Well, this could be interesting:

Japan’s Studio Ghibli, the Japanese studio and home of anime master Hayao Miyazaki (Howl’s Moving Castle), announced that it will adapt Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea fantasy novel series in an animated movie called Gedo Senki (Tales From Earthsea), the IGN FilmForce Web site reported. Gedo Senki will be released in Japan in July 2006 and will be based on the third and fourth books in Le Guin’s six-volume series, which was first published in 1968, the site reported.

I was a little disappointed by Howl’s Moving Castle, and this will be a first-time feature for Miyazaki’s son, so I don’t know. It may never even become available in the United States, for all I know. I do know that Le Guin was none too pleased with the Sci-Fi Channel miniseries of her Earthsea books, so we’ll see if she likes this one any better. I have a copy of the first book sitting on my desk at home, waiting to be read.

Of course, it’s just one in a very large pile.

From Reuters News:

“I feel like I’m getting really good advice from very capable people, and that people from all walks of life have informed me and informed those who advise me. And I feel very comfortable that I’m very aware of what’s going on,” Bush said.

Yeah, well, but isn’t that sort of part of the problem? Just because you feel you and the country aren’t being led astray, that doesn’t make it so. Obviously, the President can’t keep track of every story in the news, can’t read every morning paper cover to cover. Obviously he needs summaries, advisors. But couldn’t he have chosen ones who were, oh, I don’t know — good at their jobs?

I am amused that Reuters put this in their “Oddly Enough” section. He’s not literally inside a bubble, you know. (With a water bottle and small gerbil wheel or anything like that.) Now that would be odd news. Maybe they’re suggesting it’s odd simply because the man clearly is living inside a protective bubble. How wacky that he would suggest otherwise!

Apparently, there was a thirteenth episode of Fawlty Towers?

Q: Is the 13th episode, “The Robbers”, for real? If so, why do you think it was never broadcast, even in later years as a TV special?

A: I have absolutely no idea why the 13th episode, called The Robbers, has never been aired. I only know that I saw it once in Bill Morton’s flat not far from Piccadilly Circus on a particularly wet evening. Hadn’t it been for this, I might myself have doubted the otherwise striking authenticity of the script, reproduced in the book.

As things stand, I can only assure the reader that the show, as far as I remember, was amazing. Rarely have I seen John Cleese and his crew reach such continuous heights of sublime entertainment, and the only reason I can see for not wanting this episode to reach the fans, is that it would perhaps create the false impression that there was so much more to wring out of the material, whereas, in fact, the 13th episode represents the ultimate solution to the problem of how to carry this tormented universe to a happy end.

As concerns the reason for never admitting its existence, let alone airing it, I must refer the reader to the BBC. They should know why. And poor Bill. The last time I tried to call him he had a parrot recorded on his answering machine, exclaiming: P-off!

I may be missing the joke here, because, if the episode is for real, it’s tough to imagine it could actually languish in such complete obscurity at the BBC for thirty years. (Even weird television Holy Grails like that version of Alexander the Great starring William Shatner, Adam West, and John Cassavetes has seen some light of day.)

See, this is why I didn’t go to my office holiday party this evening.

But was there ever really a time when the Xerox machine — that perfidious usurper of the music industry’s potential income — was such a novel, newfangled contraption that “photocopying one’s bare buttocks” on it was the height of drunken office fraternization? Has any drunk, outside of a 1950s movie or television show, ever actually worn a lampshade to the delight of his co-workers or friends?