Category: Web

Alternate Ending: Little Shop of Horrors

One last link in between packing and waiting for baby Max to wake up for his midnight feed: Lost “Horrors” Ending Found on YouTube

Ten years ago, “Little Shop of Horrors” was available on a DVD including the toothier alternate ending — for exactly five days. But Warner Brothers failed to secure the proper copyrights for the alternate ending — and the DVD was recalled. For the next decade, producer David Geffen and Warner Brothers wrangled and promised to restore the original ending, until Warner Brothers finally discovered in 2007 that it had already been burned in a studio fire.
But while Hollywood argued, the coveted footage quietly slipped onto YouTube.

It sounds awesome… Alas, I have no time to watch it until I get back.

MTV redux


So MTV has somewhat atoned for the past decades of sin by finally providing… music videos! I browsed around for an hour and realized it’s literally been 20 years since I’ve really watched music videos… And it’s telling to see the #1 watched video on the site (I swear the kids linking to that vid must think Wang Chung is an Asian porn site).
Some of the videos seem to be in fairly high def as well. Go check it out; mtvmusic.com

Disposable Diapers vs Cloth: Carbon Footprint

We did the cloth diaper thing for a while and I was happy to do my own little part for the environment, but as soon as I realized how poorly cloth diapers performed compared to disposables, we switched. Now it seems that using cloth nappies might not be as environmentally friendly (in regards to greenhouse gas emissions) as everybody assumed: Blow to image of ‘green’ reusable nappy

“A government report that found old-fashioned reusable nappies damage the environment more than disposables has been hushed up because ministers are embarrassed by its findings…
…The report found that while disposable nappies used over 2½ years would have a global warming , impact of 550kg of CO2 reusable nappies produced 570kg of CO2 on average. But if parents used tumble dryers and washed the reusable nappies at 90C, the impact could spiral to . 993kg of CO2 A Defra spokesman said the government was shelving plans for future research on nappies.”


I guess the thing to remember is that the carbon footprint is only a part of the total environmental impact.

Literary Rules

  • Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
  • And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction.
  • It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
  • Avoid clichés like the plague. (They’re old hat)
  • Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
  • Be more or less specific.
  • Remarks in brackets (however relevant) are (usually) (but not always) unnecessary.
  • Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
  • No sentence fragments.
  • Contractions aren’t necessary and shouldn’t be used.
  • Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
  • Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
  • One should NEVER generalize.
  • Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
  • Don’t use no double negatives.
  • Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
  • One-word sentences? Eliminate.
  • Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
  • The passive voice is to be ignored.
  • Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
  • Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
  • Kill all exclamation points!!!
  • Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
  • Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth shaking ideas.
  • Use the apostrophe in it’s proper place and omit it when its not needed.
  • Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
  • If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
  • Puns are for children, not groan readers.
  • Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
  • Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
  • Who needs rhetorical questions?
  • Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

Forwarded by one of my students.

Keep it real

There are some fools claiming it’s all about WordPress. Get real, have you really read your master’s teachings? Is it not apparent with each link he magically conjures up in your footer?
Likewise, there are some claiming it’s all about Drupal or Textpattern or Nucleus (or Mambo or b2evolution). I’m not claiming that MT (which is running this blog) is the best, rather, I’m calling for the next true level of blogging software… We are far from the combination of power, features, and ease of use that each blogging platform claims to have but doesn’t really deliver… Bring on the next level, please. We are all waiting.