8 Ways to Sunday

Every December, I get surprised at least once by the fact that it gets dark around 5:30 PM. You’d think I’d have figured it out by now.

the American Chocolate Bass in its natural habitat

It’s not even New Year’s Eve yet, and already the stores are stocking up on Valentine’s Day candy and cards. Holiday creep: it’s not just for Christmas anymore!

I had a nice moment of V-Day absurdity yesterday. Walking down a grocery store isle, I happened to see one of the strangest candy gifts ever: a milk chocolate bass, wrapped in silver-scaled foil and sold in a red box that declares “YOU’RE A KEEPER.” I think the tree-branch-and-flannel motif on the box is an especially nice touch, myself.

In a couple of months I’ll be feeling my usual seething hatred for this holiday, single as I always am this time of year. For now, though, I’m just enjoying the weirdness. You can buy a candy fish for your own special someone right here.

Update: This is too clever/silly not to recommend — scientist valentine cards! My favorite is Charles Darwin. “I select you. Naturally!”

“A camel is a horse designed by a committee.”

– Sir Alec Issigonis, designer of the Austin Mini

Dictionary company Merriam-Webster has named w00t their 2007 Word of the Year. According to the site, w00t was submitted for consideration way back in 2005 by “Kat from Massachusetts” with the following definition:

w00t

interjection
expressing joy (it could be after a triumph, or for no reason at all); similar in use to the word “yay”

“w00t! I won the contest!”

Visitors to m-w.com finally voted it into the top spot for this year’s competition. You’ve come a long way, w00t.

In other w00t-related news, Grant Barrett — editor of the Double-Tongued Dictionary of fringe English — has written another amusingly formal exploration of the word’s origins. This one is far longer and more detailed than the one I linked to in 2004.

Somewhat surprisingly, Barrett traces the word’s history to hip-hop music instead of online gaming and “leet speak.” I think his argument is weakened, however, by the claim that “whoot and w00t are, for our purposes, variations of the same lexical item.”

As they say on the internets, O RLY?

The first trailer for the the Wachowski brothers’ live action Speed Racer movie hit the Web on Friday. It looks like a colorful, retro-futuristic, and fundamentally silly movie with exciting races, two-dimensional characters, and ridiculously over-the-top villains. A lot like the cartoon, in other words. You can watch the trailer in high-definition QuickTime format, or check out the fuzzier YouTubeized version below.

When I was a kid I thought that the original Speed Racer cartoon was awesome, but I’m not sure that nostalgia is enough reason to see this movie in a theatre. I’m withholding final judgment until there’s more than one trailer to go on. What’s interesting about the trailer is the several direct visual references to the opening sequence of the cartoon — both the Japanese and English versions.

The race sequences themselves owe an obvious debt to the F-Zero and Wipeout video game franchises. It’ll be interesting to see whether these varied influences can be knit together into a coherent movie.

More Speed Elsewhere

• Joe Hallock takes a brief look at the original Japanese anime and its differences from the American translation.
• ComingSoon.net has the company line on the movie’s plot.