UPDATE (01/17/2014): Thanks to a busybody dear friend’s observation, I have updated the post title to reflect the fact that we are in a new year. Lousy Smarch…

– Wait, what? A gentleman’s club proprietor in Atlanta is planning to open what the Atlanta Banana calls a “science-themed strip club” (h/t Mike):

Hoping to capitalize on DragonCon’s attendance, the proprietor of a new gentlemen’s club, Jabbu’s Hut, has announced the club’s grand opening to coincide with the fantasy and science fiction themed convention on Labor Day weekend.

“Of course we’d prefer to call it Jabba’s Hut,” said Steve Scizz, owner. “But the lawyers would open us up like a Hoth tauntaun and crawl inside.”

Scizz says his club will feature more than just girls dressed up as slave Leias, although there will be plenty of those, even if he calls them “Slave Laylas.” He plans to have his girls costumed across the full spectrum of fantasy, science fiction, and actual science.

“Just imagine getting a lap dance from sexy Marie Curie — non radioactive and in the public domain — or one of those hot night elves like the ones in WOW. We’ll have it all,” said Scizz.

Yes, of course anything posted on a site called the Atlanta Banana is certain to be satire (and it is), but that didn’t stop a few nerdbros from getting cautiously excited about it:

So, while this sounds awesome and I am sure some of you now are on travel websites looking for the next ticket to the dirty south, this has the potential to be kind of sad and depressing: what if you go and there is pretty girl dressed as Wonder Woman taking her clothes off to whatever nerd themed house music is playing. You try and by cool and interact with her, kind of live out out some fantasy you have. You start dropping the knowledge of the character trying to impress her, so she will tie you up with her lasso of truth (if you are into that sort of thing), and she just says she is here because the pay is good and knows nothing about the character. You, being crushed, go home and masturbate using your tears as lubricant…just saying, it might happen.

I guess even fake satire is subject to the Fake Geek Girl meme.

– Need to get away from it all? I mean really, really away? The headline really says it all: “Utah Man Can Finally Dump Wife and Children By Going To Mars.” Even though the headline said it all, here’s more:

When a man looks at his wife and four (!) children, what he really sees is the black iron prison surrounding him. How does he break out? In the case of Utah dad Ken Sullivan, the answer is the same red planet that has inspired humanity throughout history. Mars!

Sullivan, a 38-year-old married father of four, is looking at about 40 more years of headaches and heartbreak and the crushing sense of having wasted his entire life raising more humans, like we need more of those on Earth. (We don’t.)

***

So this Utah dad did what so many others long to do: He signed up to go to Mars, forever, on a one-way trip. And now he’s one of the finalists for the Mars One mission. He may actually go to a nearby planet that is still so far away that nobody will ever be able to bother him again—nobody but the other people on the Mars One expedition, but at least there will be some novelty, for the first year or so, before he realizes he has to spend his life with another set of people.

The various sites linked to by io9 are not generally known for satire, but I’m approaching this one with about as much skepticism as I used when approaching Jabbu’s Hut.

– Can’t Unsee: My search for Creative Commons images of Princess Leia cosplayers led me to the creepiest piece of Star Wars fan art I have ever seen (so far, I’m afraid).

Quick shout-out to Christy Marie, the Princess Leia cosplayer pictured above.

Photo credits: Christy_Marie_as_Slave_Leia_at_San_Diego_Comic-Con_2006.jpg: Jason Scragz from Portland, Oregon, USA derivative work: Fanfwah [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons; Master Magnius (Flickr: Slave Leia) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.