Pacificapocalypse

These were the lazy salad days… warm gentle breezes, crickets chirping in the twilight as Mother and I sipped lemonade on the porch.

Bullshit.

It’s freaking cold out there!
So here we are with another Xmas about to blow it’s festive load all over us. Good times. Unfortunately, my employer has decided that they need to remain open for business (of which there will be none) the day after Xmas, which throws a monkey wrench into the whole visiting the various fams for the holidays road travel extravaganza. Meh, we’ll make it work somehow. So here’s my checklist so far:

• Gifts: all done
• Gifts to wrap: three left to go
• Current mood: suspicious with a hint of ennui
• Currently listening to: Joy Division unreleased Christmas Album bootleg. Ok I made up that last part.

Anyway it’s damn slow in the office and I can tell it’s going to be a very long day.

New Ink!

Finally! Two weekends ago I said screw it and Court and I went and got new ink. Jeff at Lyle Tuttle was able to get us in on a moments notice, so tip o’ the hat to him for that.
I decided to work the chem geek/foodie angle and came up with this -

Don’t waste too much skull sweat trying to figure it out; unless you’re a BioChem freak (or SuperFreak – I’m looking at you Atek) then you might not recognize the chemical diagram for 8-methyl-N-vanillyl-6-nonenamide, or more commonly known as capsaicin, the burny goodness in chili peppers.
I’m not going to say what Court got done until i can get a good picture of it, so guess away.

Oh yeah and I asked Court to marry me last Wednesday.
So yeah, it’s been an interesting two weeks.

God Rest and Keep you Betty Mae Page

Betty Page
April 22, 1923 – December 11, 2008

Wednesday, December 10 – Follow-up:

DocPop has a piece on this up as well as a more detailed post over at Laughing Squid.

From You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice:

Emily the Strange is a rip off of a 1978 book character

The page on the left is from a 1978 book called Nate the Great Goes Undercover, by Marc Simont.
The poster of Emily the Strange on the right is from 1991.

WOAH. BACK UP. SERIOUSLY? Yes. The top image is a page from Nate the Great Goes Undercover, complete with text. This book was published in 1978. The bottom image is one of the first images of Emily the Strange ever made publicly available–it was sold, WITH THAT TEXT INCLUDED, as a bumper sticker.

What’s the saying? Oh yeah: Talent borrows, Genius Steals.

Forgot to post this last week; this appeared on the MUNI stop in front of the old US Mint building at Fifth and Mission on Friday morning.

Did We Really Need a Robo-Serial Killer?

Via io9

The arthouse gore hounds behind Machined have answered a question you never knew you had: How about a robo-serial killer made from scrap metal in a machine shop? I think the answer is still a tentative “no” even after seeing this mini-epic about a creepy, hairy, shirtless dude who turns a guy he hit with a car into a half-machine serial killer. Now he keeps his robo-pal in the basement and feeds him naked co-eds while watching on CCTV. Really, the entire movie is like this. There is no punch line.

Best comment:

Heh.
Doc Pop finds the Euros make with the funny.

Ok look, I’m no fan, by any means, of Pat Buchanan, but the man does have a handle on history.
Ignore the messenger ( odious though he may be ) and listen to the message.

Will the Terrorists Succeed Again?

“Terrorism is a tactic, a technique, a weapon that fanatics, dictators and warriors have resorted to through history. If, as Clausewitz wrote, war is the continuation of politics by other means, terrorism is the continuation of war by other means.”

So, will they? I’m not so sure. I do believe he’s correct in his argument that the real target of this attack is Pakistan itself:

But the strategic target of the militants is the Pakistani government.
Pakistan’s offenses? Cooperating with America in Afghanistan and the border region, battling al-Qaida and the Taliban, withdrawing from the fight for Kashmir, seeking peace with a Hindu nation where 170 million Muslims are denied their place in the sun.

I pray ( as I seldom do these days ) that cooler heads prevail and that these ten criminals do not end up in the history books, but instead, as Trotsky said:

“You are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on / into the dustbin of history!”

I have a little more than passing acquaintance with the Twilight series, primarily through Court, who as a educator of these… young minds, has to experience the fan phenomena on a more personal level every day.

And her opinion is clear if not profane.
And apparently she’s not alone.
Came across this via Reddit:

Twilight has raped the minds of teenage girls everywhere…

Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight saga has stormed onto the national scene drawing streams of female fans, ranging from pre-teens to adults and has spurred a blockbuster movie…and has just reiterated the same concept illustrated to me by Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code: most people have no idea what composes good storytelling or literature.

Read the whole thing.
My favorite take is a comment by Akira:

Let’s cut to the chase.
These books, and the movie, are evil.
Evil sells.
All this talk about “Well at least kids are reading!” is such nonsense. It’s like saying about Satanists, “Well at least they’re praying.”

For facile critics of critics: No, they’re not evil because they’re about vampires. And they’re not good books because there’s no sex. Better a thousand morally serious, obscenity-riddled and sex-filled books about evil, than one lousy sexless Satanic book that presents evil as normal, reasonable or understandable.

Could not have said it better myself.