See your words here!	May 31, 2000 Bleah. I'm feeling a little slow of brain this morning, so it's time to pull out all the stops and whip up a bowl of the Breakfast of Champions: one scoop of cheap vanilla ice cream, topped with a healthy amount of extra-fine coffee. Stir. Best eaten with an entirely inappropriate utensil, such as a fork or a measuring spoon. Just stopping by with the exciting news of what I'm eating for breakfast... but I'll be back to Blogging Speed in no time, once the sugar and caffeine have properly entered my bloodstream. (In the meantime, though, go visit today's Great Blog-Off, and feel the twernt.) May 30, 2000 Hey.. what's going-- where am I? Who are you people, and what do you want? I don't underst-- Wait.. wait.. it's all coming back to me now. Something about links and opinionated commentary and great piles of lovely e-mail (and voice mail-- thanks Jish). Okay, so I might be a little wrong about that last part, but it's all a bit hazy after having spent four entire days offline. I did use some of that time playing around with ideas for new features for Pith, so there might be a few changes here and there this week (and maaaaaybe a redesign). I know, I know, stop with the boring meta-stuff and get on with the linkage. Your wish is my command, oh wise reader. It's amazing how out of touch one can get in a matter of days, so forgive me if Inside.com has been blogged to death already. The free content seems to hold great potential for media junkies like me, but it remains to be seen how loyal they are to non-paying visitors after the initial buzz wears off. Worth a look, at any rate. I cannot recommend the 1966 Batman movie enough. Sadly, I only caught the last half, but once Batman managed to safely land his careening helicopter at a "Foam Rubber Wholesalers' Convention" (Holy plot contrivance!) only to press on in his mission to save the UN Security Council from dehydration, I was hooked. (Fellow old fashioned Batfans might enjoy reading Burt Ward's "My Life in Tights", but only if the idea of Robin describing his naughty exploits with phrases like "Holy knockers!" doesn't give you the wiggins.) You know, it's at times like these that I remember to stop and thank modern media for creating a place in the world for consumer news reporters. Last night, for example, I caught a shocking story about an AOL subscriber who mistakenly set up her account on a long-distance access number, and was consequently, oh yes, charged for the time on her phone bill. Luckily the good folks at KIRO news took it upon themselves to help those for whom it may not be too late, and advised that "this is a pretty easy thing to check... If you see a one in front of the number, it's long distance." Next Week: 911-- does it really have to be three whole digits? Thanks to the League of Obscure British Actors, I'm finally able to keep straight which brooding unknown starred in which A&E production of a Jane Austin novel. Fametracker is featuring the battle for Hollywood dominance between two of my favourite short, Gen X, big-mouthed character actors, Jamie Kennedy and Seth Green. Round One-- Fight! A woman suffered serious injuries last week while being the first to take a ride on her husband's giant homemade catapult. The gentleman almost immediately became the winner of this month's 'Doesn't Get The Point' Award with his insightful comment, "I think what we need [next time] is a bigger net." Sailor Moon just became much more amusing now that I know about the frequent RoboCop references (see "Episode 6"). Bonus Link: Now you can browse a comprehensive archive of the unusual faces made by Serena and her little Sailor friends! Oh, sure, you can try and deny it, but I bet deep down every message board or newsgroup poster can recognize themselves in at least one of these caricatures. (from MetaFilter) "Would you like a bib with that entry?": Excuse me while I sing the praises of GQ Magazine, as their decisions to put Ewan McGregor on a previous cover and Joaquin Phoenix on the current one has made sitting at Chapters waiting for the bus much more pleasurable over the last year. Did I just say that? I'm bad. May 25, 2000 A new medical study has found a "strong correlation between coffee drinkers and low rates of Parkinson's Disease." Now scientists just have to discover that staying up late makes your liver stronger and donuts stimulate brain growth, and my lifestyle will finally be healthy. I am in kitch heaven. The creator of the afore-mentioned Three's Company art, Jason Mecier, in fact has an entire portfolio of pop art made from pasta and beans, including portraits of most of the cast of Melrose Place. While I'm on the subject, now you can try your hand at making a masterpiece without accidentally glueing pasta to your hair thanks to the Macaroni Art Game. (game needs Shockwave) The Washington Post this week had an interesting article on Canada's half-hearted acceptance of the metric system. It's all true, I'm afraid: Personally, I think of distances in feet and kilometers, weight in grams and pounds, and temperature in Fahrenheit if it's hot, but Celsius if it's cold. Mind you, this probably accounts for why I can never, ever accurately guess the spatial constraints of anything. (from piasentin.com) The funeral of Barbara Cartland was held today, and apparently a number of important folks turned out to see her remains be buried in a cardboard coffin. Of course, I'm not the kind of person to speak ill of the dead, but if I were I would probably make some sort of snarky comment comparing Dame Cartland's cheap and flimsy final resting place with her body of work. But I'm not that kind of person. Perhaps she purchased her coffin online at the delightfully named PaylessCaskets.com, which features a variety of styles, each accompanied by a photo of coffins in their natural, wild habitat. Now, I'm sure Matt Drudge has days when he just can't find any good stories for his headline, but, good grief, the best he could do today was, "Swear Words Used During Clinton Tribute". You mean to say that an entertainer used --gasp-- grown-up words during a festive fundraiser? If this keeps up, soon the whole moral fibre of the U.S. will collapse, the stock market will crash, and dogs will start mating with cats! Won't somebody please think of the children!? Seen on My Cluttered Desk: "I try not to give Jess at Pith and Vinegar too much exposure... being she is such a liberal. But in all fairness, she does do a good job at trying to disrupt the political balance of this country from across our northern border (didn't we use to shoot people for that?)." Mea culpa -- I'm a dirty class conscious, socialized medicine-usin' liberal. My parents will be so proud. May 23, 2000 Hello from Hardware Hell! I'm trying to hook a second computer up to my cable modem today (which will please the roomie and create more blogging time for moi), and the experience is somewhat frustrating. In any case, I'm just stopping by before I have to go tweak my new hub with a baseball bat... The Mars Global Surveyor website has expanded their image gallery. Now with over 25,000 photos of red sand! Blasts from the Past: From Pith's very first week of entries comes two of my favourite things. First up is the one and only website devoted to the movie Incubus, which features William Shatner performing entirely in Esperanto (look for it in the "failed languages" section of your video store!). Cheesy, heavens yes, but it doesn't hold a candle to the so-bad-it's-good majesty of the Three's Company macaroni picture. Damn, I love that thing. May 22, 2000 Ahhh, it's a lovely holiday Monday here in Canuck-land, thanks to Queen Victoria's birthday. And seeing as two of my usual morning reads aren't updated/working, I'm going to take it all as a sign that I should slack off now and worry about hunting down some delicious links later. I'll be back. I promise. (Americans: Don't get left out of all the holiday fun.. Stop stuffing that flag all nilly-willy into its container and prepare for next week's Flag Day properly by reviewing your folding techniques!) I saw this as a sig file on the weekend, and it gave me a chuckle: "SAGITTARIUS: You are optimistic and enthusiastic. You have a reckless tendency to rely on luck since you have no talent. The majority of Sagittarians are drunks and potheads. People laugh at you a lot because you are always getting screwed." Finally someone's appealing to the the surly, horoscope-reading market. Never one to turn down the opportunity to blog yet another name generator or webpage modifier, I present the double header of Get a Chinese Name and The Sarcasterizer to make your Monday "morning" full of useless "fun". My favourite confusing Dubya quotation: "When I was coming up it was a dangerous world and we knew exactly who the they were. It was us versus them, and it was clear who them was. Today we're not so sure who the they are, but we know they're there." You tell 'em, George. What do you get the person who has everything? Horrible novelty contact lenses, of course. May 19, 2000 In honour of it being Friday, the links below are almost totally useless (I really did find some interesting hard news items out there, but I'm in the mood to boogie, not critique irritating changes to Canadian television mandates or scary New York politicians who don't run for senate). Consider yourself warned. Popcorn has redesigned, but with the better looks comes an almost total reduction in content. Bah. Got a suggestion of where to go for my irreverent movie news fix? Hey, baby-- nice rack! (Okay, I just posted that so I could say it came from The Weblog of J. Alfred Prufrock. Clever, clever, clever title.) And I thought the bird-eating spiders from yesterday were gross: Scientists have spliced genes from spiders into goats, creating a goat that produces webs in its milk. Oh, gentle readers, I wish I was kidding you. The Fox channel has announced its shows for the new television season, including "Fearsum", a drama about, well, in the words on one early reviewer: "a male 'Sweet Valley High' twins meets 'The Hardy Boys' meets Poltergeist: The Legacy, with a fair measure of Internet interactivity." So, some sort of X-Files meets The Net meets imminent cancellation, then? Aww, I shouldn't complain too much-- at least Fox has the good sense to bring back The Tick (last paragraph has details), although not in a live-action format as was originally reported. Spooooooooon! This got pretty thouroughly blogged a couple of weeks ago, but I must commend IMBOT for making it so fun and easy to have a robot call friends and say, "Exterminate! "Exterminate!" May 18, 2000 Did I say I was going to be diligent about posting this week? I must have meant next week... or, umm, actually, aliens.. like.. umm.. stole my computer, and I couldn't post until today. Yeah. Mad props to: qJason for being able to practice medicine legally now, Mike for his recent nupitals, and Rebecca, for mentioning Pith as one of her favourite weblogs this morning on WBUR radio (the feeling is quite mutual). Mr. T vs. Yahoo: the real reason for falling stock prices. The Canadian political scene is all astir today with talk about the detailed database that the federal government has on almost all its citizens. It's funny, but I would have been far more shocked if it was announced that there weren't any such files... This week robbers broke into a Sydney, Australia pet shop, and stole twenty bird-eating spiders (ummm.. eww), twenty scorpions, and 150 hermit crabs. So, okay, I can kind of understand the attraction of owning a cadre of poisonous, stinging creatures, but I can't for the life of me imagine why they bothered to grab all those little crabs. Really, it boggles the mind... "She wallowed in splendor, her wondrous white-wide wholeness frolicking with the foam; as she smiled, a salt-bleached booted bone punctuated like a toothpick the purity of her pearlescent dentis; and as her buxom flukes saluted the sea, she winked her wave-washed eye and blubbered, 'Call me, Ishmael.'" Just one of many finalists in the Bulwer-Lytton contest for the worst hypothetical opening sentence. Hey, kids! Want to get a peek at the seamy underbelly of 'office politics' at a hit television show? The newly-unemployed stunt director of "Buffy" has published a very, very thinly veiled "parabal" about his experien-- I mean, the knight's experiences in the, erm, evil kingdom. Not in the mood for gossip, but still craving a juicy Buffy site? Try Everything Philosophical on B:tVS. (latter from catherine's pita) For a limited time only at Clones-R-Us you can order now and get a backup for free. Finally, I know who to call for all my organ harvesting needs. Never one to sit on the fence when questioned about current issues, Courtney Love sang the praises of Napster and online music distribution (and slammed AOL) at the DigitalHollywood conference. Sure, Courtney was cooler before her nose job, but reading about music artists who loudly support MP3s makes for a delightful change of pace. And there was great rejoicing: Microsoft has finally released a security patch for that nasty IE cookies problem. May 16, 2000 Dear Web Designers, What with all the brouhaha about IE, javascript, and cookies last week, I've taken the plunge and turned javascript off entirely. I know, I could just go back to Netscape, but then all my friends who have been using it the whole time will laugh at me. In any case, please, for the love of Pete, do not make your entire navigation system dependent on javascript. If I, or anyone I have ever known, have done this in the past, I apologize profusely. Just stop. Please. I'm serious. Love, Jess Okay, so I really did intend to spend my weekend working on lots of little cool projects, but I went to the video store, see, and ended up instead playing Twisted Metal 4 in any spare moments that weren't Mom-related. I'm a very bad, lazy person, but it's my New Week's Resolution to get in gear. If you have any comment on what you'd like to see on Pith, send 'em along. Unpack the gasmasks and practice your catchiest chants, because a major NATO conference is going to be held in Victoria, B.C. in 2001, and the usual suspects are already planning their protests. Political agitators: Couch space is at a premium! Book now to avoid disappointment! Finally, Maxis has realized what the people want, what they really, really want, and is going to release an add-on to The Sims called "Livin' Large". And, yes, it does introduce the oft-pondered ability of Sims to show more skin. More things I wish existed when I was a kid: Steven Spielberg has teamed up with LEGO to create a digital movie-making pack, including the capability to create stop motion animation. Urge to purchase... rising... "In situations like the Vietnem war, and violent inner city neighborhoods, the person with the most plans, prospects, and hopes will die.": In the spirit of the current reviews for Battlefield Earth, I bring you two, Two, TWO different lists of cliches in movies. Speaking of movie cliches, the Gynoid Gallery website pays homage to film 'fembots' throughout history. In a similar vein (in a creepy, adults-only kind of way) is Robotgirls. Ahh, the wonderful magic of Photoshop. 100% Pilfered Content: Be prepared to intiate "first contact" with only some pocketchange, two magnets, and a loop of string to dazzle aliens with Cat's Cradle! (misterpants) Find out what Pikachu has to say about current events (and I know you were wondering) at the new Poke-Friends weblog. (Fairvue Central) I'm always happy to find another Hunter S. Thompson fan, so props go to Ghost in the Machine, who has a nifty animated gif and one of my favourite quotations on his tribute page. May 12, 2000 I am so relieved to find out that I'm not the only awards show junkie out there who watched The Webbies. My impressions? The pre-show was tedious, Alan Cumming was generally quite entertaining (although I had some issues with his hair), and congrats go to Halcyon for taking home the award for best personal site. All in all though, I think Salon summed up the ceremony best in saying, "[t]his sendup of a self-congratulatory awards shows might have been sharper had the event not occasionally come off as a self-congratulatory awards show." "The mating was made possible only by balancing the male chihuahua on top of two big bags of dog biscuits so that it could reach the labrador bitch." Umm, I'll pass on the labrahuahua, thanks. Reason Canada Rocks #246: The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council has ruled that any abusive comments about gays and lesbians made by Dr. Laura on her radio show must be edited out. From Weekly World News comes the shocking story of an alien that's backing Dubya for president (apparently "the alien endorsement has been a critical factor" in previous elections, and I don't think they mean creepy Ralph Reed). The accompanying graphic is a must-see, proving once again that a picture can be worth a thousand peals of laughter. Bad Craziness in Hollywood: Avert your eyes from the brain-sucking shampoo commercial that is the trailer for Charlie's Angels! (Did Bill Murray forget his annual sacrifice to the Career Gods this year, or what?) And if that's not enough to make you forswear movies altogether, I have four words for you: Demi Moore is back. You have been warned. So, I was reading the Celestis home page, and I just have to wonder-- while having your remains sent into space would be cool, is it really making "the dreams of spaceflight into reality"? Isn't that sort of like saying, "We'll give you a million dollars and date with Angelina Jolie, but unfortunately you're going to have to be quite dead the entire time"? Okay, sure, the increasing popularity of netcast radio is a fine topic for a newspaper article, but calling fans "Streamies" is really, really going too far. Ethel the Blog is wondering what the cast of "Barney Miller" is doing now, so I'm pleased to report that the actor who played the paranoid cop (forgive my unusual lapse of pop culture knowledge) shows up occasionally in ads for a regional discount furniture warehouse ("Enjoy saving money!"). Now that that's been cleared up, we can address the important question: When will television execs come to their senses and start showing The Greatest American Hero again?!? I guess I'm just going to have to wait for the movie. "Believe it or not, I'm walking on air..." Grassroots.com appears to be a new American political action portal. Read about the issues (including reprints of articles by Michael Moore and Molly Ivins), and then click on one of the handy links to complain to your congressman or donate money to a cause. Next time you're babysitting your little cousin, grab her LEGO and a rubber band and recreate this machine gun, which fires up to five rounds per second (perfect for an annoying family pet!). If you're more one of those "pen is mightier than the sword" people, maybe you'd prefer this list of "LEGO-Related Web Sites in Academia". Reminisce about the good old days when CDs mattered with the The Liner Note Preservation Society. May 10, 2000 Mamma mia.. what a week I'm having. If I owe you e-mail, I promise to get on it soon, but in the meantime a few measly posts will have to suffice. If you're still hungry for more, go visit the Great Blog-Off, which should be chock full of links. Foop! Foop! Foop! Hee hee! Available on eBay for a limited time, it's Metallica's integrity! (from blueblog) Oh sure, you could spend lots of money on one of the new skycars, but with a little old fashioned ingenuity you could be taking a flying car for much, much less. Where has "Oh, the Humanity!" been all my life? Their reviews of bad films (including an all-important "laughable" rating) has helped considerably with my weekend movie rental list. In Kentucky, a fire at the Wild Turkey Distillery is causing the local water supply to be tained by "hundreds of thousands of gallons of bourbon". Note to self: Go to Kentucky next week, and take a very long, tasty swim. May 8, 2000 Sweet holy-- now there's squeezable yogurt!?! There is just something plain wrong with being able to legitimately say, "No breakfast for me, thanks, I'm just taking a yummy tube of yogurt to work!" "It's fabulous, darling!": The trio of actresses behind Absolutely Fabulous are embarking on a new project, this one about the world of theatre. Well, it looks like the West Nile Virus might be coming to Canada. I think those mosquitos need a better PR person-- "West Nile Virus" just isn't that catchy. I know, "Creutzfeldt-Jacob" might be a so-called official term, but wouldn't you rather support the fight against mad cows? Or have I just been watching too much CNN again? If, by chance, you're ever looking for a website about Cronenberg's excellent movie "Videodrome", my advice is to avoid Videodrome.com, which appears to be owned by someone with a nice sense of irony and a large collection of very naughty pictures. So far, my favourite bizarre search term used to find Pith is "thighmasterbater". I just don't know where to begin with that one. The Happyclown Museum: Or, really, just a bunch of photos of successful people with clown paraphernalia doodled on top, but seeing Conrad Black with a big red nose is at least worth a giggle. Where do great magazines go when they die? Not to the Internet, it seems. The only traces of SPY magazine I could find were these articles on "the homoerotic Navy" and Scientology (just in time for Battlefield Earth, stupid humans!), but a very old issue of Salon has a lovely eulogy for the publication. What I really wanted to find was old versions of the SPY 100, but instead I'll just have to make do with Movieline's not-very-similar list of the 100 best movies ever made. SPY has fared better than the late and much-lamented Neon mag, though, which only has a controversial interview with Stephen Fry to show for its online presence. The interview does, at least, have one of my favourite quotations: "One should try everything once, except incest and country dancing." May 5, 2000 Due to a lack of available mental energy, today's links are almost entirely stolen from other weblogs. Jess' brain will be back tomorrow, same Pith-time, same Pith-channel. That Simple Minds song has been going through my head for an hour now, but taking the Breakfast Club quiz was worth it. And, for the record, Allison (pre-makeover) was much cooler than Claire. ( from Strange Brew) I found this in my referral logs, and, well, I'm all about wacky bovine websites. Themaxx has a great story about quitting smoking, even if the title graphic is almost too tasty-looking for me to bear. As a big fan of BritComs, this complete guide to british swearing should help make "Blackadder" somewhat more intelligible. ( from catherine's pita) May 4, 2000 Thanks to everyone who's added their sayings to the Quote-a-matic (and yes, upon reflection it would probably sound better as "Quote-o-matic", but you can't cry over misspelled words). Special thanks go to whomever wrote the groovy Pith and Vinegar haiku-- you made my (smoke-free) day. Variety is reporting that Anakin Skywalker is going to be played by Hayden Christensen. Who? What? Why do I care again? Ah well, the good news is that the fellow appears to be a Canadian actor, at least. I am so out of touch with the latest wacky apocalypse rumours that I didn't hear about this sinister planetary alignment until NASA issued a press release stating that the world is indeed not going to end. You can countdown the hours until our potential doom at Bad Astronomy, which also debunks some of the more popular misconceptions about the final frontier. According to a recent study, people who read their news online are more interested in text than graphics, and tend to read more of an article than they do in an offline newspaper. Okay, I'd heard that eHow was a little pedantic (didn't someone mention that they had an entry on how to tie your shoes?), but having sections on astrological dating tips is sillier than even I suspected. I notice that the helpful sidebar for Sagittarius has a link for buying towels, which isn't exactly my idea of a romantic gift... (from malapropism) Tremble in fear and quite possibly laughter before the Yo-Yo Master! Silly me. Here I was thinking that the Spice Girls' career was over, when I hear that Posh Spice was recently voted Britain's top shopping icon. Girl Power lives! May 2, 2000 Hey, look! Over there, to the left more. It's a.. it's a.. doohicky! Yup, the programming goblins (you know who you are) and I have finally finished the Pith and Vinegar Quote-A-Matic(tm), otherwise known as a space for you to add a thought, quotation, or whatever else you want to. This was created partially as a way to keep the people who miss the daily quotation (hi, Mom) happy and also as a "My First Program" sort of experiment, so if you run into any difficulties, let me know. Probabilities in the Game of Monopoly-- a man, a boardgame, and a lot of spare time. It would be morally and quite possibly legally wrong for newbie web developers to take any advantage of this site. That is all. The bizarre caddis worm can be coaxed into making fantastic casings out of gold, pearls, and other gems. Now, if we could only discover a bug that made tiny sandwiches while I'm watching T.V. ... The late, great T.V. show "Action" has been revived by the FX channel. Robot cab drivers? Retinal scans? Tiny mobile phone implants? Of course, and then every day I'll read the homeopape and travel by flipflap. Hooray for the future! "We are gathered here today to mourn the passing of the last shred of Metallica's credibility..." May 1, 2000 Argh. Some days I hate feeling the need to find links. And I hate my writing. And I hate all the stupid pink on this page. Basically, I hate everything (except for you, of course, faithful readers). Have I mentioned yet that today is Day Two of my life as a non-smoker? That's right-- no more sweet, thick, carcinogenic smoke for me. My world has instead become one of empty pretzel bags and aching jaw bones from chewing too much cheap gum... oh yes, and the voice in my head that continually yells, "Go! Go now! Run to the store like your life depended upon it, buy as many cartons as they have, stuff at least ten ciggies in your mouth, and then gleefully roll around in the rest! No one will ever know!" Ah well. I know I have the willpower somewhere in me to see this to the end (I once went for months without getting the chorus of "Baby One More Time" stuck in my head), but if I seem even more bitter (and content-less, it appears) than usual, you know why. One of my friends called me yesterday ranting about how U.S. President Clinton must have gone mad, because he was riding bikes around the White House with the kid from the e*trade ads. I just assumed that my friend was the crazy one, but it appears that the bike riding was part of this wacky video, which is quite funny. As it turns out, Victoria (B.C.) has a live webcam downtown, which seems to be on all the time. The desire to do cartwheels in the middle on the road for the 3 a.m. audience is almost overwhelming... Now, I'm a big fan of Google's holiday decorations, but I always thought that May Day was to do with anarchists, or even pagan ceremonies, so what's up with the little alien guy?! Send me e-mail, dammit! All internally generated content by Pith and Vinegar©2000.