FILM NOIR

Pacific Cinematheque is hosting the newly revived Film Noir Festival and i'd like to go! unfortunately i've already missed the first half :(

i'd like to catch Kiss Me Deadly but am open to other suggestions as well.

any takers?

Kiss Me Deadly synopsis:

Film noir so nasty and nihilistic it's positively radioactive, Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly — “one of the most extraordinary films of the Fifties” (Georges Sadoul) — is the work in which the chaotic noir universe hits critical mass. Or reaches apocalyptic apotheosis! The movie is adapted from one of Mickey Spillane's sex-and-violence-filled Mike Hammer novels; Aldrich, professing disgust for Spillane's right-wing politics, transforms the author's private-eye vigilante hero (played here by Ralph Meeker) into Neanderthal sadist, bungling his vicious way from brutality to brutality as he tries to understand why the half-naked hitchhiker he picked up in the film's nocturnal opening was tortured to death — in front of Hammer's semiconscious eyes. Hammer stumbles his way into a sinister Cold War conspiracy — and, memorably, the desperate search for, well, “The Great Whatsit.” Extreme close-ups, crazy camera angles, and disorienting point-of-view shots keep the kinetic action deliriously off-kilter. The opening credits roll in reverse to the sound of a woman's heavy panting. Wow! “The most original American film since Orson Welles's The Lady from Shanghai ...You must see Kiss Me Deadly ” (François Truffaut). “Brilliantly characterized down to the smallest roles, directed with baroque ferocity, superbly shot by Ernest Laszlo ...it's a masterpiece of sorts” (Time Out). B&W, 35mm. 106 mins.

FROOGLE

yes, it's that time of the year again!

my wishlist hasn't really changed much from last year - it's just a bit shorter now.

TRACKS ON REPEAT

ANGELA AKI - KISSED FROM A ROSE (JAPANESE COVER)



mp3 here (this link will only be live for 7 days)
video here

INVEST IN MY BREAST, PLEASE

a website that funnels donations for breast augmentation - yay or nay?

so i think it's obvious who might post on a site like this. i know tons of females that are secretly - or not so secretly - planning on getting work done but the question is: who the heck is donating?

i feel as if i should be offended and yet i can't fully commit. i get it. all the way from discontent to self loathing - i think we all get it.

here's some other info i found at the Museum of Hoaxes

strange...

FLASHMOB: VANCOUVER ZOMBIE WALK

truely awesome! i <3 flashmobs the most!

the Zombie Walk - 25 August 2007


see video here

SOMEECARDS.COM

YOUTUBE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES

from Cracked.com VLog

THE iPHONE HAS BEEN UNLOCKED!

Using abundant quantities of the liquid fuel source shown above, a very dedicated group of Apple fans have documented steps they took to unlock the Apple iPhone's chains to AT&T. Full instructions here

NEWS: BLOGGERS BEWARE

CBC story on bloggers being sued for libel

see video here

I'M CHILLIN' LIKE A VILLIAN

i don't know how reliable this source is but this is favorite reference: urban dicitonary

Seems that no one knows how this originated so let me break it down. It first appeared on the saturday morning cartoon Batman, where Batman approaches Freeze and Mr. Freeze says im chillin like a villan, hence why he was chillin (literal definition).

Batman: Freeze what are you doing?
Mr. Freeze: chillin like a villan

COUNTING DOWN TO IMAGINARY SCI-FI FUTURES

In a linear conception of time, the future is the portion of the timeline that has yet to occur. We want to provide practical countdowns for special moments in space-time that still have not occurred... even if some of those moments already happened.

see: Remoting Future

URINE STREAM VIDEO GAME

this is brilliant!

The Piss-Screen is a pressure-sensitive inlay for urinals, to play a game with your pee. The game is displayed on a screen above the urinal. We teamed up with bars across Frankfurt, and installed the Piss-Screen in the men's restrooms. We designed a driving game in the style of Need for Speed with the clue that people would have a terrible crash into the oncoming-traffic if their reaction was too slow. After the crash we placed the message: "Too pissed to drive? Take a Taxi instead! Call: 069-733030"

for more info visit piss scrreen

RUSSIAN CHILDREN CONFUSED BY BOY/GIRL DOLL MADE IN CHINA

Lately some Russian newspapers post photos of these strange Chinese dolls. You can see the scanned piece of article from one Russian regional newspaper. The reason for the panic is that in Russian children toy stores have appeared strange Chinese dolls looking like a girl-doll but if fully undressed there can be something found that better would suit for a boy-doll.People demand to band those dolls from being sold on the territory of Russia and claim that it maybe done on purpose by some evil forces from outside of Russia in order to form a bad perception of female/male orientation from the early age.

MY PRECIOUS! MY PRECIOUS, BUILDING?

proposed towers vying to be the tallest skyscraper built on the west coast

HTTP ERRORS CAN BE FUN SO TURN THAT FROWN UPSIDE DOWN!

417 expectation failed:

415 unsupported media type:
408 request timeout:

400 bad request:
see more here

FROM WHENCE THE SHIT CAME TO HIT THE FAN

reference: The Phrase Finder

Meaning: Messy and exciting consequences brought about by a previously secret situation becoming public.

Origin: This expression alludes to the unmissable effects of shit being thrown into an electric fan. It appears to have originated in the 1930s. I can't say better than 'appears' as the earliest citation of it that I can find is in the 1967 edition of Eric Partridge's A dictionary of slang and unconventional English:

"Wait till the major hears that! Then the shit'll hit the fan!"

Partridge lists the phrase as Canadian, circa 1930, but as he gives no supporting evidence we have to go by the 1967 date, although it is undoubtedly earlier.

Other, more polite, forms of the phrase, involving eggs, pie, soup and 'stuff', can certainly be dated from the USA the 1940s. For example, Max Chennault's Up Sun, 1945:

"Sounds like the stuff was about to hit the fan."

The Fresno Bee Republican, May 1948, reported on a psychiatrists' convention, under the heading See How Brain Boys Also Run Wild:

"However, once that opening point was settled, the psychiatrists entered wholly in the business of the convention, which culminated, of course, in the selection of officers for the coming year. And that, as the saying goes, was when the soup hit the fan."

The other versions followed soon afterwards.

LEGO ME

make yer own at: Reasonbly Clever

HEADLINES

INTRODUCING BABY SUPERMAN (A.K.A. 4REAL)

A New Zealand couple is looking to call their newborn son Superman -- but only because their chosen name of 4Real has been rejected by the government registry.

Pat and Sheena Wheaton say they will get around the decision by the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages by officially naming their son Superman but referring to him as 4Real, the New Zealand Herald newspaper has reported.

The Wheatons decided on the name after seeing the baby for the first time in an ultrasound scan and realizing their baby was "for real."

They decided 4Real was the best way to write it, but the name was rejected because the registrar said a name had to be a sequence of characters.

Pat Wheaton said he was considering appealing against the decision through the courts, but whatever happens he won't be budged on his choice.

"No matter what its going to stay 4Real," Wheaton told the Herald, "I'm certainly not a quitter."
A spokesman for the Department of Internal Affairs, which operates the registry told the Herald discussions with the Wheatons about their son's name were continuing.

The baby is now two months old, after the Wheatons first applied to register his name in later June.

***

"have you met Mr. and Mrs. Awesome, their son Totally and their daughter Friggin? They're awesome!"

-Marshall from How I Met Your Mother

NETWORKING WITH NUTS

sorry, i'm fresh out of business cards but how about some cashews?

Taberu Me: Peanuts as business cards

BOOKS ON DEMAND

The patented automatic book making machine will revolutionize publishing by printing and delivering physical books within minutes.

Library users will have the opportunity to print free copies of such public domain classics as “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain, “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville, “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens and “Songs of Innocence” by William Blake, as well as appropriately themed in-copyright titles as Chris Anderson’s “The Long Tail” and Jason Epstein’s own “Book Business.” The public domain titles were provided by the Open Content Alliance (“OCA”), a non-profit organization with a database of over 200,000 titles. The OCA and ODB are working closely to offer this digital content free of charge to libraries across the country.

full article here

THE INCORRUPTIBLE WARRIOR

On July 25, an online game went live for testing. On the first day, more than 300 people registered. But due to the media coverage, the game quickly drew broad interest. At Sina.com alone, more than 100,000 downloads were made. By July 28, the server was so congested that people could not enter the game, which was originally designed for 500 or so people online at the same time. The server has been shut down for upgrade.

What is so interesting about this game? After all, the executable file is only 78M, the pictures are crude, the scenes are spare, the copyright is suspect (because it borrows a great deal of material from other games), the lone server is unstable and the financial sponsor is the Communist Party Disciplinary Committee of the Haishu district in Ningbo city.

The reason for the public interest is that the hero of the game is a "honest and upright official" whose assignment is to weed out corrupt officials, along with their children and mistresses. Here 'weed out' does not 'putting in jail' -- it means using weapons, wizardry and torture to kill them. There are 165 characters taken from history. On your side are the famous clean officials such as Hai Rui and Lord Bao. On the opposite side are the famous corrupt officials such as Zhao Gao, Huo Shen and others who exhibit different degrees of power (=corruption) as indicated by the gauge levels over their heads. When you kill a corrupt official, you gain experience points. For example, killing the eunuch official Wei Zhongxian gains you 100 experience points. As you accumulate points, you increase your powers for "Combatting corruption," "Moral character" and "Degree of being corruption free" instead of "life," "magic" and "strength" in other kinds of games. Your ultimate goal is to reach , where "the birds sing, the flowers give out fragrance, the people are full of love and harmony, the nation is prospering and the world is calm and peaceful."

Here are some netizen reviews:
- The characters and scenes are crude, perhaps even cruder than games such as Celestial Sword ten years ago.
- When the monsters show up, their names are always either "son of corrupt official" or "daughter of corrupt official"
- Even if an official is corrupt, is it necessary to kill their children?
- Why do the "mistresses of corrupt officials" walk around in bikinis? Why do they have to fight without clothes?
- There are options for adding values and purchasing equipment. Is this one of the 'free' games that make money off the value-added services?
- A lot of the materials is taken from games such as ,

and others. Does the fact that the government made this game mean that they don't have to respect copyrights?

article from: EastSouthWestNorth

WILL U BE MY MOMMY TOO?

this woman is amazing! check out her blog Lunch In a Box and her flickr page with all of her wonderful lunchbox creations!

WONDERFUL THINGS!

a ginormous Optimus Prime birthday cake:

how ginormous, you ask? here he is again to scale...

lucky guy! ya know september's just around the corner...