Set Adrift.

I discovered this pamphlet about a very odd movie called The Drifting Classroom. It looks fairly cool, check it out...

It looks a lot cooler than it actually is. I watched some scenes from it and it is pretty B-A-D.
The first 3 1/2 minutes are full of horrid dialogue and clichés and then it picks up a notch and goes incredibly surreal. The dialogue remains banal but the visuals are kooky.

If you have the gumption to track down the entire movie, you're braver than I.

Instead, you might want to check out the original manga it was based upon. It looks even weirder but in a good way.

Unrelated but interesting is this Clear File featuring the Sanrio gang.

 

When picking up dinner today, I noticed that "Trick or Jim Beam" is the worst version of "Trick or Treat" I've ever heard.

Today's Kemono Friend is a stormy cryptid called ライジュウ or Raiju.

Some cool trivia about the actual Raiju from Wikipedia is as follows.

• Raijū 雷獣 in japanese mean "thunder animal" or "thunder beast".

• In old Japan it was said that trees scored by lightning had been the work of Raijū claws, and that scorched tree trunks were the result of their wrath.

• Another of Raiju's peculiar behaviors is sleeping in human navels. This prompts the Raijin to shoot lightning arrows at Raiju to wake the creature up, and thus harms the person in whose belly the demon is resting. Superstitious people therefore often sleep on their stomachs during bad weather, but other legends say that Raiju will only hide in the navels of people who sleep outdoors.

There are more details about the Raiju here, courtesy of Yokai.com.

Completely unrelated to the above is my take on Norman's mom from Psycho (thanks to a wig worn in my Grade 4 class today.)

Alienated.

What happened to the final survivor of the Covenant? Alien ate it!
(Not actually a spoiler, just a dumb joke.)

As you may have guessed, I saw Alien Covenant and I ignored all the plot holes and bad effects and over the top acting and found myself enjoying it. Above is a 手ぬぐい (tenugui or hand towel) that I bought, mainly because it's a cool image.

   

I also nabbed the above Clear Files, cuz that's the kind of thing that I do.

When at the cinema, I noticed that they had some Alien figures for sale, so I picked up two boxes. Unfortunately, I picked up two boxes that were identical, so I end up with two break-dancing Aliens.

One aspect of the Alien's life that never gets explained, is how they go to the bathroom. It turns out that they squat just like us.

Here are the other poses. If these scenes had been in the movie, maybe it would have been better.

    

Ages ago, I got this Alien, and he now has a companion in this Predator.

  

They came courtesy of a fortuitous win from packs of Sci-Fi characters.

The link at the top is for the Japanese Trailer, and here is an Honest Trailer for your perusal. (Spoiler Alert: "I'll do the fingering." and then the guy giggles. Good stuff.)



If there are indeed six more Alien movies, I hope they're better than this.

A Sound of Thunder.

One of my favourite sf authors as a kid had to be Ray Bradbury. Others included John Wyndham and Robert Heinlein but they've already passed on. I reread "A Sound of Thunder" every few years. It's such a great story! Too bad the movie version sucked. I loved all his short stories collections and I just heard that some of them have been adapted into Manga. I'll have to track them down. He had a way of dragging me back to my childhood and the last book of his that I read was Farewell Summer, a sequel to "Dandelion Wine" 50 years later. Now that I'm reaching a more mature age, I found some of those stories a tad depressing. When I read of his passing, I immediately thought of his friend of several decades, Ray Harryhausen. I can't express my thoughts much more succinctly so I'll let him speak for himself and let Neil Gaiman express his. I dug up a few photos of his works and I'll end with a video tribute by my FB pals, Debs & Errol. I imagine that these are Golden Apples of the Sun and The Martian Chronicles and a Doreamon manga from 69!.

Number 2000!

According to the Stats, this is my 2000th post!! But actually it's #1999 because I have one started from a few weeks/months ago that I never published. I'll get around to it someday. If my computer weren't so incredibly sluggish today, I'd display something awesome. So instead...

Inspired by DJ Mokugohan's amazing Podcast*, here is A Cosmic Christmas. I haven't seen this since it first came out (and neither has virtually anyone else unless they can find the VHS copy) but as soon as I heard the opening few lines of the aforementioned Podcast, I had to hunt it down on YouTube. But watching it'll have to wait until another day, because of the aforementioned pc sluggishness. If it takes ages to download for you too, you can always check out this site.

I hope your Christmas is Cosmic and I do encourage you to check out this *Podcast...

Revenge of the Geeks.

I'm going to take a break from the family jewels and instead of showing off my rings, I'm going to showcase my Towels! As any good Hitchhikers fan knows, today is Towel Day and I gave a brief description of it last last year when I showed off my Star Wars towels.



It also happens to be GPDand The Glorious May 25th in honour of Discworld but I've never read Prachett's works (I know, blasphemy.) If you click that link above, you'll learn all about:

Your Geekly Rights

The right to associate with other nerds.
The right to have few friends (or none at all).
The right to not leave your house.
The right to not like football or any other sport.
The right to be out of style.
The right to be overweight and nearsighted.
(With great power comes great) Responsibilities
Try to be nerdier than anyone else.
If there is a discussion about something geeky, you must give your opinion.
Don't be a generalised geek. You must specialise in something.
Attend every nerdy movie on opening night and buy every geeky book before anyone else.
Wait in line on every opening night. If you can go in costume or at least with a related T-shirt, all the better.



But enough about Geeks (remember when they used to be known as the carnival freaks who'd bite the heads off chickens and snakes?) and let's cotton to the Towels. I've also included facecloths and mini-towelettes and except for the very last one, I haven't included handkerchiefs. See how many characters you can name!
Note: I photographed all but Bleach on top of my washer and I didn't bother to Photoshop any of them so you can see their relative sizes. I've also included a few sports/beer towels because they're cool, not geeky.

Happy Towel & Geek Pride Day everyone!!