No, no, no!

Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka in Tim Burton's remake? No, no, no, please God, no! What do I have to do, sacrifice chickens, self-flagellation, a thousand Hail Marys? I'll do it, just make this go away!



Update: Judging from all the other blogs, journals, and message boards on-line, I'm about the only person who doesn't think this is just the cat's knees and the bee's pajamas. Well, I like the original just fine, thank you, and it's hard to improve on Gene Wilder. I also think Tim Burton and Johnny Depp have both been getting increasingly mannered and creepy over the years, and I'm not sure how eager I am to see what happens when they get together again.

Dead man talking?

I guess you've all heard by now that we've captured Chemical Ali, which is quite a coup, since he's supposed to have been dead since April 5. (I've been looking for a contemporaneous link, but they seem to have all gone dead by now. Except the Fox News one, which I'm not going to link to.) Anyway, better late than never.



Amusement of the day: when you enter "Chemical Ali" in this Anagram Generator, you get "CIA call me hi!" (I wish could take credit for that, but I found it in this Fark.com thread.)



Update: I do, however, take credit for this improved rewrite: "Hi, CIA, call me!"

Oooooooooohhhhhhhh!

My life is complete: there is, indeed, a Web site called shoes.com. Oh boy oh boy oh boy...



(If this does not excite, nay, drive you wild with joy, you are clearly not a woman.)

Build your own hell!

Parents who bring squalling brats to R-rated movies
Circle I Limbo

The inventor of car alarms, My neighbors and their awful yappy dogs
Circle II Whirling in a Dark & Stormy Wind

Creationists
Circle III Mud, Rain, Cold, Hail & Snow

Republicans
Circle IV Rolling Weights

Qusay Hussein, Uday Hussein
Circle V Stuck in Mud, Mangled

River Styx

George Bush
Circle VI Buried for Eternity

River Phlegyas

Saddam Hussein
Circle VII Burning Sands

NAMBLA Members
Circle IIX Immersed in Excrement

Osama bin Laden
Circle IX Frozen in Ice

Design your own hell

Rodents (not mice)

J. sent me this link: rat-sized gerbils are decimating grasslands in north-western China. His accompanying e-mail:

They belong to the genus Rhombomys, and really ought to be marketed here in pet stores as the "Rambo Gerbil". They'd sell like hotcakes, only they're colonial and live in burrows. They sound a bit like prairie dogs, in a way. The story doesn't address what people might have done to cause a huge rodent population explosion. Like kill off all the local predators for the fur market, or start irrigating desert for grain production? Inquiring minds want to know. At least, this one does.

Hm, maybe the giant gerbils could be funneled into the fur market...

Unfortunate name of the day

Man, this poor guy: a British actor named Ray McAnally. (I'm going to start getting some unfortunate search results, too, I think...)

Spam

The "From" names cobbled together by spam programs are frequently amusing; this one's so good I had to preserve it before trashing the message: Litherland Struzzi.



I love it. It sounds like a Tolkien elf who married an Italian alpinist. I'll file it away for that grand fantasy epic I don't know I'll never write.



(Oddly, Mr./Ms./Sr./Sra. Struzzi's return address is "BoylGantzler@[snipped].com," which sounds neither Elvish nor Italian; kind of Irish by way of the Netherlands...)