The Japanese: Is There Nothing They Can't Make Disturbing?
Aug 3, 2007 · 1 minute readFor example, golf. How could this possibly be made an uncomfortable experience?
Well, you did ask. (Not Safe For Work. Or anywhere, really. You have been warned.)For example, golf. How could this possibly be made an uncomfortable experience?
Well, you did ask. (Not Safe For Work. Or anywhere, really. You have been warned.)Operation Banner finally comes to an end. Not something that I ever envisaged happening when I was growing up…
I have this in my room. Grant Morrison’s Dare and Really & Truly; the first reveals that Margaret Thatcher was in league with The Mekon (secretly, we all knew this, right?) while the second is possibly the only comic to be written by Ecstasy. Oh, and how it shows.
(in fact, R&T is probably one of my favourite Grant Morrison stories; pared right down to the bone, the gorgeous Rian Hughes art, the fact that I first read it hopped up on Lemsip on the couch, curtains drawn while pausing to be sick…good times. I think.) Perhaps I should do a proper comics round-up soon. News that Warren Ellis is going to be following Joss Whedon on X-Men won't entice me back, but Grant Morrison doing Final Crisis, which sounds as if it's based on his old Hypercrisis idea? Oh yes. More of this sort of thing later in the week. With pictures!.Oh, MIA. Bizarre and utterly fabulous.
EDIT: $20! BLUE MONDAY! WITH VWORP! VWORP! VWORP! All I wanna do is…BLAM BLAM BLAM!Was tonight’s top ITN news report an incredibly subtle advert for Teenspot.com, a website that I didn’t even know existed until it was singled out in tonight’s evening bulletin for being fertile ground for paedophiles.
Actually looking at the site, you have to feel a touch sorry for Bebo, Facebook, and Myspace, who were also named in the report. Myspace might be a little sketchy at times, but it doesn't splash 'Teen Chat: Singles - 525 members chatting, Flirt - 199 members chatting' or 'hotguys being spongebathed at the hospitool' all over the front page. (I'd like to take a moment to reflect the death of the English language while we're here. 'Hospitool'? Really?) The bizarre thing is that, despite being the top story on theevening news, there was almost no news in the story. Yes, people on the internet can be creepy! I wonder if they were just upset that the BBC got the headline grabbing story of the day with Children's Fight Club (though, surely, the first rule of Children's Fight Club should be: You Do Not Film The Fight And Upload It To YouTube, Stupid).So, having finally seen it last night, what is the considered Slems’ Die Hard group opinion of Live Free And Die Hard? I must confess that I enjoyed it far more than I was expecting, with only the silly CGI plane sequence letting the side down.
Yes, it was a little "You remember Die Hard's Greatest Hits!, don't you?", what with the taunting via radio, terrorism covering for robbery, "Gennaro", and yes, the final confront-evil-villain bit. But, eh, it was fun. And definitely better than the boredom of Pirates 3 (they made pirates dull! That takes work!). One major complaint, though: there are now two Die Hard films that aren't set at Christmas. That's just not right.As I was sampling the delights of Coke with Orange yesterday, I didn’t get around to talking about the Government surprisingly rejecting the extension of music recording copyright from the current 50 years to 70+. Good news, although expect the pressure from music companies to get even stronger as we approach the end of 2012.
The position of said companies is that allowing the copyright of these old recordings to lapse will prevent them from taking the money raised from selling these songs and using it to fund new talent, plus it will cut off a revenue stream for older artists. They're doing it for the kids and the pensioners! Who could possibly say no to that? Of course, these same record companies seem to have an endemic problem in actually paying their artists. And perhaps, just perhaps, EMI are a little more worried about what will happen to their sales if you could suddenly buy a Beatles album for less than £9.99 than keeping Lily Allen afloat. For the older artists who aren't Cliff Richard or Roger Daltrey (two of the loudest supporters of the copyright extension), this could hurt a bit. But if an item is in the public domain it doesn't mean that you can't sell it (after all, Penguin still sees the value in printing Shakespeare and Jane Austen, even though you can download them for nothing from Project Gutenberg). So, why can't Cliff Richard, or Lonnie Donegan's estate, for example, cut out the record companies altogether and produce their own collections of the material falling into the public domain? Produce your own liner notes, make a box-set, sell it online or get it into HMV and Borders, and you've got as much chance as seeing money as waiting for a multinational corporation to give your back catalogue a push. Music copyright is a little bit more complicated than with books (because the music and lyrics fall under the standard life+70 years copyright of books, whereas the recording is only 50 years), so it could be useful for these things to be spelt out, perhaps on a cheap, cheerful, and yes, Web 2.0-ish platform that would become a clearinghouse for both information on selling public domain music and a repository for discovering what music recordings have fallen into the public domain. Erm…so, who wants to provide funding? :)You may remember the time where I tried Mountain Dew: Code Red, or Pepsi: Blue. Or have heard about the epic quest for Coke Blãk, which resulted in failure when we actually found it. My God. Or Arctic Green Apple, the only Kool-Aid flavour designed to taste like a simulation of hydrochloric acid.
Well, because I never learn:For instance: given the arrival of a super-fast, shiny new Dell PowerEdge server: