From a review of TAMALA 2010: A Punk Cat in Space

Her journey begins on her birthday, when her ship is forced to land on Planet Q, where the cats are at war with a large and unruly canine population that’s erected a gigantic version of the statue from Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Happy Prince. ‘’ After various adventures — bowling, shoplifting, jumping onstage at a rock concert — Tamala and her new friend, a cat named Michelangelo, encounter a weightlifting police dog who has a kinky relationship with a tiny mouse who bears a striking resemblance to Tamala. Developing an uncontrollable passion for our heroine, the dog pounces on her at a picnic and, to Michelangelo’s horror, gobbles her up. It turns out that Tamala is the unwitting agent of Catty & Co., the conglomerate that dominates Cat Earth but is really a cover for an ancient goddess cult bent on spreading its influence across the universe. Tamala, who dies and is reborn every year, somehow causes the population of Planet Q to begin sharing a dream she repeatedly has about Tatla, a huge robot cat, based on the Maria figure from Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis,'’ ascending an endless escalator in an industrial cityscape. Meanwhile, Tamala’s image begins to appear in Catty & Co. ads all over Planet Q. And I almost forgot, there’s an old zombie cat, a couple of drag queens and a mysterious mail carrier.

This article about the possibility of racist dogs strangely makes no mention of the King of the Hill episode that confronts this same issue.

Ya know, if they are going to run back-to-back TV commercials for Vanilla Reddi-Whip and Viagra, it’s going to take an awfully mature person to not resort to the sort of comments that…well, I’m sure you understand.

Full review of a very strange Green Day show.

but they made a hell of a racket on short, spastic songs about cyber sex and fiber optics from their debut album, ‘Money Money 2020,’ released on singer Billie Joe Armstrong’s Adeline Records. The best tracks, like ‘Hungry Hungry Supermodel Robots’ and ‘Transistors Gone Wild,’ were delivered with chest-rumbling force. And just when it seemed like things couldn’t get weirder, they played an instrumental interlude that sounded like a laser fight from ‘Battlestar Galactica'’ crossed with Yes’ ‘Tales From Topographic Oceans.’

Growing up in Canada, our November and December are structured so differently, culturally. Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving in early October, so it’s an early holiday that sort of makes you realize that it’s been a while since Labour Day and the (school) year is really moving along. The biggest shopping day of the year is December 26, aka Boxing Day.

In the US, where I’ve lived for 10 years, Thanksgiving is a 2-day holiday that is the left bracket of Christmas. The second day is the huge shopping day, the rush to get the best Christmas gift bargains. I just learned that it is called “Black Friday” and I got a big kick out of this, a bulletin board that is circulating Black Friday Lists, or the details of what various retail chains will be offering as their seductive deals.

…
Progressive Scan DVD Player CH-DVD320 $34.44
Easy Bake Oven and Snack Center $9.82
Bratz Salon ‘n’ Spa $31.88
My Little pony Celebration Castle $27.88
Bratz Slumber Party Collection Doll $16.88
Polly Pocket Groovy Getaway Jet $10
Disney Little Princess Dolls $11.17
My Scene Dolls $9.22
2pk Barbie Playsets or Fashion $9
Rio Barbie Ken & Friends $1.97
Asst. Beyblade items $4.96 and $5.96
Transformers Armada Gigacon $18
Hot Wheels 49�
Electronic Hulk Hands $12
Tyco R/C Spider-Man vehicle $30
…

Leave it to a site called Dodoland Online to prove that the Diamante Poems I remember from childhood were in fact real

Noun
Two adjectives
(ing or ed participles describing noun)
Four nouns: the meaning shifts on the third noun
(ing or ed participle showing change)
Two adjectives
Noun showing completed change.

Earth
Greed, Polluted
Moaning, Suffering
Pollution, Seeds, Gardener
Planting, Growing, Transforming
Dear, Healed
Mother

The World Toilet Organization is offering a series of posters for their public education campaign. This was my fave.

full NYT review

First-time director Bo Welch has put together a vulgar, uninspired lump of poisoned eye candy that Universal has the temerity to call ‘Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat.’ It is nothing of the kind, despite voice-over narration that occasionally tries to imitate the cadences of Seussian verse and sets that sporadically evoke Seuss’s antic draftsmanship. The Cat is impersonated by Mike Myers, in heavy white makeup and scruffy black fur, speaking in a voice somewhere between Bert Lahr doing the Cowardly Lion and a third-rate Borscht Belt comedian telling toilet jokes.

More parents getting ripped off by people posing as their kids
TOKYO � The National Police Agency on Thursday reported a surge in fraud cases involving younger people who swindle older people by pretending to be their children or grandchildren urgently in need of some money.
Between January and October, the police were alerted about or investigated 3,807 cases, including attempts. The allegedly swindled amounts totaling 2.26 billion yen in 2,768 cases, with 300,000-500,000 yen being the figure in many cases.
In many of these cases, a group of young unemployed men worked together, called people in their 50s through 70s and said, ‘ore, ore’ (roughly translated as ‘hey, it’s me’).
They then said they asked for money for settlements of traffic accidents, repayments to loan sharks and other emergencies to be sent to bank accounts.
The majority of the cases were committed by a group of perpetrators who performed different tasks, such as making the call, withdrawing cash from a bank account and keeping watch while the withdrawal was made, the agency said.
Some suspects said they saw other cases reported on TV and just imitated what seemed to be an easy technique, according to the agency. They told the police they just called the phone numbers listed in a directory with names typically given to old people.
In late October, Tokyo police made arrests in a case where a man, pretending to be a son, allegedly called a 47-year-old housewife in Fuchu, western Tokyo, saying he had an accident while driving a friend’s car and need money for car repair. The woman then sent 3.3 million yen to a bank account. The police believe a group of 12 were working together and swindled around 15 million yen in this and four other cases.

I’m in Rochester, but unfortunately won’t be able to make it to the Jello Museum in nearby LeRoy, NY. Jello Barbie??? What-ever!

Okay, I am now feeling old - I discovered, flipping channels, this thing called Kung Faux: “Take one part old school kung fu movie, one part rap music, and one part video game. They have cut down those old school kung fu movies to about twenty to twenty five minutes. Then they took out all the sound and put their own background music and words in the original movie’s place. ”

I just don’t get it, I realize it’s edgy and appealing to a certain demographic that I am waaay out of, and I can sort of enjoy it as an artifact of something, but it’s almost a bit off-putting how little I can connect with it.

Foreign groceries Museum got blogged here and here

Hello, web traffic! The Foreign Grocery Musuem gets blogged on Metafilter.

Today’s strange technical support issue

I changed my email address with united.com several weeks ago. Today I receive some update or ad from them - sent to my old address. I log on to change the address and see that it has already been changed - so why am I getting email sent to the old address?

I contact their technical support via email and get a rapid response - they don’t see any account with that email address (what?) and that I should call. So I call. Turns out that United says it can take several weeks for an email address change to take effect because they queue up their emails weeks ahead of time.

What kind of operational decision is that? Isn’t email exactly the kind of thing that you’d want to set up moments before? The whole nature of electronic information affords rapid change and instantaneous access, blah blah blah - and yet United is treating it like a direct mail campaign or something, where you’d have to have things at the printers weeks in advance. Very strange.

Pretty cool blog just listed my foreign grocery musuem…

What’s with all the covers, all of a sudden? In the past few days I’ve seen videos/ads for:

Kid Rock - Feel Like Makin’ Love (Bad Company)
No Doubt - It’s My Life (Talk Talk)
Limp Bizkit - Behind Blue Eyes (The Who)
The Ataris - Boys of Summer (Don Henley)

This came in my email today. Someone who took their copywriting direction from “Tired of….?” TV commercials.

Are you an expert in information architecture? Do words like “taxonomy”,
“organization scheme” and “findability” excite you? Maybe it’s time to
navigate your way to Vanguard, a world-class company where projects are as
varied and interesting as the people with whom you will work. Our Web
Services Group is looking for a Senior Information Architect to organize
our award-winning website.

A Reader Asks: My wife and I saw a Nissan commercial that shows a family going to the beach with surfboards on top of the car. Once they reach their destination, they all jump in the water and right there is a guitarist playing “Miserlou.”

We don’t get the point, if any. Who is the target audience? The younger generation? Parents? Old rockers? And why “Miserlou,” of all things?

Stuart Elliott: The commercial is for the Pathfinder Armada, an eight-passenger sport-utility vehicle sold by the Nissan North America division of Nissan Motor. It comes from the Nissan agency, the Playa del Rey, Calif., office of TBWA/Chiat/Day, which decided to feature in the commercial not just any guitarist, but the composer of “Miserlou” himself, Dick Dale.

The spot “is aimed at who we call the ‘iconic Dad,”‘ says Rob Schwartz, executive creative director of the office, “the Dad who does stuff, who takes the kids to cool places. The Dad who all the other wives in the neighborhood wish their husbands were like. The Dad all the kids want to hang out with.”

“In this commercial, the Dad is taking his family to their favorite surf spot for a perfect day of surfing,” he adds. “As you can see in the spot, it’s pretty remote, thus showcasing the Pathfinder Armada’s rugged capability.”

And “in order to make this good surfing day a great one, the iconic Dad has brought along someone special: the king of the surf guitar himself, Mr. Dick Dale,” Mr. Schwartz says. “And what’s Dick Dale’s most famous surf song? ‘Miserlou.”‘

“So in sum, the spot is about eight-passenger utility and it’s aimed at families,” he adds, “but in particular iconic Dads and those who aspire to be. It uses Dick Dale to reinforce the eight -passenger message; the voiceover copy even asks the viewer, ‘With seating for eight, who would you bring?’ And finally, the spot incorporates his famous song ‘Miserlou’ to show how if you brought along Dick Dale in your Nissan, you’d make a ‘10′ surfing day into an ‘11.’”

While “Miserlou” has been used on the soundtracks of many commercials since being featured in the film “Pulp Fiction” in 1994, the Armada spot marks the first advertising appearance for Mr. Dale.

I’m not sure I learned anything here, but it was validating to read. I think I’m a lot like the author, although she confuses introversion with shyness.

Networking for the introverted: “I learned that people who are good at networking are interested in other people. And they are good storytellers. After that, I was able to go almost anywhere and talk with people. Good talkers recognize that there’s something interesting about every person, and it’s their job to get them talking about it. But you can’t just bombard people with questions. You also need to reveal things about yourself. The best way is by telling fun and interesting stories that make you look good.”

full story

General Motors Corp. is charging a Florida company with trademark infringement for copying the body style of its classic cars and trucks on luxury golf carts. The owner of the company, Chad Moore, 31, is named in the lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages.
He claims some of the cars aren’t modeled on GM vehicles. The ‘49 truck is a Dodge and the ‘57 car is a Studebaker President, he said.
‘We wouldn’t want to cause any infringement to GM,’ said Moore, who operates luxurygolfcarts.com.
Moore acknowledged building a Cadillac cart and offering a Monte Carlo, but said they were discontinued because of lackluster demand.
Retrofitting golf carts as fancy trucks or cars — even Hummers — is a growing business.
Moore said the company makes about 40 cart kits a month, which are shipped to dealers and retail for about $3,500 each. Moore has a license from DaimlerChrysler to make Dodge carts.
GM licenses other companies to make carts based on its cars and trucks.