The Most Nerdtastic Tee Ever Created

A good friend going by the moniker of astrocave has designed a delightfully nerderific t-shirt on Threadless.


If you are:

- A Doctor Who fan
- In possession of a sense of humour
- Any friend of mine

You would be wise to hurry along here and vote for him so the t-shirt can get printed and adorn the chests of happy geeks all the world over. Me included.

Quickly - only four voting days left!

Tip: "5" is the highest score. It took me about ten minutes to work that out.

*wub*

If the excitment of Federal politics gets a bit too much for you today, you might want to take some time out to see this.

Oh to be a fly...

THE Federal Government is in crisis after Peter Costello yesterday contradicted Prime Minister John Howard's claim that he had made no deal about quitting the Liberal leadership.

The Age, July 11

FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!*









*Does my obscene level of glee this morning mean I'm an anarchist?

Life on Mars

I'm cockahoop and doolally for Life on Mars.

Not this:



Or this:


(although I am quite partial)

No. Praise the Gods of Television, I'm talking about this:



Life on Mars is an eight-part BBC drama series from the makers of Spooks and Hustle that will hopefully appear on Australian screens before too long.

I don't usually go in for cop shows (especially not of the CSI: Crimes Against Vaginas variety) but this one is different. If Life on Mars is “just a cop show” then The Singing Detective (1986) was “just” about some crazy old dude with bad skin.

Like The Singing Detective, Life on Mars is dark, haunting, wildly original, and frequently hilarious. It has an unforgettable concept, production values that will knock your woolly socks off, and a magnificent cast who will quickly inhabit your dreams (or am I the only one who dreams about fictional characters?).

Plus the protagonist drives a mint-condition 1970s brown Ford Cortina with a vinyl roof. Hot.

If only the ubiquitous CSI series had less brow-furrowing and voyeuristic violence, and more dream sequences, 70s rock, and mind-bending narrative riffs on the nature of human memory...

I could rant and gush all day but I won’t. I had the pleasure of viewing Life on Mars without knowing a thing about its premise, and you should too. Do yourself a favour and check it out before you read any reviews.




Oh, one last thing. This man (John Simm) plays the lead:


Hot. Hot as guts. Don’t believe me? Then obviously you have not yet had the pleasure of seeing him in action.

Do remedy that, won’t you?

Check back here in the next few days for an investigation into Mr Simm’s bizarre sexual hold over myself and most of my female friends curious magnetism. This hard-hitting Carrion Laughing enquiry (going under the working title of “Inexplicably Irresistible British Man Flesh”) will explore the allure of Mr Simm and his similarly pasty yet mouth-watering contemporaries.

Get Staphed

The Steph Show



Reality TV program The Steph Show debuts on Network 10 on Friday, July 28. The Steph Show will follow Neighbours actor Stephanie McIntosh as she tries to launch her singing career.


Not to be confused with:


The Staph Show



Reality TV program unsuccessfully pitched to networks by an enterprising microbiologist earlier this year. The Staph Show was to follow the spread of an outbreak of Staphylococcus aureus, or “Staph”, in a Melbourne hospital.


Don’t get confused, kids.


Staph = A bacterium frequently living on the skin or in the nose that can cause illnesses ranging from minor skin infections (such as pimples and boils) to life-threatening diseases such as pneumonia, meningitis, and septicaemia.

Steph = Soap actress and pop starlet wannabe. May cause bleeding to the ears.






By the way, what's with the offputting overuse of airbrushing in the promo shot? I understand the temptation to smooth a little here, define a little there, but the poor poppet's upper lip has been so altered that she looks like another person - and not a more attractive one. Was she riddled with cold sores on the day of the shoot, or could this be an attempt to make Steph look (as well as sound) as much like Britney as digitally possible? Ahem. Righteo. I can't believe I had to ask.

Tracy's anguish

Tracy Grimshaw's life was changed forever by the Beaconsfield mine disaster.



It was particularly difficult when:

- Tracy became so dehydrated she had to drink her own urine

- Tracy's claustrophobia got so bad that she couldn't stop humming Martika's 1989 hit single 'I Feel the Earth Move' over and over and over again

- Tracy's life flashed before her eyes and she had to revisit particularly traumatic episodes of Today

- Tracy suffered the indignity of having to defecate into her own safety helmet

- Forced to face her own mortality, Tracy deeply regretted skipping channel nine staff meetings to go roo shooting

- Tracy became so weak with hunger she considered hacking off and eating Eddie Mcguire's limbs.

Poor lass. No wonder her life has been changed forever.






Although objectively I understand the temptation to wring every last human-interest drop out of the Beaconsfield mine accident, is the hyperbolic headline not a tad insulting to the family of Larry Knight?

Unless Tracy Grimshaw was so moved by the plight of the miners and their families that she has decided to devote the rest her working life to the investigation of workplace health and safety inequities then she should BUGGER OFF and find some other way to self-promote.

Notes from an audience member who cares: Dead Man's Chest

Seen the preview for Sexually Ambiguous Johnny Depp in a Wet Shirt Being Very Amusing: Dead Man's Chest , aka Pirates of the Caribbean II: Dead Man's Chest? It looks like rollicking good fun if, like me, you are prone to regressing to childhood when watching a better-than-average "family" film.

The sequel looks like more of the same as we got in Curse of the Black Pearl, only better.

Better because it seems they've replicated what worked in the first film and weeded out the rest. This means there's more of Johnny Depp hamming it up in a wet shirt and eyeliner, more sometimes-icky but not-too-scary ghoulish special FX for the kiddies, more of Keira Knightley being butch and sassy, less of Keira Knightley being wistful and sappy, and, most importantly, MUCH MUCH LESS OF ORLANDO BLOOM.




Orlando only appeared in the trailer twice, briefly, and I trust/pray-to-the-gods-of-cinema that this is indicative of his screen time in the feature. The filmmakers seem to have adopted the very wise practice (as perfected in the Lord of the Rings trilogy) of only letting Orlando do three things - jump off moving things and look fearful (both of which he does very well), and deliver one or two brief expository lines of dialogue to justify his role in the film (which sadly he doesn't do so well).

No more straining to be the protagonist for little Orlando. Oh no. Just let him look pretty and pose for promotional 'hero' shots so that tween girls (who haven't yet recognised that he's both woefully untalented and not interested in girls of any age) will see the film at least three times with all of their friends and then buy the DVD release in time for Christmas.

Bring on the big ships and big FX and big battles! Bring on sassy Keira dressed as a man! Bring on the lovely Johnny Depp being as camp as it's humanly possible to be for a leading man in a mainstream film!

I want to regress to childhood, yet also admire his thighs as only a grown woman can.

Wonderful and Strange

Don't you love it when something created by a stranger and kindly placed on the internet for all to enjoy unexpectedly turns your whole day around?

Exhibit A:



Michael Paulus is a multimedia artist working in Oregon. One day it occured to him just how grotesquely distorted famous animated characters are. This was no fleeting notion. Strange and curious thinker that he is, Mr Paulus actually set about illustrating beautiful, detailed skeletal diagrams for everyone from Hello Kitty to Peppermint Patty.

*applause*

‘Twenty Percent More’, Part Four

The random and rambling observations of a Melbourne lass who went to the USA, saw some stuff, and then came home.

Part Four: The Elevator


No, this is not a tedious whinge about the fact that seppos don't know what a 'lift' is.

The elevator is the 'up and down' glance that one person gives another when checking them out*. The Elevator is usually a sexual thing but apparently straight girls also elevator other straight girls to assess hair/make-up/shoes/clothes/shape/accessories/threat-level.

My experience in The States indicates that Australian blokes are far subtler at catching the Elevator than Seppo men. Well done, boys.

Maybe I just don't go to the 'right places' in Melbourne but at a bar in LA one night (when my 'ladies' were housed very discreetly and I had a gentleman friend by my side) I was rather startled by the incredibly obvious elevator-action going on.

In a couple of instances there was actually enough time for me to

*blink*

*blink*

*blink*

and think of some possible responses**.


- Did you drop something down there, sir? Shall we look for it together?

- Yes, they are real. It's possible in places that aren’t Los Angeles.

- Have you noticed you’re thinning out a little on top there?

- What size? Go on, have a guess. There's a dime in it for you.

- They’re genuine looking, huh? I got them done at the same time as the snip. There was a coupon deal.

- I’m sorry, did you just say Mommy?


Yo, Californian dudes. No one can stop you from looking but speed it up a little, yeah? Not since high-school have I been so embarrassed for the opposite sex.



* Victoria's esteemed Premier Hymie Steve Bracks is allegedy very unsubtle at practicing the elevator on every woman of age he comes into contact with. There's an A Current Affair hard hitting expose just waiting to happen.

** More suggestions welcomed.

'Twenty Percent More', Part Three

Carrion Laughing at the Grand Canyon.


© snaz 2006


There were no words while I was there, and there still aren't.