Nothing funny about feldspar

We watched Drunken Master last night, and had a very odd experience. (In case you don’t know, this is an early Jackie Chan kung-fu comedy.) I prefer to watch kung-fu movies in Chinese with subtitles. Most dubbing is quite bad; often the voice doesn’t match the physiology of the actor and it distracts me.

However, this particular version (2002 Sony Pictures DVD), kept switching between English dubbing and Chinese — sometimes from line to line! It was a surreal experience to be hearing Chinese and then all of a sudden hearing “shithead.” It wasn’t until I looked at the box this morning and saw a half-peeled sticker that says (I think) “In parts of the original language audio, English is substituted where the original dialogue is missing.”

What I’m wondering is… why? The box says it’s remastered audio, and I understand the desire to have it all cleaned up, but to totally change the language?! The interesting thing is that neither IMDB nor wikipedia mention that this version has gaps (though the Amazon.com entry does).

I think I’ll get “The Legend of Drunken Master” — I hope the choreography is as beautiful and inventive, and I also hope the audio is better.

• Suit dudes selling mutual funds at the breakfast joint (I can tell because I heard some words, like “Morningstar” and “Performance” and “Management”). What is it about a hotel (or a diner) that makes people think they’re all alone in the room? I’m sure I’ve talked about this before, but I really ought to be in corporate intelligence. All you need is a laptop and a cup of coffee.
• Snoring so loud that one wants to send a note to the guy and tell him to see a doctor (this happened to Plagioclase — I slept through it).
• An acquaintance from home on a local-to-where-I-am-now radio program.
• I hate small children who refuse to use their “inside voice” despite repeated suggestions by their mother’s to do so. I hate their mothers, too, for merely suggesting instead of demanding.

It takes a special skill to hurt oneself while one is sleeping. I’d normally be proud to be so talented, but really, I’d rather have some other special skill, like oh, I dunno, telekinesis¹ or strudel-making.

What special skill do you wish you had instead of the one you’ve got?

1. I promise not to scrunch up my eyes, or get beads of sweat on my brow.↩

Gun safety class must’ve only half-took — at least I had the barrel pointing down and away from me, but when they go to pull up the carpet one day, someone’s likely to find something interesting…

No matter what one thinks about the accuracy or the validity or the policies of Wikipedia, I’ve found that the most interesting aspect of it is the page behind the page, i.e., the Talk Page.

Some Talk Pages are empty, many only have generic tags such as “This article is supported by the Color WikiProject” or “This article has been rated as Start-Class.” Some, however, have wide-ranging discussions (as well as flame-wars), and get “protected” — not only the article, the talk page, too.

It’s an interesting example of rules-lawyership and the enforcing of social norms. And it’s fascinating to watch people write what they may or may not say to each other’s face. Of course, given that it’s in a mediawiki, all that history is maintained — at least until the servers and all the backups melt down.

Or we come up with yet another incompatible storage medium.