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Dickety! Highly dubious.

(From http://www.snpp.com/episodes/3F11.html.)

Homer: [gasps] Look at these low, low prices on famous brand-name electronics!

Bart: Don't be a sap, Dad. These are just crappy knock-offs.

Homer: Pfft. I know a genuine Panaphonics when I see it. And look, there's Magnetbox and Sorny.

I posted this in the "Simpsons Rant" thread, but I thought I'd put it in the main discussion thread too.

The real reason for the success of the Simpsons is not Matt Groening, but a writer from the Lampoon, Harvard's in-house humor magazine. Sam Simon, a producer, liked George Meyer's Army Man enough that he tracked Meyer down and hired the whole staff onto the Simpsons.

The rest is history.

You can read a nice long story about it here:

http://www.snpp.com/other/inte rvi ews/meyer00.html


-------

Try 'go crazy'
....At least get your sig right, grammar boy:

http://www.snpp.com/episodes/2F03

The Moon belongs to America, and anxiously awaits the arrival of our astro-men. Will you be among them? -- 4F21, The Secret War of Lisa Simpson

sand ... sand ... SAND!

It depends on where you live. Pay close attention to your state's presidential polls.

If your state is heavily weighted (like 50% to 35%) towards either Bush or Gore, then your handful of votes probably won't change that. Vote for Nader (or Buchanan, or Brown, etc). If the minor party gets at least 5% of the US total vote, then they get bonus funding next time.

However, if your state is waffling and the race is close, there's a slim outside chance you'll make the difference. Vote for Big Al.

Another option -- some of my friends recently decided to vote-swap. Nader fans in swing states (California) will trade their choices with Gore fans in runaway states (Massachusetts). The straight totals work out the same, but the Electrical College is weighted in the desired direction.

This reminds me of a Simpson episode where the following conversation takes place:

Lisa: Please, Dad.
Homer: No.
Lisa: Please, Dad.
Homer: No.
Lisa: Please, Dad.
Homer: No.
Lisa: Please, Dad.
Homer: No.
Lisa: Please, Dad.
Homer: No.
Lisa: Please, Dad.
Homer: Oh, okay, okay.

It is 2387 ferbles to the rod, and that's the way it should be.

The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it.

2F31

For those of you who were wondering what episode that motor boat gag came from, it's 5F05.

Everyone manipulates figures for their own benefit. Microsoft just does it more then most.

Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forfty percent of all people know that.

No false in there. It's

"But with him out of the picture, I was free to wallow in my own crapulence."

from the "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" episode.

(You can find this stuff quite easily using the search engine at snpp.com

Jebediah: [on film] A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.
Edna: Embiggens? I never heard that word before I moved to Springfield
Ms.Hoover: I don't know why. It's a perfectly cromulent word.

And again:

Homer: You su-diddely-uck, Flanders! [grabs a bell from him] Hear ye, hear ye! Ye olde town crier proclaimed crappy by all! Chooseth Homer Simpson, and he shalt rock thy world!
Wiggum: Good God, he is fabulous.
Skinner: Yes, he's embiggened that role with his cromulent performance.

And yet again:

The credits are superimposed over a shot of the bottom of Jebediah's statue: "A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man." Pan up to Jebediah as an old west tune plays:
Hitch that team up, Jebediah Springfield
Whip them horses, let them wagons roll
That a people might embiggen America
That a man might embiggen his soul
His soul
His soul...
Gracie tune is unchanged.

UNpossible, fool. Check out the Ralph Wiggum file. Open your freakin' ears, jackass.

The Ralph Wiggum File

Lighten up.

I bet your are a die hard fan of the Simpsons -not unlike- Database is of "Itchy and Scratchy".

Taken from episode 4F12:
Database: On the "Itchy & Scratchy" CD-ROM, is there a way to get out of the dungeon without using the wizard key?

Homer: What the hell are you talking about?

SNPP.COM has a 1998 interview with Mike Scully, executive producer of The Simpsons. He basically states that animation is the only way to go.

Here's an excerpt from the interview:
"It would have to be animated. I don't see how we could ever do a live-action movie as funny as the animated series. The animation allows so many creative liberties that you just wouldn't be able to acheive with live-action. I think it would be impossible for a set of actors to portray these characters. The audience likes to see them the way they are, and if you tried to turn, say, John Goodman into Homer, then it ultimately has to be disappointing to everyone, including John Goodman. Obviously, he could never live up to Homer."

Here is a link describing all the various rumors and reoprts of a Simpsons movie.

FYI: Fox purchased the simpsonsmovie.com a few years back. Currently it's just used as a placeholder housing ads for 20th Century Fox films and video releases.

Simpsons fans have been waiting for this since '93!

Check out SNPP.com's info concerning the Simpsons movie which has been collected over the years.

Almost.

Lisa: We'll help you.
Bart: I have a watch with a minute hand.
Smithers: [sighs] All right, you can come. What time is it?
Bart: 12:80. No wait. Wait. Wh-what comes after 12?
Smithers: One.
Bart: No, after twelve!
Smithers: [groan]

Use the Simpsons Archive and spare yourself this whining. :)

Greetings, friends. Do you wish to look as happy as me? Well, you've got the power inside you right now. So, use it, and send one dollar to Happy Dude, 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield. Don't delay, eternal happiness is just a dollar away.

[4F01] Lisa's Date with Destiny

Actually, the most irritating thing I find about wireless phones (come on folks, lots of them aren't technically CELL anymore) are those vanity rings. It's incredibly annoying to hear La Cucaracha, Fur Elise, Ode to Joy and any number of other songs blaring when someone has an incoming call. I realize that it makes things easier in crowds where there may be many people with wireless phones, but they could at least use a different ring instead of obnoxiously long and high pitched snippets from a song...

There is some more info on the episode on The Simpsons Archive
-legolas

i've looked at love from both sides now. from win and lose, and still somehow...

Not exactly the same, but there's always the Simpsons equivalent, starring Troy McLure.

The Matrix musical sounds dire. I saw the film on Sunday for the first time (yes, I know, I'm very slow) and the thought of it being a musical fills me with dread.

Ford Prefect

Assorted odds and ends which might be of interest...

Yet more Futurama stuff including a clockwork Bender. I want one. :-)

icebox.com which has various Flash cartoons, some of which are created (and voiced by) people behind The Simpsons and Futurama. They seem pretty good - and somewhat politically incorrect.

The Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything, a blatant plug to my utterly crap web site. Do not expect useful content.

Ford Prefect

He wasn't -- or at least, not that I saw.

And he died on 7 Mar 1999, according to the bio on IMDB ... perhaps he was not a member in good standing of the Academy or whatever organization one must belong to in order to qualify for the memoriam. It probably was in poor taste not to mention something regarding Kubrick, given that a number of his films were sampled -- 2001 during the "history at the movies" piece introduced by Morgan Freeman, "Dr. Strangelove" during George C. Scott's memoriam piece ...

Good news, though, that Rory Calhoun was remembered ...

The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea.
They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall
mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by
small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is
clear: To build and maintain those robots. Thank you.

Wasn't it just last night that I overheard the following exchange on the Simpsons?

Gibson:
You want me to replace the villain with a dog? I mean nobody will know what's going on.

Homer:
They will if you set up that the dog is evil. All you do is have to show him doing this.

[lowers eyelids and glances around in shifty-eyed fashion]

The people will suspect the dog.

:)

Also, MOST of the many people that go into making this show are TOO busy to start a large project like that. If there ever WAS a movie, it wouldn't be until after the show got cancelled.

Oh, and before you recommend "hey, how about a live action movie?", consider that most of the actors look NOTHING like their characters, so imagine a Homer Simpson with a Dennis Franz voice! And remember that most of the actors (with an exception of Yeardly Smith, who has only played Lisa, Mrs Winfield, Maggie in "Bart vs Thanksgiving" and a couple of chorus extras) play multiple characters, so it would be IMPOSSIBLE to keep all of the voices the same.

Read http://www.snpp.com/guides/movie.html for a collection of official quotes from the Simpsons staff on the movie

oh, and if you see ANYTHING about the Simpsons Movie on imdb, remember that this is the same site that once accepted a submission about the Futurama movie, starring Mr T as Fry and French Stewart as Bender!

Here you go. 4th season/8th episode. Maggie says... (you'll have to check it out yourself)

http://www.snpp.com/episodes/9F08.html

Right now Simpsons are going to be on the big screen ala IMAX, but it won't be a full-length feature; the tree-house of horror halloween episode instead.

http://www.snpp.com/news.html#imax

If you're lazy:

Simpsons to the Big Screen By Jouni Paakkinen (jouni@snpp.com) - January 27, 2000

Several studios have teamed up with IMAX to bring famous animated charactes, including The Simpsons, to the company's giant screens in a compilation film called "Cyberworld." "Cyberworld", which is to be comprised of eight animated sequences, will ultimately include the computer-generated "Homer3" segment from "Treehouse of Horror VI," in which Homer is sucked into the third dimension. Also to be included are scenes from DreamWorks' "Antz," Sony's "Monkey Brain Sushi," and a new Pet Shop Boys video. Dharma & Greg's Jenna Elfman will provide the voice of Phig, cyber-hostess of the film, which takes place in a futuristic museum. "Cyberworld" will be released to IMAX theaters worldwide in October of 2000.

Um, Maggie has spoken. Not going to take the time to look it up, but it was a much hyped episode probably during the 4th/5th season timespan. Bette Midler did the voice, IIRC.

Here's the unofficial repository of all that is Simpson's if someone hasn't already mentioned it:

http://www.snpp.com/

Lots of handy information here - it actually sounds pretty unlikely from what they have said over the years. Ford Prefect

Consider a specific example of a flowing fluid, a vortex. Such a vortex is frequently spontaneously formed when water flows out of the drain of a bathtub. (The common myth is that the bathtub vortex rotates in one direction on the northern hemisphere and in the opposite direction on the southern part of the globe, which is wrong.)

The direction of rotation of a draining sink is determined by the way it was filled, or by vortices introduced while washing. The magnitude of these rotations may be small, but they are nevertheless gargantuan by comparison to the rotation of the earth

I thought Lisa knew better: Coriolis effect does NOT determine which way the toilets and sinks drain.
[...]The Coriolis Effect
This is a real effect, but it isn't strong enough to affect the direction of water flow down a sink or bathtub. Any claims to the contrary are urban legends and can be scientifically refuted. Please consult the sci.physics FAQ for more information.

Personally, I think the Simpsons is still a great show -- fast paced and intelligent and one of the few shows I actually pay attention to. Although, I have to disagree with the original statement that it is the best show of the decade. That spot was recently taken over (for me) by the Sopranos, which, if you haven't seen, you are truly missing a great, great TV experience. You will shun network TV (not incl. the Simpsons) once you see how good HBO can do it.

SNPP.Com is a Simpsons catalogueing and news site. They have episode guides and "capsules" for every episode they have been able to get their hands on.

The capsules are entire scripts along with viewer comments and "Did you Notice?" sections and more.

However, with the deluge of information required to create a capsule, the project is sorely "behind schedule". If you've got any Simpsons episodes from the past few seasons on tape, please read the site's capsule submission guideline and help out!

Shamelessly taken from The Simpsons

Gil: [appearing suddenly] D'ah, she's a beut'. You can't beat a Coleco, eh ...? How many can I put ya' down for, a lot? Please say "a lot," I need this.

Remember the film that Lisa was watching about The Moon?

"The moon belongs to America, and anxiously awaits the arrival of our astro-men. Will you be among them?"

P

Pope

"DOH" is spelled D'oh.

It's actually spelled '(Annoyed Grunt)', see the guide for Simpsons episode 3G03:

There's grunt and grunt

One of the most frequent questions from alt.tv.simpsons newcomers is how to spell Homer's renowned expression. Although the generally accepted spelling is "D'oh!", many sources feature different versions, including closed captioning's own "D-oh!"

But the funniest part is, if you ever looked at a Simpsons script, all you would see are mentions of "annoyed grunts" over and over. When the series started, Matt and the boys let Dan Castellaneta choose an interpretation for the "(Annoyed Grunt)" indicator; since then, Homer's "D'oh!" has always been referred to in that fashion. (Though we know through 3F24 and 3G01 that the writers acknowledge the usual spelling.)

He's pretty clearly against censorship, but I think that some of the details of this bear a little more looking into. The way I see it (and to his credit, Katz does touch on this), there are basically two forms of censorship. A general form, and a specific form.

The general form simply censors objectionable material from everybody. The CDA, while claiming to have been specific censorship (since that's less objectionable in this day and age), was actually general censorship. The Hays office (the persecuor to the MPAA) censored movies for everyone. Various governments and religions have done the same, all throughout history.

General censorship doesn't work so well here and now, though, mostly because of various benefits acquired by the people who'd like not to be censored, or have things which interest them censored. Of late, the courts have ruled that while some material may not be appropriate for some, or even most people, no one is forcing that material down everyone's throat. If you have to make an effort to get this month's copy of Ass Freaks, then there's no particular reason to prevent it from being kept out of the hands of those people that want it, and who can (presumably) handle it. (Don't start thinking dirty just yet)

The sucessful cases of general censorship tend to occur at a fine level, I think, rather than a broad one. I'd blame that on peer pressure. A small bunch of moral zealots can usually get large indifferent groups of people to follow them, by implying that to do otherwise would be immoral. There's a good example here. ;) 'Course, a Supreme Court justice really couldn't care less about what someone in East Fooville thinks about him, so a more objective, and I'd say rational mindset tends to prevail.

Specific censorship, which Katz gets oh so riled up about, is more along the lines of censoring material from some specific group who just can't handle it. This could be an ethnic minority, it could be based on gender, or religion, or income, and lately is based on age. The age basis is more difficult to fight because there really are good reasons for minors to minors in a lot of cases. This isn't necessarily fair, but let's assume that we're all okay with that for now.

Anyway, what's happening is that our pals the moral zealots (it may be a different bunch of moral zealots, but for purposes of this argument moral zealotry is a black box) cannot prevent American Pie (for example) from reaching a broad audience. Nor can people who wish that it wasn't associated with Don McLean, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper. What can be done is to prevent it from reaching a specific audience. Minors are an easy target as they don't have complete freedom and it's easy to claim that you're doing things 'to protect the children.'

This is a pretty weak excuse of course, and should carry as little weight as the also oft-abused 'in God's name.' Both could be accurate and fair, but so many people claim to do so many contradictory things for the same reasons that it's difficult not to find them distasteful now.

This could all be okay, potentially. But it's not, because censorship is usually a lousy practice. In most cases it's just a grab for power by some group. Should it succeed, further censorings will be more likely to be accepted. Failure is generally ignored, making it a very easy game if you're patient. Worse yet, by censoring things based on the agenda of one or more groups of zealots, they can manipulate how people think in order to propigate their particular meme.

To limit the number of voices, the individual freedoms and the number of ideas in a society has much the same effect as standing on a garden hose. It cripples society as a whole, even if the one segment of it that's standing on the hose attains a higher position than it had before. Although I run the risk of Godwin's law being invoked, Germany had a really thriving culture for some time. WW1 and the penalties imposed upon Germany had deleterious effects, and of course Nazi Germany had a pretty wretched culture, even before WW2.

However wrongheaded the zealots usually are though, they may have stumbled upon an interesting idea. What if there is a problem with morals in today's society?

In the case of America, a lot of the specific censorship aimed at minors can be traced back to the failure of the prohibition effort in '33 and the rise of the baby boomers (as a generation x'er it's almost too easy for me to blame everything on my parents, but that's not my goal here). The former was a resounding defeat to the general censorship movement - even though in this case it was a prohibition against a tangible good and not on information. The latter was like seeing a hunted animal stand in front of a brick wall and hold up a sign that said 'Shoot here'; a generation known for rebelliousness made an easy target.

But a significant part of this wave of censorship, which I think we're still in*, is that there are some valid causes behind it. That's not to endorse censorship, but merely to say that the reasons that are being invoked to censor people may be symptoms of an actual problem, and that it's not _entirely_ an exertion of power.
* Although now it's often conducted by people who didn't like being censored themselves, yet can act hypocritically without blinking.**
** So I'm not perfect.

So the question comes up, are we less moral now than we used to be? Honestly, I think that we are, or at least, that it's changed from being an unspoken thing to something that's at the forefront of our society. Certainly things have, and continue to change a lot. Perhaps this churn is being mistaken for an overall lapse in morals.

My personal hypothesis is that around, and for quite a while after WW2, America was at the top of the heap as far as the world goes. However, in that fairly complacent environment, sprung up the rebellious baby boomer generation, who presented themselves as an easy target, as already pointed out. More importantly though, what we had was a situation in which the people who would, just as a side-effect of the passage of time, end up running things and raising their successors actively pushing away from the zenith of their society. And a good number of the people at that zenith were helping, by attempting to cause a sort of counter-reformation. So if we hit a peak for society as a whole during the reign of our (assuming /. readers are approx. my age) grandparents, we're dropping now.

Now, this doesn't mean that we'll all end up like rejects from some Gibson novel in twenty years. But if you're familiar with the confucian concept of the mandate of heaven, we are probably in the process of losing it in a general sense, even though we're doing great in some specific areas (e.g. computing). This is okay in a general sense, since there is something of a cycle in which various cultures are really on top of things for a while, with each successor usually improving upon the last like something out of Asimov.

We took over from the British. They took over from, I'd say, France (and to an extent, China, which was having dynastic problems anyway, which is pretty crappy timing). France, from Italy. Italy from the Arab world. Arabs from the Eastern Roman Empire. The Eastern Roman Empire from the cohesive Roman Empire, from the Hellenistic Greeks, from Egyptians & Mesopotamians, at which point things get a bit murky. Am I too focused on western civilization? Probably, but feel free to add data to this idea, or tear it down entirely if you've got something better. This is still quite a chain, and we're not done being the king of the hill for some time, I'd say.

Unfortunately, this is not so hot for those of us who do have a good sense of morals and all the other junk that I've been lumping in with it which combine to make a really badass culture. Our solutions are limited.

Give up, let each succeeding generation be worse off and give someone else a chance to be the best culture around. We ourselves will still have a good time of it, since it takes a while for the decay process to work, and as a part of it much of our culture will get assimilated into others, so there's no great loss.

There's the option of attempting to revitalize our culture, but I don't think that this has worked in the past, nor do I think it's especially healthy. It would represent a longing for a culture that's died naturally instead of trying to just go the hell forward with whatever you've got (the Japanese did have a good run at this in many ways from the Meiji restoration through WW2, although they still had plenty of problems that screwed them later on).

For long-term planners, there's the pilgrimesque option of migrating in order to hitch up with a rising culture (consider it first round VC) or starting your own. Insofar as the puritans (not the same group of people, as pilgrims, btw) go, this was really unsuccessful as seen from their point of view. Their descendants were did not adhere to the morality they grew up in, probably because it was sterile, as well as a hard act to follow. They, along with a wide assortment of other immigrants to the new world (convicts, traders, etc.) managed to put something really badass together, but it took over a hundred years just to get the basics down, and another hundred and fifty or so to begin aiming for the top of the hill. So this approach may work well as a seed for a totally different, successful culture, but it is unlikely to work on it's own. (based on a very small sample group ;)

I'm afraid that I can't see any especially good way to get out of this and still have a functioning, good society which outlives the people that want a functioning, good society (good morally, not good as in okay; a lot of this presupposes that a moral, yet flexible society will automagically do well as opposed to a moral, rigid one or an immoral one of any kind). Certainly it would involve a major shift in the way that people think and act.

Getting back to this specific article (what a hike that is), I think that yes, it's very important for parents to personally raise their kids. TV is not only a poor substitute for parenting, but the culture distributed across TV is pretty poor as well. Myself, I watch some of the better cartoons (Simpsons, Reboot, Family Guy) and sometimes the Weather Channel. But banning TV is probably not a good solution.

What I'd like to see (and this probably is unrealistic, but I'm no expert on the subject) is for businesses et al to arrange either for their workers to work half days, or for a shorter part of the week so that two parents working 20 hours can support a family OR to pay one parent enough to support his family (in exchange for a full work week) so that the other parent can stay at home. Unfortunately, many businesses are short sighted and ignore the effects that they have on society. Ultimately we get treated as the 'commons' (as in the tragedy of) and everyone, even businesses, suffer.

Marge: Homer, it's the thought that counts. The moral of the story is a good deed is its own reward.

Bart: Hey, we got a reward. The head is cool.

Marge: Then... I guess the moral is no good deed goes unrewarded.

Homer: Wait a minute. If I hadn't written that nasty letter, we wouldn't've gotten anything.

Marge: Well... Then I guess the moral is the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Lisa: Perhaps there is no moral to this story.

Homer: Exactly! Just a bunch of stuff that happened.

- "Blood Feud"

Jamie McCarthy