We’ve landed in Bizarro-world:
Why Secretary Paulson asked for seven hundred billion dollars: “It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.” Excuse me while I run screaming around the room here for a minute.
OK, I’m done. Next up: McCain is running [...]
Hamlet: Facebook news feed edition
The king poked the queen. The queen poked the king back. Hamlet and the queen are no longer friends. Marcellus is pretty sure something’s rotten around here. Hamlet became a fan of daggers.
Lit 101 Class in Three Lines or Less
Paradise Lost ADAM: Paradise has arbitrary dietary restrictions? DEVIL: They’re really more like guidelines. GOD: Incorrect.
Corrections to Last [...]
When Michael and Shenan are cooking, fixing a computer, or tiling a bathroom, they become Paco and Juan. As of this week, their adventures will be chronicled at the new Paco y Juan website. As you can see, the monkey has found a new home, and Shenan Juan has a snazzy soap dish business card [...]
I can’t stop thinking about the process that led to a ceramic monkey trash can arriving on the shelves at Target. I mean, let’s take another look at this thing:
Someone designed that. (“What is missing from my monkey trash can? YES. A banana. That’s it. My work here is done.”) And furthermore, someone else approved [...]
Shopping: they’re doing it wrong.
Short version: Joss Whedon has a musical web serial; go watch it.
Longer version: this is the video blog of Dr. Horrible (Neil Patrick Harris), a hapless evil genius who’s trying to perfect a freeze ray that will stop time long enough for him to figure out what to say to the pretty girl at the [...]
We were in the mood for hamburgers tonight, so we went to a little joint where they have half a dozen booths ranged around a long bar. It’s built-in entertainment: you, the sit-down diner, get to listen to the conversations of the beer-and-wings diners.
Our bar guys tonight were most excellent entertainment, being loud, ignorant, and [...]
Burt’s campaign posters
cf. Dr. Andrew Burt for SFWA President. See also A Gut Check Moment for SFWA.
Greetings gentlebeings!
I am embarrassingly out of touch with modern culture.
As I indicated last year, my hat is in the ring for SFWA President.
I am oblivious to the number of people who renewed their memberships to write in votes against [...]
In honor of the zombie literacy project. I could not resist the text my grad student, Ryan, suggested:
Friends, zombies, countrymen, lend me your ears;
For they are crunchy and delicious fried.
I come to bury Caesar, not to eat him.
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let [...]
Had trouble getting connected at the sandwich shop tonight… this was the message I got.
Headline: “Who would have been the best dressed at the Golden Globes?” leading to this story.
Excuse me. I have to renounce the intarwebs for a little while now.
Cat vs. Monkey Aubade (scored for four cats and two bipeds): A Play in One Act Howard’s customer service card
It occurs to me that I haven’t yet told you all about the wonderful hotel experience Sarah and I had on our way to Rochester. (By the way, most of the presentations are up, along with lots of photos.)
See, our plane from Houston was leaving really early on Saturday morning, so we had decided to [...]
Via nihilistic_kid, the funniest thing I have read in months: ‘Perhaps I have a special anus.’
It doesn’t matter that I skipped the gym today. My stomach muscles got the workout anyway.
In case you have to ask: while it is text-only, I would have to call this extremely NSFW. If nothing else, you’ll be laughing [...]
A misguided fanficcer has not only published her own work of Star Wars fic, but has made it available for sale on Amazon, for which she has been loudly disowned by the larger fanfic community. John Scalzi has, as usual, an entertaining summary of things, although the Nielsen Haydens have also weighed in amusingly.
Me? [...]
Talking Points Caribou Barbie — rape kit sold separately.
Being the Book Lady — this made my day.
A fanfic writer goes to Clarion. “...all the sandcastle skills you learned over in Sandbox Someone Else’s Canon are a lot harder to use when you’re not given sand to start with.” Great post.
Tina Fey and Sarah Palin Side by Side on CNN. “That was the first time I’ve ever heard the parody on SNL actually use exactly what was said…”
‘…and to anyone who thinks differently, I say please do not reject John McCain just because he’s white. I think the recent news from Wall Street has made us all less tolerant and only reinforce the stereotype that white people are shiftless, thieving welfare queens.’ (via The Weasel King)
The Texas voter registration deadline is October 6. See if you’re registered. If not, find your county registrar to fix it.
Have you created your 5 Second Test? — a nifty little test for web designers.
Economics roundup: the subprime primer, the end of the bubble, a mathematician’s summary, and how demographic shifts have contributed to the problem.
Aaron Sorkin Conjures a Meeting of Obama and Bartlet — How much do I love Maureen Dowd right now? LOTS and LOTS.
Download ‘Boojum,’ by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette — in honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day.
TwitterKeys — “TwitterKeys is a browser bookmarket that pulls up expressive characters for easy copy & paste of all those crazy unicode symbols that people love to include in their emails and blog posts.” Very handy. See also: ⌘C ⌘V Character.
The great Before & After Magazine talks about designing business cards for arts and crafts sales, including tips on photographing the items.
If you have not yet seen Firefly (infidel!), it’s now streaming for free on IMDB, via Hulu. The episodes are out of order, though, so you might want to refer to the Firefly wiki’s episode list rather than IMDB or TV.com, both of which list the massively incorrect original airing order.