Yet another instalment in the seemingly endless stream of surprises down at the Beach.

I saw this frogman in orange (for it is he) walk smartly into the lake. Then I noticed the other guy, who soon hollered over to the frogman “While you’re down there, can you look for my glasses?”

I thought this was a joke. I was – so help me – on my way over to suggest that he should have said “contact lenses” when the frogman reached in and – so help me – pulled out a pair of eyeglasses and handed them to the other guy.

I love this shit.

And did you notice the intake vent camouflaged as a rocky outcropping?

(NOW WITH UPDATE)    It was announced on 2006.05.31 that a settlement to a lawsuit had been reached concerning the lack of captioning of bonus or special features on DVDs. The lawsuit, filed by Russ E. Boltz on behalf of other plaintiffs, named Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Disney; Warner Bros.; Universal; MGM; and Sony and Tri-Star as defendants.

The allegation held that these companies “misled consumers by displaying a captioning symbol or stating ‘captioning,’ ‘captioned,’ ‘subtitled’ or ‘subtitling’ ” on their DVDs when the feature movie was captioned but “some or all” of the bonus materials weren’t. I have seen a whopping two DVDs with captioned bonus materials, so I can attest that this was the normal state of affairs. The respondents denied wrongdoing, even though it is plainly an open-and-shut case that DVD packaging used to claim captioning even if not everything on the disc was captioned. If you look closely now, you will find that Hollywood releases typically state “Bonus Materials Not Rated Or Closed Captioned” (capitalization sic).

The settlement sounds like a win for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers, since it requires the respondent studios to caption their bonus material. But in fact, the settlement represents another round of chicanery on the part of lavishly rich entertainment conglomerates to ensure that 100% captioning shall never be reached. [continue with: How not to attain 100% captioning (DVD version) →]

So farewell then, Rocco Forgione and his devilish entourage of mud-slinging reprobates. While I still enjoy Rocco’s cartoon violence, its frequency and quality have diminished considerably. What has also diminished considerably is his roster of friends. That’s his problem.

What is my problem, and should not be, is continued ad hominem attacks in his comments section, which amounts to an ever-strengthening case against the provision of comments on personal Weblogs. There’s too much of a capacity for outright hatred and vitriol, and one blog’s comment section can be and is used as a mechanism of attack against other publishers who, out of an abundance of caution, do not enable comments. Even if you’re a blogger with no enemies, you will be flooded with spam comments. If you enable comment moderation, you still have to read the comments, many of which can carry out their goal of personal abuse, belittlement, and disturbance through something as simple as a subject line that only you see.

Rocco merits ostracism not because of his boorishness; his oft-manifested racism (as distinct from his taste in blonds and redheads, like his inexplicably mismatched nice-guy boyfriend); his alleged vindictiveness in that arena of overwrought re-enacted childhood traumas, the rugby pitch; or because he is, at times, an arrogant twat. Rocco deserves shunning and opprobrium because, in the guise of naughtiness and mischief, he permits others to use his own Web site as a forum for ruthless, premeditated attacks.

In this respect, Rocco is more akin to trannies than he would like to admit.

1. (Same-language) subtitles and the future of reading: Spinning that into an E-book angle is a bit of a stretch, I think. And where are the results of the WGBH accessibility project?

2. Hell freezes over and I quote the Pied Piper of Ajax, Jason Fried, who apparently ignores my research:

   Another thing I find interesting is that when big groups really want to get things done, they don’t make the group bigger, they make the group smaller. For example, when Lockheed wanted to design the Stealth [bomber], they didn’t scale up the team, they scaled the team down. When Congress really needs to consider something important, they form committees. When the military needs to conduct an operation with absolute precision, they usually call on the best small team they have.

   Hence the WCAG Samurai. But I digress

3. The Elements of Style Manuals, Part One: Isn’t the problem that most Web sites do not have “design” directors who are able to articulate design standards in the first place? (I’m in favour of style manuals, by the way. I do, however, find it a bit of an albatross that they are always called “style” manuals, as if they documented fripperies or decoration. They are, in fact, design manuals)

4. Further evidence that South by Southwest has jumped the shark: They’re staggering the release podcasts of the 2006 conference throughout the year. Why the fuck should we wait? This isn’t going to do anything to entice doubters to attend the conference

5. Movie about Adrian Frutiger, who is a type designer, should you be unaware

6. Service design principles of TiVo: Note that accessibility simply isn’t in there. TiVos are, in this way, no better than off-brand digital video recorders

7. CBC.ca editorial director Jonathan Dubé prepares to overhaul the mother ship’s Web site for its tenth anniversary, apparently using tables for layout

8. Sign language in the Icelandic Parliament: “Sigurlín Margrét Sigurðardóttir, substitute MP for the Liberal Party, is going to be the first deaf MP in Iceland.” Paging Gary Malkowski. (She runs a Weblog, too)

9. “Putting the Story on the Screen: How do you meet the challenge of designing a PDF page for comfortable reading of a long piece of fiction onscreen?”

10. Canadian Census controversy continues: Certainly not platform-neutral or standards-compliant, but also not so accessible?

11. DHTML Accessibility for Web Applications: Another IBM sell job about its nonstandard Ajax/tabindex implementation

12. Les Tours Aillaud, Paris apartment blocks in camouflage motif (via DPM)

13. Flickr: Newspaper typography. I believe there are books and articles Malarkey can consult (also the Society for News Design).

14. Undermotivated young woman in Canadian captioning

15. “My friend Trese Hopper works in the closed-captioning department” at CITY-TV

16. On peut tous rêver: Manau came out with an album in 2005?

17. Limitations of rel="tag" microformat

18. Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese

19. Flickr: Toronto Urban Decay; Toronto Urban Exploration; Signs; Half-Lost Signs; Toronto Transit; Got Rice? Rice Police; Toronto's Little Cities

20. (Common fonts to all versions of Windows) & (Mac equivalents) (now, there’s a deep structural ambiguity I had to fix)

21. Why doesn’t Google validate?

22. CSUN 2006 conference proceedings: For some reason, unlike in preceding years, full articles are not yet available (or not commonly so). What gives?

I was at the Gerrard Scare Winnersss shopping for underwear (new Stanfield’s of Truro for $3) when, among the nonstop stream of recognizable tunes over the Muzak, a ’90s indie nugget was heard: “Big Me” by the Foo Fighters. And thus was I reminded of nonsensical songs that seem to make sense because of the prosodic delivery.

“Big Me” sounds sensible because of the ebb and flow of stress on the sentences, each and every one of them delivered with “sincere irony,” as Coupland would call it. And oddly for a pop song, they are, for the most part, complete sentences, though in the model of Chomsky’s “Colourless green ideas sleep furiously”:

When I talk about it, it carries on. Reasons only knew. When I talk about it, Aries or treasons all renew. Big me to talk about it! I could stand to prove. If we can get around it, I know that it’s true.

Word sequences like these do not work in captioning. Surely you recall the novelty music video (an ersatz Mentos® commercial), complete with a captioning job by WGBH that was solid for its time. ♪ ARIES OR TREASONS ALL RENEW ♪ makes less sense than tits on a bull, but the vocal rendition sounds great, a fact lost to most viewers of captioned music videos.

This came up from time to time, actually. Why, I’ll never forget sitting in the WGBH Caption Center office on Park Ave. South in New York – this was back when they still had such an office, but they drove that into the ground the way they would later drive the Boston mothership into the ground. I was sitting with the manageress as the intercom piped up with the response to a question I had asked: What was that godawful metal group that insisted its nonsensical stream-of-delirium lyrics be captioned exactly, going so far as to demand to review work tapes? Answer: The Melvins.

But in their case, with their quasi–Cookie Monster delivery, there is no deceptive vocal current that carries the nonsense along like a boat bobbing up and down on a lake. The whole thing makes no sense and is an embarrassment for the listener.

I thought of another example, something I heard exactly once – as a kid, on CBC Radio. It was an “interview” on an episode of Eric Idle’s Rutland Weekend Television. In an example of truth in advertising, it’s entitled “Gibberish.”

HOST: Ham sandwich, bucket and water plastic Duralex rubber McFisheries underwear. Plugged rabbit emulsion, zinc custard without sustenance in kippling-duff geriatric scenery, maximizes press insulating government grunting sapphire-clubs incidentally. But tonight, sam pan Bombay Bermuda in diphtheria rustic McAlpine splendor, rabbit and foot-foot-phooey jugs rapidly big biro ruveliners musk-green gauges micturate with nipples and tiptoe rusting machinery, rustically inclined. Good evening and welcome.

GUEST: Hello.

HOST: Foreskin mousetrap view Mount Everest tintray lobotomy in England?

GUEST: Saddleback, saddleback. Lechery billboard kettlebum simpering snuff masticated bowelside handset lemonade enterprisingly apartheid rubberized plumbjoint curvaceously mucking squirrels!

HOST: I see. Rapidly piddlepot strumming Hanover peace pudding [polite chuckle] mouse rumpling cuddly corridor cabinets?

GUEST: Sick in a cup! Toejam whisper tap Sunderland shower curtain, ice wallpaper cups grouchingly rubberking wrapped butter kissing-feathers definitely pheasantry daughter successfully douche dinner-bottom.

HOST [confidentially]: Machine-wrapped, with butter?

GUEST: Machine-wrapped, with butter.

HOST: So, nail-attacking butterfly-clouts reputedly. Without I might galvanize sugar, elbow-wrenchingly heartfelt until purse-playing perspicaciously rattled mandibled on asinine shoestring-drawn two lost three butter-machismo whenever cobbled therein. Good night.

GUEST: Good night.

So my question for the linguistics Weblogs is: Has the phenomenon of an appearance of making sense when nonsensical words are uttered in a certain prosody actually been studied?

Somebody found an old woodburning kit?