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Even spookier than the 3-minute original.

Not too long ago Noel and I were watching the opera singer Hayley Westenra covering the song, and it occurred to us that something was wrong. Her voice was beautiful, her rendition spot-on. . .but she was smiling! Smiling! And this song is sung by the ghost of a woman who died of heartbreak!

Andrea Arnold’s recent adaptation of the Emily Bronte offers an interesting interpretation of why Heathcliff was treated that way.

Our favorite version of Wuthering Heights is the one from 1992 with Ralph Fiennes as Heathcliff, Juliette Binoche as Cathy, and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s crazed/swoony soundtrack. Wait for Heathcliff’s reaction when he learns that she is dead.

But we haven’t seen the 2009 version with Tom Hardy.

Dear Readers,

When we reach a certain age, we realize that we deserve better. We must let other people know that we deserve better. We can do this through a public celebration of ourselves.

We love it when the stuff we imagined in childhood confronts us on a screen 20 feet high. Technology has caught up with the literary imagination: we never doubt that the four-armed fifteen-foot tall green humanoid Tharkians are real. We haven’t read Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Barsoom series since we were in the sixth grade, but John Carter, Andrew Stanton’s film adaptation of A Princess of Mars, has the ring of familiarity to it. Yes, we approve of this movie.

Liberties have been taken to make the protagonist’s sudden teleportation to Mars seem less incredible, and the giant machine that made Barsoom’s atmosphere breathable is not mentioned at all. But we don’t mind the changes, and we don’t think Mr. Burroughs would have either. The books are pulp science-fiction after all, full of weird and wonderful things.

John Carter is both a throwback to big old adventure movies and a showcase for new moviemaking tricks. Stanton and company have produced a great daffy yarn with visual wit and humor; with all the digital wizardry at their disposal they have not forgotten that the story rules. We hope John Carter is a hit so that the other Barsoom books can be made into movies: there’s one in which super-intelligent creatures that look like giant spiders attach themselves to headless bodies and animate them. (Read The Chessmen of Mars.)

Taylor Kitsch looks set for stardom, his grasp of geography notwithstanding. Lynn Collins is fabulous as the fighting heroine, and we like the fact that the movie has provided employment for actors from beloved TV series like Rome, The Wire and Breaking Bad.

After Uggie, Cosmo and Blackie, here comes the new dog: Woola.

John Carter opens today in cinemas.

Lollipop commercial

So the whole news world was up in arms recently because of this newscast referring to Barack and Michelle Obama “fisting” each other in the White House, the speaker blissfully unaware of the unsettling slang definition of the term. And while we can all laugh at that lady and her obliviousness, the truth is there are all sorts of everyday words that, in the right crowd, will draw the same muffled laughter as the fisting gaffe up there. Such as…

6 Everyday Words With Disturbing Alternate Meanings

We would add:

1. Bati. Tagalog for “greet”, “reconcile after a quarrel”, “beat eggs with a whisk”. And “masturbate”. My druid: “When people have an argument, I never say, Magbati na kayo.”

2. Top. Gay men, explain to the heteros.

3. Bottom. See #2.

4. Bayo. Tagalog for “grind with a pestle”. Also a popular clothing brand. And Tagalog for “masturbate”.

5. Remember that ad, “Chupa Chups: the pleasure of sucking”?

Acetaminophen or paracetamol

The FDA started requiring drug companies to place expiration dates on drugs in 1978 on the reasonable grounds that people shouldn’t be using medicine so old it was no longer safe or effective. What the FDA didn’t do was set expiration dates, leaving that up to manufacturers. In 1985 the U.S. Pharmacopeia, a not-for-profit standards-setting body, began urging that medicines not sold in the manufacturer’s original container (that is, most medicines dispensed by pharmacists) have a one-year expiration date. The theory was that pharmacy pill bottles left in the notoriously hostile environment of your medicine cabinet (or, to be fair, a hot glove compartment) were less likely to prevent their contents from going bad.

But even then it’s not like drugs go bad at the stroke of midnight. An update on the Shelf Life program published in 2009 established that 88 percent of tested medications worked fine more than five years past their expiration date, which admittedly just confirmed previous research. The more pertinent finding from a practical standpoint was this: one year post-expiration, every drug tested was still OK.

Will using expired drugs kill you? The Straight Dope replies.

We were going to illustrate this post with a scene from Drugstore Cowboy (Gus Van Sant, 1989, Matt Dillon and his crew rob drugstores for drugs), but all the videos we found disallow embedding.

We’ve realized that most people have no idea who John Carter of Mars is, and it’s hard to design a costume that works for someone you don’t know. So we’re moving the deadline to 13 March 2012, after the movie has opened.

Also it might be useful to give the star a GPS or a smartphone with Google apps so he knows where he is at all times and can correct misimpressions.

Here’s Mat wearing the prize during his early evening nap (not to be confused with his twilight siesta).

* * * * *

This is Taylor Kitsch as John Carter in the movie that opens March 9.

Fabulous-looking man, but the loincloth-and-breastplate costume is a little tired. Of course the outfit is faithful to the description supplied by Edgar Rice Burroughs in A Princess of Mars and the succeeding volumes in the John Carter Barsoom series, so the filmmakers are doing their job well. However, much as we love the Barsoom series we grew up on, we think the costume could be freshened up. Edgar Rice Burroughs: wonderful writer of timeless adventures, but what was his other famous creation Tarzan wearing? A loincloth, you know what we’re saying?

Remember those endless Tarzan reruns on Channel 13, where they would show ancient Johnny Weismuller movies like Tarzan’s New York Adventure? In that one, Tarzan travels to Manhattan and he can’t go around in the old loincloth unless it’s Saturday night in Chelsea. So Jane takes him to a tailor, where he proceeds to rip all the suits he tries on with his massive back muscles.

But back to the John Carter costume issue. A couple of years ago we had our super-popular Dress Up the Prince of Persia contest in which we put your designs on Jake Gyllenhaal’s body, and the creators of the best designs won special edition watches. This time we’re asking you to Dress Up John Carter, and the three people who send in the winning designs get special edition John Carter watches you can’t buy in stores.

Remember: the design must be appropriate to the climate, terrain and culture of Mars. Desert, basically, arid, cold at night, warring tribes not all humanoid. Method designers can read A Princess of Mars at Project Gutenberg for the design requirements. (If you’re not designing a costume read it anyway, the series is a blast.)

Make it work, but most of all, Make it fabulous. Send your drawings to saffron.safin@gmail.com. We’ll post your designs daily. Deadline for the submission of entries is on 6 March 2012 at noon.

Thanks to Jay at Disney for the prizes!