Remember SETI? Everyone got really excited about it back in 1999 when they introduced the SETI@Home screen saver (Jesus, remember screen savers?), allowing people to use spare processing power on their magnificent Pentium 1 monsters to parse cosmic radio waves for evidence of intelligent life. Well, the bad news is that, as yet, no such evidence exists. Even with the thousands upon thousands of Pentium 1 monsters chewing through the data. But the good news is that a small group of people are ready for the inevitable moment of contact, and have even set up a website to welcome extra-terrestrial intelligence (ETI) to Earth. And boy are we putting our best foot forward with this project. Because if there’s one thing we want to express to aliens on our first meeting, it’s definitely our deep and enduring love of Comic Sans:
This is apparently the masterstroke of “a diverse group of approximately 100 individuals”. They go on to explain that they “come from various parts of our planet. Almost all of us are related to science — as researchers, engineers, artists, writers, benefactors, or graduate students.”. They are also definitely not xenophobic: “our welcome is extended to any manifestation of extraterrestrial intelligence or alien intelligence that has reached our planet. Regardless of your form, regardless of where in the universe you originated, regardless of when you arrived, regardless of how deeply different you are from us, we welcome you.” But they do understand that perhaps aliens need to be convinced that talking to us is a worthwhile project, so they list “some possible benefits for you, in case you have not already thought of all of them”. These are by and large the kind of loosely patronising concepts I’m sure well-meaning missionaries the world over are well versed in, and include such corkers as:
Interacting with a few people in depth could help you gain a deeper understanding of human psychology, society, and relationships. As a community of people with some understanding of alien intelligence and contact, we might be useful in this venture. [Translation: I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality I could be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves]
You might enjoy the experience of interacting with humans and feeling bonded and connected with them. You might find this experience interesting, illuminating, even joyful. Two-way love and caring might transcend any differences between your form of intelligence and ours, just as they sometimes transcend enormous differences between individual humans. [Translation: If you see a link to an article about something called "World War II", please don't click on it]
You could gain intellectual excitement and a sense of adventure as you experience the dialogue, watch our learning, and see how the interaction unfolds. Let’s experiment with contact and see where it goes! [Translation: Hey baby, nice antennae, want to grab a drink later? Maybe afterwards you can wrap your ovipositor around my... Dierdre? What are you doing here? This isn't what it looks like, I promis- ARGH! The beautiful insect queen is eating my face!]
They then encourage contact in whatever way is convenient, whether that be “email, fax, telephone, or a face-to-face conversation”. Let me tell you, if aliens arrive and contact us via fax, I will eat one of my arms. That would also raise some serious questions about how a species managed to master the art of intergalactic travel, but still relied on fax to exchange information. I imagine the rates on interstellar faxing are just brutal. They then attach for the alien’s perusal the mighty Flag of Earth. This is slightly less embarrassing than the Comic Sans:
But not by much. Anyway, you get the idea. All in all, I feel this is a stunning example of human ingenuity that would make any alien feel right at home. Then we could lure them in and steal their kidneys.
Ahh, bacon. Scourge of pigs. I recently became a vegetarian, and the one thing I’ve missed is the pork family (although seafood is still pretty prominent on my list of ‘foods I want to have sex with’). As many friends and loved ones will attest to, one of my favorite breakfast pastimes was getting crazyawesome french toast, bacon, and drowning all of it in icing sugar and maple syrup. And icecream.
I have the metabolism of a rhinoceros, evidently.*
Anyhoo, I have two things to say about bacon. The first is that one time, back when I was doing film at university, I had a very good friend named Mikey. Mikey was great, and was a member of a hugely devout Jewish family, although I suspect his beliefs were more pronounced around his parental units in order to extract the sweet nectar of familial compliance (read: epic allowance). Regardless, he wouldn’t eat anything that came out of a pig. After a particularly taxing lecture and a Cassavetes screening, we made our way to the food court on campus, and settled on a Chinese dumpling stall. Mikey, who was being a simmering little shit sandwich that day, asked me to grab him two chicken buns whilst he made a phone call. I got him two pork buns, let him eat most of one, and then asked him how it tasted. “Good”, he replied, chewing happily. “Why?” “Because”, I replied, “it’s pork. And I’m not sorry, Mikey, I’m not sorry”.
Sufficed to say, he almost punched clean through my arm. I still think that institutionalized religions which control diet/clothing/gender rights/the right to choose/gay rights/the rights of people to kill other people/etc are pretty much all tinsel and bullshit, but I will concede that I may have crossed the line. And all because of delicious bacon. Delicious, evil bacon. Ever seen a pig NOT setting fire to libraries or peeing in the mouths of baby rabbits? I didn’t think so.
Didn’t I have a second point? Oh, right. Bacon, when uncooked, is abhorrently grotesque. And to illustrate that point, here is a guy being draped with hundreds of wet rashers of the stuff.
I probably ought to have waited until AFTER breakfast to post this.
Nicholas Cage is one of those actors whose very glare can render you infertile. Whether he’s wowing us by playing a sycophantic gambler in Snake Eyes, a pedantic cop in the Wicker Man remake, or JOHNNY BLAZE in GHOST RIDER*, the man has more range than the Andes. Which, as I learned during an abortive trivia session this past week, have a great deal of range. I also found out that yelling “VAGINA” every time a question is read out isn’t witty, and neither is attempting to call your team “TEAM VAGINA”.
Sigh.
Anyway, Nicholas has become increasingly erratic and harder to comprehend over the past few years. After winning critics over in the Jonze/Kauffman masterpiece Adaptataion, he proceeded to plough dick-first into a despair-swamp of shitty roles, exacerbated by the fact that his hair appears to have grown directly into his chubby brain. So what better way to wrestle his career back on track than quite literally CONTROLLING THE CAGE? Brandon Bird has released the Nicholas Cage Adventure Set. Imagine paper dolls. Only with icecream. And a parrot. And Nicholas Motherfucking Cage. Here’s how the website breaks it all down:
Introducing the Nicolas Cage Adventure Set! The magic and wonder of one of the most dynamic figures of the 21st century comes home in this incredible playset (one might even call it a Colorforms set, if “Colorforms” was not a registered trademark of the University Games Corporation). Reusable vinyl stickers cling like magic to glossy backdrops! Mix and match accessories! Peel and re-peel to create new scenes! The fate of Nicolas Cage is in your hands!
Each set includes a double-sided 8.5 x 11 inch play background (depicting “tropical island” and “haunted castle” environments) and one 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of nine vinyl cling stickers: 3 full-body Nicolas Cages, battle axe, skateboard, ice cream cone, scary ghost, parrot, and space helmet.
I’m pretty sure I’m bleeding to death with joy over here.
/Paul
*I had ball-spasms whilst writing those words, hence the all caps.
Sometimes I look about at the state of the world and it makes me long for the days of yore, simpler times all, where a man was a man, a woman was a woman and midgets were included in the food pyramid. Gone now are the days of easy utilitarianism, where the ends always justified the means because the ends were, frankly, kicking. Penicillin? Fuck yeah! Cecil George Paine just gave it to some babies and hoped for the best. And here we are, 80 years later, with the ability to cure syphilis. Thanks babies!
But none of that these days. No, these days we are mired by an excess of knowledge, a cynicism toward understanding and a seemingly endless parade of “ethical qualms”. And in few places has the magic of discovery been more actively suppressed than in the field of SCIENCE!!!!. The pursuit of scientific knowledge is one of mankind’s great strivings, one of the fundamental drives that separates us from the animals. Except, that is, when said scientific pursuit involves animals quite personally. I mean, I’m not entirely sure they always know what’s going on, but I like to think they appreciate the fact that it’s all for the greater good.
I have previously waxed lyrical about such endeavours in this rousing piece about the ongoing practice of feeding animals psychotropic substances, but today I’m striking a more nostalgic tone and looking fondly back at the glory days of mule experimentation. Well, one experiment in particular – the 1878 demonstration of the first ever instantaneous photograph. A development that, at first glance, might seem to have a pretty tangential relationship to your average household mule, but don’t forget, this was in the glory days of science. Days where a man was a man, a woman was a woman, and a mule was an integral part of new advances in the photographic sciences. From an 1881 issue of Scientific American:
“It became necessary, one day, at Willet’s Point, to destroy a worthless mule… The mule was placed in proper position before a photo camera and duly focused upon the animal’s forehead, a cotton bag was tied containing six ounces of dynamite.”
Now, “necessary” is a big call, but I think we can all be thankful that at least they stayed away from the prize mules for this demonstration of what exactly it looks like in the split second after a mule has had dynamite detonated in close proximity to its head. I’ll leave you to peruse the rest of the story/images over at Gizmodo Australia (You can probably lodge a reasonable guess as to the outcome. Gritty!), but nonetheless, I’m sure that I speak for everybody here when I declare “Thank you mighty mule! Your noble sacrifice shant be forgotten! Henceforth, every time we use our iPhones to take a photo of our naked torsos and send it to our local Members of Parliament, we shall remember that it was you who made it all possible!” Huzzah! Everybody with me?… Everybody?
Every Wednesday morning, I’ll be posting a video of a total lech. Someone who probably eats children and grooms his moustache with the lawbone of their dead mother. Today, you’ll be watching some vintage Euro-disco, a genre which should be shot into the centre of the sun, but can’t on account of the fact that:
a) It’s a genre, and collecting it all together in one place is a highly abstract concept, and
b) the sun gives our planet life. You really think it’s going to keep doing that if we hurl tonnes of this shit into it?
With that firmly in mind, I do hope you enjoy this.*
I’m going to go out and say that this could be considered quite a literal ‘No Fuck Friday’, because I don’t care how realistic your love doll of choice looks, if you ever find yourself having sex with an animatronic robot, you may as well be trying to have sex with the ‘It’s A Small World‘ ride at Disneyland.
Meet Roxxxy (and creator. What a dynamic looking young man). No, she isn’t suffering from a profound disability. Unless you count the absence of a brain, soul and true autonomy. Rather, she’s the latest advance in the field of ‘female simulation’. And what a noble field it is, filled with gentlemen, entrepeneurs and the finest innovators the world has to offer. For years the high-end love doll of choice has been the decidedly oxymoronic Real Doll (do I really need to point out that almost every link in this post could be considered at least slightly NSFW), a hand-crafted miracle of silicone and pliability that can be yours for the princely sum of $US5 999. Plus, presumably, postage and handling… Although, there better not be too much ‘handling’! Am I right? ‘Ey, ‘ey, ‘ey, ‘ey… ‘ey?… I’ll let myself out.
I gotta admit, the entire endeavour is a pretty alien concept to me. I mean, I’m not exactly fighting off rabid hordes of busty women with naught but a pointed stick (FYI, that’s a cliché, not a phallic pun), but at the same time I’ve also never had the thought “yes, that’s it, I’m obviously never going to be have sex again. Now is the time to dive headlong into the endless abyss of sadness and solipsism that is copulation with an inanimate object”. Hard to know if anyone has ever had that specific thought, but I like to think it’s a definite tipping point. Fortunately, other people have been paid to explore the field, and this is a reasonably entertaining account of one man’s scientific “expedition” into the “world” of the Real Doll.*
But now we have the $US7-9000 Roxxxy, the brainchild of self-described “happily married man”, Douglas Hines. The word brainchild being particularly apt given the amount of se… sentiment he has obviously poured into it. Her. It… I dunno. If you’re game, here’s Douglas showing Roxxxy off to the world for the first time at the recent Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas.
As someone has pointed out, Douglas has quite obviously managed to get Roxxxy’s underwear on sideways. Excellent work, Douglas.
Basically, Roxxxy is unique in that she vocally responds to both your conversation and your sexy touching. She also has a number of settings ranging from Frigid Farrah to Mature Martha to, my favourite, Wild Wendy. Exactly how wild Wendy can be given that she cannot move of her own volition is open to debate, but the thought is there. Anyway, the inherent creepiness of the entire affair probably doesn’t require vast amounts of elaboration (although Slate explores the concept a little more here), suffice to say I now have the distinct fear that next time I’m “in the midst”** with a woman, I’m going to look down and be able to see naught but the glossy, soulless eyes of Roxxxy staring back at me. And then realise that I’m at the tail end of a four-day paint and amyl bender that has somehow culminated in me stealing the original Roxxxy prototype from Douglas Hines’ house and “having my wicked way with it”*** in the man’s living room. While he and his wife stare at me aghast from the kitchen. And I’ll look up and see them and then scream “SHE MADE ME DO IT!” before bursting into tears and jumping through a window.
… My fears are oddly specific.
/Luke
* He had sex with it
** Having sex
*** This is probably a little self-explanatory by now
- We talked about the handcuffing of high-school girl Alexa Gonzales who DOODLED ON HER DESK. Because that’s a real issue for the New York Police Department.
- I discussed how a Romanian kid killed his adoptive mother for cutting off his connection to the internet, and by proxy, his Counter Strike. Did I manage to make this a light-hearted romp through gaming whimsy? Um.
- New research (i.e., old research made new) indicates that dinosaurs actually looked like birds. How do YOU feel about this? Indifferent? Horny? Hungry?
- And finally, I talked briefly about an X-shaped hunk of space debris, which is apparently hurtling through… space, actually.
Later on today, there’ll be a guest blog from yours truly over at the Tom and Alex website, so keep your eyes peeled for a link! Also, here’s some friendly advice. Never stare at Tom’s face too long. Damned thing is like a Magic Eye puzzle.
I never really got to experience Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood – as a child, I was more inclined to NOT watch creepy dudes emerge from behind train sets. In fact, I really didn’t know all that much about the show until I watched this clip which, let’s be honest, is awesomecrazy terribad. The show itself ran from 1968 to 2001, and can best be summed up like so:
Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was characterized by its quiet simplicity and gentleness. Episodes did not have a plot, and consisted of Rogers speaking directly to the viewer about various issues, taking the viewer on tours of factories, demonstrating experiments, crafts, and music, and interacting with his friends. The half-hour episodes were punctuated by a puppet segment chronicling occurrences in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe.
I dig that the premise of this show was a cool old dude in a sweater just hanging out with you. But that’s also the premise of the Saw films. At least, I think it is, having never bothered watching beyond the first one. They’re all about make believe and old guys in sweaters, right?
Right? Right. Time to do some actual research. Brb.
Ah, Tom Selleck. I first met you when you were going out with Monica in Friends (shut up, those were formative years for me). Later, I delved deeper into your musky waters with Magnum PI. Later still, I think I may have seen you in The West Wing. Or was it Boston Legal? Probably Boston Legal. You got your bone on with Candice Bergen, right? Yeah, Candice is pretty great.
Ah yes, the moustache. Even though I can grow one in four days and Luke can’t physically make one appear on his face (true fact!), the moustache is loved by us both. It’s gone through many different permutations over the centuries – early moustaches were pulled from the face and used to batter masatodon to death – but it’s always remained quintessentially the same*.
Nowhere, however, does the mo flourish like the fashion world of the seventies. Observe, if you will, a terrifying example of the moustache being used to beam charisma gamma-rays directly into the penises and vaginas of willing seventies youth.
I didn’t even understand half of the words being said there (did he say Crenoline? What in the name of Malcom McDowell’s fetid sack is Crenoline? If it’s on the periodic table I’ll shut up, but I sincerely doubt it is). It didn’t matter though! And do you know why? Because two slivers of groomed hair were jutting at me like sex-daggers the entire time. AND I LIKED IT.
Here, though, is the absolute peak of moustache sexiness being exploited to hock goods. You ready? Of course you’re not.
I guess the lesson here is…
I… seem to have forgotten what the lesson is. I think my frontal lobe just fused.
/Paul
*Read: creepy strip of hair above a sneering upper lip.
Paul Verhoeven (right) is on Triple J, as host of the Weekend Breakfast Show. He is a writer and film critic for Yen Magazine, and insists he is a regular columnist for Horse and Hound magazine (unverified). He recently finished a weekly series for The Vine called Curiageous where he answered people's burning questions and drank his own urine. He enjoys ducks.
Luke Ryan (left) is a stand-up comic, writer, and general man-about-town. He is a news blogger and feature writer for The Vine and also writes for the music blog Electrorash and the street mag ThreeThousand. In 2009 he performed at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in his oh so descriptively titled show 'Luke's Got Cancer'. It was funnier than it sounds.
Both of them spend more of their time then they should perusing the Internet and gaming. The Somewhat Ambitious is essentially the product of this excess.
