With all of the horrifying shit going on in the world right now, I figured you'd all appreciate a picture of a puffin.
You're welcome.
Taken last summer at Bempton Cliffs. Plans are afoot to get much more up close and personal during the coming season.
Across the nation, every beloved comedian, treasured thespian, and talented musician tentatively opens door #1 on their festive calendar, hands all a-tremble. Can they last through to calendar's end?
It was a choice what was behind that door: a choice between a miniature chocolate and the Reaper Himself. Anxiously collapse that waveform. The chocolate behind door #1 is, however, an advent calendar chocolate, and therefore somehow still manages to be disappointing.
2016 is 91.667% done with, folks. Let's at least try to make it with [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] still intact. Names removed, because at this stage I don't want to tempt fate.
Which idiot called it e-liquid
? The far superior choice for a name was sitting right there, and that choice is snus juice
.
It has the added bonus that, were one to walk into a room and note that characteristic fake-strawberry aroma that signals someone has their voltage tunred up to macho levels, one could sniff the air and proclaim:There's snus juice aboot this hoose
.
How did Kirk know he had to steal the Enterprise? Last thing he knew, Spock and his tube were burning up into their component atoms in the upper atmosphere of the Genesis Planet, to the tune of Amazing Grace. As far as Kirk knows, there's no body for him to rescue.
In the novelization, Saavik secretly adjusts the torpedo's orbital parameters to give Spock a soft landing. That's not the case in the movie, since David and the crew of the Grissom are surprised to find the tube on the surface. The gravitational fields were in flux
, David says. That's remarkably fortunate, because otherwise it would have made for an incredibly awkward conversation with Spock's dad.
Of course none of this would have happened in the first place if Chekov knew how to count to six.
Oh folks, hello folks. Tell me your personal canons. What's 100% true for you that isn't supported by the evidence?
Here are mine:
Those are mine. What are yours?
Those of you who grew up in the 90s will know already that perky elfin teen-pop princess and sometime Ozzie soap star, Natalie Imbruglia, in a dark and terrifying departure from her usual glittery milieu, once witnessed the terrifying Frankensteinian reanimation of a previously deceased human being. It's well-known that her popular song Torn is a postmodernist retelling of T'Pau's China in your Hand from the perspective of an affected observer descending into schizophrenia.
You all know what I'm talking about, but because I'm nice I shall provide the vid for context. Behold.
( In which there are several embedded media )Splains why I always liked the theme to Ski Sunday so much, but: how the FUCK did I not already know that about Ski Sunday? My musical recognition skills were hitherto frankly superhuman, but lately I've noticed that they've begun to diminish with age, or possibly with lack of practice. I'm now all out of faith in my own abilities. This is how I feel: I'm cold and I'm ashamed, but thankfully still fully dressed.
My preferred serve at the moment is—no really, trust me on this—whisky and cream soda. Get yourself a nice smoky Islay blend (Black Bottle is good, plus the purchase of it pisses off Donald Trump; Islay Mist is far superior if you can find it), pack an old-fashioned glass with plenty of ice, and add cream soda. Since I am a posh New Town bastard these days, none of the supermarkets round here sell cream soda. I have to walk for twenty minutes before I can get to the grotty kind of shop that has a proper shelf full of Barr's products. It is worth the walk.
There is a commonly held belief that one shouldn't add mixers to single malts. This view is incorrect. You still shouldn't, ever, add mixer to single malts, unless you have a really good reason, which I often do. In defiance of this naive view, I have tried the same pour with Smokehead. Smokehead is a single malt (Scuttlebutt has it that it's a seven-year-old vatted Ardbeg with a dash of 10yo), but it still doesn't work as well in this serve as Islay Mist, which is a bloody fantastic drop for a blend, and cheap too, if you can find it.
Limited Edition, single hogshead, Ximenez finish cask strength 1996 Ben Riach: bloody marvellous. This is the bottle I was saving for when Maggie died, and now I finally have something for which I should thank the horrendous old bitch. Worth waiting for. Not a lot of point in my reviewing this, since most of you will never get to drink any. I have bottle no. 112 of 310, and this one's not coming round again. But nonetheless: bloody marvellous. Tart apple, hint of stewed raisins, and strong acetone on the nose; incredibly sticky mouthfeel, with a touch of burnt golden syrup on the palate; lighter notes and the sherry and oak all come out when you add a drop of water. The concentrated essence of apfelstrudel in a glass. Bloody beautiful. Thanks, Mags. Please feel free to die again any time you like.
Now, who's up for clubbing together to buy a cask of something nice, so that we may drink it when Gideon Osborne is finally deservingly assassinated?
I had a whisky recently that tasted exactly like Scarlett Johansson. I'm not kidding, that's what it tasted like. Or possibly it tasted like how she looks. Unfortunately I can't remember anything else about it, not even the whisky's name, or how it could possibly taste like that, or how I would know. Must have been a good one.
Many of you will know of my fondness for Lidl's finest Ben Bracken
single malt. Lovely fresh vanilla cream notes, hint of lemon sherrrrbert, and it's about eighteen quid a bottle. Scuttlebutt has it that it's the last expression from the mothballed Tamnavulin distillery, but if that's true then I'm not sure where they're still getting the stuff from, since Tamnavulin reopened in 2007.
Vaguely related, today's find has been Aldi's finest, Glen Marnoch
12yo Highland single malt. There's no such place as Glen Marnoch and Internet is suspiciously silent on where this stuff came from. It's spent some time in a sherry cask, without question. Dry white pepper and old wizened cinnamon sticks on the nose. Packed full of fresh fruits—watermelon, guava, tropical fruit salad—citrus, and a warm welcoming sherry length to it. Nice long smoky finish with a little ethanol kick at the end. And the whole thing comes in at under twenty quid.
I'm starting to like Aldi. Their weinerschnitzel is good too.
It is now possible to have a mocap system that links directly (and accurately!), in realtime, to a fully realized 3D set. Both the motion-capture system and the set in which it is to be rendered are simultaneously available to a sufficiently skilled technician, who can manipulate elements of same as required while the motion-capture is still continuing, from a single laptop. This might not excite you in the way I've just described it, but what you must consider is the fact that we have these tools available. This in itself has potentially broad-reaching effects about the nature of storytelling in the 21st century. And, which is much more important, as a direct result, tonight was possibly the first time ever that the following phrase has been uttered, honestly and without irony, to an actor:
Don't worry. Stand still and I'll rotate the world around you.
Oh yeah baby. If there were ever a reason why I got myself into acting, it's this.
~
The Muppets do Bohemian Rhapsody. Presented without any further comment. I'm going to have terrible mosh neck when I wake up tomorrow, and it's entirely the fault of Dr Teeth and his Electric Mayhem. Okay, partially their fault and partially the fault of Penelope Spheeris.
(You should follow that last link; I'm giving you a no-honk guarantee.)
~
It transpires that I gots a smartphone app. Some of you should remember the pajh-inna-box of old. Now it has an app. This would be unsurprising in itself were it not for the fact that Googol Play allows user feedback comments, most of which are about how awesome I sound. There's one there from user Jessica Rabbit
thus:
I own many, many tts voices but this is the best, yet! [...] this male, u.k. voice is the most natural sounding and also elegant & sophisticated! [...] I can listen to this imaginary Englishman throughout my day helping me with my appointments and such!
I suspect the real Jessica Rabbit would say LOL
somewhat less, being a lady who knows what elegant and sophisticated
actually means. If this were the real Jessica Rabbit commenting, none of you would see me for dust.
I'm not bad. I just sound that way.
As the demigoddesslike (and deipnosophistic) annajroberts draws to a close her epic deconstruction of a certain popular novel (which magnum opus begins here), it is time once again to turn to your regularly scheduled lamentations that E L James is, for some unfathomable reason, remotely successful.
annajroberts
ajrobertswrites
When you type SHA into Amazon's search engine the first predictive result is Shakespeare. The second is Shades of Grey.annajroberts
I suppose it could be worse. Could be the other way round, but talk about opposite ends of the talent spectrum.annajroberts
I wish Shakespeare HAD written Fifty Shades of Grey. It might have contained some actual dick jokes. And maybe they'd have killed themselvespajh
@ajrobertswrites I foresee a project.annajroberts
@gominokouhai Ugh. Forget it. I've only just put one parody to bed and I only wrote that to get it off my chest.pajh
@ajrobertswrites I'm just considrin the potential for proper rhetoric in the contract scene. I might do it if you won't.annajroberts
@gominokouhai Do it! I won't - I've had more than enough of those mewling, worthless assholes, with their sex contracts and crap BSDM.pajh
@ajrobertswrites I have four lines of stichomythia in iambic pentameter earworming me now. I may have to write this down to exorcize it.
You asked for it, you got it. (Okay, you didn't ask, but still. Nobody expressly forbade it.) I include the foregoing discussion as context, so you know who is to blame for the ensuing nonsense.
(A further disclaimer: no I've not read Fifty Shades of Grey. In fact I once had to discipline a staff member who I suspected of reading it. Turned out to be a false alarm. So having only read the parody version, and not having read Twilight either, I have no idea if this scene actually takes place, but I'm led to believe it does. So there.)
TEN AND TWOSCORE CHIAROSCUROES
Or, A Bardish Bawd for the Bored.ACTUS SECUNDUS, Scaena Prima.
Chr. My lady, shall I tie thee up with ropes?
Ana. Yea, even with your cable ties withal.
Chr. O madam, wilt thou take it up the butt?
Ana. My lord, I never so had thought before.
Chr. Not e'en consider up the butt to take't?
Ana. Mayhap I shall consider it.
Chr. Dude, sweet.
Ana. But shall we speak not of our hearts'—
Chr. We'll not;
For thou art but a paltry Mary Sue
And I a ripoff vampire libertine.
No more than this we are, no more;
And poorly written are we both at that.
No sooner would I tear off both my stones
Than tarry long in such a perfect void.
But use thee shall I for my carnal aims,
For what this novel lacks in plot it shall
Repay with dirty bits in purple prose.
With organ perpendicular I'll search;[0]
In pleasures horizontal shall I find
My consolation for thy lack of mind.
For surely there could be no woman dumber
Than one who seeks to romance such a—
Ana. Bummer.
Chr. I seest what thou didst there.
There, now it's out of my brain. And possibly into yours... sorry about that. I started off with two couplets I had to get out of my head, and ended up with a full-blown sonnet: there is a lesson here, I'm sure, but I'm damned if I want to know what it is.
--
[0] Bad Quarto editions have probe
here, but later editors bowdlerized it for the sake of their own sanity.
Best music video ever, or BEST THING EVER? Steel your mind, prepare your soul, and gird your underpants for: A Complete History of the Soviet Union, Through the Eyes of a Humble Worker (Arranged to the Melody of Tetris).
The theme from Tetris, as we all know, is a pre-Revolutionary Russian folk song more properly referred to as Korobeiniki; or, more frequently, Korobeiniki
–say wha?
–you know, the Tetris theme
–oh
. No doubt you'll recall the one-hit wonder Eurodance sensation Dr. Spin, who charted at number #6 in 1992 with a hip, fresh techno remix of Korobeiniki full of phat beats and suchlike. They called it Tetris
. Just in case you don't recall, it's provided below.
I know you're going to dig this:
...I know I sometimes ask a great deal of my readers, but I'm really not expecting you to have watched that all the way through. If you did, have a gold star and please don't take it personally when I back away slowly.
Apparently, as I've just learned, Dr. Spin was a pseudonym for Andrew Lloyd Webber. Yes, that Andrew Lloyd Webber. Wikipedia wouldn't lie to me... right?
I thought that Andrew Lloyd Webber (Baron Lloyd-Webber since 1997; so, as we should properly refer to him, The Rt. Hon. the Lord Spin
) had perpetrated quite enough evil upon the world already. Having said that, I really should expect no less from the man who married the woman who did I Lost My Heart To a Starship Trooper.
I can't believe nobody's thought of this before.
Courtesy of the good fellows at the Keep Calm And Carry On O-Matic, naturally. And, incidentally, totally unrelated to the content of my previous post, although I know some of you are thinking that the half-shot of tequila must have had something to do with it.
So I'm about a billion years behind the times. Don't judge me. I'm having fun. I'm simply not cut out for today's fast-paced here-today gone-tomorrow internet world. I still find all your base
funny.
While we're on the subject, I saw this on a t-shirt recently and WANT:
( cut to save your friends page )Today I was accosted by a black-market delicatessen. Ratty-looking bloke pulls me aside as I'm leaving the supermarket, asks me if I'm looking forward to Christmas. (The answer, as ever, is no.) He offers me all manner of otherworldly festive delights. I am resistant. He suggests I might like to buy something for the Missis
. While he's talking, a packet of corned beef falls out of his jacket.
You're selling me corned beef for Christmas? Happy Yuletide, Darling. I bought you this token of my affection from a dodgy man at the bus stop
.
Vaguely related: yesterday in the Scotsman there was a letter complaining that the letters complaining that Christmas starts earlier every year are starting earlier every year. I am tempted to take this further opportunity to determine the depth of the Scotsman's call stack.
~
( Cut for: spoilers for the third <cite>Alien</cite> film, and use of the R-word in a non-triggering context )(Ever the voice of reason, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scotm informs me that Brassed Off wasn't made until four years after Alien3, so such an elevator pitch is unlikely. The solution is obvious: David Fincher travelled back in time after seeing Brassed Off to pitch Alien3 to Fox. The residual time-dilation effects are why the film runs so slowly.)
The dramatic possibilities of grimdark Brassed Off in space, with gore
are legion, and were totally neglected in Alien3. I think it's time we explored this vision now.
Disaster strikes tightly-knit community of the mining planet of Sheffield-426. The colliery has been shut down because of the xenomorph attacks. Destitution is rife; also, eviscerated corpses are everywhere. There's a comic-relief mortuary worker who's the only person still in employment. Fortunately, the Space Miners rediscover their spirit—and perhaps even a little romance—when they find they can defeat the alien with the power of SONG! Pom, pom, parp.
It's scared of fire! Quickly, play the trumpet section from The Crazy World of Arthur Brown!
I wanna introduce you to a personal friend of mine. This is an M41A Space Tuba, with over- and under-mounted thirty-millimeter trombones.In Space, nobody can hear you do the glissando from the Wallace and Gromit theme.
I think I've figured out where Alien3 went wrong. In the first film, it crept around killing people. In the second film, it turned lights on and off, so it could operate simple machinery. The aliens were getting smarter. In the third film, the alien kills off all the characters in descending order of interestingness, leaving it a bloody mess full of insipid redshirts by the half-way point. Thus, the xenomorph provides literary critique on the script of the film itself. Presumably, by Alien Resurrection, the alien has become intelligent enough to write fart jokes into new episodes of Doctor Who.
Frisky and Mannish were amazing, as ever. It being the finale for the School of Pop, it was a little melancholy, too. Still, The College Years is still on, and if anything it's better. Edinburgh people: go.
(Here's the trailer in case you have no idea what I'm talking about.)
Then: stargazing! It was cloudy. We saw a single Perseid. One lousy meteor. It was a bloody good one though; a big chunky one with a trail of smoke following it, looking like the shooting stars you get in cartoons. Lovely.
Thus, since astronomy was a bit of a washout, I leave you with a snippet of medieval history:
Robert Curthose, eldest son of William the Conqueror (known as William the Bastard
before 1066), instigated his first insurrection against his father
in 1077, aged about 24, when his younger brothers emptied a chamberpot over his head. Apparently they'd grown bored of playing at dice and decided that this would be a good way to liven up a dull afternoon. Yeah, and you laugh at what Harry gets up to in the tabloids these days.
Angry that William failed to punish his brothers sufficiently, Robert rode forth the next day and attempted to capture the castle at Rouen. Like you do. It didn't go well. Basically it's not a good idea to pick a fight with a man called the Conqueror
, especially not if that man is also called the Bastard
, and especially not if that man is also your dad. (Rumours that one of Duke William's other names was Lord Will-spank-the-shit-out-of-you-when-I-get-you-home
remain unconfirmed.)
Anyway, bottom line, Robert didn't get to be King after William died. We got William II instead. On such matters as that tenth-century pisspot do the fates of empires turn.
(Lord Will-spank-the-shit-out-of-you-when-I-get-you-home would make an excellent character on Knightmare.)
I have just accepted the commission to review popular current movie sensation Sex and the City 2. Mostly because no one else at the movie enthusiasts' site wanted to go and see it, and with good reason.
As a result, I am now researching the Sex And The City franchise. At gone midnight on a Friday. Because no one else will. Mostly this involves watching Sex and the City 1. I'm five minutes in, and it's terrible.
Pay? What's that?
Just because you're not being paid is no reason not to be professional.
I was in Macbeth with Ailidh Mackay
who was in Atonement with Keira Knightley (mmm)
who was in Love Actually with Colin Firth
who was in Where the Truth Lies with Kevin Bacon.
Anyone out there got an Erdos number, and if so, can we co-author something?
( It's another late-night IM conversation, click at your peril )
I would have got it eventually, by the way. And it has been six years since I've seen it.
(05:55:21) pajh: I love cyberpunk. I wish there had been more of it.
(05:57:53) pajh: As a result, you may find that I use the phrase ``hack the planet'' more often than a regular human being might, and the word ``duuuude!'' /much/ more often.
(05:58:13) pajh: I hope this won't impact upon our friendship.On 26th September 1983, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov received early warning of a US first-strike nuclear attack on the USSR. Contrary to his orders, and basing his decision solely on intuition—unsure whether or not millions of his countrymen were about to perish in a nuclear inferno—he decided that the warning was caused by a computer malfunction, and did not cause the launch of a retaliatory strike against NATO.
Where were you on 26th September, 1983? What were you doing?
(Were you within one of these circles?)
On 27th September 1983, you were doing pretty much the same thing, right?
Thank Stanislav Petrov for that.
regnakrja