(no subject)

Remember when we (ok, mainly me) were very (ok, slightly) disappointed that the movie "G Force" was not a G Force movie?

Toren tipped me off that there is a CG-animated [Science Ninja Team] Gatchaman (aka Battle of the Planets/G Force in the US) film in the works.

Bonus comment from the page: "[Keyop] was a snarky asshole in the Japanese version and was forced to speak gibberish [in the English version] to prevent him from making comments on why "Tiny" was called "Tiny" and why Jason and Mark spent too much time in the shower room together."

Fatal Revenant - Now We Are Sick - Ebay Fail

I finished Donaldson's second installment in the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. (Here's my take on book 1)

I was a little disappointed. The pace is glacial; the mysteries remain mysterious. The book is just not very satisfying. On the bright side, Donaldson has, as usual, taught me a few more obscure words (e.g. surquedry).


Also finished Now We Are Sick, an anthology of gruesomely childish or childishly gruesome poems from genre authors. Many of these authors should stick to prose. Plenty of stinkers and ho-hums, and a smattering of good ones. The sole outstanding poem in the mix is Alan Moore's "The Children's Hour". I won my copy on ebay from aaronjv; I can see why he could part with it, though it does contain scribbled notes about a pitch meeting.


On the Ebay fail side, I didn't win the HPL astrology material. I was even part of a tiny syndicate that formed to pool resources to get it, but that failed too. It went for $5,355, a price that strikes me as both 'a bargain in absolute terms' and 'way more than I could justify spending'. And now that ebay anonymizes winners, I don't know whom to mug.

SciAm comes out against SETI

Well, 100 years ago...

"Much excitement has been created by Prof. Pickering's proposal to build a system of mirrors, by means of which light can be rhythmically flashed to Mars. ... Even in the face of this tremendously alluring, but exceedingly remote, possibility, it seems to us that the $10,000,000 could be more worthily expended elsewhere."

In the 150 years ago is the story of a Cornish gentleman who arrayed himself in a suit of clothes composed entirely of ratskins: "hat, neckerchief, coat, waistcoat, trousers, tippet, gaiters, and shoes. The number of rats required to complete the suit was six hundred and seventy."

Hmmm... someone may have plagiarized SciAm on the rat story in 1873...


Waste products and undeveloped substances a synopsis of progress made in their economic utilisation during the last quarter of a century at home and abroad By Peter Lund Simmonds