(via)

1. Last week’s odd soliloquy worked as part of the teaser, but was dropped into the actual episode with all the grace of a flaming bag of manure.

2. This week’s fourth-wall-breaking was… jarring, to be kind. Vaguely condescending as well, which would be fine if it were Doctor-to-companion rather than writer-to-audience.

3. Hey, at least Missy didn’t show up.

Paul Prudhomme has died at age 75, leaving behind a whole lot of good food. Make yourself a batch of “those potatoes” and think of him fondly as your arteries harden.

Bird-watchers and train-watchers live for that moment when something truly unique crosses their path. I think this shot of a fully-dressed Ai Shinozaki qualifies, especially with her famous curves concealed by a tasty dish.

…a young Alexis Denisof appeared in the first version of the video for a terrible earbug of a song recorded by George Harrison. I didn’t make the connection until today, because the only reason I remembered it was the tasty bit of jailbait Our Hero was angling for. And to be honest, when I watched it again after so many years, I gave little thought to the identity of the boy.

Sadly, no one seems to know who the girl was.

The latest version of Amazon’s recommendation page is built around tiles of categories, with one or more items composited as the representative image of the category. I find this less-than-useful, because I generally have no interest in the representative items, making me less likely to click and see what the other recommendations are as I skim across the page.

Also, the categories seem to be based on user-supplied tagging, so that things end up in unusual places. For instance:

The 7 “children’s books” were: Zelazny’s Madwand, four of Smith’s Lensman novels, Sabatini’s Captain Blood, and some random guy’s Sherlock Holmes story. So, the representative image is something I don’t need to buy (an $8 ebook of a novel first serialized in 1939), the category name is something I don’t want, and the actual search results are mostly things I already own.

My actual wishlist for the Amazon recommendation system is a “less like this” button, so that the first N pages of results won’t be dominated by things related to a single recent purchase, like a watch, a box of coffee pods, or (ghod forbid) a Destroyer novel (seriously; never buy a book in a lengthy series (150!) without marking it “don’t use for recommendations”).

I have no idea why Debbie Gibson’s “We could be together” has been going through my head for two days. But if I have to suffer, the world has to suffer.

Seriously, I don’t know what set it off. Maybe the disease in that last game of Plague, Inc. was a little more viral than I thought…

(NSFW)

more...