I got spam today with the most intriguing subject line ever, so I googled it and bam, first result was Gordon Fay’s 24-hour RPG Blood Royal. The subject line, and its description: “A competitive game of fairy-tale intrigue and skulduggery in which players take the roles of a dying King’s children, each vying to be named successor at the end of the week.” How cool is that! Thanks, spam! Welcome to unintended consequences.
Category: Discoveries
It would be even better if they threw some gears in there
We watched Raiders of the Lost Ark at the midnight movies. I only realized tonight that its climax is the most literal deus ex machina in the history of film.
My mother actually WASN’T very educated when she came up with this. UNH.
All the nine-planet mnemonics you learned were dumb, because mnemonics are dumb, period. Purge them from your brain. Good!
My mother taught me the planets in kindergarten or something, using a song she and her friend made up on the playground when they were in elementary school. It goes like this:
“Mercury, Venus, Earth
dah-dah nanananah
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn
dah-dah nanananah
Uranus, Neptune and–
Plu-to.”
And I have never forgotten them since. The best part is that now that the list has been shortened, it’s more easily converted than your elevated mastodon who just served you divorce papers or whatever.
Uranus, Neptune and–
That’s all.”
It occurred to me last night that yes, they must be getting ready to make a The Dark is Rising movie, and sure enough. Aside from the two attached names so far, I’m concerned that Ian McKellen already appears to be doing three movies next year. That doesn’t leave a lot of spare time, and come on, can you even conceive of anyone else playing Merriman?
I know the intertube already saw the superballs ad months ago. But did you watch the extended version?
Baudrillard would actually get a kick out of this whole thing
The phrase “Christ of the Barricades” popped into my head this evening and won’t leave. I knew I didn’t invent it, but my usual sources for cultural context nearly failed me–Maria hadn’t heard it, nor had Wikipedia, and Google gave me only one result. That result led me to historian Frank Paul Bowman, who wrote a book in French called Le Christ des barricades in 1987. Yes, in French, and no, it doesn’t appear to be available in translation.
Putting the phrase in French and applying it to 1789-1848 (the book’s subtitle) certainly places it in context, but that only makes me want to read more. Unfortunately, I know from painful experience that academic texts with intriguing titles end up being, too often, boring and labored with odd extended rants about Disneyland. Also I don’t know French. So I’ll probably never read Le Christ des barricades.
But that’s what we have participatory media for, I suppose. What does “Christ of the Barricades” mean to you? In 101 words?
Been a while
My Uncle John brings news of Sigurdur Petursson’s official food supplier.
For probably fifteen years I’ve been haunted by the image of a man falling down a flight of stairs, falling apart at the bottom to become just a coat wrapped around an IV stand, hung with dozens of tape recorders. I knew this image was from The Tattooed Potato, a bleak and frightening book I’d read (exactly once) in elementary school. Last week, while in the library, I suddenly had to go check it out and read it. (It is not actually very bleak or frightening now, and in fact that exact image isn’t in the book.)
As per NFD policy, I’m going to wait a little while before I write any more about the book–I only finished it ten minutes ago. I will say this: it’s one thing to realize that one still reads for the things one first found in middle school. It’s another to understand that the nature of names, protagonism, surreality, pacing and imagery in one’s own writing all basically derive from an author one read in fourth grade.
This is for Ken
So uh STEAMPUNK TRANSFORMERS.
I think the last time I bought a Transformers comic book was in 1987, but I think now that it’s been almost two decades, I HOLY CRAP I’M OLD