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Copyright © 2004-2007 Backwards City Publications of Greensboro.

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Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Five Ways to Love a Cockroach
These are things we need to know. [Flash]
Gimme Comics
Graphic novel and comics spotlight from the editors of Kirkus Review, featuring the 25 must-have comic trade paperbacks of 2005. I have to pick up Epileptic; universally, I've heard such good things. (also via Bookslut)
Inside the Bruce Springsteen Symposium
Man, I wish I was going to this:
Womack's own paper hints at what's in store. Entitled Bruce Springsteen and the Politics of Nostalgia, it will trawl through a number of the better-known female characters in the Springsteen oeuvre. Coming along for the academic ride will be Sandy, Wendy and the ever-present Mary, not forgetting the "barefoot girl sittin' on the hood of a Dodge/drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain", who made her appearance on the 1975 track Jungleland.

"Although she comes in many guises, she's the female face at the heart of the sociocultural nostalgia that structures Springsteen's sense of pastness throughout his work," the paper's abstract explains.

Womack will "discuss the nostalgic imperatives in Springsteen's songs that allow us to enjoy a perspective towards the past as an archetypal paradise - a seductive space in which we can fulfil our collective longing for the illusory wholeness that lives in our memories and our dreams".
I swear, when I was briefly considering writing a paper for this, that's what it was going to be about. Except cooler. Much, much cooler.

(via Bookslut, who also informs us, sadly, that Jewel's long-awaited sequel to A Night Without Armor, A Night With Armor, is not forthcoming. Dang.)
The Illustrated Catalog Of ACME Products
From the ACME adding machine to the ACME X-ray, it's the entire ACME catalog.

(via Drawn!)
Quantum Immortality
Does quantum mechanics prove that we can never die? More here.

I've been working on a theory like this for most of my conscious life, involving time and memory as well as continuity of consciousness. (The short version: Consciousness requires the passage of time, ie, I am only aware at moment x because I'm aware of moment x at moment x+1. How then can consciousness ever reach its end? The last moment would not be experienced because there would no conscious mind afterwards to remember it. And so the second-to-last moment wouldn't be experienced either. And so on with every previous moment, back to the beginning. If we're ever conscious, we must be conscious forever. I almost fully believe this, which is the sole consolation I have in my godless world.) Before tonight, I'd never seen any indication that this theory made any actual sense.

So I'm gratified, at least.
Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Ask Backwards City: Where Can I Find the Best Sushi in North Carolina?
Like anyone could ever know that.

But if you want to know where I've had the best sushi I've had, it was at Waraji in Raleigh, earlier tonight. Here's how to get there.

It's really cheap, too. Fantastic.
Things Fall Apart
Hurricane Katrina isn't finished yet:
The sense of relief that residents felt Monday morning when the city was not immediately inundated by a storm surge overflowing its protective levees was replaced late Monday night and Tuesday morning with dread because of a levee that was damaged by the hurricane.

Water flowing from the damaged levee near Lake Pontchartrain could have equally catastrophic effects, only unfolding more slowly.

...

Water levels in Lake Pontchartrain and the connecting 17th Street Canal are normally six feet higher than the surrounding city. The levees keep the waters from flowing down into this low-lying city, much of which is below sea level.

The damage to the 17th Street Canal and its levee means that the water from Lake Pontchartrain is now free to flow down to inundate hundreds of thousands of homes and other buildings here.

Once it flows in, the water will not drain from New Orleans because of the very levees that protect the city and that largely held during the hurricane. Those levees, built to keep water out, are now keeping the water in, and reports from across the city indicate that water levels are rising.
Meanwhile, residents in nearby Jefferson Parish are being told they can't return to their homes for an entire month.
Being An Account of the Life and Death of the Emperor Heliogabolus
Neil Gaiman's (failed) 24-Hour Comic.
How Panic-Proof Are You?
During the 1950s, government officials were very concerned that, in the event of an atomic attack, law and order would break down irrevocably as the nation dissolved into widespread panic and hysteria. In its publicity campaigns the Federal Civil Defense Administration wanted to frighten people sufficiently to encourage them to take part in drills, but not to incapacitate them with fear. The following government-sponsored quiz appeared in the August 21, 1953 issue of Collier's magazine as a supplement to an article about human behavior during nuclear attack. It was intended to help readers from becoming "victims of panic." (via Boing Boing and Linkfilter)
Cubeoban
Fun little cubeslingin' game. [Flash] (via Little Fluffy)
'Disabuse Thousands of Needy, Bumbling Timewasters of the Notion That Nascent Masterpieces Stir within Their Loins'
Tim Clare in the The Guardian on why you -- yes, you -- suck.
There is an auld axiom beloved of burnt-out English teachers, glamour-impoverished fantasists and a million other drudges seeking to transcend their lives of quiet desperation: everyone has a novel inside them.

This slogan has been appropriated as an article of faith by the amateur writing community, whilst its corollary - as a novelist, you have six-and-a-half billion potential rivals - remains the gravest of heresies. Like a blind man in a room of ill-positioned rakes, any group indulging in such wilful myopia is doomed to a series of unpleasant collisions with reality.

Curiously unsatisfied with the idea that being a successful novelist requires the ability to write books that a consistently large number of people are prepared to buy, jaded scribblers search instead for an explanation that will permit them to retreat with their pride and delusions intact. As W Somerset Maugham put it: "I have never met an author who admitted that people did not buy his book because it was dull."
He goes on:
The truth is a disproportionate number of publishers are wide-eyed idealists with a frightening propensity for chucking good money after bad. As much as agents and editors may feign a cool professional insouciance, most dream of stumbling across The Next Big Thing and securing their place in industry history. While veteran authors languish in the mid-list doldrums, jammy first-timers rake in vast advances on the promise of long and lucrative careers, which frequently fail to materialise. Publishers act with one eye on posterity, leaving their accountants with ulcers the size of kumquats, and the UK book market saturated with newcomers brawling over a limited readership.

Despite this, there will always be luminaries such as GP Taylor who are happy to curry favour with the disaffected and untalented. Enthusiastically promoting a competition with the aim of finding "the next JK Rowling", Taylor made the bizarre claim that "for the first time ever, a publisher is going to offer someone totally unknown the chance to be published". I daresay there are numerous examples of an author brokering his or her first deal over champagne at a garden party, but the simple fact is that unknown authors are being taken on every day, and frankly, publishers and established authors suffer because of it. The British publishing industry is crying out for a high-profile hothead to disabuse thousands of needy, bumbling timewasters of the notion that nascent masterpieces stir within their loins.
I think we've found our hothead. (via BookNinja)
Essentialism
This page comprises a list of 736 "essentialist explanations" of the form "Language X is essentially language Y under conditions Z".

For instance, English:
English is essentially bad Dutch with outrageously pronounced French and Latin vocabulary.
--Eugene Holman

English is essentially Norse as spoken by a gang of French thugs.
--Benct Philip Jonsson

English is essentially Anglo-Saxon with all the cool bits taken out.
--Thomas Leigh

English is essentially Dutch but it doesn't want to admit it.
--Danny Wier

English is essentially Pictish that was attacked out of nowhere by Angles cohabiting with Teutons who were done in by a drunk bunch of Vikings masquerading as Frenchmen who insisted they spoke Latin and Greek but lacked the Arabic in which to convey that.
--Bill Hammel

English is essentially all exceptions and no rules.
--Jonathan Bettencourt
There are also entries for French, Spanish, Italian, German, Welsh just for Jennifer, and many many others. I guess this joke is more or less like "The Aristocrats" for comparative linguistics; now the secret's out.

(My personal favorite variant of this joke is "if _____ and _____ had a baby." Occassionally "...raised by _____." I use it all the time.)

(via Boing Boing)
Aftermath
Wikipedia has a comprehensive list of the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina. This was really bad for the people who endured this storm, but believe it or not it seems like we got off lucky; if the storm hadn't changed direction in the night and had approached New Orleans from its original trajectory, things almost certainly would have been a lot worse. As it stands, the economic impact nationwide could be ugly.
Flying Spaghetti Monsterism in The New York Times
Man, this thing caught on in a big way.

Good catch, Chris.
Backwards City #3 Call for Submissions
Hot off the publication of its second issue, Backwards City Review is now accepting prose, poetry, and comics submissions for its upcoming third issue. There is no theme for this issue; anything goes.

We're especially interested in comics submissions, as well as traditional-form poetry with a postmodern flair.

The submission period for Backwards City #3 is between now and November 15, 2005. Submissions received after that time will be considered for the fourth issue.

Send all submissions to:
Prose Editor OR Poetry Editor OR Comics Editor
Backwards City Review
P.O. Box 41317
Greensboro, NC 27404-1317

No email submissions. For complete guidelines, visit us on the Web at http://www.backwardscity.net.
Superman's Fortress of Solitude
All about Superman's Arctic getaway.



(via Gravity Lens, which also contemplates the chilling Zoo Hypothesis)
Monday, August 29, 2005

The Argument from Athletic Excellence
It's rare that you stumble upon a proof for God's existence that isn't already well-documented here, but in the worst sports column of all time, this Washington Post sports columnist (who accidentally started talking about Intelligent Design for some reason) finds a way:
And try telling a baseball fan that pure Darwinism explains Joe DiMaggio. As Tommy Lasorda once said, "If you said to God, 'Create someone who was what a baseball player should be,' God would have created Joe DiMaggio -- and he did."
Some sort of joke about the Mets and the existence of the Devil should probably go here. (via Atrios)
'The Greatest and Most Controversial American Novel of the 20th Century'
50 years of Lolita at The Boston Globe.
Thunderball!
Johnny Cash's nixed James Bond theme. [.MP3] Incredible.
Devastation
  • "Total structural failure" in parts of New Orleans
  • Section of Superdome roof opens up (including video)
  • Hurricane Katrina now Category 3 with 125 mph wind
  • East side of New Orleans under 5 to 6 feet of water
  • 10 feet of water covers Gulfport, Mississippi, streets

    At CNN.

    Keep watching the MetaFilter threads.
  • The Jack Kirby Museum
    Opened today online. (Via MetaFilter)
    Sunday, August 28, 2005

    Hurricane Katrina at Wikipedia
    As usual, Wikipedia is the best place to get information about extremely current events.
    'It's Time to Get Serious About Saving New Orleans'
    The American Prospect Web Exclusive, 5/25/05.
    The Great Live Concert Moment
    Why some concerts are good and so many concerts suck, from the former pop-music columnist of The Washington Post.
    You know about the great Live Concert Moment, right? I'm not talking about the kind of show where you leave thinking, "Those guys rule!" and then buy a T-shirt. I'm talking about total-body bliss, a rush so strong it turns brain cells into Jell-O and, for a moment or two, you sort of leave your skin. Art lovers would probably argue that they get the same feeling by looking at a great painting, but they're fools, and you should ignore them. A good part of what I'm talking about here is sheer volume. A painting can be many things, but it will never make your ears ring.
    (also via MetaFilter)
    A Streetcar Named Katrina
    MetaFilter has an interesting thread going on regarding the current situation in New Orleans, which is again being evacuated due to the possibility of a devastating direct hit by Hurricane Katrina. Let's hope it doesn't happen.

    UPDATE: This is looking really bad.

    UPDATE 2: The apocalyptic NWS bulletin that's been all over the Internet is now on an official NWS website. (via Cynical-C)
    Lemmings
    The classic PC game online. [via Little Fluffy]
    Saturday, August 27, 2005

    Running Shorts For Sale
    Ebay exhibitionists: fulfill your shopping thrills and more! When I stumbled upon this gem of a picture, I thought I should share it with the world.
    This Throwing Stick Stunt of Yours Has Boomeranged on Us
    I wonder if people will be as keen on keeping their children uneducated now that some colleges are starting to take note:
    Under a policy implemented with little fanfare a year ago, UC admissions authorities have refused to certify high school science courses that use textbooks challenging Darwin's theory of evolution, the suit says.

    Other courses rejected by UC officials include "Christianity's Influence in American History," "Christianity and Morality in American Literature" and "Special Providence: American Government."

    The 10-campus UC system requires applicants to complete a variety of courses, including science, mathematics, history, literature and the arts. But in letters to Calvary Chapel, university officials said some of the school's Christian-oriented courses were too narrow to be acceptable.

    According to the lawsuit, UC's board of admissions also advised the school that it would not approve biology and science courses that relied primarily on textbooks published by Bob Jones University Press and A Beka Books, two Christian publishers.
    Both BCR Fiction Editors Agree, Hemp is It
    Following PCEgan's lead, I just bought a new wallet.
    The New Yorker Reviews
    ...Lennon and The Aristocrats.
    The Harry Potter Lexicon
    The most compleat and amazing reference to the wonderful world of Harry Potter (including magical spells, potions, maps, lists of wizards and all manner of magical items and devices).
    Friday, August 26, 2005

    'The Fact That He Didn't Die Doesn't Mean He Wasn't a Martyr'
    You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
    Kinsey
    I really enjoyed this movie. (Jaimee enjoyed it too, but it made her a little depressed. I get that.) I wasn't expecting to like it as much as I did, because I expected it to be either a hagiography or a hatchet-job -- but it was neither. Or maybe it was both. Kinsey did important work and he was a Great American, etc., but aspects of his methodology were plainly and obviously terrible, and the movie does a great job of detailing that.

    It also does a fantastic job of peering into the postmodern ethical abyss Kinsey helped usher in. "Okay, nothing is prohibited, everything is permitted. But surely not everything. Not [x], not [y]." It doesn't give us an answer, but how could it? There is no answer.

    Definitely worth your time.

    Netflix
    Amazon

    I'm surprised this movie got so little Oscar love. It was at least as good as Sideways, which was better than Ray, which was better than Best Picture winner Million Dollar Baby.
    Broken Arrow: Goldsboro, NC
    On Tuesday, 24 January 1961, at about 12:30 a.m., two hydrogen bombs fell to earth near the tiny farming village of Faro, NC. Parts of one bomb remain in a bog.
    Classic '80s Arcade Games Online
    Metafilter has a thread that's chock full of 'em.
    Terry Gilliam, Burn Victim
    Critics savage Brothers Grimm.
    In the New York Observer, Rex Reed was still more scathing. "Gilliam has no clear idea what he's doing," he wrote, "so the movie is nothing more than noise, costumes and disjointed special effects."
    I guess I've never recommended it before -- if I have, Google doesn't know about it -- but Lost in La Mancha, the story of Gilliam's disastrous failed attempt to film an adaptation of Don Quixote, is truly excellent, both as a sad glimpse at the movie that might have been and as a film in its own right.

    In fact, I'm putting it in my Netflix queue right now, along with Brazil. Take that, Hollywood elite!
    Comfortably Dumbfounded
    Interesting interview from The Believer magazine with psychologist Jonathan Haidt [full text], who argues that ethical judgments are almost always snap judgments, and that our justifications come later:
    JONATHAN HAIDT: People almost always start out by saying it’s wrong. Then they start to give reasons. The most common reasons involve genetic abnormalities or that it will somehow damage their relationship. But we say in the story that they use two forms of birth control, and we say in the story that they keep that night as a special secret and that it makes them even closer. So people seem to want to disregard certain facts about the story. When the experimenter points out these facts and says “Oh, well, sure, if they were going to have kids, that would cause problems, but they are using birth control, so would you say that it’s OK?” And people never say “Ooooh, right, I forgot about the birth control. So then it is OK.” Instead, they say, “Oh, yeah. Huh. Well, OK, let me think.”

    So what’s really clear, you can see it in the videotapes of the experiment, is: people give a reason. When that reason is stripped from them, they give another reason. When the new reason is stripped from them, they reach for another reason. And it’s only when they reach deep into their pocket for another reason, and come up empty-handed, that they enter the state we call “moral dumbfounding.” Because they fully expect to find reasons. They’re surprised when they don’t find reasons. And so in some of the videotapes you can see, they start laughing. But it’s not an “it’s so funny” laugh. It’s more of a nervous-embarrassment puzzled laugh. So it’s a cognitive state where you “know” that something is morally wrong, but you can’t find reasons to justify your belief. Instead of changing your mind about what’s wrong, you just say: “I don’t know, I can’t explain it. I just know it’s wrong.” So the fact that this state exists indicates that people hold beliefs separate from, or with no need of support from, the justifications that they give. Or another way of saying it is that the knowing that something is wrong and the explaining why are completely separate processes.

    BLVR: Are the subjects satisfied when they reach this state of moral dumbfounding? Or do they find something deeply problematic about it?

    JH: For some people it’s problematic. They’re clearly puzzled, they’re clearly reaching, and they seem a little bit flustered. But other people are in a state that Scott Murphy, the honors student who conducted the experiment, calls “comfortably dumbfounded.” They say with full poise: “I don’t know; I can’t explain it; it’s just wrong.” Period. So we do know that there are big differences in people on a variable called “need for cognition.” Some people need to think about things, need to understand things, need to reason about things. Many of these people go to graduate school in philosophy. But most people, if they don’t have a reason for their moral judgments, they’re not particularly bothered.

    BLVR: So your conclusion is that while we might think that Reason or reasons are playing a big causal role in how we arrive at moral judgments, it’s actually our intuitions—fueled by our emotions—that are doing most of the work. You say in your paper that reason is the press secretary of the emotions, the ex post facto spin doctor.

    JH: Yes, that’s right.
    If some of Haidt's scenarios seem familiar to you, I suspect you've played Taboo at The Philosopers' Magazine (blogged here and referenced several other times).
    Juggler
    The game. [Flash] (via Little Fluffy)
    Thursday, August 25, 2005

    The Big Giant Hand!
    It can't be stopped. (via Gravity Lens)
    If It's Octopi
    Today's Internet Obsession: Octopi in pulp fiction.



    Yes, they do. (via Boing Boing)
    Shouldn't That Be 'Bullsh*t Repeller'?
    But I appreciate the sentiment.
    Wednesday, August 24, 2005

    In a World Where I Have Nothing Else to Link To
    Five voiceover guys in a limo bring moderate laughs. (via Cynical-C)
    There Are Other Types of Comics
    Newsflash: the world is round, creationism is wrong, sometimes TV lies, and there are other genres besides superheroes.

    (At Cinescape, via Gravity Lens)
    Or You Could Just
    ...play dominoes. [Flash]
    Nurikabe
    The wall-building puzzle game. Here are the rules. [Flash]

    (via Little Fluffy)
    Tuesday, August 23, 2005

    Curb It
    The new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm starts Sept. 25. This is the best news I've heard all day.

    I recommend you buy Seaon Four on DVD to celebrate.
    Secret Cow Level
    The Greatest Easter Eggs In Gaming History. (via Slashdot)
    Fake Roadsigns
    A really great site (with a really annoying Flash interface) devoted to pictures of fake roadsigns installed on various city streets. The best way to access the pictures is to click on ARTISTS and then use the next-artist arrow at the bottom of the screen.



    (via MetaFilter, which links to other worthy fake roadsign projects elsewhere on the internets. I think the second link is maybe better than the first.)
    National Health Care, Please
    The New Yorker takes on the national health care question:
    One of the great mysteries of political life in the United States is why Americans are so devoted to their health-care system. Six times in the past century—during the First World War, during the Depression, during the Truman and Johnson Administrations, in the Senate in the nineteen-seventies, and during the Clinton years—efforts have been made to introduce some kind of universal health insurance, and each time the efforts have been rejected. Instead, the United States has opted for a makeshift system of increasing complexity and dysfunction. Americans spend $5,267 per capita on health care every year, almost two and half times the industrialized world’s median of $2,193; the extra spending comes to hundreds of billions of dollars a year. What does that extra spending buy us? Americans have fewer doctors per capita than most Western countries. We go to the doctor less than people in other Western countries. We get admitted to the hospital less frequently than people in other Western countries. We are less satisfied with our health care than our counterparts in other countries. American life expectancy is lower than the Western average. Childhood-immunization rates in the United States are lower than average. Infant-mortality rates are in the nineteenth percentile of industrialized nations. Doctors here perform more high-end medical procedures, such as coronary angioplasties, than in other countries, but most of the wealthier Western countries have more CT scanners than the United States does, and Switzerland, Japan, Austria, and Finland all have more MRI machines per capita. Nor is our system more efficient. The United States spends more than a thousand dollars per capita per year—or close to four hundred billion dollars—on health-care-related paperwork and administration, whereas Canada, for example, spends only about three hundred dollars per capita. And, of course, every other country in the industrialized world insures all its citizens; despite those extra hundreds of billions of dollars we spend each year, we leave forty-five million people without any insurance. A country that displays an almost ruthless commitment to efficiency and performance in every aspect of its economy—a country that switched to Japanese cars the moment they were more reliable, and to Chinese T-shirts the moment they were five cents cheaper—has loyally stuck with a health-care system that leaves its citizenry pulling out their teeth with pliers.
    This is true. When I lived in D.C., I spent some time working as a temp in the city's failing free-clinic system. There was only one dental procedure that was covered by the city: pulling teeth. And the waiting list was six weeks long.

    I guess it's good they didn't have to use pliers.
    Like Baskin Robins, There's a Billion Flavors
    From Flat-Earthers to theistic evolutionists come all your flavors of creationism. One omission: they seem to have inadvertently left out Last-Thursdayists, who believe the entire Universe was created last Thursday, possibly by a cat.
    Bring Me All Known Cheeses
    In alphabetical order. (via Gravity Lens)
    That'll Be the Day
    What was in Buddy Holly's overnight bag the night he died? (via Boing Boing)
    Monkeys Just As Stupid As People
    When given a choice between steady rewards and the chance for more, monkeys will gamble, a new study found.

    And they'll keep taking risks as the stakes rise and dry spells get longer.
    Monday, August 22, 2005

    'How It Looks on the Receiving End'
    Apropos of this post, cenoxo at MetaFilter posts Ground Zero 1945: Pictures by Atomic Bomb Survivors.


    -Horikoshi Susumu, 6 years old in August 1945

    These drawings and paintings by Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb were created more than a quarter century after the bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. They are provided by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Direct link to image gallery and Tomiko Konishi's story.
    Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire International Trailer
    It looks like it might actually be decent.
    Three from Bookslut
  • Suggested Vacation Reading List for President Bush
    1. Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee: A South African fable about strangers at the gates of a disintegrating empire.
    Burn.

  • Missing Masterpieces: Speculating on lost works from Shakespeare, Plath, Flaubert, Papa, and others.

  • Geraldine McCaughrean talks about her upcoming sequel to Peter Pan, which I've mentioned before. She's got good things to say, and provides some neat tidbits:
    In Barrie's story, Captain Hook, Peter's foe and alter ego, died when he was eaten by a crocodile. McCaughrean has hinted that Peter, with no enemy to challenge, begins to take Cook's place - even borrowing his clothes. She also said she was determined to appeal to both adults and children, and would avoid the saccharine-sweet Disney image of Peter and the Lost Boys, with Wendy a more assertive 21st-century girl.
    All three via Bookslut.
  • Art from the Atomic Bomb Test
    Wow, great link from Cynical-C: paintings from the Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests.



    Do to a bombing error, the ABLE device exploded almost directly over the attack transport USS Gillian (APA-57). It was flattened by the force of the blast and sank in under one minute. USS Carlisle (APA-69) was tossed about 150 yards by the blast. Battered and on fire, the ship sank in flames shortly thereafter. To the right is former Japanese cruiser Sakawa, which sank the next day sfollowing severe superstructure and hull damage.

    Some other favorites include Plus 2 Seconds and 0900 Through Protective Goggles on the USS Appalachian. Absolutely amazing site.
    Fnord
    Robert Anton Wilson, the iconoclastic genius behind the famed Illuminatus! Trilogy, has a few thousand things he'd like to teach you.
    I Think There's Something Wrong with the Machine
    MRI mishaps. Once you've been in the MRI field for any length of time, you start hearing all of the various horror stories about things that have flown into a scanner. Often, newcomers don't take the real danger of flying objects seriously until they witness an oxygen tank or gurney flying into a magnet themselves. (via Cynical-C and MetaFilter)
    Sci-Fi Science Blunders Hall of Infamy
    Science mistakes from all your favorite TV shows. (via Gravity Lens)
    Life Less Interesting Than Previously Hoped
    World-Famous 'Piano Man' Turns Out to Be Just Some Guy.
    By Thor!
    Religion of Comic Book Characters. I'm sorry to say that Protestants get both Superman and Spiderman (though they get stuck with Captain America too). At least my peeps the Catholics get to party with Bruce Wayne and the Punisher.

    Atheists get Wolverine.

    And Jews get The Thing and Magneto -- as well as every listed supervillain, oddly.
    Sunday, August 21, 2005

    One Story Was Really Good This Week, Too
    #60: "Girl Reporter." The Superman/Lois Lane theme didn't hurt.

    If you're not subscribing to One Story, you should be. Of course, if you're not subscribing to Backwards City, you should do that first.
    'The Many Deaths of Norman Spittal'
    Some of these are really good. This one is the best.



    (at jbanx.com, which has many other good drawings, most notably Cubes)
    The Museum of Modern Robocop Art
    Robocop and SpongeBob Driving the Taxi from Roger Rabbit through the Berlin Wall circa 1985

    Pope-ocop.

    Robocop Wins the Boston Marathon

    And many others.

    Via MetaFilter, of course.
    Saturday, August 20, 2005

    Spike the Vampire? At Last?
    AICN has me very excited.
    From E! Online, Aug. 19, 2005:

    “I just got off the phone with someone who talked to Joss [Whedon] yesterday, who claimed that [the "Spike The Vampire"] project was very much on the front burner. Joss has never told me anything like that. He's checked with me twice, to see if I was interested. I said yes twice, and both times he's been very clear that this doesn't mean that anything's going forward, [he] just wants to have [his] ducks in a row.” – James Marsters

    From Whedonesque.com, Aug. 20, 2005:

    "I had lunch with Joss and he asked me if I wanted to write and direct some blonde vampire movie thing. Should I do it? (I of course said yes right off, still) Anything under 13 hours scares me. And anything over 13 hours... um. I got nothin'." – Tim Minear
    30% Off the Regular Price of One Paperback at Borders
    Deal ends tomorrow. You'll need this coupon.

    (via SlickDeals)
    Books I've Read Lately That Were Just Okay
  • Speaking with the Angel, Nick Hornby (editor). A collection of all first-person stories by Hot Young Writers™. A few strong stories -- Hornby's "NippleJesus," Giles Smith's "Last Requests," Robert Harris's "PMQ", Zadie Smith's "I'm the Only One" -- salvage the book, but the rest are pretty forgettable.

  • Amnesia Moon, Jonathan Lethem. Philip K. Dick meets Stephen King's The Gunslinger. As is well-known around these parts, I'm a big Lethem booster, but this was my least favorite of his books so far. I found it a lot less interesting than his very good Gun, With Occassional Music (review), for instance, and all of his science-fiction novels seem vastly inferior to his most excellent Fortress of Solitude (review), his delightful Men and Cartoons (review) and the incredibly fantastic Motherless Brooklyn (review). It's somewhat hard to believe the same guy wrote all five books.
  • Hunter S. Thompson's Ashes to Be Shot Out of Cannon Today
    Per his last wishes. Via MetaFilter.
    Trails of Greensboro
    Complete list of Greensboro hiking trails, maintained by Greensboro Parks & Rec. (Via Roch101, via the comments to this post)
    On Frankenstein
    Chris Mooney in The Prospect on why "The Modern Prometheus" is old hat.
    ...I'm tired of preachy retreads of the Frankenstein myth, first laid out in Mary Shelley's 19th-century classic and recycled by Hollywood constantly in films from Godsend to Jurassic Park. I'm sick of gross caricatures of mad-scientist megalomaniacs out to accrue for themselves powers reserved only for God. I'm fed up with the insinuation (for it's never an argument, always an insinuation) that there's a taboo against the pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge and that certain technological achievements -- especially those with the potential to affect life itself -- are inherently "unnatural." Or as Victor Frankenstein puts it in Shelley's novel, "Learn … by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow."
    Retro Kid
    Old-school illustrations for children's books and products. The prizewinner? The Shelter Trap.



    Until this moment, I thought it was patty-cake. (M-W says both are acceptable.) (via Drawn!)
    localhikes.com
    Hikes and trails near American population centers. Here's the Greensboro page.
    Friday, August 19, 2005

    Sushi Finder
    Where do you want to find sushi?

    (via MeFi, which recommends Raleigh's Waraji)
    Poom!
    Bounce the falling ball. (Via MeFi)
    Same Art-Time, Same Art-Channel
    Boing Boing also links to news that DC Comics is trying to shut down a Chelsea exhibition of 'gay' Batman-and-Robin watercolors. (Given Robin's young age, I'm really not sure 'gay' or even 'homoerotic' is really the right term. But 'pedophiliac' sounds too harsh for what's depicted. See comments. The paintings are potentially not-safe-for-work, by the way.)

    In any event, parody is fair use, fellas. More on fair use at Wikipedia.
    Flying Spaghetti Monsterism
    I'm a little surprised this paody of intelligent design has taken off the way that it has. I ran across the meme a few weeks ago and just went "meh" -- but I guess the moment was right, because it's being forwarded all over and is popping up everywhere. Personally, I think it's got nothing on the ten-year-old classic Kissing Hank's Ass, but that's me.

    I like the "His Noodly Appendage" bit, though. That's funny.

    Today Boing Boing links to the Wikipedia page, as well as a truly great picture.
    Larry F'ing David
    Jump with me into the Wayback Machine to a great New Yorker profile on Larry David from early 2004.

    UPDATE: "See also Larry David's February 15, 2004 New York Times Op-Ed." - Neil
    How Advanced Could They Possibly Be?
    Michio Kaku, author of (the excellent) Hyperspace, has a really interesting essay on the physics of extraterrestials:
    Specifically, we can rank civilizations by their energy consumption, using the following principles:

    1) The laws of thermodynamics. Even an advanced civilization is bound by the laws of thermodynamics, especially the Second Law, and can hence be ranked by the energy at their disposal.

    2) The laws of stable matter. Baryonic matter (e.g. based on protons and neutrons) tends to clump into three large groupings: planets, stars and galaxies. (This is a well-defined by product of stellar and galactic evolution, thermonuclear fusion, etc.) Thus, their energy will also be based on three distinct types, and this places upper limits on their rate of energy consumption.

    3) The laws of planetary evolution. Any advanced civilization must grow in energy consumption faster than the frequency of life-threatening catastrophes (e.g. meteor impacts, ice ages, supernovas, etc.). If they grow any slower, they are doomed to extinction. This places mathematical lower limits on the rate of growth of these civilizations.

    In a seminal paper published in 1964 in the Journal of Soviet Astronomy, Russian astrophysicist Nicolai Kardashev theorized that advanced civilizations must therefore be grouped according to three types: Type I, II, and III, which have mastered planetary, stellar and galactic forms of energy, respectively. He calculated that the energy consumption of these three types of civilization would be separated by a factor of many billions. But how long will it take to reach Type II and III status?
    I just eat this stuff up. Fantastic. (via Gravity Lens)
    Thursday, August 18, 2005

    Being, Nothingness, and Harry Potter
    If Jean-Paul Sartre read Harry Potter.
    It is only through the ministries of the nihilating Lord Voldemort, the anguish-dispensing Dementors and the squads of Death Eaters that meaning can accrue to the universe-which-must-not-be-named, which we instinctively recognize as a pale shade of our own. The Sartrean Voldemort embodies Nothingness; i.e., he concretizes Potter and his pals by being the negation of Hogwarts. By seeking to destroy Potter, Voldemort imparts form, or "facticity," to the undifferentiated Beingness of Potter's World of plenitude. Sans the struggle with Voldemort, the wizards would, of course, be nothing but hopeless dilettantes practicing parlor tricks.
    (via Monkeyfilter)
    The New Army Recruiting Packet
    Shouts & Murmurs has gotten better lately.
    Dude, we totally know what you're thinking. That you'll have to wake up early. That we'll make you run all day with heavy stuff on your back. That you have to be drug-free, know how to read, and rank the U.S. as one of your top five favorite countries. Wrong, wrong, and wrong! And whatever else you're thinking? Wrong!

    The Army is actually a whole lot of fun. Picture this: You get up—ten, eleven, whatever's good for you. Then we have brunch. Pancakes, waffles, French toast, some grease if the night before was a rough one. Sugar cereals. Then, at 1200 hours—just kidding! nobody here uses that number thing anymore—around noonish we hit the Xbox for a few hours of Halo and all-you-can-eat Cool Ranch Doritos. It's combat training without breaking a sweat. After a quick nap, we pack in some more training by watching a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie marathon. Then a dinner of chipped beef on toast, dehydrated mashed pota- Again, totally joking! We're having Taco Bell every night, all night, washed down by some of the best that Milwaukee has to offer.
    Flea World
    Guide a group of suspiciously immortal fleas through obstacles and great difficulty to the Promised Land.
    Slavery As We've Heard It
    In the Fall of 1932 the students at Jonesboro Elementary School, Greensboro, N.C., under the direction of Mr. Abraham H. Peeler, undertook an oral history project to document the memories of their parents, grandparents, or relatives. They captured these memories in brief compositions, which were placed in a folder "Slavery As We’Ve Heard It."

    An unique online exhibit at Greensboro's own Historical Museum.

    (via MetaFilter)
    391
    That's how many cans of delicious Cherry Coke it would take to kill me. I wish I knew how this calculation was being made.
    Wednesday, August 17, 2005

    The Office (Sham-erican Version)
    The Americans find it very hard to act natural. The American boss is a bit too surreal - someone who knows he's acting. The Gareth equivalent gets a C-. The American Tim seems to be trying to be directly modeling the acting of British Tim, with every twitch of his eye muscles. Direct scenes taken from the British version are a shell of the original comedy, as was to be expected. Everything's the same except Hilary Rodham Clinton = Camilla Parker Bowles, and nothing is as funny. I wish I could have seen this show without having seen the better British version, to see if it might possibly be funny.
    New York City vs. Ecko Rhinos
    Two links today from Wooster Collective:
    An excerpt from the first one.(from the NY Times)

    The city has revoked a permit awarded to organizers of a block party celebrating graffiti, saying it will not grant another one unless the group scraps plans to have graffiti writers spray paint murals onto models of New York City subway trains. The city acted hours after Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg criticized the plans yesterday.


    The second post details Mark Ecko's response.
    "Sea Oak"
    Unbelievably, the George Saunders story I taught in my 108 class tonight is still online. I can't believe this hasn't been taken down; it's been anthologized a number of times, as well as published in Pastoralia.

    It's quite good.
    Feedster Top 500
    Top 500 most interesting and important blogs. Sadly, Backwards City came in at 501. We'll be there next month. (via #314)
    So Are They Literature Yet?
    Sales of graphic novels in Borders bookstores have increased over 100% a year for the last three years. (via BookSlut)
    On Bullshit
    The classic essay is now available as a cheap book, and the all-Target New Yorker is on the scene with a review.
    The essence of bullshit, Frankfurt decides, is that it is produced without any concern for the truth. Bullshit needn't be false: “The bullshitter is faking things. But this does not mean that he necessarily gets them wrong.” The bullshitter's fakery consists not in misrepresenting a state of affairs but in concealing his own indifference to the truth of what he says. The liar, by contrast, is concerned with the truth, in a perverse sort of fashion: he wants to lead us away from it.
    The reviewer goes on to demolish Frankfurt's fine distinction with an apt example about a used-car salesman, but nonetheless: This is important philosophical work. Seriously.
    £1 billion in My Sofa
    Britons have enough small change around their homes to fund half of the London Olympic Games, according to a survey published today. [Boing Boing]
    How'm I Doing?
    Sarah Boxer takes a look at the state of Web comics in The New York Times. Things aren't entirely rosy.

    (via Bookslut)
    "Irony is Just Honesty with the Volume Cranked Up"
    George Saunders on George Saunders.

    The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil comes out September 6th.
    Tuesday, August 16, 2005

    Kung-Fu Hustle
    Absolutely nothing like what I was expecting, but still worth seeing. Like watching a live-action cartoon. Not as unbelievably, spoon-bendingly great as Shaolin Soccer, but really good.

    Amazon
    Netflix
    The All-Target New Yorker
    Apparently, the only ads in the upcoming issue of The New Yorker are Target ads. I find this very strange. Michael Bierut has more:

    The all-Target New Yorker is the product of more nakedly mercenary world where advertisers no longer need conceal their aims. There's nothing subliminal about it: I counted over 200 Target logos in the first 19 pages alone, and there were still eleven ads left to go when I gave up. The illustrators acquit themselves well: Robert Risko turns in a funny image of a substantial construction worker perched on a typically un-ergonomic modern cafe stool with a single logo on his back-pocket handkerchief; Yoko Shimizu turns in a spirited biker chick crossing the Brooklyn Bridge with the logo rising before her. Best of all is Me Company's vertiginous computer-generated cityscape, the last ad inside the magazine, which surely pushes the logo count well into four figures, if not five.

    Although the publisher has publicly stated that the decision to go with a single advertiser had no effect on the magazine's editorial content — as editor David Remnick put it in the New York Times, "Ads are ads" — the inescapable world of Target creates a disorienting context. Every non-Target illustration in the issue looks a little...funny. Indeed, when I saw the large woodcut that Milton Glaser's former partner Seymour Chwast produced to illustrate Gina Ochsner's short story "Thicker Than Water" (two blackbirds with round eyes that sort of reminded me of...never mind), my first thought was: didn't Seymour get the memo? No, and he no doubt didn't get the paycheck, either. Even the cover drawing by Ian Falconer gives one pause: two boys, playing with a beach ball, a round beach ball, a round red and white beach ball...


    I wonder if Target would pay $1 million to be our corporate sponsor. We could probably let the space go for just $500,000...
    New Zelda Game Delayed
    Until April at least, apparently. Oh well.

    "A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever."
    -Zelda Developer Shigeru Miyamoto

    (via Slashdot)
    He Was Looking For a Soul to Steal
    Thirty-Nine Questions for Charlie Daniels upon Hearing "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" for the First Time in Twenty-Five Years. At McSweeney's Internet Tendency.
    8. If the Devil went down to Georgia 'cause he was looking for a soul to steal, why does he arrange what appears to be an honest competition?

    16. Was there some sort of arbitration board in place in the event that the outcome was not obvious?

    17. If so, who served on this board?

    35. Was it really necessary or wise to invite the Devil to come on back if he ever wants to try again?
    Hobbyhorses
    Amazingly thorough article on the history and flaws of the 'intelligent design' movement from The New Republic.
    'Death to the Death of Poetry'
    Wait -- you're saying poetry isn't dead? That's what Donald Hall is saying, at any rate, at the Academy of American Poets.
    Poetry, then, appears to be:

    1. a vacuous synonym for excellence or unconsciousness. What else is common to the public perception of poetry?
    2. It is universally agreed that no one reads it.
    3. It is universally agreed that the nonreading of poetry is (a) contemporary and (b) progressive. From (a) it follows that sometime back (a wandering date, like "olden times" for a six-year-old) our ancestors read poems, and poets were rich and famous. From (b) it follows that every year fewer people read poems (or buy books or go to poetry readings) than the year before.

    Other pieces of common knowledge:
    4. Only poets read poetry.
    5. Poets themselves are to blame because "poetry has lost its audience."
    6. Everybody today knows that poetry is "useless and completely out of date"--as Flaubert put it in Bouvard and Pécuchet a century ago.

    For expansion on and repetition of these well-known facts, look in volumes of Time magazine, in Edmund Wilson's "Is Verse a Dying Technique?," in current newspapers everywhere, in interviews with publishers, in book reviews by poets, and in the August 1988 issue of Commentary, where the essayist Joseph Epstein assembled every cliché about poetry, common for two centuries, under the title "Who Killed Poetry?"
    He goes on to say:
    More than a thousand poetry books appear in this country each year. More people write poetry in this country--publish it, hear it, and presumably read it--than ever before. Let us quickly and loudly proclaim that no poet sells like Stephen King, that poetry is not as popular as professional wrestling, and that fewer people attend poetry readings in the United States than in Russia. Snore, snore. More people read poetry now in the United States than ever did before...

    A few years back, a journal of the publishing industry printed a list of all-time trade paperback best-sellers, beginning with The Joy of Sex, which sold millions, on down to books that had sold two hundred fifty thousand. It happened that I read the chart shortly after learning that Lawrence Ferlinghetti's Coney Island of the Mind, a trade paperback, had sold more than a million copies. Because the book was poetry, the journal understood that its sales did not count.

    When I make these points, I encounter fierce resistance. No one wants to believe me. If ever I convince people that these numbers are correct, they come up with excuses: Bly sells because he's a showman; Ginsberg is notorious; Rich sells because of feminist politics. People come up with excuses for these numbers because the notion of poetry's disfavor is important--to poetry's detractors and to its supporters. Why does almost everyone connected with poetry claim that poetry's audience has diminished? Doubtless the pursuit of failure and humiliation is part of it. There is also a source that is lovable if unobservant: Some of us love poetry so dearly that its absence from everybody's life seems an outrage. Our parents don't read James Merrill! Therefore, exaggerating out of foiled passion, we claim that "nobody reads poetry."

    When I contradict such notions, at first I insist merely on numbers. If everybody artistic loathes statistics, everybody artistic still tells us that "nobody reads poetry," which is a numerical notion--and untrue. Of course, the numbers I recite have nothing whatsoever to do with the quality or spirit of the poetry sold or read aloud. I include no Rod McKuen in my figures; I include only poetry that intends artistic excellence. My numbers counter only numbers--and not assertions of value and its lack.

    But I need as well, and separately, to insist: I believe in the quality of the best contemporary poetry; I believe that the best American poetry of our day makes a considerable literature. American Poetry after Lowell--an anthology of four hundred pages limited, say, to women and men born from the 1920s through the 1940s--would collect a large body of diverse, intelligent, beautiful, moving work that should endure. Mind you, it would limit itself to one-hundredth of one percent of the poems published. If you write about Poetry Now, you must acknowledge that most poetry is terrible--that most poetry of any moment is terrible. When, at any historical moment, you write an article claiming that poetry is now in terrible shape, you are always right. Therefore, you are always fatuous.

    Our trouble is not with poetry but with the public perception of poetry. Although we have more poetry today, we have less poetry reviewing in national journals. Both Harper's magazine and the Atlantic have abandoned quarterly surveys of poetry. The New York Times Book Review never showed much interest, but as poetry has increased in popularity, the Times has diminished its attention. The New York Review of Books, always more political than poetical, gives poetry less space every year. The greatest falling-off is at the New Yorker. The New Yorker once regularly published Louise Bogan's essays on "Verse." Lately, when the magazine touches on poetry, Helen Vendler is more inclined to write about a translation or about a poet safely dead.
    Great article. There's a lot more there. Via Bookslut.
    Things Came Up to My Brain Museum
    Surreal point-and-click puzzle game [Flash]. Via Little Fluffy.
    Monday, August 15, 2005

    List of Twilight Zone Episodes
    With detailed plot summaries and many of the twist endings. At Wikipedia. God, I love Wikipedia.
    You Unlock This Door with the Key of Imagination
    What Serling created, above all else, was a homegrown vernacular of alienation, identity slippage and paranoia, and he did it right when it most needed doing, when his audience was starved for a vocabulary to express their uneasiness -- and he did it on weekly television. Just the titles of his best episodes read like a found poem of All-American dread: Where Is Everybody? Walking Distance. People Are Alike All Over. Time Enough At Last. The Obsolete Man. Eye Of The Beholder. Nervous Man In A Four Dollar Room. The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street. The After Hours. And so on.

    Jonathan Lethem on Rod Serling at the astounding Professor Barnhardt's Journal.
    What Makes People Gay?
    Good article (via MeFi) on the biological basis of homosexuality, from The Boston Globe.

    The big surprise: it turns out it is caused by playing with Barbies. One time, that's all it takes.

    Kidding aside, I remain convinced that from a political & ethical standpoint it's entirely irrelevant what causes homosexuality. People are people, that's all that matters.
    I've Never Seen a Bond-Company Stooge Stick His Neck Out Like That
    Just in case you missed the excerpts from Backwards City #2 this morning, be advised: they're still there.
    How Did I Get So Old?
    I don't quite know why, but there's something incredibly poignant and sad about this recreation of the famous V-J kiss in Time Square.

    As stupid as it is, I guess it just never occurred to me that those people went on living after that moment. In my mind, they're frozen in time.

    Original Photograph: The Kiss
    The Ewing Theory
    When superstars go bad. It's an old one from Bill Simmons, but perhaps truer now than when first written:
    Dave introduced me to the Ewing Theory three years ago, and we've been tinkering with it like Voltaire and Thoreau ever since. Eventually, we decided that two crucial elements needed to be in place for any situation to qualify for "Ewing" status:

    1. A star athlete receives an inordinate amount of media attention and fan interest, and yet his teams never win anything substantial with him (other than maybe some early-round playoff series).

    2. That same athlete leaves his team (either by injury, trade, graduation, free agency or retirement) -- and both the media and fans immediately write off the team for the following season.

    When those elements collide, you have the Ewing Theory.
    This all comes as no surprise to fans of UNCG Writing Program Amateur Ultimate Frisbee, who are well-versed in the so-called 'Canavan Effect.' (via Cynical-C)
    Language Art
    33,096 English nouns arranged by meaning and colored by the average color found during a search for that noun by Google Image Search. Outstanding.

    (Via MetaFilter)
    WWII-era Japanese Propaganda Booklet
    Great find. The best one is the Don't Go Crazy pamphlet.

    Otter v. Dog
    Is it just me, or has the animal world gone completely crazy lately?
    Heather Davis thought the dark brown otter was just playing with her dog Mike.

    Then the 4-foot-long otter seized Mike's snout with its teeth and started to drag the fluffy, white dog into the lake.
    Mantis v. Hummingbird
    Octopus v. Shark
    Lennon: The Musical
    ...now on Broadway. I had high hopes for this, but reviews have been mixed. (via my mom)
    Backwards City #2 Excerpts, Smoking Hot
    Unbelievable excerpts from Backwards City #2 are now online.

    Just for starters, consider "In Five Hundred Years Comics" and "Brutus the Robot" by Kenneth Koch, "Robot Building with Parent and Me" by Paulette Poullet, and the much-linked, never-duplicated, excruciating third-degree burn that is Patricia Storms's "The Amazing Adventures of Lethem and Chabon."

    Our bond-company stooge doesn't want us putting up the full text of stories anymore, so excerpts are all you get of Chris Bachelder, 1st Place Fiction Award Winner Alika Tanaka, and 2nd Place Fiction Award Winner Dave Housley. Our bond-company stooge doesn't check the blog, though, so hopefully he won't notice that we've put up the full text of Traci Burns's essay "Feet."

    More poems will be coming online in the next few days, including some that are online-only, but until then you can whet your whistle on Dan Albergotti's "Book of the Father." (I'm not sure which poems we have online rights to, but I'm reasonably confident our dear friend Dan won't sue us.)

    Still want more? Visit our corporate sponsor. Gaze in longing at the mouth-watering table of contents, the absolutely typo-free contributor notes, and the perplexing issue index. Wonder why all this cannot be yours. Then make it yours.

    And have a good first day at school, kids.
    Sunday, August 14, 2005

    Everybody's Got to Have a Hobby
    Today's: Extreme Quarterbouncing. [WMV] Over the lighter, past the couch, into the frying pan, nothing but glass. (via MetaFilter)
    Early Christian Heresies
    Monarchianism, Gnosticism, Pelagianism...they're all here. Also here. Also here. And here. And at Wikipedia.
    The Legend of Zelda: The Lampshade of No Real Significance
    It's a parody, see.

    Via Little Fluffy.
    Saturday, August 13, 2005

    Daredevils of Niagara Falls
    Barrels, tightropes, jet skis, oh my.

    (Via MonkeyFilter)
    Wal-Murder?
    Always low prices.
    A man suspected of shoplifting goods from an Atascocita Wal-Mart — including diapers and a BB gun — had begged employees to let him up from the blistering pavement in the store's parking lot where he was held, shirtless, before he died Sunday, a witness said.
    (MetaFilter)
    Modern Living
    Bizarre series of animated and interactive gifs. Kind of neat. (via MeFi)
    Jack Kerouac, "Belief & Technique For Modern Prose: List of Essentials"
    The author of On the Road takes on "How to Become a Writer." Some highlights:
  • Try never get drunk outside yr own house
  • Be in love with yr life
  • Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
  • Accept loss forever
  • Believe in the holy contour of life
  • Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
  • You're a Genius all the time
  • More tips on the page.

    (via Cynical-C.)
    Four Horsemen rage on
    The Four Horsemen, toy designers best known for their readaptation of the Masters of the Universe figures a few years ago, have launched a new project. Called Fantastic Exclusive, it's a toy line that's going to be designed, from the initial stages to final packaging, all based on Fan input and voting. You can go to the site now for more information, view the first proposals for six lines, and vote on which ones you like best/least. An interesting concept. It worked well for the makers of the PARANOIA XP rpg. (here's their ongoing development blog)

    Speaking of which, The PARANOIA Mandatory DNCCG (definitely not collectable card game) is due out later this year.
    Bang Bang
    A Saturday-morning-cartoon style Flash cartoon animating "Maxwell's Silver Hammer." It's pretty faithful to the lyrics, but damn.

    Via MetaFilter.
    Global Warming Hits Tipping Point?
    A vast expanse of western Sibera is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming, climate scientists warn today.

    Researchers who have recently returned from the region found that an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres - the size of France and Germany combined - has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.
    We Love Ninjas
    The running/jumping/climbing/falling/etc Flash game.

    (via MetaFilter)
    Friday, August 12, 2005

    Walken '08


    I hid this uncomfortable piece of metal up my ass for two years. Now I'm running for President. Walken 2008: Because America's Not Crazy Enough.

    (via Cynical-C)
    Ebert's Most Hated
    Negative a million thumbs down. (via MeFi)
    OPGL
    Other People's Grocery Lists. Via MetaFilter.
    Is the Future Red?
    Redheads, in addition to requiring more anesthesia than the rest of us, are also less susceptible to pain. (via Neil F.)
    MST3K Poster Index
    Posters from all the movies mocked by Mystery Science Theater 3000. (via Rashomon)
    House of Flying Daggers
    Too many plot twists and a bizarre fixation on scenes of sexualized violence bring House of Flying Daggers in well under Yimou Zhang's previous achievement Hero (reviewed here), but it's still a great movie. The epic ending swordfight alone is nearly flawless, and so moving and excellent as to make up for most of the movie's other flaws. (Whatever it takes to get us to that last fight in the snow is fine with me.)

    What is most admirable about House, like Hero, is its refusal to make any type of black-or-white determination about which of the two sides is 'good.' The movie's least admirable character is a hero on what American audiences would expect to be the 'good' side, the Rebellion. Meanwhile, the movie's male lead and apparent hero works for the corrupt, dying Empire. No character escapes this movie without a shade of grey.

    In the end, the epic, final battle between the Empire and the Rebellion is left completely off-screen, while we focus in on the bloody resolution of a love triangle. This is a love story, first and foremost -- an interesting choice for a martial arts movie, but it works.

    The stylization is very different from Hero's, which I suppose is necessary, and the direction overall is quite masterful -- though I wish there had been a scene to rival the colors of Hero's leaf fight.

    Worth renting. Next up in the queue: Kung Fu Hustle.

    Amazon
    Netflix
    Thursday, August 11, 2005

    Backwards City #2 Is Here
    We're very pleased to announce that UPS just dropped off our copies of Backwards City Review #2. Subscribers and contributors should be getting their issues in a week or so.

    Excerpts are going up this weekend -- but it wouldn't hurt to place your order early.

    The taste explosion that is Issue 2 includes:
    Comics from Paulette Poullet, Kenneth Koch, Nate Powell, Jeremy Broomfield & Claude le Monde, and Patricia Storms

    Fiction from Chris Bachelder, Alika Tanaka, Dave Housley, Julia Ridley Smith, and Kurtis Davidson

    Nonfiction from Traci Burns

    Poetry from Dan Albergotti, Linh Dinh, C. Derick Varn, Joanne Lowery, Michael Constantine McConnell, Lisa Jarnot, Adam Clay, Eric Amling, Naomi Ruth Lowinsky, Anna Fulford, Denise Duhamel & Maureen Seaton, Chad Davidson & John Poch, Nick Carbo, Michael Robins, Marc McKee, Jon Leon, Becky Cooper, Matthew Rohrer, Chris Vitiello, and James Grinwis

    Art and Photography from John Norris, Jon Clark, Mitchell Ostrover, and Mike Stauss

    Humor from Tom Greenwood

    and introducing Index by The Editors
    And current subscribers: we love you. It's never too early to renew.
    Strip Generator
    Comic strips in simple graphic stylings from my second favorite country, Slovenia. I made one. And so can you.

    Via Scott McCloud and Comixpedia. (but I recognized the Slovene language instantly - my favorite word for these hot days - sladoled = ice cream (or pivo for beer))

    GERRY-UPDATE: Here, I made one too. Great site.

    GERRY-UPDATE 2: I put this up on MetaFilter, which directed me immediately to the similar stripcreator and The Garfield Strip Creator sites.
    Checkpoint
    If you're like me, you sometimes get frustrated by the lengthy, security process at airports -- which is why we should all take note that sometimes it's worth it.
    'Autism and Metaphor'
    In the comments to last night's thumbs-in-the-middle review of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, J.T. links to this very good essay from the July 31st New York Times Book Review on Autism and Metaphor. Check it out.
    What We Talk About When We Talk About Monsters
    I've put up a copy of the syllabus for my freshman seminar, FMS 115-05: Transformation, Metaphor, and Discourse. It's all about monsters. Buffy will be watched.
    Colonizing Mars: A How-To
    The Mars Foundation has big plans. (via Gravity Lens)
    Superman vs. the KKK
    See, this is why he's my favorite.
    Radio's Adventures of Superman (rebroadcast nightly at 9:30pm, KABL 960AM) was a popular show on the Mutual Broadcasting Network, claiming 4.5 million listeners in 1947, according to a March 3, 1947, article in The New Republic. While the mainstream press didn't comment on the political content of the show, it was noted by the right-wing commentator and reactionary evangelist Gerald L.K. Smith, who denounced Superman as "a disgrace to America."
    (also via MeFi)
    You Lose
    SpaceWorms: The hardest Flash game ever. Try to pilot your fast-moving dot away from the other fast-moving dots. You have infinite lives.

    HINT: Take advantage of the Pac-Manesque warping of the world's edges; go out the left, come out the right.

    No human being can get past level 8.

    (via MeFi)
    Nothin' But Robots
    Remember Birth of a Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robot Painting? (Previously blogged here.) Now Drawn! is linking to the artist's website, ericjoyner.com, which has a ton of great robot paintings.

    The hanging robots are my favorites.
    'Surprise! 1-in-25 Dads Not the Real Father'
    About 4 percent of men may unknowingly be raising a child that really belongs to the mailman or some other guy, researchers speculate in a new study.

    This seems a little hard to believe.
    Wednesday, August 10, 2005

    The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
    I was enticed to buy Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Nick Hornby's lukewarm review in The Believer (which I read anthologized in Hornby's excellent The Polysyllabic Spree) -- and after reading the book tonight I feel similarly lukewarm, though for somewhat different reasons. Hornby disliked the book because he felt it didn't paint a reliable picture of autism, which I tend to think he's right about (his son, incidentally, is highly autistic, which he talks a lot about in the review). He's right: this is nothing like the book an autistic person would write, in large part because the main character is all quirks and no autism. Reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time you never get the sense that you're experiencing a radically different state of mind from your own.

    That bothered me.

    But mostly it's just that the book didn't live up to the massive hype surrounding it. The preoccupations and strange obsessiveness of the voice is nice enough, but this type of thing has been done much better in any number of books. Motherless Brooklyn in particular springs to mind.

    I really don't expect our descendents to be pouring over this novel in a hundred years, regardless of what Vintage Books may want you to think.

    Still, it was an enjoyable read for a Wednesday evening.
    One-Man Band
    You've read about it, now here are clips:

    One-Man Star Wars
    One-Man Lord of the Rings

    (via Gravity Lens)
    Praying Mantis v. Hummingbird
    Praying Mantis captures and kills a humingbird. (WARNING: A little graphic, if you're squeamish. You can see blood.)

    The praying mantis will be taking on the octopus in the finals.

    (via Cynical-C)
    Harry Potter: A Contrarian View
    Brian Hennigan: There is another sense in which I don't know JK Rowling. I don't read her books. There is a simple reason for this. I am not a child. Harry Potter books are for children. Some adults read them. These adults are losers.

    ...

    Let me also say that, yes, I have read a Harry Potter book. It was nice enough - for a children's book. But at no point did I ever think that I was involved in anything other than a book for children.

    There was not anything of entertainment value for a fully-developed adult mind. I am sure that one or two adults read Harry Potter books in the same distracted way that soap operas are observed or crisps are munched - in a manner entirely consistent with the obliteration of whatever dreary day they have just got through and in search of some temporary relief from the trauma of an unjust world.
    [Via BookSlut]
    Help! My Five-Year-Old Is Gay
    Because it's never too early to start projecting your own sexual anxiety onto your child, Focus on the Family has your much-needed Is My Child Becoming Homosexual? checklist.
    Evidences of gender confusion or doubt in boys ages 5 to 11 may include:

    1. A strong feeling that they are “different” from other boys.

    2. A tendency to cry easily, be less athletic, and dislike the roughhousing that other boys enjoy.

    3. A persistent preference to play female roles in make-believe play.

    4. A strong preference to spend time in the company of girls and participate in their games and other pastimes.*

    5. A susceptibility to be bullied by other boys, who may tease them unmercifully and call them “queer,” “fag” and “gay.”

    6. A tendency to walk, talk, dress and even “think” effeminately.

    7. A repeatedly stated desire to be — or insistence that he is — a girl.
    1,2,4,5 -- tough luck, Jaimee, looks like I've been gay all this time. But don't worry, "professional help is available."

    Via MetaFilter.
    --
    *Shorter #4. "You like girls? That's so gay."
    Do Shakespeare's Plays Have Secret Catholic Messages?
    Gosh, I hope not. Look how this diminishes his work:
    A simple example is a passage that many observers have long believed to contain a typographical error, the line of poetry in Sonnet 23 that goes: "More than that love which more hath more expressed. "On the surface, it does not make sense -- until Asquith realized it was a pun. "It should read, 'More than that love which More hath more expressed,' " she says -- a reference to Sir Thomas More, the chancellor and Catholic saint beheaded by Henry VIII for refusing to take the oath of supremacy recognizing the monarch and not the pope as head of the Church in England.

    Similarly, she says, all of Shakespeare's characters existed on at least two levels, the dramatic and the allegorical....

    The coded language was a vehicle that allowed him to comment on current events without risking the wrath of the authorities. Viewed through this prism, Romeo and Juliet becomes a commentary on the forbidden love between the 3rd Earl of Southampton and Elizabeth Vernon, one of the Queen's more impoverished ladies-in-waiting. King Lear becomes a symbol of James I, while his daughter Cordelia's refusal to make a public affirmation of unconditional love represents the refusal of Catholics to take the Oath of Supremacy.
    The whole ugly theory can be found here.

    [via BookNinja]
    Bathroom Graffiti For the Ages
    Gallery upon gallery of bathroom wall scribblings, at the delightfully named Latrinalia.

    And don't miss C. Derick Varn's definitive poem on the subject, "Constructive Criticism of Bathroom Wall Scribbling," which appears in Backwards City #2 (obligatory subscription link).

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