black gold

The NYT has an article up about Kopi Luwak, coffee beans that have been eaten, digested, and evacuated by civets. I predict several things. First, we will see a profusion of super specialty coffee companies that charge huge amounts of money for this. Second, they'll mostly be bogus. Third, I will seek them out anyways. Fourth, as per Mitchell & Webb, we can expect that the Asian Palm Civet will face few threats of extinction anytime soon.

Could've been famous

In 1945, Walt Disney signed Aldous Huxley to write a screenplay for "Alice and the Mysterious Mr. Carroll": a combination live-action and animated incorporation of "Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland" with the biography of Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson). Dodgson, a beleaguered Oxford lecturer known as the Dodo, has already written "Alice in Wonderland" under the name Lewis Carroll. He and Alice take refuge in Wonderland from Alice’s cruel governess and Dodgson’s Tory vice-chancellor. These villains, who disapprove of "nonsense books," must never learn that Dodgson and Carroll are the same person, lest Dodgson be barred from a coveted university librarianship. A series of fantastic adventures culminates with the resolution of the Carroll-Dodgson identity through a deus-ex-machina appearance by Queen Victoria. "It was so literary I could understand only every third word," Disney said of Huxley’s script, which he didn’t end up using for his adaptation of "Alice in Wonderland" (1951).

Seven never-produced screenplays by famous intellectuals.

Welcome to Earth

Welcome, element #117. We hope you enjoyed your brief stay and that you do return.