Since we saw the trailer for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory last week, I’ve been trying to figure out just what Johnny Depp’s Willy Wonka look reminds me of. Then last night it hit me:
He looks like Amélie!
But then, while looking for photos to demonstrate this connection, I discovered a more disturbing resemblance:
Hmmm… A Chocolate Orange?
Well, I finally found out the reason for the Grass Under Renovation signs. I passed a median where a road crew was setting out what I first thought was sod, but then realized was Astroturf.
Nice one. I suppose it’ll save money on water and maintenance, but then so would painting the concrete green.
Couldn’t they just put in some native plants and leave them alone?
Why do some spammers insist on prefacing their junk with statements like “THIS IS NOT SPAM?”
Some idiot just posted a bit long letter offering to let me put my “products” on their online store. No, they didn’t send me an email about, say, the comic book collection I’m selling. No, they didn’t offer to sell prints or digital copies of my photography. No, they didn’t offer to publish my writing or Katie’s writing. They certainly didn’t look for contact information on any of those pages, because if they had, they would have found it and used proper channels. (Well, probably. I occasionally get comments on my Flash site via eBay’s “Question to Seller” feature because people don’t see the email address at the bottom of the page, but they do see the link to my eBay profile.)
They posted a very generic form letter—so generic that I can’t tell what they’re offering to resell—as a comment on a two-year-old blog post in which I remarked on some new comic books I had started reading.
And you know what? That’s spam. You can yell all you want that it isn’t, but when you post a completely off-topic advertisement on someone’s site, when you send someone a (supposed) business offer without checking to see whether it’s relevant—particularly when you claim to have checked them out, but clearly haven’t bothered—that’s spam.
And denying that fact won’t make me accept the offer (or leave the comment visible) any more than the “Please do not discard” statements on credit card offers will get me to fill out an application.
We went to see Howl’s Moving Castle (Miyazaki’s latest, excellent as always) tonight, and as we walked past the Oakley store, I suddenly realized: that’s why General Grievous looked familiar!
Though Katie pointed out, it also looks rather like the Omni-Droid.
Well, technically, the fish is severed…
OK, I have officially changed my mind about the four covers for Angel: The Curse #1.
If they weren’t publishing alternate covers, there’s no way they would have used a fully-painted picture of the puppet Angel. Update: Scan added.
The guy at the comic store said, “of all the people who had it on their pull list, I figured you’d appreciate this one the most.” Good call!
I let Amazon.com send me notices every once in a while, just in case something interesting pops up. This qualifies, though not in the way I expected:
Based on your recent purchases, we thought you might like to know that you can save up to 65% on summer favorites in men’s, women’s, children’s, and shoes.
The thing is, I’ve never bought clothing from Amazon! Books, CDs, the occasional DVD, some computer software. But no clothing, though they’ve tried to convince me. T-shirts aside, I prefer to be able to try something on before I buy it.
Assuming they actually are using their recommendations system, I think they must have just checked the clothing category for the mailing, and left the “based on…” phrase in the template. Though sometimes cross-category recommendations can be strange. I’m often amazed at things I find in my rec list that have no relation to the things I bought or rated that supposedly triggered the recommendation, simply because those items are popular enough to cut across multiple interests. Of course, right now the only thing they recommend for me in “apparel” is a Darth Vader mask, which I find somewhat disturbing…
