Well, it’s the day after Wallace and Gromit rode again – and it’s the 31st anniversary of the first appearance of the greatest sound effect in the history of the motion picture, so here’s the story of how (I found out how) they made it...

BLUE VELVET (David Lynch, 1990)

There's been a lot of talk about ghost stories in the run up to Christmas, but one that never gets mentioned is "The Return" (1973). Essentially a 2-hander starring Peter Vaughan & Rosalie Crutchley (cinematography by Douglas Slocombe) it's wonderfully creepy. Avoid reviews: they're full of spoilers

I've been thinking about this sign for 6 months. a phrase I'll treasure forever. a metaphor with boundless potential

My son bought me what I thought was a drill. Turned out to be a toblerone gaffer-taped to a bottle of Bailey’s.

The Housemaid livens up at the end but the rest feels drawn out & twists are obvious a mile off. I feel like I saw enough ‘90s thrillers in the ‘90s, y’know?

It's that day again. Happy anniversary

they misspelled christmas on the title card lmao

couldn't decide between a star and an angel, so i went with both

There’s an old folks horror film in this…

JP probably got more presents than anyone this year and he's fallen completely in love with his new piggy. Carried it around all day and although there was copious chewing, he damaged it not at all. Somehow I have become custodian to the sweetest soul on this entire godsforsaken planet.

perhaps the greatest gift i've ever received

Tonight’s film: Bell, Book and Candle (it’s set at Christmas) A little daft & dated but Kim Novak is suitably feline and Elsa Lanchester (Bride of Frankenstein!) is great fun

Fucking sellouts. It used to be about the music.

@vole.wtf DocType, may have been bought with nostalgia in mind, but the boy is very keen to have a go... Christmas done a day early :-)

My 94 year old dad has never been great with tech but manages to use a cheap Android phone to send emoji-laden messages & has now ditched his landline, I’m impressed

It’s a page of nonsense to print off and colour in to keep a child busy while you cook or for you to have some calm crayons time. Merry Christmas!

Right, let's see what's on the telly

I've got to be honest, we may as well call it a night #DuvetKnowItsChristmas

Tonight’s films: Fackham Hall - somehow even the decent gags fall weirdly flat, there’s something fundamentally off with the tone or timing, I don’t know (Jimmy Carr being involved doesn’t help) A House of Dynamite - solid nuclear thriller, kept me gripped

merry christmas

love reading recipes online

And Tiny Tim, who did not die. Yet did not live. Trapped forever in his tiny body, never growing older, cursed to survive only on the blood of the living, never to see sunlight again

🎄 Hope you’ve got all your presents ready 💝 Google search interest shows a stable pattern: 🎅 “Christmas gift wife” peaks just before Christmas Eve 🎅 “Christmas gift husband” peaks much earlier #MerryChristmas to all of you! 🎁 📈 Google Trends (Nov 18–Dec 24, 2020–2024) #dataviz #ggplot2

A propos of absolutely nothing, this is my favourite bit of one of my favourite books, to wit the introduction to "Spinning" in the Royal Air Force flying training manual for the DHC Chipmunk T10.

Here's a Christmas treat for you which always cheers me up, Christopher Frayling's heraldic motto.

"They looked towards the hilltop and saw a yellow flame rising against the sky. Too-ticky had lit the bonfire. It wrapped itself in flames at once, from ground to top, it gave a roar like a lion and threw its reflection straight down on the black ice" Moominland #Midwinter, Tove Jansson

First time my mum went to my dad's parents house she noticed my granddad had a party hat on. Seemed odd as there was no party. "Why is he wearing that?" she asked my dad later. "It's because he's so forgetful," said my dad. "My mum makes him wear it every time he's switched the immersion heater on."

Second anniversary of our Apple TV’s spectacular attempt to understand me asking for “Hercule Poirot’s Christmas”

In our actual cyberpunk dystopia, there will remain in the dark nooks and crannies of the world machines which are cognitohazards people must avoid. Young people told "if you see one, don't fucking talk to it. Don't ask it any questions. It will drive you mad and get you to kill yourself."

I like being an uncle for the holidays because: Mom and dad are responsible, and will discipline you. Grandpa and Grandma are indulgent, and will coddle you. But the uncle... the uncle is unpredictable. The niece and nephew cannot know what the uncle will do, because the soul of the uncle is CHAOS

Thanks to @coffeeeeee.bsky.social for this perfect essay about It’s a Wonderful Life. “It’s a Wonderful Life is, in part, the story of someone becoming, kicking and screaming, against all intentions and desires, a big man. Mary sees the big man in George from the first, because she is a big woman.”

Christmas Eve.

And to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, and will return in Avengers: Doomsday

Btw this is one of the biggest reasons why it’s not as easy as people think to start up independent newsrooms or just be an indie journalist on substack. If you are actually holding powerful and rich people to account, you WILL need legal representation. Not a matter of whether but when

Proper lol at this

One thing that is always left out of Christmas Carol adaptations that I think is important in the book is that when Marley leaves, Scrooge looks over the city and sees thousands of spirits. Just a little suggestion to just how common miserliness and cruelty is and how few can make the change.

POV: You've just dug up one of the three lost crowns of East Anglia and can hear a breathless, lungless laugh...

2025 vole site traffic is 3x higher than 2023, a lot of the growth has been driven by people finding games like Penga on Pinterest & “I’m bored” sites, so it’s not a loyal userbase, but it’s nice to have numbers going up for a website rather than the assumed general decline

It's a festive ode to the incredible work of @moonjam.com

tl;dr: GenAI and game design concepts traditionally referred to as "AI" (enemy behaviors, pathfinding, etc.) are not the same thing, and I'm on my knees begging people to learn the difference, lest we see more bullshit claims like what The Escapist put out re: Blue Prince.

This is a delightful winter if you like being surrounded by kids with horrible croupy coughs whenever you go into a shop/cafe

IT COULD BE ANYBODY WE JUST DON'T KNOW

We've got a book of toxic wallpaper that can kill (arsenic I think). It was made as a reference to avoid toxic wallpaper but I guess when they made it they didn't think about the fact that the samples were also toxic

As my previous tree stump thing did well on Instagram, I made a festive sequel

Didn’t realise this was Xmas 1977. If you want to understand what Star Wars added to pop culture, it’s this. Big budget Sci Fi before it was adult, troubling, dystopian, allegorical. So all the BBC can pick is stuff that also has ILM-grade VFX but is deeply unsuitable for family fun.

Cutting-edge browser tech www.tiktok.com/@avibagla/vi...

Ugh, imagine how excited an illustrator would’ve been to work on this (especially one with some kind of person connection to the topic), and it wouldn’t have been expensive, instead a BBC producer just typed prompts about an enslaved woman hiding in the woods, looking sad in a ship, etc