Dressing up the laptop

Pretty spiffy, I gotta say.

I had a moment to watch Boxing coverage and heard one of the commenters say (and I am trying to remember the wording exactly):

"A boxer should always be cognizant of the location of the other boxer's fists."

I love that.  I am going to use that as my new motto.

For about 18 hours the other day I was under the impression that a group of badminton players had been lighting matches and throwing them at people.  Sort of like an angry street gang or something.

Learning the truth has come as sort of a letdown.

For no reason, a quote I found.

"A good sacrifice is one that is not necessarily sound but leaves your opponent dazed and confused." --Nigel Short

Don't worry, they can't see you. Just take your time.

The latest in computer aided literary studies - Brian Joseph Davis is taking descriptions of fictional characters from their source texts and running them through software designed for law enforcement composite sketching.

I have just realized that Cate Blanchett really should play Emma Bovary (number four in the lineup, there).

Trailer Parking

A couple of films that are coming out:

The trailer for the new Wes Anderson film looks exactly like a trailer for a new Wes Anderson film.  Make of that what you will:


Under African Skies is a documentary marking the 25th anniversary of Paul Simon's Graceland album.  When the album came out, I was a bit conflicted about the politics of it (I got the impression that Simon was in some ways deliberately exploitive of the situation, and in other ways an odd combination of defensive and naive). I purchased the thing nevertheless and think it does hold up as a good album - but I am quite interested in how it is looked back on.

Great moments in fictional bears

Coming at me sideways from Tardis Eruditorum:

That said, this basic aesthetic of 2000 AD is perhaps better summarized by the strip that replaced Flesh - a sixteen issue job that is rarely mentioned as one of the absolute classics of 2000 AD, despite being absolutely fantastic in every regard. I am speaking, of course, of Shako. Shako tells the story of a particularly homicidal polar bear who has swallowed some vital military hardware and is being chased by government agents. It is, in practice, nothing more than sixteen short strips of a polar bear violently slaughtering people in improbable and needlessly imaginative ways. Though really, little needs to be said about Shako beyond its tagline: Shako! The Only Bear on the CIA Death List! 

And so a quick google later and I find a spiffy overview here:

The Americans are goal-orientated and tech-savvy but fail to accommodate the difficulties and nuances of the environment in which they are battling. Could Shako be the first Vietnam analogy involving a polar bear? Perhaps. Meanwhile The Russians are blinded by unthinking subservience to dogma and the need to best the Americans. Initially they don’t know why the polar bear is of note they only know that the Yanks want it so they capture it and take it aboard their Whaling ship cum KGB spy ship. This turns out quite badly. In fact, so disputed does the bemused bear become that a nuclear interaction is only narrowly avoided. Could Shako be the first Cuban Missile crisis analogy involving a polar bear? Perhaps.

Finally a panel that I imagine has been grabbed and repurposed by many before me, but is irresistible so here it is: