Saw Pirates at World's End last night. Opposite (and usually unaligned) ends of my friendslist are voicing aggravation, but I liked it. I can cope with the plank-on-plank action from the romantic leads, I don't especially care about the constantly collapsing timeline, plotline and rules of reality, and I'm prepared to forgive a lot for such a fantastically dreadful set of pirate colours and Widow Ching in all her terrifying glory. At the same time I can see how it would suffer the usual problems of magic realism; fictional world not sufficiently defined for the genre fans, and the people who like realism being perpetually poked in the eye by the magic comparative mythology.

Ooooh! Tiny robots made of trash!.

I am a reality TV hatr but Who Wants to be a Superhero? is weirdly compelling. I finally twigged why yesterday; in it, characters are encouraged to be law-abiding, kind, brave, determined, and, well -- heroic. It's almost the antithesis of the regular reality show. After every task, a holographic Stan Lee head pops up on the nearest blackberry/TV/billboard and starts deconstructing their behaviour according to justice, virtue, self-sacrifice and consideration for others. While chortling. It's madness. It's shooting another series.

Lovers of dice or electronic music (what are the chances?) will want to watch this dice-based animated video of Fujiya Miyagi's Ankle Injury. It is so lovely! (from A smursh of Pete)

I've just right now started receiving a torrent of spam in German. My favourite subject line so far is "Ich brauche dich nicht, und du brauchst mich ebensowenig" which translates to "I do not need you, and you need me just as little".

Spam containing its own internal critique. That's German efficiency.