[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRUCQohBW8M]
This Hyundai Sonata commercial always reminds me of the opening sequence from Ghost In The Shell (which was surprisingly difficult to locate on youtube).
[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-47816034914245932]
As a being entirely dependant on the goodwill of those around it, abandonment probably figures high in their bad dreams – but what do the good ones look like?
Ceiling fans and massive, jingling sets of keys descending from the sky?
It’s great marketing on Virgin’s part to call their new spaceship the VSS Enterprise, and congrats to them for a great PR day with the recent “test flight”.
Branson’s company Virgin Galactic announced Monday that the VSS Enterprise had successfully completed what it called a captive carry flight attached to a carrier plane.
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The VSS Enterprise remained attached to its carrier aircraft for the duration of the 2-hour, 54-minute flight, reaching an altitude of 45,000 feet, according to a statement from Virgin. – CNN
A necessary step towards space tourism, which makes me happy, but certainly not a cheap one:
Virgin Galactic has envisioned one flight a week, with six tourists aboard. Each will pay $200,000 for the ride and train for at least three days before going. About 80,000 people have placed their names on the waiting list for seats. – Still CNN
Still, there’s definitely something to be said for the odd Leer-Jets-strapped-to-a-flying-wing appearance, although it sort of looks as if it were designed by an eight year old mashing up airplane model kits.
The British government, to keep the development of their new weapon a secret, told the North British Locomotive Company – the ladies who were doing the actual iron and grease work on the Allies’ new landships – that they were constructing water carriers intended for the middle east.
The women simply called the things “Tanks”, and for better or worse, that’s how we all know them today.
Landship development, originally conducted by the Royal Navy under the auspices of the Landships Committee, was sponsored by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, and proceeded through a number of prototypes, importantly among them the Little Willie, designed byWilliam Ashbee Tritton and Walter Gordon Wilson, as the first-ever completed tracked tank prototype vehicle, culminating in the Mark I tankprototype, named Mother.
The descriptor “tank” is reputed to have evolved from the construction of the early batches by North British Locomotive Company in Glasgow. The order was coded as “special tanks”, and much of the work was undertaken in the NBLC Tank shops and the name stuck. – wikipedia
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-DiWJ9TzNw]
BMW Marketing people, please don’t show me a lightsaber and then try to sell me a ginsu – it may be a fine knife, but no amount of transposition is going to make me think it’s a lightsaber.
It’s tough to get a crazy organization off the ground these days.
During the evenings we watch Letterman from a station out on the coast, one of the last bastions of broadcast crazy. It has no commercials, just loud bouncy music videos that I’ve long suspected were chosen by the owner’s 14 year old niece.
More interestingly however, the station is one of the few in Canada that maintains a 24 hour broadcast without playing paid infomercials. This is like a blank canvas to crazy.
Nowadays the hours may be filled with “specials” featuring, among other things, Stirling’s metaphysical thoughts, his interviews with likes of the late Newfoundland premier Joey Smallwood and conspiracy theorist David Icke, a “Computer Animation Festival”, various features or animations starring Stirling-created superheroes such as Captain Atlantis and Captain Canada, extended (sometimes all-night) tributes to the late Elvis Presley and John F. Kennedy, and other programs that are truly miscellanea. Stirling once stated during a “fireside chat” that he’s against abortion in China because those aborted babies could have grown up to become NTV viewers.
Other topics seen on the late night NTV programming schedule relate to Stirling’s interests in eastern mysticism, as well as intestinal health, Unidentified Flying Objects, crop circles and the pyramids. Mr. Sterling has been known to telephone master control from a remote location and order that a particular favorite program immediately preempt current programming, or that a particular effect be applied to the screen by the technician. Often multiple videos would be “layered” over each other, with unusual results. While things like this tend to anger viewers, Geoff Stirling’s eclectic programming has its cult following. – Wikipedia
Mr Stirling does have a website, but it doesn’t see much updating.
The best part about this image is that I can only read those last two lines as if delivered by an over-eager voice actor dubbing an old Mexican film.
It’s Friday, and my brain is sliding out my right ear.
It’s a great nation, it’s just too bad I have to share it with so many idiots. These two posts basically sum up why I don’t join facebook groups, and also why anyone engaging in political discussion on facebook needs to take a nap and maybe invest in an education.
I don’t mean to be a jerk, but: did Corey Haim die, or did he just succumb to the inevitable? We’ve turned out a pretty solid generation of young stars who eventually grow into their gaunt faces and crack teeth. Next it’ll be Aaron Carter, Tara Reid, or maybe one of the Culkins.
If “Child Celebrity” was an invasive microbe we’d be seeing kids in front of grocery stores with pledge sheets and charity chocolate bars attempting to raise money to cure or curb it – if it were a geographic location we’d be seeing Sunday afternoon commercials featuring on-location shots, asking us to sponsor a former B-level Mickey Mouse Club member.
We certainly glorify combatants – I think we can all name a few generals, a wrestler or two, some famous action movie heroes – we’ve got the Fight part of Fight-or-Flight covered, but we seem to put a lot less emphasis on that second half.
Most of the runners I can think of are more about infamy than excellence: Jim Fixx, mostly remembered because of his death; Ben Johnson, infamous cheater; that poor bugger Pheidippides, of Marathon fame, keeling over at the end of his run (and do they name it the 25k Pheidippides? No.)
Even the intensely fast Jesse Owens seems to be mostly remembered for sticking it to the Nazis, not his four gold medals & race barrier breaking deal with Adidas.