...or not to revive? That is the question.

"This film - and nobody is pretending otherwise - will suck. It will blow. It will totally chomp, absolutely bite, and eat it raw."

And I can't wait!

You Passed the US Citizenship Test

Congratulations - you got 8 out of 10 correct!

Weirdly, when I look at my answers, I can only find 1 wrong (they don't seem to show you the right answers).

They should really have the question that my sister recently heard asked (of a group of 5 Americans and 1 Canadian): 'When did WWII start?' In unison, the Americans replied: '1942!!'

I think the words 'ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME??' were heard as far north as White Rock.

What's wrong with instant beans on toast? Everything, according to this article in The Guardian about the rise of convenience foods in Britain. I agree. As Tim Dowling says (of precooked bacon), "How much would you have to despise food to purchase such a thing?"

The article reminded me of The Current's excellent interview with Michael Pollan about his book The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. You can listen to it here. A lot of his argument was familiar, but he encapsulated it so neatly that I really must buy his book.

Danny gave me my birthday present this morning, which took me totally by surprise--a gorgeous painting done by our very talented friend Sam. It looks so beautiful, and is just perfect on the green walls of our living room. I love it!!

This very interesting article from the BBC says that babies born in the spring or early summer have an increased risk of committing suicide later in life, as well as suffeirng from alcoholism, depression, and mood disorders. Apparently there are other seasonal links--people born in December, for example, are more likely to develop Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, epilepsy and narcolepsy.

Fascinating--I must do a runthrough of my family tree database to see how much the theory holds up.

The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes, by DuBose Heyward

The little girl Cottontail grew up to be a young lady Cottontail. And by and by she had a husband and then one day, much to her surprise there were twenty-one Cottontail babies to take care of.

The the big white rabbits and the Jacks with the long legs laughed and laughed, and they said, "What did we tell you! Only a country rabbit would go and have all those babies. Now take care of them and leave Easter eggs to great big men bunnies like us." And they went away liking themselves very much.

Cottontail stopped thinking about hopping over the world with lovely eggs for little boys and girls, and she took care of her babies.

And one day, when her children stopped being babies and were little girl and boy bunnies, she called them to her and said,

"Now we are going to have some fun."

I wanted to get this book for John for Easter, even though I knew it was still way too old for him. Basically, I really wanted to read it again myself because I loved it so much as a kid.

The part I remembered the most was the beautiful Easter egg that the country bunny has to deliver. I loved the idea that she could look inside it and see someplace far away. It was also extremely satisfying, as a rural child, to see her triumph over the bigger, fancier town rabbits and achieve her dream of becoming an Easter bunny.

It had a much different resonance for me when I reread it a few weeks ago, though! I felt rather teary, and silently cheered, 'You go, girl!' So encouraging to see that even a rabbit can combine a career and a family.

But I still have one question. What the hell happened to Mr Cottontail? He completely vanishes after knocking her up with 21 babies. The deadbeat!

(click All Sizes to zoom in on the picture)

My poor misbegotten blog. I have not entirely forsaken you, I think of you every day. I shall return, I promise.

Looks like everyone is onto this by now, but it's still pretty cool:

Live Action Simpsons!

It's funny how English it looks, even though it's a frame by frame replica.

Terry Jones
Wednesday March 8, 2006
The Guardian

A high-level leak has revealed that God is "furious" at Tony Blair's attempts to implicate him in the bombing of Iraq. Sources close to the archangel Gabriel report him as describing the Almighty as "hopping mad ... with sanctimonious yet unscrupulous politicians claiming He would condone their bestial activities when He has no way of going public Himself, owing to the MMW agreement" (a reference to the long-established Moving in Mysterious Ways concordat).

Mr Blair went public about God on Michael Parkinson's TV show. "If you have faith about these things," he said, "then you realise that judgment is made by other people. If you believe in God, it's made by God as well." As is customary with Mr Blair's statements, it's rather hard to tease out what he is actually saying; but the gist is clearly that if God didn't actually tell him to bomb Iraq, then the Almighty would certainly agree it was the right thing to do.
"If Tony Blair thinks his friendship with George W Bush is worth rubbing out a couple of hundred thousand Iraqi men, women and children, then that's something he can talk over with me later," said God. "But when he starts publicly claiming that's the way I do the arithmetic too, it's time I put my foot down!" It is well known that God has a very big foot.

A source says Gabriel has spent days trying to dissuade the Almighty from loosing a plague of toads upon the Blair family. Gabriel reminded God that Cherie and the children had nothing to do with Tony's decisions. God's response, it is reliably reported, was: "Blair says the Iraqis are lucky to have got bombed, so how can he complain if his family gets a few toads in the bath?"

The archangel is said to be ticked off with God's ability to provide glib answers without even thinking.

What has particularly incensed the Almighty is that Mr Blair made the claim on the Parkinson show. "If he'd done it on Richard and Judy I could have forgiven a lot," He is reported to have said.

The archangel reported that the Almighty has become increasingly irritated with the vogue for politicians to claim that He is behind their policies - especially if these involve killing large numbers of humans. According to Gabriel, God spake these words: "That George W Bush once had the nerve to say: 'God told me to go end the tyranny in Iraq, and I did.' Well, let me tell you I did no such thing! If I'd wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein, I could have given him pneumonia. I didn't need the president of the United States to send in hundreds of heavy bombers and thousands of missiles to destroy Iraq - even though I appreciate that Halliburton needed to fill its order books."

"How do Bush and Blair think it makes me look to all those parents who have lost sons and daughters in this grubby business? Don't they know that the Muslims they're taking out worship the same Me that they do? It's a public relations disaster that ought to set Christianity back hundreds of years. Though knowing the fundamentalists, it'll probably have the reverse effect."

The archangel further revealed that he had been advised by no less a person than Alastair Campbell to warn God to keep out of politics. "But it's hard to get God to do anything He doesn't want to," sighed the archangel. "It's all to do with what He calls 'free will', though a lot of us have a problem working that one out, since He's omnipotent and omniscient."

God, the archangel says, is also disturbed by Mr Blair's remark that while religious beliefs might colour his politics, "it's best not to take it too far".

"How would he like it if I went round claiming that he gave me his full backing when I sent the tsunami last year?"

'Brokeback' a Hit in Montana

Contradicting predictions by commentators that Brokeback Mountain would not attract ticket buyers in red-state strongholds like Montana, the film has actually performed strongly in many of those areas, distributor Focus Features has maintained. (Fox News commentator John Gibson remarked: "I think most people do not want to go into a darkened room with a tub of popcorn and munch away watching two guys get it on." His colleague Bill O'Reilly has opined that the film has received critical praise because the media "want to mainstream homosexual conduct." And he predicted, "They're not going to go see the gay cowboys in Montana.")

However, the online magazine Salon today (Thursday) quoted the manager of the Wilma Theater in Missoula as saying that the film grossed $33,006 in its first four weekends there -- "one of our best starts for a movie we've ever had." In the conservative town of Kalispell, the film opened last Friday with $3,656. In the town of Whitefish, it took in $2,312 and beat out the three top national draws, including the No. 1 film, Big Momma's House 2. Salon indicated that the film is also a hit in Great Falls, Bozeman, and Helena, where it also opened at No. 1. Meanwhile, L.A. Weeklyentertainment columnist Nikki Finke has observed that Brokeback Mountain could be passed over at the Oscar ceremonies. "That's because this year's dirty little secret is the anecdotal evidence pouring in to me about hetero members being unwilling to screen Brokeback Mountain. For a community that takes pride in progressive values, it's shameful that Hollywood's homophobia may be on a par with Pat Robertson's," Finke wrote.

The creators of Rough Guides and Lonely Planet travel books are now admitting that casual air travel is taking a devastating toll on the environment, and that travellers need to think carefully about whether their journey is really necessary.

New editions of the popular travel guides will carry warnings about the impact of airplane emissions on global warming, and will recommend that tourists travel less frivolously, stay longer in one place, and choose less polluting methods of transportation. They also recommend that tourists contribute to carbon offsetting schemes.

"If we do real damage to our planet we're not going to be able to travel anywhere. We want our kids to be able to travel as well," says Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler.

I remember reading awhile back that Brad Pitt pays for trees to be planted to offset the environmental cost of his air travel. Personally, I still feel guilty for having visited Las Vegas a few years ago. It's got to be one of the most ecologically unsustainable cities on the planet. I've been meaning to read Marq de Villiers's Water, which I'm sure will make me feel even guiltier for having drunk a single drop of their water.

Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra Austen, 1 September 1796:

My dearest Cassandra,

The letter which I have this moment received from you has diverted me beyond moderation. I could die of laughter at it, as they used to say at school. You are indeed the finest comic writer of the present age.

Modern day equivalent:

OMG!!! LMAO!!!!!!

How many different ways can you say 'oo'?

Looks like Larry Ellison might want to try out Oprah's Debt Diet--he's $1bn in the hole, and his accountant is getting worried.

At dim sum today, we were discussing Rip Torn's new movie and Chris said, 'What was that movie he was in, in about 1983? You know, the one with the ferrets, and the pyramid, and the quest?'

I was stumped, but Google knew.

The Beastmaster!

Weirdest search terms ever? I think so.

Jackson Signs Without Reading Script

Pulp Fiction star Samuel L. Jackson was so amused by the title of new movie Snakes On A Plane, he signed up without reading the script. The movie features an assassin who intends to kill a passenger on a flight by releasing a batch of deadly snakes. Jackson explains, "I didn't even read the script - I just saw the title, 'Snakes on a Plane' and said 'Ok, good. I'm there.' You have got to love that. That's exactly what it is--500 poisonous snakes released on a flight from Hawaii to Los Angeles. They are (set free) on a time release half-way there, so we can't go back, we've got to keep going. It's fun!"

A meme I found today--not entirely sure what this particular selection of books is supposed to represent, apart from your average university student's bookshelf....

Bold the ones you've read, italicise the ones you might read, cross out the ones you won't and underline the ones on your book shelf! (and place parentheses around the ones you've never even heard of). I think it mainly indicates that I'm not a huge science fiction fan!

The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J. K. Rowling
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
1984 - George Orwell
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J. K. Rowling
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
Angels and Demons - Dan Brown
---Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk---
Neuromancer - William Gibson
(Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson)
(The Secret History - Donna Tartt)
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C. S. Lewis
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
---Good Omens - Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman---
Atonement - Ian McEwan
(The Shadow Of The Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafón)
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
---Dune - Frank Herbert---