Nate -

i still remember the first comment i made, regarding your then-new-to-me existence, on the sift. a month and a half ago.
i saw a comment by you, on a clip we both upvoted or something, and i knew anyone with that name would know that i was taking a funny jab, at his most excellent taste in usernames.

so i called you, a then-total stranger, a ... what was it now... fiddle-playing sissy heroin addict, or somesuch.
point being only this.

you're already, clearly, better than i am, at spotting a good-natured jab, in the random comment flow that we all enjoy.
i, however, am better at writing them.

- owen

ps. you are, also, clearly a better sifter than i to date, as well. having little need of *requeues, i notice.

In reply to this upvoted comment by MycroftHomlz, sleuth o' the sift.

Thank you for the save.

In reply to this comment by michie:
*save

great film..go see, go see (rent,buy,borrow or steal) ! especially before the remake comes out!

For more details on this upcoming film:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleuth_%282007_film%29


For movie trivia on the 1972 version of "Sleuth":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleuth_%281972_film%29


About "Sleuth", the play:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleuth_%28play%29

For movie trivia on "Sleuth":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleuth_%281972_film%29


About "Sleuth", the play:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleuth_%28play%29

I'm OT so sue me:

Mr. Laurie, a household name in Britain since 1980, was not as well known here, except to fans of his British series Blackadder. The confusion over his nationality was played up during last year's Emmy Award telecast. When Mr. Laurie began speaking in his real voice, co-presenter Zach Braff said, "I didn't realize we were doing British accents."

"Well, we're not. I'm British; it's the way I talk," Mr. Laurie protested.

....


Mr. Laurie doesn't use a dialect coach, and he has described his struggle to sustain Dr. Gregory House's American accent as "the hardest single thing in my day."

LOS ANGELES - For Hugh Laurie, speaking American is an issue."ISH-oo or ISS-you?" he recently asked on the set of Fox's hospital mystery series, "House," his costar Robert Sean Leonard said. In the diagnostic suspense series, which has its second-season premiere tonight, Mr. Leonard plays a Watson-like comrade to Mr. Laurie's Sherlock Holmes-esque sleuth physician,and the rehearsals often are interrupted when the British actor utters a wrong diphthong or some such mispronunciation.

"Expletives come pouring out of his mouth, and he's hittinghimself with the cane," Mr. Leonard said. "It drives him nuts."

That kind of exactitude is what Mr. Laurie demands of himself and his character demands of his underlings. Struggling with aforeign accent is not as bad as hobbling around with a perpetual limp, as the Vicodin-popping Dr. Gregory House must. But it's a mild form of handicap that connects Mr. Laurie to Dr. House's
sense of agitation.

"It is the single hardest part of my job; oh, by far!" he said in an interview in Los Angeles. Off the set, he's relaxed, so his Britishisms are in full flower, as when "herbs" get the hard h. But his stubbly face creases just discussing that dialect problem.

"I can't think of any other human activity that doesn't get easier with repetition," he continued, calming himself with a Marlboro Light. "Making omelets, playing violin, sex, anything -
the more you do it, the better you get at it, supposedly - but for this, it doesn't apply. I find that every day is as painful as the last day, which is painful as the first day I did it."

I agree with PM, I don't particularly like the idea of anonymizing the queue. Sure, there is the possibility of a voting block, but let's also consider the possibility that higher-level members are at that rank due to their taste in sifts and their amount of time spent sifting, not merely because they're pseudo-famous. Also the fact that it is enjoyable to be able to pick out other peoples' sifts and make personalized comments.

Also, as Raven and WildmanBill have pointed out, I have a raging clue for the queue progression. Something needs to be done about the visibility of queue videos, because it's ridiculous. I can categorize all videos as one of two types of sifts: the Daphne and the Velma.

You see, the Daphne is the quick-riser, the one that gets huge amounts of initial attention and gets published within the first few hours because it's quick, easy, and a looker to boot. (Cute sifts, I'm looking at YOU). But it's sometimes harder to sustain conversation with the Daphne, because often (but nowhere near always) it's a bit of a ditz. The Velma, on the other hand, tends to be overlooked in the initial phase, and it takes a while to come into the spotlight in its own right. For some reason, the slightly bookish, thick-glasses-type sifts fit this category. (Documentaries, especially, have this effect.) Sure, it may get some votes initially, but it takes time for enough people to notice it, and realize it's smart AND sexy, so it takes the full four days and its appearance on the soon-to-be-discarded list to get voted to the top, and sometimes even that won't be enough to promote it, and that's dangerous, because without Velma's priceless intellect, sleuthing skills, and constant supply of doggie treats, how will Scooby and the Gang ever manage to crack the mystery of the Egyptian Mummy and save their professors from the mummy's stone curse?

...wait, what? Crap, I forgot what I was talking about.

Anyways, all this talking about Daphne and Velma has given me another big, stiff clue for queue visibility. I think randomized videos should be added mandatorily to the queue list. For example, underneath each time-placed video, you could include one small-sized video randomly from the queue list. It's probably a bad idea, but seriously, this whole deal of letting sifts sit on their butts after page 3 until they're just about to be discarded is annoying and will become even more so as it becomes harder to get a sift published if the escape number is raised to 12, and the only way I can see this being dealt with is by raising middle-page visibility so queued videos can be seen and voted on as they pass through each page of the queue, and the only way I can see that happening is by creating some sort of randomized display of videos to accompany videos in chronological order.

Wow, when I had loaded the queue, this had 0 comments, and I felt like such a sleuth for figuring out that it was a self-post. Then I come here to downvote and explain, and y'all have done it within seconds. Dayum!

Ahh, and with a little sleuthing it most certainly is. The ip associated with this account is one known to be used by google employees.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:65.57.245.11

This is in violation of posting guidelines, and come on you guys have a HUGE budget, you could throw us a little cheddar for promotions.

*ban