One Scary Photobomb

“Photobombing” is the age-old practice of sneaking into the background and making a funny face while someone takes a photo, usually (but not always) of a group of people. I’m sure you know what I mean, but just in case you don’t, you can see some pretty funny examples here.

But here’s one photobomb that’s both funny and scary:

Mike Tyson Photobomb

I, for one, wouldn’t want Mike Tyson sneaking up on me like that!

(Originally seen on nextround.net)

Ashes to Ashes: Season 2, Episode 2

After last week’s massive 4000+ word recap, you’ll probably be disappointed with this week’s recap. I’m really going to make an effort to make this short and sweet… so here goes:

The episode begins with Alex having a daydream or hallucination. She’s walking down a hall at the police station, and spies a girl that looks a bit like Molly. She takes a few steps towards her, then hears “operating room noises” from a door to her right. She bangs on the door and tries desperately to open it. She comes back to “reality”, still banging on the door, and asks Shaz if she has the key to the door. Shaz looks at her oddly, and simply turns the knob… to reveal an empty “Interview Room 1”. Alex asks Shaz if he could “hear them talking” and other things that make her sound like a loon. The important thing here is that Alex wonders aloud if she’s forgetting her life in 2008.

Shaz says that Hunt has been calling for her (“loudly”) and so Alex goes outside to find Gene. As she steps outside, she hears the helicopter sound again and so she looks up in the air. Two guys are nearby, working on a disabled police car with the hood up. At first, Alex hears them talking as if they were EMT workers, but eventually their words morph back to the present (1982) day, where one of them says he wants to get a sandwich. Alex walks up to them, once again talking like a crazy person. “Fight for me”, she begs. “More like fight over ya, darlin'” one of them says.

Thankfully, Gene pulls up just then in the Quattro. He says they’ve gotten a tip about “Operation Burning Ring”, and we next see them in a car chase near a gypsy camp. Hunt pulls the Quattro even with the fleeing car, and Alex notices that the man appears to be intoxicated or having a seizure. We then hear a “crunching” sound, but we do not see Gene hit the other vehicle, nor do we see any obvious damage to the Quattro. In any case, the car flies off the road and has a spectacular crash, coming to as rest just at the edge of the gypsy camp.

Continue reading “Ashes to Ashes: Season 2, Episode 2”

Ashes to Ashes: the definitive playlist

Being a huge fan of both New Wave music and the show Ashes to Ashes, I thought I might share a list of songs used on the show.

Season 1’s list follows, and season 2’s will follow at the conclusion of the current season.

Season 1, Episode 1

Ultravox – “Vienna”
The Clash – “I Fought the Law”
Tubeway Army – “Are Friends Electric?”
The Stranglers – “No More Heroes”
David Bowie – “Ashes to Ashes”
The Passions – “In Love With A German Film Star”
Duran Duran – “Hungry Like the Wolf”
Duran Duran – “Careless Memories”
Roxy Music – “Same Old Scene”

Season 1, Episode 2

Tenpole Tudor – “Swords of a Thousand Men”
Madness – “The Prince”
Imagination – “Body Talk”
The Flying Lizards – “Money”
Visage – “Fade to Grey”
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – “Souvenir”
Dexy’s Midnight Runners – “Geno”
The Pop Group – “We Are All Prostitutes”
Heaven 17 – “(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang”
Jon and Vangelis – “I Hear You Now”
Dexy’s Midnight Runners – “Show Me”
Chas and Dave – “Gertcha”

Continue reading “Ashes to Ashes: the definitive playlist”

R.I.P. Peter Toon

The Rev. Peter Toon, a giant in the war for Orthodox Anglicanism in the United States and the United Kingdom, passed away in San Diego this past Saturday. He was 70.

Ordained in the Church of England in 1973, Toon initially served in the Diocese of Liverpool. He would later serve throughout England and the United States. He wrote 25 books, and was president of the Prayer Book Society of the US in the last years of his life. A caring man and a scholar, his work on the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal were top-notch.

He will be missed greatly.

Read more about him here.

More Monkeyshines from TWC?

As you’ve probably read here and at other Internet sites, Time Warner is temporarily shelving plans to offer capped bandwidth plans to customers. But that doesn’t mean that the company still isn’t acting like a petulant child – news is leaking out that users in Austin, Texas are running into TWC’s “proposed” 40GB limit and having their Internet service cut off. Worse yet, when Time Warner contacts heavy users, the company’s not giving them an explicit cap – just advising them to “use less”.

Did Time Warner learn nothing from the Comcast debacle?  Last year, Comcast got in trouble for threatening to disconnect heavy users… but not telling them how much data was “too much”. This led to considerable criticism from tech websites, who (rightly) stated that it was impossible for people to stay within the company’s bandwidth limits if no one would tell them what those limits were. Imagine, if you will, signing up for an “unlimited” cellphone plan, then getting a nasty call from the company’s “security team” telling you to not use so many minutes. And when you ask “well, how many minutes can I use?”, the only answer you get is “fewer”. That’s essentially what Comcast was doing, and it got a smackdown for it (well, that and actively interfering with Bittorrent protocols). So now Comcast has an explicit cap of 250GB/month.

Of course, TWC wants to have a smiliar cap… of only 40GB/month. Let me break down the math on that for you again: assuming that each company’s “basic” broadband plan costs $45/month, Comcast is charging its customers around 18¢/GB/month, while TWC wants to charge its customers $1.13/GB/month for the exact same product.

If people could change cable providers as easily a cell phone companies, I wouldn’t be up here bitching up a storm about it. But, in many areas, TWC is the only choice for broadband. They’re a monopoly. And one of the key legal tests of an illegal monopoly is whether a company, as the sole provider of a good or service, increases its prices for no legitimate reason. We all understand that companies occasionally have to raise prices to account for inflation. Or they might have to increase their prices significantly if the price of one of the raw materials skyrockets. But that isn’t happening with Time Warner. Bandwidth has never been cheaper, yet TWC wants to double the rates for your home Internet connection, if not treble them.

I’m watching you like a hawk, Time Warner.

Oh, and just this past Friday, the missus and I got a slick new color catalog from AT&T about their U-Verse offerings. Hmmm……

Time Warner: Lies, Lies, Lies?

I know it’s a little late, but Ars Technica posted this great article on Wednesday about how Time Warner just might be stretching the truth about their bandwidth costs. Apparently, all of TWC’s whining about “increased costs” just doesn’t bear out analysis… of the company’s own shareholder reports. In fact, external bandwidth is the least of all of TWC’s contractual obligations, except for existing debt obligations.

How’s this for a figure: Time Warner pays around $40 million per year for their external bandwidth. Compare that to how much the company pays for carriage contracts – the contracts between cable networks and cable providers ($3 billion), digital phone bandwidth ($453 million), and purchases of set-top cable boxes ($175 million) and you can see that TWC really is raking it in on its Internet service.

And not only that, the cost of backbone bandwidth is dropping by around 50 percent every year. So whatever Time Warner pays for bandwith this year, expect the price per megabyte to actually fall next year… and the year after that, and the year after that.

You should really read the linked article. It will open your eyes.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-04-26

  • It’s late… and I’m wide awake! #
  • Holy crap! It’s 6am! #
  • Please Retweet: Sign this petition : “Renew NBC’s "Chuck" For A 3rd Season!” – http://tinypaste.com/f9a5462 #
  • “Bob Loblaw Lobs Law Bomb”… man, I really miss “Arrested Development” sometimes… #
  • Rene Descartes walks into a bar… #
  • Time Warner really do suck, don’t they? http://ping.fm/k2Pc7 #

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R.I.P. Bea Arthur

Although many made fun of her… manly features, Bea Arthur was a top-notch comedic actress. It’s sad to see her go!

Beatrice Arthur, the tall, deep-voiced actress whose razor-sharp delivery of comedy lines made her a TV star in the hit shows “Maude” and “The Golden Girls” and who won a Tony Award for the musical “Mame,” died Saturday. She was 86.

Arthur died peacefully at her Los Angeles home with her family at her side, family spokesman Dan Watt said. She had cancer, Watt said, declining to give further details.

via `Golden Girls’ star Bea Arthur dies at 86.