Category: Random

More evidence, if evidence were needed that Metafilter’s Matt Haughey is a god among men.

On Thursday night I went to see Ocean’s Eleven. The film is amazing, Don Cheadle‘s accent is offensively bad. The whole cinema groaned whenever he came on. First “The Limey” and now this… What did England ever do to Steven Soderbergh!?

I just did a quiz at the Guardian designed to figure out how much money you should be earning – it works it out by assessing your IQ. At the end of the test the quiz asked me what I was doing with my life. The quiz told me I was wasting it. And, in fact, that I should be earning about £60,000 more a year than I seem to be at the moment. More annoyingly the instructions for the second round of questions made absolutely no sense at all. So I just answered the same for all of them and hoped for the best.

You tell me – do these instructions make any sense? “Does the second shape differ in some way from the first shape? Or could the second shape be the same as the first shape?” The possible answers are “Could be” and “no”. Is that ‘No the second shape does not differ from the first shape?’ or ‘No the second shape could not be the same as the first shape?’ or is that ‘The second shape could be different from the first shape?’ or ‘The second shape could be the same as the first shape?’ – whoever wrote the quiz was a bit dumb if you ask me. Now, where’s my £75,000 salary?

It’s Valentines Day – are you lost and lonely? Well then it’s a terrible shame that I didn’t do this earlier. Because I’m considering selling a date with myself over the net on ebay. Would you like to buy me for a meal and some stilted conversation in Central London? Sometime in the first week of March? Then keep yourself glued to your monitor…

Look at my graph! It’s a graph about the Oscars! It’s a graph with no point. All of these links go through to the same graph!

Something wonderful from ObscureStore today: Thomas Ray Mitchell suffers from several psychiatric conditions that include a violent reaction to the words “New Jersey,” “Wisconsin,” “Snickers” and “Mars,” said his attorney, Maria Luisa Mercado. In a statement to police after the March 9, 1999, shooting of Barbara Jenkins, Mitchell indicated that he had wounded her with three bullets from a .38-caliber pistol because she was about to say “New Jersey.” [link]

Damn you Meg and damn you Guardian! I didn’t want to know that I’m part of the Dido demographic. I have thirteen of the albums listed – more if you include MP3s. I feel hearily disgusted with myself and must now immediately listen to the Pixies a thousand times to remind me why I’m cool. If you want to experience the true shame of my CD collection, the albums I have are hidden in the comments of this entry.

When you are ready to have a serious conversation about Green Lantern you have my e-mail address – and if you don’t, it’s tom@plasticbag.org. Davo sent me this particular parody, mocking the adult comic book fan, and I have to confess that it is funny. Or at least, I imagine it must be if you don’t go through the whole thing going, “Wow – I remember Abin Sur – he was cool. And John Stewart. And Guy Gardner. And Jade. And the John Byrne reboot of Superman. And Hal Jordan before he went evil. And Sinestro. And… and… and…” And I imagine it would be particularly funny if you don’t finish the article and realise that you missed Kilowog and Arisia and the little chipmunk Green Lantern and the guy who looked a bit like a pickle with lots of arms who used to say things like, “In words of seventeen syllables…….” Green Lantern was always my favourite.

I don’t know how accurate or true any of this is. I wish I knew. I wish I knew who to trust to tell me the truth about such matters. I think we all wish we knew who to trust to tell us the truth about such matters. And in that lies the crisis of modern politics – there’s too much for any one person to grasp, and no-one impartial who can keep you reliably informed. Is it any wonder that the voters become disillusioned?

How unbelievably cool does this magazine look? This is post a its first redesign in eighty years, and it still has a wonderful retro-future design feel to it. It feels more like a periodical of sci-fi short-stories or something. I’m in love with it. And if you want to see the kind of wonderful madness that lurks inside it, then it even has a fairly well-assembled site.