I don’t know how long this has been going on, but I have been attributing the line “This shit’s chess, it ain’t checkers” to Stringer Bell on the HBO show The Wire.
I was wrong, it’s actually a line delivered by Alonso Harris in the movie Training Day:
I had to go AFK for a bit because of hand and elbow surgery, but that was now more than two months ago, and I’ve been back at my regular writing job for a while. My lack of regular blog updates might have upset my reader(s), so I am committing to [trying to] do better.
In the meantime, I found this GIF of Olivia Munn saying “boobs” in an Imgur folder:
That’s in honor of the series finale of The Newsroom, where she played Sloan Sabbith and was awesome.
Comfort Food: No one brings dinner when your daughter is an addict. Larry M. Lake, Slate, November 8, 2013
Friends talk about cancer and other physical maladies more easily than about psychological afflictions. Breasts might draw blushes, but brains are unmentionable. These questions are rarely heard: “How’s your depression these days?” “What improvements do you notice now that you have treatment for your ADD?” “Do you find your manic episodes are less intense now that you are on medication?” “What does depression feel like?” “Is the counseling helpful?” A much smaller circle of friends than those who’d fed us during cancer now asked guarded questions. No one ever showed up at our door with a meal.
Stephen Colbert schooled Fox News hard: Comedy, Bill O’Reilly and the exposure of right-wing patriotism lies, Sophia A. McClennen, Salon, December 12, 2014 Continue reading
WarGames, the 1983 film about the Cold War and dangers of technology starring Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy, Mustache Coleman, and the guy who always plays someone grouchy, is on one of the HBOs this morning, and I realized something: If David’s mom serves David’s dad raw corn-on-the-cob for dinner, and he doesn’t notice until he bites into it, why did the butter melt when he spread it on the corn????
You’ve probably already seen Adult Swim’s “Too Many Cooks” informercial (whatever that means), but in case you haven’t, it’s worth eleven minutes of your time. Stop asking questions and watch it:
The overwrought ’80s sitcom intro was ripe for surreal parody, when you think about it, but you probably never did before because why would you? Somewhere along the line, between the still-lengthy intro to Friends, the abbreviated intros to shows like Scrubs (did you know that’s actually an entire song?), and the just-get-in-with-it show openings of today, I mostly forgot that goofy sitcom intros ever existed (except for the songs—I’ll never forget classics like Diff’rent Strokes and their like). Only HBO shows (and their imitators) seem to have extended intros anymore, and except maybe for Game of Thrones—which you need to watch for any changes to the map—I suspect most people fast-forward through them.
Anyway, this seems like an important moment in our cultural history that we will have forgotten about by next week, so enjoy it while you can.
Also, I learned about “Too Many Cooks” thanks to this GIF on Imgur, which seems to capture the most truly WTF moment: Continue reading
Why Nobody Ever Asks If Irony Has Ruined Science Fiction, Charlie Jane Anders, io9, September 29, 2014
Every few years, there’s another essay insisting that irony is ruining culture. Hipsters and postmodernism have created an insincere world where nothing means anything. But you never hear anybody insisting that irony has ruined science fiction. That’s because irony is part of the creative life-force of the genre.
We tend to talk about irony in terms of a disconnect between a stated expectation and what actually happens — in other words, as a kind of failed futurism. But irony, more broadly, is about dislocation. And the description of types of irony in the introduction to the book Irony in Language and Thought (ed., Gibbs and Colston) seems like it could be a list of science-fictional story setups: “coincidences, deviations from predictions, counterfactuals, frame shifts, juxtapositions of bi-coherences, hypocrisy, etc.”
Anybody who writes about history, and then tries to imagine history continuing into the future in the same bewildering, illogical, bendy fashion is going to bake a certain amount of irony into the cake. That’s partly because storytelling is about humans, who use technology in ways that its creators never expected, and make choices that no rational observer would expect. The law of unintended consequences is fundamental to narrative irony.
The ironic twist is also part of the DNA of SF, from War of the Worlds onwards — H.G. Wells’ disease-ex-machina ending only really works as irony, rather than as straightforward narrative: they’re too big and powerful for us, but in the end they’re unexpectedly defeated by the tiniest of creatures.
![Henrique Alvim Correa [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](http://crypticphilosopher.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Correa-Martians_vs._Thunder_Child.jpg "Henrique Alvim Correa [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons")
Photo credit: Henrique Alvim Correa [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
You know what? I’ve never even seen Frozen, and yet I’m really tired of this song. Don’t get me wrong—it’s a phenomenal song, and it absolutely deserved an Oscar. It just seems like it is everywhere.
Since it won’t leave my head, I might as well give praise where it’s due, to this kid and her brilliant, poop-based parody:
I just learned that this morning was the first Saturday morning in at least fifty years with no cartoons on broadcast television. While I don’t think I have personally spent much time watching regularly-scheduled animated programming on Saturday mornings since we all wondered if the Smurfs had any sort of copyright claim against the Snorks, I can’t help but feel wistful that an era is ending.
I also can’t help but realize that I actually remember the PSAs that ran during commercial breaks better than the cartoons—this is almost certainly due to repetition, since I would’ve seen the “hanker for a hunk of cheese guy” way more often than any one episode of The Herculoids or Turbo Teen. (Okay, seriously, how f—d up was the basic concept of Turbo Teen? What happens if one of the headlights gets smashed? Does he lose an eye???) Anyway, since I don’t seem to have anything else to do this morning—I’m certainly not going to be watching any cartoons!!!—here are a few old memories for my fellow Gen-Xers who maybe thought the nostalgia segments of Reality Bites were ahead of their time.
Of course, we have the “hunk of cheese” guy:
I don’t know if anyone remembers the singing bean and grain of rice: Continue reading
There’s nothing “shocking” about growing up, Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon, September 11, 2014
Along with the gotcha! wardrobe malfunction, the “Can you even believe it that a human being is subject to the laws of time and physical progression?” story is a reliable page views grabber. Throw in wrinkles, weight or any possible cosmetic surgery and you’re particularly golden. Three years ago, the Internet blew a gasket when Sinead O’Connor, who was once 20 years old, appeared in public, in the words of an Inquisitr headline, “No Longer Bald or Skinny.” Fortunately, she had the decency to lose weight before the release of her new album earlier this year, prompting inevitable headlines about her “dramatic makeover.” And when the 81-year-old Kim Novak appeared at the Oscars this winter with an unusually taut, immobilized countenance, critics were swift to mock her “wax museum” appearance. These are your options, people. You can get older in whatever natural form that may take and be made fun of for it, or attempt to remain youthful and be made fun of for it. Basically, unless you master some vampire-like secret of remaining a fixed age and size for eternity, you’re screwed.
Colorblindness is the New Racism, Lauren Rankin, Policy Mic, July 22, 2013 Continue reading
Sunday evenings very often suck for many people, e.g. those who have to get up and go to work early the next day after having two days off. Some people don’t get weekends off, or get two days off per week that vary from one week to another. Some people don’t have jobs. Some people are at work right now. Some people are in the hospital.
Anyway, for anyone who might be having a rough time just this moment, a dancing baby Groot might help, at least a little bit.
Here’s the musical accompaniment:
