Aut tace aut loquere meliora silentio

‘Shut up, or say something useful.’ – Salvator Rosa

links for 2007-03-21

• Quote of the day
  “English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and ri[f]fle their pockets for new vocabulary.”
  (tags: words)
• Hell in a hand-basket, a continuing series
• Smile

This man hits a ball better than any man before

links for 2007-03-14

• Sometimes, Some Things are Better than Anything You’ll Ever Do
  This is the first part in a series of collected images from Drake’s seminal DOOM PATROL, illustrating that they really DON’T make ’em like they used to anymore.

links for 2007-03-13

• What the hell happened to movie poster/cover art?
  Good question, and a great link to some alternative Brick/Pan’s Labyrinth artwork.
  (tags: film)
• Amiga Power – an online archive
  This magazine addled my brain at an early age. For which I am continually thankful.
• The Wright Stuff – Interview with Will Wright
  Games eat lives, baby.

Let’s make a list…

Of all the people who make comments like this over the next few years –

 “This ‘global warming’ rubbish is just stuff and nonsense put out as an excuse to raise taxes”  – Rich Wintie, Bournemouth

– and then use their bodies as sandbags.

links for 2007-03-12

• Kung Fu Monkey: The Host
  The most glowing review of any film I’ve read in a long while.
• Hopkins FBI review
  It’s a childish, poorly made piece of shit, deserving of nothing but contempt and a kick to whatever balls it might have, and to be held up forever as a warning to the children of the future. But the graphics are okay. 78%
• this should be posted everywhere

Many happy repeats

Spike: You listen to me. I’ve been alive a bit longer than you, and dead a lot longer than that. I’ve seen things you couldn’t imagine, and done things I prefer you didn’t. Don’t exactly have a reputation for being a thinker. I follow my blood… which doesn’t exactly rush in the direction of my brain. So I make a lot of mistakes. A lot of wrong bloody calls. A hundred-plus years, and there’s only one thing I’ve ever been sure of. You… Hey, look at me. I’m not asking you for anything. When I say I love you, it’s not because I want you, or because I can’t have you. It has nothing to do with me. I love what you are. What you do. How you try. I’ve seen your kindness, and your strength. I’ve seen the best and the worst of you, and I understand, with perfect clarity, exactly what you are. You’re a hell of a woman. You’re the One, Buffy.

Buffy: I don’t want to be the One.

Spike: I don’t want to be this good-looking and athletic. We all have crosses to bear.

Buffy The Vampire is 10 today. So her latest woe-is-me speech should finish in, what, September? Here’s to Xander, Willow, Giles, Spike, Oz, Anya, Dawn, Tara, the land of perpetual Wednesday, and a world without shrimp. And to those oft-promised, never-realised TV movies.

Buffy: Does it ever get easy?

Giles: You mean life?

Buffy: Yeah. Does it get easy?

Giles: What do you want me to say?

Buffy: (looks up at him) Lie to me.

Giles: (considers a moment) Yes, it’s terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after.

Buffy: Liar.

 “Lookit-hey! I’m dancing crazy!”

links for 2007-03-09

• Sony’s new Home
  “you decorate your virtual apartment with Sony game posters, Sony TVs, and your favourite Sony BMG Music MP3s. On the one hand, it’s a solidly built, well realised (if completely plagiarised) concept. On the other hand, it can fuck right off.” Yes.
• Infinitely More Exciting Than Anything
  Yet more LittleBigPlanet love. Way to finally get some good press, Sony.
• The ‘Just in Time’ watch communicates with your calendar, mobile phone and the web so it knows…
  …where you should be, how long it’ll take to get there, what routes are available, and if you’re early, late or on time. Obviously, it’ll need a ‘Geoff’ setting to add 45 mins to each journey, and a sedative capability if his bus gets stuck in traffic.
• Shacknews – LittleBigPlanet First Look
• From 0 to 60 to World Domination – New York Times
  Awesome article on why everyone wants to be Toyota.
• Game Developer Conference: MMOs, past, present and future
  “We’re seeing dumb money trying to beat World of Warcraft, and smart money trying to figure out how we can plant a tree that’s not in the shade.”
• Three things PlayStation Home is *not*
  He doesn’t call himself Curmudegon Gamer for nothing – “PlayStation Home is not free. It’s only free in the sense that iTunes is free. It’s actually a clever trap to bleed you dry of money.”
• The Land – Rudyard Kipling
• The Curmudegon cries for an objective unsullied gaming press
• Game 3.0 – For Fuck’s Sake.
  pithy.
• Why Apple is the best retailer in America
  In 2004, Apple reached $1 billion in annual sales faster than any retailer in history; last year, sales reached $1 billion a quarter.

links for 2007-03-08

• Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
• The UK trailer for ‘Sunshine’
• Bookporn

links for 2007-03-07

• Animation of a Samuel L. Jackson Pulp Fiction speech in type – (37signals)
• Foreign Office: Children of Men
  A montage of adverts and infographics from the fillum. Which made me want to watch it again.
• Sunshine Trailer
  And a bit of imdeebeing leads me to these cinematical factoids – Sunshine will star the guy who played Johnny Storm in the Fantastic Four film, and the guy who played the Scarecrow in Batman Begins…. And there’s a sequel coming to 28 Days Later called..
  (tags: film)

I get my morals from Tesco

In a hospital emergency room, five critically ill patients desperately need organ transplants. A healthy man walks in. Should the doctors remove his organs to save the sick five? Most people will respond in milliseconds with a resounding “No way”. Now imagine an out-of-control train about to run down five workers standing on the track. There’s a fork ahead, and throwing a switch could divert the train to another line on which there is only one worker. It’s the same question – should we sacrifice the one to spare the other five? – yet most of us would say “yes” just as quickly.

Avast, me hearties!

We should print thousands of these, and send them to every studio head, DVD retailer and anti-piracy tsar in the land.

via BrokenTV 

links for 2007-03-06

• New revelations in the ‘Cats are Evil’ scandal
• Test your brain
  Name the 192 UN member states in 10 minutes

links for 2007-03-05

• If you missed Saturday night’s lunar eclipse…
  here’s what it looked like. Twas spectacular.
• The new Terminator TV show stars…
  Oxford-educated RADA luvvy Owain Yeoman as a Terminator, and Serenity’s Summer Glau as a fembot. Also, Sarah Connor’s played by a Brit. If the casting of John Connor wasn’t so hopelessly poor, I might have been excited.

links for 2007-03-04

• Paprika – Trailer
  A anthropomorphic-penguin free zone.
• pdf-mags.com
  For those bored/monumentally pissed off with the continuing slump in the quality of traditionally-published magasines, here is your salvation.
• They’re made out of meat

links for 2007-03-01

• Obsidian Wings: Liberating Iraq
  Violence is not a way of getting where you want to go, only more quickly. Its existence changes your destination.
• How to prank a telemarketer
  yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
• The Jay » Things Overheard on the Razzies Red Carpet…
  “M. Night Shyamalan: I make like I’m smart and creative, but there’s a twist! I secretly SUCK!” Yes, yes you do.