Boba Fett Rule O-K! The Star Wars Christmas Special It was a little-known or remembered 2-hour Christmas special that aired in late 1977. The TV special was so laughably embarrassing that George Lucas has said he'd like to destroy every copy ever made!

The clip is worth watching for one thing: the introduction of Boba Fett. Here, Boba Fett has more lines in 10 minutes than he does in Empire and Jedi combined. Despite his overall scant screen time and brevity in speech, Boba Fett is much swankier than the breathy, screen-hogging Darth Vader. He deserved a better end than a whack into the Saarlac Pit. (You will need Real Player to view both the Boba Fett cartoon and the cheesy opening credits to the Christmas Special.)

Where is my mind?

Wil Wheaton has a weblog. I was going to find a characteristic quote from the site, but no matter what I chose, it just felt wrong. It's like finding out that your new room-mate dated you ex-girlfriend, or that your online romance is actually working in the next cubicle. It's an unexpected crossover of genres and worlds that you should have expected, but leaves you a little shaken none the less.

Jump Tomorrow--The Website

ALL YOUR DEVICE ARE BELONG TO US

This guy's got tons of neat stuff, including a carrying case with charging crank for your pocket PC, "Worst Case Scenarios" on portable Ebook (so you can have it handy when you need it), The Simpons for Pocket PC, and a portable whiskey guide.

Link thanks to Nelsad.

Salon.com People | Ray Bradbury is on fire!
"I never cared for pinball games when I was 18 or 19. Video games are a waste of time for men with nothing else to do. Real brains don't do that. On occasion? Sure. As relaxation? Great. But not full time and a lot of people are doing that. And while they're doing that, I'll go ahead and write another novel.

--Ray Bradbury, in his Salon interview.

You know what? I agree with him. I love video games; play 'em all the time. But they're really for when you're burned out, and you just want to play, or for a little recreation. A lot of online games are built on the assumption that they can get a customer to pay to play for hours and hours every day. They're going to find it doesn't fly that way.

Zero Tolerance Run Amok
This "crackdown" is only the educational system's latest instance of cowardice. The so-called "fairness" principle is a way for the powers that be to squirm out of having to think ethically, intelligently, compassionately. I ask that all grown-ups go back to high school for a day-- no, a week. Try to do it undercover, if at all possible. At the end of that week, after you have dealt with the real bullies, burnt-out teachers, busy-work curriculums, and arbitrary rules that punish folks who are simply trying to get through the system in one piece, let's readdress this issue of zero tolerance. Read Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War while you're at it. Do whatever you need to do to find compassion. (It is not synonymous with leniency, but it is a first cousin to empathy.)

Interesting search referer of the day: Secret Jesuit Cancer Cures.

The remedi project is somewhat strange.

Coffee glut, feudal traditions combine to starve communities

CNN.com - Congress predicts $9 billion taken from Social Security - August 28, 2001 The federal government will be forced to use $9 billion from the Social Security surplus this year because of the ongoing economic downturn and the Bush administration's tax cut, congressional budget calculations indicated Monday.

'Parasitic grid' wireless movement may threaten telecom profits

"On the West Coast, the movement started in Seattle Capitol Hill neighborhood, which already had a large concentration of technically oriented residents, according to one of its founders, Matt Westervelt."

This is really cool. It's basically a neighborhood approach to networking, where people in a neighborhood set up their own wireless LAN at their own expense. Apparently there's one in Capitol Hill, though I currently have no idea how I might connect into it. :)

Link from John, who should really have his own Blog, since he knows way more about this kind of stuff than I do.

Locations for your Lair

"The fake mountain with a hollow interior is yet another site often used by evil geniuses. While on the outside it looks like any other mountain, with the flip of a switch you can transform it into a deadly fortress of doom! Where once stood rock can now stand rocket turrets, as the front opens up to reveal missile launchers and powerful artillery cannons. The central base can easily house your armies of destruction, and the whole thing folds up quite nicely when you are done playing with it. The only caveat with the fake mountain is that you should not place them in the middle of cities. They are for some reason too often noticed there."

The fake mountain has always been a personal favorite of mine, but your own choice of evil headquarters will be a matter of personal taste. Link thanks to John.

This web page best viewed in Windows RG. I suggest you get Windows RG by clicking the link below.

Windows RG Now!

V: The Next Chapter

J. Michael Straczynski, creator of the science-fiction series Babylon 5, was commissioned by Warner Bros. in 1989 to write a script for a proposed syndicated V revival. You can see the first three chapters of the script in this web page. Among the great innovations, the immediate and violent irrevocable elimination of the annoying Star Child and Willie, the vegetarian alien.

Who would win in a fight, Babylon 5 or DS 9, Alf or Scooby-Doo, Lucas or Spielberg. Find out at WWWF Grudge Match!

Because you can never have too much Mr. T.

Farida threw out my favorite shoes today. They were a pair of brown wingtips. The soles have been replaced 5 times. They fit me perfectly, but the eyeholes were wearing out.

Cold Fusion
Tony was on the team that designed the original website for Cold Fusion Foods.

Addendum by Tony: Yep, it's true. The coldfusion foods website, coldfusionfoods.com was my first freelance web gig. My impression of Colin and his product was that both were basically crazy, so I figured that it would almost certainly succeed. If you check out the quicktime movie on the website, you'll see what I mean. They're actually quite tasty too. Kudos to them.

Just the other day, someone said to me 'You know, you can tell what class of people are supposed to live in an area by the streetlights. Well it turns out that Cap Hill is getting new faux-antique streetlights.

Wrote some stuff for the D&D campaign I'm playing in: Cathara - Unhappy the land that is in need of Heroes.... Oh, and I got a +1 weapon. Whee.

This organiztion wants to deliver 1,000,000 AOL CD's to AOL headquarters: No More AOL CDs

Please Mail your unwanted AOL CDs to:
No More AOL CDs!
1935 El Dorado Ave
Berkeley CA, 94707
United States Of America

This from Nelson: a company who specializes in figuring out what teens think is cool, then sells the info. And I though my company had a nice scam going.

look-look.com

Fragaria vesca
Up in the mountains of southern West Virginia, there wasn't much I looked forward to besides leaving. However, the one aspect of the mountains I loved were all the different kinds of berries free for the picking. My favorite berry of all was the woodland strawberry. Each strawberry was not much bigger than the size of a pea. I'd have to pick a long time to fill my bright orange bucket. Each little strawberry was intense and sweet. Now, I can only find the storebought, mostly watery kind. But I guess that's the tradeoff for moving to the flatlands. (Well worth it, but I would love to eat woodland strawberries again.)

They'll also make a custom action figure of YOU!

I finished Master and Margarita by Bulgakov on the boat back from Victoria. It's definitely a Russian novel, including the morbid fascination with death and roubles, characters with ten names, including family, familiar, formal and diminuitive forms which you are assumed to know, and a lot of talk about Christ, the devil and death. The only odd thing about it is that it's relatively light and comic (despite the untimely beheading in chapter 3). The book includes some great characters including the pirate, Archibald Archibaldovitch, and the indomitable Margerita. Note that the eponymous characters don't show up until page 183. The book is also quite weird. I'd say it easily gives Tom Robbins a run for his money in the weirdness department. It gets the recommend, but be patient and wait for Margerita to show up before you give up on it.

CNN.com - Israel: Fatah member killed while making bomb - August 20, 2001

Lost It by a Hair
Al Gore recently came out of his post-election seclusion sporting a new beard. While he made no definitive statements about his future political plans, Gore's facial hair implies a change in strategy for the former Vice-President. Could his plan be to attract 2004 voters using the "goatee gambit?" Modern Humorist presents some follicular possibilities.

The Onion Interview Berkely Breathed

"I'm still working on becoming more interesting. This year, I started listening to Celtic music and collecting vintage ray guns. If you don't think that's more interesting, well, then, you agree with my wife."

Read this excellent interview with Berkely Breather, which Philos sent to me. I blogged another interview with Breathed a couple of months ago, but for some reason, it's missing from the archives.

"Nope. Bill Clinton just took all the fun out of this stuff. Even Trudeau, brilliant as he is, couldn't do anything much with the last eight years, really. It's like doing a parody of The National Enquirer. Can't be done. We're over-saturated with commentary and with absurdity, and we're numb because of it. Nothing shocks, so what's the fun? And irony, oh, the goddamned irony, that courses through the popular culture like a cancer. If nothing is serious anymore, then there's nothing to satirize. Look at George W. Bush. He knows the game. He knows he's a maroon, as Daffy Duck would say, and refuses to take himself seriously. He cut off our satirist balls. We're like a gaggle of eunuchs running around the palace, wishing we could hump the princess. The game's changed forever."

It's 10:31 pm PST, and Tony is finally home! This time the border guard asked him a few leading questions, and then paused to say: "I don't know why they held you up-- your paperwork is in order." When Tony showed him the translation of the Latin diploma, the border guard scratched his head and said, "That wasn't necessary." In essence, the border guard said that every customs official wants something different. Gentlemen and gentlewomen, I think it is time for INS reform.

I think everyone forgets that the United States was founded on immigration. Too bad the Native Americans didn't form one nation to kick those Pilgrims out!
Can you just see it now?

(Swirly dream sequence.)

INS: What is your purpose in coming to these lovely shores?

Pilgrim #1: Uh, to plunder the land and conquer the people.

INS: Out! Out! Back home to England! Next? Why are you here, sir?

Pilgrim #2:To seek out a new life for myself and have the freedom to practice my own religion.

INS: Yeah, and you're going to oppress everyone who doesn't conform to YOUR beliefs, you dirty rotten Puritan. Next! What do you have in those blankets, ma'am?

Pilgrim #3: Smallpox. I figgered I'd give them Indians some blankets and pretend to be friendly. But the smallpox will wipe out their whole tribe! Then me and my man can till the soil and cut down a few trees, and in a few years we'll have the very first Pil-Mart shopping center.

INS: (Checks papers.) How long will your length of stay be?

Pilgrim #3: Oh, about five hundred years.

Balloonist over halfway around the world
And while you're at it, take a look at the Newbery Award winning book by William Pene du Bois, called The Twenty-One Balloons.

Rocket Boys
I have just finished The Coalwood Way, the sequel to Rocket Boys/October Sky, by Homer H. Hickam, Jr. Hickam is a good storyteller, and these memoirs are exciting to read.

Salon.com Life | Turkey village sex strike continues
Could this be the answer to our energy crisis?

Latin as a foreign language

Refused again: this time because my degree is written in Latin, deemed a "foreign language" by the inspector. Now awaiting an official translation from the College by Fedex.

Liberty's Heavy Hand: Or, the Unchecked Power of the INS

In the Northwest: The conservative's conscience is being trashed

So here I am, trapped in Victoria, a hostage of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Amaze your friends and annoy your officemates with the virtual stapler.

Hit and Run - but not far...

A hit and run driver took out a transformer during his flight on North Cap Hill last night. Onlyonecapitolhill.com has pictures.

Am I the only one who finds this a little startling? Wasn't technology supposed to protect us from shortages for evermore? Aren't we supposed to have conquored nature? Is it possible we've got a premise wrong somewhere?

Long-term water crisis predicted

"For example, King County's sewer system discharges 250 million gallons a day -- far more than the average 150 million gallons of water delivered daily by Seattle Public Utilities to all of its customers within Seattle and surrounding areas. Much of that effluent could be captured and treated for industrial, landscaping and agricultural use, Bissonnette said, freeing up millions of gallons of fresh water."

scifi.ign.com:Powerpuff Girls:The Movie

When we mention the words "Powerpuff Girls," we can almost see all of you readers getting a warm, happy glow. "Ah," you say. "How I love my Bubbles lunch box! My Buttercup stickers! My Talking Mojo Jojo with Exposed Brain!" We love the Powerpuffs (and the merchandise) just as much as all of you, and so we're most excited about this next bit of news...

Mmmm... Powerpuffs merchandise.

I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith.
J.K. Rowling says, "This book has one of the most charismatic narrators I've ever met." And lucky for us, it's back in print (since 1999). The first sentence: "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink."

The Lair of Mojo Jojo (No Giggling!)

Rowling denies writer's block rumor
As hard as it is to wait for Harry Potter #5, I am glad to know that Rowling is taking as long as she needs to write the book. She is not writing to fit a Stratemeyer Syndicate schedule. While you're waiting for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (working title), you might want to pick up a copy of Hounds of the Morrigan, by Pat O'Shea. This book took over ten years to write, and features magic, humor and high adventure.
--Farida

It seems that Pyra Labs is workingon a Blogger API. This is great news for all of us who have been itching to hack the blogger functionality for our own ends. WOo HOO!

ARGUMENTS / Should Libraries Pull the Plug on Web Site Obscenity? / Kids, Porn and Library Censors

news flash - nothin ever happens any more.

The Seattle Times: Local News: Dirty tricks for GOP charged: Couple recruited 3rd-party candidates

"I'm just an activist person. I just do what needs to be done," she said. "I didn't know it would upset the whole world."

*shakes head* Isn't shaking up the whole world exactly an activists goal? Someone send these phonies back to Yakima.

Rumor: Star Wars: Episode II will be named "Attack of the Clones".

Yesterday, Farida, Pam, Tony, Andrea, Jestom and I went on the Seattle Private Eye Tour of Cap' Hill. I didn't know that "Eating Raoule" was based on a Seattle antiquest dealer who slew his family and served them to guests. I guess you learn something new every day.

After the tour, Andrea told me that
the Aurora Ave teepees have been torn down!

Slashdot | Rules-Unknown Artificial Intelligence Competition

Slashdot has an interesting discussion of an AI writing competition. Your AI program has to play a game without knowing the rules of the game. All it gets to know is its opponents moves and the current score. I wonder how well a purely random program, or one that copied it's opponent would do?

How to Tell a Bad Movie From a Truly Bad Movie

"Smug is the common thread," says Mr. Stahl. "Movies and stars that scream, `Love me as much as I love myself.' Think `Yentl.' "
Thanks to Farida for the link.

Exploring Cosmic Darkness, Scientists See Signs of Dawn
T"he dim haze from a distant epoch that astronomers have dubbed the cosmic dark ages, a time so ancient that stars and galaxies had not yet begun to shine, has been seen for the first time by earthly telescopes, members of a multinational team said on Friday."

The Seattle Times: Local News: How I spent my tax rebate
"There's only one good thing to do with the rebate check and that's to spend it at Amazon.com," quipped the Seattle company's founder and chief executive.

So how are you going to spend the refund?

USA NETWORK | Cannonball Run 2001

Now this looks a little more encouraging. Cannonball run was a great movie, though, of course, it didn't hold a candle to the less well known movie it ripped off, Gumball Rally. Go Jeff! Pity I don't have cable.

Into the ranks of piss-poor reality TV comes Manhunt. Admittedly, this show is blatantly unfair, which is its best feature. Basically a bunch of clueless gits run into a gully where a steroid-induced nightmare runs into the midst of them and lets loose with a paintball gun. The monster is so much faster and stronger than the rest of them that he simply starts at the back, runs up to the front, and pops the fastest runner in the butt with a paintball. The "contestants" are so pathetic, that inthe first round the hunters waste their ammo into the trees. There's no other way they could miss a shot at such close range with the guns they're using. When the day is done, the contestants can't even make up interesting lies, as they rush to backstab one another.

-"I vote KJ because she's, uh, capable. Yeah that's it."
-"Uh, me too. Because she's capable. Yeah."
-"Me too."

The only positive point is the head hunter "Babyface" Tim Kingman, who, despite his ridiculous blond mohawk and ludicrously large muscled, give the impression he'd rather be home tending to his garden. Nevertheless, he gives a great performance. I predict big things for him.

The Seattle Times: Local News: Man and machine take the field

Damn, why didn't anyone tell me about this!

Report: Worm nabs secret Ukrainian files - Tech News - CNET.com
From the 'World just keeps getting stranger' department:

"A Ukrainian Web site said Thursday it had received secret documents from the administration of President Leonid Kuchma as the result of the SirCam worm infecting government computers and e-mailing the files."

So John called me this afternoon.
"Hiya John, what's up?"
"Oh, nothing, I just noticed you hadn't posted on your blog today, and I wanted to make sure you were OK."

Going to go see Jump Tomorrow at the Broadway Market tonite.

OVERDUE: A Librarian Cop Drama
You will need flash plug-ins and speakers to enjoy this gritty, realistic drama about a repo-librarian.

Car Calls May Leave Brain Short-Handed
You may need a free password to access this article.

Scripting News

"In the Q&A section, Mundie said you can always challenge a patent in court. A developer in the audience said that costs a lot of money. Mundie said 'Get your money.'

I'm still waiting for the full transcript of the Mundie session, but you can see a video at Scripting News.