Yes, it’s a commercial, but the imagery is lovely, and the imagery is real. A British ad agency sent 250 000 superballs down a San Fransisco hill. Makes you feel happy.
Bouncy Balls (Quicktime)
From Paris—bien sur—comes this lovely little bit of animation by Cube Creative Computer Company (really, it’s a French compagnie!) :
A quoi à§a sert l’amour? (Quicktime)
Via Enrico’s blog
Oh poop, they’ve gone and removed all of their work. Must have been flooded. Woohoo, it’s back up!
Laura’s gone and researched the lyrics. It’d help if you watched it first:
TS:
Ah, what use is love?
You always hear
silly stories,
What good is being in love?
EP:
Love cannot be expained,
It’s not like that,
It comes out of nowhere
And hits you all at once.
TS:
As for me, I’ve heard
That love brings suffering,
That love makss you cry,
What good is being in love?
EP:
What good is love?
It brings you joy
With tears in your eyes,
It’s sad and wonderful!
TS:
However people always say
That love is deceiving
That one of the two
Is never happy?
EP:
But even when one has lost it,
A love that one has known
Leaves you with a taste of honey -
Love is eternal!
TS:
All this is very pretty,
But when all is said and done,
You’re left with nothing
But an immense sorrow -
EP:
But all that seems to be
Tearing you apart right now
Will become a
Joyful memory tomorrow.
TS:
So essentially, if I understand correctly,
Without love in your live,
Without its joys and its sorrows,
There is nothing to live for?
EP:
Of course! Look at me!
I’ve believed it it every time!
And I will believe in it forever!
That’s what love is for!
As for you, you are the last!
As for you, you are the first!
Before I had you, I had nothing,
With you I am complete.
You’re what I want!
You’re what I need!
You’re the one I will always love..
That’s what love is for!
(translated in Google by commenter Bannister at drawn.ca)
Yesterday Uncle Troy took all 
three of us to see the movie Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. We had a lovely time—Jon is now officially comfortable with movie theatres. A little nervousness at the beginning, and hands-over-the-ears during the commercials (for which I don’t blame him one bit); but a huge bucket of popcorn and a big cup o’ pop ameliorated any rocky patches.
Not that there were many rocky patches during the movie. Thoroughly enjoyable, we also noted it favourably for being a rare animated movie that is relatively quiet. There were no thundering explosions or an Elfman-loud music score cranked up to 11. It did have wonderfully inventive sound effects, which Jon appreciated more than probably anyone else in the audience—lots of guffaws and giggles at interesting times during the show.
Jon had woken up yesterday morning excited about seeing the movie; he went to bed last night excited about having seen the movie. Today at school he wrote a cute creative writing piece about the movie (titled Wallis and Gromit and the crs of the were-rabbit). I’d post it here, but in the last sentence he actually gives away a major spoiler!
Is it as good as The Wrong Trousers?
-aiabx
A wee bit slower-paced in places, perhaps (got 90 minutes to fill rather than 20), but I’d say it’s about as much fun! Lots of tiny details and silly puns (Peter would argue great puns), some PG-rated double entendres; and lots of spiffy references to old monster movies. The first few minutes are similar to the shorts (the Rube Goldberg device to get Wallace up in the morning), since the movie doesn’t assume you’ve seen them before. But the whole feeling is snappy, spare, and very much like the W&G shorts of old; it doesn’t feel like a bloated, money-laden “movie-ization” of the films.
Yesterday a number of us toddled to the Ontario Science Centre to see the BodyWorlds 2 show. It features actual human cadavers, preserved through plastinization, in various stages of muscular, nervous and skeletal undress and posed to show various aspects of anatomy, disease, and dynamic motion.
Almost everybody who went had a background in some aspect of what was only display: Laura’s sister Tamiko works with pathologists, Laura’s mom is a retired lab tech who has created plastinized biological samples (albeit on a much smaller scale), Laura’s aunt Michiko was a nurse, and Laura and I studied brain and behaviour (including surgery on, and post-preparation of, rat brains).
I had heard that there were about 25 cadavers and lots of body parts, and I went thinking the latter were filler. In fact, I now think that the bits and pieces were key to understanding and focusing on what was going on. I wouldn’t go so far as to say the whole-sized bodies became repetitive, but by the end the subtleties in the differences of the way they were displayed were more likely to be appreciated by an anatomist.
And no matter how comfortable you are with the concept of these latter-day Visible Men and Women (and occasional ungulates), we were all emotionally drained by the show. Is it coming face-to-face with the reality of the anatomy or of my own mortality in this fragile frame of bone and meat? For me it was the one-two punch of the two together.
And apropos of our visit (since he doesn’t know about the show), Jon suggested we sing Pinky and the Brain’s Brainstem song as we went up the stairs for dinner. How very fitting!
Sung to the tune of Camptown Races, lyrics by Tom Minton. In this evening’s performance, the role of Pinky was played by Jonathan, and the role of the Brain was played by Daddy.
Brain: Neo-cortex, frontal lobe
Pinky: Brainstem! Brainstem!
Brain: Hippocampus, neural node
Right hemisphere.
Brain: Pons and cortex visual
Pinky: Brainstem! Brainstem!
Brain: Sylvian fissure, pineal
Left hemisphere.
Brain: Cerebellum left!
Cerebellum right!
Synapse, hypothalamus
Striatum, dendrite.
Brain: Axon fibers, matter gray
Pinky: Brainstem! Brainstem!
Brain: Central tegmental pathway
Temporal lobe.
Brain: White core matter, forebrain, skull
Pinky: Brainstem! Brainstem!
Brain: Central fissure, cord spinal
Parietal.
Brain: Pia mater!
Meningeal vein!
Medulla oblongata and lobe limbic
Micro-electrodes…
Pinky: Naaarf!
P+B : THE BRAIN!!!
I love the Brainstem song but Yakko’s World is better.
Everybody! “United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Haiti, Jamaica, Peru!”
& etc…
I just love that song!!! I think I’ll be humming it all day long!
I read about the Bodyworks exhibit in a novel about a year ago, and wondered why I’d never heard about the actual exhibit; so when it came to town, I was excited about getting tickets but also apprehensive because of all the information and emotion that had surrounded its description in the story.
The only friend interested in going is a my best friend’s husband, who’s a surgeon. He may bring quite different remarks to it than a regular person. I’m concerned though that it’s going to freak me out — the reality of it, that all we really ARE is meat with consciousness.
I’ll hide behind Dr. Rick if I feel queasy.
He said to me, “And let’s go out for dinner afterwards” but I’m guessing I’ll have to take a raincheck on that… what if I can never look at friends, salespeople or my cat again without superimposing a plastinated cadaver on the image of them??? What if I can never eat again. Oh wait a minute, that’d be a good thing…
I bet the conversation on YOUR trip would have been worth hearing.
Loris
Nah, your dinner will be fine. I hope I didn’t overstate how I feel on this: Bodyworks simply has the impact that any well-crafted exhibition or show should have. Makes ya think and by the end your head is buzzing.
Some of our conversation was worth hearing. This majority of the show is set in an open concourse, so conversation tapered off as we all went at our own pace. I wish Tamiko had been nearby when I was in the part that dealt with her subject area. We did have some nice communal discussion try to guess what the heck the parotid glands did. It turns out it’s the largest of the salivary glands. Must be important, considering how much of your face it takes up.
I remember laughing at how sheep have tongues bigger than their brains, evolved and bred to appreciate the taste of grass (the show features a split-down-the-middle example of a sheep if you don’t believe me). But given how much of our heads are devoted to keeping things mouth-watering, I’m just gonna shut my big monkey mouth.
I’d be the first to admit that Randy Rogel’s “Wakko’s World” is a better song. But the Brain’s design was stolen from my head and I thought that he deserved a song that only he could sing. (This marked the very first occasion Brain sang in Animaniacs) Years later, “Brainstem” became popular in certain medical schools as a learning device covering the rudimentary structures of the human brain.
The snake goes ssssssssssssssssssss. I love going to his house. He live in the forest. I like him. I love going slithering around. We are going to play on the grass. The grass is green. I love going in to the forest. I love going to pull the leafs apart to make a leaf house.
Jonathan
Finally, here’s a picture of the boat Troy built for himself in summer 2004. It’s a quarter scale Chinese junk. The moose hunt was apparently its first major expedition, and it performed with flying colours.
1/4 scale? So does that mean the Chinese used a 200 horsepower Merc. instead of a 50hp Evinrude? 
You need 200 hp to carry around the Majestic Quadruple-Moose of Manchuria!
-Andy B
How do I get the plans to build one of these fine units? Looks like it would be a good thing for a hunter in Prince George.
Hi Mike, the design was done by Greg Foster a master wooden boat guy from Galiano Island. I had the pleasure of working with him on two paddle wheel restorations in the Yukon. He scaled and streched the hull lines of a turn of the century junk for me so the plans aren’t on the market or in any book. I could give you his contact info if you’d like to pursue it.
Troy
Troy – we’re looking for contact info for Greg Foster. We recently purchased one of his boats (Nanoose). Do you have an email or something for him? Could you email that to us? Thanks.
Troy is back in town, and he brought meat! Moose shot on a river trip three weeks ago and bison hunted last March. Troy says bison tastes like the finest beef you’ve ever tasted. Can’t wait to try them!!
He told us all sorts of stories about the hunt. Apparently bison are quite difficult to hunt, even as a herd, even in light woods. They can just disappear. After killing one, it took them 12 hours to carve it up, drag the pieces down to the snow machines through deep snow and pack up.
Edit: Here a shot of the moose on the way to my tummy. Okay, okay, everybody else’s too.
What a carnivore — you’re definitely not getting the baby goat — you’ll just turn it into kidburgers.
L
P.S. I’m a carnivore too, and curious as to how the moose will taste. As my favourite saying goes, If God hadn’t wanted us to eat animals, why did he make them out of meat?
Loris, your reasoning is sound to my way of thinking, but as Flanders and Swann point out in the Reluctant Cannibal,
“But people have always eaten people,
What else is there to eat?
If the Juju had meant us not to eat people,
He wouldn’t have made us of meat!”
So think twice if we invite you over for dinner.
-Andy B
Terrific spoof commercial, for a fruit drink, filmed in a British neighbourhood.