Thursday, July 22, 2004

A speed camera and the car carrying it have been stolen from the side of a road in north-west Melbourne.

The incident occurred on the Melton Highway at Sydenham about 8.30pm yesterday.

A speed camera operator was loading camera equipment into a Toyota RAV-4 four-wheel drive parked on the side of the road when a man approached and began talking to the operator, a Victoria Police spokeswoman said.

While the operator was at the back of the car, the man got behind the wheel and drove away, she said.

He was described as being of southern European appearance, about 25 years old and 1.7m tall, with a medium build, tanned complexion and short, black hair.

He wore blue denim jeans and a dark jacket.

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

So I am going to have another rant again. Fortunately this time it's not about BCT but it will probably sit better with people who are over thirty, or who are genetically predisposed to feeling old and/or curmudgeonly.

I want to cover two things, preening and revelry.

I was going to my office on the eighth floor this morning, in an elevator which has a wall with those tinted glass mirrors, and another guy got in the lift (as the lift doors were closing)  and charged (well, as much as one can in those poxy lifts) to the back and started checking his hair, pulling his lower eyelids down to check for bloodshotness, and generally pretending like he was at home in his own bathroom. What is it with people that they can't check this stuff before they leave the house? Or at least waiting till the lift is empty. Or even being subtle about it fer chrissakes.

So... revelry. It was in the news this morning that a balcony had collapsed in Port Melbourne at half past three this morning, taking a few revellers wth it. On a Tuesday night!!! I'm glad some of them got injured. Bah.

Thursday, July 15, 2004

Abstract: While preparing to film a movie entitled A Night in Casablanca, the Marx brothers received a letter from Warner Bros. threatening legal action if they did not change the film’s title. Warner Bros. deemed the film’s title too similar to their own Casablanca, released almost five years earlier in 1942, with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. In response Groucho Marx dispatched the following letter to the studio’s legal department:

Dear Warner Brothers,

Apparently there is more than one way of conquering a city and holding it as your own. For example, up to the time that we contemplated making this picture, I had no idea that the city of Casablanca belonged exclusively to Warner Brothers. However, it was only a few days after our announcement appeared that we received your long, ominous legal document warning us not to use the name Casablanca.

It seems that in 1471, Ferdinand Balboa Warner, your great-great-grandfather, while looking for a shortcut to the city of Burbank, had stumbled on the shores of Africa and, raising his alpenstock (which he later turned in for a hundred shares of common), named it Casablanca.

I just don’t understand your attitude. Even if you plan on releasing your picture, I am sure that the average movie fan could learn in time to distinguish between Ingrid Bergman and Harpo. I don’t know whether I could, but I certainly would like to try.

You claim that you own Casablanca and that no one else can use that name without permission. What about “Warner Brothers”? Do you own that too? You probably have the right to use the name Warner, but what about the name Brothers? Professionally, we were brothers long before you were. We were touring the sticks as the Marx Brothers when Vitaphone was still a gleam in the inventor’s eye, and even before there had been other brothers—the Smith Brothers; the Brothers Karamazov; Dan Brothers, an outfielder with Detroit; and “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” (This was originally “Brothers, Can You Spare a Dime?” but this was spreading a dime pretty thin, so they threw out one brother, gave all the money to the other one, and whittled it down to “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”)

Now Jack, how about you? Do you maintain that yours is an original name? Well it’s not. It was used long before you were born. Offhand, I can think of two Jacks—Jack of “Jack and the Beanstalk,” and Jack the Ripper, who cut quite a figure in his day.

As for you, Harry, you probably sign your checks sure in the belief that you are the first Harry of all time and that all other Harrys are impostors. I can think of two Harrys that preceded you. There was Lighthouse Harry of Revolutionary fame and a Harry Appelbaum who lived on the corner of 93rd Street and Lexington Avenue. Unfortunately, Appelbaum wasn’t too well-known. The last I heard of him, he was selling neckties at Weber and Heilbroner.

Now about the Burbank studio. I believe this is what you brothers call your place. Old man Burbank is gone. Perhaps you remember him. He was a great man in a garden. His wife often said Luther had ten green thumbs. What a witty woman she must have been! Burbank was the wizard who crossed all those fruits and vegetables until he had the poor plants in such confused and jittery condition that they could never decide whether to enter the dining room on the meat platter or the dessert dish.

This is pure conjecture, of course, but who knows—perhaps Burbank’s survivors aren’t too happy with the fact that a plant that grinds out pictures on a quota settled in their town, appropriated Burbank’s name and uses it as a front for their films. It is even possible that the Burbank family is prouder of the potato produced by the old man than they are of the fact that your studio emerged “Casablanca” or even “Gold Diggers of 1931.”

This all seems to add up to a pretty bitter tirade, but I assure you it’s not meant to. I love Warners. Some of my best friends are Warner Brothers. It is even possible that I am doing you an injustice and that you, yourselves, know nothing about this dog-in-the-Wanger attitude. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to discover that the heads of your legal department are unaware of this absurd dispute, for I am acquainted with many of them and they are fine fellows with curly black hair, double-breasted suits and a love of their fellow man that out-Saroyans Saroyan.

I have a hunch that his attempt to prevent us from using the title is the brainchild of some ferret-faced shyster, serving a brief apprenticeship in your legal department. I know the type well—hot out of law school, hungry for success, and too ambitious to follow the natural laws of promotion. This bar sinister probably needled your attorneys, most of whom are fine fellows with curly black hair, double-breasted suits, etc., into attempting to enjoin us. Well, he won’t get away with it! We’ll fight him to the highest court! No pasty-faced legal adventurer is going to cause bad blood between the Warners and the Marxes. We are all brothers under the skin, and we’ll remain friends till the last reel of “A Night in Casablanca” goes tumbling over the spool.

Sincerely,

Groucho Marx



Unamused, Warner Bros. requested that the Marx Brothers at least outline the premise of their film. Groucho responded with an utterly ridiculous storyline, and, sure enough, received another stern letter requesting clarification. He obliged and went on to describe a plot even more preposterous than the first, claiming that he, Groucho, would be playing “Bordello, the sweetheart of Humphrey Bogart.” No doubt exasperated, Warner Bros. did not respond. A Night in Casablanca was released in 1946.

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

After lengthy negotiations, feistyknickers are now available at Torrid. Huzzah!

STOP PRESS: Feistysocks too.

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

Donnie Darko... THE DIRECTOR'S CUT! Starts at the Nova on August 14th!!!

Monday, July 12, 2004

Screw the google toolbar:
Google Deskbar

God, I am such a nerd!

In other, non-nerdy news, I received confirmation of receipt for my first writing competition entry, so that's pretty exciting. Now I just sit back and wait for the inevitable rejections to start.

Tuesday, July 06, 2004

this might be a silly question, but have you all got the Google Toolbar yet? it's awesome.

Monday, July 05, 2004

from a discussion on slashdot about the worst computer accident you've ever had....

You know, while reading the stories here, I realize that I have been quite fortunate over the-

Oops. oooh. Oh yeah. . . That.

Whew. I'd actually blocked that one from memory. . .

Okay. . .

So way back when a 486 was something special, I was young and didn't have a cool computer of my own. Upstairs where the adults lived, (I slept in the basement, would you believe?), my father had just such a gleaming-cool 486 with many bells and whistles, the most significant being a sweeeeet laser printer he'd just wrangled out of his job.

We're talking a top-of-the-line Hewlet Packard beast. This was back in the day when HP made good printers rather than the cruddy consumer-level, guaranteed to break within three years junk boxes they sell today. It was a very nice machine and my father was pink with pride about it.

I was working on an art-project at the time, which involved animation cell-painting onto clear sheets of acetate. I'd been running heat-resistant acetate sheets through printers and photo-copiers for a while, outputting line-work for painting on later, so I was all knowledgeable about this. Cocky, even.

But that evening, I'd just used up my last sheet of acetate right in the middle of a job I was really enthusiastic about. I didn't want to wait a whole night just to go out and buy more, so I dug around and actually found a stray sheet. Only problem was, I didn't know where I'd gotten it from, and I didn't know if it was treated for high temperatures or not. . .

Can you see where this is going?

Erg. My palms are sweating at the memory. . .

So there I was, with this rogue sheet of clear plastic poised over the paper intake of that HP thinking, "Come on! I'm sure it's heat treated. Why would it not be? And anyway, even if it isn't, how bad could things get? Probably at worst, it'd just go a bit warped, right? Just put it through and quit worrying so much, you dork!" So I put it in.

It didn't come out again.

In its place issued a series of interesting sounds and smells. Panic.

My father was in the next room half an hour into watching some hour-long television drama. I remember, clearly, because I can still see in my mind the clock dial telling me that I had exactly 32 minutes to smuggle tools up from the basement, casually walk past the television and into the back room where I was silently, desperately dis-assembling a damned printer.

Have you ever tried to take apart a thirty pound computer appliance on a hardwood floor in total silence as fast as you can? It's difficult! I mean, you drop a single screw and it will bounce off that hardwood with the loudest, "TACK!" you ever heard. And my dad is the suspicious sort who perks his ears up to any unexpected noise. --He spent most of my childhood convinced that his son was a dangerous klutz who could burn down the backyard fence playing with fireworks if given half the chance. (That was a LONG time ago!)

Anyway, my point is that nothing, nothing adds stress to a situation in quite the same way a father does.

While in the process of cutting free a mess of baked-on crusty plastic from the innards of that HP beast, I managed to gouge out big wads of pink rubber stuff from one of the rollers which was certainly not designed to be gouged. That's what you get for rushing. Take the job slowly; you'll only regret it later if you don't. It doesn't matter that you're going to DIE in. . . 14 minutes and counting.

"How's it going in there, Son?"

"Hmm. . ?" Panic. Fear. Adrenaline. Please, please, please, don't come in! Just keep your gnarly head turned toward that flickering TV screen, old man, because I have your fucking printer in pieces all over the floor and crumbs of pink rubber stuff on my guilty fingers. "Oh, just doing some work in Corel Draw, Dad."

"Oh, Corel Draw? Do you need a hand with that? I upgraded to the next version. It's very complicated."

"Nah. I've got it worked out."

"Are you sure? It's very complicated. If you need a hand, just let me know."

"Gotcha, Dad. Thanks." ARGH! WHY AM I STILL LIVING HERE?!?!

--I remembered suddenly a, Calvin & Hobbes strip, current back then, where Calvin was walking back and forth through his parent's living room with a water bucket, (empty one way, full the other), to and from a botched bit of hack-saw plumbing in the family washroom. Amazingly similar, when I think of it. . . Except, somehow, unlike Calvin, I managed to put everything back together and I'll be damned if that stupid HP printer didn't work perfectly; --even with big chunks of pink rubber missing from its guts.

Phoo.

Yeah. That was a trial. And it just goes to show that under pressure, the impossible can be done. It makes me wonder how much shit actually goes on in the world which nobody but solitary, terrified individuals ever know about.

I'm not sure I really want to know. .


contributed by this fine fellow

Thursday, July 01, 2004



between them, the noodlebob posse have hit this many states you can do countries too