Virgin Mary Acts Rationally, Claims Bishop

"It doesn't make sense to me that Our Lady, in some way, would tell someone 'I'll see you in Knock on the 5th of December'," Bishop Walsh said, scathingly. "That goes away from the rational."

Belfast Telegraph

Oddest "Poor Battery Life" Metaphor Ever

"Battery life is the boil on the face of most smart phones, and RIM claims the Bold 9700 will lance that boil in time for the BlackBerry ball."

cnet

**Warning: Article headline includes phrase "less big".

Trump Protesters Escalate From Horses' Heads

A sperm whale that washed up on the beach at Balmedie, just north of Aberdeen, has been removed to a landfill site after it began to get too smelly.

This is the environmentally sensitive site where Donald Trump plans to build his golf course 'n' apartments complex. Is the dead whale a message to The Donald? I'd like to think so. I know a few fishmongers in Aberdeen who'd slip you a sperm whale under the counter if they knew it was for a good cause.

Signs and Portents

Laist are hot and bothered (actually, they're cool and unruffled) about 90210 featuring an impossible location: two characters meet under a letter of the HOLLYWOOD sign, which is off-limits to the public.

Makes sense, doesn't it? If ordinary folks could clamber up to the sign then there'd be all sorts of shenanigans afoot. Letters would be smashed up and/or stolen. Then all the people who live to the east of the sign would be able to pour through to the west - and, before we knew it, east and west America would be reunified and the capitalist system would be consigned to the trash can of history.

Nightmare Job #439

"Busy surgeon has many great ideas for science fiction, historical fantasy and adventure novels, wants to pay a co-author to actually flesh out the ideas and outlines into complete novels..."

elance (may well require registration)

This busy surgeon is advertising on elance for a ghostwriter, and I'm sure he (it's got to be a he, surely) will get lots of offers. I'd be more interested in writing the story of the busy surgeon who dreams up science fiction, historical fantasy and adventure while he's hacking away in the theatre.

Or perhaps I could pitch an "alternative reality" novel where a writer gets a job as a busy surgeon? I reckon I could "flesh out" as well as the next guy, given the right instruments, and someone to catch me when I faint.

Girls And Corpses Magazine

“I keep a corpse in my car for shoots and stuff,” he said. “You never know when you’ll need one.”

LA Weekly

Phrase Of The Day: Wall Wart

The universal charger will likely use half as much energy on standby as conventional chargers, solving the "wall wart" problem.

Mother Jones

How To Start A Review

In a typically cynical insight, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once observed that romantic love is nothing but a subterfuge by which nature ensures the survival of the human species.

He could hardly have known that a couple of hundred years later, love — or rather, three-minute depictions of how one falls in and out of it — would have become the focus of an enormous industry selling CDs and music downloads.

There seemed to be very few cynics at Miley Cyrus's Halloween night concert at Freedom Hall.

(etc etc)

The Courier-Journal

There's Always Someone Worse Off Than Yourself #754

"Today, I'm upcycling a bag of wine corks (compliments of my crafty sister-in-law) into an eco-hip crisscross cork trivet to use on the Thanksgiving table."

Sadly I can't find a nicely laid out page for this story - if you want to make your own cork trivet (which you don't) you'll have to try this rubbish snapshot from the Google cache.

Sentence Of The Month

Ms Hadfield - pictured in the festival’s spinning egg, which she described as “like a sensory-deprivation chamber, but friendlier” - said more than 60 volunteers were contributing knitting to cover central Footscray’s trees.

- Maribyrnong Leader

Woman sees Rudolph in pork chop

Of course she does.

Official: Okay To Kill Zombies

'Did you know that the same guy founded Atari (in 1972) and the pizza/video-game chainChuck E. Cheese? Nolan Bushnell was ousted from both companies right before they hit the big time. And now he's writing a science-fiction novel. [...] Bushnell has come out against ultra-violent video games like Grand Theft Auto because it's not constructive or cathartic to portray violence against a cop, sex worker or pimp. But it's okay to show someone killing zombies, because "they're already dead!"'

io9

Amanda Holden In A Jar

This is a very exciting idea from Kenco, the coffee people. Instead of buying an actress, using her up, and then throwing her in the trash so that you can replace her with a fresh one, why not "refill and reuse" the same actress? It's kinder to her, and it's kinder to the planet. Not sure what use it is for Kenco.

How to Fix... high speed rail

Now that Lord Adonis, the Greek mythical character in charge of British transport policy, has swung his weight behind a high speed train link between London and far-away Birmingham, we can expect work to start any minute, and the new service to be running perfectly by the spring. That's certainly what happened with the wonderful Crossrail project, without which London would have seized up years ago.

But a big problem remains: Where is the line going to go?

I don't think there's much disagreement about the overall answer to this question. Clearly, the most logical place to put the line is on the ground. There's a huge amount of ground stretching between the two cities, and all we need to do is find a continuous, narrow strip of it that doesn't have any houses on it.

However, there's a much better way – a simple solution which is, as temporarily Heathrovian author Alain de Botton might say, “ruddy brilliant”. Instead of finding a new route for the track to be built on, the line's builders can simply lay the rails on the fast lanes of the M40 motorway. Anyone who can prove that they habitually drive along the fast lane at speeds above 90 mph will be offered discount tickets on the new train service, and their cars will be taken away and crushed. This will solve the road traffic capacity issue, while at the same time demonstrating the government's ability to solve problems through sensitive negotiation.

Having studied the route of the M40, I will acknowledge that it does have quite a few curvy bits, and that the high-speediness of the new service may well be compromised in some sections. There's one particularly vicious curve that's almost a right angle, where most drivers need to open their eyes and/or stop eating for at least two minutes as they struggle to keep the car more or less on the tarmac. This sudden diversion in the road was designed to protect some butterflies who would otherwise have been crushed, but it's quite possible that the butterflies have since flown away, meaning that this stretch could now be straightened.

Journey times between London and Birmingham may be reduced by bends in the line, but the delays can be countered by removing “station stops”. Passengers will be treated like mail freight: tossed into large hoppers hanging over the sides of bridges. No one really wants to go to places like Banbury or Bicester anyway, as they're full of lorries, so that will help.

The service can be further improved by removing Shakespeare tourists, who would otherwise need to be thrown out as the train passes Warwick. Given the huge investment made at Stratford station in east London – there are now three hundred platforms, direct links to every European capital and signs in Catalan – it makes sense to shift the Shakespeare industry down there. It's much nearer the Globe, and Harrods.

Finally, the big kitsch statue that greets international travellers at St Pancras sets the keynote for the kind of public art we'll want to see associated with the new high speed line. St Pancras has a couple kissing, so it would be fitting if Birmingham New Street was adorned with a couple breaking up. The man could be throwing the Simply Red CDs at the woman, for example. And the whole thing could be made of leaves.

Brand naming genius

Brewers to the nation Molson Coors - or, as drinkers of a certain age might know them, Bass - are to launch a low-alcohol lager with a bottle size cunningly designed to contain exactly one unit of alcohol. They must be hoping that this gesture will further show their commitment to promoting "sensible drinking" among the lower orders. Why else would they be calling the new brew "C2"? According to the hallowed demographic classification defined by the National Readership Survey (NRS) on behalf of the newspaper industry, C2 means "skilled working class".

Spooked tuna juveniles

Hooray! 

If, like me, you've ever despaired at the dearth of stories featuring the phrase "spooked tuna juveniles", your Google-zero-hit-misery days are over! Oceanic Tuna Limited to the rescue!

Right, I'll put the exclamation marks box back now.

"Shooting Stars" at Surbiton

I am nothing if not up-to-date - and therefore I seem to be nothing... Because here I am reviewing a movie that was made in 1927. Shooting Stars was co-directed by Anthony Asquith, the son of a prime minister who went on to make a long and honourable list of British films.

My affection for this silent dramedy is enhanced by the knowledge that it was made not far from my house in glamorous Surbiton, a corner of south west London these days known for, well, not for anything really. Shooting Stars is about a love triangle among three actors making films, and makes extensive use of the studios that used to exist on Park Road.

I didn't know this when I dialled it up at the bfi's wonderful (and free) Mediatheque facility one day last week. But as the film started I was surprised to see it credited to "British Instructional Films" of "Surbiton, Surrey", and then I got my Googling attachment out. I knew there'd been a studio nearby, but not that anything in the way of a classic had been made there.

The studio closed a few years after the making of Shooting Stars, though I don't know if it was demolished immediately. The larger site it stood on belonged to the grounds of Regent House, a mansion built in the late nineteenth century by the founder of London's Cafe Royal (which is on Regent Street).

In those days, Surbiton was in the countryside and the owner had his own deer park. After he sold up, or perhaps after he died, the Stoll company established a movie studio in the house's ballroom. The behind-the-scenes shots in Shooting Stars are clearly of a brick-built, hanger-style studio - double height, I should say. I'm sad enough to freeze-frame movies to look at the quality of the brickwork in the background, and I can report that the studio at Park Road didn't look like it was built to last.

The site where the house, grounds and studio used to lie is now covered in houses. But they're not all quite of the same age, and I have a feeling that the studio site may have been built over later than the rest. Some features of the boundary wall still survive, though these are not in great shape.

It would be fun to mobilise the homeowners on the site, equip them all with metal detectors, and see what we could find... Maybe a film can here, a prop medal there - I believe that various World War I dramas were shot amongst the shrubbery. We could get Time Team over... "Here, Tony! Look at this!"

And just think: if we had managed to retain the lido and the film studio, this part of the suburbs would really be quite something, wouldn't it?

The most-used line in Eastenders...

... is: "Why aren't you in school?"

I haven't been keeping score, but I bet you all the money in the world (and all the debt) that this line has been used more times than any other in the entire history of the show.

A Store Too Far

Every little hurts, as Saint Tesco said to the Tolworthians.

Bon Jovi at ninety

There's going to be a big party to celebrate Jon Bon Jovi's ninetieth birthday! Come along to the free concert at Twix-en-ham, nr London this Friday, and show your support for the man who single-handedly freed the whole world from oppression - through his music.