Oh my god!

!
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 4:38 PM on July 2, 2008

Through winding roads

And steep inclines

Please watch the road

And not the signs

(which would have been funnier if it hadn't been an old B.C. cartoon).
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 11:43 AM on April 23, 2008

Ah yes, and don't forget the influence on Split Enz. Tad Williams (his Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series clearly influenced by Peake) did an intro to the recent reissue.

My master's thesis was on the series in the context of Gothic lit. I really liked Titus Alone (although the quality of prose certainly suffers) because it reinforces and underscores the nature of Gormenghast castle: inviolate, enduring, impenetrable by any outside... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 4:38 PM on April 16, 2008

Hah, I thought exactly the same thing when I saw the Winchester Mystery House. Wrote about it, too.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 11:36 PM on April 16, 2008

Neat. I hope someone looks at The Player. I mean, an eight minute opening shot that talks about long opening shots in other movies?
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 2:10 AM on April 9, 2008

I saw DJ Spooky's 'Rebirth of a Nation' in Wellington. It was outstanding. (Also cool, he had run out of CDs to sell so told the audience that it was fine with him if we obtained it by 'other' means.)
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 2:42 AM on April 7, 2008

I remember this from Dr Demento's 25th Anniversary collection CD.

and you don't hear your little girl screaming no more?
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 5:43 PM on March 5, 2008

I can't think of anyone else who had such an influence on the idea of a game as a narrative experience - something that had affected, and will continue to affect, games far beyond mere pen-and-paper RPGs.

Everything I know about university lecturing I credit to my early DMing experiences.

Gygax and Arneson gave all of us nerds an opportunity to socialise, make friends, and find common ground throughout the world.

So sorry... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 12:25 PM on March 4, 2008

I thought the NZ accent was spot-on. But then, everyone here seems to think that I'm British (including the ex-pat Brits). Living with a Californian, I though the LA accent was pretty weak.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 1:09 AM on March 2, 2008

There are a lot of relics of the True Cross in Europe; I think I saw about four of them at various churches and museums. Funnily enough, they were all different types of wood, which leads me to conclude that Jesus must have been nailed up on butcher block
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 4:14 PM on February 21, 2008

"the diner draped his head with a linen napkin to preserve the precious aromas and, some believe, to hide from God" (W)

Yeah, you better hide. Not one of them shall fall to the ground without your Father.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 7:26 PM on February 20, 2008

While I love to hear about 'obsessive' creators and cataloguers like Robert Burnham, it's sad to see how many of them turn out poorly. His story reminded me a little of William Chester Minor.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 6:00 PM on January 28, 2008

This is better than the original facile narration on 'Planet Earth'.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 6:12 PM on January 26, 2008

Geez, Hillary is (was) the closest thing New Zealand had to common-man royalty. For a lot of us, he's respected much more for what he did *after* knocking the bastard off, and everything in his life was suffused with quiet dedication, humility, and humour. Despite the sappiness of the statement, he's my hero.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 3:05 PM on January 10, 2008

Oh, neat post. I visited Çatalhöyük in 2003 (having had to bribe a travel agent in Konya to drive me out there) and was blown away by it all.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 8:31 PM on December 29, 2007

Oh man, I still remember manually adding up the bytes to hard-code a sprite when I was 10. And (Poke) 53280 may have been the first number I ever memorized. Good times, good times.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 1:12 PM on December 7, 2007

Given the size of Antarctica, I'd always hoped that there was something (preferably without tentacles) hidden under the ice. Maybe a wealth of fossils along the lines of Antarctopelta and Cryolophosaurus, or some unique marsupials.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 3:52 PM on November 27, 2007

New Zealanders love any kind of international assessment system in which the country ranks highly. There'll be a local boastful report about this within the week.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 4:34 PM on October 22, 2007

Geez

.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 1:59 PM on July 30, 2007

I watched this movie for the first time about half a year ago, and it's certainly funny how a movie that is apparently deconstructing the nature of exploitation ends up being so obviously exploitative. Oh sure, you can use the tools at hand to satire those tools, but this movie takes a little too much delight in using the tools.

I imagine the scenario as something out of Ed Wood: the director has a keen and insightful script that they just have to put up on the screen... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 2:10 PM on June 28, 2007

Thanks for this - Vertigo has been my favourite film for a few years now. And that 1000 frames part is neat.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 9:06 PM on June 25, 2007

God, I wore stubbies as a kid. They were even tighter and more brown than is portrayed here. Mortifying.

And L&P is delicious. I found one for sale once in Australia, but that was near Surfers so there must have been a high volume of NZers around.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 6:51 PM on May 27, 2007

Aside from a battered copy of The Hobbit, the Chronicles were the first books I bought when I got my first paper route fifteen years ago. Sorry to see him go.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 3:14 PM on May 19, 2007

33 is The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean
92 is It Came from Outer Space
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 7:02 PM on May 17, 2007

I'm more interested in the Occult Book that James I wrote
I have a copy; you can get it from Amazon. Pretty damn weird.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 3:37 PM on April 20, 2007

.

So it goes. But somehow, I always wish it wouldn't.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 8:51 PM on April 11, 2007

Wow, thanks for this. I've wanted a Codex for a few years now, really bad... had it on my Amazon wishlist and everything. No-one's taken me up on it yet.

Love the e e cummings title of the post, too!
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 11:46 AM on March 20, 2007

Imagine an encyclopedia from another world dropped into our own: not only new information, but new ways of representing information, cryptic but clearly internally consistent. Imagine that we do not have the tools to completely understand (and encapsulate) it, but find ourselves fumbling around the edge, being offered tantalising glimpses at an alien way of approaching an alien experience. It's like a song in a foreign key, or a cryptogram eternally unsolved. The essence of the Codex... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 8:19 PM on March 20, 2007

Someone mentioned to me that there are some people who have been planning for this event for a decade now - and now that it has gone off without a hitch, they're out of a job.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 5:42 PM on March 18, 2007

This gives me such a powerful urge to destroy all the clutter in my house - and I don't by any means have a cluttered house. Very cool.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 5:12 PM on March 18, 2007

It's probably not the best site in the world when the first 'fact' out of the gate (Two films share the record for the highest number of awards received) is rather hopelessly out of date.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 12:52 PM on February 25, 2007

Physical currency is dead. Welcome to the 21st Century.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 11:38 PM on February 13, 2007

Nothing lasts forever. Even the longest, the most glittering reign must come to an end someday. [sly look at the camera]

.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 1:40 PM on February 11, 2007

Did anyone else see the weird phrasing in the Reuters article?

"In the growing field of eight Democrats seeking the presidency, Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois, is polling behind New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton though his candidacy has generated buzz as he seeks to become the country's first black president as well as some Hollywood money."

Good to know that getting Hollywood money and becoming the country's first black... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 3:18 PM on January 31, 2007

No, it's saying his candidacy has generated buzz and Hollywood money

Wouldn't it then be put as "though his candidacy has generated buzz as well as some Hollywood money as he seeks to become the country's first black president"? I don't think it's a vast conspiracy, but it's surely an awful sentence construction.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 3:25 PM on January 31, 2007

And of course there's the New Zealand equivalent, chocolate fish.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 7:07 PM on January 29, 2007

Additionally on the race front; these people might have a little bit of a right to resent the fact that their town of less than 7,000 was used as a dumping ground for thousands of refugees. I don't see the state department bureaucrats and NGO bleeding hearts using their Georgetown neighborhoods to street 3rd world refugees.

Sure I can imagine them feeling resentful. The fact that anyone would think that the refugees themselves (and their kids!) are... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 12:43 PM on January 23, 2007

Oh great, give us all the politicians. Gee, thanks.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 2:08 PM on January 16, 2007

I use a variant of Mullingitover's method; a right-click in a search bar in Firefox will give you the option "Add a keyword for this search". Now, if I want to search Wikipedia, I type "w [search term]" into the address bar. "g" does a Google search, "d" dictionary.com, "m" imdb.com, "b" a Google book search, etc. Really speeds things up.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 1:55 PM on January 16, 2007

"said" is like punctuation. Invisible, essential. Those who try to dress it up better know what they're doing, or they'll just end up with a semi-colon in a funny hat.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 6:38 PM on January 11, 2007

/.\
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 3:29 PM on January 11, 2007

Cool!
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 5:05 PM on January 10, 2007

You haven't heard of it because it's silent.
Fnord?
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 5:50 PM on December 7, 2006

Holy crap.

In the vein of monster bugs, try the Giant Isopod.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 10:25 PM on November 21, 2006

I want one. You know, for weekends.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 3:34 PM on November 18, 2006

Nice. I always assumed that I had a weak sense of pitch, but 72.2% says that I'm a bad singer for other reasons.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 12:41 PM on November 11, 2006

Of course it's a hoax of some stripe; it'd be impressive if this fine gentleman was a Trekkie three years before the original series debuted.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 1:58 AM on October 27, 2006

Er, sorry, stupid. That'd be his birthdate, not the date. I'm going to go put myself out of my misery now.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 2:00 AM on October 27, 2006

(a friend of mine came up with this one)

For Sale. One parachute. Never opened.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 3:01 AM on October 26, 2006

Just keep writing. Oh, and have a basic plan going in: you're not allowed to write, but there's no rules against scheming a rough plot outline (assuming you're writing fiction, of course). Last year was my first try, and probably last: got to 50,000 words in 15 days. I was fairly happy with the quality too; it was totally worth the two weekends.
posted to MetaFilter by Paragon at 1:19 AM on October 10, 2006