Category: Not-politics

‘Automata.’

Penny Arcade can stop asking what people want. If they have an idea like this ready to go:

The second concept is Automata, nineteen-twenties crime fiction which unfolds in a time where “machine intellect” has been outlawed. It wasn’t always, certainly, and the problem of what to do with the existing “stock” of fully sentient, mechanical citizens endures. Detective Regal and his stenophone Carl Swangee traverse the margin where these worlds overlap.

…then they can just get on with it, and they can save the third one for later. Don’t get me wrong; Lookouts looks like it’d be fun. But to hell with fun; I want mechanical men noir, dammit.

Moe Lane

PS: Let me put it this way: I would buy this.

And today’s the day for the digital TV conversion.

I haven’t found a better description of this particular four-month-delayed boondoggle than this:

The FCC has spent too much money (from their expansive “lowest common denominator” budget that is funded by you and me) on people who can’t or won’t find the time to get a converter box, and this “problem” could have been solved cheaply by utilizing scientific principle that is “The Couch Potato Law of Motion”: An object at rest will remain at rest until it no longer gets television reception.

Still, do yourself a favor: when you run out to buy one of these when you realize that, yeah, really, they’re not going to delay this conversion again – go get one of these, too. The regular antennas don’t work a darn.

Crossposted to RedState.

Lo, look upon this Inter-net, viewers…

“It also has a… CD-ROM player.”

I shouldn’t mock; it’s not nice.  On the other hand, fifteen or twenty years from they’re going to be mocking our earnest prognostications about the future, so I might as well.  On the gripping hand, this video does remind me that I still need to pick up Where’s My Jetpack?: A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future that Never Arrived…

This Rifftrax contest is harder than it looks.

Via IMAO:

CONTEST: Movie Genre Switcheroo

THE CHALLENGE: Make an existing comedy into a drama, or vice-versa.

DETAILS: Pick an actual movie, from any era. Re-pitch it as a comedy if it’s considered a drama, OR if you’ve chosen a drama, re-pitch it as a comedy. Stick as closely as possible to the actual characters and plot of the real movie, but completely change the tone…. and do it in 150 words maximum (down below in comments).

I didn’t expect it to, but it’s exercising portions of my brain that haven’t had that much of a workout lately. I’m trying to put something together involving either I Am Legend or Brain Donors, but nothing’s gelling yet.

Must ponder.

Moe Lane

If you like MoeLane.com, go give Ace of Spades some money.

I link to him all the time, parasitical so-and-so that I am.  So throw some cash his way.

Moe Lane

PS: You are perfectly free to throw some cash my way, as well: I gotta pay for that airline ticket and hotel room for the RedState gathering in August somehow.  I unaccountably keep failing to receive my checks from the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy…