Friday, April 30, 2004
Hey, lookie here
I was surfing around, not really looking for anything, when I came across this piece of fanart. I kinda liked it, considering it's fanart, as it has Nightcrawler, who's one of my all-time favorite X-men, Brooklyn from Gargoyles, and Hellboy, of whom I've become quite fond since seeing the super-fun movie.
Yay! Gargoyles!
Yay! Gargoyles!
Can't help lovin' that short stop of mine
Jeter, Anemic at 0 for 32, Is a Crusher at 1 for 33
"Yogi Berra has forgotten some details, but he knew the length of his worst hitless streak, the way he broke out of it and the opponent when he did. Decades later, Derek Jeter provided the historical symmetry to an epic slump.
"In his first at-bat against the Oakland Athletics' Barry Zito last night, Jeter crushed a first-pitch homer deep over the left-center field wall near Monument Park at Yankee Stadium. The blast emphatically ended a slide that had reached 0 for 32, a figure that was familiar to Berra, the Yankee Hall of Famer.
" 'It's funny,' Berra said before last night's game, a 7-5 Yankee victory. 'I went 0 for 32 once. I hit a home run the next time up.' The home run, he added, was against the Kansas City Athletics, a forerunner of the Oakland team."
cue creepy '50s sci-fi moog Ooo-oo-oo-oooo!
Jeter and Yogi. Please also note that the HR wound up in the netting over Monument Park. He's so future HOF. I'll never cheer for that Rodriguez fellow the way I cheer for Jeter.
Jeter and Yogi. Please also note that the HR wound up in the netting over Monument Park. He's so future HOF. I'll never cheer for that Rodriguez fellow the way I cheer for Jeter.
Monday, April 26, 2004
Oh, this just craked me the hell up
| Doctor Unheimlich has diagnosed me with Katosis not the real name...edited to protect my web anonymity | |
| Cause: | too much sleep |
| Symptoms: | hovering, occasional déjà vu, liver pain, frequent diarrhoea |
| Cure: | electroshock therapy |
For an even bigger laugh, type in Sugar Kat into the name spot above. Tra la. I kinda like this response better....
...and this was my first and family names:
| Doctor Unheimlich has diagnosed me with -- --itis | |
| Cause: | influence of the Devil |
| Symptoms: | groin swelling, extremely inability to pronounce letter 'c', steam whistling from ears, pimples |
| Cure: | fresh air |
Wah! This makes me happy for some strange reason
You are a GRAMMAR GOD!
If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!
How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
Yay!
I saw Hellboy this Saturday! So happy! Yay my mom!
Liked it muchly, but that might be because I wasn't expecting much of it and came at it in terms of it being a movie, not in terms of how it interpreted the comic book. It was fun and funny and a little creepy, but mostly funny and fun. I suspect comic book fans might have been screaming, "Aw, fuck! Fuck! No! Shit! No! That's not--! Auugh! Bastards!" or some such, but I laughed and enjoyed myself immensely (the dialogue was occasionally stilted, but in a comic-book-y kind of way, so I accepted it for what it was).
Whee! Comic book movies!
I kinda want to see it again, mostly for Ron Perlman's performance, which I loved. My mom really liked the movie, too. She said now she has to get some huge-ass widescreen television so she can watch the Hellboy DVD appropriately. She adored Hellboy the character. Called him a "unique and very human superhero." (She collected Superman comics when she was a kid in the 1940s and '50s and feels herself to be an expert on the genre for some reason.) She now REALLY wants to go see Van Helsing. My crazy mom.
So, that's two thumbs up from the women of the Sugar Kat household for Hellboy.
Liked it muchly, but that might be because I wasn't expecting much of it and came at it in terms of it being a movie, not in terms of how it interpreted the comic book. It was fun and funny and a little creepy, but mostly funny and fun. I suspect comic book fans might have been screaming, "Aw, fuck! Fuck! No! Shit! No! That's not--! Auugh! Bastards!" or some such, but I laughed and enjoyed myself immensely (the dialogue was occasionally stilted, but in a comic-book-y kind of way, so I accepted it for what it was).
Whee! Comic book movies!
I kinda want to see it again, mostly for Ron Perlman's performance, which I loved. My mom really liked the movie, too. She said now she has to get some huge-ass widescreen television so she can watch the Hellboy DVD appropriately. She adored Hellboy the character. Called him a "unique and very human superhero." (She collected Superman comics when she was a kid in the 1940s and '50s and feels herself to be an expert on the genre for some reason.) She now REALLY wants to go see Van Helsing. My crazy mom.
So, that's two thumbs up from the women of the Sugar Kat household for Hellboy.
From Salon: Hand wash, drip dry, insult president
By Melanthia Mitchell
April 23, 2004 | SEATTLE (AP) -- Clothes can make a statement. Urban-bag designer Tom Bihn has discovered that labels can, too. Bihn's sales have doubled since a French-language presidential insult mysteriously made its way onto the bilingual washing instructions for hundreds of his laptop bags and backpacks.
The labels read: "Nous sommes desoles que notre president soit un idiot. Nous n'avons pas vote pour lui."
Translated into English: "We are sorry that our president is an idiot. We didn't vote for him."
Bihn's self-titled company has drawn national media attention and sparked Internet chatter since a Seattle customer spotted the insult and posted a photo of his bag's label on his Web log.
Bihn is careful to note that the tag doesn't specify who "our president" refers to.
"I'm going with the idea that it's a joke about me, the president of the company," Bihn said Thursday, but "clearly when you use the word 'idiot' and 'president' in the same sentence people jump to other conclusions."
Bihn, 43, said he knew nothing of the tag until calls and e-mails started coming in from people around the country asking for "the bag with the label."
Bihn figures about 2,000 labels were printed and hundreds had been sewn into his bags in the past five to six months.
About 500 labels remain, and Bihn continues to use them. He also has given them to customers who want just the label.
The company also has rolled out a line of "French Label" T-shirts with the enlarged label silkscreened onto the front. The company says all profits from the shirts are donated to the Seattle Vet Center.
Bihn, who has a Seattle store and a Port Angeles factory outlet, said he has gotten some complaints, but most people who call him say the labels are funny.
None of Bihn's 10 employees has taken responsibility for the tags.
"We're not really looking real hard because it's been really good for business," Bihn said. "If somebody admits to doing it we'll give 'em a raise."
Sunday, April 18, 2004
Russians say fuck you to plastic-fantastic glamour-pusses
Found on die puny humans:
An unglamorous schoolgirl has become a feminist icon in Russia after she was entered for an online beauty pageant by a friend as a prank.
Alyona Pisklova - not her real surname - got at least 40,000 votes, making her the runaway favourite to represent Russia in June's Miss Universe contest.
But Alyona, 15, was disqualified ahead of the finals because of her age.
In a blow to convention, her supporters hit back with a website called "Say No To Barbie Dolls".
She collected at least twice the votes of her nearest competitor.
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
Quote of the Day
"FOX! Where the shit hits the fans."-Tim Minear not too long after having to tell folks his brand-new show got the boot after four eps.
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
p.s.
Went to see Secret Window last night. It was a completely predictable and vaguely clichéd film, but in a kind of clever way. Johnny Depp made it well worth watching with yet another brilliant performance. Also had some nifty shots and cuts.
Saw The Fog of War this afternoon, which made me cry, which I generally don't do during documentaries about American history. It was super-good. See it before you see Secret Window.
If only I could've persuade Mom to go see the late show of Hellboy.
Saw The Fog of War this afternoon, which made me cry, which I generally don't do during documentaries about American history. It was super-good. See it before you see Secret Window.
If only I could've persuade Mom to go see the late show of Hellboy.
Please note that both Secret Window and The Fog of War had soundtracks written by Philip Glass. They were good, appropriate to the films, and very different. Kinda odd to see two films in two days of such different character and both of them having Philip Glass soundtracks.
Also note that all three films here are Sony releases of one kind or another. Complete coincidence, I assure you. Complete, freaky coincidence.
Also note that all three films here are Sony releases of one kind or another. Complete coincidence, I assure you. Complete, freaky coincidence.
Monday, April 05, 2004
Michael Chabon reviews His Dark Materials
My brother forwarded this article from The New York Review of Books by Michael Chabon of Wonderboys and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay fame: a highly literate and mildly disappointed review of Phillip Pullman's epic. I'm not sure I agree with everything Chabon wrote, but I found the review interesting. I especially liked the defense of the legitimacy of the genre which he puts in the beginning of the essay, a portion of which I quote here (without permission, bad kitty, so I'll put in this: the following quote is copyright © 1963-2004 NYREV, Inc.):
Like a house on the borderlands, epic fantasy is haunted: by a sense of lost purity and grandeur, deep wisdom that has been forgotten, Arcadia spoilt, the debased or diminished stature of modern humankind; by a sense that the world, to borrow a term from John Clute, the Canadian-born British critic of fantasy and science fiction, has 'thinned.' This sense of thinning--of there having passed a Golden Age, a Dreamtime, when animals spoke, magic worked, children honored their parents, and fish leapt filleted into the skillet--has haunted the telling of stories from the beginning. The words 'Once upon a time' are in part a kind of magic formula for invoking the ache of this primordial nostalgia.
But serious literature, so called, regularly traffics in the same wistful stuff. One encounters the unassuageable ache of the imagined past, for example, at a more or less implicit level, in American writers from Cooper and Hawthorne through Faulkner and Chandler, right down to Steven Millhauser and Jonathan Franzen. Epic fantasy distills and abstracts the idea of thinning--maps it, so to speak; but at its best the genre is no less serious or literary than any other. Yet epic fantasies, whether explicitly written for children or not, tend to get sequestered in their own section of the bookstore or library, clearly labeled to protect the unsuspecting reader of naturalistic fiction from making an awkward mistake. Thus do we consign to the borderlands our most audacious retellings of what is arguably one of the two or three primal human stories: the narrative of Innocence, Experience, and, straddling the margin between them, the Fall.
There's more. I recommend you read the article to get the full impact of the argument.
Those of you who have read the "trilogy" might be interested in this article, which, I warn you, is long. You might be able to tell from here that Chabon tied the series into Milton's Paradise Lost, to which, in part, Pullman was responding in writing His Dark Materials. I quite enjoyed reading the article, especially as Chabon refered to so many other fantasy and SF books, and pointed out that the Mrs. Cooper in The Subtle Knife might be a little reference to Susan Cooper of The Dark Is Rising fame, which is cool! (I don't feel stupid about not noticing that when I read the His Dark Materials "trilogy" as I hadn't yet read the The Dark Is Rising sequence so I couldn't possibly have noticed then. :p)
Also, there is another book in the series coming out (The Book of Dust), so it's a trilogy no longer (hence the quotes). Sorry, ET. Looks like you'll be waiting like the rest of us.
Those of you who have read the "trilogy" might be interested in this article, which, I warn you, is long. You might be able to tell from here that Chabon tied the series into Milton's Paradise Lost, to which, in part, Pullman was responding in writing His Dark Materials. I quite enjoyed reading the article, especially as Chabon refered to so many other fantasy and SF books, and pointed out that the Mrs. Cooper in The Subtle Knife might be a little reference to Susan Cooper of The Dark Is Rising fame, which is cool! (I don't feel stupid about not noticing that when I read the His Dark Materials "trilogy" as I hadn't yet read the The Dark Is Rising sequence so I couldn't possibly have noticed then. :p)
Also, there is another book in the series coming out (The Book of Dust), so it's a trilogy no longer (hence the quotes). Sorry, ET. Looks like you'll be waiting like the rest of us.
Monday, March 29, 2004
Quote of the Day
Ted Allen: Carson, this cheese is made by nuns.
Carson Kressley: Stop it! picks up cheese Praise cheeses!
Thursday, March 25, 2004
"What D&D Character Are You?"
(this is all ET's fault)
I Am A: True Neutral Half-Elf Ranger Bard
Alignment:
True Neutral characters are very rare. They believe that balance is the most important thing, and will not side with any other force. They will do whatever is necessary to preserve that balance, even if it means switching allegiances suddenly.
Race:
Half-Elves are a cross between a human and an elf. They are smaller, like their elven ancestors, but have a much shorter lifespan. They are sometimes looked down upon as half-breeds, but this is rare. They have both the curious drive of humans and the patience of elves.
Primary Class:
Rangers are the defenders of nature and the elements. They are in tune with the Earth, and work to keep it safe and healthy.
Secondary Class:
Bards are the entertainers. They sing, dance, and play instruments to make other people happy, and, frequently, make money. They also tend to dabble in magic a bit.
Deity:
Silvanus is the True Neutral god of nature. He is also known as the Patron of Druids. His followers believe in the perfect balance of nature, and believe that nature's bounty is preferable to any other 'civilizing' method. They wear leather or metallic scale mail, constructed of leaf-shaped scales. Silvanus's symbol is an oak leaf.
Find out What D&D Character Are You?, courtesy of NeppyMan (e-mail)
Alignment:
True Neutral characters are very rare. They believe that balance is the most important thing, and will not side with any other force. They will do whatever is necessary to preserve that balance, even if it means switching allegiances suddenly.
Race:
Half-Elves are a cross between a human and an elf. They are smaller, like their elven ancestors, but have a much shorter lifespan. They are sometimes looked down upon as half-breeds, but this is rare. They have both the curious drive of humans and the patience of elves.
Primary Class:
Rangers are the defenders of nature and the elements. They are in tune with the Earth, and work to keep it safe and healthy.
Secondary Class:
Bards are the entertainers. They sing, dance, and play instruments to make other people happy, and, frequently, make money. They also tend to dabble in magic a bit.
Deity:
Silvanus is the True Neutral god of nature. He is also known as the Patron of Druids. His followers believe in the perfect balance of nature, and believe that nature's bounty is preferable to any other 'civilizing' method. They wear leather or metallic scale mail, constructed of leaf-shaped scales. Silvanus's symbol is an oak leaf.
Find out What D&D Character Are You?, courtesy of NeppyMan (e-mail)
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
"Sanctuary! Sanctuary!"
...X-Kitty looking for X-Men to shed black and white fur on
Six-month-old Lilly, born on a farm in the southern state of Bavaria, has an extra pair of slightly smaller, non-hearing ears just behind the normal two. Vets attribute the phenomenon to a gene mutation.
'We want to find Lilly the loving home she deserves. She is very kind and not a monster,' said an employee at a sanctuary caring for Lilly and her nine normal brothers and sisters.
This one's for you, Maggie.
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Sunday, March 21, 2004
Quote of the Day
Steven Brust on writing his latest book:
Writing is like a tree.
Well, actually, it isn't at all like a tree.
Monday, March 15, 2004
Bizarre idea of the week
Okay, so the week's only just started, but to my addled brain (got a nice, huge whack on the forehead yesterday ... you can stop laughing now) this, from the City of Angel newsletter, is one of the stranger ideas I've run across. Angel fans are an interesting bunch.
An idea was born and is growing on the discussion boards at
SaveAngel.org. Across the U.S., and picking up speed in the U.K.,
fans are contacting local Red Cross Centers to set up March 17th as
the Save Angel Blood Drive Day. A PDF postcard is available for you
to send to Garth Ancier or Jordan Levin of the WB letting them know
we gave blood for ANGEL. We recommend that you visit the site where
you can find listings of venues near your home; also it is very
important to SCHEDULE AN APPOINTMENT for giving blood if possible.
While walk-in's are always welcome, it is recommended that folks
make an appointment as otherwise you might have a wait. If you can
not find a location near you maybe you can start your own blood
drive in your area!
Sunday, March 14, 2004
Nonsense
"FBI Looks Into Latest Jimmy Hoffa Claims"
The FBI will investigate a purported deathbed confession by a former Pennsylvania Teamster official that says he helped dispose of the body of Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa.
The confession, said to have been written by Francis Sheeran before he died Dec. 14 in a nursing home near Philadelphia, says he flew to Pontiac the day Hoffa disappeared in 1975, picked up Hoffa's body from his killers and drove it to a trash incinerator in Hamtramck, where it was cremated. [...]
Obviously untrue, as we all know that Hoffa is hiding in Halifax's anus, guarded by timber wolves.
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Dangers of online communication
Every once in a while, I run across some text written by someone else, online, which makes me think, What an asshole. I'm sure this happens lots to other people. La, la, la, you're reading along on a bulletin board and, BAM!, your only response can be Man, what a bitch or Christ, what a jackass. Still, it's not fair, as you don't really know what the person's tone of voice was or sometimes even the real personality of the person posting. Context is everything, and postings on the web are somewhat without context. Meaning, you might be reading what that poster wrote incorrectly. (Or maybe you are right, but.... Well, it's just not kosher to respond in kind. Flame wars are stupid.)
This is all obvious, I know, and stated much better elsewhere, but I needed to write it so I wouldn't write something stupid and incendiary like, "You're a humorless asshole," in response to this guy.... sigh
This is all obvious, I know, and stated much better elsewhere, but I needed to write it so I wouldn't write something stupid and incendiary like, "You're a humorless asshole," in response to this guy.... sigh
