To aid the story, and to give us all a common framework, here are some guides:

On the bike is Ted. His girlfriend is Marlena. His roommate's name is Neutral. There are two other characters: one dubbed Tracy Dick, the other to be created. Post as many times as you like, but keep each post to about 1 or two paragraphs in length.

Here's how the Backwards City Foam Cowboy Hat Fiction Series works: Build off the last person's post, writing a paragraph, a sentence, or just one word of action. Try to push the story forward with your post; don't just describe the characters, make them do something. And don't be afraid to take the story in a weird direction. Write whatever comes to mind.

As before, posts of an inflammatory or offensive nature will be ignored and edited out of the final product. This is supposed to be fun, not a flamewar.

This post will stay at the top for awhile. In general, you can always reach the latest hat by clicking on the foam hat picture to the right. Feel free to visit our Foam Hat Archives. Enjoy!

# posted by Anonymous @ 11:58 PM  |

Federal charges were filed against Adam McGaughey, creator of the popular SG1Archive.com website - a fan website devoted to the MGM-owned television show Stargate SG-1. The charges allege that the website engaged in Criminal Copyright Infringement and Trafficking in Counterfeit Services. The charges were the culmination of a three-year FBI investigation, set in motion by a complaint from the Motion Picture Association (MPAA) regarding the content of the SG1Archive.com website.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 7:29 PM  |

Pretty awesome class project. Information on 50s scifi, from The Day The Earth Stood Still to Attack of the 50 Foot Woman to The Tempest in Space, Forbidden Planet.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 4:37 PM  |

A coin is flipped 10 times in a row.
If (and only if) it comes up tails each time, then you are cloned a million times.

When you are wakened, after the possible cloning, you (and clones of you) are asked "Were they all tails?"
If you answer correctly, you live happily.
If you answer incorrectly, you are tortured and killed.

The paradox is that thirders would answer yes to this question.

A fair coin is to be tossed without your seeing it, and you will be asked for your credence that it has landed tails. If it lands heads, you will be asked once; tails, you will be asked twice, but the second time you will be compelled to give the same answer as the first time. You know all this in advance.

The answer is obviously 1/2.

This is effectively the same as SB's scenario.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 8:33 AM  |

DeLillo novel: A novel in which all the characters sit around talking as if they're in a DeLillo novel.

"For some time now I've had the feeling that novelists and terrorists are playing a zero-sum game."
"Interesting. How so?"
"What terrorists gain, novelists lose. The degree to which they influence mass consciousness is the extent of our decline as shapers of sensibility and thought. The danger they represent equals our own failure to be dangerous."
"And the more clearly we see terror, the less impact we feel from art."

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 6:52 PM  |

The writers are funny, and they have the potential to be really funny if they just stop saying or writing to the point of making their parents laugh and thank of them as being normal.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 10:12 PM  |

Stephen Castello said the Springsteen reference, while helpful to his mother's career and much appreciated, is fictional. She was never arrested, he said, out of envy or for any other reason.

"It gave her a lot of publicity, but my mother stands on her own merits," he said. "When Asbury Park is mentioned, they think about the Stone Pony, they think about Convention Hall, they think about Madame Marie."

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 9:58 AM  |

I am not interested in George W. Bush's corporeal being but rather in his flatness and in the way that his obvious deficiencies are "spun" by supposedly disinterested media pundits. Bush's estrangement from the real -- evident in his unfamiliarity with geography, history, ordinary English syntax and semantics, and a fund of common knowledge -- stems from his own lack of reality. George W. Bush does not exist.

When Bush stammers publicly about freedom, democracy, and the axis of evil, American media commentators gloss his remarks positively. Reporters and pundits chronically overestimate Bush in much the way Chance's admirers do, discoursing about him as if he actually possessed a political philosophy and an understanding of government policies. They overlook, understate, or make excuses for his slipshod syntax, reliance on clichés, and inability to answer either theoretical or factual questions. They inevitably refer to him as if he were a "real" person with a complex sensibility, rather than a simulacrum entirely composed of sound bites and photo opportunities.

While in public, Bush appears to interact amiably with the media, in the center of government -- away from public observation -- he is disconnected, like an unplugged machine. At a January 30, 2001, meeting with the National Security Council, O'Neill remembers, "the president said little. He just nodded, with that same flat, unquestioning demeanor that O'Neill was familiar with." [13] Behind closed doors, Bush no longer connects or exists. His principal function has been lost. In this respect he is like an expensive, hand-waxed automobile, gleaming in the darkness of a garage. The car is intended for rapid motion and for public display. When its owner-driver is at the dinner table, he has no need of the car.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 6:22 PM  |

I'm a neutral observer, of course, here to give you a fair and balanced report. But some people would say that Fox News Channel is nothing more than the private right-wing propaganda machine of a sneaky right-wing billionaire who is -- now these are just the facts, people -- not an American at all but some kind of Down Under, funny-accented, shrimp-on-the-barbie-eating, crocodile-hunting, profoundly un-American Australian, for goodness' sake.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 9:47 AM  |

A third source, an official who works under ISI's director, Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq, informed tnr that the Pakistanis "have been told at every level that apprehension or killing of HVTs [High-Value Targets] before [the] election is [an] absolute must." What's more, this source claims that Bush administration officials have told their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in mind for announcing this achievement: "The last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad and during [ul-Haq's] meetings in Washington." Says McCormack: "I'm aware of no such comment." But according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July"--the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 12:14 AM  |

Marsters did not provide any detail on the movies other than that each would focus on one particular character, and that either all four would be made or none at all. As far as Marsters was aware, only he has comitted to the project so far.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 7:51 AM  |

Caspari and Lee found a five-fold increase [in] the number of individuals surviving into old age in the Early Upper Palaeolithic period - around 30,000 years ago. This coincides with an explosive population growth of modern humans and the spread of archaeological artefacts that suggest the development of more complex social organisation.
...
Anthropologists have long suspected that older people may have played an important role in the development of early human societies by providing extra care for children, helping to accumulate useful information and strengthening kinship bonds.

The so-called "grandmother hypothesis", based on studies of African hunter-gatherer groups, suggests that infertile women are vital for successful child-rearing despite being unable to produce children themselves.

One of the biggest moral bombshells handed to Billy by the Tralfamadorians, incidentally had to do with sex on Earth. They said their flying-saucer crews had identified no fewer than seven sexes on Earth, each essential to reproduction. Again: Billy couldn't possibly imagine what five of those even sexes had to do with the making of a baby, since they were sexually active only in the fourth dimension.

The Tralfamadorians tried to give Billy clues that would help him imagine sex in the invisible dimension. They told him that there could be no Earthling babies without male homosexuals. They could be babies without female homosexuals. There couldn't be babies without women over sixty-five years old. They could be babies without men over sixty-five. There couldn't be babies without other babies who had lived an hour or less after birth. And so on.

It was gibberish to Billy.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 8:52 PM  |