Questions nobody asked me.

Also included:
Answers.

Bonus:
Follow up questions nobody cares about.

1. Did WALL-E borrow from other sci-fi?
A1. Yes.
2. Does it impact the credibility of WALL-E?
A2. No.
3. Why?
A3. Anyone creating sci-fi borrows from other sci-fi material or even non-sci-fi material. Often they are creating new worlds, universes, and scenarios that would be boring if you had to explain every detail. Some themes are just an accepted part of sci-fi and offer familiarity to the reader/watcher without having to tack on a 27,000 word prologue. Often times the sci-fi creator is unaware that they are even borrowing an idea. The idea is just that universal or just that good.
4. Can you give an example from WALL-E?
A4. Yes. After hundreds of years in space humans have become so dependant on verbal communication w/ machines that they have forgotten how to read. This is hardly a new idea. Colony by Robert Grant used this same premise to similar humorous effect. Robert Grant wasn't the first one, either. Douglas Adams touched on the idea in one of the Hitchhiker's Guide books, albeit within Arthur Dent's single lifetime while stranded and living alone in a cave. Douglas Adams wasn't the first either. Walter M. Miller had a similar theme as the underlying premise for A Canticle For Liebowitz, though in that case it wasn't dependance on machine but the destruction of modern civilaization in nuclear holocaust that was the cause.

Help Me

I've been listening to my backlog of TWiT netcasts from the last few months. I had stopped listening to podcasts for a while as I finished listening to the Red Dwarf audiobooks and a few other audiobooks I couldn't wait to hear. Now I've got this huge backlog of podcasts to listen to and I've been consuming them one after the other in reverse chronoligical order (which is a fun brain exercise).

In a May episode of TWiT they touched, once again (groan), on twitter only this time they were discussing a tweeter named "comcastcares" who is an employee of Comcast who started using social media to attempt to assist Comcast customers with their questions and problems.

"Is ********* doing this?" I thought. Well... we are... sort of. The twitter account exists but it is completely dead and entirely unutilized. I'm thinking I'd like to take a stab at this. I think it could be a great way to alleviate some customer frustrations and also has the additional benefit of being a tool for PR. I created my own Twitter ********* themed account, now monitored through digsby and the twitter Opera widget, and, though I don't know exactly how this is going to work, I plan to monitor this for questions and opportunities to make things right for a few people. It seems to me that this could be fun, helpful, and very satisfying. Maybe it'd be like fighting back against "the man" in a way that benefits me, the customer, and "the man" himself.

Thoughts?

Voice Acting

I had about 400 words concerning my general distain for celebrities trying to take a stab at voice acting and then pointing out the few exceptions where someone was actually good: Mark Hamill, Patrick Warburton, Robin Williams (who I hate but who is a great voice actor), and (the one who inspired me to post this) Phil Lamarr (Hermes Conrad, Vamp from MGS4, and the dude whose head gets splattered by John Travolta in the back of the car in Pulp Fiction). After 400 words I realized I had about 2000 more and decided I just didn't have the energy for a 2400 word rant. I erased it and wrote this instead.

Voice actors you should look up:
Billy West
Maurice LaMarche
Dan Castellaneta
Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker himself)
Tress MacNeille
David Herman
Frank Welker
Phil LaMarr
Patrick Warburton (Puddy!)
Doc Hammer (not exactly well known for voice acting but... Dr. Girlfriend... Holy Shit!)
H. Jon Benjamin (my favorite. his first appearance on The Venture Bros. had me dying)
Ron Lynch (his voice pops up all over once you know it enough to recognize it)
Chris McCulloch
Brad Garrett (Robert Ramone! His voice is very distinctive and recognizeable so most of his voice acting has been just his regular voice. He's been in so many things over the years but much of it isn't what I would call "choice material." However, if you heard him as Gusteau in Ratatouille, you'll notice he sounded nothing like himself and he was really putting on a voice that couldn't be easily traced back to him. Perhaps he will be able to supplement his regular income from straight-to-DVD Disney crap with some prime gigs.)

There are so many others. Those are just my favorites from a few of my favorite recent shows. Perhaps I should have included Harry Shearer and Hank Azaria in there. There are others on the list that have had careers and fame outside voice acting but the problem is I just don't know what voice acting they've really done outside of The Simpson's. They're both very good and it's possible I've heard them somewhere and not even known it and between them they've delivered something like 67% of my favorite lines from The Simpson's but since I was trying to find the people who do the voices I like on my favorite shows from recent years and, despite the fact that new episodes keep coming out like puss oozing out of a sore, I don't consider The Simpson's to be all that recent.

Not sure how they did this

But it is cool!

Test

If it works I might like to take this here widget and make it a permanent addition to the right hand side of this little adventure.

Poison Fountain

The Speedway stations here (that's like a Super America for you nordic folks) have these devices on their soda fountains that deliver a squirt of flavored syrup in cherry, lemon, or vanilla.  You can make your own cherry coke or vanilla dr. pepper or whatever else you can think of.  Today I added some lemon to some Sprite.  What I didn't know was that this artificial lemon flavor was not lemon flavored at all.  It is labelled lemon but it's actually just flavored "yellow."  What does yellow taste like?  Well... onion paste, alum, and flop sweat from a bad observational comic who eats nothing but garlic and fish paste.  

He will never need a zimmer.

Watched this episode tonight.  I had forgotten.  Brilliant!

Holla!