Friday Fun Times

It's the worst to have lots of ideas for blog posts and no time to write them down.

But here -- have a Welsh steam engine.

Friday Fun Times

You're welcome.

Friday Fun Times

Friday Fun Times

More Shaun!

Friday Fun Times

Sheep and Doctor Who jokes. :)

For What It's Worth

It has recently been brought to my attention that some people actually take the recommendations and, presumably, the disrecommendations I make on this blog seriously.

I feel a sudden rush of power and blood to the head.

No -- wait, maybe that's just the third cup of coffee kicking in.

So with this in mind, here's my meaningless, completely insignificant recommendation for this week.

You enjoy raunchy, foulmouthed, violent cartoons, right?

Of course you do.

So I have three words for you, my friend:

Tripping the Rift.

All 3 seasons and the movie (not so great, but fun if you get into it and great if you've got a six-pack on hand) are available on Netflix insty and I'm betting that 5-10 minutes of hardcore Youtubing will probably net you the same thing.

Not for the faint of heart or the ready to blush since two of the main characters are Chode McBlob, the deeply profane and irreverent purple captain of Bob, an agoraphobic spaceship, and Six, Chode's feminist sex android.

Seriously, we are talking stripper jokes, sex jokes, drug jokes, alcohol jokes -- if you thought Little Britain was as bad as it gets -- well, okay, you were close but not close enough. There are also enough pop culture references -- visual and verbal -- to keep pretty much anyone happy.

The first episode is called "God is Our Pilot": Chode and his "faithful" android, Gus (think a limp-wristed-er version of Threepio) take a trip back in time and kill God. I mean -- what do you do for the rest of the day, right?

If you're in the mood to kick back and take nothing at all very seriously -- and enjoy a fictional universe where clowns are the evil villains we all know them to be -- then Rift is your new best friend, believe me.

Short Thoughts: Also, Magical Cats

I've been doing something that I should have done a long time ago: watch through Hiyao Miyazaki's/Studio Ghibli's back catalog.

Believe it or not, until recently, I had only ever seen two of these films: Mononoke Hime and Nausicaa. I love them both and I own Nausicaa -- a fancy collector's edition, actually, that was a birthday gift -- but I hadn't seen anything else.

Now I've got two more under my belt -- Castle in the Sky and Howl's Moving Castle, which I know isn't technically a Miyazaki story since he adapted it from the late Diana Wynne Jones' novel which I have never read.

And I always have the same reaction and now I've come to expect it as I start to watch: "Oh, this again. I know how this goes. Yes, yes, I know what all this looks like. Yup, there's little furry things. Oh, well, I guess this is the one where..." And then the dots lead into the bit where my brain simply goes wstfgl because something so lovely and unexpected has happened that I can't think what to think about it for a minute.

I don't know how else to explain it, really, other than by saying that every time I think, "Oh, this is just another Miyazaki movie; fine," there is always something surprising and something that transcends the film. Maybe it isn't a grand philosophical statement -- although sometimes it is -- but most often it's something that's simply beautiful.

Or weird.

Or both.

Friday Fun Times

I'm not even all that into Pixar. Some of these movies -- Cars, Toy Story 3, Up -- I haven't even seen.

But the ones I have? Wow. There is something Pixar manages to tap into telling its stories that lifts them up out of the run of "average" animated movies and makes them brilliant.

friday fun times

friday fun times

This is like what would happen if Jabba's band and Pixar ever did work together.

friday fun times

I want one!

If I could only adopt a pink cat...

...I'd have a name all built in.

and

And am I totally crazy or does the owl sound like William Hartnell as the first Doctor and the toad much like the apocalyptically stoned Danny from Withnail & I?

"A little water never hurt anyone!"

Good god, it's wet. Boston is damp today. Very very wet, in fact.

Anyway, skinny post today, folks -- if you want more, I suggest you check out my Tumblr blog. I'm wading through Google Reader feed backlog, calling some folks about jobs, and generally doing not very much. Oh, and getting through a few more chapters of Tony Judt's Postwar -- excellent book, but very tiny font -- tough reading.

In any case, I can't just leave nothing up on a Wednesday -- especially not a thunderstormy Wednesday -- so I went to find amusing things on Youtube.

So I started with the idea of finding a Clangers short from Oliver Postgate which I have done -- it's right down there -- but there was also a link to a Bagpuss short. Now I've only ever heard about Bagpuss and The Wombles which were Postgate's other two really successful creations and mostly heard about them through things like Alice on Vicar of Dibley or Brendan Gleeson's wonderful/insane turn in Breakfast on Pluto.

This is trippy. This may be the trippiest thing I will see all day -- and I want more of it. I want lots more of it:

And then there are the Clangers who are also trippy and deeply so, but which I am more familiar with. Don't blame me if you start to whistle after watching this: