Posts from 1st August 2006
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Aug 06
When Is A Raccoon Not A Raccoon?
When it is a Tanuki. Clearly the distributors of Princess Raccoon, a glorious whacked out Japanese fairy-tale cum musical had a problem. A Tanuki is a Japanese animal, which does not really have a Western analog. Calling the film Princess Tanuki might have been more accurate, but missed out the fact that the film is a whimsical folkloric type tale – something that both haterz and lovers of such whimsy might need to know before stumping up their dollar. A raccoon is a bit like a tanuki, but even with the translation, an awful lot of information is missed. In particular the role of the tanuki in Japanese folklore as a shapechanging, trickster type animal with excessively large testicles.
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Ian Curtis: School Work (Part 2)
Recently unearthed, here is the final assignment as handed in to Mr Brownlow. Note the simpering familiarity, the pointlessness of the graph itself and the prophetic words of the year head.
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FT competition: the MOST OFF-PUTTING title of ALL TIME
my entry:
An Humbler Heaven: the Beginnings of Hope, William Rees-Mogg, Collins paperbacks, 1977 — the blurb begins “The evidence for the existence of God is like the pre-photographic evidence for the existence of Everest”, so the front cover has a nice photo of Everest obv
i was a SEA goblin
(i already mentioned this in the goblin comments somewhere, except i couldn’t recall its NAME)
i. it is called “Drake!”
ii. it comes in a long thin box, and the “board” is a rolled up parchment MAP! (drawback: it has been rolled up far longer than it has ever been unrolled, and prefers to be that way — if you weigh it down at the corners, you have to be super careful not to knock them, or the whole board rolls up w.a snap, sending the pieces flying)
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