it offers outstanding possibilities for exploitation."

"Nazis 'hatched master race plan in Amazon'," NineMSN (Friday 24 October 2008)

Cor! Wiv' 'Is Best Mate, Draco Weasley, Also 'Elpin' 'Im Catch (Despite Ministry Stonewalling) The Blokes What Poisoned the City's Water Supply

2008-10-16T14:45:00.002+10:00

No, really. Shouldn't joke about this. It's sad. But the kid deserves respect for this initiative...

"Two men in Britain have been arrested after the son of a murder victim set up a website, dedicated to solving the 11-year-old case. 16-year-old Daniel Grainger pleaded with police to re-open the case, when he launched the website www.whokilledmymum.com, two months ago...."

- Annika Burgess, "Two arrested after teen launches website to catch mum's killers," LiveNews (16 October 2008)

When priests attack!

2008-10-15T06:53:00.002+10:00

UPDATE: "Warring monks threaten destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre," Sheera Frenkel, The Times (15 October 2008).

While this incident of course in no way compares to the disunity among the fragmented Protestant sects - how sadly often have we witnessed roving gangs of Baptists raiding Lutheran services armed with baseball bats - it is nonetheless intriguing to try to reconstruct the ipsissima verba ...

"St Mary's is a living faith community dedicated to peace, justice and non-violent dispute resolution! We are thoroughly sick of you RadTrads spying on our services and taking photos so you can report us to the Inquisitorial Office in Rome! So if you take any more photos I shall thump you!"

"But you're disregarding the Great Commission! Did not Our Lord say, 'Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, but only of course while wearing the correct vestment, such as the Greater Habit!'?"

THE parish priest of the South Brisbane St Mary's Catholic Church will fight allegations of assault after an incident at Sunday mass. Fr Kennedy is alleged to have knocked a mobile phone camera out of a man's hand during the service. Speaking on behalf of Fr Peter Kennedy, parishioner Karen Walsh unequivocally denied that Caboolture man Richard Stokes had been assaulted when Fr Kennedy tried to stop him taking photos of a baptism. "The shots had children in the frame and were unauthorised," Ms Walsh said. Mr Stokes and several supporters marched from the church to the West End police station afterwards to file a complaint. Mr Stokes was not injured and police are regarding the incident as "minor"... It is understood Mr Stokes was taking the photos because he was outraged the baptism was being conducted by a priest not wearing a vestment.

- Anna Caldwell, "Baptism photographer alleges attack by St Mary's priest," Courier-Mail (13 October 2008)

Hold me now

2008-09-29T13:58:00.000+10:00

"The New South Wales Opposition's police spokesman, Mike Gallacher, says people with criminal convictions are being accepted into the police force to try and boost numbers. New figures show 133 serving officers have criminal convictions, including three senior constables and two detectives who have kept their jobs despite more than one conviction..."

- "Police 'need criminals to boost numbers'," ABC News (29 September 2008)

Giving positions of public responsibility to former convicted criminals? Contrary to every principle that New South Wales was founded on!

"Beware the time-eater: Cambridge University's monstrous new clock"... The Chronophage

2008-09-28T22:56:00.001+10:00

For a variety of reasons, this thing is so very Phillip Pullman.

Every "Ross Schultz" on the Planet Starts to Feel Nervous

2008-09-03T13:52:00.001+10:00

Moral: don't risk sharing a name with someone who's pissed off any heavies of the New South Wales Right faction of the Australian Labor Party.

Downsizing a man's operation (so to speak)

2008-09-02T16:53:00.000+10:00

"An 84-year-old Nigerian man with 86 wives and 170 children has accepted a decree issued by Islamic authorities that he must divorce 82 of them. The BBC, quoting a local emir, reported that Mohammadu Bello Abubakar agreed to the mass divorce at the weekend. Abubakar, a former teacher and preacher, faced the death penalty under Sharia law, which was reintroduced to the Muslim-majority Niger state in northwest Nigeria in 2000. While the death sentence was lifted, Abubakar still faced eviction from his home. Nigerian media and the BBC interviewed Abubakar several weeks previously, when he claimed there was no punishment in the Koran for having more than four wives. However, the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs said that Sharia law clearly limited a man to four wives."

- NineMSN, "Nigerian man agrees to divorce 82 wives" (2 September 2008)

"Playboy founder Hugh Hefner is reportedly getting married to one of the stars of Girls Next Door, according to reports on Wednesday. Hefner, 82, will reportedly marry Holly Madison, 28, who has been one of Hefner's girlfriends since 2001. Despite Hef's plans to get married to Madison, he is still married to Kimberley Conrad. [...] Soon after Hef's separation from Conrad, Hefner began having a bevy of girlfriends, all of which were blondes between 18 and 28 years old and lived with him in the Playboy Mansion. Hefner had a rotation of around seven girlfriends until 2003 when Madison and Bridget Marquardt were his only two girlfriends."

- TransWorldNews, "Hugh Hefner Reportedly to Marry 'Girls Next Door' Star Holly Madison" (27 August 2008)

Bolshie rag

2008-08-22T17:27:00.002+10:00

In conversation today I used the phrase "Bolshie rag" when describing a certain industry publication. I am not sure if my colleagues who heard me actually undertsood what I was saying, so I decide to google the phrase when I got home. The result: only six entries for the phrase "bolshie rag" and no wikipedian in sight. After my last attempt to edit Wikipedia (my ham-fisted efforts were viciously maligned by a pedantic Wiki-Nazi who insisted I has plagiarised my content. Au contraire! I was merely editing), I shall post my interpretation on the blog.

Bolshie rag: A derogatory term used of left-wing newspapers and the like, such as The Guardian (UK). Or any Australian newspaper containing a column written by Phillip Adams. From "Bolshevik" (abbreviated as Bolshie), original Russian revolutionaries, and "rag" for newsprint.

This definition is made up out of my ownhead and if you would like to correct or amend it, join the beg the Wiki-Fuhrer for permission to stain the beautifully polished marble floors of his palace with you mud-sodden boots. So there!

Some inspiration...

2008-08-19T10:23:00.001+10:00

... for the ~~Paradise Lost~~ Lucifer film's CGI. Apologies to the respective original copyright-holders - I used to download any interesting clips I came across, without recording the site they came from. These are too good not to disseminate. Contact me if you are the copyright holder.

Paradise Lost to be filmed

2008-08-15T12:13:00.001+10:00

I agree with this blogger: Rufus Sewell for Satan. ("But then I looked at his name again and saw it backwards: LLEWES SUFUR....Was this guy born to play the Prince of Darkness?")

[AE Hochner (Paul Newman's spaghetti-sauce-making partner) records in his Blown Away: The Rolling Stones and the Death of the Sixties that one Michael Jagger Esq was once sounded out, four decades ago, to play Lucifer in a proposed film (based on a novel by Herman Hesse or Gunter Grass or Carlos Castenada or Michael Mann or one of those guys), and he initially agreed, but after "Sympathy for the Devil" attracted some criticism from the usual enraged vicars (gee! Who'da predicted that! Why not just call yourself "bigger than Jesus" and be done with it?!), Mick decided he needed to, ah, de-Satanise his public image, and started ostentatiously wearing gold crosses in public.]

James Earl Jones, of course, for the voice of God. Essential to get right away from all the "talking lion king" associations that Liam Neeson would bring.

My preferred fallback for depicting God on screen (First Commandment issues and all) is "a bright light shining down from a cloud and three voices talking in unison", but since Milton was a neo-Arian (in modern terms, a Jehovah's Witness avant la lettre), his estate might veto.

Imagine the most evil creature that ever existed, a villain who commits atrocity after atrocity, who has scarred the world and each and every creature in it, a scoundrel so heinous he makes Heath Ledger's anarchist Joker look like Mother Teresa. Now imagine that you like him.

Director Scott Derrickson says that when you see his upcoming adaptation of "Paradise Lost," the epic 17th-century poem by John Milton about the Fall of Man, you won't be able to help but have sympathy for its bad guy: the devil.

"What's interesting to me is that you cannot help but feel that his initial feelings of being disgruntled are merited, and I feel a lot of empathy for the Lucifer character in the beginning of the story," said Derrickson, who wrote and directed "The Exorcism of Emily Rose." "I would want the audience to be sympathetic with him at the beginning, and what happens - what he's up against and what he's wrestling and struggling with - you certainly feel that."
The poem, praised by secular and religious scholars alike, opens with Satan's fall from heaven. He is surrounded by utter darkness before coming to rest in the fiery pits of hell. Defeated in his war against God, and with like-minded fallen comrades in his service, Satan soon concocts a plan to belittle the Creator by desecrating his most recent, and most prized, creation: mankind.

Given that setup (a remarkably futile one at that, since Satan can never actually defeat God), how is it that so many people most identify with the devil? It's a complex theological explanation that Derrickson can only sketch in the film but one that, if you are Christian, essentially boils down to this: "Because you are fallen too."

"In the movie, Satan goes from being a completely good being [an angel] to becoming the most heinous kind of evil, and you really have a hard time knowing exactly where he crossed that line because you were with him," the director said. "What is interesting about that story, in the way Milton laid it out, is that people jump off with him at different points and some never at all. Properly done, it's a story that tells readers a lot about themselves.

"You have to respect that Milton created the first anti-hero with that poem, and certainly this was preserved in the script," Derrickson added. "At what point does love turn to jealousy, jealousy turn into hate and hate into evil?"

For Milton, and for religious thinkers who follow similar beliefs, that point comes when Satan commits the sin of pride, when he begins to set himself up as separate from and in opposition to God. It's a transgression that is mirrored later, of course, by Adam and Eve. Much later, actually: Milton's sprawling poem isn't just dense, it's remarkably long as well, spanning tens of thousands of lines.

Fitting the entire poem into a movie is actually one of the biggest challenges, Derrickson said, but one he hopes to accomplish.

"The screenplay takes aspects of the entire arc," he said. "What it encompasses is still a fraction of the poem and has to be, because you could make a 50-hour miniseries out of it if you wanted to. But it really covers end to end the basic events of the poem."

That means showing not just the highlights, but also the building of Pandemonium (the chamber for the devil and his minions), the revolt of the angels and the battle of heaven. At this stage, much of Derrickson's work on the film is in trying to figure out how to do exactly that, he admitted.
"That's a big part of the process I'm in right now in terms of working on both artwork and just conceptualizing how to do something," he said. "There's CGI and then there's versions that are blends of the two, live-action and CG, and I think the best version of the movie is going to have a lot of blending in it."

Add up all the challenges - the evil character at its heart, the theology, the visuals, the epic story line - and adapting "Paradise Lost" is no easy task. For his part, though, Derrickson can't wait for the opportunity.

"It would not be an easy movie to make, but it would be ground-breaking," he said. "It's really worthy of the attempt."

- Shawn Adler, "Scott Derrickson Says His 'Paradise Lost' Film Might Lead To Sympathy For The Devil', MTV. com (23 July 2008)

"When I find myself/ In times of troubleborough..."

2008-08-06T11:40:00.002+10:00

This was prophesied:

"The city of Maryborough, in south-east Queensland, could have its own anthem within the next six to 12 months. The Maryborough Regional Arts Development Fund Committee has allocated $13,000 of funding to compose a city song...."

- "Maryborough looks to own anthem", ABC News (9 July 2007)

Ooh! Ooh! Pick me! Pick me!

Maryborough! Mighty town of ancient awnings
Bringer of life, mother to us all
We swell with pride when the Mayor lets off
The ceremonial cannon every Saturday during the markets
Maryborough! Where they filmed "The Delinquents"
A story set in Bundaberg, but that town "looked too modern"
O Maryborough! We shed our blood for you
A thousand swords leap into our hands
Next time the bogans from accursed Gympie and Monto
Dare to drive donuts through our sacred burg
On their migration to Hervey Bay...

Take it from there.

Granted, finding "life imitates The Onion" stories in the Fairfax papers is like finding stray thongs on the beach, but still

2008-08-06T11:33:00.004+10:00

'NEW YORK - Miguel Nunez, a Brooklyn-based artist, has sparked protest and outrage within the art community with his "Jesus Rising #4," a non-controversial, non-feces-smeared painting that in no way defiles or blasphemes Jesus Christ. "Jesus Rising #4," included in Nunez's new Divinity exhibition at the Whitney Museum, has received harsh criticism from artists and academics since its June 6 debut. The painting has been picketed nearly around the clock by angry protesters, who say they are stunned by its lack of obscene imagery metaphorically conveying a provocative, highly charged theopolitical message. "Why isn't this [painting] splattered with donkey semen?" asked sculptor India Jackson, one of the protesters. "And I defy anyone to find a trace of urine, human or otherwise, on this entire canvas. The piece does not appear to be an enraged howl against Christian patriarchal hegemony at all. Frankly, I'm shocked"...'

- "Non-Controversial Christ Painting Under Fire From Art Community", 37(22) The Onion (13 June 2001)

THE nation's top prize for religious art is again embroiled in controversy after one of its judges resigned in protest over the inclusion of a crucifixion painted by the artist Adam Cullen.

The Sydney academic Dr Christopher Allen has resigned from the judging panel for the Blake Prize for Religious Art over his vehement objections to Cullen's work. The triptych shows Christ on the cross and the inscription "only woman bleed", a line inspired by a song by the shock-rocker Alice Cooper.

Cullen said the organisers contacted him yesterday and told him Dr Allen had resigned in protest over the work's selection for consideration for the $20,000 prize.

"It's just a Jew on the cross," said Cullen, who won the Archibald Prize in 2000. "All the other entries would be of a Jew on two bits of wood. It's a very left-wing, almost pseudo-femme, artwork. How can he be offended?"

Dr Allen could not be contacted yesterday. But at a judging session on Friday he admitted he was not a fan of Cullen's work. "I've never even met him - I just don't like his work," Dr Allen said. "It has a kind of deliberate ugliness which has been exploited as a gimmick. This isn't a personal preference, it's a judgment."

Prize organisers were hoping to avoid controversy this year after entries last year, including a statue of the Virgin Mary shrouded in a burqa and a hologram of Christ morphing with Osama bin Laden, angered the then prime minister, John Howard, and the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell. Mr Howard called them "gratuitously offensive".

Most of this year's entries are benign, but the more provocative works include the party boy Corey Worthington as Jesus Christ. "Jesus was crucified to pay for the sins of man, and Corey was crucified by the media to pay for the sins of the MySpace generation," said the image's creator, Dean Sewell, a photographer who also works for the Herald.

The Blake Prize's chairman, Rod Pattenden, confirmed that Dr Allen had quit the judging panel. "Christopher Allen resigned due to his objection towards a particular work included in the exhibition. That was related to his training as an academic and it was an aesthetic objection."

Cullen's entry was condemned by another judge, the academic Dr Kathleen McPhillips, who described it as "really offensive". But another member of the judging panel, the Blake Prize-winning artist Lachlan Warner, was more supportive. "We knew that work was Adam's," he said. "It couldn't have been anyone else's. I decided to throw it in there. I put in a vote for it. I wanted to look at it again." Cullen has become used to strong reactions to his work. "Sometimes I think all I have to do is wake up in the morning - I just have to fart and there's flames."

- Erik Jensen, Louise Schwartzkoff and Richard Jinman, "Religious art prize judge quits in disgust," Sydney Morning Herald (Wednesday 6 August 2008)

And speaking of Tin Men...

2008-08-05T22:22:00.002+10:00

RTFM

2008-08-02T11:13:00.003+10:00

Just reading over at MetaLutheran a whinge about RTFM. Having offered this advice in desperation on the past, here's my two cents:

Josh (and many like him) are confusing _effort_ in searching with
_effectiveness_ in searching.

Example #1:

Child: Where are my school socks?

Mother: Where have you looked for them?

Child: Everywhere!

Mother: Here they are, in your sock drawer!

Take it as given that the child has indeed searched literally everywhere, but not found what they were looking for because of an ineffective search strategy. Searching exhaustively in and of itself will not necessarily find you what you are looking for - you have to know _how_ to look. And, you often have to know _what_to look for.

Example #2:
In the bush, you can look and look and look and not see a person standing near you because they are camouflaged. But if you look for a camouflaged person, "through the trees" instead of "at the trees" you will see them.

The manual is the best place to look for the right thing, but you still have to know what you are looking for and how to read it.

Testy techs do grab for this too quickly in my opinion, because many users are very needy and will often play helpless because they are too lazy to find out for themselves, and a tech support call will given a guaranteed iron-clad answer. Some people by habit just pick up the phone and call or send an email because that's how they learn - by asking someone else - rather than trying to find out for themselves. And others just want to get back to being productive rather than wasting time trying to sort out a problem that is not their department anyway (and they might make it worse- best to log a tech call).

Proper training of staff about their proper area of responsibilities (Should you call tech support to help you make a bulleted list in MS Word? No. Should you manager send you on an MS Word course to teach you how to use the tools of your trade? Yes), and of tech about how to speak to humans (Grunts, sneers, sarcastic remarks and long periods of silence are typically not regarded as helpful), goes a long way.

By the way, many manuals written by techs with poor communication skills are fairly useless. It is the synthesis of technical ability and communication skills that makes a tech an asset to both the computers and the people who work with them. They can act as a kind of priestly interpreter, divining the true gnosis generated by the 999th iteration of the Deep Thought project for the congregants at large.

And if they still don't understand, they can always RTFM.

Mark of McKain

2008-07-25T08:12:00.000+10:00

'In case their Plantation Bend neighbors had any questions about how Doug and Wendy McKain feel about Barack Obama, the bumper sticker on their pickup could be a clue. But when Chynethia Gragg spotted the sticker - depicting someone urinating on the name "Obama" - Sugar Land police say, she stopped to express her disapproval, and that's when things got ugly...'

- Eric Hanson, "Sticky Obama issue with these McKains leads to arrest," Houston Chronicle (24 July 2008)

"Sugar Land police"? Did twenty of them pour out of the same crazy car, waving their batons? Did Mayor McCheese turn up wearing his official sash?

And what's this "someone"? Surely Mr Hanson reads The Onion:

'Throughout its 224-year history, America has had many channels of discourse, its citizens expressing themselves by means ranging from pamphlets to protests, newspaper editorials to televised debates. In recent years, however, a significant new avenue of expression has emerged: "Peeing Calvin" decals.

Originally appearing on trucks as a salvo in the age-old Ford-Chevy debate, the popular stickers - which feature a bootlegged image of "Calvin" from the Bill Watterson comic strip Calvin & Hobbes urinating on a rival brand - have expanded to depict Calvin expressing urinary disapproval of a dazzling array of offenders.

Today, at the dawn of a new millennium, the terse but expressive decals are a vital part of our national dialogue, used by millions of Americans to exchange viewpoints and ideas about the important issues of the day.

"I used to devote hours to reading newspapers and magazines in an effort to understand my world and the issues that shape it," said Tuscaloosa, AL, resident Elvin Crosley, who proudly sports decals of Calvin urinating on a Democratic Party donkey and Greenpeace logo in the rear window of his pick-up truck. "But that became a tremendous expenditure of time I simply couldn't afford. These decals make a concise, digestible point in approximately two seconds and reach a far wider audience than I could by writing letters to my local paper or congressman." [...]

The [law]suit was denounced by ACLU president Nadine Strossen, who called it "an unconscionable attempt to gag free speech in America." "Watterson and the Universal Press Syndicate are attempting to block citizens from exercising their constitutional right to freely express ideas and opinions," Strossen said. "Peeing Calvin stickers may not have existed in 1789, but they are precisely the sort of thing the Framers had in mind when authoring the First Amendment."

- "'Peeing Calvin' Decals Now Recognized As Vital Channel Of National Discourse," 36(12) The Onion (5 April 2000)

"Peeing Aquinas", "Peeing Maimonides", "Peeing Ibn-Rushd" and "Peeing Rick Osteen" stickers also available on request for members of the other great living world faiths.

"Belief system debunked by T-shirt"

2008-07-22T15:46:00.001+10:00

Churches around the nation have reported a sharp decline in attendance following the revelation of a dogma-shattering item of clothing. The T-shirt, which bears a humorously blasphemous slogan, is believed to have undermined the core tenets of 2000 years of Christianity. "Our faith has survived persecution, child abuse allegations and the Spanish Inquisition," said Archbishop George Pell. "But this garment has proven too strong for Jesus Christ."

Even more troubling than the impending dissolution of the church, says Reverend John Buchanan, is the ignominy of its downfall at the hands of a t-shirt saying 'Christianity is stupid, give up.' "I wouldn't mind if decades of research and deep philosophical musing on the numerous inconsistencies of the Bible had eventually made a mockery of the system. But that t-shirt isn't even trying to be witty," he said. "It's enough to shake your faith in the existence of an benevolent God."

Theologians claim this conflict has been a long time coming. "Shirts with jokes like 'I found Jesus: he was hidden behind the couch the whole time' printed on them seemed to be nothing more than harmless ribbing, but such is the way Satan works - hiding sin behind a façade of innocence," says Professor Adam Frankland. "Or at least that's the way he would work, if he was real."

The shirt's designer, Steve Holkins, has gone into hiding to work on his next range of humorous attire, after receiving death threats from American fundamentalist Christians. In addition, a group of extremist Muslims has warned Holkins to "stay away from Allah puns".

Some church officials have refused to give up the fight, deciding the best way to combat the T-shirt is with some catchy slogans of their own. "Our 'God Doesn't Believe In Atheists' range is really going to put a rocket up those soulless heathens," said Gerald Bündchen, who also came up with the 'Want To Know My Sign? It's a Cross' advertising campaign.

This is not the first time a garment has brought down a system - political scientists have found strong parallels between the fall of the Soviet Union and red shirt bearing a picture of Karl Marx with a lampshade on his head, entitled 'Communist Party'.

"A witty slogan is very powerful," said Professor Frankland. "Think of all the world governments toppled by protesters with clever placards and rhyming chants."

- "Belief system debunked by T-shirt," The Chaser (Saturday 8 March 2008)

Still preoccupied with/ 1984

2008-07-21T23:15:00.001+10:00

1984... Red Sails in the Sunset reached #1 in the Australian record charts. The Terminator, the original movie, was booming at the box office. And the domestication of the dog continued unabated.

But now, in 2008...

(".... the open box contains the sword from the movie Conan The Barbarian....")

At last I get why, when I was a kid, grown-ups laughed at the idea of Ronald Reagan being elected US President. ("And I suppose Jack Benny is the Secretary of the Treasury?" - George McFly).

"Italy's metal brother"; or, Brown Sabbath

2008-07-21T23:06:00.004+10:00

Putting the "priest" into Judas Priest.... Surely Australia's own Religious could match this Italian Dumbledore wannabe. Father Michael Motörhead? The Blue Öyster Cultus? Historically speaking, the Dominicans have a much stronger claim on the words "Iron Maiden" than does some hairy-chested son of a Michigan army sergeant in Fabio hair and tight leather pants. And Ignaz von Döllinger, Hans Küng and Bernard Häring could give most metallista bands a good run for their money in terms of umlauts. Next: the Anglican version - "Deep Purple".

MILAN - Dressed in his traditional brown robe, sandals and twirling the rope around his waist, 62-year old Friar Cesare Bonizzi is no ordinary heavy metal rocker.

But as guitarists around him grind out heavy notes, the long-white-bearded Capuchin, a former missionary in Ivory Coast, has no qualms bobbing his head and shouting lyrics about alcohol, sex, tobacco and life in general into his microphone.

Describing himself as a "preacher-singer," Bonizzi has been singing for over a decade, and last month wowed heavy metal fans at Italy's "Gods of Metal" festival, where he performed with his band Fratello Metallo (Metal Brother) alongside groups such as Iron Maiden.

"About 14-15 years ago, I went to a Metallica concert and fell in love with heavy metal after I saw all the energy there," Bonizzi said after a rehearsal in a Milan recording studio. "I find (heavy metal) the most energetic, the most alive music."

A member of the Catholic Capuchin order in Milan, Bonizzi began singing heavy metal after having first started with what he calls "light music with slight rock influence."

This month punk label Tre Accordi Records, whose Web site offers titles including "Life Stinks of Human Beings" by The Valentines, released his second heavy metal album "Misteri," or mysteries, inspired by a group of southern Italian women who sang about Jesus' mother Mary.

Bonizzi, whose car even has a poster of his album and "preacher-singer" scrawled on the side, is not the only musical monk enjoying fame.

In Austria, Cistercian monks released an album of Gregorian chants on the same record label as Amy Winehouse and Eminem.

The monks were signed up by Universal Music -- beating more than 200 entries from around the world -- after they sent in a YouTube video in response to its advertisement for a choir.

Bonizzi has heard of them and compared heavy metal with Gregorian chant, one of the oldest known forms of written music.

"Gregorian has the same roots as (heavy metal)," he said.

A heavy metal version of the song about Mary features on his album. Bonizzi also sings about how alcohol can warm the heart but damage the liver if drunk in excess, as well as how important sex is to man but has to be done in the right way.

"I saw these 200 grandmothers singing and I told them 'Ladies, you will end up in heavy metal,"' he said referring to the Calabrian women. "My first (rock) CD was light because I mainly sing for grandmothers ... in fact I named the group then

'Metalluminium'. This one is stronger, fuller."

Bonizzi, who names bands such as rockers Megadeth and Dream Theater as favorites, also sings about God and faith but says he has no intention of converting listeners to Christianity.

"I never did it to preach, I did it because music is beautiful ... If I want to convert people, I simply want to convert them to life, to welcome life, to enjoy life," he said.

"I am religious and I am a priest but I am not doing this to convert people to Christ, to faith or the Church, but for them to try to understand life, to be able to enjoy it. Nothing more."

One of 10 children, Bonizzi grew up near the northern Italian town of Cremona. He worked as a hairdresser, welder and in a factory before a brief military stint and then joined the Capuchin order at age 29.

The friar, who performs about 100-150 concerts a year, says heavy metal fans have warmly welcomed him and he distances the music genre from Satanism.

"About 90 percent are very good, they accept (me), the other 10 percent are more extreme," he said.

"They say 'We don't want people from the Church.' There are those who profess to be Satanists but there are only two or three groups that explicitly claim to be so. I do not really know whether they really are, they claim to be."

Bonizzi sings in Italian and Latin, but "Misteri," his 18th CD, is being translated into English. So far, he only performs in Italy, but he says he has received invitations to put on shows in Japan and Brazil: "I would like to do a world tour."

Unsurprisingly, his singing has attracted much attention. At the "Gods of Metal" festival, fans were screaming his name even before he began performing.

"We do not understand what has happened. It's not as if we had done any publicity, the CD wasn't even out yet. I've sung three times at 'Gods of Metal' already," he said. "I've been doing this for 10 years, and it's only really now that it has taken off."

The friar, who was even given a "heavy metal rosary" by a non-believer fan, performs with three other guitarists and a drummer, who are much younger than him.

"At first I was a bit skeptical about this project because I thought it was weird to have a mix of heavy metal and a Capuchin friar," said 38 year-old guitarist Cesare Zanotti.

"But after two minutes with him, you forget he is a friar -- his age -- you forget everything and he becomes a member of the group. He gave me more energy than bandmates who are my age or younger are able to. When you play with him, there are smiles and a lot of energy which is fundamental for heavy metal."

The Vatican has not voiced an opinion on Bonizzi's singing but he says his superiors have not said anything negative to him about it. He says his fellow Capuchin friars accept what he does, although he does not play for them: "I could sing this (heavy metal), but they would say it's too loud."

- Reuters, "He ain't heavy... Italy's metal brother: Capuchin monk rocks out with festival performances, CDs, possible tour", MSNBC (17 July 2008)

"... Kombeart to zee CHEENIUS of... DOKTOR KOLOSSUS! Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!"

2008-07-18T10:14:00.001+10:00

NEW YORK - Determined to circumvent Justice Department action forestalling the release of his powerful new operating system, Microsoft CEO and evil genius Bill Gates dropped Windows 98, coded into liquid form, into New York City's water supply sometime this past weekend.

"Excellent," said Gates, watching his scheme unfold on a 30-foot video screen deep within Microsoft's Redmond, WA, compound. "Everything is going exactly according to plan."

Doctors say the risk to New Yorkers who consume Windows-tainted water is considerable. "As little as three ounces of water can carry the entire Windows 98 installer file into the drinker's cerebral cortex," said Dr. Terry Braithwaite of New York's Mt. Sinai Hospital. "Once this insidious operating system enters a person's brain, it may take years to fully rebuild his or her original neurological programming, and even then, old files can remain in their memories for years."

According to New York water commissioner Glenn Portnoy, the Susquehanna and Catskill reservoirs were contaminated with the software in question late Saturday night, rendering 100 percent of the city's taps Windows-compatible only. Those living in any of the city's five boroughs, Portnoy said, are now at risk of having the system installed in their bodies by drinking, cooking with, or even showering with New York City water.

"Residents of New York!" said Gates in a televised address early Monday morning. "Some of your neighbors, your friends, your own family members have not yet joined us in operating within our glorious system. Why not? Is something affecting their judgment? Are they perhaps... thirsty?"
"Water," Gates added. "The source of all life."

Gates then emitted a sinister, high-pitched laugh and faded out, returning televisions across New York to their regular programming with the push of a button.

Justice Department officials said they plan to come down hard on the software giant for its latest controversial move. "Not only is tampering with a major metropolitan area's water supply illegal," U.S. attorney Joel Klein said, "but mass, involuntary bio-installation of operating-system software is a gross violation of federal antitrust law."

Klein said Microsoft has also taken steps to prevent rival Netscape from placing its web browser in New York's reservoirs, an act he said may constitute a further illegal monopolistic trade practice. If found guilty of dispatching winged Microsoft henchmen to block Netscape's access to the reservoirs, Microsoft may face fines of up to $670 million.

Gates refused to respond to the allegations, but spoke directly to the people of New York via Microsoft's Windows 98 brainwave transmitter, saying, "Command priority reformat unit sub-Klein-delete//DELETE: A-Priority." Klein's whereabouts are currently unknown.

Despite Microsoft's tainting of their water supply, New Yorkers seem relatively unfazed.

"There is nothing wrong with having Windows 98 in my body," said a glassy-eyed Queens woman identifying herself as "7398473289348390-98.01." "Windows 98 is good. Where do I want to go today, O Gateslord?"

Added the woman: "Invalid sector error Type-41."

- "Evil Genius Gates Drops Windows 98 Into NYC Water Supply," 33(21) The Onion (3 June 1998)

A disgruntled computer engineer has been sitting in a prison cell for four days after locking out everyone but himself from a city computer system.

Terry Childs is accused of tampering with San Francisco's new computer network to give himself exclusive access. He has refused to hand over the password and is being held on $5 million bail while officials try to crack his code.

The Department of Technology employee, 43, allegedly created a secret password to the city government's data network. The multimillion-dollar network stores records such as officials' e-mails, city payroll files, confidential law enforcement documents and jail bookings....

The network administrator, who lives in Pittsburg, has been working for the Department of Technology for five years and has a basic salary of just over $126,000. Police said that Mr Childs had recently been disciplined at work. Reports suggest that officials then discovered that Mr Childs had put together a tracing system to monitor what other administrators were saying and doing in relation to his disciplinary case.

Last weekend he allegedly locked out all administrators except himself. Before his arrest he gave pass codes to police, but they did not work. "They weren't able to do it," an official said. "This was kind of his insurance policy."

It was feared that although Mr Childs is in jail, he may have enabled someone else to access the system by telephone or other electronic device and order the destruction of hundreds of thousands of sensitive documents....

He said that Mr Childs had been a highly regarded member of staff but was now a "rogue employee that got a bit maniacal"....

- Mike Harvey, "'Maniacal' computer engineer Terry Childs takes city network hostage, " Times Online (17 July 2008)

Cinematic S[ci-]F[i]. From JJ Adams to JJ Abrams

2008-07-16T16:51:00.001+10:00

Two mashes involving Nathan Fillion (or, as he is known to those who practice the Latin or Western Rite of Cathodoxy, Natham Phillium).

Sigourn.e

2008-07-16T11:02:00.000+10:00

First "The Glass House", now the BB House; Or, killeen the aspirations of the Young People of Australia

2008-07-15T07:58:00.001+10:00

Yes, yes, Mr Jonathon. There'll now be a huge hole in the 16-24s' understanding of the big issues in our world...

The axing of Big Brother will deny its young audience exposure to a range of social issues, according to a former housemate. Big Brother 2005 runner-up Tim Brunero says that despite much of the show being based on "titillation", it still provokes valuable discussion on serious topics.

"From Merlin's 'free the refugees' campaign, to racism, bullying, homosexuality, citizenship, sexism and harassment, it's all been covered," Brunero says. "Every time the show did that, it was challenging people to think about something different. People who watch Big Brother don't watch Kerry O'Brien on the ABC ... it's added a forum where people can explore these important ideas." [...]
"The ripples go further than just the show," Brunero says. "Breakfast radio is going to lose about a fifth of their talking points. Gossip columns, magazines and websites are going to lose a great chunk of their content, and the men's magazines are going to lose half of their pin-up girls." But the vast majority of NineMSN readers who voted in a poll yesterday said they were glad to see the back of Big Brother. More than 115,000 people said they were glad the show had been axed, while fewer than 20,000 people wanted it to continue.

- AAP, "Big Brother's demise 'will hurt young viewers'," NineMSN News (Tuesday 15 July 2008)

One workday per wife...

2008-07-09T08:08:00.003+10:00

"Utah will be the first American state to embrace the four-day working week, in a bid to reduce the state's energy consumption and fuel costs."

Hmm. Presumably, with the Garden of Eden located in Missouri instead of Mesopotamia, the relevant deity needed two fewer work days...

Yglesias, Ecclesias, and Aliens

2008-07-04T14:37:00.000+10:00

"I was watching Star Wars IV: A New Hope last night on television, and somehow it occurred to me for the first time that a new generation who watches the six movie cycle starting with The Phantom Menace is going to wind up with a very different perception of the story than the original audience got. This is true in terms of a few big plot points, like that whole thing about Darth Vader being Luke's father, but also in terms of some broader atmospheric points. The beginning [of] A New Hope is cloaked in a sense of mystery. For all we know old Ben Kenobi really is just a crazy old man and Han Solo's skepticism about "hokey religions" is justified. The audience rides along with Luke throughout the film, learning to trust in the power of the Force. New audiences won't have that experience, they'll already know much much more than Luke does about the Jedi, the Empire, the Skywalker clan, etc."

- Matthew Yglesias, "Star Wars In Order" (3 July 2008), http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/07/star_wars_in_order.php .

(One reader references this: http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/07/1207/121907.html.)

"Gay groups say police are unnecessarily scrutinising them over activities planned for Sydney's World Youth Day, as civil libertarians rile at new police powers for this month's week-long event. Lapsed Catholic Luke Roberts is a homosexual activist and performer who goes by the stage name Pope Alice, a character best described as a celestial being of indeterminate gender. Along with Pope Benedict, Pope Alice will also be in Sydney during World Youth Day, hosting a "kiss-in" along Oxford Street in Darlinghurst. ..."

- "Police investigate WYD queer kiss-in", ABC News (Friday 4 July 2008), http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/04/2294284.htm?section=australia

"Narnia" in different languages

2008-06-21T10:16:00.006+10:00

Albanian: Narnijë

Arabic: Narniyat

Czech: Narznija

English: Narny

Danish/ Norwegian: Nårnige

Esperanto: Narnio

Finnish: Näärniiää

French: le Nargne

Gaelic: Náchairnhiadh

German: Närnien

Greek: Narneia

Hebrew: Narniah

Hungarian: Nãrnyörszãg

Indonesian: Narniyah

Italian: Nargnia

Latin: Narnia

Polish: Narnija

Portuguese: Narnha

Romanian: Nearnea

Russian: Narniya

Sindharin: Narnië

Spanish: Narña

Turkish: Narniyet

In thuh SECOND season

2008-06-18T10:49:00.002+10:00

The impending release of the animated 2008 film Star Wars Episode VII: The Clone Wars [*] fills us with great joy, not only because it uses Lucas' characters and universe while carefully keeping him away from any involvement with writing the script or dialogue, but also because, at last, the circle that joins the Lucasverse with the Larsonverse is now complete.

[*] Not to be confused with Star Wars: Clone Wars, the 2003 animated TV series. With no "The". Just plain "Clone Wars" after the colon. This series was produced by a Russian. Whose native language lacks a definite article. Remember how the gorilla in Tim Burton's 2001 Planet of the Apes remake took great offence when Lee Adama called the apes "monkeys"? Well, in the original French that Pierre Boulle [**] wrote in, singes means both.

[**] And speaking of Pierre Boulle and Star Wars...

"Dear Mr President: There are too many States these days. Please eliminate at least five. Yours truly, Abraham J Simpson."

2008-06-12T12:32:00.001+10:00

'... Robert Miller, 72, who lives in a government subsidized room in
Bedford, said the Constitution should be amended so it will "not let
any colored people run for the White House." He seemed unsure about
his voting record in recent elections, but vividly recalled voting
for Dwight Eisenhower in 1956...'

"Racial attitudes pose challenge for Obama"
Charles Babington, Associated Press
Yahoo! News (Monday 9 June 2008)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/obama_race;_ylt=AlCFJffgs7MkcArNwYZyYxis0NUE

The Smurf Movie is coming!

2008-06-11T14:53:00.003+10:00

I nominate Daniel Craig to play Azreel...

We've been half-expecting this for a few years (ever since the whole Smurfette argument in Donnie Darko) but now news has finally reached us that a live action/animated outing for The Smurfs is coming our way soon.

Variety reports that Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation are bringing those blue-faced forest dwellers to life after obtaining the rights for the characters from their Belgian creators a few years back.
The Smurfs (or Les Schtroumpfs as they're known in France) have already made their cinematic debut in animated form following the Saturday-morning cartoon which ran from 1981 to 1990, but the new movie is set to be a wholly 3-D CG affair.

No word on cast or script details yet but we'll keep our ears to the ground for you.

- Glen Ferris, "The Smurfs Movie Is Go: Boys (and girl) in blue on big screen", Variety (11 June 2008)

"Britons [is] too busy to peel oranges"

2008-06-04T08:07:00.002+10:00

Every second "William" [*] story I read as a child had him exclaiming
"Cor! A blimin' orange!", in a Ron Weasley voice, whenever he scored
one of these rare wartime treats. Since I was growing up in
south-east Queensland - where farmers put free buckets of excess,
ripe fruit and vegies out by the roadside so passing motorists can
help themselves - this made 1940s Britain seem even more an alien planet.

[*] For those who don't know the "William" books by Richmal
Crompton... imagine Bart Simpson crossed with Agatha Christie and
written by the author of Biggles, and you're in the general ballpark.

Note this vivid comment from the Wikipedia entry
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_William_series):

>"As was often the case with popular radio shows, there was a big
>push to put it on the stage, where audiences could get to actually
>put a face to the famous voices, and the actors could get to earn
>decent money after the frugal pay checks offered by the BBC -
>William was paid 4 guineas a show, standard pay for juveniles back
>then, one line or star, didn't matter."

You can almost hear this contributor thinking "A shoe box! In the
middle of the road!!!" as he writes this...

>"Britons too busy to peel oranges"
>
>Tue Jun 3, 2008 11:27am EDT
>
>By Avril Ormsby
>
>http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSL0328894220080603?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews LONDON (Reuters) - Britons are too busy to eat oranges in their lunch breaks nowadays and are opting instead for "easy to peel" fruit like satsumas, according to a survey. For the third year in a row, orange consumption has fallen. It was down 2 percent at some 600 million compared with the previous year, market researchers TNS said. Although still popular with the health-conscious over-45s seeking their 5-a-day fruit and veg intake, oranges are being replaced by the smaller and more manageable satsumas and tangerines among young adults. Both are easier to carry in lunch boxes, quicker to peel and less messy to eat. Consumption of satsumas rose 35 percent over the past year to about 460 million and the number of tangerines jumped 60 percent to about 62 million. "Satsumas are the key growth area," a TNS spokeswoman said. "Seven in every 10 times oranges are consumed for health reasons," she added. But while adults cannot find the time for oranges, they do encourage children to have them. Consumption among children is about 15 percent up. (Editing by Steve Addison)

Textus receptus; or, "i m d trditn"

2008-05-07T10:12:00.002+10:00

Who said the Popes are semper et ubique opposed to Artificial Methods of doing things?

Pilgrims at this year's World Youth Day in Sydney will receive inspirational text messages from the Pope in an effort to better connect with the event's technologically-savvy participants. The messages are just one of a number of new digital services that will feature during the week-long event. World Youth Day coordinator Bishop Anthony Fisher says a number of new services are being introduced to the event for the first time. "For the week of World Youth Day, while the young people are here, those who've given their mobile phone numbers to us will receive a message each day," he said. "There's going to be digital prayer walls at the event sites where the young people can put up their own messages asking people to pray for their intentions," he said. "There's also going to be a social networking site, a kind of Catholic Facebook if you like." Bishop Fraser says the new services are about better connecting with young people. "We very much want to use the best of the modern technologies and the language of the young people when we are communicating with them during this coming World Youth Day," he said.

" 'God b wth u': Pope to text Sydney pilgrims," ABC News (Wednesday 7 May 2008)

Next: Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem to announce the Wailing Funwall.

You think? A princess and a guy like him?

2008-05-02T19:42:00.002+10:00

Before there was Bennifer, TomKat, Brangelina and Adamanda, there could have been... Carrison Forsh. Brrrrhhhh. And that could have been assimilated into Bennifisher two decades later. Double brrrrhhhh.

No wonder Ford acquired a liking for women with SW Expanded Universe-sounding names like "Callista Flockhart". This episode makes Carrie Fisher sound much less like her character. OTOH, it makes Messrs Ford and Hamill sound even more like their characters.

Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher - who played Princess Leia in the original hit trilogy - has told for the first time how she and Harrison Ford had a steamy affair while making the movies.

Harrison was married to first wife Mary Marquardt while filming the first Star Wars movie in 1977. The couple later divorced in 1979.

"I went on the film saying, 'I'm going to have an affair', like it was a kiwi, an exotic fruit - because I'd never had one,'" boasts Carrie.

Contrary to his conservative image, Harrison had few inhibitions in private Carrie says.

"Harrison is great fun when he's had a few drinks ... once I left the room and came back, and he was in the closet not wearing a lot of clothes."

A brutally frank Carrie has also revealed the bitter jealousy between Harrison and Mark Hamill - who played Luke Skywalker.

"Harrison had this enormous career by the second or third film - that was tough for Mark," she reveals. "He was like, 'This wasn't supposed to happen - it's the adventures of Luke Skywalker'."

"Carrie and Harrison's steamy affair", Women's Day (Friday, 2 May 2008)

Shameful ethnic and social-class stereotyping in Howard's Australia

2008-04-22T16:42:00.002+10:00

You Know You're REALLY Politically Correct When...

#19. you absolutely despise John Howard, darl, because you're deeply committed to opposing to all forms of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination, and that boring little Methodist midget isn't.

( 23 September 2003)

"... No doubt the same good Australians a week or so later were celebrating our national day with 'mates' over a lamb-laden BBQ and a game of backyard cricket fuelled by a Cold Chisel CD...."

- Tom Cranitch, " Nationalist zealots stealing Australia Day" 8(2) Eureka Street (24 January 2008),

More fighting monks

2008-04-21T10:44:00.002+10:00

Armenians: "Those who actually profess repentance towards God, faith in, and obedience to, our Lord Jesus Christ, are the only proper subjects for the ordinance of Baptism!" Greeks: "Sez you! But rather, not only those that do actually profess faith in and obedience unto Christ, but also the infants of one or both believing parents, are to be baptized!" Armenians: "Right! That doth it! Have at thee, heretic!"

The monkomachy at the shrine continueth...

A scuffle broke out at the traditional site of Jesus's burial on Sunday, when Greek Orthodox and Armenian believers, who fiercely protect their hold over sections of the shrine, traded blows.
Police said a fight broke out after Armenian worshippers yanked a Greek Orthodox cleric away from a tomb in Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional site of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection.
A spokesman said he did know the precise cause of the scuffle. Fights are not uncommon among the representatives of Christian sects who jealously guard their rights to parts of the centuries-old church.
"There is always tension there between the different sides," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. "That's why police were on scene ahead of time to prevent any arguments or disturbances from breaking out."
No injuries were reported but two Armenians were briefly detained.
Worshippers had gathered at the church in the Old City for Orthodox Palm Sunday, when eastern churches celebrate Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem on a donkey. Western churches celebrated Palm Sunday and Easter last month.
About 100 Armenians gathered at a Jerusalem police station to protest the detention of the two men but were later dispersed.

- Reuters, " Christians brawl inside Jerusalem's Holy Sepulchre" (21 April 2008)

The hand... controls me!

2008-04-09T11:14:00.001+10:00

A "happy-go-lucky" man who killed himself with a shotgun died in the same manner and using the same method as the man from whom he received a transplanted heart over a decade earlier. Sonny Graham was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the throat in his backyard shed last Tuesday, US media reports....
Mr Graham, 69, never met Terry Cottle, who fatally shot himself 13 years ago, but took the heart of the 33-year-old South Carolina man in an organ transplant operation when on the verge of congestive heart failure. Mr Graham contacted widow Cheryl Cottle a year later expressing his gratitude. They continued their correspondence before meeting in person and eventually falling in love.
The couple married in 2004 and moved to the US state of Georgia with the six children they had from previous marriages. In a 2006 interview with a local newspaper, Mr Graham said he felt an instant and unusual attachment when he met his donor's widow. "I felt like I had known her for years," Mr Graham was quoted by The Island Packet as saying. "I couldn't keep my eyes off her I just stared"...
- Erin Tennant, "Man's mystery suicide mirrors that of organ donor", NineMSN News (9 April 2008)

Orlac, call your office.