The Matazone blog

Very, very cool Japanese video. It starts slowly, but about fifty seconds in it changes into something amazing. It’s called Sentimental Journey and by the end really does have quite an emotional impact.

It’s yet another great link from the William Gibson blog. Apparently he’s finished his new novel, so now I think he spends all his days watching obscure stuff on YouTube!

Ommmmmm!

Instant anagrams, ‘tea gazing ash om’ is ‘Matazone Haggis’, and Doctor Who’s anagramatical spin-off ‘Torchwood’ would have been very different if they had gone for ‘Hot Rod Cow’. Anagrams of ‘Matazone The Other Side’ bring up ‘threesome’ in the jumbles, so that amused me greatly!

Do you remember this? A heron decided to eat a rabbit for no discernable reason. This time it really is a pelican, and it’s eating a pigeon.

See the full horror here. That has to rate as one of the most surreal images that I’ve ever seen. The BBC report describes the moment a pelican casually strolled across to a pigeon, picked it up in its beak and tried to swallow it. A 20 minute struggle ensued, before the pigeon was swallowed, head first, still flapping as it went. Ew!

I don’t know about you, but I think that ‘pelicans eating pigeons’ probably features on a big list of signs of the end-times. No doubt Channel 4 are probably preparing a ‘Top 100 signs of the Apocalypse’ TV show at the moment, in which this event will feature quite highly, just after ‘Too many “Top 100…” TV shows on television’. It’ll be hosted by Jimmy Carr or Russell Brand.

Thanks to Daria on my forums for finding the link.

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year has been judged and there are some very cool pictures. The winner was a lovely picture of Cthullu rising from the depths, but I think my favourite is Still Life with… Aargh! There’s a bloody huge bear at my window! Great stuff, check them out!

You cannot escape the T-Rex of Love!

Mythicnorms is a selection of adorable bitter-sweet cartoons and love and loneliness. Check them out!

I wonder exactly what President Bush is being told in the White House about events in Iraq, which are by all measures getting worse by the day, because he said this yesterday:

My attitude is, don’t do what you’re doing if it’s not working — change. Stay the course also means, don’t leave before the job is done. We’re going to get the job done in Iraq.

Let’s break that down because the (lack of) structure is a bit confusing:

My attitude is, don’t do what you’re doing if it’s not working — change. If what you’re doing doesn’t work, try something else.

Stay the course also means, don’t leave before the job is done. Don’t stop until you achieve your goals.

We’re going to get the job done in Iraq. Ah… Now here’s the tricky bit. What he’s doing in Iraq clearly isn’t working, but he’s against any change of tactics. This bit contradicts the first thing he said.

There’s a technique in hypnosis and persuasion techniques where you use deliberately confusing sentence structures to occupy the rational mind, and then give it a clear and easy direction immediately afterwards. The conscious mind latches onto the clear instruction and accepts it because it resolves the uncertainty that it was facing before, even if that instruction would usually be rejected. Could it be that this technique is being employed by Bush, either deliberately or subconsciously? Either he’s immensely deluded about the situation in Iraq or there is some very sneaky stuff going on in his language.

EDIT: Or he could simply be an idiot with no clue and a lucky linguistic quirk. I really shouldn’t jump to paranoid conclusions!

What the flipping nora is that?