Judgement

Judge Floro was dismissed (or "separated") from the bench in Malabon City, a suburb north of Manila, after questions arose about his practices of starting court days with a reading from the Book of Revelations, conducting faith-healing sessions in chambers, and consulting three "mystic dwarves" named Luis, Armand and Angel for advice and predictions of future events.

The intro has a point. If you want justice handed down, who better to do it than someone with lightning teeth, eyes that emit spiritual fires, and hands that heal poor people with hot coconuts?

In other news: I am sad Steve Irwin is dead. I am not surprised Steve Irwin is dead, and I don't think he added much to modern culture, an opinion shared by many others. However, while I didn't want to watch somebody annoying dangerous animals for entertainment, I did like the idea that there was somebody out there actually doing it - there's a charm, however silly, that the David Attenborough voiceover can't match. I raise an enraged reptile to his memory.

Three things

1. Despite the barbed comments of Private Eye, it appears that the police aren't all that familiar with obsolete computers after all. Police investigating the Austrian who kidnapped a child and kept her in his cellar for ten years are having problems with the fact he was using a Commodore 64 that they can't get data off. I'm sure fansites are swamping them with advice even now.

2. A shot of Google hits from around the world over a single day. Obviously, this is watching the internet's heart beating.

3. Talk to the hand.

The write thing

For the first time in my life, I find myself looking forward to a Will Ferrell movie. In fact, probably two. The former I can partially blame on the fact that it uses the piano-y bit from Spoon's The Way We Get By, which I totally was going to use in a film trailer of my own one day, somehow, because it's that perfect combination of no lyrics and jaunty melody that should be overlaid over a montage of people pulling agonised expressions. Alas, Hollywood beats me to it. Again. The second one I'm assured is actually much cleverer than it looks, something I find remarkably believable.

Sticking to the cinematic theme, I can recommend Crank to anybody who likes the trailer, because it's blessed with that knuckle-dragging high-concept simplicity that means the trailer tells you everything you need to know about it, including leading you to accurately guess the few events that it doesn't actively spoil. Oh, and the protagonist's name is Chev Chelios: you can't really get a much more primal signposting short of marking your territory with urine.

Original No More

For a service that's supposed to foster creativity, Threadless has some achingly uniform submissions. May I be the first to propose a ban, however temporary, of the following topics:

1. Lovable Robots
2. Swirling Graphical Representation Of How Music Blows Your Mind, Perhaps Not Even Metaphorically, Yeah
3. Hilariously Incongruous Star Wars Character/Setting
4. Strange Vector Art With Distinct Root/Tree Motif
5. Anything With Monkeys In

That last one is from the heart. Sorry, world, but I just don't care about monkeys and genus solidarity be damned.

65% - some nice ideas, but nothing really new

I share what I think is Jim's amused horror at his mind not only inventing games, but then reviewing them. Reminds me of the Onion's reportage on a similar subject. I've not had any gaming dreams for ages, myself, but I can't recall anything beyond hazy remixes of whatever I was playing too much of before retiring: that is, WoW or Jawbreaker.

Woah

The suction above the hole resulted in several helicopter crashes, so all flight above the hole is prohibited now.

A really, really big hole that Aanand found.

That's a rap(ture)

I have been having rapture dreams and I can't believe that this is really it! We are on the edge of eternity!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I. Just. No. NO.

Seeing double

WTF? It's like a rejected first reel of a James Blond script.

Let's just file this under Administrative Overhead

This time instead of just crossing their fingers and hoping the curse would falter, the launch team decided to do something. According to Ash, the ground crew held a ceremony in which a Chumash priest, hired by Lockheed Martin, asked the gods for forgiveness and to remove the curse.

And to think Lockheed Martin get so much criticism for unharmonious business practices.

This your captain speaking. We may experience some turbulence and, explode

As a suitably fitted-out plane prepares to crash down, an altimeter would trigger explosive charges to make one wing break away from the fuselage and kick the one-winged plane into a horizontal spin.

Because airline companies are really keen to install explosives in planes these days. Yup.

Mine too

"We have the shot animated that reveals that Winona is not shooting ping-pong balls from her vagina."

South Park gets better with time.

Five Achievements I Feel Oddly Proud Of, Although I Really Shouldn't

1. Had review quoted on game box
2. Achieved enough miles for British Airways Silver Executive Card
3. Had submission featured in NTK
4. Set up wireless network between three PC's, a Mac and an Xbox 360
5. Rolled a car into lampost and survived unscathed

(Concept stolen from 5ives, which you should visit).

Evolutionary failure

I know I've been very slack updating this thing lately (sorry again, Emma) but I received documentary proof this week from a letter from the Highways Agency. Header: Accident, 20th November. Date: 6th April. Opening line: "We are sorry to hear of your recent accident and hope you are on the way to recovery." I'm surprised they just addressed to me rather than, say, the executors of my estate.

In truth, it wasn't an estate because BMW are too posh for such things; it was a Touring. A new record for eBay purchasing: a lifespan of just over twelve days. It was always a silly purchase, although it did look quite exciting: with black metallic paint, mostly-tasteful alloy wheels and a bonnet spoiler it was a great 80's villain car or hearse for very short gangster, and it was far and away the fastest car I've ever owned.

Unfortunately I got a bit too complacent a bit too quickly, I think, and it met a messy end and a lampost (not in that order) on a roundabout just outside Warminster. It was probably quite dramatic, but I've no recollection of the event: I recall slowing down to join a roundabout, then there's a period of static that ends with me talking to a woman on the side of the road, looking at the car lying on its side in the middle of it. Kudos points: 0. Despite my best efforts I can't remember anything else, which is a shame because I think the "passenger side window, or sunroof?" dilemma isn't something you get to ponder often. I must have been reasonably coherent because I came to clutching my mp3 player and the remains of my glasses.

Despite these theatrics all I got was a lump on my head - dismissed in 30 seconds my a triage nurse in an otherwise spookily deserted A&E which of course kept me waiting anyway, presumably to hit some government target. That I made it there at all was only thanks to the very understanding attentions of Tim and John who were both embarassingly helpful and succesfully rebutted my unsteady claims of good health. Alas, they failed to stop me going into work two days later, despite still having a short-term memory that fell far short of the five-minute mark.

The slightly dubious silver lining is that I was able to give some glowing buyer feedback (albeit in a tense rarely encounter in Seller Ratings) and didn't have to worry about the slightly irregular idle, sticky central locking, and a boot so full of water you could have kept goldfish in it.

Anyway, I lived and the car died, terminated two days later by an alarmingly local scrapyard in Bristol, and I went back to the old smoker I hadn't had the chance to dispose of. Now the threatened bill for the lamp-post has arrived, but it's irritatingly devoid of numbers: I was all set for some little-Englander outrage that a bit of metal and some concrete costs £15,000. Alas, all they want is my insurance details: I just hope they can reclaim the premiums that have been screwed out of me the last four years without putting the tab on the ones yet to come. Fingers crossed.

You Have Got To Be Fucking Kidding Me

The Onion vs. reality.

Parody: doomed.

Babes and sucklings

"I learned that it was sad and that you had to go to someplace and get stuff." And to think they said that Homer was too heavy-duty for the young ones.

Pieces of flair

'Susan Sontag nailed the idea of camp in the 1960s, labeling it as "failed seriousness," but no one has yet put a finger on the failed joviality of the retail age -- and its air of enforced cheer, sentimental prefab and the replication of nostalgia... "I think what it was was that one person had a bunch of crap on their walls and it was successful and everybody followed. Who the hell knows?" he said. "When I go to Chili's, it's not because of the southwestern decor."'

My worst fears are confirmed: there exists a job where you spend your days buying up boot-sale tat to nail to restaurant walls. And they're updating it for Generation Y, too! (via Cardhouse)

In other news, it has been a reasonably busy month. I bought another car, wrote it off, did lots of work and caught up with some friends. Yesterday, I was told to go to Vegas. Stay tuned for the exciting details. Now, I must do some Christmas shopping.

Christmas Fear

Yearly Christmas letters to Christopher Walken. The rest of the site is mightily interesting too; how can you resist The Anguish?

Grinny

At last, a movie about the games industry!

This is, of course, terrible. I only hope that the stereotype they've gone for ("We need an utterly pathetic protaganist, a model of someone old who never grew up. I know! We'll make him over 30 yet working in computer games!") is as obviously ridiculous in its crudity as the rest of the film.

Troubled waters

..studies reveal “a commonly held attitude that romanticizes suicide from the Golden Gate Bridge in such terms as aesthetically pleasing and beautiful, while regarding a Bay Bridge suicide as tacky.”

San Francisco: more sinister than you might think. An insomniac posting because I can't sleep at the moment; not in great health these days, which has contributed to slight depression on the passing of my 26th year. Not a unique concern, I notice. I read something months back about the "mid-20's crisis" or something like that, and I'm starting to embrace the mindset: youth is gone, mortality has achieved that absolute, ever-present certainty that previously you can tune out, and you've got a very foggy view of the road ahead in which the only certainty is that you're really going to have to hustle to become a huge success at anything. All of this overlaid with that odd Generation-whateverwe'resupposedtobe nihilism; knowing it's all going to be shitty and broken but at least there'll be wireless games consoles and boozy weekends in Prague to distract you.

Or maybe I'm giving myself and my generation too much credit; perhaps this is how it's always been. Curse previous generations for confining their innermost insecurities to private diaries or the bottom of bottles, rather than posting dreary self-indulgent mush in the public domain.

"When only one of the cubicles is occupied the system attempts to construct responses using fragments of online gay chat transcripts. When both cubicles are empty it is quite possible sexBot talks dirty to itself."

So glad this got government funding. I wonder if they do a concealed version.