Random links too good to waste but not worthy of individual posts:

The big premiere of the Speed Racer movie is this Friday. Warner Bros. has very high hopes indeed for this film as the “tentpole” for all of their summer releases, and they’ve been hyping the living shit out of it for weeks and weeks. But this story in today’s Hollywood Reporter seems to be damning the film with pretty faint praise. Apparently the film isn’t testing too well in advance screenings, and the rhetoric of the studio flaks is already downplaying how much ticket revenue they expect. Meanwhile, Iron Man is exceeding expectations, did boffo at the box office on its opening weekend, and is lined up to win this coming weekend, too. The fact that both of these movies were released in early May shows that their studios did not have a lot of faith in them in the first place — it wouldn’t be the first time a hoped-for “franchise” film based on comic books or a TV show ended up way below expectations. With people being quoted in the industry press making equivocating statements, things do not bode well for this film.

Speaking of upcoming films, the Huffington Post has this brief interview with Star Trek director J.J. Abrams that has me feeling hopeful about his film. The movie was originally slated for this summer, but the writer’s strike slowed things to the point that the film has been pushed back all the way to NEXT May.

It’s always amusing to go to IKEA and laugh at all the silly Swedish names for their products. Not too long ago, it was revealed that the branding folks at IKEA deliberately give Danish-language names to their low-end products and keep the Swedish names for their top-of-the-line items as a sort of slap in the face to their Danish cousins. But Mental Floss tells us today that apparently “IKEA” is the Swedish word for “tax evasion”. Yumpin’ yimminy!

If you’re old enough to remember the 1980s, you might remember the PR disaster that occurred when it was revealed that the Reagan Administration had the U.S. Postal Service make sure that they would be able to maintain regular mail delivery in the event of a nuclear war (lots of scary links there, btw). Reagan’s Mussolini-like determination to keep things running smoothly seems downright heroic compared to this story from the BBC: recently-declassified documents from the British government during the 1950s show that the Ministry of Food was terribly worried, old chap, that there wouldn’t be enough tea to go ’round if London were blitzed with the H-bomb by those dreadful Russian fellows. I say! That would be a bit of a sticky wicket, eh wot?

If you’re a fan of “Deadliest Catch” like I am, I think you’ll probably appreciate this Alaska joke. Buuuuut, you probably don’t want to know that the fish you ate last night was full of worms.

Got a personal problem? Ask Genghis Khan! (Doesn’t look like too many people really want his advice, actually)