[Index]

LL :: Volume 1 :: LR

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  Never Get Off on the Right Foot
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*   For the Holiday Season
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  E. Coli Legos. Just like ordinary Legos, but made of some squishy moldable plastic and each one is the size of your head. They stick together, but we're not really sure how. (The instructions say they use magnified molecular bonds, via a patented quantum process, and not to feed to children under two.) You can open a sliding door to see all the internal cellular organs and the nucleus. You can switch the organs around and try to get your hybrids to divide. The nucleus has a sliding door, too, but it seems to be stuck in all the models we tried.

The Basic Set just has various subspecies of E. Coli. The Advanced Set has protozoa and amoebas as well. They fight if you leave them in the same box.

Comments from Playtesters:

  • Sammy (age 6): They're pretty cool. You can stretch them and, and, see, you can stretch them way up.
  • Jane (age 7): I like all the sticky things. There.
  • Jae (age 5): (would not comment)

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*   Next Week's Movies
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  Beyond All Arms (S. Lecec, director)

This somewhat puzzling failure of a movie is the directing debut of Czech poet Seve Lecec. The story is loosely based on his 1983 word cycle "Life Under Arms"; but on the one hand, the story has been updated to account for the fall of the Soviet Union, and on the other hand, the metaphorical imagery of armoured knights flying fighter jets has been turned inside out, as it were, becoming the literal story of the movie, while the turmoil of the Czechoslovakian state becomes the metaphorical language used by the knights to describe their battles. Without a hint of perceived incongruity, these Anglo-French Crusaders harry the Holy Land in American WW2 aircraft, and the audience is expected to glide right over this to the romantic (or Romantic?) subtext. None of us were able to quite swallow this piece of ironmongery. However, the acting is exquisite, and the aeriel ballet over Jerusalem that caps Yeltsin's election is worth the money all by itself.

  • Sen: Not too bad, really. The inversion casts a certain light on the Middle Ages, although I don't think the scholarship holds up to the concept.
  • Richard: I look forward to Lecec's future efforts, but I hope he stays a little closer to the surface next time.

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*   Technology Watch
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  Kathektic Tym. Leather watch bands that tell the time by themselves, no watch attached. $150 and up.

Crystal Campbell's. Transparent soup. Chicken Noodle, Mushroom, and Chunky Vegetable.

Kraftwerk CAD Scissors. Looks like a pencil. You draw the pattern you want to cut out, erase and redraw as desired, and then press a remote button to cut along the lines. The limning will not attach to living skin.

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