Ackpth! and other onomatopoeias

[AssistantCrone]

Bad machine! No pudding! I assume the debit card had an expiry date on it, but that's far too small a window in which to get your replacement through. (If all else fails, steal a punt and go plundering).

[D.B.]

I assume the debit card had an expiry date on it, but that's far too small a window in which to get your replacement through.

Well, it did - but the wrong one. Anyone else ever heard of a bank admitting they've printed the wrong date on their cards? it all seems kinda weird to me...

[c_nordlander]

Poor Pat.

No concrete advice, unfortunately.

[Andreas]

Reminds me of a story that a buddy of mine told me recently. He went to an ATM to get some cash, inserted the card, the machine spit it out again and displayed "out of order". He went over to the other machine, inserted the card, got it returned, followed by the "out of order" message. So he drove to the next ATM somewhere else, inserted the card, and guess what? Yes, same story. Unfortunately, it was saturday afternoon, banks closed and whatnot. I guess he could have continued trying, but that would have shut down all ATM machines in town. I dunno how he explained that to his bank, though.

[D.B.]

So, anyone else seen the latest attempt to convince people to cut CO2 emissions? Anyone who dislikes films/tv shows/etc with gratuitous blood spilt in them may want to click spoiler first (the rest of you should just go straight onto the link, it's more fun that way ).

Spoiler

Schoolkids/employees/etc are asked who's going to be cutting their carbon emissions. Those who say they aren't get blown up in a rather gory way.

I'm a fan of horror films, etc, so didn't mind the visuals. But good god, what on earth were they smoking thinking when they decided "Hey, this'll win people to our cause" ? I find it a tad disquieting, not so much because of what's shown, but because when large organisations do this sort of thing so much attention is usually spent trying to cover all your bases to avoid complains and the ad being subsequently pulled - presumably this lot did the same sort of analysis, yet came to the conclusion that this would be seen by everyone as okely-dokely. Uh-huh.

[archonix]

It's been all over the web now. Even the more fanatical wing of the environmentalist movement have said it was a bad idea and there's been all the usual claims that it's a secret call to murder people. Personally I think it's more like a "clever" way to try and promote the idea that dissenters should be silenced because they're obviously bad people. The people who were blown up were portrayed as the rebels against an orthodoxy for the most part (in some cases slovenly oafs as well).

I'm still half-convinced that Richard Curtis wrote this as a satire of the obviously people he was contracted to produce the advert for; he's very much the anti-authority type and, whether they like it or not, with most of the country's local and national government signed up to this 10:10 pledge and with "I have a windmill on my roof" Cameron and "My environment minister wants to blow up all the coal plants" Clegg running the place, the global warming movement are now the authority establishment. When you see it that way it suddenly becomes hilarious, showing how petty and closed-minded they are about anyone disagreeing with them and how willing they are to go to extremes to make their point - things like James Hansen referring to coal trains as "death trains", various other bits of histrionic madness about reducing the world's population immediately if not sooner, and persistent calls from certain media greenies (not looking at anyone George Monbiot of the Guardian) for "deniers" to be put through Nuremberg-style trials and executed for opposing the righteous cause. Otherwise, I don't see how it made any sense to produce it. Unless they really are that insulated from reality to believe people would like this...

[SirMustapha]

This stuff looks like it was produced by anti-environmentalists trying to make the "green" cause look bad. At this point, I don't doubt at all that kind of stuff may happen -- with the green cause having become so "hip", the only way to try to effectively attack it is with such sneaky, dishonest measures.

And fuck whomener decided to put Radiohead as the soundtrack.

[c_nordlander]

Tyra Banks is writing a fantasy novel.

My first thought: fair enough, a lot of people have surprising things in them, and it'll probably be an average derivative fantasy epic at worst.

About... a magical land of photo models?

I'd laugh, if it wasn't for the fact that this stuff getting published and my stuff is not I'm an emo kid who should consequently cry more.

[Gulliver63]

This reminds me so much of a book that my wife showed me years ago. I know that there are SF authors that write romance, but this was an SF/fantasy novel written by a romance writer. And, again, I don't want to judge before I've looked at the goods. It was dreadful - this person (I think it was Janet Dailey, but I can't recall), tried to window dress a romance novel as an SF book...they didn't have a clue as to what science fiction actually was (they thought it was still laser guns and bug-eyed monsters). Loosely, the plot was about a tough bitch of a woman commander who falls in love with a barbarian on a barbarian planet. Why not make it a vacation planet with genetically engineered barbarians or something like Westworld? I wanted so bad to wrap up a copy of Dune and Ringworld and send it to this person, hoping that they would read them. Her other mistake was that she kept trying to explain how everything worked with some sort of 1930-ish jargon - all you really have to do is say something like, "He put his hand on the wall and the screen came to life." I gave that person an e for effort, but not much else.

Modelland - Hey Mike...we got us a cartoon idea!

[c_nordlander]

That's what you get when writers try to branch out in genres they're not used to. Even if they're skilled writers and have cool ideas, they'll have little idea of what's been done a million times, what's new and original, and what is accepted by the readers and can be skipped over (e.g. ten pages of describing how every piece of equipment works).

Heh, a vacation planet with genetically engineered barbarians - I'd probably read it. Sounds a darn sight better than "Modelland".

[AssistantCrone]

Bah, Stepford Wives did it better.

(The models thing, not the barbarian thing. Stepford Barbarians would have been too cool to be creepy).

[Gulliver63]

Hey...this has got me excited now. I can't wait for the movie version; it could be the greatest thing since Lou Ferigno's "Hercules". Let's see...Dino DeLaurentis' phone number has got to be here somewhere...

[archonix]

Movie version of ModelWorld (Why can't I stop thinking of Spice World?) or the movie version of Stepford Barbarians?

(e.g. ten pages of describing how every piece of equipment works)

Which is why every Tom Clancy novel ever written usually only takes about ten minutes to read.

[Gulliver63]

Genetically engineered barbarians! Android fashion models! From the creative genius of Tyra Banks comes the greatest fantasy epic since Krull the Conqueror...Modelland! Complete with soundtrack by Taylor Swift. An army of really good-looking robot models goes haywire and lays waste to the happy kingdom - one heroine must save Modelland and make things happy again. Now showing in Dank Cinemas everywhere.

[AssistantCrone]

Heh! Excellent. If the book turns out to be like this, I swear I'll never leave the house without my Louboutins* again.

* I think they're a sort of antelope.