(I heard it used a few minutes ago on the Fox News Channel. Per my longtime observation of such matters, whenever anyone in elected office or the "mainstream" press uses the word "comprehensive", 99.999% of the time what it really means is "there's more bullsh-t going on behind the scenes than you seriously want to know about...")
That is all for now.
Witness anew what is arguably the lowest point of the illustrious career of Bill Cosby...
"Better than ever"?? I still remember the one time that I tried to drink New Coke. It tasted like crap! What were you thinking, Bill?! We trusted you! And Coca-Cola betrayed us! No Jell-O Pudding for you.
With a wrathful vehemence not seen since the Cabbage Patch Kid riots of '83, Coca-Cola found itself besieged with angry phone calls, letters and organized protests. Three months later then-CEO Roberto Goizueta announced - via a televised spot with all the gravitas of an Oval Office address - that the crisis was ending: the old Coca-Cola was coming back as "Coca-Cola Classic".
And within days of hitting shelves again for the first time, sales of original Coca-Cola soared. Coca-Cola Classic fast eclipsed sales of Pepsi. To this day, Coca-Cola remains the best-selling soft drink in the world.
How could it not have? By that point in the summer of 1985 Coca-Cola dominated much of the pop cultural discussion, both here and abroad. People were talking about Coke like they had never talked about it before.
New Coke by itself was a business failure... but New Coke did make people want the original Coke like never before. New Coke pulled off what had never been done on this large a scale before: it created genuine demand for something that was already so successful it didn't need demand.
I don't care what the "official" documents say: I'm fairly convinced that the New Coke fiasco in my book was brilliant and quite intentional psychological marketing. Not completely convinced though. Wanna know why? Because it does bother me, that the mass of people can be manipulated by something so simple. And so part of my mind doesn't want to acknowledge a great fear that history and human nature have perhaps confirmed too many times already. But anyhoo...
If you want to know more about New Coke, which we got ambushed with twenty-five years ago this week, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a good write-up about it, including how Coca-Cola is now chronicling the New Coke episode at the World of Coca-Cola.
(If nothing else, it has to be said that New Coke was a product so bad that it made Billy Beer taste good.)
No wonder they've often been mistaken for sisters :-)
I would like to also show you a photo of Bob, Lauryn's dad and Robin's husband, but that would prolly ruin the effect...
(Just kidding Bob. Mostly :-P)
But seriously: it is a rather neat image, although rather bloody. But I like how it compels the eye to dart around it, picking out grisly detail and the film's tagline...
Don't let anyone else tell you otherwise, either. They're only seeing their respective wave functions. What the heck do they know?
Mind ya, immortality can be a bit boring after awhile. I can't help you there. But no doubt you'll find something to keep you occupied.
Me? I'm going off to become a shrimp boat captain.
And why? Because it's been known for awhile that "Death Trap" hails the return of Boba Fett: the most infamous - and most popular - bounty hunter of the entire Star Wars pantheon.
It will be thirty years next month since Boba Fett was first seen in The Empire Strikes Back, and fully eight since a young Boba fought alongside his father Jango in Attack of the Clones...
So he's not yet the Mandalorian-armored mercenary that will eventually stalk the galaxy. But "Death Trap" definitely gave us plenty of the up-and-coming Boba Fett in high-gear action! Heck, by my rough count this one half-hour of Clone Wars showed us Boba wrecking more havoc than everything he did in the live-action movies combined! And yet at this stage in his career (voiced by Daniel Logan, who played the ten-year old Boba in Attack of the Clones) he's still a bit uncertain of himself, still blessed with a child's conscience... albeit a child obsessed with killing Mace Windu. He's not what we know he'll be, but he's well on that path.
And then there were the last few moments of the episode: practically porno for everyone who's ever loved the Star Wars bounty hunters too much than is probably healthy. Yeah I'm speaking of Bossk and Aurra Sing but if you watched this episode then you know what I'm thinking of most of all: the return of Boba Fett's hyper-deadly space vessel, Slave I.
(I wonder if we'll ever get to see Bossk's ship, the Hound's Tooth. 'Specially that wicked automated skinning table tailor-made for Wookiee prey. Prolly not: as daring as Star Wars: Clone Wars has been this season, it's not that daring... yet anyway.)
All in all, I thought "Death Trap" was a superb episode: well-scripted, beautifully animated, and finely orchestrated as a story of both action and character. I'll likely watch it a few more times from the DVR over the next several days.
"Death Trap" will air a few more times this week, and then Boba returns for the Clone Wars season finale next Friday night. No doubt Fett-heads across the planet will be waiting out the week with baited breath :-)
Very great thanks to good friend Bethany Myers for finding this! :-)
How something like this has escaped my knowledge until now, I've no idea.
Did you know that two widely-used childhood vaccines were manufactured with cells taken from aborted fetuses?
I didn't either, until I read this article from LifeNews.com. It's about a just-published research study that has found a connection between the MMRII and chickenpox vaccines, and the dramatic rise in the rate of diagnosed autism.
From the article...
A new study conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency shows a correlation between the use of cells from babies in abortions in vaccines to an increase in autism rates. The study provides another problem from pro-life advocates who are already concerned about the abortion-vaccine tie.After all these years and several court cases focusing on the mercury in vaccines as being the accused source of cases of autism, now it turns out that it was possibly something far, far worse that might have been behind the climb.The study, published in February in the publication Environmental Science & Technology, confirms 1988 as a “change point” in the rise of Autism Disorder rate.
"Although the debate about the nature of increasing autism continues, the potential for this increase to be real and involve exogenous environmental stressors exists," the study says.
The 1988 date is significant because, as pro-life blogger Jill Stanek notes, the Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute indicates that's when the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices added a second dose of the MMR vaccine, containing fetal cells from aborted babies, to its recommendations.
The study found two other change point dates: 1981, two years after MMRII was approved in the United States with fetal cells, and 1995, when SCPI says the chickenpox vaccine using aborted cells was approved.
Jim Sedlak, vice president of American Life League, said today that his group is joining SCPI in calling for a Fair Labeling and Informed Consent Act to let people know of this link and the use of cells from babies victimized by abortion.
“For years the evidence has pointed toward the link between vaccines using DNA from aborted babies and the rise of Autism Disorder rates,” he said. “Parents need and deserve to know the risks associated with vaccinations made from lines derived from the bodies of aborted children.”
How does it feel, knowing that we have had our children "inoculated" with the dead remains of innocent babies?
I doubt that even Edgar Allan Poe, in his most feverish nightmare, could have come up with so horrific a thing.
Unfortunately what happened to the Alien franchise after that hasn't been anywhere as up to par with what Ridley Scott and James Cameron did. Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection well, let's put it this way: they both had their moments, but I don't regard them as being true "Alien"-ish canon. Maybe they're just bad dreams that Ripley is having and she's still aboard the Sulaco along with Hicks, Newt and Bishop on the way back from LV-426. Even Alien vs. Predator was better than those entries (and I haven't seen that movie's sequel so I can't comment on how good or bad it might be).
Anyway, when word came that Ridley Scott was planning on returning to the series that he helped to create, I was ecstatic. I had been hoping that he could get things back on track. Maybe even do something drastic to make us forget that Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection never happened to begin with.
Unfortunately, it looks as if that is not to be. We've known for some time already that Scott was going to do a "prequel" to the original Alien... which I already thought was a way wrong approach. Now it's worse. Confirming some rumors that have been making the rounds for awhile, Scott spoke to MTV Movies and revealed some details about the Alien prequel. Including what it's going to mostly be about.
And much of it will be about this thing...
Yup, the Space Jockey. That fossilized ancient extraterrestrial pilot that Dallas, Kaine and Lambert found in the derelict spaceship on LV-426. Scott told MTV that "It's fundamentally about going out to find out 'Who the hell was that Space Jockey?' The guy who was sitting in the chair in the alien vehicle — there was a giant fellow sitting in a seat on what looked to be either a piece of technology or an astronomer's chair. Remember that?"
How could we forget a thing like that? But I for one am compelled to ask: Do we want to know everything about what the Space Jockey is? That was one of the things that most made Alien succeed as a horror story: the Lovecraftian atmosphere of the film. Here are seven blue-collar working stiffs aboard a glorified tugboat. You know: people that on some level we can all relate to. And they're earning their paycheck in the depths of interstellar space: the most unknown and inhospitable setting known to man. And they come across something that they not only don't understand, but the crazy geometry of it practically screams out "you can't understand this".
Honestly, I don't want to understand that. And I've no doubt many others feel the same way. The Space Jockey - whatever the heck he/she/it is - is part of a mystique that would forever be gone if we knew any more about its back story. It is simply... what it is. Nothing more and nothing less. But this is definitely a case of "less is more".
There is plenty of potential in the Alien franchise that hasn't been touched upon at all. 'Twould be something that fans would much more appreciate if Ridley Scott took the road less traveled than that of a prequel. Seriously, I want him to return to the series... but not like this.
Other than that (which I can live with, I suppose) it was a great first meeting for the full cast and crew of Theatre Guild of Rockingham County's production of The King and I. There's something like nearly sixty people in this cast, a huge technical crew, over 400 costumes (or costume pieces, one or the other, either way it's pretty darned big for a community theatre production), few more stats about this show that blew some minds. It's gonna be positivalutely gigantic! Maybe one of the biggest productions ever in these parts.
And oh yeah, this is one neat cast and crew. Lots of familiar faces from past productions, along with some new ones that it's gonna be fun to work with for the first time. I forged some very good friendships during Children of Eden two years ago, and have during every show that I've been involved with since. Looking forward to making even more during The King and I.
As always, watch this space every now and then for reports as we prepare to bring y'all the timeless tale of Anna Leonowens and the King of Siam :-)
From the story at the BBC...
Penguin Group Australia had to reprint 7,000 copies of Pasta Bible last week, the Sydney Morning Herald has reported.I wonder if Penguin is printing any cookbooks for Mexican or Chinese cuisine...The reprint cost A$20,000 ($18,000; £12,000), but stock in bookshops will not be recalled as it is "extremely hard" to do so, Penguin said.
The recipe was for tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto.
"We're mortified that this has become an issue of any kind, and why anyone would be offended, we don't know," head of publishing Bob Sessions is quoted as saying by the Sydney newspaper.
Penguin said almost every one of the more than 150 recipes in the book listed salt and freshly ground black pepper, but a misprint occurred on just one page.
"When it comes to the proof-reader, of course they should have picked it up, but proof-reading a cookbook is an extremely difficult task. I find that quite forgivable," Mr Sessions said.
When they're broadcast over local television, they're downright sick.
I'm just sayin', is all...
