Moe Lane

(Today’s guy: Charles Stross)

If you’re the sort of person who thinks that mixing higher mathematics, spy fiction, and the Cthulhu Mythos is kind of cool… well, you’ve probably already read The Atrocity Archives and The Jennifer Morgue. On the other hand, if the idea’s never actually occurred to you before, or you’re just looking for a good couple of books, you should pick these two up.  Stross is a fun writer with a good eye for combining horror and science fiction; his alternate histories (the most developed being the Merchant Princes series; a couple of good ones can be found in his short story collection Toast) are likewise well-conceived.  The space opera that he’s done has not really reeled me in as much, but there’s nothing wrong with it; I’m just more of a E. E. “Doc” Smith type.

CBS itself put them up there, in full, and in high-definition: you can’t embed them, and there are ads, but from what I can tell these are the originals, not the hacked-up syndication versions, so good deal all around.

Here’s Mirror, Mirror, which I looked up mostly because my wife and I were trying to remember whether Star Trek: TOS costuming allowed you to see belly buttons. Apparently, the answer is yes.

Remember this event, the next time a Democrat holds out his hand to you.

[Update: Video added, and the Hill's Blog Briefing Room is back up, so I'm cutting back the article.]

…and, given the general meltdown of the Internet, it’s currently down. Via comments here:

January 20, 2009
Bush Mocked As He Arrives on Inauguration Dais
@ 11:52 am by Hill Staff

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Well, that didn’t take long:

Kicking a man once he’s safely out of power and can’t kick back doesn’t diminish him; it merely diminishes you. But, hey: message received, Mr. President.

Message received.

Moe Lane

PS: “I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.”

Eh. Just words, apparently.

I won’t spoil it by excerpting.

Heh. I don’t need to bother with politics for a while today, in fact.

In the Fahrenheit 451 sense, that is. For those three or four individuals out there not aware of the book, it was set in a world where literature was banned and burned on sight, for reasons which were never adequately explained; and apparently the only way to keep books alive was to memorize them – probably because 99% of Golden Age SF/Fantasy writers were all about the flying cars, rather than convenient and ubiquitous data storage.

Not that I don’t love Ray Bradbury’s stuff anyway.

Anyway, I’m Gilbert Keith Chesterton’s Lepanto. I know that one so well that I can rap it Beastie Boys style (never listen to Licensed to Ill three times running while on a trip, is all I’m saying).

What are you?

I was going to more or less skip the political commentary this morning, but this was too silly to pass up.  Via Hot Air Headlines:

Will Obama Bring Home the Neocons?

“Neoconservative” and “neocon” have become terms of abuse, denoting right-wing extremism. But the original neoconservatives began mostly as left-leaning intellectuals who only deserted the Democratic Party after it fell under the influence of the counterculture during the Vietnam War. With Barack Obama about to become president, is there any chance neoconservatives will finally return to the roost?

A month or two ago, the question would have seemed preposterous.

Speaking as a “neoconservative:” it still does. (more…)

It’s a literary reference, you semi-literate barking moonbats.

Hi.  I’m going to spoil your appreciation of the day now.

Oh, not all of you.  The people who are ordinary, decent Democrats – or just happy that we’re going to finally have as President somebody who isn’t an old white guy – go ahead and have a good time at the Inauguration.  I plan to eat wings and watch it on TV, myself, but that’s because I live in the DC area, which means that I know what the traffic is going to be like.  Heck, I wouldn’t be there for McCain’s, if he had won.  Anyway, you folks don’t bother finishing this little essay: I don’t want to spoil your day.  Hope it’s a good one for you.

But as for the rest of you.  The Maoists.  The Stalinists.  The Klansmen.  The anti-Semites.  The blackshirt anarchists.  The unwashed antiglobos.  The summer patriot celebrities.  The 9/11 Troofers.  The Che-worshippers.  The neo-Nazis.  The deep ecologists.  The PETA freakazoids.  The World Can’t Wait losers.  The Code Pink soldier-haters.  The International ANSWER seditionists.  The ACORN election-fraud enthusiasts.  Every single one of you who screamed and ranted and threw garbage cans and put on bandannas and plotted attacks (incompetently) and waved around giant paper-mache heads… yeah.  You people.

You missed.

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Because I’m up waiting for the kid to decide to fall asleep again. Nightmares.

The McCalmans – a band that I have not heard of before now; I actually first heard this song on this album by Clam Chowder…

Good Lord.  Sixty dollars?

I should email the band.

You just have to go out there and tell them about it (H/T: Instapundit):

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There is only one American king, baby.

(That’s Mojo Nixon“, by the way. Otherwise known as the Pleasure Barons.)

Thanks to Glenn Reynolds, I’ve got Tremors stuck in my head. Ever see it? It was one of those movies where a bunch of actors did a better job than they were really supposed to with a script that was just a touch better than it had any right being and a plot that was remarkably fresh for being in a can for forty years. I say this with all love and affection: it’s rare that I get to see a movie that combines the Cthulhu Mythos (sorta) with automatic weapons fire.

The sequels, of course, pretty much sucked… oh, God help us all, but they made it into a television show.