Day: July 23, 2008

You know, this would probably be a great deal if I didn’t already own the live Rowan Atkinson material and the collected Monty Python set, or if I had more than a passing interest in either Benny Hill or Mr. Bean. (They bought have their merits, but how much of either can you really watch in one sitting? Five, six minutes?)

• Why are we still pretending Tasers are safe and law officers should have them? [via]
• See, if they’d just throw him in jail over his involvement in the Valerie Plame leak, none of this would have happened: Robert Novak cited after hitting pedestrian. My question is: just how fast or badly do you have to be driving to not know you hit someone? [via]
• The New Yorker wonders if poetry can be a war crime. If it can, it’s high time Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England, was brought to justice, that’s all I’m saying. [via]
• Baby’s First Internet [via]
• Glen calls the new G4 show Hurl a program “for people who found ‘Fear Factor’ much too nuanced and intellectually complex” — just because the object of the game is to speed-eat, compete in intense physical activity, and be the last to throw up. My first thought was to wonder if this maybe signaled a final decline of the American empire, and if vomitoriums couldn’t be too far behind. But then I was disillusioned to learn from Wikipedia that “A commonly held, but false, belief is that Ancient Romans designated spaces called vomitoria for the purpose of actual vomiting, as part of a binge and purge cycle.” If you can’t believe in ancient Roman vomit, what can you believe in?
• In general, I think the new Star Trek reboot is a bad idea — at best an underwhelmingly unoriginal idea. I’m increasingly less enchanted with J.J. Abrams with each new project, but more to the point, remakes are a tricky proposition, and I don’t see a reason to remake this. As a franchise, Trek would do a lot better to look forward. (Or at least a Deep Space Nine movie.) All that said, even if I thought the movie was a good idea, this isn’t the poster to sell anybody else on the idea.
• I keep forgetting to mention how much I like this wall mural Ken Jennings painted for his daughter’s bedroom.
• Things are just getting worse and worse for the American Life on Mars. Even Colm Meany’s gone? (Well, that means he’s free for that DS9 movie…) Seriously, can I just skip it and watch the terrific original again instead?
• Tin Man was nominated for nine Emmy Awards? But Tin Man…well, sucked.
• It’s horrible, but I think what struck me most in this sad story of US Marine Sergeant Tyler Ziegel and now ex-wife Renee was this line:
  

  Part of his skull is implanted in the fatty tissue in his torso, to keep it viable and moist for future use…

  Like I said, it’s horrible, but ewww. [via]

• Flickr user hit by lightning while recording a rainstorm [via]
• I don’t know what you did with your economic stimulus check. Me, I just deposited mine. Lots of Americans, apparently, used the money to buy porn. [via]