AND YOU THOUGHT THAT “TOM TOM” CRAP WAS ANNOYING

The [robotic teddy bear car navigation system] stands 30 centimeters (1 ft) tall and has 6 joints in its arms and neck, which it uses to make gestures while providing spoken directions.

The robot bear is also equipped with functions to improve auto safety, such as an alcohol detection sensor embedded in its neck. If it smells booze, the robot confronts the driver, saying, “You haven’t been drinking, have you?” Other sensors detect wreckless driving, so if the driver suddenly accelerates or slams on the brakes, the robot says, “Watch out!”

As a bonus feature, the robot bear provides information about nearby landmarks when you stroke its head.

— via BB

I would like to stage an entire production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, using these bears in the roles of George and Honey. Now, please.

NO OLYMPIC UNDIES YET, BUT THIS IS HOT:

I am surrounded by librarians.

Seriously, my biological mother is a librarian. Half a dozen of my friends are librarians. And about 20 feet from my office door is, yes, a library.

I have a little librarian in me, too. Even when my grad school classes were dull as dirt, researching was always fun, frequently bordering on awesome. I liked nothing better than finding a topic and exploring the hell out of it, following each little thread until it petered out somewhere in the middle of the dissertation abstracts.

(NB: I’ve done the same thing in videogames–especially sandbox games like Fable and Assassin’s Creed. I’ve been happy to abandon a primary objective if a side quest looked interesting. I want to see every wee nook and cranny of the goddamn virtual world! I’m sure all those OCD designers from Oblivion love people like me.)

I still have those ferreting tendencies. Sometimes it’s a good thing, but oftentimes it gets me in trouble–or at the very least, sidetracked. This morning, for example, I came across this interesting bit of news:

Just as Clark Kent became Superman by changing suits, the [Japanese] national men’s volleyball team will be hoping to break its Olympic drought courtesy of “super” undies that members will wear under their uniforms instead of on the outside like other superheroes….

Underneath the uniforms are the amazing inner pants, which correct the positioning of the pelvis, apparently putting it in the place where it normally should be and thus giving athletes a spring on average 7 millimeters to 1 centimeter greater than those not wearing the same clothing. Much ado has been made about revolutionary swimsuits athletes will wear — or not wear in the case of Japanese swimmers who’ve been refused the chance to compete in Speedos — will revolutionary uniforms also boost the national men’s volleyball team’s chances of Olympic glory….?

—full story at Mainichi Japan

To most people, this would be just a weird news item: read it, then move on to the entertainment section. To me, however, it became a challenge–a challenge to find images of this amazing new underwear, preferably in action.

Welcome to my rabbit hole, ladies and gentlemen.

I’ve now spent the better part of an hour searching for photos, and I’ve got nothing to show for it. I could easily spend another couple of hours trolling for info, but I’d probably just stumble across another equally odd item, then get distracted all over again.

Help…me….

Okay, I totally love Carol Kane and I totally love version 1.0 of When a Stranger Calls, but if the producers were trying to prove that the movie is super scary by filming an audience watching the damn thing, they might’ve picked a more expressive audience, don’cha think? I mean, after the first two seconds, most of them look like they’re watching a lecture on the Peloponnesian War. And at least one of them is laughing. Not good:

P.S. Yes, I also mentioned this clip in today’s totally not-safe-for-work Fleshbot post. What of it?

Have you ever wondered what it might be like to be trapped in a blender? Say, a blender filled with oyster shells and gunpowder and little shards of glass and copious amounts of fermented yak’s milk?

Neither have I, and yet, here I am. But instead of all those things, I’m surrounded by ringing land lines and a ringing cell phone and a non-stop barrage of email, half of which is marked “Undeliverable Mail Returned to Sender” because my addy was hijacked by some spam-happy asshole, probably in Florida. And goddess or yahweh or Stephen Hawking or Dame Judi Dench or whatever has her finger on the “pulse” button of the aforementioned blender, so just as I think things have ground to a halt….

Yeesh.

Why don’t you amuse yourself by singing Emily Dickinson poems to the tune of the Gilligan’s Island theme song? That ought to occupy some time while I have a calming cup of coffee. (Which makes no sense because coffee has all that jittery-making caffeine, but there you go.)

Because I could not stop for Death,

He kindly stopped for me;

The carriage held but just ourselves

And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,

And I had put away

My labor, and my leisure too,

For his civility.

We passed the school, where children strove

At recess, in the ring;

We passed the fields of gazing grain,

We passed the setting sun.

Or rather, be passed us;

The dews grew quivering and chill,

For only gossamer my gown,

My tippet only tulle.

We paused before house that seemed

A swelling of the ground;

The roof was scarcely visible,

The cornice but a mound.

Since then ’tis centuries, and yet each

Feels shorter than the day

I first surmised the horses’ heads

Were toward eternity.

— Emily Dickinson

New Orleanian Wins Lambda Literary Award

Closepersonalfriend and fellow New Orleanian Greg Herren just received a Lambda Literary Award for his gay mystery novel Murder in the Rue Chartres–which sounds eerily like a below-the-fold headline in the Picayune, but hurrah anyway!

I’m not much of a mystery reader, and I wonder if having separate categories for “men’s mystery” and “women’s mystery” might be a little much (really, is the GLBT mystery genre that big?), but I’m a huge fan of Greg and his partner, Paul, so it’s going on my list.

Also honored: my current read, Mississippi Sissy by former closepersonalfriend and former New Orleanian Kevin Sessums. He’s several years older, but apart from the bit about his parents dying when he was painfully young, our childhoods were strangely, sadly similar.

SLICES OF LAST WEEK’S LIFE

MY UNCLE’S PHOTOS FROM THE NYC PREMIERE OF

MYRA BRECKINRIDGE

Via my sister, of course.

WHO IS WITH ME?!?

GOOD FRIDAY, BAD FRIDAY

• Good news: Fatal Frame–an awesomely creepysexyodd videogame in which you play twin Japanese girls exploring a haunted village and doing battle with ghosts via an enchanted camera–has another sequel in the works. And it’s coming soon.
• Bad news: One videogame in which you won’t be playing a girl (or a woman, for that matter) is Far Cry 2, because Ubisoft is too lazy to re-record the script in ladyvoice. Note, this comes from the same OCD design team that turned Assassin’s Creed a series of nested menus. Weak.
• Good news: Andy posted a link to a free iTunes download of “Blind” by Hercules and Love Affair. (FYI, a totally different Andy included a remix of that ditty in his similarly free, similarly downloadable Spring 2008 Mixtape.)
• Bad news: Also at Towleroad, a story about Nepal’s first openly gay member of parliament. Which might seem like good news, but the opposition party in Nepal is dominated by communists. And while communism in theory works just fine, in practice, not so much–especially vis-a-vis the gays. Things usually start out fine, like we’re brothers in arms, but eventually we’re called “degenerates” and likened to members of the evil bourgeoisie. Anyone remember Farewell, My Concubine? Before Night Falls? You get the picture.
• Good news: Jonno returned safe and sound, and I have abandoned my pursuit of prosthetically enhanced self-portraiture.
• Bad news: The brilliant, brilliant Harvey Korman, who influenced the comic sensibilities of me and a thousand other queens, died yesterday:
• Confusing news: This Rolling Stone piece on the “secret” life of fundamentalist Christians is circulating fast and furiously on the web, but for no good reason. There aren’t any surprises. He doesn’t draw any wacky conclusions. Nothing especially interesting happens. Maybe I’m biased, having been raised in a church that was only slightly more mainstream than the one he attended, but it seems like we’ve all read this piece before. Snore.