Not-politics – Page 1211

Umm… didn’t most of them die?

Well, except Boromir Faramir (thanks, AoSHQ), of course. Via @phxgonline:

‘300’ Sequel Officially in the Works
Legendary Pictures, the production company behind the 2007 blockbuster 300, has confirmed the inevitable: Development of a sequel is underway.

Well, maybe they’re all in Tartarus or something, and the 300 have to break out and march back across Hell to the upper world in order to save the Athenians’ bacon at Marathon. Sort of Anabasis meets Doom.

(pause)

Yeah, actually, that does sound pretty cool.

Moe Lane

Our critical Mad Science gap.

Now, as I have noted elsewhere I am giving a somewhat jaundiced eye towards our upcoming defense cuts, if only because I’m missing why we’re cutting from the military when we’re spending like drunken bureaucrats just about everywhere else. That does imply that I can be reasoned with on the need for any one particular program. Maybe.

BUT THIS IS AN OUTRAGE:

GATES PULLS PLUG ON DEFENSE SPENDING

WASHINGTON, DC – The Government has been forced to pull back on defense spending. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is pulling funding on F22 and Area 51, which is expected to close within the month. At a press conference on Monday Robert Gates announced his new plan to shift resources from costly weapons systems to the ground campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan

Area 51 is a top secret government installation in southern Nevada. It first gained recognition as a secret government testing site in the 1950’s. Since then it is believed to be where the government tests new and alien technologies. Most of the new and alien technology Secretary Gates is cutting is expected to be in Area 51.

Most of the absolutely critical advances in American technology – lasers, fuel cells, microprocessors, Cheez Wiz – have been generated via Area 51. The salvaged entertainment system from the crashed Roswell saucer alone has justified the entire program, although I will admit that the 8-track tape thing didn’t work out as well as was hoped. Still, this is an absolutely critical military facility, with endless opportunities for industrial and scientific advancement; we cannot let little trivialities like “telekinetic implosions,” “rips in the space-time continuum,” or “involuntary accelerated mass mutations” obscure the valuable work being done there.

So keep Area 51 open, Secretary Gates. Do not force me to unleash my minions upon the land.

Moe Lane

Isn’t Seal bald?

I could have sworn that he was bald.

Crazy

Of course, that was in 1991… yeah, yeah, yeah: I know, that video’s old enough to vote. And also, yeah, everybody dressed like the Daywalker back then. To quote Lileks, it was the way of my people.

So was dressing up young women in a fashion reminiscent of last-minute desperation fetish shopping, apparently: Continue reading Isn’t Seal bald?

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies!

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies came in the mail today – the last of the birthday money purchases, and the most anticipated – and so far it’s living up to the majestic promise implied by the title. This was, in point of fact, a worry: some things are better imagined than seen.

But so far, everything’s fine. Just fine.

God help me, I’ve seen most of these films.

Cracked Topics: Vampires. Generally spot-on, except that the author left out Innocent Blood. A serious omission: the combination of vampires and mobsters in the same movie is sufficiently rare to be worth noting.

Also: I haven’t actually seen any of the Otherworld films, on the grounds that there’s some suggestion that White Wolf should have gotten a cut. Any of them any good?

XtraNormal Beta.

I’m probably going to have to yell at Ace (that video that was done for him ain’t safe for work, by the way) for pointing this XtraNormal site out, the next time that I see him. Or at least make him buy the first beer. It’s distressingly fascinating: the site lets you generate 3D movies using text. There’s just enough choices to demonstrate that I’m not that great at blocking out movies.

Anyway, the first verse of Lepanto.

Deceiver Madness face-off!

Al Gore vs. PETA, and that’s one time where you root for injuries, huh?

They also have a contest, with the winner getting a set of prizes lovingly designed to seriously piss off whoever wins Deceiver Madness. I’d get in on that, but it also requires me to figure out the final score of an actual basketball game, and I don’t even know who’s winning that. Or who was participating in the first place…

Personally, I like “Treachery.”

Jim Treacher is thinking about a name change for his blog – I’m personally fine with his current one, but then I’ve been doing this since 2003 or so; I’m accustomed to in-jokes and whimsical names. On the other hand, I didn’t exactly go with either when I picked the name for this blog. On the gripping hand, it’s not my call anyway.

Jim’s been doing fun stuff with Twitter – that really does sound dirty – so check him out.

This was once edgy.

Admittedly, it was edgy when I was eleven.

Centerfold, by J. Geils Band.

One of the funniest things that was in the original GURPS Autoduel was its suggestion that the dystopian future of that world’s 2020s would portray the 1980s as being idyllic (in much the same way that we romanticize both the 1950s and the 1890s). It’s still funny (nobody gets near-future disaster scenarios wrong like roleplaying games do*), but not because it isn’t increasing true that we do.

Moe Lane

*Which is not the games’ fault, really: if you’re playing in a near-future game, you want it to be different than the current time period, right? That means “exciting,” and exciting means that something’s probably blown up somewhere. Or lots of somethings. Whatever the current worry is, really.

Pulp genre – was some helpful links, now mostly about that post about the court case.

As you can see, I’ve added Conan to the Wish List, mostly because my wife thinks that we should pick those movies up at some point. My wife happens to be a stone-cold pulp fan, although oddly she’s more a fan of the Conan movies than she is of Robert Howard‘s books (probably because she associates the latter with local TV station weekend afternoon movies).

And while looking up to see whether the Doc Savage stuff was still available online now that they’re reprinting them both in dead-tree and Kindle form I came across this absolutely fascinating post about a court case with Conde Nast. I still don’t know who won that one.

Moe Lane

PS: My wife raved about The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril: A Novel: I haven’t gotten to it yet.