my.bicycle

My favorite member of SMAP (a J-pop band about which I am otherwise unmoved), Katori Shingo takes on the Power Rangers, including Pink Ranger Rina Uchiyama, the only Pink Ranger I'd take over JP.

O! Behold the Flashy navigation of the lotus eater. How can i get my Mac UI to look like this? The luscious drama!

Enki Bilal’s style, in CG for a contest: check this Trainstation out. (mefi)

Labels: comic

• Throw Paper!
• shoot and loot for the romero flick (it's dark)
• harder-than-it-looks cat game by orisinal
• Wax on. Wax Hoff. (get your hassel hoffed)

Labels: games

...it plays. (warrenellis)

Masahiro Fukuyama: Samurai fuzzies, or plushie codpieces?

I, for one, welcome our new samurai muppet-cock sexuality-exploring overlords.
—jwz

The Chronicles of Narnia movie site has released a beautiful extra large trailer.

BBC NEWS — Japan panel wants women on throne:
The Imperial Household's main succession hopes lie with Akihito's eldest son Crown Prince Naruhito and his wife Masako.
But analysts believe the pressure on Masako to bear a male heir contributed to stress-related illnesses which stopped her fulfilling official duties for more than a year.
If the rules were changed, her three-year-old daughter, Princess Aiko, could succeed instead.

How cool is that?

Vice Recordings’ Do They Know It’s Hallowe’en? (.mov) (waxy)

Some mad genius has built a built a robot from a Mac Mini.

BrickJournal - the magazine for Adult Fans of LEGO has launched its second issue, in the form of a free PDF download. Check out that dinosaur!

What is more Hallowe’en Sexay: zombie dancing girls?
or dancing girls with corpses?

Adverstisement for the new line of Sony TVs, Bravia: 10,000 superballs rolling down the San Francisco hills.

Lone Star Statements, by Matthew Baldwin:

The following are excerpts from actual one-star Amazon.com reviews of books from Time’s list of the 100 best novels from 1923 to the present. Some entries have been edited. (...)

Lord of the Flies (1955)
Author: William Golding
“I am obsessed with Survivor, so I thought it would be fun. WRONG!!! It is incredibly boring and disgusting. I was very much disturbed when I found young children killing each other. I think that anyone with a conscience would agree with me.”

The Lord of the Rings (1954)
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien
“The book is not readable because of the overuse of adverbs.”

(mckenzee)

Apparently I get a cameo in Cory Doctorow’s latest work, a serialized novel at Salon called Themepunks:

He hopped to, quickly moving to an older man, tapping him on the shoulder, whispering in his ear. Andrea squeezed Francis's hand as the fire chief approached them. She extended her hand and talked fast. "Andrea Fleeks," she said, and took out her notebook, the key prop in any set piece involving a reporter. "I'm told that you are going to let those homes burn because someone representing himself as the title-holder to that property has denied you entry. However, I'm also told that the title to that land is in dispute and has been in the courts for decades. Can you resolve this for me, Chief ...?"

"Chief Brian Wannamaker," he said. He was her age, with the leathery skin of a Florida native who spent a lot of time out of doors. "I'm afraid I have no comment for you at this time."

Andrea kept her face deadpan, and gave Francis's hand a warning squeeze to keep him quiet. He was trembling now. "I see. You can't comment, you can't fight the fire. Is that what you'd like me to write in tomorrow's paper?"

Despite a reversion to an older spelling of my last name and my complete lack of a tan or leathery skin (and the possiblity that this is entirely unrelated...) I am completely stoked. (timmeh)

Labels: sf

Friend of this blog, Amy Kelly, has created SPASMS Project, a collection of very short stories at a rate of a story-a-day for over a year.

“I can’t help it, words are interesting. What if they weren’t called fingers, they were called something else? Would that change my fingers? Would it change how I used them?”

“Other mothers have daughters who want to talk about ponies and princesses,” Mother chuckled.

“What if ponies and princesses were called zounds and zebras?”

“They’d still be the same thing, Vivian.”

She rolled her head around to look at her mother. “How do you know?”

“These, for instance. What I’m holding. What are they?”

“Pruning shears.”

Mother shook her head. “‘Pruning shears’ is a label, words we use to mean something. You should never confuse a label with what it stands for.”

“But they really are pruning shears.”
(more)

Who is up on flickr here? Ping me so I can add you as a contact.

The DOOM movie is out, and Rottentomatoes currently has it at a stinking rotten 20%. Even the good reviews top out at “easily the best videogame movie adaptation yet” — which is roughly the same as saying, “easily the most attractive burn victim supermodel yet (barring advances in radical plastic surgery).”

Depeche Mode Violated is a selection of remixes and mashups of the classic album. It features work from DSICO That No-Talent Hack and Bootied’s DJ Adrian. (thanks, The Other Michael)

Pi, the video; with wizards and robots.

I was a fan of ZOOM back in the day; The Electric Company, too. Spidey was great. (Thanks, The Other Michæl)

zefrank.com is full of all kinds of joyful goodness. Sometimes it is even helpful, or productive. Check out this sequencer, for making your own loop goodness.

Comedy Central is hosting clips from The Colbert Réport (the “t” is silent) featuring Tip of the Hat/Wag of the Finger. Colbert’s onscreen persona is similar to his instance on The Daily Show, with a few extra pinches of self-righteous O’Reilly thrown in for good measure. Where the Daily Show hits the news stories as I'd like to see them covered, Colbert instead mocks the format of News/Opinion programming personalities. Brilliant!

Stunningly well integrated CG composited with real footage creates a believable dreamscape of plants with roving eyes. (jwz)

A flea-like parasite that bites and leeches from the tongue until the tongue dies; at which point the parasite becomes a surrogate tongue, stealing its host’s precious humours of mucous and blood. I’m just going to go collapse in a quivering, shuddery pile now. (boingboing)

It has been over a year since I last mentioned Spamusement, comics inspired by the subject line of spam emails, so hopefully it is OK to trot it out again. (thanks for the reminder, JP)

BBC NEWS: Nintendo in McDonald’s wi-fi deal
Nintendo has joined forces with McDonald’s to offer free wireless internet access in the US for its DS handheld games console.

The service means McDonald’s customers will be able to play selected DS titles against other gamers around the globe.

Rivals Sony and Microsoft already offer online gaming on their game consoles.

Could that last sentence be any less without point? Could it be any more misleading? It makes Nintendo sound like they are pulling up to the game late. It reads like they are responding to something that Microsoft and Sony have established.

It’s not. What Sony and Microsoft have, in their home consoles is the ability to connect one’s home system to one’s existing internet service. So these are stationary machines in people’s homes that they can connect to the internet service they are already paying for on their own. With Sony’s PSP, and its built-in 802.11g wireless capability, the statement is marginally more reasonable; a PSP can be brought anywhere with wireless access and can connect to the internet. Provided one can find a free hotspot (does the PSP work with paid hotspots?) one can get online and play. Sony has talked extensively about PSP Spots that are coming soon. It seems as though Nintendo has manifested this plan first, and apparently very thoroughly.

What has happened now with the Nintendo has partnered with McDonalds to bring free internet access to enable online gaming at one of the most ubiquitous, child-friendly establishments in America. With people knowing that they can bring their DS to McDs, you can bet that not only will there be chances for online gaming, but head-to-head matches with other patrons and pictochat to meet new child predators... er, friends.

Make no mistake, Sony and Nintendo have both been hard at work on this for some time, and I would not be surprised to see a similar announcement from Sony very soon. For now, when the system rolls out on November 14, Nintendo has seized the lead.

Labels: games

After promising to fire anyone found to have leaked the information, Bush offered a more qualified pledge in July, saying, “If someone committed a crime they will no longer work in my administration.”

Asked on Monday if he would expect members of his administration to resign or take a leave if they were indicted, Bush said: “My position hasn’t changed since the last time I’ve been asked this question. There’s a serious investigation. ... I’m not going to prejudge the outcome of the investigation.”
Reuters.com

WikiHow: How to Communicate With a Non Native English Speaker
Avoid touching your listener. Even if you want to nudge them in the right direction or encourage them with a friendly pat on the back, your gesture may be misinterpreted. Many cultures view personal contact very differently and your friendly touch could be seen as aggressive or overly familiar.

And, no, “avoid touching your listener” is not a euphemism. The rest of the advice on that site is also quite good; I find I follow most of it already when trying to communicate in English here in Japan.

The Spaghetti Western String Co. makes charming and intimate acoustic music. Several MP3s are available for free download at their site to promote their CD, and another track to be found at the site that directed me to them, music.for-robots.

Guinness beer advertisement comes down on the side of evolution. (.mov) (del.icio.us/popular?new)

GamesIndustry.biz - GameStop, EB merger results in job cuts and warehouse closures
Hundreds of redundancies and EB outlet closures planned until summer 2006

Having just completed its acquisition of Electronics Boutique, videogame retailer GameStop has announced the intended closure of EB's Philadelphia headquarters, resulting in hundreds of redundancies.

In other news, E3 2006 expects a 50% decrease in sullen, rude, retail register jockey attendees next year.

Labels: games

Remember the Shockwave/Flash “falling woman game”? It wasn’t very fun; maybe it was just the theme, because Falling Bush is lots of fun. (del.icio.us/popular?new)

Labels: games

In Japan covers some How To elements of existing in Japan. Getting drunk and being able to navigate the train system to get home seem key.

Labels: music

HOWTO Put Porn On Your iPod: Grown men grunting over their new, video equipped iPods is not an image I needed when looking for a tutorial on getting DVD content transferred. Yeesh.

Labels: nsfw

So it is ALL over the web already, but Apple’s new iPod does video, and the new iTunes allows purchase of videos; here is a shot of ABC’s LOST for a buck-ninety-nine. Holy COW is that cool or what? Here’s a link to Jobs’ keynote address covering the other announced products.

somesongs [list songs]:

welcome to somesongs.
this is a community-based site for sharing homemade music. it works pretty simply: a person makes a song and posts the mp3 on his/her website and then posts the link here. then the users of somesongs rate the song (good, okay, or bad) so that other users will have an easier time of finding songs they'll enjoy.

Labels: music

(warren ellis)

Google Video is hosting some, um, fan-created stories featuring Zelda characters. They start off as trite just prior to starting an uncontrollable slide into madness and pwnage. There is a weird backstory to it. (thanks, colin)

SNK Playmore is partnering with Production IG to bring King of Fighters to TV anime.

That’s almost as exciting as the Blood+ anime that is starting up weekly broadcasting next weekend. It looks like a sequel or re-interpretation of Production IG’s earlier movie, Blood: The Last Vampire.

Labels: games

Geek on Stun presents spritely Mario in Cosplay. (waxy)

Check out these sweet advertisements (.wmv) for the Utah Fair by Napoleon Dynamite and Pedro. (waxy)

Watch as this granny gets fed up with a jerk behind the wheel of a Mercedes Benz. (popup warning; switch to firefox already!)

Labels: video

Old Grandma Hardcore chronicles the reactions and attitude of a very sassy grandma while she plays videogames.

It took Grandma a long time to get through Chapter 9 in the game. Her surprise was in the effectiveness of blade weapons over rifles against her enemies. She could target them much easier, finish them off without worrying about the awkward reloading vulnerability period or running out of ammo. She could focus on what is important in life: killing the undead.

“No!!! Fucker! ...got me with a FIREBALL, where the hell am I supposed to RUN?”

“.....SHIT! No, RELOAD. ‘B’ Button! BEE BUTTON!!! I pressed the fucking thing!”

“Fuck this I’m using a sword.”

2nd best grandma, evar.

Labels: games

Here’s a link to shop. Sit down before viewing price information. (via larking through Flickr: Photos tagged with ‘gorillaz’)

Hill: I had a very simple thing at the beginning of the movie which [Paramount] wouldn’t let me do which was a legend that said, “Some time in the future.” The great minds at the studio thought that was too much like Star Wars. I thought the movie was close to being incomprehensible without that because it always seemed to me to be a science fiction movie.
The FADER Magazine - New York Mythology

Hill also notes being influenced by his love of American comic books in structuring The Warriors. Between science fiction, and comic books, I think I am happy with the way that it came out more than what Hill proposed. It is easier to think of The Warriors as taking place in some parallel New York than it is to deal with what would have been perceived as half-assed post-apocalyptic vision.

I am unclear on how much of The Warriors meme-boom is due to marketing efforts on Rockstar/Take 2 Games’ part, how much is synergy between the two studio and Take 2 to celebrate the Extra Super Special Edition of the movie on DVD, and how much is coincidence. As someone recently wrote, “there are no coincidences, only marketing tie-ins.” (thanks El Otro Miguel)

Labels: comic

The guy who does the rock-on "I like pie" weebl stuff takes on Final Fantasy 7.

(jwz)

It is sad but true; the moon landing was completely faked. This kind of evidence is difficult to refute. Especially the space mice. (4rthur)