My Big Fat Greek Banning

    O, Helena, the seat of democracy.
    Dozens if not hundreds of sites are already spreading the news of the incredibly misguided and stupid Greek law 3037 which, in an attempt to curtail illegal gambling, puts a blanket ban on any type of electronic game from PC games to handhelds, even some cellular phones, both for public or private use. This law also extends to tourists, who might have foolishly brought some little handheld electronic game with them. Punishment runs up to twelve months in jail and up to $75,000 (US).
    The Greek paper Kathimerini reports, “The blanket ban was decided in February after the government admitted it was incapable of distinguishing innocuous video games from illegal gambling machines.” But of course. Aristotle himself would find such logic irrefutable. And if they need to combat reckless driving, I assume they’ll just start arresting anyone with a car.
    Thank Zeus, the Greek gaming community is putting up a fight. The Gameland.gr website was keeping track of the story, as well as a planned protest over the arrest of two Internet café owners. The interest in the story has overwhelmed their server, but the site has several mirrors, two of which can be viewed here or here.
    Maybe the lawmakers need to soak their heads in Windex.
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Lexiconga

    No more complaining I can’t make out the words, no more griping about how singers can’t enunciate. I found Dictionaraoke!
Posted in Links, Music | 1 Comment

Correction

    Contrary to previous reports, Richard Donner says he has no plans to digitally interpolate Joe Pesci into future versions of Lethal Weapon 1. “I don’t know how that rumor got started,” says the award winning director.
    …You see, it’s an obtuse swipe at George Lucas’s continuing desire to revamp the Star Wars movies.   Get it?
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Today in French Fries

    As reported in USA Today and on CNN, McDonald’s is contemplating changing the way they make their world famous French fries. “America’s favorite french fries are about to get even better,” says McDonald’s president Mike Roberts in the USA Today article. “This is a major step toward the elimination of trans-fatty acid from our cooking oil.”
    “Bottom line,” the article continues: “The trans fat in a small bag of McDonald’s fries will shrink 47% to 1.8 grams from 3.4. Saturated fat will drop 17% to 1.9 grams from 2.3.
    “‘This doesn’t turn french fries into a health food,’ warns Margot Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a critic of fast food. ‘But McDonald’s should be applauded for taking a step forward.’”
    Some are concerned the change might detrimentally alter the taste of McDonald’s famous fries, but our experts in the SFG Kitchens believe the taste hasn’t been the same since they stopped using beef tallow in 1990.
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SFG Time Killer

    While waiting for the next SFG update, perhaps you would enjoy whiling away the hours with a crossword puzzle. (Java required.) [Game no longer available.]
    This just in: I’ve added a wordsearch page too!
    Note: I admit the crossword puzzle is rather tough. It was a spur of the moment thing, while I try and teach myself to make a better one.
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Did that help?

    This site has been loading slowly at work, and I got to wondering if maybe I had too many entries — what with my using one database for seven other weblogs. So I spent the last couple days pruning away. I didn’t delete anything, I just turned the other weblogs back into plain old HTML pages (negating all the excited work I’d done a few weeks ago).
    So…did it help? Is the page loading faster for you?
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Electrical Storm

    A new U2 song is being released to radio today. A few stations, notably BBC 1, played the song a few days ago; but it was discovered they were actually a demo or remix of the song. All three known versions of Electrical Storm can be found here.
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Elvish Week

    Everybody else is talking about Elvish it seems, so why not me? I discovered this link, just in time, to a page of Elvish translations from The Fellowship of the Ring movie. It’s pretty cool to get to the see the Elvish dialogue in print.
    There’s a bit of contention over one line though. During the scene where Aragorn sends Arwen off with the wounded Frodo, he says something which does not show up in the subtitles. Some say it is “Be iest lîn” (“According to your wish”) whereas others (including myself) believe otherwise, if only because the supposedly Elvish phrase is not translated.
Posted in LOTR, Movies | 3 Comments

Maximum R&B

    I just saw this on Pete Townshend’s The Who site (e-mail registration required).

    THE WHO 2002 ENCORE SERIES    Eelpie.com and themusic.com bring you exclusive live recordings on CD of shows from the 2002 WHO tour of North America.
    The band are aware that many of the shows on this tour will be sold as bootleg recordings and to satisfy this demand they have agreed to release their own official recordings to benefit worthy causes.
    Recorded and mixed live from the sound board, these CDs will be as close as you will get, and as quick as you will get, to reliving the experience. By this process you will be provided with good recordings at a reasonable price just as soon as we can make them.
    Whether its because you enjoyed the show you attended so much, or whether you couldn’t make a particular venue but want to enjoy it anyway, you will be interested in this Encore series of CDs.
    We anticipate each double CD will be available within three weeks of the show concerned and all profits from their sale will go to young peoples’ charities supported by The Who.


    This is one of the coolest ideas I’ve seen in a long time. (The Music website wasn’t working this morning, but it’s up now and I just placed my order for last night’s Detroit show.)
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Great Moments in Movies (in MSPaint)

   (Note: this was originally featured in my YaBBSE message board. Now that it’s become a buglight for spammers and other reprobates, I’ve killed off the message board and dumped these MSPaint masterpieces here [roughly at the time they were originally drawn].)

The Ten Commandments


Close Encounters of the Third Kind


The Exorcist


Fantasia


Field of Dreams


The Godfather


The Graduate


Independence Day


Citizen Kane


King Kong


The Matrix


Memento


The Adventures of Baron Munchausen


North By Northwest


Patton


Psycho


Dr Strangelove


The Birds


The Wicker Man

The Wizard of Oz
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