Fatadelic

Behold:

It could only be improved if it recited an endless supply of witty and pithy Oscar quotes.

(Having said that, is it me, or have they trimmed Mr Wilde’s substantial physique down somewhat? Perhaps to suit modern aesthetics, perhaps to fit a standard action figure mould?)

It features in the Top 10 Geeky Holiday Gifts For Your Oddball Child, and comes to us via Orodemniades at Birch and Maple

I need to make a confession. My partner John and I have a vice over which we have no control.

No, it’s not drugs or alcohol.

Its DVDs. Hundreds of them. All legit (not pirated). All obsessively catalogued.

We add to our collection in a variety of ways, but we have our preferred source (Hum in Newtown). We call it The Vortex, because we cannot drive through Newtown without at least feeling the intense pull of the place calling to us and our credit cards. It stocks DVDs that are interesting and sometimes hard to get (at least in Region 4 format, although our player can do multi-region).

Anyway, we fell into The Vortex today, and managed to come out with only 6 DVDs to add to the already large To Be Watched pile. Not to mention another 2 on order.

If you are interested, the purchases are listed below. NB: the links are to IMDB

Continue reading ‘We’ve made it out of The Vortex alive!’

The new government is still popping champagne corks, K-Rudd has just put his Prime Minister ‘P’ plates on and the result of Bennelong is still not in. And if she does win the seat, Maxine will not be on the Frontbench.

Nevertheless, who can resist this:

(hat tip: Crazy Brave and Ampersand Duck)

Just testing Flickr

After many months, too many thousands of dollars and a lengthy cruise from France to Australia (for it not us), THE COUCH has arrived.

Well, it actually arrived on Friday afternoon.

I took a day off work for it’s arrival. I planned where it would go in the room. I warned the cats that they would be nothing but cat-skin rugs if one thread of upholstery was pulled. I waited all day in anticipation… And, just as the blessed thing was delivered, I got the most foul, stinking, visually disturbing migraine I have had in years.

AAARGH! I couldn’t actually see the couch. Nor could I lie on it, since my migraine required the comfort of darkness. Damn, damn, damn!

Well, the damned thing is here now. We did kind of rush in to buying it (Note to self: it’s extremely expensive to worship at the altar of Design), but I don’t have any real regrets even though it it is larger than I remember. We love being able to put the arms and 2 back panels up and down, the cats love it (there were 3 in a row on it on Sunday) and John and I can finally lie together on the lounge without fighting.

…Too much.

Did you know that we have 246 DVDs in our collection? I know, because I have catalogued them all, somewhat obsessively, using a program called DVD Database X (which is a Mac program, but I believe there are similar programs for Windows). It can be kind of clunky, but it is much better than cataloguing in a spreadsheet or access database as it looks up movie data and cover shots in IMDB and Amazon.

And no, the DVDs are not pirated. We feel strongly about that.

We do, however, have a stack of (as yet) unwatched DVDs on our shelves. Either because we buy multiple DVDs at a time or because we don’t have time to watch our purchases immediately. Oh, don’t worry, we will watch them all and the special features too…although by that stage, we will have probably added another 10 new DVDs to the pile!

Here are our past 10 DVD purchases, for example:

• Fahrenheit 451 - watched movie and special features
  Directed by François Truffaut. In the future, books are banned and are burned when found. Montag is a fireman whose duty is to seek out the underground librarians an burn books, however when he meets a strange young woman with odd opinions, he begins to steal books rather than burning them.
• Accatone - John has watched it, but I haven’t
  Directed by Pasolini. After his girlfriend (whom he pimps) is arrested, Accatone goes down hill. He begs from churches and even visits his estranged wife and son in the hope they will help.
• Dogville - not yet watched (although we saw the film in the theatre)
  Directed by Lars von Trier. A woman comes to a mountain village as a fugative. At first they hide her willingly, but soon they start to impose conditions on their concealment of her and she becomes their prisoner.
• Red Desert - not yet watched
  Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. About the depressed and suicidal wife of a factory foreman.
• <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/Breaking the Waves - watched movie and some of the special features
  The story of a young bride in a Scottish religious community, whose husband is crippled in an oil rig accident. He convinces her to perform sexual acts with other men and to come back and tell him what she has doen, causing her to be outcast from her community.
• The Idiots - not yet watched (although have seen before)
  Directed by Lars von Trier. A woman finds herself involved with a group of people who pretend to be mentally handicapped. At first she is horrified, but soon discovers that letting oneself be an ‘idiot’ can be liberating.
• Love Nest - not yet watched
  An early movie of Marilyn Monroe’s, in which she has a co-starring role as ‘the other woman’. Should be interesting.
• Of Human Bondage - not yet watched
  Bette Davis and Leslie Howard star in this film. A young medical student falls in love with waitress. She cheats on him constantly, even becoming pregnant by another man and generally ‘does him wrong’.
• The Outlaw - not yet watched
  Directed by Howard Hughes and starring Jane Russell’s breasts. Howard Hughes famously fought the Hays Office for the right to show this film uncensored. The plot (my god, are you really concerned with that?) is a western about Billy the Kidd.
• <a No Man of Her Own - not yet watched.
  Clark Gable plays a gambler who marries a woman (Carole Lombard) on the toss of a coin, but starts to fall in love with her. Gable and Lombard eventually married in real life.

We should have some good viewing there, I think. Even if we never quite get to the bottom of the pile before we buy new ones.

I’m not sure about the ipod shuffle, but the mac mini looks good.

There are also rumours that we might have an Australian iTunes music store soon. I won’t hold my breath.