The gigantic arrow of trooth

New Young Pony Club - The Bomb

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Are the Pet Shop Boys secret Nintendo fans?

The Pet Shop Boys have announced the second single from their excellent Fundamental album will be the uptempo dancefloor stomper Minimal.

What they haven't announced is that the song features a cartoon dog from Nintendo's Animal Crossing game...

Animal Crossing is a role-playing / life-simulation game on the Gamecube and DS that sees you performing menial tasks and cultivating friendships in a primary colour village.

It's played in real time, and on Saturday nights you can catch a wandering canine minstrel, K.K. Slider, performing a set of folk classics in the village coffee shop. He even gives out bootlegs at the end of the gig!

Clearly the Pet Shop Boys are fans, as they've "hired" Slider for a solo spot on the chorus of Minimal. Don't believe me? Here's a handy side-by-side comparison:




Pet Shop Boys - Minimal

KK Slider - DJ KK

KK Slider - Rockin' KK

See what I mean?

Pet Shop Boys site

Introduction to the groovy world of KK Slider

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Sounds and lights and music and flashy buttons

Remember that strobe light / musical instrument we were talking about in our last post? Well, some kind soul has filmed its inventor, Toshio Iwai, demonstrating the Tenoi-On at the Spanish ArtFutura festival. The video is just underneath this text.

We can see Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood sporting one of these machines at Glastonbury 2007.

The second half is where everything whizzes and bangs - so we'd recommend judicious use of the fast-forward button.


(Via YouTube)
By the way, if you like what you see we'd suggest getting hold of Mr Iwai's new game for the Nintendo DS, Electroplankton. Using the same premise of turning user's interactions into sound collages, it has been getting rave reviews everywhere. Yahoo calls it, "a unique sort of marine pop-art biology". (read the whole review here)

Essentially, Electroplankton is an interactive musical toy. The underwater theme is pure whimsy, the 'plankton' of the title really being pictorial representations of sounds, instruments or speech. Using the stylus, you manipulate the little creatures or their surroundings to create melodies. No, piano 'grades' are not required.

As you can see, the whole thing is incredibly difficult to explain. The best way to tell your friends what it's all about would be to show them, otherwise you'll end up using phrases like "deranged subaquatic jazz improv computer game toy sound making thingy", which is no use to anyone.

Even better, blogger Stinkygoat has made this exciting discovery while spanking his plankton:

"Sometimes they chirped, sometimes they formed into circles and crosses... until at one point I held the DS out in front of me and sang "FLUFFY!" into the microphone.

"The nanocarp swarmed and reformed in the shape of a llama.

"I thought this must surely just be some random shape change, but subsequent experiments proved to me without doubt that if I sing "FLUFFY!" at a certain pitch to my DS, the nanocarp always form the shape of a llama."

Brilliant! In 2006, we love computer games all over again.

Buy Elektroplankton at NCSX.
(You have to import it if you're in the UK. Bah.)

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Save money now

Here's a nifty way to save money: a search engine that looks for mistakes on eBay listings.

It's fairly obvious that a pair of pants listed, by accident, in the antiques section will be seen by fewer people and therefore attract lower bids (unless they're really unique, frilly Victorian pants previously owned by David 'cheap as fucking chips' Dickinson).

Less obvious, however, is that mis-spellings can also reduce visibility to the casual e-Buyer, and thus have the same effect.

According to this website, one eagle-eyed user has just picked up a brand new Nintendo DS and three games for £40 because the seller had listed the machine as a "Nintendo D S" (with a space). Doik!

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Don't let Mario kill you

The Nintendo DS is, almost unbelievably, outselling the PSP in every country around the world. It has even been shifting 40,000 units a week in the notoriously Nintendo-phobic UK.

To be fair, we can understand why. The games are innovative and genuinely fun, the wireless multiplayer works like a dream, and the touchpad is incredibly intuitive. In fact, our home consoles haven't had any play since we bought the DS back in October.

However, we've discovered the console could kill you !!!!!!11!

We've been shielded from the potential health hazards because the European version of the DS comes without the nine pages of safety advice contained in the Japanese instruction manual.

Luckily, some enterprising souls have posted the Japanese manual on the internet. We're guessing that the majority of you don't speak Japanese, so here is a rough translation of the key points.


When using the stylus, avoid repeatedly stabbing yourself through the tongue.

Your DS will not help you to attract a mate, even if you put it in your pants.

Don't play while hiding under your sheets, in case the bogeyman gets you.

On occasion, the DS will emit poisonous fumes.
Do not approach it during this time.

The Nintendo does not much like milk.

Play safely, folks.

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One diva to trump them all

Jennifer Lopez, we're told, is a "Triple Threat". We'd always assumed that meant she could sing, dance and act - until we saw Gigli. So what is that mysterious third talent? Apparently, it's farting in people's faces.

The ultimate present for your mopey, Morissey-stalking friend - His house.

Now you can buy Bill Clinton's jazz collection. Unfortunately, it's a CD of his favourite songs, rather than a stash of top-shelf magazines.

Thinking of buying a PSP? Why bother when Nintendo are discounting the DS. In the US, Nintendo's machine is now half the price of Sony's - and we'd wager that similar discounts will appear over here just in time for the PSP launch.

And, finally, how can we resist a video where a geeky teacher sings to his class:


"Nobody loves you like your mama loves you
But who's loving your mama?
I am."


Well, we can, after the initial novelty has worn off. But you can click here to watch it once.

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No Doggs allowed

Snoop Dogg says he might
shorten his name to plain old Snoop to 'shed all canine references from his moniker'.

Erm, surely Snoop is a canine reference? Or is he planning to come back as a private detective?

The Nintendo DS is getting a Rumble feature, which should make using the stylus a hell of a lot more challenging...

MTV comes up with the lamest excuse yet to get the words 'Britney' and 'Breasts' into a headline.

Sad faces all round: the voice of Tony The Tiger has passed away.

No link for this one (it was on teletext), but U2 have given $23m to charity. That's about one-third of the profits from their last world tour - so it won't break the bank - but it's nice to see Bono put his money where his mouth is.

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Touch Me, Touch Me

Get your stylus out!



The tactile delights of Nintendo's new double-screen, touch-sensitive, handheld games machine will be available in the UK from March for a measly £100.



The DS has already outsold Sony's PSP in Japan and America, and Nintendo are shipping an optimistic 650,000 of the machines for the European launch.



The big question, however, is whether Nintendo will retain the eyebrow-raising US advertising slogan - "Touching Is Good". If so, I nominate Sam Fox to front the campaign.

gamesradar.com: DS on 11 March

Engadget: Unpacking the DS

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