You call it pedantry… I call it another sign of the decline of Western civilization:
I’m back!
Back from a little vacation… posting madness resumes tomorrow!
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-05-16
- TFLN: "My mother's day gift to my mother is to promise never to tell her 95% of the stories I've accumulated in my life." #
- "English: Turning your words into our words since 1066." #
- IRONY: "Green Party councillor Phil Gordon dies after falling out of tree" #
- TFLN: "my credit card is covered in vodka and bad memories." #
- OMG! Just saw an EXACT DUPLICATE of the Ghost Busters car in SC! What year is this??? #
- Congrats, Jessica Watson! http://tinyurl.com/2fjywml #
- Sugar? Heathen! I love that you love WH, Jill! 🙂 (@wagnerofficial)http://yfrog.com/2mcdkrj #
- Yet another reason to love Jill Wagner: http://ping.fm/0HhEp (read the caption) #
- Drinking Yuengling Lord Chesterfield Ale tonight… #
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FRIDAY FUN: Weird News
– From the “Let’s Hope It’s a Typo” Department: an Australian publisher is recalling and reprinting around 7,000 copies of The Pasta Bible… because one of the recipes calls for “salt and freshly ground black people”.
– Need gold? The Emirates Palace Hotel in the United Arab Emirates has installed a gold ATM machine. You simply insert some currency, and gold comes out. The machine uses a broadband connection to update gold prices every ten minutes, and has some incredible security measures, including anti-money laundering software. So the next time you’re in the Middle East and need gold at 4am, the hotel’s got you covered.
– A British woman is the first person to be diagnosed with phonagnosia – the inability to recognize voices. Unless the woman sees the face of the person speaking, she has no idea who it is. As a result, she avoids the telephone, as she can’t even recognize the voices of close family members without seeing their faces. Amusingly, there is one person she can recognize by voice alone: actor Sean Connery.
– George Washington is a deadbeat. It seems our first president borrowed two books from the New York Society Library – Law of Nations and Vol. 12 of Commons Debates – but never returned them by their November 2, 1789 due date. The president now owes over $300,000 in late fee dues to the library… although they’re not exactly expecting payment. They would, however, love to have the books back.
– Check out this nifty piece on spirolaterals at Futility Closet. Basically, if you gave two robots some pencils and the exact same set of instructions, one would draw a symbol of pure evil, while the other would draw the symbol of the people that evil persecuted, all based on differing angles. Chilling, but cool.
Ashes Update
Hi all!
Various commitments prevent me from even starting the recap of episode 7 of Ashes to Ashes until next Thursday (05/20).
This is, of course, the day before the series finale of the show. Given that it takes me several days to write each recap, it is extremely unlikely that I’ll have the episode 7 recap finished before the finale airs. So what I plan to do is to do a special, short “finale recap” post on Saturday (05/22). The “regular” recaps will be posted as I finish them.
Sorry for the holdup and thanks for understanding!
Jim
My Own Comic Book Guy
I didn’t like Mission of Burma, and so was unworthy.
Jeff Albertson – “Comic Book Guy” – is one of the most beloved minor characters on The Simpsons. I think it’s because so many of us have known a “Comic Book Guy” in real life: a socially-awkward comic book or record shop owner who lords over his store as if it was his own little kingdom. While they might have incredible knowledge of the most obscure comics or musical genres, they are loathe to share their knowledge with anyone, and often answer honest questions with a roll of the eyes and a sarcastic rejoinder.
I had a Comic Book Guy of my own. I think his name was Harry, but I never bothered to learn his name, because to me he was always just “the asshole at Wax N’ Facts”.
Wax N’ Facts is a record shop in the Little Five Points (L5P) neighborhood of Atlanta. Back in the 80s, L5PÂ was the place for hipsters to hang out. Travel guides called the neighborhood “Bohemian” or “funky”, and Wax N’ Facts was where we all bought our music.
My troubles with the Wax N’ Facts Comic Book Guy (WNFCBG) started the day after I got my first car. I got the car in the late evening, and drove it to school for the first time the next morning. I went home and did my homework after school, then decided to drive to L5P… just because I could. And, of course, I went to Wax N’ Facts to see what was new. I saw a couple of records I was mildly interested in, but what really caught my eye was a Dead Can Dance t-shirt (they weren’t common back in the day). Since this was the 80s and teenagers didn’t really have credit cards back then, I decided to return a few days later, after payday, to get the shirt.
Ashes to Ashes: Season 3, Episode 6
Episode 6 begins with Alex at home, asleep on the sofa. Haunting whistling is heard as she dreams of a soccer ball being kicked down the hall of the station. She picks up the ball and stares at it.
The next morning, she walks into the station… and looks confused. Police in riot gear are everywhere, and Viv is seen telling someone on the phone that all leave is canceled. When the person on the other end of the phone asks why, Viv tells him to “turn on your bloody television”.
Alex walks into the office, where the TV is reporting news of the riot and takeover of nearby Fenchurch Prison. It seems that ten prisoners jumped a guard patrol and the rest of the guards reacted with the “speed of a spastic tortoise” (Ray’s words). Alex asks if the wing held juveniles. Gene says that it does not, that it holds the worst prisoners: “You name it, they’ve raped it, robbed it, killed it.”
Gene says that their priority is a prisoner who escaped during the melee. Viv comes in and says he needs to have a word with Gene. But before they can talk, others join in the conversation and Viv gets lost in the shuffle. After Chris describes the escaped convict, Gene says that the gang can handle that by themselves, and that he’s going for a “quick refresher course” at the prison, which is only a couple minutes away. Alex, smiling, calls him “Braveheart in Paco Robanne”.
At the prison, all is chaos. The police are pelted with roof tiles, masonry, hammers and Molotov cocktails. Viv again tells Gene that he needs to talk to him, but Gene says there’s no time to chat… “it’s playtime”. We then see the scene inside the prison, and the advancing police officers are pelted with even more debris. Gene scans the prisoners and takes a long hard look at one in particular. The police advance with Hunt leading the charge. It’s like the biggest barroom brawl you’ve ever seen.
Lucky Rusty
Rusty Torres, a Puerto Rican-born baseball player, was one of the few baseball players in history to deal with not one, not two, but three baseball-related riots in his career.
22 year-old Rusty made his Major League debut on September 20, 1971 with the New York Yankees. Just a few days later, Torres was playing right field when the Yanks traveled to Washington to play the Senators’ final home games before moving to Texas and becoming the Rangers. It was the top of the 9th, with one out, and Torres was in the on-deck circle. Bobby Murcer hit a ground-out, and angry Washington fans, thinking it was the third out and the end of the game, stormed the field to protest their team’s move to Texas. Torres escaped without injury.
After the season was over, Torres was traded to the Cleveland Indians. Torres had a decent, but not spectacular, couple of seasons… and then June 4, 1974 rolled around… a date known in baseball history as Ten Cent Beer Night.
As the name suggests, fans were sold all the 8 oz. cups of Stroh’s beer they could drink for only 10¢ each. And the promotion worked: 25,134 fans showed up that night, compared to the 8,000 the team had been averaging.
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-05-09
- I'm finally caught up on the "Ashes" recaps… hallelujah! Too bad episode 6 is in two days! #
- @chipvanalstyne Do you know the EXACT meaning behind the Brit slang "shirt-lifter"?? Thanks! #
- Actual spam subject line: "Hat are your scruples to him, so long as you yourse". #
- "I once woke up in the National Air and Space Museum with a revolver in the waistband of my jean shorts." #
- The volume control on the BBC online video player goes to 11. AWESOME! #
- TRIVIA: Tracey Ullman couldn't hit the "Baby!" note in her cover of "They Don't Know", so they left Kirsty McColl's original vocal in. #
- I love how the Daily Mail's RSS thumbnails of Gordon Brown always show him eating a sandwich, sneezing, or smelling something bad. #
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Happy Mother’s Day
Happy Mother’s Day, everyone!!
(No wire hangers, please)