Christmas trees as catnip?

Here’s a new use for that leftover Christmas Tree next year: let your local lion or tiger have it as his own “Yuletide catnip:”

Remember, if the Big Kitty wants to rub himself all over your tree and shred it, you let him.

MEANWHILE: Learn about the sponsoring charity, Big Cat Rescue.

Since when did PA become San Francisco?

Welcome to life in the 21st century:

Woman says her fake penis got her fired

A northeastern Pennsylvania woman is suing a South Jersey-based maker of frozen treats and other snack foods, claiming that she was wrongfully fired because she wore a prosthetic penis to work.

Pauline Davis, 45, wore the device to the J&J Snack Foods plant in Moosic, Lackawanna County, while she contemplated a gender change, according to a federal civil-rights complaint filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Scranton. She confided in several co-workers about the device, and someone told management, according to the complaint.

She subsequently was fired from her job as a packer/line inspector. Her termination, she claims, was discriminatory because a male co-worker who wore female clothing and prostheses and took hormone treatments was not fired nor disciplined.

Actually, I do think she has a case, based on disparate treatment and the fact the… unit was concealed under her clothes and not causing a blatant disruption at work.

And doesn’t the Brotherly Love Pennsylvania is famous for apply to women with plastic “accessories?” Strap-on wearers have feelings, too, y’know.

Of course, if this had happened here in California, she’d be a culture hero and Gloria Allred would already have her on cameras and booked on The View. In fact, in San Francisco, and especially in the Castro, an artificial whoopie wand  would have been considered normal casual business attire.

“But this ain’t California. It’s Moosic, and we’ll have none o’that here. Ya hear?”

Like I said, welcome to the 21st century.

Someone call Sherlock Holmes

The Giant Rat of Sumatra has moved to New York City!

It may be the size of a small dog, but this is not the sort of creature many of us would fancy petting.

What appears to be a giant rat was allegedly found dead in a Foot Locker shoe shop in the Bronx, New York.

Scooped on a shovel in the Fordham store’s stockroom, the massive brown and white rodent measures around three feet

The picture was uploaded to Twitter by user @thegoodfella_, who believes it was snapped by a friend last autumn.

Experts think the rodent is a Gambian pouched rat, a fairly common pet that can grow to up to three feet.

It is not the first time the giant breed has been spotted in New York City.

Of course they’ve been seen before; the Occupy movement spent months at Zucotti Park.

I can’t wait for the inevitable SyFy “original” movie: “Sewers of New York: Mega-Rat vs. the Giant Alligators.”

With a cameo by Mansquito.

h/t Dana Loesch

Happy New Year!

I hope you had a helluva party last night and that you have a helluva good year to come.

Movie Fright Night: a review of “The Whisperer in Darkness”

As I’ve said here, here, and here, I’ve been looking forward to seeing the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society‘s film adaptation of HPL’s “The Whisperer in Darkness,” one of his most famous stories. The movie arrived last week and, a couple days ago, I sat down to watch both it and the accompanying “extras” DVD.

Executive Summary: If you like Lovecraft’s horror tales and aren’t a “no deviations from the text” purist; if you enjoy horror movies from the 1930s in the “Universal style;” or if you’re a fan of well-done independent film-making, I think you’ll greatly like “Whisperer.” Grab a hot dog, popcorn, and coke, sit back, and enjoy.

Full Review: In brief, “Whisperer” tells the story of Dr. Albert Wilmarth, Professor of Folklore at Miskatonic University and a deep skeptic of the idea that there is anything real behind the legends of strange beings haunting the hill of northern Vermont. When Wilmarth receives an invitation from a regular correspondent in the area, Henry Akeley, to come for a visit to discuss the legends and strange happenings more deeply, he accepts.

And then Very Bad Things happen.

One thing to bear in mind is that, conforming to the styles and standards of the period, there is little blood and gore in Whisperer. “Halloween” this isn’t, and I say that’s a good thing. Rather than trying to make you throw up by overwhelming you with buckets of guts and severed limbs, and without resorting to yet another nubile 20-something ingenue pretending to be a nubile teen who’s investigating a strange noise while dressed only in her lingerie (1), we’re presented with a patient (but never slow) build up of tension and mood that brings us into the movie’s world and lets us get to know Wilmarth before the action really gets going.

The use of black and white film, albeit required for the genre, fit the filmmaker’s needs perfectly; I don’t think this story could be done right in color. And special praise goes to whoever was in charge of the lighting (there’s no lighting credit on the site); at times I was reminded of the wonderful use of light and shadow from German Expressionist films of the 1920s and 30s.

Other technical matters were equally well-handled: costuming, makeup effects (God save me if I ever have to wear a life-mask as Barry Lynch did.), modelling and miniatures, the works. Special note has to be taken of the Mi-Go, the hyper-intelligent brain-stealing jumbo shrimp from space who are the monsters behind the legends. Originally planned to be done with models, the creators finally had to resort to CGI, but I didn’t feel them out of place with the rest of the movie’s look.

(It’s a this point, also that I commend to you the DVD extras disc. Not only does it have deleted scenes and the trailers, but a series of neat documentaries on the making of Whisperer, one general, the others being short treatments of specific topics. They were as interesting as the movie itself.)

As for the cast, everyone was good to excellent, but two stand out: Matt Foyer as “Albert Wilmarth” and Barry Lynch as “Henry Akeley.” It’s safe to say that their performances “make” the movie: Foyer portrays Wilmarth as a good-natured rational man of the 20th century brought face-to-face with The Horrifying Truth(tm), while Akeley wins the award for the creepiest old man in movie history. His rasping giggle could make Dracula’s servant Renfield cringe.

The secondary cast all play their parts well, and I was impressed by 11-year old Autumn Wendell, who played Hannah Masterson: a very disciplined and good actress.

One thing I alluded to above is deviations from Lovecraft’s original story. They’re considerable and of necessity in order to make a good movie. Some are little, such as giving Wilmarth some background that comes into play later in the story and adding minor characters in a few scenes. Others are more substantial: “Hannah” is an addition, used to hook Wilmarth through his family’s past and to give him something to care about and fight for.

The other is a continuation of the story past the ending Lovecraft gave it, which, as I’ve described before, is typical of the style of the weird fiction of the time: ending on a weird, horrific revelation with no definite conclusion.

This would be, for most people, unsatisfying in a movie, so the filmmakers decided this moment was the end of Act II and added an entirely new “Act III.” Purists might object to this and other changes made, but I think they all came together in a way that improves the story and works better for an audience. I’d like to think old HPL would approve.

Of any complaints I have, they’re all minor: I would like to have seen the deleted scenes left in. (The setting of Wilmarth’s discovery of an old manuscript wasn’t clear to me until after I saw the deleted scene.) I thought Daniel Kaemon, who plays cult leader P.F. Noyes, played his part a bit over the top, but not out of line for the period and genre. And the disc menus and “subtitle” text in the making-of featurettes were way too small: the text was very hard to read at a normal viewing distance.

Yes, those are quibbles. As I said at the start, I was greatly looking forward to this movie and I wasn’t let down. I had a blast watching it, and I think you will, too.

Just stay away from Vermont. Trust me.

Footnote:
(1) It’s not that I object to nubile 20-somethings running around in lingerie, but it’s such a cliche…

Headlines one never expects to see outside of The Onion

Man Eats Cocaine From Brother’s Butt, Dies

Both brothers were taken into custody on allegations they had drugs in their car.

But police told Charleston, S.C., TV station WCIV there were additional drugs hidden in 23-year-old Deangelo Mitchell’s backside.

Officers said Deangelo Mitchell convinced his brother, 20-year-old Wayne Mitchell, to swallow the ounce of cocaine to hide the evidence. He died soon afterward.

Just try to tell me this isn’t a Darwin Awards finalist.

Merry Christmas!

I hope Santa brought all that you could desire.

It’s a great day for movies geeks love

The first trailer for The Hobbit is out!

I may not have agreed with every decision Peter Jackson and crew made in The Lord of the Rings, but, overall, I thought it was a fabulous series and a great overall adaptation of the trilogy. (Or should it be “The Trilogy,” as there is no other in it’s league?) And I have great faith that Jackson and Del Toro will do a fine job here, too.

Originally, the movie was to be in two parts, with part two showing those things that happened “off camera” in the book, such as Gandalf’s investigation of the Tower of the Necromancer in southern Mirkwood and the White Council’s attack on it, but del Toro’s comments in the Wikipedia entry make it look like that’s changed. Still in two parts, the movie would stick to facts in the book. And yet, the trailer sure makes it look like Gandalf is wandering around a spooky tower…

(Come on. We all know evil demigods like Sauron just have to have a spooky tower. It’s in the union rules.)

Ah well. Something to chew over until next year. I can’t wait.

Meanwhile, my copy of The Whisperer in Darkness came yesterday, just in time for the holiday weekend! Huzzah!  You can’t get much more “Christmas-y” than hyper-intelligent brain-stealing crustaceans stalking the mountains for Vermont.

Right?

Finally, something almost as big as our national debt

A black hole 10 billion times the size of the sun:

Scientists have found the biggest black holes known to exist — each one 10 billion times the size of our sun.

A team led by astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley, discovered the two gigantic black holes in clusters of elliptical galaxies more than 300 million light years away. That’s relatively close on the galactic scale.

“They are monstrous,” Berkeley astrophysicist Chung-Pei Ma told reporters. “We did not expect to find such massive black holes because they are more massive than indicated by their galaxy properties. They’re kind of extraordinary.”

The previous black hole record-holder is as large as 6 billion suns.

Hah! I bet it feels puny. Probably wheezes and whines “I’ve been sick!”

And why don’t  we have starships right now? There’s a universe that needs exploring.

Come to think of it, the national debt does kind of function as a black hole…

Courtesy of neo-neocon.

My brain-case to Yuggoth is almost ready!

The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society has (finally!) finished their movie version of Lovecraft’s “The Whisperer in Darkness,” and the DVDs are almost ready to ship. In fact, you can pre-order and have it arrive in time for Christmas? And what better way to celebrate the holidays than by watching a movie about brain-stealing jumbo shrimp from outer space?

I knew you’d agree.

In the meantime, you can enjoy the trailers.

RELATED: Earlier posts on TWiD.

I am weak…

Okay, I’ve wanted a new laptop for a while (Hey, my current one came new with Windows 98 SE. It almost needs its own wheelchair.), but I hate taking on debt, so, even though there were some good bargains out there, I kept telling myself “no.”

Well, that ended a few minutes ago, thanks to the combination of a $500-off online coupon and easy terms from the HP online store. (Bad economies are good for something, I guess, such as companies desperate to sell.) So, for (just) under $1,000 –including California’s godawful sales tax– I will soon be the happy owner of a 17″ laptop with HD screen, 8 GB ram, 750GB hard drive , 2gb ATI video card, and i7 quad-core processor. It also has a built-in camera and mic for video conferencing, so this should be… interesting. I bought a new desktop from them last April and, so far, it’s been almost perfect.  And fast. Fast is important to me.

It’s scheduled to ship the 29th, but HP typically ships early. And still I want it now, danggit. Oh, the pain of instant gratification denied…

Now I just have to think of a name for it.

TV commercials, if Rod Serling had made them

Some people are afraid of clowns. Not me (1), but I’m sure dolls are vessels for evil. Whether it’s the Zuni warrior doll from Trilogy of Terror, psychotic ventriloquist dolls, or the ultimate pigtailed Satan, Talky Tina, dolls hide horror behind their tiny forms and placid smiles.

Someone obviously agrees with me and took a commercial I recall from my youth, giving it a new script straight from the Twilight Zone:

Yeah, that would have cost me a couple nights’ of sleep. Rod would be proud.

You can see the original here.

In Passing:
(1) Clowns are our friends. We like clowns. The nice clowns will protect us while we sleep.

Missed us by *that* much

Whew! That was close!

Billion-Ton Comet May Have Missed Earth by a Few Hundred Kilometers in 1883

A reanalysis of historical observations suggest Earth narrowly avoided an extinction event just over a hundred years ago.

That’s a billion-ton comet that had broken into thousands of pieces. Had they hit the Earth, the investigating team estimates there could have been over 3,200 “Tunguska events” over 48 hours.

That’d put a crimp in anyone’s day.

The return of Perry Mason

"Trust me, Della. It will never work between us."

 

Hmmm. I’m a big fan of the old series, and Robert Downey, Jr., has turned in some great performances since cleaning himself up, so this sounds promising:

Warner Bros. Pictures and Team Downey are relaunching the “Perry Mason” franchise as a feature film, with Robert Downey Jr. eyeing the title role, reports Variety.

The trade says that, like the original Erle Stanley Gardner books, the Perry Mason movie will be set in the 1930s and feature characters such as Mason’s secretary, Della Street, private investigator Paul Drake, and Mason’s longtime courtroom nemesis, Hamilton Burger.

I like the return to the 1930s of Gardiner’s stories and I hope this also means they’ll be more true to the Mason of the stories, who was often willing to engage in a little law-breaking himself in service of a greater good. (The original series starring Raymond Burr had that in its early days, but it mostly vanished after a few seasons.) And I think Downey is a good choice for the part — as long as it isn’t a “reinvention” like his Sherlock Holmes movie. I liked that for what it was, but, in this case, I want “Perry Mason,” not a action-hero comic-book alternate-Perry.

Sidenote: Sorry about the lack of posting of late. I hope to be a bit more regular about it; if nothing else, there are some new TV shows to talk about.

And now the vending machine feels cheap and used

I have to ask… Didn’t that hurt??

Police: Man ‘molested’ vending machine

Police in Florida said they arrested a man who “maliciously molested, opened, broke, injured, damaged and inserted his body parts” into a vending machine.

The Palmetto Police Department said Michael Aguiar, 20, denied assaulting the vending machine at Budick Coin Laundry at 11:30 p.m. Aug. 17 until police showed him surveillance footage of the incident after his Monday arrest, The Bradenton (Fla.) Herald reported Friday.

Officers said Aguiar then admitted to breaking into the vending machine and taking $10 worth of coins from it.

First he takes the money, and then he thinks… “You sure got a pretty coin return?”

What kind of crisis counseling do you give a machine?

h/t The Jawa Report

What the world has been waiting for

Brazilian Dwarf Soccer:

Courtesy of The Jawa Report, which also has the highlight reel from the Lingerie Football League. You’re welcome.

Now all we need are dilithium crystals

After all, we have the antimatter for the engines…

A thin band of antimatter particles called antiprotons enveloping the Earth has been spotted for the first time.

The find, described in Astrophysical Journal Letters, confirms theoretical work that predicted the Earth’s magnetic field could trap antimatter.

The team says a small number of antiprotons lie between the Van Allen belts of trapped “normal” matter.

The researchers say there may be enough to implement a scheme using antimatter to fuel future spacecraft.

But it won’t be complete until they find Green Orion Women.

As far as the public is concerned, I have no taste in television

At least, one can infer that from the surprised look on my face at the news that Rizzoli and Isles, which I panned, has already been renewed for a third season, just four episodes into its second year:

“This summer, ‘Rizzoli & Isles’ has proven that last year’s record-breaking ratings were just the beginning of this show’s remarkable track record,” Michael Wright, executive vice president and head of programming for TNT, TBS and TCM, said in a statement. “With a terrific cast, a top-notch production team and the kind of stories TNT fans crave, ‘Rizzoli & Isles’ is poised to continue its success alongside blockbuster TNT series like ‘The Closer’ and ‘Falling Skies.’”

Ya got me, pal. I stand by everything I wrote in my earlier review about mediocre, botched stories and cliche characters. My cynical side suspects that people are watching because they’re waiting for this “ambiguously lesbian” duo to admit their attraction toward each other and at last get it on.

Sort of “Moonlighting” for gay couples.

And that’s not just me being cynical (or salacious). After all that “are they or aren’t they” talk last season, the show has gone out of its way to practically scream “THEY’RE STRAIGHT!!” in the first three episodes.  In the season premier, both women wind up in bed with men. In episode three, Sasha Alexander’s character “Maura Isles” practically drools on her own shoes over a guy, and she makes it crystal clear that it’s all about lust and wanting a man.

Methinks they doth protest too much. 

Seriously, it’s my opinion the showrunners were exploiting the subtle “lipstick lesbian” angle to draw viewers and now they’re trying to dial it back. Maybe the stars have complained, since both have denied there’s anything there. Whatever. I’ll give them credit for a sense of humor, though: at one point in episode three, Rizzoli gets a worried look on her face and asks Isles “You don’t want to sleep with me… do you?” To which Isles says no, of course not. And then, at the end of the episode, to get rid of the now-annoying guy Isles had wanted to bed, they have to pretend to be… lesbian lovers.

Nice touch, folks.

Still can’t see why the show is a hit, though.

Geek victory

I really scored this weekend.

No, not like that! Get your minds out of the gutter!

This is almost as good, though(1). I managed to win the auction for a 1st-edition boxed set of Chaosium’s Stormbringer roleplaying game:

The game is based on the novels of Michael Moorcock, which are set in his “Million Spheres” multi-verse and which chronicle the adventures of Elric, last Emperor of Melniboné (which he destroys), as he travels around the world — which he destroys. (Really, if you ever meet Elric on the road, run.) The game’s title is the name of his soul-sucking demonic sword, which eventually destroys Elric.

Sounds like fun, no?

I’ve always been a fan of Chaosium‘s (2) games (you can see the cover of my favorite, Call of Cthulhu, in the sidebar), and Stormbringer is no exception. The magic system is, for me, what makes it special, being based on the summoning and binding of demons, which, being creatures of Chaos, have an infinite and entertaining variety. Later editions included a “design-a-demon” system, so would-be planet-conquering sorcerers could “roll their own” and save the GM some work.

Sadly, while I own several editions of the game, I’ve never gotten to play; it’s a niche within the roleplaying game hobby, and I suspect those interested are few and far between.

But, back to the big purchase, I was happily surprised at what good shape it was in (as if new off the shelf) and that it was complete — even the original dice, it seems. It also included the first supplement, the Stormbringer Companion. I assume this was a bonus; I don’t think the boxed set ever included it.

Regardless, this is one of the better purchases I’ve made in a while, and I’m looking forward to reading it.

(1) Okay, not even close. But, what can I say? I’m a geek at heart.

(2) Sad to say, the company is a shadow of its former self.

The ten worst restaurant names

Here’s the list from Zagat’s. Several are laugh-out-loud-worthy, but “Phat Phuc” was the winner. I won’t ask to see the kitchen, thanks…