Son of the Return Of Short Shorts Part VI

I can stop if I want to...

• Ten Most Difficult Words to Translate. It surprises me that there's no English equivalent of Kyoikumama.


• The Scunthorpe Problem. Probably exactly what you think it is, but I was amused by the irony that "socialism" can be blocked by spam filters because it contains a commercial word.


• Blocks With Letters On. Fiendish puzzle game with some charming between level animations, and some fine "aha!" moments. One thing to remember is that the teleports require you to press "enter" to use them.


• Playing the didgeridoo may help sleep aponea


• Star Trek: NCC 90210: The Pics

Son of the Return Of Short Shorts Part V

Obey Your Thirst!

• As a fairly regular reader of Paul Krugman I should mention his Nobel Prize which, as Patrick Neilsen Hayden has it, seems to be, unusually for an Economist, for Being Right. The Rightwing bloggers are in a tizzy, apparently.


• Krugman likes Gordon Brown, though, which may or may not cause you to question the above.


• A discussion of Pornography: “If real-world sex were a meal, the chicken would rarely be hot enough and there would not be quite enough dessert to go around.”


• Nailing Your Wife. PG Porn with the fearless Nathan Fillion.


• The Designer's Notebook: Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie! IX Earnest Adams looks at the ways computer games, and their designers, still manage to annoy us.


• Cubeecraft. Because you never know when you are going to need a boxy model of Buffy, Darth Vader or Hellboy.


• Quackle. Not exactly Scrabble, but you can sure make it a lot like that game. It describes itself as a "free crossword game artificial intelligence and analysis tool that rivals the best players in the world!"

Tis The Season

I'm pretty sure I've read this article, or something very much like it, a few times before. In short it goes something like this:

Confident, possibly attractive New York women fails to pull at some event or other.
Realising the problem isn't her, or her judgemental, condescending manner, she looks for another possibility.
She comes up with one. English men's fear of sex, say, or, in this case, English drinking habits.
Generalises to whole country.
Includes flight to notorious drinking spot (Dublin, Ibiza or where ever, in this case Prague), so she can compare her normal, rarefied society to the oiks.
Writes article about it for quality rag (maybe also gets book deal).

The hilarious follow up to this is the stampede of English people rushing to furiously agree with her in the comments, because Englishness is nothing if not the ability to look at other English people with revulsion, followed by a handful of denials and at least one sarcastic reply.

I went to a dinner party the other night. The new yorker sitting next to me was brash, rude, passive-aggressive and generally unpleasant, so I stayed quiet for the first part of the meal while enjoying a little wine to dull the pain. Later I made sarcastic remarks about her she didn't understand.

Then, probably, a second wave of responses will come when the Guardian, seeing how many hits the Times piece is getting, writes a piece asking if the English (or British, as it tends to be for these things, though I doubt that Sarah Lyall met a single Northern Irish or Welsh person) are really like that. Normally concluding that, despite the Guardian (and Times for that matter) readership being sensible people who like a bottle of red wine or two with dinner but don't have a problem and who aren't generally loutish on holiday, well yes we guess the British really are a terrible lot, except when we aren't.

Really, though, to top it all off Ms. Lyall should have made the now de rigueur trip to Rotherham and had an awful experience in a Working Man's Club. Though may be that's in the book.

Just When You Thought Their Reputation Couldn't Get Any Lower...

... bankers find a new low to go to. Apparently some on the right, ignoring the obvious reason that the current calamity has been caused by a bunch of rich venal fucks who you wouldn't trust with their granddaughter's piggy bank, are blaming the finacial crisis on being forced to help out poor people (read "darkies" or other, worse epithets).

Charles Krauthammer provides an excellent example, writing that "much of this crisis was brought upon us by the good intentions of good people." He continues: "For decades, starting with Jimmy Carter's Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, there has been bipartisan agreement to use government power to expand homeownership to people who had been shut out for economic reasons or, sometimes, because of racial and ethnic discrimination. What could be a more worthy cause? But it led to tremendous pressure on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—which in turn pressured banks and other lenders—to extend mortgages to people who were borrowing over their heads. That's called subprime lending. It lies at the root of our current calamity."

I'm not usually one to advocate violence, but Krauthammer needs a kick in the balls. Several. Until he recants this nonsense. And then till he passes out. Same goes for anybody else who believes that rubbish.

Via 3QD.

Son of the Return Of Short Shorts Part IV

Vorsprung durch linkage.

• From friend of the blog Klaus Rieder, Drinking Like Keith Moon


• Jesus Was A Black Man, just don't tell the American Christians


• The Lake Wobegon Distribution, it's not Normal. I think this explains something about Premier League football, but I'm not entirely sure what.


• Manorexia. Real? Or are they just making this shit up?


• All men may not be bastards but a hell of a lot of them seem to be creeps...


• IMB live piracy map 2008


• Ever wondered how you pronounce Jorge Luis Borges? Well now you know (along with a bunch of other authors' difficult names). I'm still not sure if it's "your gay" or "whore hey", though...


• "In its broad strokes, McCain's life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. [...] In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot." Rolling Stone, Make Believe Maverick, via Making Light where there's oodles of good stuff.


• Wow, just wow! Earth From Above.

Paul Newman Helped Me Pass My Driving Test (Sort Of)

I never met Paul Newman, not that I ever expected to. So I won't ever get a chance to thank him for helping me with my driving test. I gather he was a nice man and I'd like to think he would have been charmed by the story.

Strictly it was him, Robert Rossen and Jackie Gleason. The film is The Hustler and there's a bit in the first game between Eddie and Fats where they take a break. They've been playing pool for hours and Eddie just sits around and chats, maybe has a drink, while Fats goes and gets clean. Fats takes off his jacket and washes himself and combs his hair. The black guy then helps him back on with his jacket and puts talc (I guess) on Fats' hands. Eddie looks at Fats and says something about "You look beautiful Fat Man" and cracks up with laughter. At that point you know that Eddie has lost the first game.

There's something cool about that moment. In a literal sense. Fats cools himself while Eddie doesn't take the time to stop and think he just carries on.

Well, when I took my driving test I got flustered at my first right hand turn, nothing too bad, just nerves. I remembered that moment from The Hustler and I imagined myself as Minnesota Fats putting his jacket on and feeling that little bit cooler. It helped.

The Hustler is a film of many great moments and it is one of my favourites. It helped me pass my driving test.

Son of the Return Of Short Shorts Part III

You're lovin' it!

• Becks and The Bullets. My Bro's new(ish) band, poppy but with a northern attitude. BTW expect new demos from the Little Baby Cheeses and the BluesBerries in the next few months


• The Guardian asks for first date songs. Somewhat traditionally someone mentions Jayne/Wayne County, referring, of course, to (If You Don't Wanna Fuck Me Baby) Fuck Off


• Onomatopoetry


• "To give even two million dollars to a single little dog is like setting the money on fire in front of a group of poor people."


• Top 15 Modernist Gas Stations


• Vince gives out the love to Robert Mitchum and it's hard to disagree. Incidentally, it seems only the Bowdlerised version of the ketchup story is on the 'Net, I'll have to whip out "Baby I Don't Care" sometime and extract the "true" version.

Son of the Return Of Short Shorts Part II

Because you are worth it!

• Democratic Underground notice that many people are asking why the people of the USA should give 700 Billion Dollar to a Wunch of Bankers who frittered it away in the first place.


• Xmas must be near because The Express has already started printing stories about some place or other banning it. This even has a box out with the requisite "It's political correctness gone mad"


• An odd poem I had cause to remember


• Golf course destroyed in pesticide error. Only in Austria.


• Nine Types of Drinkers. Is it a bad thing if you are several of them?


• When I feel bad about my lax attitude to dusting, I find that there's always someone worse.


• How To Spot A Fake Pound Coin. I think this would make a decent album name, even if it is a bit U2.


• I Fucked Your Mum. Someone should do this for the Jill Sobule version, because if it's possible to have an ear worm for a song that doesn't exist I have it.

Son of the Return Of Short Shorts

Because sometimes I just want to link and go!

• It looks like Little Baby Cheeses has some competition, also worth skipping down to comment 66 to see Teresa Nielsen Hayden slapping down an offended party.


• Split Words is an addictive game where you have to put split words back together. Go for the bizarrely esoteric vocabulary on the harder settings.


• Life imitates Buffy (season 1, episode 3 "The Witch", really)


• http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/. Maybe it has, who knows. One good thing, though is that the page has an rss feed to help to check it more regularly


• This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps


• Polish Film Posters People seem to discover these semi-regularly. I'm pretty sure I have a link to a site with them in the archives somewhere, but they are worth seeing again. It's odd that quite a few of them (Willow, Critters, Weekend at Bernies, etc) are better art then the films they are touting.


• Why many top-selling wines are not much more than alcopops dressed up with flavourings and fancy labels. I sort of agreed with something published in the Daily Mail. I may need to shower for a very long time.


• Do pubs really live or die by the beer they serve? The Guardian asks what seems to be entirely the wrong question. Especially as the answer is, well, yes and no. Some places the beer is important and in some it isn't. On any given day one style might be more important to me than the other (although I'll always appreciate a good pint).

You Can Mix Anything With Lego

I remember when Lego Star Wars (just the sets) was frowned upon and after that grown men, who should have known much better, questioned the sanity of Lego Star Wars The Videogame. Actually, I suppose Travellers Tales could have messed this game up but they managed to make Star Wars fun again, although getting 100% was sometimes an exercise in controller-throwing frustration.

In the same tradition, how could they lose with Lego Indiana Jones? Both franchises spring from pulpy origins, B-movies with A-movie budgets, if you like, and Indy having the advantage of lending itself to more puzzle based game play.

Well, they triumphed again. The game is probably just a little bit easier than the Star Wars games, "True Adventurer" is almost pathetically easy to attain on most levels compared to the previous games' "True Jedi" status, and the supporting cast don't have quite the variation (and is it me are all the black characters mechanics?) but it shares the same joy at breaking everything in sight and tweaking the nose of the films that spawned it.

Indy Lego has some hilarious moments and nice touches. I liked that but all the bad guy soldiers, not Nazis I hasten to add, had blues eyes. The graphics are subtly improved all-round. The backgrounds, in particular, can be quite stunning and, as before, some of the most interesting rooms are the hidden secrets (the Star Wars Cantina, for one example).

Which is all to say it's not too surprising when some enterprising YouTuber tries to recreate the Simpsons intro sequence in Lego. To be honest, it doesn't quite work, the timing feels off and there could be more detail, but you have to applaud the effort and it's worth a watch despite the flaws.