Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Kurt's scary brother Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 06:27:34 GMT robert lindsay (rlindsay@shark.gsfc.nasa.gov) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Also, our "Nuke The Whales!" bumper stickers glow in their > > dark because of all the toxic plutonium. > > When I was in college, I had a 'Nuke the squrrells' button, because the > squirrels at Vanderbilt annoyed me. Damn, I knew I should have paid the extra $800 to get the better model of computer. This one doesn't have ANY anti-rodent buttons. And it's hard to jam mousetraps into the CD-ROM drive and it costs too much to keep hosing it down with WeaselWash(tm). -- K. I have a few Cherry Pez here but I chose instead to save them for a REALLY special occasion so I ate an Abba-Zabba instead while watching "Stand By Me". Does this mean that now I have to get Rob Reiner to make a movie where Jerry O'Connell talks about how he likes rock-hard white vinyl with orange grease inside before I can eat my Pez? P.S. This has nothing to do with the way I'm not stalking Wil Wheaton. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Searchenginebombing: A new twist. Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 06:47:40 GMT robert lindsay (rlindsay@shark.gsfc.nasa.gov) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Computers should be required to have a big lever you have to slide back > > and forth to indicate the operator's current level of irony when they > > look at other people's stuff. That would allow my site to deliver > > content customized to the level of irony of each visitor. > > Cool! Isn't that like the level Moltar uses on Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast? I preferred Moltar on the original "Space Ghost and Dino Boy" show, where he had a voice sort of like Truman Bradley. Come to think of it, all the bad guys sounded like bored radio announcers. I guess Space Ghost was a good guy because he sounded like an excited radio announcer. Sort of like Shaggy, but straight. Last week they showed the one where Moltar helps the Council Of Doom go after Space Ghost. Usually people notice that Zorak's silly little vest keeps changing from red to blue and back, but because I identify more with Moltar, I kept my eye on him the whole time, and in one scene where he was sitting next Zorak, Moltar's red-and-black hazmat suit turned yellow with white trim, and then it changed back, but Zorak and Moltar had switched places! Or maybe instead of just coloring in their clothes wrong they accidentally drew Zorak so that he looked more like Moltar than Zorak, or vice versa. Plus, Moltar's belt buckle got HUGE at one point. The previous week, Space Ghost said he was going to beat up a villain "for the last and final time," and the next week, Space Ghost said, "I guess when the energy mass hit the planet's core, it caused a cosmic explosion!" More superheroes should say funny stuff like that. In fact, everyone should talk like that. And let Alex Toth design their costumes. I still like how Space Ghost's chest has a picture of his face drawn on it. Does this mean that somewhere in a closet he has a sun hat with chest hair drawn on it? Does he get his other body parts confused too? Does he have ass elbows and butt boots? Last night, Mr. Ghost was being attacked by four rockets, so he used his Scatter Ray followed by his Destructo Ray. I don't know about you, but if I had a Scatter Ray and a Destructo Ray, I'd probably never use the Scatter Ray on anything. I mean, it's the sissiest ray ever. Okay, I take that back. If Shaggy uses it it could be sissier. Or when Shaggy changed from the lime-green t-shirt to the pink t-shirt in the '80s, was that just another one of Hanna-Barbera's little coloring errors? Do you think I should write to them so that they'd get to save their reputation for quality work by burning every cartoon where they slipped up, or would Cartoon Network then have nothing to show except Miffy? I still can't find my tape of the Filmation "Archies" cartoon where someone's facial features jumped off his face for just long enough for me to notice but not Filmation. It would be fun to set up a panel of Filmation "animators" against a panel of Hanna-Barbera's most talented and see which would do the best in this simple game I've devised called "WHAT'S WRONG WITH ARCHIE?" -- K. "The writing" would be an acceptable answer. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Searchenginebombing: A new twist. Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 07:36:21 GMT robert lindsay (rlindsay@shark.gsfc.nasa.gov) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Computers should be required to have a big lever you have to slide back > > and forth to indicate the operator's current level of irony when they > > look at other people's stuff. That would allow my site to deliver > > content customized to the level of irony of each visitor. > > Cool! Isn't that like the level Moltar uses on Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast? I should add that, instead of that long commentary on how poor Hanna-Barbera's old cartoons were in every aspect (except for Alex Toth's brilliant character design), I was originally intending to say "No, it's more like how the Weekly World News convinces everyone that it operates at precisely their level of superintelligence and all the other people who buy it are nitwits," but I got distracted because you said "Moltar" and let's face it, if I could be any Hanna-Barbera character I could choose, I'd be one of: * Moltar * Space Ghost (Gary Owens version) * El Kabong (but NOT Quick Draw McGraw) * Gleep * the lion from The Roman Holidays * The Human Torch, unless I got replaced by an obnoxious robot * the secret agent from William Castle's "Project X" * Black Vulcan, except with pants * anyone who gets to shoot Muttley ...so of course I got distracted by thinking about Moltar instead of doing the sensible thing and talking about how I'm the only one on the planet who ''gets'' the Weekly World News. ALSO SOME PRO WRESTLING MATCHES ARE FAKE!!! But Hanna-Barbera cartoons, they're real. Especially Moltar. You can tell he's real because there's that little air vent in the front of his mask so he won't suffocate. By the way, here's something only I and a million other people know: The original voice of Space Ghost was also the original host of "The Gong Show". In one of Chuck Barris's autobiographies, you can read about how Gary Owens got FIRED from "The Gong Show" because he didn't take it SERIOUSLY enough, unlike the MASSIVELY OVERTALENTED Chuck Barris, INVENTOR OF TELEVISION. -- K. And how come nobody's making fun of last week's "Celebrity Boxing" special here in alt.religion.kibology? Was it THAT stupid, that you guys don't even want to MOCK the way Greg Brady kept hurling himself at the mat whenever Danny Partridge waved his oversized padded glove three feet in front of Greg's oversized padded gut? Or the way they managed to pack almost nine minutes of boxing into a mere sixty minutes of commercials for Andy Richter's new show? I was looking forward to his show until they advertised it while Greg Brady was taking dives. I demand a sitcom that's advertised with REAL Brady blood! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Just Back from Vegas, Baybee! Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 07:02:10 GMT Paula (mmmtoblerone@earthlink.net) wrote: > > Darla Vladschyk (DarlaVladschyk@hotmail.com) wrote: > > > > Don't you wonder what the power bill for this joint is like? > > That's actually my explanation of gambling for dummies. In Las Vegas, I like to go to the top of the Stratosphere at sunset and watch as the different casinos turn on their neon over the course of about an hour. Then I go gamble my brains out in the one that turned their lights on last. Of course, my theory is ruined by the fact that the Stratosphere is usually the brokest casino in town (given that it's about a mile from the kitschy ones on the Strip and about a mile from the quaint ones downtown) so I demand that they build a giant mirror at the south end of the Strip just to make my theory work. Also, I still want the Stratosphere to catch fire again, like it did in 1993. It didn't have the non-revolving restaurant on top of it back then, it was just a 110-story-tall stick with a big fireball on top. Another theory is that they originally wanted it to be 100,000 stories tall so that people could gamble in zero gravity (where they would be so giddy they'd use POOR strategy when playing roulette) and stopped building after the first 110 caught fire. Incidentally, one of the three Eiffel Towers in Las Vegas is inside the Strat, holding it up, although none of the various flags around the Strat is French. In fact, none of the flags is from any Earth country. They're just flags from seventh-season "Mission: Impossible" countries. "Come on, replacement for Barbara Bain's replacement! We have to smuggle our secret IMF time machine into Schwadistan before they invade Oranbaq, Felgerkarb, and Zupperzappistan!" Then they crawl through a secret passage with a sign saying "SEKRIT PASSAGE" with one backwards "S", probably the one in the middle because it would look silly to have two backwards "S"s side by side. -- K. Just once in my life I'd like to run through a Las Vegas casino naked, shouting "LOOK AT ME! I'M NOT GAMBLING!" to make all the slot players feel silly. Assuming any of them noticed. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Woman stabs boyfriend for slow dishwashing Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 07:53:34 GMT Tim Chmielewski (timchmielewski@hotmail.com) wrote: > > Subject: Woman stabs boyfriend for slow dishwashing > > Wash faster Archie! Wait, I'm confused. Women are willing to be around Archie now? I mean, he'd have to be sexy enough to get her to want to be with him at least long enough to stab him. In any case, Oliver Sacks will write a book about this headline. It will sell as well as "The Man Who Mistook Chicken Soup For A Soul" and "Everything I Need To Know I Learned From Books Other Than This One" even though it might be only half as good. -- K. Men are from Mars, women who stab Archie are sent from Heaven. I'm just kidding. I wouldn't want Archie to get stabbed no matter how slowly he washes. Maybe the guy who got stabbed was Jughead from that cartoon? Send out a dragnet for that crazy woman who's always shooting hearts at him with her eyes! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology,soc.libraries.talk From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: We need cones... Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 07:56:53 GMT In alt.religion.kibology, Lots42 (lots42@aol.com) wrote: > > Subject: We need cones... > > at the library! Make the old farts line up to ask inapropiate questions > to the wrong people! Lots, I think I figured out who stole your computer. Don, shame on you. -- K. Stealing Lots's computer just to get free AOL, why, that's almost as wrong as PAYING for AOL. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Yay! Someone other than me watched Fox's "Celebrity Boxing"! Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 08:14:21 GMT Talysman the Ur-Beatle (talysman@globalsurrealism.com) wrote: > > so anyways, I was just watching celebrity boxing, and the results > were predictable: > > (1) danny partridge made baby greg brady cry! > (2) vanilla ice said "yo, whatchoo talkin' 'bout, willis?" > and willis beat him senseless and said "I'm goin' to > disneyland!" > (3) tonya harding did a tripleaxle on paula jones's head. > > I actually care squat about boxing, but I watched it anyways, because > hey, famous people were getting beat up. however, I think I would be > more interested in celebrity grossly mismatched boxing. george wendt > versus gary coleman! I don't know, I think the whole idea of "Celebrity Boxing" is pretty stupid. Someone should do a parody of it. They could use Claymation. I just hope they don't get it on the air too long after "Celebrity Boxing". It would suck if nobody parodied "Celebrity Boxing" in a timely manner. Also, the guy who wrote "Alien" should write a parody of "Alien" where a guy gets trapped in a spaceship with a killer beach ball, and "Saturday Night Live" should make fun of those three-bladed Gilette razors before they become old news. > or what about televised giant H fights? weren't we promised that? > where's the kibo vs. wil wheaton giant H battle? Waah! You're scaring me! I just saw "Stand By Me" and now I'm having trouble getting to sleep because I know I'm going to have nightmares about Wil Wheaton pointing a gun at me and saying "SUCK MY FAT ONE!" and then the fat kid will swipe my cherry Pez! The worst part is I have two kinds of Cherry Pez in my collection, and one of them tastes wonderful and the other tastes like bad icky artificial cherry, and I can't remember which is which. And besides, I refuse to box Wil Wheaton, because he's cool. I'd only box someone I didn't respect, like Bob Hope. ACK! Right when I was typing that last comma, my TiVo cleared its menu screen (after 15 minutes of idleness while I was typing stuff and it was waiting for me to tell it what to do) and started showing me "The Curse", starring Wil Wheaton. What, did Cinemax declare an International Day Of Wil Wheaton? Good thing I have two TiVos, I can just watch the other one. It should be Wheaton-free because I cleared out four "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episodes earlier today. They were those TNN reruns where everyone's head is a little too fat, but I think TNN meant to make the show that wide because they had to make room at the bottom of the screen that says "STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION" all the time in case I forget whether I'm watching "Star Trek: The Next Generation" or TNN's other show, wrestling. Why on earth did they go out of their way to distort the picture just to make sure I can watch the show even if I'm too stupid to figure out what it is? -- K. Notice I'm not making fun of Wil Wheaton's color "Outer Limits" episode where he blows up the Earth with his spaceship which is too wide, because I don't make fun of anything where all the special effects were done by people who didn't realize they needed to render their spaceships to a D1 tape with non-square pixels, OOPS! So this is like the "Happy Days" episode where they go camping and Fonzie can't get to sleep because there's stock footage of a super-narrow squirrel saying "CHIRP CHIRP", except I'm more worried about Wide Wesley. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Yay! Someone other than me watched Fox's "Celebrity Boxing"! Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 22:52:34 GMT James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > Talysman the Ur-Beatle (talysman@globalsurrealism.com) wrote: > > > > [...] > > where's the kibo vs. wil wheaton giant H battle? > > Waah! You're scaring me! I just saw "Stand By Me" and now I'm > having trouble getting to sleep because I know I'm going to have > nightmares about Wil Wheaton [...] > > Notice I'm not making fun of Wil Wheaton's color "Outer Limits" > episode where he blows up the Earth Well, it finally happened. You people gave me a nightmare. It wasn't about Wil Wheaton, but did feature Robert Patrick, as seen in "Terminator 2" and "The X-Files" and the "Outer Limits" episode with... Wil Wheaton. For some reason I was still employed at that supermarket in Schenectady where I worked one summer long ago. I showed up and the door was locked and there were guys inside taking away all the shelves and stuff because they went out of business without telling me. I tried knocking on the door to ask what happened but then this scary policeman (Robert Patrick) showed up and told me to get lost and started escorting me away from the supermarket, through these woods behind it. Somehow he morphed from the evil policeman from "Terminator 2" into an FBI agent from "The X-Files" along the way. We came to this hill that had this weird giant orange flower growing on a vine. The blossom was about three feet across and when I looked inside a whole lot of gnats and flies were orbiting around in it, and I said "It seems to be attracting insects," and he flipped open his cell phone and said "Get me FBI Headquarters," then the spooky music kicked in and the camera crane pulled up to reveal that on the far side of the hill were thousands of these flowers with a big gray cloud of bugs hovering over them, and then I woke up. Yes, I dream in television. Doesn't everyone? I love the use of dramatic irony in this dream, where the dream went to great lengths to show me the thousands of killer flowers but also made it clear that the other me didn't see them and was probably going to get eaten by gnats or something. In any case, Mr. Patrick is an actor I like, and I was glad to have him as a special guest star in my head. The weird part is that I don't like "The X-Files", I've only ever seen about three episodes of "The X-Files", and still Robert Patrick somehow forced me to watch one of his "X-Files" episodes while I was asleep. I'm glad David Duchovny doesn't have that kind of power. His style of acting could put me to sleep even if I was already asleep. -- K. How come Robert Patrick doesn't do standup comedy? I mean, he's got two first names, like Steve Martin and Lenny Bruce and Jack Benny and Robin Williams if plurals count and if there is more than one Robin William. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Yay! Someone other than me watched Fox's "Celebrity Boxing"! Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 05:42:15 GMT Matt McIrvin (mmcirvin@world.std.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Well, it finally happened. You people gave me a nightmare. > > Last night I dreamt that I was looking at a newly revised map of > Africa, a huge, glossy National Geographic wall map. Without my > knowledge, a vast number of national borders had been rearranged in > 1999. There was a huge number of tiny countries, like a map of the > Holy Roman Empire, or the Peloponnesian War. But there was a huge > region without borders in it, colored black: a slash extending straight > through the continent from about Tripoli to Dar es Salaam. This had > written in it the names of all the various ethnicities that lived in > it, a long, long, list; it was noted that it was called "the Wedge," > that it had no stable government, and that the only entity with any > authority there was the Church of Scientology. Oh! And these tiny little islands off the coast of it that nobody cared about but total nerds? They were the WEDGE ANTILLES!!! (Several miniature Stormtroopers from "Yoda Stories" drive in figure-8s in funny little cars while clown music plays, confetti falls, and Mark Hamill acts.) Then John Berkey comes in and makes your nightmare all blurry until Ralph McQuarrie fixes it and it becomes comfortably blocky. -- K. Also, why was it called "The Death Star" when it wasn't pointy? Shouldn't it have been called The Death Tomato? ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Judges? I need a ruling. Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 23:10:01 GMT Paula (mmmtoblerone@earthlink.net) wrote: > > While driving down the freeway today, I saw a car with the license plate > "VRY SEXY." The car was too far away to tell whether its driver was > male or female. I think the important thing is that you can conclude that the driver is not sexy, in the same manner that any food product named "Delicious Yummy Winko Crantasia" will taste bad, or any standup comedian who prefaces his monologue with "My mother says I'm a really funny comedian" will be bad. True sexy does not fit on a license plate. (It doesn't fit in a phone number, either. Trust me on this. Dialing 617-SEX-WRLD will not get you a world of sex, it'll just get you an annoying whining noise.) > I realized that if it was a man/boy/male type person, the license plate > would actually be a turn off instead of a turn on. To me, anyway. > If it was a woman, I wouldn't care much about whether she was sexy or > not, but I would wonder about her insecurity or egotism level. But then, > I assume she would be advertising for doodz, who might see this differently. > The car itself was a TT, so it was kinda sexy. The car was made from the mummified corpse of television's beloved TENNESSEE TUXEDO? Definitely NOT sexy! That's even less sexy than Mr. Whoopee's collection of 3-D porn drawn in chalk! > I guess I would be neutral if it were talking about the car. > > So how does this come across to others? I need to know for a report > that is due to the DMV before I can get new personalized plates. Most motor-vehicle departments don't permit "SEX" in any form on license plates (and if they had their way they wouldn't permit it at home, either.) Are you sure this wasn't one of those fake license plates you can buy in places like Hollywood souvenir shops, all of which say things like "HOT2TROT" and "BOO BEES"? Here in Massachusetts, we don't HAVE a DMV. Yay! We have an RMV. Boo! The Registry Of Motor Vehicles is like a Department Of Motor Vehicles except instead of car license plates it gives out HKEYs. -- K. Also, because Microsoft runs the Registry, if you try to renew the license for your old Chrysler K Car, they replace it with an XBox, which sucks because it's just four shopping carts tied together. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Cement wall hides poor district from rich and powerful Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 00:00:25 GMT l'AFP (via ClariNet) wrote: > > MONTERREY, Mexico, March 18 (AFP) - Presidents and ministers from some > of the world's richest nations meeting here this week to talk about poverty > will be spared having to confront poor people in the flesh, thanks to a > cement wall erected by local authorities hosting the UN gathering. Yeah, it's so hard to keep Presidents and ministers from spending all their time wandering into the poor neighborhoods. > "Monterrey's Berlin Wall," as it has become known here, is 200 meters > (yards) long and two meters high and is exactly one kilometer (mile) from the local taco (hamburger) stand. > serves to separate the impoverished El Caracol district from the > Fundidora convention center, where President George W. Bush and the > heads of 50 other countries will gather for an International Conference > on Financing for Development. > The conference, sponsored by the United Nations and aimed at spurring > an international campaign against poverty, (formerly known as "A Wall Around Everything" until someone told them "International Campaign Against Poverty" had a better acronym) > got under way Monday at the level of senior officials and ministers. > "It is the wall of misery, the perfect illustration of the gulf > between the world of the privileged and that of the poor," said > Laura Frade, an organizer of the Global Forum of non-governmental > organizations, which plans to present proposals to the Monterrey > summit from an estimated 3,000 delegates on ways to establish a > world order based on justice. > The area around the wall is largely deserted today, visited mainly > by photographers. The children of the district who wash cars for small > change have gone -- lured away by the offer of a "bonus" from city > authorities during the summit. > Monterrey officials bristle at the suggestion that the wall was put > up several weeks ago to shield the high and mighty from the poor. > "It is absolutely not designed to hide anything whatsoever," a city > councilor told AFP. > He said the wall was built simply "to protect children who play in > a nearby park from unsavory characters and drug dealers." Oh, what a happy world in which we live. I'm just glad that walls aren't designed to hide anything whatsoever. This means that from now on, I'll be able to watch naked women showering WITHOUT getting those X-ray vision implants! > But the wall is nonetheless part of the face-lift that Mexico's third > largest city has undergone ahead of the conference. > Municipal structures have been scrubbed clean, flower beds freshened > up and patches of grass devastated by heat and drought replaced with > strips of green turf. > Beggars usually operating on the outskirts of the Fundidora complex > have been transported several blocks away, with firmness but without > violence by special security units assigned to the conference, and > invited not to return. If l'AFP were a good wire service, I would accuse them of putting sarcasm in their news reports, because of their use of "invited". However, I don't think l'AFP is good enough to be able to do sarcasm on purpose. They probably think that the secret police were actually handing out little cards with lacy edges saying "Please go away and die and RSVP." Also, they forgot to specify the manner in which the Mexican secret police coerced the little kids with Coca-Cola products. I hope it wasn't one of the ways in which I'm thinking, but Coke bottles must have been involved somehow. After all, Coke is the Mexican secret police's main weapon. And primary underwriter. -- K. I want to move to a country run by Kool-Aid. They'd never be able to put a wall around anything for more than ten seconds, OH YEAH! (crash) ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Bad Idea, The TV Series! Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 07:08:18 GMT I noticed that today was the premiere of the sitcom "Baby Bob", based on the commercials from a few years ago with a talking baby selling computers. Because the sitcom about the Taco Bell dog never got made, this may be the first TV sitcom ever based on a commercial. It'll probably be the first one to be cancelled, too. Can we PLEASE stop with the talking baby and talking pet movies and TV shows? I want NO talking babies, NO dancing babies, and definitely NO adult babies. Moreover, I do not want to see anyone whacking guys in the crotch, whether a baby or a grownup is doing the whacking. Things I want: NO talking babies, pets, or inanimate objects. NO live-action versions of cartoons. NO cartoons based on live-action. NO videogames translated to any format other than videogames. and NO things with "3000" appended to the title to make them even cooler than two years ago was. In any case, I'm trying to sit through the first episode of "Baby Bob", which isn't even as funny as the commercials. Plus the lip-sync is not a tenth as good, and I've been racking my brain for hours trying to remember which brand of computer he advertised and I can't so even the commercials must not have been very memorable. Now imagine one of the ads stretched from thirty seconds to thirty minutes, with a laugh track. This is so dull that it makes "Small Wonder" look like "Fight Club". Oh, and an amendment: It's okay for the Jordan's Furniture people to make fun of talking-baby commercials, but ONLY IF they show the parody LESS OFTEN THAN THE OTHER ONES. -- K. I wonder if their furniture is as funny as their commercials? ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Star Trek (was: Re: Bad Idea, The TV Series!) Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 00:37:58 GMT Ben Allard (ballard@wpi.edu) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Things I want: > > > > NO talking babies, pets, or inanimate objects. > > I don't remember if Kibo likes Star Trek or not, so I can't tell if > Majel Barrett is the exception or the rule. So I'll go with the safe > bet and say "Douglas Rain?" That's different. The talking computer with the producer's wife's voice on "Star Trek" and the talking computer with Douglas Rain's prissy voice in "2001" were inanimate objects specifically designed to talk through the use of speech-synthesis technology. That doesn't bother me. It's when someone makes a whole movie based on the premise "THINGS THAT SHOULDN'T TALK ARE TALKING!" I start squirming in my seat. Unless the talking babies or talking dogs or talking ventriloquist dummies begin dancing, in which case I remain completely still lest I accidentally squirm in sync with the music, which might be considered a form of dancing. So, I don't run around screaming whenever my laptop computer says "The network connection has been terminated due to lack of activity" in its Mira Furlan accent. But if a hamster talked to me in real life, I wouldn't want to listen to it. And I certainly wouldn't pay to go see a movie about it. Oh, cartoons about talking animals or toasters or whatever are okay. Cartoons SHOULD be a zillion times weirder than reality. Live-action comedies shouldn't be creepy. Cartoons can get away with ultra-weirdness. To answer your question about "Star Trek", I wrote this white paper. With my COMPUTER! So I guess it's a white screen and not a white paper, unless your computer reads it aloud, in which case it's the whitest Majel Barrett ever. KIBO'S "STAR TREK" ESSAY Yesterday Ben Allard asked whether I like "Star Trek", so I figure it's time for my obligatory position paper on whether I, as a nerd, like "Star Trek", with fully justified arguments and lots of footnotes so I can present this paper at the biggest "Star Trek" convention in the world -- "The Internet". I definitely like the original '60s "Star Trek". Sure, it was kind of naive and simplistic at times, but it had really likeable characters, a very dramatic visual (and musical) style, and most importantly, stuff happened most of the time. The characters may have tried to solve most of their problems by punching people or blowing stuff up, but they didn't just sit around waiting for stuff to happen. Plus the aspects of the show which were actually bad were bad in a manner which tended to make the show unintentionally funny, as opposed to the sorts of badness that make other shows boring. For instance, Kirk was clearly an arrogant, misogynistic jerk (he tended to seduce women and then punch them in the face -- remember when he kissed the nice lady and socked her in the jaw in "Gamesters of Triskelion"? Or when he decided not to tell the woman in "Wink of an Eye" that he had discovered a cure for her illness?) and various other characters were ethnic stereotypes that were played for camp (Scotty's drinking, Chekov's insistence the Russians invented everything, etc.) The original "Star Trek" was en enjoyable romp about 3/4 of the time (some of the episodes were rather dull, but most were always a good adventure whether or not you watch specifically for the kitsch factor.) They remain enjoyable even if you've seen them a few times because they operate on a couple different levels -- you can view them as good light-weight science fiction adventures, or you can view them as "Batman"-esque camp. I was a heck of a Trekkie when I was about ten. And that is NOT the reason I own so many solid red and solid blue shirts. I just like primary colors, dammit! And black pants. "Star Trek" has nothing to do with my personal preference to dress exactly like a "Star Trek" character. It's not actually a "Star Trek" uniform if it doesn't have the little sticker on the chest. Unless of course you're an evil twin created by the Transporter, because they don't have the little sticker either, but they still count as being "Star Trek" characters and I swear I am NOT my evil twin. "Star Trek: The Next Generation" was much blander -- it lacked the visual (and musical) drama, looking more like these people were flying through space in a suburban living room or something. And it lacked most of the intentional and unintentional camp of the original (except for the odd scene where they let Brent Spiner or Michael Dorn be funny for a moment.) I didn't like the first two seasons at all (there was a sense they didn't yet know how to write any of the characters or full up a whole hour without serious padding and lots of recaps) and the final (seventh) season was atrocious (after they ran out of ideas and started filming the slush pile) but seasons three though six were mostly enjoyable, if not as goofy or action-oriented as the original series. On the original show, they solved their problems by actually doing stuff: Shoot that, punch him, seduce her. On "The Next Generation", they solved their problems through technology. Because most problems could be solved by pushing the appropriate buttons, this means there had to be a ton of padding in most episodes, where the characters either dithered about their stilted ethical dilemmas, or else were just too wimpy to even think of trying to solve the problem. Like so: DATA Captain, the ship is on fire. PICARD I see. Any suggestions? DATA Uh... RIKER Duh... WORF Hmm... TROI Captain, I am sensing... umm... DATA Captain, I will check whether the ship is still on fire. PICARD Okay, and then if it is, we'll schedule a meeting to determine what to do about the fire. WESLEY Why don't we just put it out with the fire extinguishers? PICARD WHO LET THE BOY TRY TO TELL ME HOW TO RUN MY SHIP? RIKER Shut up, Wesley! Sir, as his mentor, I apologize for him being a genius. WESLEY But, sir, we must have fire extinguishers. This is the 23rd century. GEORDI Captain, the phase flow induction coil matrix of the primary warp manifold has caused a subspace inversion of the multi-phasic tetrion stream in the forward lateral EPS conduit, leading to a breach of the phozon doop-de-woop chuzzlewit pop-o-matic. PICARD What does that mean? GEORDI It means we can't use the fire extinguishers for fifty-five minutes. PICARD I see. GEORDI Also they won't work if any of us goes through a doorway between now and then. And Worf and Troi have to have a dream where they turn into Antony and Cleopatra. PICARD Very well. Make it so. Implement Waiting Plan Gamma J Twenty-Seven Omega Omicron Three Alpha. Troi, activate dream sequence. This is a show where most of the jeopardy to the characters is a direct result of their own stupidity or the stupidity of the universe they live in. Most twentieth-century safety devices, such as brakes for elevators, have been uninvented by the time of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" so that everyone could die at any moment, especially because their newer technologies are incredibly dangerous. The Transporter has about a 25% chance of horribly mutating you, but they forget that every time they use it (I think the Transporter also removes a chunk of their brain whenever they use it.) In the seventh season, Dr. Crusher gave Barclay an injection to cure his common cold, and this one shot caused everyone on the Enterprise to turn into different wild animals (apparently cold remedies cause people to evolve backwards, and Barclay is one of those people who evolved from spiders) leading up to a scene where Picard and Data discovered that Riker has turned into a Cro-Magnon, and Data explained that his brain was now much smaller than it used to be, but during a commercial break Dr. Crusher gave him a shot which made the rest of his brain grow back except for the part that should be terrified of the Transporter, the cold remedies, and especially the Holodeck. Every time they use the Holodeck it tries to MURDER them. EVERY TIME. And the idiots keep going in. They even put on fancy period costumes so the big computer can murder them while they play dress-up. In this particular futuristic Utopia, there are few personal conflicts and no crime or mental illness because all "genetic abnormalities" have been eradicated and everyone's attitude is adjusted at birth. And they spend all their time inside this really sterile-looking plastic spaceship. The only views out the windows are of outer space. And the only framed pictures on the walls are of outer space. There is no television in this future. There are no movies. There are no team sports. There is not even any money. These people are bored out of their minds because all they can do is play cards without wagering (they actually play poker without betting, just to kill time) or they can read one of the four books on the Enterprise. Ever wonder why they all quote Shakespeare and Sherlock Holmes and Dickens, even the Vulcans and Klingons? It's because all books written after 1940 were destroyed in the Great Recycling of 2037. So everyone on the ship has already read the ship's copy of "Hamlet" and is so bored that they're hurling themselves into the whirling knives of the Holodeck just to have some sort of interesting experience. And when they can't get into the Holodeck, they go to the ship's bar and get drunk. Except it's special alcohol-free "synthahol" that lets them get drunk but not very drunk. On "The Next Generation", they spend a lot of their time trying to get drunk, except when they're trapped in the Holodeck. And the paucity of imagination shows in that they only use the Holodeck to recreate past eras. They never use it to make something like, oh, science fiction. If you had a room that could magically make any environment, wouldn't you make weird fantasy landscapes where anything could happen, instead of faithfully recreating bygone days? "Next Generation" did a bunch of good episodes during its middle years (I particularly like the one where Wesley accidentally traps his mother in a parallel Universe where not only is she the only one on the ship, but due to a design flaw the Enterprise doesn't fit in the Universe) but overall it's so emasculated compared to the "Let's go DO something!" attitude of the original show that it's usually hard to watch the same episode more than once. I would have liked more emphasis on the minor characters, because they had actual human flaws that made them interesting. Barclay was neurotic (and the only one smart enough to be afraid of the Transporter), Ro was pushy and uncooperative, and Wesley could have been much more interesting if they'd actually tried to think about what sort of problems an unusually bright adolescent might face, especially when trapped on a spaceship with a bunch of total stiffs. My favorite "Next Generation" character was a sarcastic Vulcan cadet who showed up in one episode ("Lower Decks") which must have been intended solely to introduce some interesting new characters for a potential spinoff. Ro was one of those, too, unfortunately the actress didn't participate in the spinoff that DID happen... The spinoff was "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine", where they attempted to make it more interesting and less sanitized by returning money (and crime and intrigue and personal conflict) to the "Star Trek" universe. However, the show rapidly converged on a knockoff of "Babylon 5", but while "Babylon 5" had at least an outline of a story arc plotted out for it in advance, "Deep Space Nine" was more like a soap opera where you could see them thinking, "Well, what ELSE can we have happen?" and it just rambled on week after week without much of an overall plan. They did a few good episodes too, but I found most episodes pretty boring. At least after the first few seasons they stopped making the resolution of every problem revolve around the fact that they had one crew member who could morph. After that came "Star Trek: Voyager", which was essentially the same as the final (slush pile) season of "The Next Generation", only even more hackneyed. They got trapped in the Holodeck in more ludicrous ways, and they overcame the ever-more-invincible Borg through convenient loopholes every time. Some of the early seasons (of the seven, although the first three seasons happened the same year) had truly awful writing. For instance, here's my summary of the first-season episode "Twisted": Tuvok reports that they ship has encountered an unusual "phenomenon... phenomenon... phenomenon" and everyone is really scared because it's making him repeat himself. Then Neelix bakes a blue birthday cake and everyone gets lost in the ship's corridor because the phenomenon is switching the stickers on all the doors, and Neelix disappears between scenes, and everyone gets trapped in the Holodeck where a French hooker tries to seduce the Doctor, and the captain goes crawling through an air duct but the phenomenon makes her arm get really long and she starts talking backwards, so Tuvok concludes that the only logical thing to do is to "do nothing", and there's a scene of them all sitting around doing nothing, and then everything's fine, The End. I didn't make that up. I COULDN'T make that up. That could've been a "Space: 1999" episode, with its mixture of garbled stuff happening for no reason and an ending where the magical evil unidentified force just GOES AWAY. Although most "Voyager" episodes weren't that bad (especially the later ones, which had more action) I feel that "Voyager" contained the very worst episodes of any "Star Trek" TV series. A couple were good, but they were far outweighed by the extreme badness of the many bad ones. And most baffling was the final season (allegedly the seventh, although the show was really only on the air for about five years) where every episode revolved around them using this giant digital camera prop. There were loving close-ups of this toy camera sitting on tables. Every plot required them to take a futuristic photograph of something with this futuristic camera, which is just like the digital cameras I own except three times bigger. I've always wondered precisely what the deal was with this "holo-imager" prop. Were they planning to sell clunky over-sized toy cameras? Finally, we come to the present series, "Enterprise", which doesn't have "Star Trek" in the title because the show is intended as This Isn't Your Father's "Star Trek". They did something admirable in jettisoning most of the twenty-plus seasons of backstory (much of it contradictory) accumulated on the four previous shows and trying to start from scratch in a new style with different rules. The visual style of the new show is excellent (the lighting is moody, the sets aren't fake-looking) and the cast is good as always but the writing... the writing... well, I can barely even call it writing. The characters are absolute idiots, sent out to explore deep space in Earth's only big spaceship without having been given any sort of briefing or training to tell them stuff like "When you land on an alien planet, don't test the atmosphere by opening your helmet, and then certainly don't go off and eat random local plants." On "Enterprise", life is a serious of random encounters that happen periodically, either leading to super-cheap offscreen space battles (much like the original series) or the captain having to rub up against the Vulcan woman because they're tied up, or they have to rub decontamination gel down the front of each other's underwear, or something. And after the first six episodes, one of the producers said in an interview that because they'd already used up their whole year's budget, the remaining episodes would take place mostly in the ship. For instance, one recent episode was 1/4 concerned with the ship being attacked by an unidentified offscreen spaceship and the remaining 3/4 was people wondering what the British guy's favorite flavor was so they can bake him a birthday cake (again, I'm not making this up) so most of the episode was people secretly trying to find out if the British guy liked chocolate or vanilla, and then they guessed pineapple and it turns out that he does indeed like pineapple cakes. Notice I didn't mention the awful, awful, AWFUL theme song. This is because the show has an awful, awful, AWFUL theme song which isn't worth mentioning, because it's AWFUL. And I don't mean "awe-ful" like a Bach organ piece, I mean "awful" like "If I could only have one piece of music when I get stranded on an island, I want it to be the exact opposite of this one!" "Enterprise" will presumably have a second season next year. I hope it will be better. It couldn't get much worse, unless they just spend all their time saying "Pineapple! Phenomenon! Pineapple! Phenomenon!" while sticking their hands down each other's underwear. Kirk would NEVER have done that! He only made out with women for LEGITIMATE, PLOT-DRIVEN reasons! I won't analyze the various "Star Trek" movies, which are special cases (especially the ones that were released with pieces missing -- that would be #1, #5, #7, and #9) except to say that I did enjoy some of them, particularly the new director's cut of the introspective and beautiful #1, the hammy low-budget melodrama and submarine battle in #2, the wacky sitcom adventure of #4, the silly straightforward action-adventure of #6 and #8. So to sum up: "Star Trek" (original series) Almost always very good. "Star Trek: The Next Generation" Usually good. "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" Boring. "Star Trek: Voyager" Bad. "Enterprise" Ecch. -- K. If I were Bill Gaines I'd call it "Ecchterprise" and then I'd go back to trying to figure out how to make fun of the title of Ed Begley Jr.'s new show (Wednesdays 9:30, 8:30 Central.) That IS the title. I suppose they'll still move it to different time slots even though that'll break the title. "Wednesdays 9:30" and "Andy Richter Controls The Universe" are the only two mid-season shows I have high hopes for this spring. If BOTH are good, it will be a WAY above-average mid-season. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Star Trek (was: Re: Bad Idea, The TV Series!) Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 22:46:22 GMT The Avocado Avenger (stacia@flinthills.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) writes: > > > > "Star Trek: The Next Generation" was much blander -- it lacked the > > visual (and musical) drama, looking more like these people were flying > > through space in a suburban living room or something. > > But ST:TNG forshadowed the Earth's upcoming unhealthy fascination with > ergonomics in the workplace. Back in the 1960s, everyone sat in chairs > which caused PAIN, dammit! PAIN!! Which meant you were at work! The > only comfy chairs were the ones at home. Man wasn't meant to be > comfortable at work, and on ST:TOS, you got the definite impression these > people were at *work*. But they were sitting in little Sixties "tulip chairs" which were sold over-the-counter in dinette sets. In fact, some of the Bridge chairs came from Bob Justman's kitchen. (You'll notice in "The Trouble With Tribbles" that they smash a couple of tables during the fistfight in the bar, but they're careful not to damage any of the chairs they rented from local furniture stores.) I agree with you that the chairs looked uncomfortable, but those weren't office chairs. They were home chairs... OF THE SIXTIES. Life was weird back then. Everything had to be tapered. Chairs had to have pointy tops that poked you in the back of the neck, and Mary Tyler Moore's slacks had to end in tiny sharpened macaroni-sized tips. > The first season of ST:TNG was particularly atrocious, where everyone > on the front deck was in a big beige dentist's chair. What about that late episode where they spend one whole act interactively designing an uncomfortable metal chair on the Holodeck because aliens are abducting them in their sleep and the only way they know is because one of the aliens sliced off Riker's arm and reattached it crooked by .00000001 meter and also George makes that big speech about how "subspace is like a honeycomb" with numbered cells emitting "spatially-inverted tetrions"? That episode had more chair time in it, and more wacky word salads pretending to be science, than almost any other. If you want baaaaaaad sci-fi chairs, think of the Liberator from "Blakes7" (the show that couldn't even afford an apostrophe.) They had slightly larger versions of those tulip chairs except as padding there were four giant cylinders nailed to each, end-on. So it was like having four points of your body supported by giant marshmallows while the rest of your body was unsupported in searing agony. And then the guy with the large hole in the middle of his eyepatch would try to shoot you unless you zapped him with your soldering iron. > [...] > > [regarding "Enterprise"] > Also, they did the 7 of 9 bimbo thing and created a character with > padded boobs and a skin-tight outfit. Yeah, it's not like the original show made all the women walk around in miniskirts that were so short that you could see their space panties even when they WEREN'T bending over to hand Captain Kirk his memorator. One of the bizarrest things about "The Next Generation" was that they still wanted to show the women's legs (remember Counselor Troi's perky cheerleader outfit?) but they wanted to pretend that the 24th century wasn't as incredibly sexist as the 23rd century had been, so on occasion they'd have a man walk through the background wearing the same little cheerleader skirt. Any time you'd see a shot of the four or five extras who represented the 992 people who had to evacuate the ship before the engines almost exploded, there was always one guy in a little skirt. They called it a "skant", although I think that's not quite as silly a name as "UtiliKilt". When I was in Seattle, Leah tried to take me to the UtiliKilt store, so I karate-chopped her across the back of the neck, rendering her harmlessly unconscious for precisely the length of one scene. -- K. And then she took me to the Eyepatches With Holes store, also known as "Archie McPhee". ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Star Trek (was: Re: Bad Idea, The TV Series!) Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 03:27:49 GMT pete (pfilandr@mindspring.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > "Andy Richter Controls The Universe" > > The whole time that his fantasies are being displayed, > I'm aware that nothing is actually happening in the plot. Who cares? They're ANDY RICHTER'S fantasies! Nothing's happening in the plot while you're listening to MY fantasies here, either. Or are you insinuating that I'm BETTER than ANDY RICHTER? SHAME ON YOU! I AM NOT BETTER THAN ANDY RICHTER IN *ALL* WAYS! FOR ONE THING, HE'S GOT HIS OWN SHOW ON NETWORK TV! I have to go buy plastic forks now, so I won't get to see the first episode until later tonight (it's orbiting inside my TiVo) so please don't spoil it for me by telling me whether or not Andy Richter acts all goofy. -- K. And please don't spoil the twist ending of the new "Star Trek" movie. "Entertainment Tonight" already showed me the clip of Wesley killing Data with a crossbow. Oh, and they said that they're replacing Whoopi Goldberg with Jar Jar. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Andy Richter Controls The Universe (was: Re: Star Trek (was: Re: Bad Idea, The TV Series!)) Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 05:39:43 GMT Ben Allard (ballard@wpi.edu) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > I have to go buy plastic forks now, so I won't get to see the first > > episode until later tonight (it's orbiting inside my TiVo) so please > > don't spoil it for me by telling me whether or not Andy Richter acts > > all goofy. > > This show was so kibological I may cry. It's a beautiful thing to see > something you love so much take form in the popular media. It was so > dead on that I wonder if Mr. Richter lurks here. Waah! You've ruined it for me! I won't have the enjoyment of sitting there wondering whether or not it's going to start to suck 3/4 of the way through! In case Mr. Richter or any other influential TV magnates are lurking, I should point out that I'm just busting with ideas for new TV shows. For instance, here's one that would be really cheap to produce, especially as I could be the writer and star: "GARBAGE IMPROV" I'd go to the garbage dump and make up stories about stuff I find. Sort of like Spaulding Gray with a head injury. I could make up stuff about why the golfball has a bite taken out of it, the person who threw out the golfball (and why they kept it so long), what might happen to the golfball, what I'd like to to do the golfball, and remind the home viewers that it smells worse than they think inside their TV set. And for safety I'd wear two pairs of rubber boots over one of those chain-mail wetsuits the shark divers wear. Then I could just plunge my hands into any sort of pointy filth with wild abandon! I could go to different dumps in different episodes... The classiest dump in the world! The smelliest dump in the world! The only garbage dump in Canada! And I could bring along exciting guest stars, such as a garbologist, an ecologist, an archaeologist, a poet, or a gourmet chef. And the best part is, the whole show could be financed by the bottles I find! So, I hereby call dibs on the concept of "Garbage Improv" and if anyone wants to put it on TV, they know where to find me. (I don't have an agent as I insist that all business deals be conducted in the open on alt.religion.kibology.) -- K. The best thing about "Garbage Improv"? NO TALKING BABIES! ...although occasionally I might talk to Half Barbie, DecapiBarbie, or Shrapnel O'Barbie. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Andy Richter Controls The Universe (was: Re: Star Trek (was: Re: Bad Idea, The TV Series!)) Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 23:36:10 GMT Paddy Smith (pjsmith40@hotmail.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > "GARBAGE IMPROV" > > > > I'd go to the garbage dump and make up stories about stuff I find. > > Wasn't that The Wombles? Or maybe Bagpuss. Well, the > Wombles made good use of the things that the everyday folks leave behind - > so they had the rubbish (trans: garbage) aspect, albeit not in a dump. On > the other hand, Bagpuss made up fanciful stories about the thing Emily had > brought, but that was always a thing that somebody had once lost, not thrown > away. Well, your British rubbish tips aren't the same as American garbage dumps. In an American garbage dump, the seagulls screech withOUT the funny accent. Plus in the U.S., all the garbage is red, white, and blue, instead of whatever colors it is in England. > So perhaps there is a niche for Kibo's enchanted landfill storytime. A good title for this TV series would be: (a) "LANDFILLER OF ENCHANTMENT". (b) "TIP-TOP RUBBISH TIP TOT TIME" (c) "THE MOISTNESS LURKS BELOW" (d) "JAR JAR'S GAR GARBAGE FUN FUN" Now put your pencils down and throw them away so future generations can make fun of them. > In fact wear the gas mask, and you'll sound just like the Soup Dragon > too. For Americans: the Soup Dragon was a character in an earlier, > higher-budget Blakes7 precursor, before they dumbed down. For Americans who don't watch PBS: On "Blakes7" (the show that had no time to stop for an apostrophe), the bad guys were all SWAT guys wearing gas masks that were attached to the fronts of their hat brims so that the masks could be suspended in front of their faces without actually touching them at any point. This way they could see around the sides of the masks. They were, of course, led by that guy who had the eyepatch with the hole poked through it (looked like it had been done by a pencil, as the edges of the holes stuck out.) And he was faithful manservant to that woman with the buzz cut. Those who have only seen "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" have no idea how cheesy science fiction on TV can look. And "Blakes7", cheesy as it was, is only about halfway down the ladder of production values, which is why it has so many fans. Oh, and also because it had a Fonzie character. > Fun fact: Matt Irvine, who did the special model effects for Blakes7 > (spraying hairdryers silver, hanging them from strings) is now a judge on > Robot Wars. Good thinking, seeing as he probably designed Orac, The Robot > You Carry Around With You. What about Slave, the supercomputer powered by two spaghetti strainers? I always liked the shots of the Liberator flying past the camera, where the ship not only turned into a photograph that had been cut out with scissors, but also turned black and white except for a little tinting on that green soccer ball that propelled it somehow. It looked almost as good as the shots of the Enterprise in Filmation's "Star Trek" cartoons. "Look! It's sliding sideways while getting larger! That must mean it's moving toward us while using its Perspectiveless Drive!" I always liked Orac, probably because I had Capsela as a kid. Well, only for about a day. The problem with Capsela sets was that you could only assemble them once. If the Tacoma Narrows bridge had been made from Capsela it would have NEVER come apart. So I assume Orac was indestructible. You see, Orac looked crappy for a good reason. -- K. The best thing about carrying Orac around was that you could also carry your neon tetras around inside him. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Andy Richter Controls The Universe (was: Re: Star Trek (was: Re: Bad Idea, The TV Series!)) Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2002 04:21:10 GMT [on the subject of the stupid-looking Orac "computer" from "Blakes7" and Capsela toys] Sherilyn (sherilyn@suespammers.org) wrote: > > I never heard of Capsela, but it sounds like a kind of anti-Lego. Lego > is infamous for its propensity to disintegrate, and Orac always looked > like he badly wanted to win a prize for being Best Artificial Brain Made > Entirely Out Of Transparent Lego. Obviously the fact that people could > make him go "eeeeaaaaargggh" and turn off simply by removing some > crucial bit of Lego only made him appear more fragile. Perhaps he was > really an Artificial Brain Made Out of Capsela. Each Capsela atom was a clear plastic sphere (about two inches across). They had six octagonal connectors apiece, and you used little octagonal tubes (about half an inch long) to join them. Each sphere contained one gear or something, and with the six or eight spheres you were given (along with a couple of hollow yellow pods to make it float) you could build either a rectangular submarine out of the spheres (like in "Man From Atlantis" only crappier-looking) or a rectangular tractor. Because the spheres had six connectors at the north, south, east, west, top, and bottom points, you could only make rectilinear groupings of round objects. You got so few spheres and they connected in such boring ways that it was quite limiting. One motor, one propeller, a few gears. That's all. And the biggest problem was that, once joined by friction-fit of polystyrene parts, they could never, ever, EVER be pulled apart. Know the two teams of horses on the Levi's label? Imagine all the horses accidentally tearing their bodies in half because some fool harnessed them to a pair of joined Capsela spheres. They formed bonds which were painfully indestructable. Leogs are amazing -- two Legos bricks made forty years apart will have exactly the same color, and more astonishingly, they will friction-fit to perfection. Never too tight or too loose (unless the bricks have been played with a long time and gotted dinged up.) When you consider that molden plastic flows into injection molds unevenly, and shrinks when it hardens, the way they can get any two bricks from the same batch to look the same and join easily is incredible, to say nothing of how they can mate with bricks from the 1970s. In addition, they're brilliantly designed to fit together in all sorts of weird ways. Three of the skinny plates stack up to the same height as a brick, but if you turn one of the skinny plates on its side, you can wedge it between two bumps of a brick. Or if you have a small brick, you can join it to the underside of another brick either aligned with the bumps on top or staggered by half a notch (the spacers between the bumps are the same size as the bumps.) And a small round brick can be positioned on top of another brick either around a bump or between four bumps. You can make all sorts of connections, including right angles and rotational joints, without even using any of the special parts like axles and hinges. And most of the time, the unusual pieces included with the themed sets (the pirate Legos, the space Legos, the medieval Legos, etc.) have these rather generic abstract shapes, so you can use your imagination and make all kinds of things with them. (Some of the newer sets, such as the "Star Wars" Legos, have pieces with more specific uses.) Even the graphic design of the instruction books is brilliant. There is no language in the instructions, so they don't have to translate them from Danish into twenty other languages. It's all pictures. Some of the "Star Wars" ones even include comic books showing the adventures of Lego Luke Skywalker fighting Lego Darth Vader (who can use the Force to make bricks assemble themselves) done entirely in pantomime. I have all kinds of fond memories of the many Lego kits I had when I was a kid. And I HATE Capsela. I played with the Legos for a thousand hours. I played with the Capsela for about one before they could never be used again, and even if they hadn't had that problem they still would have been almost useless. Legos can do anything. A Capsela set can barely do one thing, badly. I don't know why they're still on the market when there are so many other construction sets -- even the mediocre ones are better than Capsela. Heck, even freakin' Lincoln Logs are more versatile than Capsela. Even the Play-Doh McDonalds Brand McNuggets Officially Licensed Playset allows for more creative play. But Capsela was always marketed as a brainy educational toy because it required batteries and it had gears too. The larger Capsela sets included a flashlight bulb in a green plastic ice-cream-cone-shaped holder. This light bulb, of course, was the only part which remained useful in science projects once all the plastic spheres had welded themselves together. I built a complete replica of Orac around that light bulb. No, I'm kidding! What, you think I would have obsessed about detailing an Orac knockoff that looked exactly as cheap as the original? If I had made an Orac replica nobody would have liked it because mine would have looked considerably better than the clear plastic box with random stuff inside they had on the show. -- K. I love the episodes where Orac yells at everyone and calls them idiots, and they really are idiots because they're never smart enough to say, "Oh, shut up, Orac, you're just A FISHTANK FULL OF JUNK!" ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Andy Richter Controls The Universe Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2002 10:23:22 GMT Jonathan Benney (jdb@student.unimelb.edu.au) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > They were, of course, led by that guy who > > had the eyepatch with the hole poked through it (looked like it had > > been done by a pencil, as the edges of the holes stuck out.) > > except in the episode where he was disguised as a, quote, "incapacitated > rebel leader", unquote, and thus had his entire head bandaged up except > for an obviously fake eye where the eyepatch was supposed to be. And he > was also speaking in a supposedly French accent which sounded like > EEEEEEERRRRRGH AAAAARRRRRRGH for minutes on end. (For some reason I had > the video as a kid (I don't think I bought it voluntarily), and watched > it, oh, ten times before I realised he was actually sposed to be > SPEAKING.) > > So Blake teleports down to the asteroid where he's hiding, and the > surface of the planet is represented by the most incomprehensible > special effect I can remember seeing: it consists of an image of Blake > chromakeyed onto a picture of what looks like a large rubber band > dangling from the edge of a desk which has been pushed against a white > wall. There's some dialogue dubbed on which might explain this but it's > also unintelligible. It's the most disorienting minute of television > that I can remember seeing. Wow, I'd completely forgotten that episode. I think I need to forget it again now. My favorite "Blakes7" special defects: 1. The entire planet Ultraworld consisted of London's sewer system. 2. The planet Terminal was wiiiiiide because apparently they had a "Scientific American" issue with one of those radar maps of Venus, or something similar, and it was a map showing both hemispheres of the planet unrolled onto a wide ellipse, and they cut it out and had a wild adventure on it. (Note that the Six Million Dollar Man also once made a solo mission to an asteroid which looked like a double-wide planet. That was in the two-parter where he had to keep a mad scientist from changing the Moon's orbit, and the Six Million Dollar Man fixed this by squeezing a nuclear bomb into a different shape so the blast pushed the Moon back into orbit.) 3. The alien space station that had one of Heathrow's runways (seen at night) inside. Or was it Gatwick? All those London airports look alike when you see them in outer space. 4. When Space Commander Travis fell to his death in a deep well, the event was represented by a still picture of the actor getting smaller as it rotated in front of some psychedelic swirls. It was slightly better than the "Bounce Tube" effect from the pilot of "The Starlost", but slightly worse than when the fake Brady dad fell into the Pylon in the first three seconds of the second season of "Land Of The Lost". 5. In the final episode, when their fake Millennium Falcon (the Scorpio) was getting shot down, the impending breakup of the ship was represented by the camera tilting... and the control desk sliding back and forth across the flight deck of the spaceship. 6. This isn't really a special effect (were any of the others?) but it's my favorite "Blakes7" scene: Servalan had sabotaged the Scorpio by slipping a cubic inch of neutron star matter (weighing many tons) on board, as part of yet another ineffectual yet hairbrained scheme to kill them each week. In this case, Avon spent several minutes trying to push the thing out the airlock with a special toy plastic car they keep on board specifically for lifting ultra-heavy one-inch cubes. There was grimacing aplenty as Avon crawled across the floor pretending to have trouble pushing this tiny toddler toy. -- K. Any Andy Richter fans dropping in on alt.religion.kibology right now are probably very surprised to learn how important "Blakes7" is to understanding his sitcom. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Andy Richter Controls The Universe (was: Re: Star Trek (was: Re: Bad Idea, The TV Series!)) Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 23:18:44 GMT Pugg (pugg71everyzig@hotmail.com) wrote: > > "Kev In, Boyz Out" (kboyce@toad.net) wrote: > > > > Pugg (pugg71everyzig@hotmail.com) wrote: > > > > > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > > > > > [about his Amazing Concept for a Junkyard Wars/Whose Line crossover] > > > > > > > > And for safety I'd wear two pairs of rubber boots over one of those > > > > chain-mail wetsuits the shark divers wear. Then I could just plunge > > > > my hands into any sort of pointy filth with wild abandon! First of all, I don't know which one of you three guys bracketified my backstory, but it's NOT a "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" knockoff, because my idea has IMPROV in it. "Whose Line?" is all FAKE improv, you know, like "Mork & Mindy". > > > So, you're wearing one pair of rubber boots on your hands, then? Secondly, I assumed you folks would realize I meant that the anti-shark chain-mail wetsuit had chain-mail mittens attached. I don't know how common ones with the chain-mail mittens are, or if they even exist, but they exist when I fantasize about sticking my hands into trash, so if they're not on the market yet I'll patent the idea and make a fortune selling these just to other people who want to protect themselves against sharks and pointy garbage at the same time. Lab Safety Supply sells neat chain-mail gloves for butchers to wear so they won't damage their fingers while sewing extra fat onto your pork chops, and one variety has a big wrist cuff with not just one but TWO leather straps with buckles around the gauntlet cuff, and I just know that if they took that piece of handwear off the market, it would be the end of the SCA as we know it. I mean as nerds know it. > > Rrrr! Like I'm not already bitter enough that nobody replies to my > > posts, here you go making the SAME JOKE as me, without so much as a > > mother-may-I. > > > > [...] > > > > Besides, mine was funnier because it included GERMAN. > > Because German, as we all know, is the language of humor. However, > *mine* included the concept of Drew Carey and Cathy Rogers co-hosting > a game show with Kibo. I don't know who Cathy Rogers is, so I'll pretend "Rogers" is the last name of that obnoxious cartoon woman whose daily life runs counter to the entire feminist woman. You know, the one who keeps running around yelling "AAAAACK!!! I'M FAT!!!! AAAAAACK!!!! I'M TRYING ON A BIKINI AND I'M FAT!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!!!" and then there's an extreme closeup of her face filling the whole panel and the words "NOW I MUST EAT A WHOLE BOX OF GODIVA CHOCOLATES!!!" are jammed into her giant mouth. Possibly the words are made out of chocolate, I don't know. I don't understand "Cathy" because I'm not a woman. It's a good thing all women constantly worry about being fat so that us men never need to concern ourselves with our body images. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go buy a gas-guzzling car because if I bought an electric car everyone would think I were gay because it wouldn't go "VRRRROOMMMM!!!!!" when I drove down the block to the post office. Also, when you mail-order Rogaine, does it come in a plain wrapper? I want to have more hair but I don't want anyone to know it! > I think Kibo, Drew Carey and Cathy Rogers should co-host a show that > combines all the best aspects of "Junkyard Wars," "Whose Line is It, > Anyway," and "The Chair." What those aspects are is left as an > exercise for the reader. > > pugg > hint: John McEnroe is not the correct answer. Oh, forget all three of the fake torture shows ("The Chamber", "The Chair", and MTV's stupid super-fake pretend make-believe really-not-real "Kidnapped".) My "Junkyard Improv" show would not have any real or fake torture in it. However, I'm sure that some network will produce a REAL torture-and-execution show at some point (probably sponsored by Amnesty International) and I call dibs on making a show where people are locked in a room with a TV set showing the torture show and we track their eyeballs with invisible laser beams and the last one to glance at the screen wins a thousand dollars. -- K. And the losers would get to be on the other show. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Andy Richter Controls The Universe (was: Re: Star Trek (was: Re: Bad Idea, The TV Series!)) Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 10:10:19 GMT Ben Allard (ballard@wpi.edu) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Ben Allard (ballard@wpi.edu) wrote: > > > > > > This show was so kibological I may cry. > > > > Waah! You've ruined it for me! I won't have the enjoyment of sitting > > there wondering whether or not it's going to start to suck 3/4 of the > > way through! > > Sorry, I tried to be as general as possible. You at least have the > enjoyment of wondering whether it's going to be one of the wacky, fun > flavors of kibology, like discussing which recipie for durian fudge goes > best with horrible, horrible B-movies, or one of the dry, stullifying > flavors, like arguing over which particular sorting algorithym causes the > fewest memory leaks on linux boxen vs Beboxes. Is he a kook? Is he a > troll? Is Andy Richter Not Bitter? So you see, there's still plenty to > wonder about! Waaaaaah! You've double-ruined it for me! I was wondering if there would still be anything to wonder about and now I CAN'T wonder if there will be anything to wonder about! Stop being MEAN to me just because I like to save up TV shows so I can watch them when I have the correct snacks picked out to complement the funny! MY tomato-and-garlic-swirl bread wasn't ready when YOU enjoyed the show! I guess now I'll save the show until tomorrow night so that in the meantime I'll have something to talk about at the office: "HEY EVERYONE, BEN ALLARD, THE BIG RUINER, RUINED MY CHANCE TO HAVE FUN WONDERING ABOUT WONDERING ABOUT ANDY RICHTER!" and then they'll say "Who's Andy Richter? Are you allowed to be in this department? Why are you stealing that jar of okra?" -- K. P.S. It was delicious. Ha! Now I've ruined your chance to find out if this jar of okra was delicious! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Star Trek (was: Re: Bad Idea, The TV Series!) Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 03:12:26 GMT Joe Manfre (manfre@world.std.com) wrote: > > Waitaminnit. Does this mean you're the only nerd -- nay, the only > movie/TV criticizing person in the world who actually has good things > to say about "Star Trek: The Motion Picture"? Or are you just > trollerizing the entire Internet again? I think it's the most intelligent of the "Star Trek" movies, and it has absolutely fantastic visuals and one of the best musical scores of all time. The main problem is that they managed to alienate their target audience by going overboard trying to distance themselves from their own source material by making it super-duper-grownup -- the replaced the action with looking at stuff, they replaced all the cool-looking primary-colored things with rounded-corner beige plastic stuff (including the costumes with the feety pajama bottoms attached), and so on, in order to try to imitate "2001". Of course, it didn't work all that well, because it had to feature people like Shatner acting (and Shatner had become so pompous and oafish somewhere after the original series ended) so they wound up with this solemn, beautiful-looking, slow-moving, ultra-relaxed "think" piece studded with shots of bad actors reacting to stuff going past the window. "2001" works (if you're the sort of person who can sit through such a carefully-paced film -- "carefully-paced" means "really slow") DESPITE that it doesn't adhere to any normal rules of moviemaking. It contains essentially no characterization except for the talking computer -- HAL is an interesting character who has a personality. The humans who occasionally stand around in the frame motionlessly are these mannequin-like astronaut types. Kubrick clearly wanted the world of the near future to be sterile and mechanized, perhaps to make the scenes where something startling happens more startling, or perhaps just because he liked HAL better. (He would have. He didn't like people much.) "2001" doesn't have much characterization, it has almost no dialogue (and the dialogue it does have is quite dull), and the story is unconventional in that it presents -- entirely visually -- scenes from a million-year-long story arc that you have to piece together yourself. It doesn't have a regular "problem, climax, resolution" structure, it's fragments of something too epic (and too esoteric) to be depicted in any conventional way. Now, "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" is often an unhappy mixture of this attempt to do a fake "2001" and to adhere to some of the elements of the original "Star Trek", which was a show about people keeping the ship from blowing up by punching out a different supervillain every week. The mixture of the two resulted in something that wasn't a normal "Star Trek" adventure by any means, and was too cheesy in a lot of ways to be considered a super-artsy intellectually-oriented film like "2001", but it does have elements of each. And, unfortunately, it was damaged before release because they started filming before they had finished the script, then additional cast members (like Spock) had to be inserted after filming started, they went way over-budget having to redo the special effects (it had originally been intended as a TV-movie with cheap effects), etc., etc., until finally the movie had to be rushed into release with a few bits and pieces still missing, and it was long and people generally disliked it, so the studio did what they always do movies they think are bad and made it even shorter, which actually damages movies further but allows the theater owners to show it more times a day. Robert Wise's new DVD version of the movie manages to improve the movie a lot by putting back in much of the character-oriented moments the studio took out (many of the Spock or Decker/Ilia scenes) while still shortening the dull scenes. Also, all the scenes where the special effects were missing -- originally represented by people looking at a viewscreen showing a grainy blowup of a still picture, etc. -- have been properly completed (now we finally get to see what the big spaceship looks like when its cloud evaporates!) and the scenes which were eerily silent have the missing sound effects added. I don't think it's a great movie in any form, but I really like a lot of the elements of it, especially the DVD release. I think Jerry Goldsmith's grand orchestral score is the best part. (A tinny, hacked-up version of some of the music became the "Next Generation" theme.) The "2001" influence is most visible in the three or four long sequences in which our heroes just watch super-psychedelic special effects sliding past the window while the orchestra plays. The flight around the Enterprise in drydock. The flight into the cloud. The flight over the surface of V'Ger. And Spock's wild ride into V'Ger's guts. Seeing those sequences on a really big movie screen, with a great sound system, is a wonderful experience. Unfortunately, they keep cutting away to reaction shots of Shatner squinting and grimacing and otherwise crumpling his face into funny shapes because he's thinking, "I AM... SHATNER! I! MUST! ACT! MORE! I AM... THE SHATNER!" It's hard for me to do anything like rank the movie on a scale from "awful" to "great" because I enjoy watching it but I also recognize that it's really bad in places. If exactly the same movie had been made with a cast of unknowns, it might have been a milestone in the history of science fiction. But because they had to keep giving Shatner (and all the others) screen time in a story that wasn't right for their characters, it's obvious that it's a hybrid of two fundamentally different kinds of movie, each of which is trying to overwhelm the other. Shatner attempts to upstage the special effects. And his giant hairpiece manages to upstage them both. If you're expecting an action movie, you'll be very disappointed in "Star Trek: The Motion Picture". But if you're looking for a relaxing trip through a bunch of weird-looking stuff, you might enjoy it if the incredible overacting doesn't repulse you. (Stephen Collins and Leonard Nimoy are the only ones in the movie who give a good performance, in my opinion. The other "Star Trek" regulars make such a big deal out of every line they get -- DeForest Kelley shouts all his lines, Walter Koenig's accent is all over the place, and the bizarrely miscast guest star Persis Khambatta, well, she seems to be having trouble remembering her lines in English. Worst performance of all: William Shatner's wife, Marcy Lafferty: "Con, firmed vessel is, floating? free no for, ward mo, mentum?") > Hey man, I don't think that movie was as bad as people say it is, > either, although that transporter-accident scene still makes me shiver > after all these years. Also, some guy on the Internet said the > director's cut eliminates part of Kirk's reaction to said scene and > that that ruined the whole thing. Yeah, but on the second disc you can see all the deleted or enhanced scenes in their original form so you can still hear Kirk yell "OHMYGOD!" and McCoy say "or a crew of TEN A THOUSAND MILES TALL!" Unfortunately, they didn't remove him from the movie entirely. They should have gone in and replaced him with an actor who didn't go insane when his series got cancelled. One of the neatest extras on the supplemental DVD is a documentary on the making of the film where they actually show bits of the famous test footage they shot for the "Star Trek: Phase II" series pilot (before the idea of a Paramount TV network was shelved and they decided to do "The Motion Picture" instead) including David Gautreax's screen tests for Xon, the replacement for Spock. (He wound up having a bit part in the movie as Epsilon Nine Commander Branch, the guy with the most seventies hairdo ever.) David Gautreax gave such a great performance as the fake Spock that I figure he would have been a big star if "Star Trek: Phase II" had gotten on the air, depsite the poor quality "Phase II" would have been produced with. (There are at least two books documenting the "Phase II" saga, one reproducing all the story treatments and one complete episode script. My favorite detail about "Phase II" is that Paramount didn't want to admit they couldn't get their new TV network off the ground, so they hired a dozen writers to write "Phase II" episodes that wouldn't get made, while they were already working on secret plans for the movie. Some of the "Phase II" scripts became "The Next Generation" episodes, which is easy to see once you realize Decker is Riker, Ilia is Troi, and Xon is Data.) P.S. YOU'RE A NERD FOR CARING ABOUT THIS!!!! -- K. I also have all the "Space: 1999" DVD boxed sets if you want to hear about how I feel about the way they're interlaced. INTERLACED! They should put a big sticker on the box saying "JUST LIKE THE VHS TAPES WE COPIED THEM FROM!" ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Bad Idea, The TV Series! Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 07:34:54 GMT A few minutes ago, I wrote: > > I noticed that today was the premiere of the sitcom "Baby Bob", based on > the commercials from a few years ago with a talking baby selling computers. Oh, man, I'm trying to watch this show, which has an opening credit reading Based Upon the Commercials by Siltanen/Keehn Advertising and the talking baby's dad (Adam Arkin) just made a remark about how "the last guy who blew off one of the boss's dinner parties had his client list reduced to Carrot Top and one of the guys from the 'Whazzup?' ads!" and... and... and... AUGH! THIS MEANS THAT NOW THEY HAVE TO MAKE "WHAZZUP?" INTO A TV SHOW! EVEN WORSE, THEY HAVE TO MAKE SEPARATE ONES FOR EACH OF THE "WHAZZUP?" GUYS! In any case, I sure hope the closing credits of the first (and hopefully only) episode of "Baby Bob" do NOT consist of wacky outtakes of the star wetting himself. -- K. Oh, I did some searches to find out what the baby used to sell that I couldn't remember, and it was "freeinternet.com" (aka NetZero), one of those could-not-possibly- be-profitable companies that kept trying to get rich giving away the worst possible Internet service... FOR FREE! And now they're giving me one of the worst possible sitcoms... FOR FREE! Their parent company, United Online (which also owns Juno, another "free" Internet "service") had a stock price of $150 per share... before it went down about $142.50 a share in the past two years. It's amazing how stupid investors were two years ago. And $7.50 worth of them are still stupid. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Bad Idea, The TV Series! Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 05:28:54 GMT Lots42 (lots42@aol.com) wrote: > > What next? Celebrity Jello Wrestling? I believe Bill Cosby is working on that right now. Not for TV, though. Just in his basement. He also wants to team up with John Williams so the two of them can conduct The Boston Pudding Pops. And their tuxedos would get all splattered by the exploding pudding! To say nothing of what the tuba would do! Speaking of snack foods, how come they can advertise Kool-Aid on TV if they can't advertise Kool cigarettes? Couldn't they get away with cigarette commercials if they gave some money to save the rainforest and then said "BUY KOOL AID THE RAINFOREST!" They'd get sued if they used the same grinning evil pitcher, of course, but they wouldn't, they'd take out the red fluid and put in a cloud of smoke. At the moment I'm drinking the kind of Kool-Aid that comes in little plastic bottles inside a cardboard sleeve inside plastic shrink-wrap. I guess that makes me bad, ecologically speaking. Except that I don't own a car OR smoke cigarettes OR have a fireplace OR own a nuclear reactor, and those more than make up for my Kool-Aid consumption, so I can litter all I want and I'll still be better than you. Unless none of you own nuclear reactors either. I wish I had more friends who owned nuclear reactors. Cherenkov radiation is pretty. It makes ordinary water into blue Kool-Aid! Cherenkov radiation happens whenever sugar molecules try to go faster than the speed of deliciousness underwater. In any case, I want to Kool-Aid the rainforest, and Jell-O the sandbox. -- K. P.S. It's spelled "Jell-O" with a hyphen because that's the way they registered their trademark because the other spelling, "Jello", is a Japanese word meaning "aspic" and who would buy something that sounded as gross as "aspic"? ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Does anyone have Hulk Hogan's phone number? Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 07:46:32 GMT This may be a long shot, but... Is anyone here Hulk Hogan? I need to know for a project I'm casting. -- K. And it does NOT involve talking babies, talking dogs, or talking margarine tubs, just REAL puppets. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Does anyone have Hulk Hogan's phone number? Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 22:07:24 GMT Lots42 (lots42@aol.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > This may be a long shot, but... > > > > Is anyone here Hulk Hogan? > > No, but he goes to the same movie theatre I do. Would you like me to > pass along a message next time I see him? Sure. Tell him I know another major star who wants to work with him in a project that would be perfect for all three of us. -- K. And it AIN'T Shatner. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.sci.physics,sci.physics.relativity,alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Albert you were wrong Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 11:41:11 GMT Followup-To: alt.sci.physics.plutonium And now, TWO for ONE! In alt.sci.physics and sci.physics.relativity, "Arthur Knight" (arthurknighta@bigpond.com) wrote: > > Dear Albert, > You may have been right is some things ( I don't see you as part of the Brady Bunch cast this week, and now I'm sorry I checked this factory-reject "TV Guide". I forget whether I bought it from my local Mafia-run newsstand > establishment or a bad guy) but you were grossly wrong in others; I believe that if the sound of one hand clapping is heard, Peter Pan's friends will all become undead. The inner volume of my tent is persecuting me > through ignorance rather than any wrongful intent. The establishment were at used to be a man but turned into a rat when there was a full moon, but then one of his r's fell off, and Benny Hill thought I said "his arse fell off", and > first worried you may have been a threat to them, your theories bordering on Pottsylvania, where Peter Pan and the Mafia run an illegal newsstand selling the opposite of "TV Guide" out of a tent. They visit Dr. Purely to take > the purely physical, but later decided you were not; indeed because your defective edition of "TV Guide" said that both Carrot Top and Yahoo Serious were Conan O'Brien, I wasted time watching Leno instead, and his jokey > theories were so ambivalent this allowed them (the establishment!) to sleep over in Peter Pan's tent with the evil lining. Then Benny Hill stole someone's knickers and framed you for the pant heist -- the cops > portray themselves as being tolerant, also to you being a pantheist. The knickers, of course, are properly worn with the evil side outside, except when Benny Hill is playing a very fat man, and wears the tent instead. > Religious groups often cite you to justify their absurdities and also some of Benny Hill's, such as when he did an impression of Carrot Top playing Shakespeare's Bottom, which contained baffling > contradictions. If your theories were based completely on the purely evil side of Benny Hill's giant novelty underwear, the only hole in your theory would be a Y-front, and you'd have to take it off during Dr. Purely's > physical or materialistic and you had have declared yourself an atheist or someone who believes in Benny Hill and clapped your hands until he came back to life. But that didn't work, at least not for very long. As a > materialist you would not have got your foot on the first rung of the ladder because you'd be offended by Benny Hill's ribald pun: "What's runny and sounds like a bell? RUNGGGGGG!" so you'd rebury his corpse under his star on the Walk > of fame. And the religious would have burnt you at the stake (metaphorically representing Peter Pan's flaming lust as he rubbed his pajamas on the canvas interior of his evil tent, the fabric going "whoosh! whoosh!" as if it were > speaking; they don't do that now even if many of them may feel like it) They changed my "TV Guide" again to put the Brady Bunch and Benny Hill together to make the Benny Bunch, and also it says completing the hard crossword puzzle > made a virtual god out of you and others that give simular tacit support to Harvey Keitel's catchphrase from the sequel to "Saturn 3", namely "Saturn 3 2", in which he kept yelling "NO TACIT SUPPORT!" at Kirk Douglas and Farrah. See > them, with "Noble prizes etc", thus to make the populous gar gar and take Gar Gar Ginks and Genny Gill and Geter Gan and Girk Gouglas and, Gus, go get gas! Fargo North, Decoder, told me to say that. He helps kids take > their minds off the real problems besetting them. The establish almost sentence coherent. But wobble ix flep dorz Girk Gouglas, with melon the, not to mention "not to mention." Embedding someone in a tire will kill them > entirely and inevitably favour exploitation of the general public and General Electric and General Mills, who is a boxing referee according to this broken "TV Guide". I've had it with the way their magazine keeps > promoting fallacious beliefs creeds and pseudo science or misused science to create flavors of Hamburger Helper that destroy hamburger on contact. That's less helpful than Benny Hill carrying a 10' plank. Betty Crocker and Benny Hill > hold their power over the masses. The back bone of the establishment is "I before E except after C", but Albert Ienstien couldn't grasp that simple rule, nor could he pitch a tent with the evil side facing the right way. Let's make > believe" : Religions, The Medical profession and Drug companies Big Breakfast include two strips of bacon in the form of a crucifix with Claritin eyes. But taking into account Benny Hill's naughty extra > business, (a powerful alliance!) The Legal profession and Institutions, such as the Smithsonian Institution and the Mafia-run newsstand that sells an evil version of "Playboy" with an inflexible fold-out that cannot be opened by > Governments, Politics, cosy Bureaucrats (another powerful alliance) and so what? It makes almost as much sense as if Peter Pan, Benny Hill, and Betty Crocker brought about world peace by taking a bubble bath with no knickers > on. We now have (perverted "Globalisation" ) It was inevitable the world would revolve around Benny Hill someday, and not Carrot Top or Yahoo Serious. If I had another three dollars and fifty cents, another smiling yellow Lego > policeman would be bought! Almost anything that is good and right is stolen during pant heists and hidden in Peter Pan's inside-out evil tent, and all that's left is bad and left. Maybe Peter Pan's wild crime tent could be > infiltrated by agents or freelancers of greed and the establishment. To the south there is a view of the Tubbytronic Superdome. But beware if the TeleTubbies say they "wuv" you, for they like to tightly hug the > general public; "they almost have an irretrievable strangle hold on you". But at least it is a strangle-hold of wuv, unlike when Benny Hill and Peter Pan switch knickers: Peter's fall off and Benny is strangled from the waist down. > They now can destroy almost anyone who opposes them that is a real threat to my right to stalk celebrities like Girk Gouglas, Garrot Gop, or Gahoo Gerious. I'd love to garrote Garrot Gop with Benny Hill's oversized GVDs, stretching > them, using the media and the institutions they control. Don't think the word "wuv" too often or you will turn into a Teletubby or worse, Benny Hill's underwear. And it's all covered with brown streaks, smudges, swooshes, > skirmishes between religious groups and politics or within the confines of Peter Pan's evil tent of perversion, where Lego policemen often disappear on fantastic voyages of discovery. The existence of Lego-free > establishments themselves is a sign of hope of freedom. There is only a chance the next "Saturn 3" sequel will be called "New York 12, Chicago 5, and a partial score of Saturn 3." There's a fine line 'tween old jokes and crap, a > hairs breath of difference between which ever side wins. Sorry to be a cynic but I think the Teletubbies really have people inside, possibly in disguise. The late Howard Cosell jumped out of my ersatz "TV Guide" into my brain > but I cannot help telling it the way it really is. Still don't give up the spot closest to the flap in Peter Pan's tent to anyone because I don't want to have to climb over Benny Hill when I need to run away. I don't try to > fight because even little victories enable you to at least sleep at night in Peter Pan's tent of evil fun, unless Harvey Keitel keeps us awake shouting "NO TACIT SUPPORT!" while Farrah Fawcett's bad acting fails to steal any scenes > and give you some dignity. (see I am not a complete cynic!) Something even more complete would be a Lego policeman with two heads. He would be too complete, and you'd be arrested too fast, and go before a bribe-resistant judge > money cannot buy and the gurus in the establishment can never attain with Benny Hill parading around in that giant underwear. It ruins the serious dignity of "The Benny Hill Show". He should just wave fluffy pom poms with > all their pomp pomposity and power. None the less don't think they will get wet unless they sit in the first three rows. Unlike Harvey Keitel's "NO TACIT SUPPORT!", Mae West's catchphrase is something about sometime getting > their comeuppance in the next life because there just isn't one. That is the best "Brady Bunch" plot listed in this special "TV Guide", and it's not even as the actual ones with Cousin Oliver. Adding him to the cast was > just another ploy by the establishment (one of many) to placate you to be placoated with a goopy layer of Play-Doh. DOH! A deer! A female deer! Nobody, not even the great Girk Gouglas, can explain the meaning of this > content with partial or no justice. Arthur. ps If you want to relieve your self in Benny Hill's underwear, that would be just plain gross, which is odd because visually, grossness is seldom plain, usually a mass of blotches and > frustrations and make small waves join me in criticisms of them and maybe "The Benny Hill" show was stupid and maybe it was funny and maybe it was both, but everyone can agree on one thing: He chases people at double speed to > make them feel a little uncomfortable now and then, and those of you being exposed to Teletubby wuv rays and/or illicit tacit contact with Cousin Oliver, Peter Pan, Garrah Gawcett, or Yahoo Serious on the knee or > in the know of what goes on behind the scenes out of conscience guilt, like that gal in "Goldfinger" who died when she guilt her conscience including the crucial spot at the back of her mind. Should've used sticky Play-Doh, to > perhaps join us. Even the innocents of the families of the establishment suffer from the occasional bout of antidisestablishmentarianism, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, and sucking chest wounds, which > themselves often get sucked into the injustice of the system they themselves mentioned in a letter to the editor of the other "TV Guide", where it was ignored by the scientific community, engrossed in the "Benny Hill" plots they > helped to create. Sometimes members of the establish themselves get hoisted by their waistband until they get an atomic, chemical, or biological wedgie, based on specialty, unless the Brady Bunch is mimicking Le Petomane, stinking > up on their own petard, but not often enough me thinks. Arthur. With special guest stars Benny, Yahoo, Carrot, Peter, Harvey, Kirk, Farrah, Howard, Cindy, Bobby, Jan, Peter, Marcia, Greg, and the other Teletubbies. -- K. The only way I could get through all of that was to keep imagining Raul Julia yelling "TUH-RIPLE JACKPOT!" to keep my spirit, and my pinball score, up. How come they never made a Benny Hill pinball machine? ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: I warned you! More "Knight Rider" on the way! Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 06:36:26 GMT Remember how a few times I've mentioned that David Hasselhoff keeps trying to make a "Super Knight Rider 3000" movie? Hot news from Variety: -> -> "Knight Rider" revved up for feature -> Tue Mar 19, 4:33 AM ET -> -> By Michael Fleming -> -> NEW YORK (Variety) - Sony-based Revolution Studios is teaming with -> Mayhem Pictures partners Mark Ciardi and Gordon Gray for a souped up -> feature version of "Knight Rider," the NBC drama that starred -> David Hasselhoff and a car voiced by former Screen Actors Guild -> president William Daniels. Don't forget the late Edward Mulhare (from "The Ghost & Mrs. Muir".) Now that he's passed on they'll have to replace him with Don Knotts (from "The Ghost & Mr. Chicken".) -> The vehicle is being overhauled to fit in with the action-oriented -> youthful demo that Revolution is gunning for with its summer entry "XXX." -> Hasselhoff will executive produce the film along with series creator Glen -> A. Larson. Larson has been signed to write the first script draft. Let me get this straight. They're retooling "Knight Rider" for a "youthful" demographic? What, is the new "Knight Rider" going to be for toddlers instead of 7-year-olds? -> [...] -> -> The "Knight Rider" concept revolved around crime fighter Michael Knight -> and his partner, a sleek black customized Pontiac Trans Am that could -> travel 300 mph and leap 50 feet into the air. Of course, because the movie will be twice as long as an episode of the show, they'll have to slow it down to 150 mph. -> In the deal brokered for him and Larson by Intl. Creative Management, -> Hasselhoff will have input in the film, and he is also expected to -> play an onscreen role. Hey, he could be the Mulhare! And Christian Bale could be the Hasselhoff! IF ENOUGH OF US WRITE LETTERS TO THE STUDIO THEY'LL HAVE TO PUT CHRISTIAN BALE IN "SUPER KNIGHT RIDER 3000"! BETTER YET IF ENOUGH OF US WRITE LETTERS TO THE STUDIO THEY'LL HAVE TO CANCEL PLANS TO MAKE "SUPER KNIGHT RIDER 3000"! ...aw, never mind. Let them make their silly talking-car film. I can't get excited over thinking "Knight Rider: The Motion Picture" is a bad idea compared to, for instance, "Baby Bob". Hey, and how about a movie where a talking baby drove a talking car? They could fight talking crime! Wait, that doesn't make sense. IT'S PERFECT! But wait! That little Variety article was just the beginning! The "E!" channel's Web site has MORE! => "Knight Rider": The Movie! => by Josh Grossberg => Mar 19, 2002, 12:40 PM PT => => David Hasselhoff is getting ready to make some Knight moves again. => => Revolution Studios is gearing up to revive Knight Rider--NBC's cult hit => 1980's action series featuring Hasselhoff as the titular crimefighter => aided by his trusty talking Trans Am K.I.T.T.--for a potential big-screen => franchise. Hey hey hey hey! I got another great idea for Hollywood! The most profitable thing in the world is a movie based on a valuable franchise, right? So, how about "McDonald's: The Movie"? Willard Scott would play Grimace! With Christian Bale as Ronald! => Hasselhoff is on board to executive produce the flick with series creator => Glen Larson. There's no word yet what kind of screen time, if any, => Hasselhoff will have. Never mind that. When will Glen Larson's "Automan" series come to the big screen? We're getting a second "Tron" movie and a "Knight Rider" movie, therefore there MUST be an "Automan" movie. Christian Bale would be Automan! The "Whazzup?" guys would play Desi Arnaz Jr.! => Hasselhoff has been trying to jumpstart the project for a while. Last => September, he told E! Online, "I'm really excited about it. We're working => hard to get it off the ground." (i.e. it'll be shown mainly on airplanes) => When Hasselhoff first started shopping the new Knight Rider around, it was => reported that his character, Michael Knight, would be a supporting player, => acting as mentor to a new generation of younger (and presumably hotter) => operatives. A Revolution spokesperson, however, says the story still needs => to be hashed out and the stars need to be cast. => => "Right now we just bought the pitch, and no script has been written, YO, HOLLYWOOD! HIRE ME! I GOT'CHER "KNIGHT RIDER" CONCEPT RIGHT HERE! => so [Hasselhoff's] involvement or what he's gonna do is up in the air," => said the spokeswoman. "But once we get the other cast down then we'll => kind of work the script around him." Another idea! Stephen Hawking fighting crime in a talking wheelchair that would keep arguing with him! Christian Bale could be Stephen Hawking! => Larson is currently hammering out a script that will update Knight Rider => to appeal to The Fast and the Furious set. => => "It's going to be a big action film," says the Revolution rep. "[Larson] => is going to write the script but obviously it's not a remake of the TV => show." Somehow I don't think a great tagline would be "SUPER KNIGHT RIDER 3000: IT'S NOT SO CRAPPY ANY MORE." => To that end, the studio plans to overhaul the black Trans Am (originally => voiced by St. Elsewhere star and former Screen Actors Guild president => William Daniels) and refurbish the story to appeal to a more high-octane, => teen-male market. => => "There will be a lot of gadgets and a lot of toys [in K.I.T.T.]," the => studio spokesperson adds. In the original series, the souped-up sports car => was equipped with enough options to make a car salesman drool and James => Bond jealous. The Trans Am could travel upwards of 300 miles per hour and => used its turbo boost to jump through the air. It also had infrared X-ray, It's like regular X-ray except it can't see through glass! => audio-video recording capabilities, mircrowave jamming, chemical and blood => analyzers, ejection seats, oil jets, a smokescreen, flame thrower and a => grappling hook. Oh, if only William Castle were producing this. Then the theater would have ejection seats. => The original Knight Rider featured Hasselhoff as a young undercover cop => who, after getting shot in the face, is recruited by a dying billionaire's => secret Foundation for Law and Government to battle the baddies. He gets a => new identity via plastic surgery, a new name and a new ride. Hasselhoff => and his garrulous car entertained audiences for four seasons before NBC => axed the show in 1986. To improve it, the new car should be loquacious. Possibly even prolix. => [...] => => Hasselhoff & Co. hope to get the new Knight Rider up and running on the => big screen by 2004. Just as long as they don't wait until 3001 to do "Super Knight Rider 3000" or it would seem STUPID. -- K. Christian Bale would be the three! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: I warned you! More "Knight Rider" on the way! Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 23:28:12 GMT Daniel Edwards (edwardsdp@yahoo.com) wrote: > > Uh, does David Hasselhoff know that they don't even make Trans Ams > anymore? What, is KITT going to be a USED car? Last time we saw KITT, in "Knight Rider 2000", he had turned into a red Ferarri. Then in "Knight Rider 2010", they had a talking '57 Chevy pickup truck powered by a teardrop crystal from an old chandelier. In "Team Knight Rider", they had various vehicles, such as a four-wheel-drive truck and two motorcycles that could turn into something looking a lot like Automan's Autocar. Clear, in "Super Knight Rider 3000", KITT will be a Segway. -- K. After all, the regular SegwayHT already has the little glowing smiley face staring up at you until it breaks. Then it turns into a little picture of Dean Kamen dancing around with another eight thousand dollars of your money clutched in his hands. But in icon form it's hard to tell him from Greg Brady. So please don't sue the real Greg Brady just because the sixty-pound scooter that's almost as fast as a bicycle and almost as convenient and almost as ecologically friendly and only significantly more expensive broke in the middle of the street while cars were running you over. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: I warned you! More "Knight Rider" on the way! Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 08:27:36 GMT "J. Calhoun" (jcalhoun@cunning.co.uk) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > In "Team Knight Rider", they had various vehicles, such as a > > four-wheel-drive truck and two motorcycles that could turn into > > something looking a lot like Automan's Autocar. > > Not quite. The Autocar looked like a fake Lamborghini, or maybe a Vector W-8. > The Team Knight rider car looked like something Hot Wheels threw out on the > grounds that it was too silly looking. Remember they're the ones who make > jet-powered chicken trucks and jeeps that look like scorpions. I stand corrected. The two cars were gay in completely different ways -- one because it looked like something little boys wouldn't want to play with and the other because it was in a show about a shy nerd who used his computer to create a perfect male model who would take him on wild adventures and say things like "Come into my world, Walter," while pulling him towards his chest. (I am not making that up. Desi Jr. would climb into the male model's chest to hide inside him.) I don't know why people keep accusing KITT of being gay. Clearly "Automan" was the gay show, and ALL talking cars can't be gay. I think KITT was probably a heterosexual talking car. Of course, it's hard to tell, because there weren't any female cars in KITT's world. So, what do you think of the car in the movie "Robot Jox"? (That's the movie where the evil guy with the bad accent yells "I weel krush yiew, liek BUGGG!") That car appeared to be made out of cardboard and was polyhedral with about five sides. I'm not sure why it was a flying car, given that it had the aerodynamic styling of a Tetra Pak. > > Clear, in "Super Knight Rider 3000", KITT will be a Segway. > > And the next generation of talking car will be a Toyota Prius, > voiced by Ed Begley Jr. At this point, I'd like to run around screaming for a while because last week I had the mistaken impression that Ed Begley Jr. was peering in through my seventh-story window from his silent electric helicopter. I know he'd never do that and I had the wrong idea but I'm still scared. I kept expecting the phone to ring in the middle of the night and hear a spooky voice say, "EVERRRR HEARRRRD A SHIRRRRT MAKE A PHOOOONE CALLLL?" But he's a nice guy and would never stalk me even though I've seen everything he's been in. Don't forget to watch his new sitcom, which is officially titled "Wednesday 9:30 (8:30 Central)", the only sitcom to have two colons, three if you count the person who thought that was a memorable title. Ed Begley Jr. plays the president of a TV network (showing programs with better titles such as "Paper Or Plastic".) It's produced by one of the folks from "The Larry Sanders Show", and I always enjoy Ed Begley Jr., so I'm hoping it'll be good before ABC murders it. Plus apparently John Cleese plays "Red". I hope that means he'll have red Bozo hair. John Cleese could be the first funny Bozo. The wacky TV network that Ed Begley Jr. is in charge of is named IBS, which I assume isn't all shows about Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Hopefully they won't show that three-dimensional fishing show from "Batman & Robin" that reduced him to a vegetable. So, if we're lucky, it will be very good, and it will stay on the air forever, keeping him busy so they'll have to find a third "St. Elsewhere" character to be the voice of the "Knight Rider" car. Is Howie Mandel available? You can catch the premiere of "Wednesday 9:30 (8:30 Central)" next week, I think on Wednesday. Go here now to be told to watch it: http://abc.abcnews.go.com/primetime/wednesday930/index.html The link even says "go" in it because you have to go there now. Go! -- K. P.S. The "Ever heard a shirt make a phone call?" movie was the one I had to threaten to sue Blockbuster over after they charged me something like a hundred dollars for moving to a different town after I returned the tape. Don't shop at Blockbuster, even for Ed Begley Jr.'s movies. If you can't find them anywhere else, you should just go without Ed Begley Jr. for a while. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: I warned you! More "Knight Rider" on the way! Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 08:48:16 GMT True story. While I was just writing that article about "Knight Rider 2000", one of my TiVos started recording "Knight Rider 2000", on a whim. That's the one where it's the distant future year of 2000, and KITT has the power to electrocute James Doohan for no reason, and all crime takes place in a single shopping mall, and Dan Quayle is President. That TV movie begins on February 19, 2000. Why do we need to know what day of February it is to enjoy the talking car? The thing started recording it while I was typing the article, and when I was done I turned on the TV and got a "Knight Rider 2000" surprise. Anyway, this is just another example of how I've got my TiVos so well-trained that they are somehow accessing my alt.religion.kibology articles to record the obscure old TV-movies I'm making fun of, even before I finish making fun of them. Yay! KITT just zapped James Doohan. Also one of the future guys says James Doohan "played Scotty in all ten movies", so I think David Hasselhoff owes us three more original-cast "Star Trek" movies in addition to "Knight Rider 3000". "KNIGHT RIDER" LIED ABOUT "STAR TREK"! -- K. I better not mention "Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp" or the TiVo will subscribe me to some secret cable channel that shows it. P.S.: "Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp" ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: I warned you! More "Knight Rider" on the way! Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 23:01:02 GMT Poot Rootbeer (poot@dork.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Hey hey hey hey! I got another great idea for Hollywood! The > > most profitable thing in the world is a movie based on a valuable > > franchise, right? So, how about "McDonald's: The Movie"? Willard > > Scott would play Grimace! With Christian Bale as Ronald! > > Stop trolling us into reminding you about the existence of "Mac & Me"! That was the OLD, SCARY Ronald McDonald who stopped "Mac & Me" for the big "breakdancing Ronald McDonald" scene in which Ronald was credited as playing himself. The NEW, MUCH LESS SCARY Ronald McDonald hasn't been credited in any live-action movies yet. The old Ronald McDonald did do a TV-movie pilot for a series of "movies" based on public-domain tales ruined by commercialism (the pilot was "McTreasure Island", yes, really) and I believe the terribly-drawn creepy-looking Klasky-Czupo cartoon tapes of Ronald McDonald travelling in time are supposed to be the new version of Ronald, but it's hard to tell because he's so diseased- looking when drawn spastically by the people who make everything they do look like their only hit, "Rugrats". But I still say that Hollywood should make an actual theatrical film -- preferably a glamorous biopic -- about Ronald McDonald, just so I can have the satisfaction of choosing to not see it. > I wish Michael Moore would hurry up and film "Roger & Mac & Me"... I think he's busy at Enron headquarters trying to straighten out the crooked "E" on their sign. Am I the only one who was traumatized by an elementary-school eye test involving "E"s facing four different ways but I wasn't allowed to say "that E's backwards", I had to try to remember this bizarre mapping of "backwards E -> 'window', forwards E -> 'door', downwards E -> 'table', upwards E -> 'sky'"? To this day, I still think they were trying to confuse me just to sell me eyewear to get me ADDICTED TO GLASSES. -- K. There's also one involving the "C" from the "Crate & Barrel" logo facing four ways. That eye chart makes big sparks if you put it in the microwave. Also a whole block of those "C"s makes a magical kind of glass