Vietnamese Take Out

So you think you're funny with the ha-ha stereotype about Vietnamese food and the stray cats? Well you should be ashamed of yourself; the proud people of Vietnam have many, many much more rare species of animals they put in their diets.

From BBC News:

Experts in Vietnam have warned that the Vietnamese could be eating a number of wild species into extinction.

The chairman of the Vietnam Zoology Association said animals at risk included the rhinoceros, the white-handed gibbon, the civet and the tapir.

My grandfather likes his meat rare, but his is ridiculous! (awaits rimshot). Now the only question that remains is how long before I start to see Roasted Civet on the menu locally?

Not Another Star Crossed, Mystical Teen Movie: The Musical 3D

I was sure the final blow to complete the Ouroboros of Hollywood's Pitch-tank of Appropriated, Monkey-typed Scripts would have been dealt by the contrived pop culture "referenceur" team of Friedberg & Seltzer with "Rebooted 1980's Toys Movie 3D". You knew it was going to happen, it was a safe bet.

Instead the pale rider on a paler horse of Limey cinema has taken up the gauntlet, intent on one-upping their Yank cousins by turning our fascination with UK character actors, magiks, musicals, 3D and rehashed ideas back on us with a series of movies "targeting the 'Harry Potter' and 'High School Musical' market" IN 3D, yo!

Based on musical versions of the plays created by Shakespeare 4 Kidz, "Hamlet" will be the first of the six total pictures ("MacBeth", "Romeo & Juliet", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", Twelfth Night, and "The Tempest").

So armed with a "$10 million budget for the initial three films" we can expect some high end, not at all obvious, pop-out-go-wow, 3D effects, right? Well, we are assured Hamlet will rock you so hard.

"Hamlet" lends itself to a 3-D treatment. The producers hope to include a ghost that hovers in front of the aud's eyes, cannon fire that flies into the auditorium and a sword fight that appears to happen all around viewers.

Such Xtreme awEZomenEZ will be accompanied by the reality show "Movie Quest -- A Romeo 4 Juliet," a public search to find two "undiscovered" young actors to play the lead parts of Romeo and Juliet. Renée Zellweger is rumored (just made it up) to play Mrs. Uncle.

Slow clap to you, L.A.-based private equity fund, European backers, Mark Thomas of Elsinore Films, Director John Godber and all the Queen's loyal subjects for staring into the void and asking it to name the capital of Assyria.

Science Confirms Cats Manipulative A-holes

Being repeatedly woken in the mornings by her cat's incessant purring to "haz bwekfest", the sleep deprived Karen McComb, Behavioral Ecologist of the University of Sussex in Brighton, U.K., complained to fellow feline fanciers about it and found they too were being pulled from dog like sleep by their purring cats. McComb realized a potential cat conspiracy, wondering why it was she and others got up to feed the fuzzfaces instead of backhanding them into the wall, rolling over, and going back to sleep. A study was born; got to love science.

The results show cats, "modify their signature sound when seeking food, adding a higher-frequency element that exploits our sensitivity to infant wails--and thus making it harder to ignore." The louder the element, the bigger sucker the listener. 75% of the volunteers in the study picked the solicitous purr as more urgent and upsetting than the regular purr of the same cat. Thus proving cats are indeed manipulative assholes and train unsuspecting owners to do their bidding. The study is due to be released tomorrow in Current Biology.