Why'd he bring so much money on a three-hour tour, anyway?

The amazing new Spiderman action figure (with an incredible 68 points of articulation!) reviews Crayola's 96. It's so high concept, it could only happen on the Internet.

That's one great looking action figure though.

Someone took an x-ray of a sword swallower.

Found time for another Woody Allen flick between classes today: Crimes & Misdemeanors, a surprisingly sober and weighty movie essentially about the place of ethics in a world without God. It's funny, but it's heavy.

Best quote is from the end.

CLIFFORD
I think it would be tough for someone to live with that. Very few guys could live with something like that on their conscience.

JUDAH
People carry awful deeds around with them. What do you expect him to do? Turn himself in? I mean, this is reality. And in reality, we rationalize, we deny, or we couldn’t go on living.

CLIFFORD
Here’s what I would do. I would have him turn himself in, ‘cause then, you see, then your story assumes tragic proportions because in the absence of a God or something he is forced to assume that responsibility himself. Then you have tragedy.

JUDAH
But that’s fiction. That’s movies. You’ve seen too many movies. I’m not talking about reality. I mean, if you want a happy ending, you should go see a Hollywood movie.

Very good movie.

Gotta run to class now. Peace.

I knew this would happen -- some of you may recall that I predicted it at the time -- but I'm surprised it happened so quickly. Fifty percent of New Yorkers believe the government had advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks and "consciously failed" to act.

It truly is our generation's JFK assassination. I think we'll be hearing a lot along these lines in the coming years.

A new site devoted to answering the simple questions we all have. Like, you know, what happens if we light tupperware on fire? (I already know the answer to this one; Shankar and I actually tried it in high school one day when we were bored. The tupperware spits fire. It's pretty freaking impressive.)

Anyway, up today: What happens when I expose a LEGO man to extreme heat? I think the little guy actually holds up pretty well.

Continuing our whirlwind tour of Woody Allen's career, we watched Sweet and Lowdown tonight, Allen's pseudodocumentmentary about a fictional '30s jazz guitarist named Emmet Ray. Now, there's a nontrivial sense in which Woody Allen just writes the same movie over and over again, and I think it's impossible to see these repeated relationships and characters over and over in his films and not associate them in some way with aspects of Allen's own life and psychology.

That being said, this is a fun movie. It's something different, both from the rest of Allen's usual style and from cinema as a whole, and I really liked it. I even liked the movie's huge unstated fakeout, which is that there's no such person as Emmet Ray to begin with. Generally, I don't like things like that; in this movie, it works. There's a lot of neat stuff here.

I'm really enjoying my whirlwind tour of Woody Allen.

Kind of funny.



(via Metafilter)

If you're interested, my good friend and co-blogger Shankar D has been blogging the last two days about the protests in NYC. He's posted a lot of pictures and talked to a lot of zany people. Click here and start scrolling down.

Just wanted to give a hearty endorsement to Holidays on Ice, which I picked up using another gift certificate from my aforementioned Amazon Visa (apply today!). This book's pretty hilarious. People talk a lot about "The Santaland Diaries," which is a narrative about what it's like working as an elf in a Macy's, but in terms of per capita laughs I think I really prefered "Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol," a brief fake review of local elementary school Christmas pageants, which is about what you'd expect:

To those of you who enjoy the comfort of a nice set of thumbscrews, allow me to recommend any of the crucifying holiday plays and pageants currently elicting screams of mercy from within the confines of our local elementary and middle schools. I will, no doubt, be taken to task for criticizing the work of children but, as any pathologist will agree, if there's a cancer it's best to treat it as early as possible.

David Sedaris is well beyond the point where he needs any praise from me, but he's basically our best living humorist. Barrel Fever is very funny, and I'll definitely be using as least part of his excellent Me Talk Pretty One Day in my class next year, as I did this year.

Bitches try, but you can't kill the Rooster.

Michael Chabon reviews the slightly more mature answer to the Harry Potter phenomenon in The New York Review of Books. I've never read these, but I've been told they're actually really good.

The brain apparently produces its own antipsychotic drug. Says The New Scientist:

At some point in their lives, between 5 and 30 per cent of healthy people have had symptoms such as delusions or hallucinations, which can be triggered by something as simple as sleep deprivation. "All of us are potentially psychotic," says David Castle of the University of Melbourne. So for the body to have a system that prevents these experiences getting out of hand makes sense, he says.

Obviously this is grounds for a special impromptu "Use Your Delusions" Backwards City event. I'll start. I was telling this one to some people over the weekend:

In the year 2000, while I was living in that tiny house Boston with every person that I knew, I fell asleep one night in the living room while we were watching some bad direct-to-video murder mystery movie. At that time, it was just me, Sal, Sheryl, and Lindsey in the house, and we were all in the living room watching TV when I feel asleep.

When I woke up, the movie and all the lights in the house were off, and everyone was gone. I don't know how long I'd been asleep, or what woke me up. But I do know that when I woke up I was absolutely convinced that Lindsey (the one person in the house that I hardly knew) had murdered everyone else--and that I was next.

In other circumstances, I would have just stayed on the floor of the living room, keeping alert for any sign of Lindsey. But unfortunately for me, I had to pee.

So I made my way through the dark hallway to the bathroom an inch at a time, convinced that any second I'd either discover Sheryl and Sal's dead bodies or be stabbed to death by Lindsey in the dark.

I was awake for at least two minutes before my delusion suddenly subsided and my beliefs about Lindsey returned to normal.

It's the only time in my life I can remember ever being completely out of my mind. It must have been some kind of weird dream hangover, or something. It was very strange. I can still recall, vividly, how anxious I was inching to the bathroom, as well as how unshakingly convinced I was that Sal and Sheryl must be dead and that Lindsey must have killed them.

Don't leave me hanging. Use your delusions in the comments.

Whatever the nature of Ultimate Reality is--and I'm talking about what's really going on, of which the world of experience is mere illusion, shadows on the wall of Plato's cave--I'm pretty sure it involves giant camel crickets being our insect overloads. How else can we explain the extreme, prerational revulsion all decent people have upon seeing one?

For centuries there'd been a war between the spiders and the camel crickets in the basement. Every so often I had to beat a camel cricket to death with a shovel, but all in all it was a happy stalemate.

But last night Jaimee woke me up at 3 am to kill one that had somehow managed to get into the bathroom. We think it's the genius who tried to escape earlier while Jennie T. was doing laundry in the basement; this was one very smart cricket.

It was in the sink when I got there. I threw a pair of shorts over it to thwart its megajump and drowned the bastard. God, I hate camel crickets. And in the real world, they're using us for batteries (or something). They're evil.

(Yes, I'm a vegetarian. No, horrible insects (who have no capacity to experience pain, one assumes) don't count.)

Marcus Slease. 2 Poems. DIAGRAM.

Julian Barnes (whose England, England is an imaginative novel about an amusement park that strives to simulate all the tourist highlights of the U.K. on a Disneyland-sized plot on the Isle of Wight, which I truly admire) on Michal Houllebecq--favorite of such Greensboro luminaries as Jillian Weise, Poet and Matt Armstrong--in The New Yorker in 2003:

In 1998, I was one of the judges of the Prix Novembre, in Paris: a prize given, as its name implies, late in the literary season...

In the course of a rather tense discussion, it was Vargas Llosa who came up with the best description of “Les Particules Élémentaires”: “insolent.” He meant it, naturally, as a term of praise. There are certain books—sardonic and acutely pessimistic—that systematically affront all our current habits of living, and treat our presumptions of mind as the delusions of the cretinous. Voltaire’s “Candide” might be taken as the perfect example of literary insolence. In a different way, La Rochefoucauld is deeply insolent; so is Beckett, bleakly, and Roth, exuberantly. The book of insolence finds its targets in such concepts as a purposeful God, a benevolent and orderly universe, human altruism, the existence of free will.

More at the link.

The Elementary Particles *is* in fact a great novel, though I must say it's among the single most filthy books I've ever read. I can't believe Matt's taught it in his classes.

The book Barnes was actually reviewing is Platform, which Matt's using in his classes now, which I'm told is excellent, and which I'm likely to buy today using one of the many Amazon giftcards I've stumbled across as late. How do I do it, you ask? It's easy: I simply spend a tremendous amount of money on my Amazon Visa (Apply today, if you haven't already, and we both get $20! The BCR has already made about $200 in kickbacks! Go! Go! Go!!!!), and the more I spend, the more I save.

...in southern Bosnia. You almost want to say, let them keep it. Goddamn.

Picked up a crazy new board game from our local nerd store: Strange Synergy from Steve Jackson Games. It's superhero themed; your team of three superheroes is dealt 9 random powers, to be distributed as you see fit among them. Then you fight.

Looks to be extremely customizable, too. It's really pretty fun.

Best individual power so far has to be a tie between "The Human Bomb" and "Mind Control," although the time I had two attacks per turn and a magic energy ('Zorch') ball that always hit for 1-6 damage, my man Vlad was pretty unstoppable. "Two Heads" is pretty awesome too.

Huh. This link tastes a little bit like McSweeney's. Funny--and true.

And for more information on the A-Team as it relates to the editoral staff of the BCR, click here.

When I was 15 and saw Clerks for the first time on the television in Mike Papish's living room, I thought it was the funniest damn movie that I'd ever seen.

When I was 22, I watched Clerks again for the first time since I was in high school, and I realized--hey, wait a second, this movie's hardly funny at all.

And thus, the ViewAskewniverse died.

I feel bad for Kevin Smith, because despite his best efforts to grow up and move on, he's going to be making sequels he hates to the movie that got him started until the day Jason Mewes is the first person to ever die from a marijuana overdose, and there's absolutely nothing he can do about it.

Zombie outbreak simulator.

How many people can you save?

Holy crap.

LONDON, England (AP) -- A German who had his lower jaw cut out because of cancer has enjoyed his first meal in nine years -- a bratwurst sandwich -- after surgeons grew a new jaw bone in his back muscle and transplanted it to his mouth in what experts call an "ambitious'' experiment.

According to this week's issue of The Lancet medical journal, the German doctors used a mesh cage, a growth chemical and the patient's own bone marrow, containing stem cells, to create a new jaw bone that fit exactly into the gap left by the cancer surgery.

Tests have not been done yet to verify whether the bone was created by the blank-slate stem cells and it is too early to tell whether the jaw will function normally in the long term.

But the operation is the first published report of a whole bone being engineered and incubated inside a patient's body and transplanted.

As voted by the Guardian's expert panel:

1. Blade Runner
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey
3. Star Wars & The Empire Strikes Back
4. Alien
5. Solaris (1972, not the Clooney one)
6. Terminator & T2: Judgment Day
7. The Day The Earth Stood Still
8. War of the Worlds
9. The Matrix
10. Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind

Needless to say, I have some disagreement. I've never been THAT in love with Blade Runner, though it's pretty good I guess; it makes the list. I'd probably put 2001 at the top though. I would have had Aliens instead of Alien; it's the exact same movie, just superior. No Terminator for me; It's a movie, not a film (sorry, Ezra). I think 12 Monkeys deserves to be on there, as well as probably Brazil. Hell, I'd even consider putting Sleeper on there, because I love Woody Allen so much lately.

The original Planet of the Apes is absolutely on the list.

What else? The Sixth Sense? I was spoiled by a friend, so I never saw it at all, but all those other people seem to like it. A Clockwork Orange? I'd like to see a comic book movie up there: maybe the original Batman or Spiderman 2 or X-2. Throw those kids a bone for once. E.T.? No, I hate E.T.

A.I. and possibly even Minority Report make the list in the alternate universe where Stephen Spielberg doesn't ruin everything. Not in our universe, though.

And no Back to the Future/Back to the Future Part II? Come on, McFly! Back to the Future should be on there, and everybody knows it.

What else am I missing?

The trouble with this list seems to be a decision on the part of the Guardian to define science fiction so narrowly that basically only space opera qualifies. That's why I prefer "genre" or "speculative" or just "nerd" to "sci-fi", because then at least you can bring in movies that are mind-bending or bizarre or geek-centric (say, Being John Malkovich) without necessarily having laser guns.

Freaky.

Your casino is ready.

Ladbrokes say the most likely conundrum to be cracked is the origin of cosmic rays - high-energy particles from outer space which continuously bombard Earth. No one is certain where they come from or what gives them energies 10 million times greater than the most powerful man-made particle accelerator.

Working on the problem are physicists at the Pierre Auger experiment in Mendoza, Argentina. Utilising 1600 detectors spread over 3000 square kilometres, it has been running since January 2004. Ladbrokes are offering 4-1 that the mystery will be solved by 2010.

They are also giving good odds on a successful hunt for the missing Higgs boson which, particle physicists believe, is responsible for giving everything in the subatomic world its mass. And it is one of the key reasons for building the Large Hadron Collider at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. The LHC should be complete by 2007 and Ladbrokes put the odds of finding the Higgs before 2010 at 6-1.

“I’d be tempted to take a bet on the Higgs at 6-1,” says Brian Foster who heads the particle physics group at the University of Oxford in the UK. “I’ve been quite instrumental in betting the taxpayers’ money on us finding it, so I’d better put my money where my mouth is.”

In just ten easy steps! And frankly that's being fairly generous. I read a lot of these things when I was a kid, and I think I could do it in seven.

1. Read Lord of the Rings.
2. Read the latest edition of the Dungeons & Dragons manual. Create your characters as described.
3. Change the Ring to something similiar: magic sword, magic boots, magic staff, magic spell, magic book, the dreaded teapot of doom, etc.
4. Replace all instances of the word hobbit with something else: halfling, kender, gnome, elf, half-elf, peasant, or what-have-you.
5. Draw a map that looks kind of like Middle Earth but not so much like Middle Earth, if you know what I mean. Name your locations with vaguely Anglo-Saxony sounding words and sprinkle throughout.
6. Cut out bits as appropriate to your desired length. Then move what's left around.
7. Come up with one or two twists on the same old thing. Throw these in someplace inconspicuous.

And, you're done! Enjoy!

You'll have to, if you want to live in the Space House.

What will life be like in the Year 2,000 A.D.? A July 22, 1961 edition of Weekend Magazine has the scoop.

Your home may have: Air walls and a floating roof!
Your wife may have: A computer as home help!
You may eat: Tablets, dried and processed food!
You may drive: A hovercraft and a helicopter!
You may work: A 24-hour week!

What sort of life will you be living 39 years from now? Scientists have looked into the future and they can tell you.

It looks as if everything will be so easy that people will probably die from sheer boredom.

You will be whisked around in monorail vehicles at 200 miles an hour and you will think nothing of taking a fortnight's holiday in outer space...

Hoax, or unbelievably optimistic projection?

Either way: 1961, we salute you!

Albert Einstein: Wrong Again.

In 1954 Maurice Allais, a French economist who would go on to win, in 1988, the Nobel prize in his subject, decided to observe and record the movements of a pendulum over a period of 30 days. Coincidentally, one of his observations took place during a solar eclipse. When the moon passed in front of the sun, the pendulum unexpectedly started moving a bit faster than it should have done.

Since that first observation, the “Allais effect”, as it is now called, has confounded physicists. If the effect is real, it could indicate a hitherto unperceived flaw in General Relativity—the current explanation of how gravity works.

That would be a bombshell—and an ironic one, since it was observations taken during a solar eclipse (of the way that light is bent when it passes close to the sun) which established General Relativity in the first place.

More inside the link.

I'm sorry, but remaking the Wizard of Oz (with or without the Muppets) just makes no sense. It's a classic, it's still good, leave well enough alone.

I'm not even such a big Wizard of Oz fan. I'm just so tired of remakes. Do something new.

But even if you are a big Wizard of Oz fan, I wouldn't worry too much. They won't screw it up. I mean, they got Quentin Tarantino to play himself. Can't lose.

Gridcosm is a collaborative art project in which artists from around the world contribute images to a compounding series of graphical squares.

How it works: Each level of Gridcosm is made up of nine(9) square images arranged into a 3x3 grid. The middle image is a one-third size version of the previous level. Artists add images around that center image until a new 3x3 grid is completed, then that level itself shrinks and becomes the "seed" for the next level. This process creates an ever expanding tunnel of images, the newest level a direct result of the previous level which is a result of the previous level... and so on.

Top Level
Bottom Level
Random Level

(via Metafilter, which has more)

Bring on 2008! Bring on Beijing! Bring on...THE WATER CUBE!

Available now at BoingBoing.

While searching for something entirely unrelated, I came across this: the original Planet of the Apes movie, reedited and reimagined as a thirty-minute episode of the original Twilight Zone. Black and white, commercial breaks, Rod Serling narration and everything.

*Extremely* well done. I'm pretty floored. It really is a perfect fit. Makes sense, since Rod Serling wrote both. That Rod was one tripped-out hepcat.

Definitely check this out.

UPDATE: They've also got the classic Simpsons parody, "Stop the Planet of the Apes, I Want to Get Off!" Troy McClure is Charleston Heston in Planet of the Apes: The Musical.

UPDATE 2: Boing Boing's got the torrent. (Requires BitTorrent)

Vice Magazine's Dos and Don'ts of Photography. Your ABC organization is on the house.

Some NSFW text and images, but nothing risque.

A picture of Seiko Epson's smallest flying robot in the world. Plus, someone patented the 10 ethical laws of robotics. Post of the rest of that robot news, here. Via MindJack.

Rate your novel's opening against the classics at The Hook Project: A Collection of Literary Beginnings.

A fun site today via Little Fluffy Industries. Make a movie with multiple (up to three) scenes, characters, dialogue, music, and title sequence, all with this well-designed editor. Then email it to all your buds. Let them know how much you love them, or how much you want them to buy a subscription to the Backwards City Review. There's even a subtle plug for Kubricks in the character section. (here (KidRobot) and here(Sweaty Frog) for english-friendly, as well as more and better pictures.)

Godchecker: Becuse you don't be the last guy on the block to burn your offering to Mictlantecuhtli.

Seriously, you don't. That guy's nuts.

Burn.

My least favorite painting: Stolen! Now I'll only be able to see in on coffee mugs, inflatable dolls, pencil toppers, and in every freshman art major's dorm room! Woe is me!

Not that I hate Munch. Just that painting. Link to a pic of a lithographic print of the other stolen piece, "Madonna." (MoMA - link is good) A link to the oil on canvas (Stolen) version. (Norway's national gallery. Link is slow, probably due to today's heavy traffic.) Don't use the zoom button for what I know you are going to use it for. Shame shame.

Amazing picture, via Boing Boing. 1924, Canon City, Colorado: The Klan has a day at the Fair.

This should be in a museum. If we could, I'd run it in the magazine.

I haven't fully read any of the books. I only saw the first movie. But, I have some the HP LEGO and ate some jelly belly that tasted like snot. Here's a post from someone on "Why Americans don't think Harry Potter is an unsufferable Prig." Old news, I guess, but new to me.

From GTxA, a quick post about palindromes. Make sure to click on the link which leads to publishing company, Spineless Books.

Younger than some of my friends, D&D is still older than me. There's lots of coverage on the web right now as GenCon Indy is going on now and pressing out lots of geek nostalgia.

A link to some GenCon Coverage. Scroll down and read the two page piece from Daily Show's Stephen Colbert. (link to ign interview, also discussing D&D and fantasy/sci-fi reading)

Or, if you hate D&D, be reaffirmed in your suspicions with this Jack Chick Tract, Dark Dungeons.

Or, if you hate that tract, here's a spoof, w/ appearance by Chtulhu. (UPDATE: nope..it's gone.)

I see.

How about Boxing and Philosophy? (When I was 18 I wrote a story called "Kid Kamoo and the Parable of the Pugnacious Prizefi... Quiet, you.)

(Via Geekpress, via A&L Daily.)

Or how about Kodomo no kuni: children's books and songs from 1920s Japan? Seriously, this is a pretty excellent website. Check it out.



(Via Metafilter)

I just remembered something that makes it all go down a little smoother: At least I can go to my cold, cold grave knowing that Tom the Dancing Bug stole his idea from The State.

Tom the Dancing Bug's God-Man #1, 1997

The Adventures of Young God, The State, 1993

Incidentally, what we've been working on isn't really superhero parody like this at all--that's not our bag--so I'm not sweating it, either.

I do feel like we need a new name, though.

THIS ALWAYS FREAKING HAPPENS TO ME

The latest Tom the Dancing Bug is about God-Man, The Hero With Omnipotent Superpowers.

I seriously cannot believe how often the universe screws me on this stuff. I'm like Zeitgeist Man. I have this strange and horrible power to tap into the Zeitgeist and come up with amazing ideas for great new things, only to watch in horror when the story/book/movie/tv show/stupid weekly comic comes out a few weeks/months/years later and my idea's completely taken.

Link to your favorite God-Man adventures. I was going to say, at least I can prove independent development using my beloved poor man's copyright. But not since 1997. God*damn*it.

Worst part: Now I'm going to need a new title for my, Tom's, and John Lanning's comic book concept, which I've been working on for about three months, and which we've been working on together for about a month. With the exact same (great) name and wildly different concept. If the project isn't entirely funking sunk by this. Grrr. Argh.

UPDATE: I guess, now that I think about it, that you can't copyright titles. Maybe we can keep the title. I'll have to talk to my unscrupulous lawyer.

If you're not a writer, I don't think you can imagine how angry this would make a person. I hate being Zeitgeist Man. Zeitgeist Man can't catch a break.

UPDATE 2: Sigh. We probably need to come up with a new title. Or kill ourselves. Check the date: Tuesday, August 17.

I never said it was the most original thing in the world. POWER + Man. That's how you name your superhero. That's why it's such a good name for our concept.

And it's such a good fit. In my current despair, I can't imagine one fitting better.

I'm done now.

Thoughts from Within. A spoken-word, multimedia condemnation of all things modern and an celebration of the "pre-industrial revolution." A veritable call to arms from Woody the Bartender himself.

"I feel like a run-on sentence in a punctuation-crazy world."

"Like a genetically modified irradiated Big Mac is somehow symbolic of food."

"Morality is legislated, prisons overpopulated, religion is incorporated, the profit motive has permeated all activity. We pay our government to let us park on the street."

"Everybody feels it like a giant open sore; they don't represent us anymore."

"You say you want a revolution? A communal evolution? To part of the solution? Maybe I'll be seeing you around."

And they thought Brad Pitt was Tyler Durden?

Surreal. Must-click.

UPDATE: But you don't care about any of this, do you? No, you just want to know what the Ultimate Warrior thinks about 9/11. Worry not, child. I can provide. A taste: "Evil will inevitably meet up with the big-knuckled fist of good and get its ass kicked. Always. Happy kicks sad’s ass. Always. Triumph kicks tragedy’s ass. Always."

Tired of mazes where you can "see" where you're "going"? Try Invisibility.

Behold, the entirety of Star Wars: A New Hope...in ASCII.

Jill Greenberg's Monkey Portraits: Because everything tastes better with monkeys.

...says the Times of India.

Says a programmer on Slashdot.org who outsourced his job: "About a year ago I hired a developer in India to do my job. I pay him $12,000 out of the $67,000 I get. He's happy to have the work. I'm happy that I have to work only 90 minutes a day just supervising the code. My employer thinks I'm telecommuting. Now I'm considering getting a second job and doing the same thing."

Yes, once you've established by your own admission that someone in India will do your job for a fifth of the cost, nothing could possibly go wrong.

Seriously, is this a hoax? Or is it a brainwashing attempt by the nation of India?

I picked up Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End from McKay's this week, because I thought it would be relaxing for my first week of teaching (it was), and because it was the #1 on the 100 Science Fiction Books You Just Have To Read, and I hadn't read it yet.

Basic plot: What happens when the aliens finally show up and take complete control of our affairs? As you can imagine, it goes from there.

The good: Parts of it were truly great. The revelation of the true form of the aliens is suburb, for instance. The entire first 100 pages or so--when humans are first dealing with the Overlords--were fantastic in general.

It was also cool to see the original text that "To Serve Man" and ID-4 were playing off.

The bad: Then the rest of the book happened. It's not just that Clarke didn't keep focus on a small group of characters, as he should have; it's that he completely went off the page in terms of what I was prepared to accept. That's right, fans, this is yet another science fiction tale that's fundamentally materialistic for 7/8 of the story before suddenly getting all mystical for the last eighth. (See also: A.I.;The Matrix Revolutions). It's a betrayal of the reader to suddenly change horses in midstream like this; and it's cheap.

So overall, a cautious review. It was worth at least the $1.80 I paid for it. I just wonder sometimes if I've been spoiled by Philip K. Dick's work, which never betrays your expectations in this way, if only because his books are so mind-bending and paranoid that you have no idea what the hell is going on. You're never secure enough in one mindset to feel the shock of moving to another.

I guess my point is just what I told Fred Chappell last year: I love Dick.

Look, after an initial rough patch, I learned to like Family Guy as much as any red-blooded American male under 25. When I haven't watched it in a while, the first few episodes I see leave me in stitches. Eventually I start to feel bad for laughing; but when the show's fresh, it's incredibly funny.

But American Dad? Isn't this the same damn show?

AMERICAN DAD, from “Family Guy” creator SETH MacFARLANE, is the animated story of STAN SMITH, who works for the CIA and is constantly on the alert for terrorist activity. Stan will go to extremes to protect his beloved America from harm – as evidenced by the terror-alert color code on his fridge, and his frequent knee-jerk reaction of shooting holes in the toaster whenever the toast pops up. In addition to Stan’s wife and teenage children, the Smith household has two rather unconventional members. There’s ROGER, the sarcastic space alien Stan rescued from Area 51 who deeply resents the fact that he’s not allowed to leave the house, and KLAUS, a lascivious, German-speaking goldfish – the result of a CIA experiment gone seriously wrong.

What am I missing?

John Lanning, local comics guru, has brought my attention to a new series DC has been running: Will Pfeifer's HERO, an updating of the old Dial H for Hero series.

The basic premise is that using a magic dial, the protagonist can turn themselves into a random generic superhero: the Human Inferno, Torpedo Man, etc.

In Pfeifer's modern series, it doesn't usually turn out well.

It's a cool concept, albeit a little hokey--but the modern series at least is well-executed enough that all hokeyness is quickly forgiven. Check it out, if you're a big nerd.

Interview with the creator.

Start your planning now, kids.

I have to warn you, though: Baltimore, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh are all on this list as "Bohemian Bargains." I guess that sounds better than "Post-Industrial Scumpit"--but buyer beware.

Pretty soon we'll all have one.

Scientist have successfully accomplished quantum teleportation through 600m of fiber optic cable in a sewer. Beam me up.

Can there be an upside to reality tv? Salon says maybe we're entering a golden age of "constructive, literate reality tv."

The golden age will be airing Mondays after "The Littlest Groom 2."

Pretty good online comic strip. I wonder if it wouldn't have more success if it's character didn't look so much like Calvin. The whole worldview of the strip is very reminiscent of Calvin & Hobbes, too. (Not that that's a bad thing.)

Today's is great. I'd just post the image, but I'm not sure he's cool with that, and I'd hate to get sued.

64=65? Whaaa? Props if you can figure out how they did it.

Here's the answer.

SquidSoup's Glassworld.

Let me give a firm recomendation for new writers to submit to flashquake, who didn't take my story (fools!), but who did offer the detailed comments of six(!) different editors. I've never seen anything like that in a rejection letter before.

If you have short shorts, I doubt you're going to find a better or more helpful market for them (except, of course, for the Backwards City Review). I know I'll be trying them again in September.

flashquake submission guidelines.

The trailer for Wes Anderson's new movie (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou) is out. I'm so happy.

Hell freezes over: they're still in talks for Freddy vs Jason vs Ash.

I didn't see F vs. J, and I didn't see A v. P either, although the plot of that one at least interests me somewhat. I this trend doesn't get taken too far. Smurfs vs Transformers? He-Man vs Voltron? The Bride vs Buffy?

That last one might actually be somewhat good. Regardless, let's nip this in the bud. And no more remakes or cookie-cutter sequels, either.

Not actually a porn site. It's just a clearing house for people who take their vegan diet a little too seriously. Some interesting articles, though.

This little cartoon by Peter Bagge, surprisingly linked to with approval from BoingBoing, really rubbed me the wrong way.

It's about the triteness of the message. Dude: just because modern art's not your thing doesn't make it worthless. The fact that its value may not be readily apparent to you doesn't necessarily make it "self-important nonsense." (And even if it is, so what? Who made Peter Bagge Aesthetic Sheriff? I want that job.)

It's the absurd caricature of a strawman "Fine Art Establishment" elite, as if a) any such collective actually existed and b) that Fine Art people actually have any kind of influence over anybody. Bagge is in an imaginary argument with imaginary aesthetic oppressors who tell him how to think and what to value. Back in reality, artists are trying to scrape up two dimes to rub together.

It's the strip's real agenda, a typically whiny libertarian rant about arts funding. Yes, fifty cents from your tax bill went to the NEA. Live with it*.

It's the pointless (and objectively incorrect) jab at Shakespeare; I didn't like that one bit.

But mostly, it's the strip's "I-can't-drive-art-so-it-must-suck" functionalist mentality, although I take some comfort in the fact that surely Reason Magazine should be among the first things to go by that standard. (Little known fact: Obscure, semi-nonexistent literary journals can be driven, but they don't like to be.) Sorry: I like pop culture as much as the next person, but in fifty years no one is going to care about the PT Cruiser or the new Beetle, much less a candy wrapper. The thing about the arts (and about literary writing, for that matter) is that they're in dialogue with time.

Pop culture isn't. It's ephemeral; throw-away.

Art lasts.

That's the whole point.
---
*NEA Funding, 2004: $120 million dollars
Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles Funding: 250 million dollars a year

The Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles was a seven year program, totaling 1.25 billion dollars, for developing a hybrid engine for better fuel efficiency and emissions. Guess what? They never did. They got the money anyway.

And that's just one subsidy program among the many that go to the Big Three automakers every year, who are themselves just a few among the many recipients of billions of dollars in annual corporate welfare from the federal and state governments. But no: for Bagge, cars just spring up naturally, a source of spontaneously occurring "beauty" we can all enjoy. It's art that can't compete in the marketplace. We have candy wrappers, for God's sake. We have "Fraiser." Art museums? Who needs those?

NY Times has a puff piece on J.K. Rowling and the last two Harry Potter books.

"There are two questions I don't think I've ever been asked and that I should have been asked, if you know what I mean," Rowling said.

She told the gathering they should be asking themselves "not 'why did Harry live' but 'why didn't Voldemort die?' "

The second question they should think about is: "Why didn't Dumbledore kill, or try to kill, Voldemort?" she added, referring to the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

It's not like people haven't thought about this before. To me, it's one of the principal reasons why I still anticipate getting burned in a big way by Harry Potter in the end--a burning that will be worse than even Star Wars, because I will have read seven children's books to get it.

There just has to be a good reason for these things. We'll see if she's got one. And "Dumbledore IS Voldemort" doesn't count as one. (Neither does "Evil must exist for good to exist.")

The prophecy issue raised in Book Five may be a good start. The fundamental institutional corruption of the wizard world (also raised in Book Five) is another.

The Japanese never stop animating, do they? Pretty excellent.

Phobos Entertainment's "100 Science Fiction Books You Just Have to Read."

(via Linkfilter)

Safe For Work.

Longtime Archie fan Neil Farbman must be ecstatic.

Is human society about to undergo such drastic changes that predicting the future is completely impossible? Popular Science says maybe. Contains an interview with longtime BCR-linker and forthing BCR-contributor Cory Doctorow, free of charge.

Wish us luck.

Last night had a "fight" (as she called it) with my girl over video games. I was trying to tell her about some new games coming out, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and Fable. (I'm totally buying both of them and playing them so much it ruins my life...evidence further:)

Quick Synopsis of fight: Was addressing the issue of limitation/lack of limitation in these games. Specifically mentioned reading this 12 page review of Fable, which, aside from the unfogivable upcoming blemish, was informative and more than piqued my interest for the game. But, the most frighteningly offensive passage, from page 9:

So, let's say you hate loose women who happen to be brunettes. Earn some renown and you'll find that some ladies take an immediate liking to you. Start chatting up a brunette, get her to really like you (noted by a filling heart above her head). Compliment her, show off your physique, and give her gifts to increase her trust and desire so much she actually asks if you want to sleep with her. Ah, but you know a more secluded place, don't you? Have her follow you deep into the woods and spend the next 15 minutes beating her to death with your frying pan. One brunette down, a world full of others still to go.

Jesus gorram christ. As Fay says, this is further evidence of the downward and unavoidable spiral humanity is on, which will lead to the distruction of the world. I can't disagree, but I did try to say that video games are an evolving art form. That there are some people who are trying to make games that are different and allow for that thing that she said all games lack, opportunity for reflection.

And luckily I discovered this morning, Break in the Road. It's a beautifully rendered and designed flash game about wandering the city, recording sounds, then mixing them into music. No points, no killing, just a quiet stroll, some time to reflect, and a microphone. Definitely worth a check. No pun intended. I found it on our favorite games site, Little Fluffy Industries. Go Humanity, go.

Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn is undoubtedly one of the best books I read this summmer. It's at once a hard-boiled detective novel and a loving sendup of the genre.

The lead character is a New York detective, who just happens to have Tourette's syndrome. Things snowball from there.

The novel is a tremendous amount of fun, especially if you're the sort of person who digs contortions of language. Don't wait, buy it.

Nitpicks? Of course I have one. It seems to me that more people would have known what Tourette's was independently of knowing Lionel. I counted one such person in 300 pages. But as my good friend Pclem would say: Shutupcanavan! Sackupcan'tavac! Vacuumsaginaw!

Speaking of: He's in In These Times again, praising librarians and not-praising Bush.

As you may have gathered, he's not happy.

I dug out my old expertly synched .wmv of Dark Side and Oz today. (Thanks, stoners!) As I've said before (but never on this blog), I was a skeptic before watching it, but now I'm 90% sure they must have had the movie playing while they recorded it. There's just too much linking for it to be a coincidence.

The Definitive Synchronicity List (NOTE: I do not support the multiple playthroughs theory. Just once is enough.)
A Shorter List

Seriously, do this if you get the chance. There's a few very convincing ones, but the very last one (I don't want to spoil it) seals the deal.

I'll see if there's any way / anywhere I can host the file. It's huge though, so probably no dice. Ezra?

UPDATE: Straw poll results:

Me: Yes
Jaimee: Ya
Tom: Needs more evidence
Jennie: No
Jennifer: Abstain (although, in fairness, she didn't watch)

Tom and Jennie have no soul.

UPDATE 2: Want to see what The Wizard of Oz is really all about? Here's a hint: it's a political parable about the gold standard. Read more.

UPDATE 3: Obviously I don't believe that every element on the list was deliberately synched up. But the major synchs--the last one, "Great Gig in the Sky," "Money," Dorothy falling off the rail in the first song, the witch entering on "black, black, black"--are enough to convince me that there must be something to it.

Tom says that makes me a creationist. You be the judge.

Awesome.

The Backwards City Review has more than served its purpose. So long, everyone!

Newsweek explains.

Taking a cue from Vicious E. Large's comment below, showcasing some wonderful other tools like that. Beware some of these types of sites that ask for too much info. I'm like, 80% sure though that these are all non-harmful.

Cyborgs [] Middle-Earthians [] Smurfs [] Prison Bitches [] Vampires [] D&D Characters [] Fledgling Rock Bands [] Ninja Burger Employees [] TRUE Geeks [] Folks with Writer's Block

Or just make your own.

Some that may be less fun, but very much more helpful to writers/programers/geeks are:

Random Generator by Kliemo
Chris Pound's Language Machines (Somewhere in THAT name is a joke, by god)
Behind the Name ("Etymologies" and meanings of first names)

Finally, off meta filter, The Ramones. Because we all need to learn a lesson today.

Horribly addicting Shockwave game. Likely to hurt your ego.

Excellent. It's a start.

God, Six Feet Under's gotten bad. This week, near the tail-end of a twenty minute montage in which 5 pairs of characters all had sex, Keith (David's partner) had sex with Dawn Celeste--and he's gay! Talk about reaching.

It's hard to believe this show was once adult. It's completely adolescent now, down to the terrible dialogue. And every character is unlikable except Claire and maybe David. And...oh, hell, just forget it.

With the passing of Julia Child today, I thought I'd look up and share all my favorite cooks from my young and tender years glued in front of pbs all day.

Julia Child, a site on pbs, and her Kitchen in the Smithsonian. (a nice flash site with audio and lots of good visuals). And the requisite image search.

Justin Wilson, the Cajun Chef. The first of my beloved cooks to die. Here's a nice link from NPR on his passing. It starts with a snippet of the show and Wilson telling one of his jokes. His son now runs a site that sells sauce.

The Frugal Gourmet, my favorite cooking show of all time. Jeff Smith died in July. His character got pretty well assassinated when he was accused of molesting young cooks who worked for him in the 70's. (here's the news on that) I always loved the show, except for the later Elmo Pledge-Break laden years. Everything I really learned about cooking I got from here, including how to make a roux, my love of cast iron, and the "Hot pan, cold oil - food won't stick" tenet, probably his greatest legacy. JumpedtheShark, tvacres, and his quotes on my motherland's cuisine.

Galloping Gourmet, turned Graham Kerr. He's not dead, but I liked the show, even the boring informercial like second incarnation. (A show all about low-fat cooking...Jesus, what's the point?) JumptheShark a page from The Straight Dope and Kerr's current website.

Yan Can Cook. Also not dead, Martin Yan was always my favorite of the "YAN + Bad Pun" cooks. All he said was "If Yan Can cook, so can you!" His super fast chopping technique was straight out of a kung-fu movie.(I can't get the video to display, but the sound is still there) Some asian folk might find his smiling, poop eating grin pretty annoying, but the audiences "ate it up." (get it...food, and poop eating, all in one)

Yup. And that's the note I end this with.

First - Fay has pointed me to a great site that can teach folk about Literary Agents, without them having to pay out thirty bucks for a guide book and directory each year. Check it out aqui. Of interesting note is the news update on their front page, an announcement from Mid American Review. Here's the quote:

* Unpublished Writers Sought *  We're currently reading work for a special issue devoted to writers who have never before been published (or who have never published work in the genre in which they're submitting). We will be reading for this special issue until about Nov. 15, 2004, but work may be submitted any time.  You are "unpublished" for our purposes if your work has never before been included in a nationally distributed literary journal, magazine, or newspaper, or in a professionally published and distributed collection. Campus or local publications do not disqualify you from submitting, but small national journals do. If you're not unpublished, pat yourself on the back -- and feel free to send a regular submission. Additionally, if you have students or friends who may qualify, we hope that you'll pass the word along.  Submissions should be sent via snail-mail to Unpublished Writers Issue, Mid-American Review, English Department, BGSU, Bowling Green OH 43403.


A link to Mid American Review. The Contest Link is down there in the left frame. And just kidding about the losers comment, by the way.

For those about to rock, we salute you. (Link goes to Google Image Search Results)

Wine Spectator sure thinks so.

Primates appear to have a highly developed sensitivity to the smell of ethanol, Dudley said, which may give them an edge over other fruit-eating animals. And this sensitivity may have been passed on to humans. Today, we continue to be attracted to foods that benefited our ancestors.

Why does Alcoholics Anonymous hate nature?

Before there was the movie, there were the comic books.

Timeline of the Alien Universe

And just for Ezra...Alien vs Predator vs Terminator.

I haven't seen it yet, but Shankar has. Shankar's review is so fair and balanced, you'll hardly even realize that we went to high school with the screenwriters.

The dark side of Toys 'R' Us.

Jaimee just rewatched it now on DVD. I watched a good chunk of it (missed an hour in the middle).

Anyway, just to settle it once and for all, (relatively minor spoiler) Bill clearly takes six steps. He's just that good. I'll never be convinced otherwise.

UPDATE: Aw, nuts. Original Kill Bill script says five, if you scroll down all the way. David Carradine still takes six though. You can count yourself.

Some weird stuff in the script, including a long, pointless subplot involving Go-Go's sister, and Bill on an assassination mission. It's also missing some other stuff, most notably the Origin of O-Ren chapter. Check it out.

My opinion: the finished movie's much better than the script. All the changes I found looked like improvements.

You know what this means, don't you? Kick-ass Going Out of Business sale.

Regardless: Damn you, Wal-mart!

I don't do a lot of politics over here anymore (thank God, says everyone), but if you want to read a well-written but chilling article about the terrible state of sex education in America under Bush, check out this link. My meager comments here. That is all.

"Marvel Universe looks almost like a real social network":

Authors: R. Alberich, J. Miro-Julia, F. Rossello
Comments: 14 pages, 3 figures
Subj-class: Disordered Systems and Neural Networks; Statistical Mechanics

We investigate the structure of the Marvel Universe collaboration network, where two Marvel characters are considered linked if they jointly appear in the same Marvel comic book. We show that this network is clearly not a random network, and that it has most, but not all, characteristics of "real-life" collaboration networks, such as movie actors or scientific collaboration networks. The study of this artificial universe that tries to look like a real one, helps to understand that there are underlying principles that make real-life networks have definite characteristics.

Link.

And if the right one doesn't get you then the left one will.

Exit Mundi: End of the world scenarios. Choose your own apocalypse.

Bad news, America fans. Not much.

Ezra was talking about this last night. Idiots. A cat with wings is clearly from heaven.

Life-sized Mousetrap

Last nerd post of the day, I swear.

Gi Joe has a fun little character creator on their website. Obviously this is made for straight, heterosexual young boys between the ages of 7 and 10. However, it doesn't mean that the "*" randomize button isn't an experiment in the Lacanian Mirror Stage gone awry, nor does it not shed light onto how they must have been creating the Gi Joe figures for the past three years. (Kiss it, Strunk and White!)

After you read Five Things You Probably Didn't Notice In The Shining, you'll want to check out:

The Kubrick FAQ: The Shining
Thoughts on reading Kubrick's The Shining
Stanley Kubrick's The Shining
And, of course, The Shining in thirty seconds, re-enacted by bunnies.

Then rent it.

How corporations got their names.

Today I almost sold my Xbox for dollars. That includes my last two video games, Knights of the Old Republic, and Soul Calibur II. After not selling it, Jesus, in his infinite mercy, helped me find this link on grandtextauto. It's everyone's favorite S&M, knife weilding maniac, Voldo, dancing in choreographed mayhem to Nelly's "It's getting hot in here." GTA says it's been around on the net for a while. But God let me see it today. Let the dance begin."

Update: The first minute or so is really the best. Then it gets kind of dull. Then there's a bit more good stuff. Then there's too much "Voldo on Voldo" action. And then there's more good choreography to end it off. A nice performance, and no programming or hacking. And, it's voldo. Much cooler than any kind of "dance" people would come up with via "Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball."

There are often things that we, as geeks, freaks, and serial-nerdballs, can't discuss with everyone around us. I don't talk Games with Fay. I don't talk Toys with Will. I don't talk Hot Dogs with Tom. I don't talk Booty(link goes to something you aren't thinking of, seriously. It's not a butt, I promise)with Gerry and Jaimee. I never mention LEGO to my students. And I never discuss anything with PClem. These are all things the Internet is for.

Case in point, some forums to discuss Buffy the Vampire Slayer action figures and toys. Enjoy.

Side note: Freaks & Geeks - I never watched that show, but heard it's really good. Did those episodes ever get released on video or DVD? (UPDATE: Yes they did.) I also never watched My So Called Life. But I did watch the movie, Running on Empty, with young River Phoenix and Martha Plimpton, which may perhaps be an eye opener for fans of that entire series.

Update : Want to buy MSCL or Running on Empty? Links go to Amazon.

Yeah, I've got that.

More and more television is now delivered by cable, with no radio-frequency leakage to space, and by direct-broadcast satellites that put out just 20 watts per channel, all efficiently directed straight down the intended areas on the Earth's surface.

So from the point of view of being detected through such inadvertent broadcasts, the longevity of humanity's detectability may be just 100 years.

So is this a good thing or a bad thing? Do we even want to be found?

The really important ramification, of course, is that we've been looking for *them* the wrong way all this time.

Link.

Tough news, team.

Learn here.

There was a great article about this in The New Yorker, about a year or two ago. A group of people trained themselves to spot liars through careful attention to visual clues like subconscious facial muscle movement. The training worked; afterwards they could identify a liar at far better than chance.

The only problem? Having taught themselves to do this, they found they could never turn it off. They could tell when people were lying, even when they didn't want to know.

Good deal. Shipping $5.

Evidence of subconscious gender choice on the part of mothers. Apparently, women who believe they have longer to live are more likely to produce sons. No one's quite sure why yet.

"It's not something I've ever come across in practice," says midwife Sue Jarman from South Norwood Medical Centre, London, but she says the idea that unborn sons are biologically more costly makes sense. Male babies are more likely to spontaneously abort than female babies, so women may need to be on top form to carry a son to term.

Once born, males may also require more parental investment than females. Women tend to breast-feed sons longer than daughters, says Jarman.

Girls are much more biologically valuable than boys, as well; a community with 1 man and 1000 women can survive to another generation, but a community with 1000 men and 1 woman will die out. Don't know how that translates to longevity-expectation per se, but it would make sense that a vague (or not-so-vague) concept of "threat" would tend to produce more girls.

That's one smart monkey. Get my brain saw.

$10 today gets you a ticket to the future. (Warning: hoax.)

This warms my heart.

A rarity: a Fark photoshop thread that's actually worth scrolling through. In honor of Jack Black's casting as Green Lantern, they've come up with some other unlikely celebrity superheroes. Amid the usual Fark crap, there's actually some good ones. (Unsurprisingly, there's also a large number of unaltered images of poorly cast superheroes.)

At least one of the posters has a bizarre Condi Rice obsession. Weird.

Anyway, here's the best one, hands down:

FuturePundit takes a stab at major world issues 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 years from now. Interesting guesses, if somewhat unsurprising. I've seen all of these movies.

Here are my guesses:

World, 2054

1. Sticks or stones: Which should we use to smite our enemies?
2. Can we harness the incredible power of fire for our benefit? How?
3. Which shall we worship: thunder, the sea, trees, or our ancestors?
4. Can human longevity be pushed past 30 years?
5. What's that green glowing goo?

The granddaddy of comic lit, Art Spiegelman, has an interview about his new book up at the NY Times. Reference is made to his indispensable novel about the Holocaust and its survivors, Maus.

The new book is In The Shadow of No Towers, and it's about (what else?) 9/11 and its aftermath. You might have seen an excerpt in the latest McSweeney's, if you're a McSweeney's kind of person, or know someone who is. I'm sure it's good. I'll be looking for it.

Another great road law by California. Arnold and his Hummer nowhere to be seen.

This August 4 article from Slate notes that California has long banned large trucks, bigger than 6000 pounds, from riding on residential streets. And guess what, all the big SUVs break that mark. Maybe your town has these laws? Maybe your neighborhood has these laws. Maybe those bastards across the street who keep reporting you for not mowing your lawn every week, thus getting you fined by the city and harassed by your landlords break these laws. Maybe you should do something drastic and rash about it.

Scathing and fun. I especially like the August Five Update.

[ihavenocar]Living in California would be no fun to me. At least there's folks out there who also think driving a car isn't absolutely necessary. Carsharing, amongst urban dwellers, is a good concept and popping up everywhere as a viable alternative to ownership.[/ihavenocar]

[vegetarian]Via Metafilter, a link to "Bush-meat Trade Breeds New HIV" which basically says strains of HIV have jumped from wild animals/primates to humans Seven times in recent history, not two, like everyone thinks. This includes "invisible" strains. As a bonus, the title is great anti-republican propaganda for those who just browse headlines.[/vegetarian]

Good news: Scientist claims Ireland is the lost continent of Atlantis. Now THAT'S a baseless hypothesis about a nonexistent place that I can get behind.

Awful news: New research indicates that "a signficant number" (potentially thousands) of people in the UK may already be infected with mad cow disease.

[VEGETARIAN] Until the western world has widespread, sweeping reform in the way we produce our meat, people seriously shouldn't eat meat. For more information, consult chapters 8 and 9 of Fast Food Nation.[/VEGETARIAN]

Interested parties can check out my Fall 2004 English 105: Introduction to Narrative syllabus, here. 101 syllabus forthcoming.

Today is the 59th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.



On August 6 paper lanterns are set afloat on the rivers to console the souls of the A-bomb Dome are dotted with colorful paper lanterns which carry the wishes of the bereaved families and praying for eternal peace.

Hiroshima Today

Issac Asimov takes on The Future of Humanity, while Larry Smith (who?) tries to party like it's 1954.

Driving to Wilmington today (yes, we're back in Wilmington, so posting from my end will be very sporadic until Monday), we were treated to the most incredible lightning I've ever seen. We're talking lighting-up-the-night-sky, fear-of-God lightning. Amazing to witness--but I'm glad we were in a car.

Along other lines entirely, in pursuit of my recent comic book project, of which you may someday hear information, I flipped through Kingdom Come today, the comic book story people tell you to read once you've already read The Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns (which I should be looking at shortly). Although excellent, it's not as good as those others; it's not the high-water mark of superhero tales or anything. But it does have one advantage over the other two: it takes a harsh look at what the DC world would be like when the children of the first generation of superheroes took over.

And it's exactly right. It wouldn't be paradise. It would be a Nietzschean hell.

Ralph Fiennes is You-Know-Who in Goblet of Fire, says AICN.

(PS: I'm with Quint here. Prisoner of Azkaban was the best of the three by far. You should be giving everyone involved with its production a lifetime contract, on replacing them.)

Cute webcomic about working in the psychiatric ward of a hospital.

Here's a cool picture, the photographer of which may be our wedding photographer.

Check out this speech bank made available to us by Casey. No speeches from the DNC as yet. The list is alphabetical according to whatever word begins the phrase that describes the speech so, if you're looking for a speech by George Bush, look under the letter "G".

Our pollution has created a 5,800 square mile "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico, so oxygen-devoid that no life can survive. High-fives all around.

In Sword of Dracula #5, Dracula fights...John Kerry.

Okay, one last thing: pages from the 1978 Sears catalog. Visit retroCRUSH in general for all your instant nostalgia needs.

Here are some science links to chew while I'm gone:

Scientists may have discovered the biological basis for autism: lack of coordination and integration between brain areas.

One-way ticket: NASA's studying statis hibernation for intra- and extra-solar travel.

US Army starts work on massive supercomputer to control weapons systems. Called "Skynet" "Stryker." I've seen this movie, too.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 9:36 AM  |

This is a very strange project.

Visualizing the world, as it is conceived by fools. Updated often.

For those of you that are still interested, my nation-state (previously discussed here and here) is doing quite well. Its description today seemed particularly appropriate for a nation ruled by me. Canavania is currently a Scandanavian Liberal Paradise, with a fragile economy, excellent civl and political rights, and a tax rate of (sigh) 100%:

The Republic of Canavania is a very large, environmentally stunning nation, remarkable for its compulsory vegetarianism. Its compassionate, intelligent population of 134 million enjoy extensive civil rights and enjoy a level social equality free of the usual accompanying government corruption.
...
Canavania's educational system is the envy of many and regarded as a pinnacle of educational achievement, all forms of advertising are banned, the nation has opened its arms to an influx of refugees, and the government is avowedly atheist. Crime is totally unknown. Canavania's national animal is the monkey, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its currency is the gerry.

You can see the whole description here.

Did anyone else bother to putter around with this? It's actually kind of fun.

Blasphemy:

Takeshi Kitano's Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi isn't technically a musical, even if it does include several oddly delightful percussive interludes and ends with a rompin', stompin' taiko-drumming-meets-Harlem-tap number that rocks about twice as hard as anything in "Chicago." What it is, though, is an unclassifiable every-genre-at-once movie, in the spirit of the great martial-arts classics. Some of its violence is comic and cartoony, some of it is dire and horrifying. It's a mystery, a swashbuckler, a fable of bloody revenge, a tender tale of youth corrupted, and a tragedy about a noble samurai who takes the wrong path for the right reasons.

While the ultraviolence and the slapdash Mixmaster sensibility of Zatoichi surely aren't for everyone, it's such a big, compassionate film, so full of life and so delighted with its own excesses, that it's likely to win over all kinds of viewers (as it already has at numerous film festivals). As one Internet posting put it, Zatoichi's improbable combination of elements is pretty much what Quentin Tarantino tried to pull off, with somewhat less success, in Kill Bill.

Movie sounds good. But when am I going to see Shaolin Soccer?

Was Six Feet Under always this bad? I seem to recall it once being good. This week's episode was even worse than the "David Gets Kidnapped!" crapfest from two weeks ago.

What's the deal, Alan Bell? Someone take control of this sinking ship.

What a jerk.

Saw with Jaimee this afternoon The Manchurian Candidate, starring my good friend Shankar D as Frank Sinatra, Meryl Streep as Hillary Clinton, and Etti's dad as that random Albanian scientist.

It was all right. I don't have much to add beyond Frinibarf's review. Just a few random notes:

Director Jonathan Demme has perfected the art of the creepy ultracloseup.

At least one of the writers has a tic wherein their characters all repeat a line of dialogue twice: "I worry about you, Captain Manchuria. I worry."

They changed the ending a little bit, in the least surprising manner possible, and to the detriment of the movie. Original ending here.

I don't really understand why this movie was remade in the first place. The first one was a classic, and this remake is hardly different. And if you wanted to make a movie about mind control to tie into the presidential election, an original script could have been a LOT more interesting.

Probably worth renting though.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 6:56 PM  |

Link roundup:

Dingos likely evolved from Asian pets

Heinz 57: The Known Alien Races

Philip K. Dick and the Kennedy Assassination

Photoshop Contest: If celebrities were the subjects of Van Gogh and Cezanne

Weird Cloud Over N. Pittsburgh

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 1:43 PM  |

I hate e-Spartan. This is a complete travesty.

And Pat, Tom, and anyone else who's been forwarding their UNCG mail to a different account; I think that stopped working about 2 am this morning. They want everyone to use the new system.

Ah, McSweeney's.

Here.

UPDATE: Want some spoilers? We'll list the commands we find right here, in easy-to-highlight-and-read goodness. 9/11, drugs, money, intelligence failure, war on terror, torture, foreign policy, michael moore, U.N., Reagan, gun lobby, speech, axis of evil I'm sure each of those actions has other phrases or words connected to them, and some may be repeats. Surely the internet will have a full list in the coming hours.

UPDATE 2: Dude can dance, too.

Wow...the people over at HomeStarRunner have seriously outdone themselves. Presenting Peasant's Quest.

View the Trailer
Play Peasant's Quest

You'll need to know about Trogdor first.

The original Trogdor movie
Trogdor the Game

UPDATE: Walkthrough.

A Vonnegut/Trout fansite.

Saw this on Lugnet today, thought Gerry and Jaimee would appreciate it.

And for those of you who haven't seen them : There are Kill Bill figures from NECA. Including this "convention exclusive" (I hate convention exclusives, by the way) of "Crazy 88 Quentin."

AND, on an almost completely different subject, a review of Wil Wheaton's new book, Just a Geek. Maybe I'd like a review copy of this...

Just a reminder...This is the last chance for adding to our second Foam Cowboy Hat Fiction Series story. Help us wrap this one up. The new one begins tomorrow.

Two books have just come out, one proclaiming that religion is back and better than ever, the other that religion is dead and its adherents just haven't noticed yet. Salon wonders: Who will win?

I assume we'll just settle this the old-fashioned way. Whoever sells more books was obviously correct, and that's the end of it.

Reading this article makes me want to get rid of both the religious and the irreligious. Who would be left? The apathetic, the agnostic, and let's say the Buddhists. That's my kind of party.

Why do they have to take away everything I love?

How Much Pus is in Your State's Milk?

UPDATE: Yeah, this website clearly has an agenda, but I'm still completely grossed out by the confrontation with this.

I think it can.

Spent a lot of time rereading The Watchmen today, and I just can't recommend it enough. If you don't want to buy it, borrow it. Written in 1986, this story still has a lot to say to us. I don't want to spoil any more.

We're pretty high on the potential of comic book lit here at the BCR. When we talk about comic-lit, we're usually talking about essays and memoirs translated to graphic form, with Maus standing on one hand and the work of R. Krumb on the other. We're not generally talking about superheros.

Here's one case where we are. The Watchmen transcends the genre.

Can't wait for the movie.