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Surreal match-up of the year

Washingtonpost.com reports that Quentin Tarantino, director of several ultra-violent action movies, will appear in a Muppet-filled Disney remake of “The Wizard of Oz”. Have the producers at Disney been hitting the bong a little too hard? This has got to be the most surreal match-up ever conceived.

I can’t wait for the scene where a jumpsuit-clad Miss Piggy disembowels the flying monkeys, while Kermit grabs a straight razor and goes medieval on the wicked witch.

Link: Washingtonpost.com: Reservior Frogs: Kermit and Tarantino Join Forces

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Prognostic

At BoingBoing today, they note that a Hong Kong company has created a virtual girlfriend for your cellphone. It struck me, as I read this, how similar it is to an idea that appears in Adrian Bedford‘s novel Orbital Burn.

Unlike the sophisticated AI described by Adrian, the cell-phone AI is mostly designed to part lonely geeks from their money:

If players neglect her, she will refuse to speak.

The company says the amount of money players will have to spend has yet to be determined.

But unlike other computer games, it seems that cash, not skill, will enable players to climb the different levels in the game. *

Link: BoingBoing: Virtual Cellular Girlfriend

Link: BBC Hong Kong: HK firm develops cyber girlfriend

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Phwoar

I’m just back from seeing Adrian Bedford at the first stop of his book tour — a reading at The Grind Café. It was excellent to finally meet Adrian and Michelle. It’s an example of the power of the net to allow people to make connections all over this floating ball that we call Earth. Neat stuff.

If you haven’t met Adrian yet, I’d highly recommend it, as he’s a clever and witty guy, and he’ll sign your copy of Orbital Burn, absolutely free! Even in the short time we were able to chat, he imparted a great deal for me to mull. I’m mulling even now. Principally, his advice was to start small and work my way up, which seems far more sensible than what I was doing. I started with an epic, 1,500-year plot and worked up from there, expecting to finish in a couple of months. Maybe that was a bit too much for my first attempt.

I wish Adrian and Michelle all the best as they wend their way across the continent, stopping in Calgary, Regina, Saskatoon, Toronto, New York, and finally Boston for the 62nd World Science Fiction Convention.