To the Overmind and beyond!

Every year since I was two, my family goes to Disneyland right before Christmas, and this year was no exception. One of the greatest recent additions to the park is the awesome Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters. My brother heavily pwned us with his FPS skills (I just witnessed him play Halo 3 in its entirety in six hours flat – it was the first time he had ever touched the game), but it’s mighty good times nonetheless. However, whilst standing in line, I could not help but notice that, according to Star Command, Galactic Enemy #1 is known by the name of “Zurg”. Realizing this to be a homophone for another high-ranking adversary of galactic proportions (and indeed, the spelling is only one letter in difference), my brain made a few quick connections, and suddenly, Toy Story took on a whole new level of badassery.

Buzz Lightyear is a Terran Marine.

Season’s Greetings

We would like to extend our seasonal felicitations to you all.  Whether you celebrate Christmas, the Solstice, or any of the other myriad midwinter festivals, we hope that your holiday is full of joy.

We’ll be back on task, with many a new idea to write copiously on, shortly after the holidays come to their close.

Until then, enjoy whatever life throws your way.

Love of a Place

Here’s another original work.  It is supposed to be the beginning of a novel.  That novel may only exist in Lucien’s library, but that’s okay.  Someday I’ll get back to this.

If you’re easily offended or nervous about anatomy, you may not wish to read it.  If not, then enjoy!

I – Intimate Familiarity

It’s really an amazing thing when you come to know a city intimately.  I’ve lived in the City all my life.  The longest I’ve ever been away was for a month, once, when I was nineteen.  I went on an extended holiday to the Motherland with one of my best friends.  Part of me was looking to see if I could find my roots in some way.  Find more People like me.  Anyway, even though I’ve lived in San Francisco all my life, I didn’t get to really know the place until I was about seventeen or eighteen.  Whenever it was, it was a while after I had started driving.

I am in Love.

I realized recently that I left a woman out of my treatise on Chivalric Romance.  I am dearly and deeply apologetic to have missed Eliza de la Zeur.  Eliza is a fantastic example of the woman who is too good for her knight.  The Countess of Sgyr is exactly “my type”: Brilliant.  This woman could run circles around Leibniz if she cared to.  She wasn’t merely book smart, either.  She was one of the most cunning women I have ever met.

The only problem I can find with Eliza is that I have only met her in literature.  Eliza is simply too good for a base and dull wretch as myself.

If you wish to meet her and to fall hopelessly and miserably in love, pick up Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, which begins with the novel Quicksilver.

What We’re (Not) Geeking Out About This Week

1. The bootlegged trailer for The Dark Knight – o hai guyz, im still in ur city, murderin ur masses lol
2. Space – that shit fucks you up…if you’re up there more than three months
3. Sidekicks – they’re not just for child endangerment anymore.

We realized while trying to compile this list that there are far more things that we are NOT geeking out about. We’re going to try that route instead.

-1. The latest Messiah Complex – we went from “omg” to “OMG” to “OMG!!1!one” to “…meh”. But, ok, it moved the story forward. Get your game face on, guys, we’re spending valuable laundry money on this.
-2. X-Force – who the fuck thought it was a good idea to give Wolverine a team?
-3. Stupid people – if you are one of them, get the hell off our blog.
-4. Geoff Johns writing the Green Lantern – point of interest, there are more than seven emotions and “willpower” is not one of them.
-5. Books – hard to find good ones, because there are too many bad ones to wade through.
-6. Publishing delays – o hai guyz, im not writin, i am so depressed QQQQQQQ.
-7. Ret Pallys – Hitler was a ret pally.
-8. Robert Jordan is dead – we know this happened a while ago, but he’s still dead, god damn it. On that note…
-9. Robert Jordan’s character development of the Aes Sedai – “I’M A BITCH!!!”
-10. Professor Xavier – this man must die so we can all get laid without fear.
-11. The audiotape of A Clockwork Orange – not a good thing to listen to in your car before work.
-12. Man Bat – come on, honestly.

In which we are verily pissed off

There are many things in human history and the universe itself that are beyond comprehension, and even border on preposterous. They include:

1. Extra dimensional string theory.
2. How the stock market functions.
3. The fact that viruses are organic but not alive.
4. Blood-letting as an socially acceptable medical practice.
5. Astonishing X-Men #4 being pushed back to January 24.

What the fucking fuck. Issue #23, one of the finest and most mind-blowing comics we have ever read, was released on November 7. It was so epic, in fact, that we are still nerdgasming over it to this day. We should’ve had a highly satisfying dose of optic blasts and adamantium claws and mind-reading by now. Not to mention, our Kitty Pryde withdrawals are reaching levels normally reserved for governmentally controlled substances.

It is now December 15. This is a monthly series. Christmas and New Years will occur before we get to read the conclusion. Rud will have had a birthday. Marvel, why hast thou forsaken us? We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore just going to whine and cry until they finally publish the damn thing, because they know we’ll spend our hard-earned pennies on it no matter when it hits shelves, the bastards.

Also, Kitty Pryde, k.

Weekly Comic Review ~ Rud Edition

Slowly working my way through the pile.  There’s a different stack near the bed this week, and the common theme here is War in Space

7 Ways To Have A 1337 Christmas

Ah, Kwahanusolstimas! That magical time of year when we Californians get out our plastic snowmen and decorative scarves that we don’t know how to wrap properly! This Friday I am gathering potluck-style with my super fly roleplaying group to celebrate, and tonight I set about wrapping up presents. For the first time this year I felt super Christmasy, and I wished to fully indulge in the holiday spirit. However, I didn’t have any of my mom’s raspberry jam bars or a copy of George C. Scott’s A Christmas Carol, so I had to make do with what I had. It worked out so well that I have condensed the key points down into a handy list that you should not only share with your friends and family, but that we should all work hard to make mainstream holiday traditions known the world over.

Valiant Knight of the Aether

Somewhere in my head has been brewing a relevant and insightful post about why steampunk is one of the best damn things to happen in the history of subculture. However, I’m coming off a late night script writing bender, and I don’t think I could string together so much as a haiku right now. So it will wait until the day inspiration strikes, and instead share with you this video that I discovered. A little slow to start, but trust me, you want to watch it all the way through.

An Indie Character Sketch

She had, in fact, been that particular kind of girl over whom all the boys fawned and stuttered, and of whom all the other girls were instantly and insanely jealous.  By the time she had turned 17, she had already booked dates for every Saturday night through the third week of the November after she turned thirty-eight.  At this juncture in time, she announced that her date book was more than reasonably full, and she would be making no further arrangements.