Diane

Re the Rolling Stones’ halftime performance:

About 2,000 volunteers surrounded the stage to give the performance the feel of a “real” concert, even thought it was largely designed for television viewers.

The NFL had originally tried to ban anyone over the age of 45 from dancing near or on the stage, but it backed off after it was pointed out that the average age of the Stones was 62.

Oh, Gods forbid anybody over 45 might be seen dancing. They could be passing themselves off as young: horrors!!

(eyeroll) Yet another reason for me not to bother with US football. Thank heaven spring training will be starting soon…

You won’t be finding this one on eBay any time soon.

Secretly stored in a loft in England since WWI, this 1917 Sopwith Camel #B6291 was discovered by a former Royal Flying Corps Camel pilot with the cooperation of Sir Thomas Sopwith. Carefully restored to flying status by British Aerospace Co., at last it is here now in the U.S.

Nothing compares to this remarkable and historical fighter that once flew over the battlefields of the Western Front in 1917. This is the most desirable Camel existing in the world today.

Additional information at the Vintageaviation.net sales listing area suggests (via recent valuations of the aircraft) a price of somewhere between USD $1,800,000 and $2,600,000.

Sigh…

Used to be that, every now and then, when I’d see a name in the Blogger referral logs for a blog that I didn’t recognize, I’d click on the link and go have a look. I rarely do that any more unless the referral from the blog is a repeat, because if it’s not, it’s almost always a link to a spamblog — one of those artificially generated weblogs whose only purpose is to drive business to some other site, or push up the owner’s Google ratings on said other site. I really hate those things.

Yet every now and then I find myself looking at one of them anyway, if only by accident; and every now and then, the mashups of written material they use to try to confuse the search engines into thinking they contain something — well, like content — have a strange poetry to them. This one, for example, I found this morning; its real purpose in life is to get you to go to some ringtone site. But in passing it says this —

but never in their ardest whiskered did they re-deposit all of that super-saxony. yet the mourning-dresses opposed up, and the ale set out in the dining-room, and the cosette of hot shoare washt from the kitchen.

And Verty, with the variousness in his interventionist millston, blows away the gunsmithery from the canvas. Then I observe the Bettws-y-coed, by no means such a culpasse, although more adventurous than the Mitre by its side; and in the Klerksdorp I see (but only in molesting) Rijswijck and Prasritaja scandalizing over the quaint unfashionableness of registrars and letters till three o’clock in the morning, peroosin their three or four scelles of port, and wondering why they were a little cape-stone the next markest.

(headshake) Sounds like a tiddly James Joyce staggering down the street arm in arm with a plastered William Faulkner…

Hilarious.

…I did learn a few useful things…

Older people are much less likely to see the funny side of something, even when the safety of the universe is in the balance.

Couples are far better at avoiding the magically hindered than individuals.

Men with grey beards really don’t like to be called, “fellow wizard.” (Although, their wives are likely to find it funny.)

(Thanks, Jerry and cjmr!)

And not a moment too soon, if you ask me. This convenience comes to us courtesy of the Overseas Vote Foundation, a nonprofit / nonpartisan group devoted to cutting through the bureaucratic tangle for voters abroad.

The registration tool, known as RAVA, guides users through a process that first places them in one of three basic categories – overseas civilian, overseas military or family of overseas military – then asks for their home state, before guiding them to pages tailored to the laws and requirements of the appropriate state.

The swift system employs 128-byte encryption, the same as banks, to ensure security and privacy. Once the user downloads the completed form and prints it out to mail or e-mails it, all personal information is destroyed, Dzieduszycka-Suinat said.

The group does plan, however, to retain generic information on voters’ states of origin and current whereabouts, which may help complete the still very fragmentary picture of the precise numbers and locations of overseas Americans.

This should make things a lot easier for when the next elections roll ’round…

But in the nicest kind of way:

Tales of the Plush Cthulhu

Yes, Plush Cthulhu! The stars were right again and a band of innocent
stuffed animals had released Him into the world by accident.

“Uh, oh,” said Baby Boy Fluffy Bunny.

(grin) Sleep tight.

I see that I’m a trifle late in finding out about this — dewline put me onto it (hey, thanks!!) — and after a little Googling I see that Chris Roberson mentioned it last month. But ask me if I care, at the moment. I’m delighted! I saw BB at its Worldcon premiere and have loved that universe dearly ever since.

Now it turns out that Moonstone Books, starting in April, will be bringing out a comics version of Buckaroo Banzai — a three-issue miniseries. The first book’s story was done by BB creator Mac Rauch, and is entitled “Return of the Screw”.

I am so jazzed! Can’t wait.

(Fascinating sidenote: the penciler, Stephen Thompson, is Irish…and had never heard of BB before being asked by Moonstone to work on the project. See the interview with him, inker Keith Williams and writer Joe Gentile for more details.)

It was only a matter of time.

“Move Over, Buzz Lightywar: Virgin Atlantic offers its frequent flyer members ‘space miles'”

Frequent flyers are being offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become an astronaut under a newly launched scheme by Virgin Atlantic.

Members of its Flying Club loyalty programme can now convert their earthly miles into ‘space miles’ and earn themselves a trip beyond the upper atmosphere to join the 100-Mile High Club.

Members will need to earn two million miles on Virgin flights to be able to redeem them for a trip with Virgin Galactic into space. The adventure includes the three-day Virgin Galactic Experience, which will ensure that future astronauts can savour each second of their space flight. It will include ‘g’ acclimatisation, a flight in the White Knight spacecraft, and will take place in the US at the Virgin Galactic Spaceport. To date, there have been only 444 astronauts, but with the launch of commercial flights, the figure is expected to grow to many thousands.

Initially, flights will cost $200,000 per person but Virgin Galactic expects prices to fall over time.

All I want to know now is: (a) Can you move miles over from other airlines? (b) If not, when will Continental or Swiss take on Virgin as a codeshare partner? 🙂

Aargh.

…A prostitute he knew years ago has made him a central figure in her memoir.

Yet, if true, is this one of those “the-biter-bit” situations? Because it says a little further down —

She says he told her he’d written a call-girl character into “The West Wing.”

“I wrote it because (I’m serious about this) I’ve always remembered the way you came over to my apartment,” according to the E-mail she reproduces. “I remember looking at you and thinking: I don’t understand why this isn’t my girlfriend.”

Despite that note, she feels ripped off. “Almost every time we were together in his penthouse, he asked me to tell him in minute-per-minute detail about my life as a call girl. …Who knew then he was gathering information?”

…I feel sorry for them both, in a way. And wonder (in as gentle a tone-of-mind as possible) which of them was dumber about this — him, for not realizing how likely this relationship was to bite him in the butt some day (as he certainly anticipated it would come back to bite Sam in the butt on TWW)?…or her, for not realizing (as his conversation even about other subjects probably was suggesting about every five minutes) that just about everything you say in front of a writer is likely to go into the creative pot?

(sigh…)

A hilarious Heineken ad. Have you seen it?…

Here’s one link…
…or a different one…
…another one… (QuickTime)…
…or one where you can download and view later.

(And to my absolute delight, the ad comes in two versions. I’d only seen the bottled version before. The one at humour.com is draft.) 🙂

Sorry that the article requires a subscription — “Oprah Winfrey Takes a Guest to the Television Woodshed”, they title it…

It was indeed amazing television. James Frey — the truculent tough guy who used to compare himself to Hemingway — now sat like a boy in detention, gloomily taking his licks from the nation’s headmistress until he seemed to whimper. Sure, Mr. Frey was supposed to have been humbled already, brought low by the grievous sins he chronicled in “A Million Little Pieces,” his best-selling creative nonfiction memoir novel of drug addiction. Oh, but that book’s phony “hitting bottom” was nothing compared to the chastening — the emasculation, really– that he received yesterday on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

Just like back in the days when her guests were abusers and sexual deviants, Ms. Winfrey came for vengeance — and vengeance on behalf of the poor, the voiceless and the women above all, who get conned and defrauded and violated by men who think they’re so bad. But because Ms. Winfrey never sounds just one note, she turned in an uncanny performance, modulating her aggression with such finesse that she seemed to be the penitent one, and not the one with the whip hand…

Sounds memorable. And sounds pretty grim. But Frey brought it on himself…