1. Drop by Lost in Translation, a site that specializes in making fun of translating software by turning it against itself. The site uses some sort of technological thing beyond my ability to comprehend to translate a phrase so many times that it makes even less sense than Engrish.
For example, something like this:
Becomes this nugget of clarity:
2. For those of you who remember Transformers, one of the better-written animated television series to come from this side of the Pacific, or for those of you who just want to see something a bit different, check out amateur-made but professional-looking movie clip of a new Volkswagon Beetle transforming into a giant robot.
3. Buy a CD (or download some MP3s if you’re a scurvy mate), or, alternatively, just stare at your empty (or in Amp’s case dearly departed) wallet and wish that you could buy a CD. This weekend I’ll be listening to M83’s Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, Dntel’s Life Is Full of Possibilities, My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, and Jóhann Jóhannsson’s Englabörn. What can I say? I’m in the mood for static and electronics, I guess.
4. See if you can come up with six ways in which this picture doesn’t look like a modern Gap or Abercrombie ad. And, yes, the fact that she’s clothed in the first place counts as a difference. (Bonus! If you want to prove to yourself that you’re more culturally literate than I, see if you can recognize the woman in the photograph without being told who she is.)
5. Read a study about the forces required to drag sheep across various surfaces, the (scientifically validated) uniquely simple personalities of politicians, the composition of belly-button lint, and how to make frogs and sumo wrestlers hover, courtesy of the Ig® Nobel Prizes. (I think my favourite story from there is the one about the village of the dead in India.)
6. Learn about and experience some truly wonderful optical illusions at Sandlot Science. Be warned, though, that the site is pretty Java-intensive so it might be problematic for persons with abnormal browsers (i.e., not Netscape or Internet Explorer) or persons with slower connections. I used to have a really great optical illusion page in my bookmarks, but unfortunately it’s slipped away into that great chasm that inevitably develops between a new computer and an old one.
7. Have some fun with Google and Ogden’s Basic English: go to a word list for Basic English; pick a few words at random; run a Google search for those words using the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button; see what sort of interesting things you can find out about. For instance, a search for “industry goat development” takes me to this abstract (in PDF form) from the International Goat Association (who knew there was such an association?) about the “Role and Strategy of Goat Rearing Industry in Poverty Alleviation and Development.”
I promise to post something a bit more serious on Monday. Until then, have fun!.
A quick plug for the film “Lost in Translation.” It’s IMO of the same caliber as “In the Bedroom”, i.e. an Oscar contender. It’s Sofia Coppola’s second film after “The Virgin Suicides”, a great film on a much smalller budget. It strikes me as tonally flawless.
Unless I’m mistaken (which is not only possible but probable!) that’s Jackie-O. And yeah, that does look like the template for every in-motion windblown-look modern model-based advert of the modern age, doesn’t it?
That scene in Tolkien in its original form is sufficiently vague (though I love LOTR) to leave fans endlessly debating whether the Balrog had wings. I think it says it does. Or else it had two shadowy projections like wings. Or something. I just looked it up–yep, there are wings there. I take it back–the confusion is entirely the fault of careless readers.
Of course the movie settled the issue for those unwilling to go back to the book and read it closely. The Balrog had wings, but clearly nonfunctional ones, perhaps vestigal leftovers from the days when it was a Maiar working around Aule’s forges and had to fly over carelessly spilled pools of molten metal or something.
The woman in the picture is Jackie O. And ways that the picture differs (besides the afformentioned clothing of the “model”): There is no ugly jewelry anywhere on her person. No piercings or tattoos can be seen by the casual observer. She doesn’t look like a heroin addict. Her clothes fit and look good on her. She is not heavily made up, nor is she affecting boredom. Her smile is genuine.
Lord, but I miss her!
Donald — I’m not ready to blame careless reading quite yet (although I do lean that way). In one of the paragraphs following the one I quoted in my post, the balrog is mentioned as having “[a] shadow about it [that] reached out like two vast wings,” which implies that the wings are metaphorical (actually a similie) for the cloud of shadow that surrounds the creature. Two paragraphs later, however, the Tolkein says that “its wings were spread from wall to wall,” which implies that the wings are literal. [shrug] I’m willing to accept the movie’s balrog, which looked fantastic, and drawings of the balrog sans wings. But I’m curious… Do you feel like an über nerd, yet?
Reba — You nailed it for a lot of the ads I see, but some of them are so close to Jackie O.’s picture that I momentarily didn’t know that that picture was taken in the seventies and not a couple weeks back. I think that has a lot to do with black and white being in Vogue right now (sorry, couldn’t help myself) along with ribbed sweaters and hip-hugger jeans, as she is wearing.
Ok, it’s already been pointed out that it’s Jackie O. But I found one difference no one else has mentioned– her breast are in proportion to her body . . .Geez, I think they might even be real . . .