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Volume 7, Number 12
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28 February 2003
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TFIr #168
Edited by and copyright ©2003 Simon Lamont
tfir@simonlamont.co.uk
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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/CD archive lists (the latter are now only available as a zip due to their size):
- FAQ: http://www.gizmo1.demon.co.uk/scblbiog/scblfaq.htm (last updated 6 February 2003)
- UndeadCam: http://www.gizmo1.demon.co.uk/undead/ (last updated 26 February 2002)
- Film/TV/CD Archive: 630 CDs, 2754 films (314 on DVD) and 9732 TV shows (548 on DVD), totalling 12486 items, at 23 February 2003
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Friday 28 February - Patent for computer core memory issued, 1956. Cycling permitted across the Golden Gate Bridge, 1970. Moorgate London Underground crash, 1975. The FBI siege of the Branch Davidian complex at Waco, Texas, started, 1993. Happy birthday to: actresses Ali Larter (27) and Rae Dawn Chong (42), actor/director John Turturro (46), B-52s' singer Cindy Wilson (46), racing driver Mario Andretti (63). Kalevala Day in Finland. Saturday 1 March - Patent for a motion picture machine granted to Louis du Hauron (he never built it), 1864. Library of Hawaii founded, 1879. Soviet probe Venus III became the first probe to land on another planet, 1966. Actor Jackie Coogan died, 1984. Happy birthday to: actors Jack Davenport (30) and Timothy Daly (47), actress Catherine Bach and director Ron Howard (both 49), actor Dirk Benedict (58), Harry Belafonte (76). National Day in Bosnia-Hercogovina, Admission Day in Ohio (17th state, 1937) and Nebraska (37th state, 1867). St. David's Day. New Year's Day in Ancient Rome.
Sunday 2 March - US Congress created the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, 1929. Ted Geisel (Dr Seuss) born, 1904. "King Kong" premiered, 1933. Happy birthday to: comedian Dave Gorman (32), Jon Bon Jovi (41), actor Michael Troughton (48), actress Gates McFadden and former Welsh rugby international J.P.R. Williams (both 54), soccer manager Harry Redknapp (56), writer Tom Wolfe and Mikhail Gorbachev (both 72). Texas Independence Day (from Mexico, 1836). Peasants' Day in Burma.
Monday 3 March - Henry IV (1399-1413) born, 1367. Jesse James shot dead, 1882. American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) incorporated, 1885. First issue of Time magazine published, 1923. Pioneer 10 launched, 1972. Riots started in Brixton, London, 1981. Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, 1982. Happy birthday to: musician Ronan Keating (26), actress Miranda Richardson (45), former racing commentator Peter O'Sullivan (85). Dolls' Festival (Hiramatsuri) or Peach Festival (Momo no sekku) in Japan. Japanese Girls' Day in Hawaii. Independence Day in Morocco. Liberation Day in Bulgaria. Admission Day in Florida (27th state, 1845)
Tuesday 4 March - Composers Antonio Vivaldi and Domenico Scarlatti born, 1678 & 1685 respectively. First American Congress held in New York, declared the Constitution to be in effect, 1789. Clayton F Summy published "Happy Birthday to You", 1924. Roosevelt inaugurated as president, 1933. Martin Luther King assassinated, 1968. Prime minister Edward Heath resigned after failing to form a coalition government, 1974. Happy birthday to: actress/musicians Chastity Bono (34) and Patsy Kensit (35), musicians Chris Rea (52) and Shakin' Stevens (55), actress Paula Prentiss (64), astronomer Patrick Moore (80). Constitution Day in the USA. Admission Day in Vermont (14th state, 1791)
Wednesday 5 March - Cartographer Gerhardus Mercator born, 1512. Jacobite Florence Macdonald died, 1790. Congress appropriated US$30,000 to ship camels to the western US, 1845. Joseph Stalin died, 1953. John Belushi died, 1982. Happy birthday to: actor Jake Lloyd (14), actress Jolene Blalock (28), broadcaster/writer Sandi Toksvig (45), musicians Eddy Grant and Elaine Paige (both 55), actress Samantha Eggar (64), actor Dean Stockwell (67).
Thursday 6 March - Michelangelo born, 1475. First issue of "The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society" published, 1665 (and still being published). Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning born, 1806. The Alamo fell (and Davy Crockett died), 1836. Felix Hoffman patented aspirin, 1899. John Philip Sousa died, 1932. Happy birthday to: actor/hoopster Shaquille O'Neal (31), musician Betty Boo (33), actresses Amy Pietz (34) and Connie Britton (35), comedian Phil Jupitus (41), actress Alberta Watson (48), cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova (66), singer Dame Kiri Te Kanawa (59). Independence Day in Ghana. Magellan Day in Guam.
THE WISDOM OF...
This week, Ralph Bunche:
There are no warlike people, just warlike leaders.
TOTALLY TRIVIAL
We've got this week's trivia all zipped up. After a friend developed back trouble from trying to fasten his shoes, Whitcomb L. Judson developed a clasp locker that went on be used in bags as well as shoes and patented it in 1893 (Elias Howe, inventor of the sewing machine, had designed and patented an "automatic, continuous clothing closure" device in 1851, but had not produced it commercially). In 1913 Gideon Sundback, a Swedish electrical engineer living in Canada, refined the idea, replacing Judson's hook-and-eye mechanism with metal teeth, patenting his "separable fastener" in 1917, before the B.F. Goodrich company adopted it for galoshes, and - as it meant that they could be fastened quickly with one hand - changed the name to "zipper." Marketing campaigns in the 1930s promoted the zipper for children's clothing, and French fashion designers also took to it rather than buttons for men's trouser fastenings. A system of interlocking brass coils was introduced in Europe in the 1940s, but proved less durable until stronger materials were developed in the 1960s. The zipper prevailed, and today is almost entirely produced by one company - founded in 1934 Japan as Yoshida Kogyo Kabushilaisha, it officially changed its name to YKK in 1994, and is now a multinational group of 80 companies in 52 countries, producing everything from the metal fasteners to the fabric that holds the zipper.
[Want us to find trivia on a particular subject? Mail your request to tfir@simonlamont.co.uk - we can't promise to use your suggestion, but if we do, you'll be credited.]
FILM QUIZ
A mixed bag of quotations this week. Answers next week or from the regular address.
- There's a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it's not about who's got the most bullets. It's about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think... it's all about the information!
- It's been six weeks since Saddam Hussein was killed by wild boars and the world is still glad to be rid of him.
- Just because they're aliens doesn't mean they can't be dates.
- - Were they sent to Hell?
- Worse. Wisconsin. For the entire span of human history.- I don't advise a haircut, man. All hairdressers are in the employment of the government. Hairs are your aerials. They pick up signals from the cosmos, and transmit them directly into the brain. This is the reason bald-headed men are uptight.
Last issue's quotations were:
- Mom! I am not you, I'm not gonna get pregnant at 16, I'm not gonna stay here for the rest of my life and be a trailer trash sheriff!
-- Eight Legged Freaks- I'm saying I'm an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over and the insect is awake.
-- The Fly (1986)- It's a Kafka high. You feel like a bug.
-- Naked Lunch- I am flying! And from way up here you all look like little ants!
-- A Bug's Life- Who, me? No, I'm just a worm. Say, come inside, and meet the Mrs.
-- Labyrinth
WEIRD WORLD NEWS
Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...
DUMB CRIMS... Shades of Raising Arizona in Alburquerque, New Mexico where 22-year-old Jarrod Devinney allegedly held up a shop while holding his nine-month-old son in a car seat. He got away with about US$120 and was arrested after police checked local hotels and found only one guest with a baby. Charged with child injury after whipping his stepson by making the boy sleep in a dog kennel as punishment, Texan Curtis Robin Sr's lawyers reached a plea bargain in which Robin would plead guilty, pay a fine and receive eight years' probation as well as spend 30 nights in a dog kennel himself. In Ajmer, India, a man accused of robbery had a charge of assault added last week after throwing his slippers at the judge hearing his case - the first one missed but the second his Judge Bhagwan Sharda in the face.
PAGING CHIEF WIGGUM. Austrian police have carried out a number of raids on bakeries across the nation and arrested dozens of people after a tip-off that they were producing jam-filled doughnuts with less than the legally-required minimum of 15% jam content. Those arrested face fines or up to three months in jail for consumer fraud. A police spokesman confirmed the actions, adding that one manufacturer was filling their doughnuts with just over two thirds of the required amount, and one in three doughnuts tested nation-wide were in jam deficit. With several thousand doughnuts produced daily the savings made by skimping on jam can be considerable, according to consumer protection councillor Gabi Burgsthaller.
PLUS CA CHANGE, PLUS C'EST LA MEME CHOSE... After the revelation earlier this month that the British Government's report on Iraq was mostly plagiarised from a 12-year-old thesis written by an American grad student, carefully reedited to heighten tension, it has now emerged that George W Bush has gone one better by citing a report that does not even exist. On Thursday last week Bush - along with White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer - made a special effort to persuade Congress to pass his tax cut, citing a survey of "Blue-Chip economists" who predicted that the economy would grow by 3.3% if the cut was passed. "I don't know what he was citing," Blue Chip Economic Forecast editor Randell E. Moore later commented, adding that he was "a little upset" that "it sounded like [the Forecast] had endorsed the president's plan. That's simply not the case." In fact, the forecast had predicted 3.3% growth before Bush announced his plan, and merely commented that some version of a stimulus plan would likely be enacted.
O, PIONEER. After nearly 31 years and 7.6 billion miles, NASA believe that Pioneer 10 has finally fallen silent. Launched on March 2, 1972, Pioneer's mission was originally scheduled to last just 21 months as it became the first craft to move beyond the asteroid belt and take close-up images of Jupiter, but it kept going and sending signals back. In 1983 it became the first manmade object to leave the solar system when it moved beyond Pluto's orbit. Famous for its gold plaque bearing images of a man and a woman, a message of greeting and a map of the solar system, Pioneer's extended mission officially ended in 1997, but Jet Propulsion Lab. scientists continued to track it as part of a separate NASA deep space research project. Although it stopped relaying telemetry data last April a final signal was detected on January 22, a final attempt made on 7 February picked up nothing. In about 2 million years the probe should reach Aldebaran. Ames Research Center's Pioneer 10 project manager Larry Lasher said "I was a workhorse that far exceeded its warranty, and I guess you could say we got our money's worth."
WHAT NEXT? THE JOHN PAUL II SHOW? While much of the world is currently glued to reality TV shows, from Big Brother to The Anna Nicole Smith Show and Celebrity Driving School, there is one country where viewing choices buck the trend. In Italy reality TV shows are popular, but surpassed by religious programming, particularly films, which are almost as popular as soccer with a recent made-for-TV dramatisation of martyr Saint Maria Goretti's life being watched by 35% of households, some 10 million viewers, suggesting that although church attendance is declining faith is still high. A film starring Ed Asner as Pope John XXIII screened last year was watched by over 50% of the viewing population.
STORIES WHICH ALSO CAUGHT OUR EYE THIS WEEK: Another naked antiwar protest to be held on May 1 in Santiago, Chile. Romanian man plans to sue rope manufacturer after hanging suicide attempt failed because the rope broke. Woman fined for not paying recently-introduced London traffic congestion charge hasn't been to London for six years. Frankfurt officials want to put large "number plates" on dogs to help trace owners who don't scoop the poop. Thousands of (unfortunately unpaired) Nike shoes washing up on Washington state and British Columbia shores after falling off container ship in December. British pensioner detained for two weeks in South Africa for questioning by the FBI after one of their most wanted fraudsters "stole" his identity could now face a multi-million dollar settlement. Motoring magazine survey determines that "the car everyone should drive before they die" is the Mini Cooper, ahead of the McLaren F1 and Porsche 911 C2. 80-year-old war veteran accidentally sent call-up papers by UK Ministry of Defence. End of the world due in 57 years, according to Sir Isaac Newton (d. 1727).
ENTERTAINMENT BRIEFS
George Michael antiwar but criticises plans for celebrity pop protest single. J.K. Rowling and Sir Ian McKellan guesting on The Simpsons. Fire near a set of the third Harry Potter film might have been sparked by the steam train used as the Hogwarts Express. Now official - no more Buffy after this (7th) season; spin-off still possible; no decision yet on Angel. Latest US reality TV show based around troops in Afghanistan. Rumours: Daredevil spin-off movie based on Elektra (Jennifer Garner) planned. Obits: TV comedy musicals actor/composer Rusty McGee (47), actor Paul Schrum (68), US children's TV legend Fred Rogers (74), artist Pavel Hiava (78), screenwriter Daniel Taradash (90), DIY pioneer Barry Bucknall (91).
WEBSITE OF THE WEEK
This week we have some music for you, but - this being The Irregular - it's got a twist. It's the symphony for dot matrix printers...
THE AMAZING NOT-QUITE-RANDOM LOTTERY PREDICTOR!
Madame Jennifer, our in-house psychic predicts the following numbers will be lucky:
11, 16, 17, 26, 31 and 40.
You can consult Madame Jennifer online at the Daily Irregular:
AND FINALLY...
Reasons to Go to Work Naked
- Your boss is always yelling "I wanna see your ass in here by 8:00!"
- You can take advantage of computer monitor radiation to work on your tan.
- "I'd love to chip in, but I left my wallet in my pants."
- You want to see if it's like the dream.
- So that with a little help from the Muzak you can add "Exotic Dancer" to your resume.
- People stop stealing your pens after they've seen where you keep them.
- Diverts attention from the fact that you also came to work drunk.
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