We have simplified the subscription/unsubscription process to an online form. Visit http://www.gizmo1.demon.co.uk/li/tfir/tfir-subs.htm to add or remove yourself from the list.

Back issues and Irregular goodies can be found at http://www.gizmo1.demon.co.uk/li/

WORKS IN PROGRESS

The Irregular Archive Project - all issues of The Lamont Times through TFIr plus goodies, on a CD-ROM with an HTML/raytraced graphical interface (which may bear a superficial - and purely coincidental - resemblance to a onetime-real office):

Still missing Lamont Times #5 and Irregular #12.
Graphical interface: development status page last updated 26 July 2002
http://www.gizmo1.demon.co.uk/wip/archive/office/

Text adventures:

All at Sea: - planned release: Summer 2002
The Night Before Christmas: - planned release: Winter 2002

TFIr ONLINE

You can also read TFIr in its enhanced online version, with links and graphics where appropriate. The latest online version will always be available at http://www.gizmo1.demon.co.uk/li/tfir/latest.htm

Who is the Editor? So far as we know there's no Malkovichian portal into his brain, but there is the Frequently-Asked-Questions (FAQ) file, the UndeadCam and the Film/TV archive list (the latter is now only available as a zip or tgz file due to its size):

• FAQ: http://www.gizmo1.demon.co.uk/scblbiog/scblfaq.htm (last updated 10 July 2002)
• UndeadCam: http://www.gizmo1.demon.co.uk/undead/ (last updated 18 August 2002)
  
• Film/TV/CD Archive: 616 CDs, 2633 films (258 on DVD) and 9230 TV shows (435 on DVD), totalling 11863 items, at 28 August 2002
  
  • http://www.gizmo1.demon.co.uk/scblbiog/lists.zip (Windows) or
  • http://www.gizmo1.demon.co.uk/scblbiog/lists.tgz (Linux).

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Friday 30 August		-		Mary Shelley, creator of Frankenstein, born, London, 1797. Huey P. Long Day in Louisiana.
Saturday 31 August		-		Solidanosc (Solidarity) trade union founded in Poland, 1980. Diana, Princess of Wales, died, 1997. Independence day celebrated in Malaysia, Kyrgyzstan and Trinidad and Tobago
Sunday 1 September		-		Emma Nutt, the first female telephone operator, started work, Boston, 1878. Independence Day in Uzbekistan. Disaster Prevention Day in Japan.
Monday 2 September		-		Great Fire of London started, 1666. J.R.R. Tolkien, creator of Middle-Earth, died, Bournemouth, 1973. Vietnamese Independence Day.
Tuesday 3 September		-		England declared war on Germany, 1939. Independence Day in Qatar.
Wednesday 4 September		-		Los Angeles founded, 1781. Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells II premiered, Edinburgh Castle, Scotland, 1992. Civil Servants' Day in Venezuela.
Thursday 5 September		-		John Wisden, cricketer and founder of the cricket annual, born, Brighton, 1826. Freddy Mercury born, 1946. Voyager II launched, 1977.

This week's guest speaker - Oscar Wilde:

"The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything."

 

TOTALLY TRIVIAL

Some footwear facts this week. In the 15th century a popular shoe design was the "crakow," which has extremely pointed toes of up to 20 inches long, but by the end of the century it was fashionable to wear shoes with square tips after the style was worn by Charles VIII of France, who chose it to hide the fact that one of his feet had six toes. If you think platform shoes were tall in the 60s/70s, back in the sixteenth century fashionable Europeans wore "chopines," shoes with soles raised up to 20 inches high. In the original fairy tales, Cinderella's slipper was made of fur, not glass (the glass slipper was a result of mistranslation), and the wicked Queen of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" was condemned to dance in red-hot iron shoes until she died. Finally, if you have smelly feet, it is illegal to remove your shoes in any theatre in Winnetka, Illinois.

 

FILM QUIZ

A menagerie of quotations; answers next issue or from the usual address.

• I am a musician and the monkey is a businessman. He doesn't tell me what to play, and I don't tell him what to do with his money.
  
• I'm a donkey on the edge!
• I may not be a smart dog, but I know what roadkill is.
• I enjoyed the movie very much. I was just wondering, did you ever consider having more horses in it?
• One morning I shot an elephant in my pyjamas. How he got in my pyjamas, I don't know.

Last issue's quotations were from:

• You forgot to read your fortune cookie. It says "You're shit out of luck."
  -- The Dead Pool
• I loved it when you nuked Las Vegas. Seemingly biblical ending to the place, don't you think?
  -- WarGames
• Attention! Attention! Ladies and gentlemen, attention! There is a herd of killer rabbits headed this way and we desperately need your help!
  -- Night of the Lepus
• That's flesh that you're shovelling into your mouth. You know, that was, like, a living breathing creature. You know, it probably had a name.
  -- Bad Boys
• Do you see any Teletubbies in here? Do you see a slender plastic tag clipped to my shirt with my name printed on it? Do you see a little Asian child with a blank expression on his face sitting outside on a mechanical helicopter that shakes when you put quarters in it? No? Well, that's what you see at a toy store. And you must think you're in a toy store, because you're here shopping for an infant named Jeb.
  -- Unbreakable
  

 

WEIRD WORLD NEWS

Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...

IT'S TECHNOLOGY, JIM, BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT. No sign of warp drives as yet, but it's been a good year for Star Trek technophiles. Back in June a team of Australian scientists reported that they had successfully teleported a laser beam across a workbench, and earlier this month Britain's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory announced the development of an electronic "force field" to protect armoured vehicles from grenade attacks. In fact the system uses a double layer of metal plating connected by a highly charged capacitor. When a metal-tipped grenade strikes the outer layer the charge vaporises the molten metal that could otherwise penetrate more than a foot of conventional solid steel plating.

DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME, KIDS... An unnamed 30-year-old Slovakian was driving his car when he noticed that the fuel gauge was broken, so he pulled into a petrol station in Horna Streda to check the level in the tank visually. Unable to see into the tank he lit his cigarette lighter and held it over the nozzle. The resulting explosion blew up his car and much of the station. The motorist suffered burns and two other people were hospitalised.

SUMMER SPORTS... 87 competitors turned up for the 17th Annual World Bog Snorkelling Championships at the Waen Rhydd peat bog near Llanwrtyd Wells, Wales, last weekend. The challenge in bog snorkelling is to swim 60 yards along a smelly, peaty four-foot deep trench cut through the bog, using flippers and a snorkel. 15-year-old Phillip John won both junior and main titles with a time of 105 seconds, while 18-year-old Gemma Davies won the women's race with a time of 123 seconds. Held as a charity event, all proceeds from this year's championships went to the Mid-Wales division of the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. Meanwhile, less of a sport, more of a fruit mêlée took place in Bunal, Spain, with the annual Tomatina fight. A record-setting 38,000 people (more than four times the town's population) converged to hurl 132 tones of plum tomatoes at each other for an hour before helpful residents washed them down with garden hoses. The fiesta is believed to have its origins in a food battle between youngsters in the 1940s. Finally, Londoner Zac Monro won his second consecutive World Air Guitar title at the Oulu Music Video Festival in Finland.

WOULD MAGRATHEA HAVE INCLUDED SUCH SAFETY DEVICES ON THEIR LATER MODELS?... Hermann Burchard of Oklahoma State University has proposed a new way of protecting the Earth from any future giant asteroids - an airbag. He suggests sending a space ship carrying a massive airbag that, once inflated to several kilometres width, could be used to gently buffet the asteroid onto a new course. "It seems a safe, simple and realistic idea," Burchard told New Scientist magazine, adding that there were still numerous details to work out, including finding a suitably light but strong material.

WHEN RUSH HOUR BECOMES AN OXYMORON... A survey carried out by the Evening Standard newspaper, the Royal Automobile Club (RAC) Foundation and Mori has found that during the summer, when traffic is typically 35% less than in the rest of the year, average driving speed in central London is just 2.9 mph - a reasonably brisk walking speed. Along Haymarket speeds were as low as 1.6 mph. Kevin Delaney, road safety manager at the RAC, put the blame on politicians and engineers for tampering with well-proven junctions and traffic light systems over the last 2-3 years. London is not the only city with slow traffic though - researchers in Tokyo have found that for trips of less than 50 minutes, cycling is faster than driving.

STORIES WHICH ALSO CAUGHT OUR EYE THIS WEEK: Another giant squid (at least the third this summer) washed up, this time in Portugal; Luminous tattoos could be used to warn diabetics of low glucose levels; average European nose is 5.8cm long and sticks out 2.2 cm; Taiwanese scientists make housebricks from industrial effluent and sewage sludge; next "reality TV" series in America could be based on The Beverly Hillbilles; robber leaves getaway car keys at scene of crime - goes back for them, gets arrested; New York TV reporter covering baby kidnapping story finds the missing child; Aberdeen man who placed lonely-hearts advert describing himself as a no-good with bad dress sense has been flooded with replies; world's oldest living dog title claimed for alleged 27-year-old vegan border collie.

 

WEBSITE OF THE WEEK

In the modern age of litigiousness, manufacturers sometimes go overboard when printing warnings and other instructions on their products, and sometimes they are just plain silly. This week's site collects some of the best of these - such as the instruction printed on the bottom of Tesco's Tirimisu Dessert: "Do not turn upside down.". [Site submitted by Paul]

http://www.dumbwarnings.com

 

THE AMAZING NOT-QUITE-RANDOM LOTTERY PREDICTOR!

Madame Jennifer, our in-house psychic predicts the following numbers will be lucky:

3, 18, 21, 24, 37, 40

 

AND FINALLY...

Spotted in the uk.net.news.announce usenet group this week:

From: Control <control@usenet.org.uk>
Newsgroups: uk.net.news.announce,uk.net.news.config,uk.rec.sheds,uk.misc
Subject: NOTICE: FAST-TRACK of uk.rec.humour
Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2002 14:33:25 +0100

The Committee has received one objection to the fast-track creation of uk.rec.humour, on the grounds that the group is 'not funny'.

The Committee is not amused.