LIONEL HAMPTON DIED TODAY, and it occurred to me that in one way it's sad that he lasted so long: most of the people who truly appreciated him are already gone. A few years ago, my grandfather's older sister died--she was 102. In her time, she was quite a powerful, revolutionary figure. She did things women rarely did in the early part of the last century, and reached heights of accomplishment that few people ever reach. In the 40s and 50s, she was borderline famous.

If she'd died in 1953, hundreds if not thousands would have paid their respects. As it was, 14 people attended her wake. Now, I'm not saying I'd trade any time on Earth for a kickass, widely-attended wake (well, maybe a few days), but it's disturbing how quickly people--even noteworthy people--can be forgotten.

WHAT'S D. J. WALLIS BEEN UP TO? (Long-time readers are aware that Lingster considers D. J. Wallis to be a prime candidate for apotheosis.) Well, she's marketing her approach to developing super-human physical capabilities. Now, I'm as much of an extropian trans-humanist as the next guy, but what the hoo-hah is "Anti-Gravity Inversion Therapy" or "Laser Beam Ergotherapy"? Sounds like something out of a Flash Gordon serial, or a Power Company story. That said, I might not mind spending a weekend in an orgone accumulator if D. J. was the one pulling the levers and attaching those sticky sensor thingies.

D.J.: You'll be able to make a lot more money selling videotapes and books than "Austriallian Magnofield Electro-Massage" [sic] or portable hyperbaric chambers. Think about what the, oh, say, Kiana Tom brand stands for (slight muscular hypertrophy and big Malomar-looking fake boobs) and what a brand you might be able to craft as an alternative. Swear to God: mixing scientists, product development and branding is like giving Wild Turkey and car keys to teenage boys. My advice: make an exercise video, hire a PR flack, and back-burner all the science fiction stuff. Once you've got a franchise going, like The Firm, then you can sell the rubes anything you want. Point is, get them hooked BEFORE you start trying to sell them a warp core and a pile of jargon that would induce a brain hernia in a second-year Harvard MBA candidate. (What? There's no such thing as "brain hernias"? What are you, a neurobiologist or something?)

Also, the brainiac muscle goddess is running this banner ad on some Web sites:

What more do I want? Well, I also like ravishing brunettes with big boo....uh, never mind.

HERE'S THAT WONDER WOMAN COVER I WAS SO ENTHUSED ABOUT:

BETA TEST RENDERS OF POSER 5 are beginning to show up on Renderosity. Here's one by Catherine Przezak, who already had a rep for photorealism in Poser 4. I was blown away by that one, and also by this one. What you have to appreciate is that in the new rendering engine--apparently--the course of light is being much more thoroughly and accurately calculated. The realistic look of skin is very much a detail operation--light bounces off every pore and ever blemish--and to look realistic, a human face must have that same topography and the light effects to complement it.

A JOKE I FOUND HERE:

A guy is having a drink in a bar. He leans over to the very muscular woman next to him and says, "Do you wanna hear a funny blonde joke?"

She replies, "Well, before you tell that joke, you should know something. I'm blonde, six feet tall, 210 lbs, and I'm a professional triathlete and bodybuilder. The blonde woman sitting next to me is an ex-professional wrestler, and next to her is my blonde friend Susan. She's 6'5", weighs 250 lbs, and she's a professional kickboxer. Now, do you still want to tell that blonde joke?"

The guy thinks about it a second and says, "Not if I'm going to have to explain it three times."

I MENTIONED CBS DEVELOPING A SHOW CALLED "THE REAL BEVERLY HILLBILLIES" the other day. Rod Dreher, a columnist for the New York Post, also sometimes writes for National Review Online, and had this to say in the latter venue. I think he's dead on.

MAYBE THEY SHOULD HAVE OFFERED CAMELS? The Saudi Royal family--all 4000 of them--screws up again. One of the things I'm looking forward to in Poser 5 is the new fabric and strand manipulation tools. This will make it possible, for instance, to create a very realistic looking Saudi flag, all crumpled up on the ground, with a Poser figure urinating on it. It is my hope to create an entire series of Saudi flag desecration shots.

I do, however, have some sad news on this front. I had contacted a paper products manufacturer, and regret to inform you that my plan to produce "Saudi Arabian Flag Toilet Paper" is unworkable. It seems that not only is the cost for all that green dye prohibitive, but the green stuff tends to rub off on the assholes of the people using it.

TRAGICALLY, the Ms. Teen USA contest does not include a general bodaciousness rating, and so Miss Washington went home empty-handed. I am pretty sure high school girls didn't look like this in my day. Thanks to GTech at the BEA, who spotted this.

CONSERVATIVES OFTEN REMARK that the Left defies satire: any cause or claim, regardless of how ridiculous it might be, can find a home on the Left. But this is the tops, for me. I nearly peed myself laughing. Welcome to Harvard.

PULL OUT THE FLYEST SH*T IN YOUR CLOSET! The Smoking Gun demonstrates that class cannot be bought. Pretty funny stuff.

NEW STORY BY MARKNEW AND NOMDRESERV, called "Give and Take". It's really good. Don't read it before you go to work, though.

LAST 24 HOURS, Lingster's Big Mouth access by country of origin (rank, country, total visitors, percent of total):

1. United States 500 70.4 %
2. United Kingdom 50 7.0 %
3. Canada 42 5.9 %
4. Germany 16 2.3 %
5. Sweden 12 1.7 %
6. Argentina 10 1.4 %
7. Netherlands 6 0.8 %
8. France 6 0.8 %
9. Italy 4 0.6 %
10. Switzerland 4 0.6 %
11. Brazil 4 0.6 %
12. Japan 4 0.6 %
13. Australia 3 0.4 %
14. Finland 3 0.4 %
15. Yugoslavia 3 0.4 %
16. Denmark 2 0.3 %
17. Malaysia 2 0.3 %
18. Saudi Arabia 2 0.3 %
19. Austria 2 0.3 %
20. Philippines 2 0.3 %
21. Israel 2 0.3 %
22. Cuba 2 0.3 %
23. Kuwait 1 0.1 %
24. USSR (former) 1 0.1 %
25. New Zealand (Aotearoa) 1 0.1 %
26. Spain 1 0.1 %
27. Hong Kong 1 0.1 %
28. China 1 0.1 %
29. Belgium 1 0.1 %
30. Korea (South) 1 0.1 %
31. Norway 1 0.1 %

There's something very amusing about having only one Chinese reader, from the most populous country on Earth.

THE BEST COMIC BOOK COVER I EVER SAW, on Wonder Woman #184 this week. I'd link to it, but that fat, perpetually-tardy genius of comics illustration, Adam Hughes, must have filed it late, because it's not on the DC Comics site. But it's beautiful, and brilliantly rendered. If it shows up someplace, I'll link to it.

SWEET LOVE! OK, I've had a complicated morning: Our protagonist, Mighty Lingster, awoke at about 6:50am, ready to confront the travails of the day. As is his wont upon waking, he sort of stumble-walked out of his bedroom and into his miniscule "office", to check the avalanche of fan mail that awaits him most mornings (ahem). Among this vast tide of correspondence was a copy of a new story by Marknew and Nomdreserv, which those of you among the hoi-polloi of female muscle growth fandom will see in a day or so. As he read the story, so distracted became our protagonist that he forgot to move his khakis (all of them) from the washing machine (where he put them last night), to the dryer (where they needed to go so he could wear them), before taking a shower. After taking his shower, he returned to his office, where he checked the news and scribbled the bit of nonsense just below this bit of nonsense. He began dressing, and then remembered that his pants were all wet. By this time, it was approaching 8:30am, when Mighty Lingster is supposed to leave for work. Our hero wound up leaving the house at 9:40, which is bad, in the grand scheme of things. But there's a silver lining.

Sometimes, when a person breaks his routine, he sees something that he would otherwise not. Such was Mighty Lingster's experience this morning. For as he entered the train station, a glorious site in the distance met his eye--the arm of a woman that bulged not only on the bottom, but also on the top. As he moved closer, he felt his heart beat faster and his skin go flush. To call her physique "spectacular" would be an understatement: imagine Cory Everson circa 1986, in the off-season, and soften her features. No, no: imagine Alphie Newman if she kept at the weights for another two or three years, and gained some weight up top. Lingster walked past the woman, but by odd coincidence (yeah, right!) wound up on the same train car with her. Unfortunately, she got a seat, so much of her body was obstructed from view. But Lingster noted the absence of a ring on her left hand, her bright blue eyes, and the magnificent bicep that exploded when she eventually grabbed the bar over her head to leave the seat. And she was reading! Lingster squinted his eyes to parse the title of the book: was it Spinoza's Ethics? Feyman's QED? Foucault? Ayn Rand? Ah. Jackie Collins. "Well," mused Mighty Lingster, "nobody's perfect."

SILLY MANHATTAN LIBERALS AT CBS have no idea how badly this will end. The network wants to launch a reality show based on The Beverly Hillbillies, but the central premise of that show was mockery--real people don't take well to being mocked. This thing will implode. And it will be ugly. Not that I really care.

OK, APPARENTLY ATOMIC KITTEN BROKE UP A YEAR AGO. It's no wonder if they went around grabbing each other's boobs.

HERE'S SOMETHING SPECIAL, from the UK's SUN. This girl is built. She reminds me of a girl who was two years behind me in high school--curvy little blonde. Everywhere she went, boys walked into column supports, cars skidded into trees...it was quite extraordinary. Anyway, this little poptart's name is Kerry McFadden, though two or three cup sizes ago she used to call herself Kerry Katona. She's in a band called Atomic Kitten, and it seems likely that part of her job description is to breast feed the other two members.

I ADDED SOME NEW WEBSTATS TODAY, so that I could get a better idea of how people use the site. Just got a hit from Cuba, if you can believe it. Who's got Internet access in Cuba? It looks like it all gets piped through Canada, but still, maybe it's Fidel himself? After a long day of torturing dissidents and living in the lap of luxury while his subjects go hungry, el líder máximo para la vida sits back in his leather chair, samples some cheeses sent over by the French ambassador, breaks wind, lights up a cigar and cruises over to Lingster's Big Mouth. Es muy agradable. ¡Las muchachas son muy grandes y fuertes!

¡Viva como Ché!

PAGE SIX REPORTS THAT UMA THURMAN has acquired great big tracts of land. I noticed! What happened to waifish little Uma? Now she's towering over her dainty little fancy boy husband, and her boobs are bigger than his head! This is an admirable and forceful movement against the grain by Uma, breaking the trendline set by the incredible shrinking Jennifer Connelly. Look at her! Wow!

VISITORS FOR LAST WEEK DIVIDED BY WEEKDAY: (just because somebody asked)

2002-08-20: 683
2002-08-21: 705
2002-08-22: 754
2002-08-23: 674
2002-08-24: 691
2002-08-25: 824
2002-08-26: 812

AT THIS POINT, I have the process of making 3D renders down to an assembly-line process, such that I am considering publishing an online comic. My goal would be to produce a story every month, combining text and pictures. The main character would be a miserable, nerdy little guy who through some accident acquired the ability/curse of making women grow. He wanders the Earth like Jessica Fletcher, but rather than murders he sparks female growth in every locale he visits. Even better, it would be like the Incredible Hulk TV show in reverse: nerdy little guy wanders, but it's the love interest who grows big muscles each show, not him. Waitresses in coffee shops, cheerleaders at football games and nurses in hospitals would all benefit from his bizarre, random gift. The stories would probably be a combination of his first-person diary entries and real-time bubble-text dialog. Any thoughts or suggestions from the peanut gallery would be welcome, I'd especially like to hear thoughts on potential vendors--my hope is to be able to sell one-offs via Paypal for maybe $5/ea., or six-month subscriptions for $25/ea, payable by Paypal or credit card.

LOOKS LIKE ELIMIDATE might not be a waste of time tonight.

A NICE GRAPHIC, from the hucksters at InstaTrim.

MORE FEMUSCLE FROM THE NY POST: A reader spotted this bit about Russell Crowe being manhandled by a muscular woman.

A PHOTO OF A SURPRISINGLY MUSCULAR WOMAN appears today on the front page of the New York Post. Some guy flipped past it on the train this morning, and I almost reached out to grab the paper away from him. Caught myself at the last moment.

DEATH TO THE HOUSE OF SAUD. The New York Post has a nice wake-you-up article on how those worthless sons of bitches in Riyadh financed al Qaeda to the tune of about $200 million. The terms of the agreement were that al Qaeda would not stage attacks in Arabia nor would it try to overthrow the house of Saud. In return, the Saudis gave them bucketloads of cash, vehicles, supplies, and agreed to do their best to block American efforts to root out al Qaeda. The Taliban was also a party to the agreement. Delenda est Arabia.

WELL, IT'S TIME TO GO TO BED, another free day wasted on making a bunch of renders like this new one. This render is special, and suitable for the non-fetish masses, although lift-and-carry fans might find themselves inspired by it. The basic idea is of a strong girl dating a scrawny computer nerd, and using his body as a makeshift weight set.

FFEJL RESPONDS TO MY STEVE CASE RANT:

Hey Ling,

I have to disagree with you on the Steve Case insider trading investigation. If he did what the SEC suspects, he should be held responsible.

Sure, as you point out, Case (like any CEO) is an insider by definition, and he can't help but know non-public information every time he sells AOL stock. But his intent on the day he sold the stock counts for a *lot*. Let's take an extreme example. Suppose a CEO, oh, let's call her Martha Stewing, meets with the financial whizzes on a Friday, and learns that the company is going down the toilet. On Monday, Stewing sells a million shares of stock in her company. That act alone will drive down the price, thanks to the basic law of supply and demand, but just to make matters worse, she tells a reporter that things are great, and the company is in fat city. Then, on Tuesday, she announces that life sucks, the company is inches from going under, and bankruptcy is right around the corner. That, of course, causes the stock to plummet, and all the *other* shareholders are left holding the bag, including the poor schmucks who just bought those million shares from Stewing. Shouldn't Ms. Stewing be held accountable for the damage she's just done to the shareholders of her company, and the near-fraud she perpetrated on the folks who bought her stock? They *own* the company -- they are her bosses, in one sense--and she's just screwed them royally. Now, maybe she shouldn't go to jail, but it seems to me she shouldn't be allowed to keep all that money she made on Monday, either.

Of course, Case didn't do anything that blatant, but he's accused of essentially the same thing. If he sold while talking up the stock, and only *then* began to make public how bad things were, or even if he just sold knowing bad news was right around the corner, he deserves what he gets. Don't forget, no one knows that Case is selling the stock when he does it, since insiders have something like 90 days to report a sale to the public.

I've was high enough up the food chain to have been a company-designated (as opposed to SEC-designated) insider at my last couple of jobs. The rules are clear, fairly simple, and, trust me, they don't keep you from making plenty of money. There's no reason they shouldn't be enforced.

Best,
FfejL

PS -- Love the new renders! More, more! 8^)

Thanks for the kudos on the renders. About Steve Case--I believe the sales that are under review by the SEC are those that took place in the first half of 2001. You can see a list of all his sales of AOL stock during the period in question here. Now, he began selling in February, flipping 1,000,000 stock options priced at $0.43/share on the open market at $50/share. That's a lot of cash, but that sale would have been filed and public by March 10, assuming he filed his form 4 on time, and I have no reason to think he didn't. He sold periodically thereafter: again in April he flipped a lot of options, at an even higher market price. My point is--Steve Case was selling legally, and filing his notices as he went. If he was doing so because he believed AOL stock was near the top, that's his right the same as ours. He certainly wasn't being secretive about dumping the stock. AOL stock wasn't trading consistently below $50 until July--well after Case's big sales had occurred and been filed.

DAVID ANNAND SENT ALONG this little gem. It's yet-another-Clerks-parody, but enjoys the rare distinction of actually being funny. I'm gonna be in Red Bank tomorrow--if I see Kevin Smith I'll bitch-slap him for y'all.

ANOTHER NEW RENDER, using some of the same elements as the last one, is posted in my folder at FMG2--called "feminoxfina.jpg". This one is based on Feminox--a FMG plot device Femgrowth invented and used in a story called "The Health Food Store", that David Annand picked up for one called "Addiction", and that Julie Velor used in "Little Sister", parts 1, 2 and 3.

I POSTED A NEW RENDER AT WRECK SHOP'S SITE. It's right here.

THE NY POST REPORTS that Steve Case of AOL fame is being investigated for insider trading regarding some sales of AOL Time Warner stock he made last year. I'm no fan of the whole AOL/TW mafia, but the enforcement of these insider trading laws becomes more ridiculous every day. Basically, what happened is Steve Case, and some other former execs from the AOL side of the business, sold a bunch of shares last year. A big bunch. The stock's value has since declined precipitously. So now the SEC is suggesting that Case may have traded on inside knowledge--specifically that he had information not available to the average investor that indicated that AOL/TW stock would decline.

But here's the thing: Steve Case always has more information than the average investor. There's nothing to be done about that. The government is trying to make it criminal for Steve Case to be Steve Case. He followed all the rules for insider sales of stock--which require advance notification which is made public so all the "average investors" can see that he's planning to sell--yet he's still being investigated. It's not a good thing to prosecute rich people from envy--it discourages people from becoming rich, and it discourages rich people from living in the U.S. Class warfare is a sign of a sick culture.

OOOH, BABY! YOU KNOW WHAT I LIKE! From the boys at FHM, a very nice bit. Nudity! (Oh, I forgot to mention, move your mouse over her breasts.)

HAHA. So they're done. I wonder how much Infinity gave them in walking-away money?

TREMORS! ON TNT! AGAIN! TWICE!!! AAAAAAAGH!!!

AND DEROB HAS THIS TO ADD:

I posted this to the FMG2 board, but you may not have seen it yet. If your readers want just an MPEG-2 codec, you can get them from http://www.elecard.com/products/mpeg2decoder.shtml for Windows Media Player 7. They're plain codecs, and you can see the program that's used to register them, so there's no concern with spyware.

READER MICHAEL C. WRITES:

Thought the clip was really good and the voice wasn't too bad.

As for people that can't view the clip, I would suggest you download the latest codecs. You can get it at download.com and the file is called SLD Codec Pack. It has all the updated codecs you need to view almost all video files. It even includes the newest divx codecs w/o the spyware. It seems to work fine on all windows os and I ran ad-aware and manually searched regedit and msconfig files to make sure that no such spyware was installed for those that are concerned with that. Here is the direct link:
http://download.com.com/3302-2194-10132352.html?tag=lst
I figure since you already put all that effort into making the clip, it won't be too much trouble for people to try and install the latest codecs before you put more time into re-encoding the file.

Also, I wanted to pass along some female muscle sightings in comics that you might have missed. The first is Big Daddy Danger #1. Art is a bit cartoony but it does have two villians who are huge female wrestlers. That comic came out last week along with another, Femforce #115 which has drawings of women that appear fit not to mention a short story on Too Tall Tara for those who like GTS. Then there's the latest issues of Legion where one of its characters, Kinetix, was evolved. She was turned into some eight foot tall woman. It isn't much but at least it's something.

Anyways, keep up the fantastic work.

Thanks! What do you think, Anterion, is this acceptable? As for the comics--I saw Big Daddy Danger and thought the art was very subpar. The alleged muscle women were so bulky as to appear fat and manly, not feminine at all. I missed Femforce--I wasn't aware AC Comics was still publishing anything regularly.

REGARDING MY MOVIE, Anterion writes:

Hi there!

Good work on this one. The video is very good and the voice is great for being artificial.

I think I found the reason why some people can't play the movie. My software tells me that the video is in MPEG2 format. The standard windows media player can't play MPEG2 unless you have certain DVD playing software installed.

See if you perhaps used MPEG2 when encoding the video. MPEG1 is the better option for such videos. 99% of the available video player can play it and MPEG2 only has it's advantages at high-resolution, high-bitrate videos such as DVDs or HD-TV.

Keep up the good work!

Yeah, I used MPEG2. I'll re-encode it tonight, and re-post it.

ALSO, Derob Jacobs has some new BE/FMG stories at one of the BE story sites, but I'm frankly a bit too drunk and dry-eyed to read them right now. So check them out for yourselves:

http://overflowingbra.com/download.php?StoryID=906
http://overflowingbra.com/download.php?StoryID=909

THE MOVIE: A number of you have written to complain that you can't get it to run, but I think most everybody has gotten it to run. I used a standard MSFT codec, so make sure you've got the latest Windows Media Player and let me know if that doesn't work.

ALOHA, SCUM. I say, let the Saudi money go. The fewer financial ties we have to Saudi Arabia, the sooner we can go about redecorating Riyadh with Daisy Cutters. Delenda est Arabia.

I POSTED MY TALKIE MOVIE TO FMG2: Right here. Remember, there's sound.

OH MY GOD. Nude, unmorphed profile shots of Roberta Perdon, in 1974. They're on Pinupfiles.com. (What did they feed that girl?!)

IT'S REALLY A DAMNED SHAME THERE AREN'T MORE OF US. My guess is that there are fewer than 4,000 wired FMG enthusiasts extant, and maybe 500 hardcore fans. If there were more of us, we'd have more "content" to consume. Also, perhaps most importantly, I might actually be able to make a living doing this crap. The more time I spend making rendered images, movies, and comics, the less interest I have in my real job. If I had a whole lot of free time, I could probably make a 15-minute FMG cartoon every month, and sell it on CD--maybe charge $100/year for a 10-CD subscription. If I had some expectation of getting 750 to 1250 subscribers...hell, I'd probably quit my job.

There just aren't enough of us to make a decent-sized market--maybe 150 of you who'd be willing to cough up the money, and that's not nearly enough.

I wonder how LH's business breaks down? He's kind of lackadaisical about his Web site, but overall he puts out good product at a fairly reasonable price. Or Superheroine Central?

MCGARNAGAL WRITES, regarding The Adventures of Pluto Nash:

I saw a special on Pluto Nash on BET while flipping channels yesterday. It did show the FMG scene and just a few computer screens of the making of it. It did not say anything on how they did it really. The bodybuilder looked nothing like the actress.

Movie Special: The Adventures of Pluto Nash is the only title it gave on BET.com. It might come on Tuesday at 7:30 PM (Time zone unknown) Tvguide.com says it does not, at least in my area.

My guess is that in the faraway shots, where the head remains mostly steady, the fx guys simply superimposed Rosario Dawson's head on the FBB's body. However, in some of the close-up shots, she moves around a bit--very seamlessly--and my guess for those clips is that Ms. Dawson did those poses herself, and then her scrawny body was replaced with a muscular 3D body in editing. I will definitely watch for that show tomorrow night--though the only references I see to Pluto Nash in the listings are for an HBO "first look" special. Either way, she looked damned good with all the muscle, and Ms. Dawson should definitely thinking about hitting the weights.

DRY REPORTING can be such a pleasure. This from the NBC affiliate in Las Vegas:

The homeowner, who happens to be a gardener, in an attempt to protect his young daughter, himself and his property, grabbed a machete and whacked the suspects hand completely off. The suspect's hand was on one side of the street, the rest of the suspect was later found hiding in the bushes on the other side of the street.

SILENT MOVIES NO MORE. I'm working on a talkie animation. Uncompressed, it's looking like 105 Mb for the thirty second feature, but compressed I expect to be able to get it down to less than 5 Mb. It's so sexy it makes my head hurt. I'm not 100% satisfied with the voice--it's partly synthesized--but I'm hoping the existence of the video will draw women to volunteer their voice talent in the future. God, it's sexy. Ouch, ouch, ouch. Look for release later this week, possibly tomorrow.

MY BÊTE NOIR is back--in spades. Tremors 2: Aftershocks is running on the Sci-Fi channel right now, and to make matters worse, the Sci-Fi channel is launching a Tremors TV show. Sigh. The Tremors phenomenon is inescapable.

LETTER FROM GBM:

When I read your comment about the Bionic Woman you brought back a lot of memories. I too owned a Six Million Dollar Man Doll (sorry, Action Figure). Both my brother and I got one for Christmas one year. My parents told me later that they had a hard time deciding if they wanted to give us boys dolls for a present. I suppose they were worried that we would turn gay right there. (I'm guessing they were happy when we didn't.) But what did we know.

I was a huge Steve Austin fan. And like you, when they had the two part Bionic Woman episode I was thilled. I was crushed when they killed her at the end. Apparently a lot of people were upset and when they brought her back (with a ridiculous story) I enjoyed watching both shows, but really got more of a thrill out the Bionic Woman.

I just wanted to let you know that I've been "hitting" your blog report for a few months now and I enjoy your commentary, links and drawings. I'm...the writer who goes by the initials GBM that you mentioned in a link to DTV a few weeks back. I was a bit surprised when I saw it mentioned. I have been a fan of Marknew and you for a long time and I can honestly say that you two have inspired me to write a few stories. Although I don't have a lot of time to write them it is something fun on the side.

Keep up the good work!

What a nice guy!

OK, ANOTHER NEW RENDER, this one inspired by something that actually happened to me. Well, something that's happened to anybody who's ever gone on a personal ad blind date, and found that the other party was less than truthful in describing him- or herself.

CAN YOU BELIEVE THESE CLOWNS? It's so offensive, I'm speechless. These two jackasses just signed a $30 million contract.

PLUTO NASH didn't suck. That is not to say it's going to win an Academy Award--it really won't--but it wasn't bad. And the FMG scene was well worth it. It's all hypothetical, of course, a VR FMG; so when Rosario Dawson, suddenly built like Ms. Olympia 1986, asks "Is this me?", the doctor coos back, "It could be!" Very stimulating. The BE that follows is less satisfying and a bit grotesque, but the muscle development is terrific--she's perfect. I suspect that it was done with both real models and CGI models--the movements are so good in some places I think they must be natural body movements mapped to a computer image, but in other places, the distance shots, she looks like someone who's really practiced posing.

I'M GONNA GO SEE PLUTO NASH after work. I'll let y'all know about it later this evening. I'm soooo glad it's Friday.

THIS TIME OF YEAR people always talk about the anniversary of Elvis' death, but I tend to reminisce about #15, Thurman Munson.

THE ADVENTURES OF PLUTO NASH is being released this weekend. Many of you will recall that the movie--which is probably awful--contains a MMG/FMG scene. Of course, we don't know how the scene ends--it's entirely possible that Rosario Dawson's character winds up built bigger than the Eddie Murphy's. Here's the trailer.

ANOTHER REASON FOR HOPE that the character of Jaime Sommers will be a sexy girl: these two sisters (1,2) are the producers. And they don't have a history of making preachy, cloying movies.

NOW THIS IS COOL. I loved The Bionic Woman when I was a kid, loved it, LOVED IT! I mean, they tried to make it chick-flicky with the the Love Story-style theme music and photography, but the idea of a cyborg girl and her cyborg German Shepherd was just too good to be spoiled by saccharine romanticism. Of course, I owned a Steve Austin doll (what's in these days called an 'action figure'), but it was Jaime Sommers who really did it for me. To my mind, the only actress for the role is Erika Eleniak, but of course she's too sexy for the very likely descent into feminism and PC that the new show will dump on us. (Reason for hope: It's going to be on USA, not one of the major networks.)

AS I MENTIONED in the most recent post to Wreck-Shop's site, Poser 5 is supposedly about to be released. I believe Poser 4 was released in 1998, so Poser users have been going for quite a while without a major update (though some would count the Poser Pro Pack add-on in 2001 as a major update). Curious Labs has been a bit secretive about the release--they've announced features and have said they intend to release the product for sale "later this summer". To my knowledge there are no beta testers among the Poser enthusiast community, and those who frequent Renderosity, the primary Poser user site, have so little information that they're posting scraps of data, like this. Anyone who has worked in software development understands the importance of beta testing, and so the absence of P5 beta renders at Renderosity says to me that the release is further away than the end of summer.

I know, I know...I'm not exactly going out on a limb predicting "software product will be late", but I'm on the record now.

The good news is that the new Poser will have a much more powerful rendering engine, which should mean more renders that look like this or this, rather than like this. Also, Curious Labs is releasing some new high-polygon-count figures that, with any luck, will give Stephanie a run for her money on potential muscular development. But in another act of surprising secrecy, Curious Labs hasn't announced who made the new figures for them. That's...odd.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to acquiring the new version. From the posted hardware specs, it ought to run OK on my machine. That render I posted last night was a test, by the way, to see how many figures I could manage concurrently in one edit session--I had six high-polygon count figures, and four lower-polygon figures, for a total of ten, plus some articles of clothing, props, etc. It did OK. I never tried more than half that many before. I used some tricks to avoid eating memory, though.

A NEW RENDER from yours truly, at Wreck Shop's site.

AN UPDATE at Super Girl Power! Thanks, Seth!

NEW RENDER FROM MOI, at FMG2

A REALLY GREAT POST by Marc2410 here at DtV. He's posted links to a large number of photos of athletic, cute young women, mostly track and field athletes. One is a Slovenian long-jumper named (I think) Anja Banka, and she's just cute as a button.

GONE FISHIN' -- Be back Sunday.

MARKNEW HAS ANOTHER STORY ready to go--a really good one, too. It should be on DtV in the morning, and I'll post a link. But don't be afraid to check on your own beforehand.

THE FULL-RIPE BUST BURSTS OUR BLOOD VESSELS! God, I love the Japanese. A Japanese fella stopped me on the street for directions today--he spoke very little English--and I had tremendous fun trying to set him straight. He seemed to enjoy it, too. Of course, I wasn't too thrilled with this jackass shooting his mouth off. It always amuses me when well-meaning utopians proclaim that we should ban certain weapons--as if such a ban could be enforced. Of course, only rigorous preparation for war truly prevents it, and the simple-minded arguments of the pacifists lead only to greater bloodshed.

HERE'S A SITE ABOUT BIG-CHESTED JAPANESE GIRLS. Damned if I can figure it out. Just click around the left side menu bar. Nice shots.

WHO ASKED 'EM?

I CAME ACROSS A NOVEL WRITTEN NEARLY 100 YEARS AGO, called Herland. It's a utopian fantasy-land populated exclusively with women, and the women are, of course, far stronger than normal women. It's a long read--I myself just glanced at it. Apparently some feminists think quite highly of it.

I HAVE ANSWERED WRECK SHOP'S CALL, and added a Lois Lane themed render to his board.

JILLY MILLY #10, now available at DtV! The twists at the end are really entertaining.

TWO (YES, TWO!!) NEW LINGSTER RENDERS in my folder on Yahoo! FMG2!! One of them has nudity. If you miss a day of Lingster's Big Mouth, you miss a whole friggin' lot!