Okay, not colossal, they’re only jumbo. But there are a whole lot of them off the coast of central California and they’re up to 7 feet and about 110 lbs.

Very uncool.

Patrick Ruffini, whom I like very much, has linked to a YouTube clip purporting to be what Gen. Patton would say about the war on terrorism.

I’m afraid Ruffini has been hoaxed–clearly that is the voice of Admiral Ackbar, not George S. Patton.

In discussing Emmy nominations, the TV Whore notes that Two and a Half Men got nearly twice as many nominations as Veronica Mars and Battlestar Galactica combined (seven to four).

Awesome.

And then Galley Friend D.R. starts a discussion on movies you’ve walked out on. To my eyes, his list is slightly heretical (Fellowship of the F’ing Ring?), but that’s neither here nor there. The first flick I ever walked out on was Nightwatch. Best decision I ever made.

The Fug Girls are back: “This party is OFF THE HOOK! I wonder if the DJ will play ‘Willennium’ if I ask.”

Don’t get me wrong, I love Man vs. Wild. Can’t get enough of it. But there’s always been something about Bear Grylls which reminded me ever-so-uncomfortably of Gilderoy Lockheart. I’ve tried to sublimate those suspicions as much as I could, but now this story is making it harder:

But an adviser to Born Survivor has disclosed that at one location where the adventurer claimed to be a “real life Robin-son Crusoe” trapped on “a desert island”, he was actually on an outlying part of the Hawaiian archipelago and spent nights at a motel.

On another occasion in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains where he was filmed biting off the head of a snake for breakfast and struggling for survival “with just a water bottle, a cup and a flint for making fire”, he actually slept some nights with the crew in a lodge fitted with television and internet access. The Pines Resort at Bass Lake is advertised as “a cosy getaway for families” with blueberry pancakes for breakfast.

In one episode Grylls, son of the late Tory MP Sir Michael Grylls, was shown apparently building a Polynesian-style raft using only materials around him, including bamboo, hibiscus twine and palm leaves for a sail.

But according to Mark Weinert, an Oregon-based survival consultant brought in for the job, it was he who led the team that built the raft. It was then dismantled so that Grylls could be shown building it on camera.

In another episode viewers watched as Grylls tried to coax an apparently wild mustang into a lasso in the Sierra Nevada. “I’m in luck,” he told viewers, apparently coming across four wild horses grazing in a meadow. “A chance to use an old native American mode of transport comes my way. This is one of the few places in the whole of the US where horses still roam wild.”

In fact, Weinert said, the horses were not wild but were brought in by trailer from a nearby trekking station for the “choreographed” feature.

“If you really believe everything happens the way it is shown on TV, you are being a little bit naive,” he said.

Channel 4 confirmed that Grylls had used hotels during expeditions and has now asked Diverse, the Bristol-based production company that made the programme, to look into the other claims.

This is just amazing!

One of my pet theories is that by the end of the decade, realtors will hold a similar position in the public’s mind that junk bond traders did in the 1980s and trial lawyers did in the 1990s. If the real estate market really does crash, they will bear an enormous part of the blame for the way they shamelessly and irresponsibly helped inflate the bubble which began in the beginning of the decade (“Now is a great time to buy . . . or sell!”).

So how bad is the housing situation? In my neck of the woods in Northern Virginia, I wouldn’t say it’s apocalyptic, but it’s pretty bad. Stop on any corner in Old Town Alexandria and you can see three, four, or five For Sale signs, and once properties go on the market, they seem to be staying there for a long time. But elsewhere in the VA burbs, it’s worse. To that end, check out this great site on the NoVa housing bubble. The percentage price reductions are kind of terrifying–lots of listing prices off 30+ percent from their prior sale prices 12 to 24 months ago.

Of course the NAR is already claiming that housing prices are totally going to recover in 2008!

The latest numbers from Japan–Sony’s big firewall for the PS3–are in. They’re chilling, if you’re Sony:

Yesterday, international news wire Reuters reported that Sony’s PlayStation 3 had sold its 1 millionth console in Japan, nearly six months to the day after the publisher claimed to have shipped 1 million consoles to its home market. Citing numbers published by Famitsu publisher and gaming-industry tracker Enterbrain, Reuters also reported that Nintendo’s Wii was at the precipice of its own milestone, having sold 2.9 million units in the Land of the Rising Sun as of July 8. . . .

However, both consoles have well surpassed Microsoft’s Xbox 360, which has sold 420,000 consoles in Japan as of mid-July, according to Enterbrain.

Pay attention to the fact that it took Sony six months to sell off the number of consoles they had shipped. That doesn’t say good things about demand.

Is it wrong to be staked out at a table in Barnes & Noble at 8:03 p.m.?

Or rather, how wrong is it?

Bonus: This is the Geek Weekend from Heaven–HP tonight and The Buffy Horror Picture Show tomorrow night. Throw in a comic book convention and, well . . .