This ad apparently premiered in Europe a couple of days before my birthday, and the minute I saw it, I fell in love with it.
The love falls roughly into three parts: (a) The basic conceit of the ad. (b) The nuts and bolts of the production (i.e., working out how much of the construction really […]

Posted in Food, restaurants and cooking, Media 3 Comments »

Thanks for your concern, everybody. I’m a little better. Won’t be able to get the ultrasound till next week, though. (mutter) I will be sorting out those last book requests today and tomorrow, though, so if you haven’t heard from me, you will shortly.
Meanwhile, though, there’s this to laugh about.
LOLTrek (snort) Click on it for […]

Posted in Home life, Humor, Media, Medicine, nursing, health 2 Comments »

“Not bovvered” in Downing Street
(US readers: for background that will help you understand / get the joke in the above, first check this page and the video on it)
Technorati Tags: Downing Street, Comic Relief, Tony Blair

Posted in Humor, Media No Comments »

Oh dear, oh dear.  Not safe for those who don’t like the F word and its variants.  But visually hilarious.
Technorati Tags: Star Wars, gangsta, rap

Posted in Alien lifeforms, Fantasy and science fiction, Media, Music, Online life No Comments »

What a surprise: Max Clifford has signed on as Shilpa’s representation. (A bigger surprise: that he waited this long.)
Technorati Tags: Shilpa, Shetty, Big Brother, Max, Clifford

Posted in Media No Comments »

It’ll all be here.
(BTW, is it just me, or are we having a solar flare / CME? It sure looks like one.)
Technorati Tags: Peter S. Beagle, Peter Beagle

Posted in Fantasy and science fiction, Media 1 Comment »

And not so much a new hope, but an old one? This essayist thinks so.
If we accept all the Star Wars films as the same canon, then a lot that happens in the original films has to be reinterpreted in the light of the prequels. As we now know, the rebel Alliance was founded by […]

Posted in Media 5 Comments »

Not about Jade. (Well, only peripherally.)
The inevitable comments are starting to come out of the British newspapers regarding the Big Brother bullying-and-racism flap. A few of the articles are making puns on Jade’s last name, including a very specific one: Is it too late to be Goody Two-Shoes?, etc. And something about that brought my […]

Posted in History, Hobbyhorses and General Ranting, Media, Writing 2 Comments »

Hugh Laurie.
I am speechless. I’m literally without a speech. It seems odd to me that in the weeks leading up to this event, when people are falling over themselves to send you free shoes and free cufflinks and free colonic irrigations for two, nobody offers you a free acceptance speech. It just seems to me […]

Posted in Media No Comments »

The TV news often runs in the background while I’m working, and today it seems there’s a ruckus kicking up about the treatment of the Indian actress Shilpa Shetty in the (British) “Celebrity Big Brother” house. (Also surprising is the amount of airplay Sky News is giving this: I suppose it’s a diagnostic […]

Posted in Media 2 Comments »

(Like those UK commercials that showed things like giant hedgehogs running over tiny little trucks.)
Normally any time we hear the word “samurai” in a TV news story, Peter and I both wince, expecting to hear about somebody who’s run amuck somewhere with a cheap katana. But today, for a change, it’s something different.
Police are trying […]

Posted in Hobbyhorses and General Ranting, Home life, Media 1 Comment »

From the newsblog that appears on Blogger’s dashboard page:
I am overjoyed to announce that today we have o’ficially graduated the new version of Blogger from “in beta” to “.” Why is this significant? Allow me to explain via analogy:
Battlestar Galactica with Lorne Greene : Battlestar Galactica with Edward James Olmos :: Old Blogger : New […]

Posted in Film and TV, Media No Comments »

But then the statement was made “late Friday”, when everybody was probably at a Christmas party somewhere. (Or NewsCorp hoped they were.) (Sorry, the only link I have at the moment is to a registrant-only story at Variety.)
News Corp.-owned HarperCollins announced the news late Friday on the East Coast with a terse press release headlined […]

Posted in Current events, Media 1 Comment »

Jeez, that film got dreadfully spanked in the reviews.
This is something of an issue for me, as one fantasy film’s bad fortune affects all other potential fantasy pitches far more than the previous few films’ good fortune will; and in a household where pitching fantasy film is something that’s more likely to happen pretty […]

Posted in Fantasy and science fiction, Media, Writing 5 Comments »

I’m about to coin a word.
I don’t know if the thing I’m going to coin about is happening in the US right now (or elsewhere), but it sure happens a lot on this side of the water, and it is driving me nuts.
It happens in commercials on both radio and TV. They’ll show you, or […]

Posted in Hobbyhorses and General Ranting, Home life, Media, Uncategorized 5 Comments »

Like (it seems) about half the Internet-connected bread bakers on the planet, I’ve been experimenting with the New York Times-published recipe from Sullivan Street Bakery’s Jim Lahey for no-knead bread. (The original NYT article, which talks more about the recipe’s genesis, is here. The article discussing the ensuing discussion, and suggesting possible fine-tuning, is here.)
(Also […]

Posted in Food, restaurants and cooking, Home life, Media, Uncategorized 2 Comments »

I was sitting in one of the cafés in our nearby shopping town this morning, listening to the (sigh: inevitable, this is Ireland) Christmas music playing in the background. What they had playing was actually fairly pleasant, for a change — a compilation CD — and I started thinking idly about blogging a list of […]

Posted in Humor, Media 5 Comments »

Guns? They’re giving them guns now??
Erik Estrada and other lesser celebrities have been sworn in as reserve officers of the city police department here, allowing them to carry badges and guns as part of a reality television series.
About 200 people packed into a Muncie City Hall auditorium for the Tuesday ceremony to swear in the […]

Posted in Current events, Media No Comments »

Here you go, folks…
The Hogfather trailer
Wouldn’t mind a copy of the “Making Of…” trailer, though, with Our Ter’ in his toymaker costume.
Meanwhile, Terry tells a naughty joke in Berlin:

“A man goes into a pub…”

Technorati Tags: Terry Pratchett, Hogfather, Hogswatch, YouTube

Posted in Media 1 Comment »

Somewhere definitive, perhaps, to send your cellphone video of crashing zeppelins…
Beginning tomorrow, media companies Yahoo! and Reuters will allow members of the public to upload or e-mail photos and videos to illustrate breaking news stories. The “You Witness” service, which aims to turn the world’s hundreds of millions of camera phones into a news resource, […]

Posted in Current events, Media, Note to self 2 Comments »