If only labs were really like this . . .

What do you get when you mix The Village People with a bio and chem research supplier?
A very weird music video:

(thanks, L. you made my evening.)

Pseudo-Science drives me nuts

Hilarious commentary by Sarah Haskins on stupid skin care commercials using "sciency" words and pictures to sell things:


(yes, it's from February, but I just started going through archives)

Japan reminding me of France, for the first and only time

This story about young urban Japanese men and women getting jobs in agriculture reminds me of an excellent French film about a young woman who does the same: The Girl from Paris (more meaningfully called "Une hirondelle a fait le printemps" in French, which means "A swallow [the bird] made the spring"). Definitely worth a watch

Brilliant Frivolity

Sometimes silly, delightful little cream puffs of fiction are so silly and delightful as to be brilliant. For some reason, this genre has been my focus of the last week, starting with reading Something New (aka Something Fresh), the first Blandings Castle book by P.G. Wodehouse, the absolute master of all things silly and delightful.

Then I found Rings on her Fingers, which is quite like The Lady Eve -- Henry Fonda getting duped by a beautiful con artist who ends up falling in love with him. This got me thinking of Preston Sturges (as Lady Eve is one of his), so I rented Easy Living, an early Preston Sturges movie that somehow I had missed until now even though Jean Arthur stars. Perhaps in another mood I would not have thought it so wonderful, but I have decided I am quite fond of it. Screwball comedy is film's answer to P.G. Wodehouse and humorists of his ilk.

And now I am back to P.G. Wodehouse. Damn you Google Books and your full pdf texts of books out of copyright. I shall now go start reading A Damsel in Distress, forsaking much needed sleep.