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September 25, 2007
Bill Hader Learned that Neil Gaiman is a Rabbit's Foot
The best bits about this article are the parts on how Hader got work whenever he had a Gaiman book on his person. If have to have a four-leafed clover, I'd pick him too.
Extra thoughts: Seth Rogan gets points for being a comics geek. The article writer loses points for calling comic books and fantasy novels "juvenile regression."
Other than that, yeah, Neil Gaiman is a Luck Charm. Why not?
"I got all superstitious about it," he said on a recent stroll through the science fiction section of the Chelsea Barnes & Noble. "Like, when I have Neil Gaiman books around me, I just do better."
(via neil gaiman and new york times)
Posted by Groonk at 03:26 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Quotables
Cory Doctorow On Giving Away Books and Getting Paid for It
Cory Doctorow, writer of stuff and co-editor of Boing Boing talks about how selling his printed books and giving away editions in ebook form has actually helped sell more printed copies of his works.
Many of us have assumed, a priori, that electronic books substitute for print books. While I don't have controlled, quantitative data to refute the proposition, I do have plenty of experience with this stuff, and all that experience leads me to believe that giving away my books is selling the hell out of them.
--Cory Doctorow
(via locus magazine)
Posted by Groonk at 03:01 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Digital Share, Marketing
Drug Fueled Fictional Destruction
Wikipedia is full of fabricated altered states.
Other lists I've gathered thus far:
- Street Terms: Drugs and the Drug Trade
- LSD told Albert Hoffman to "find me"
- Iraqi Insurgents + Weaponized Hallucinogens = Isane Shit!
- Drug Turns Crime Victims Into Zombies
Posted by Groonk at 02:44 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Research
Body Modification: Suspension Edition
Body modification has returned to my thoughts.
(via modblog)
Posted by Groonk at 02:38 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Culture, Research, Weird
Mid-20th Century Artwork: And You'll See them By Name
A Flickr fellow has collected the art and illustrators of the mid 20th century and put them in his rather extensive collection set.
(via leifpeng's flickr)
Posted by Groonk at 02:07 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Art, Flickrlicious, Research
September 24, 2007
Man Decapitates Duck in Hotel. Eats it Like Sushi.
Scott D. Clark allegedly cornered the duck before grabbing it and decapitating it with his hands in front of a security guard and other onlookers.Mr Clark then said: "I'm hungry. I'm gonna eat it."
He was allegedly drunk, AP said.
Drunk?
Do tell.
(via digg and daily telegraph)
Posted by Groonk at 05:04 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Animals, Quotables, Research
Stephen Colbert Defies You to be Afraid
That man is Awesome and Win and Excellence personified.
"Not living in fear is a great gift, because certainly these days we do it so much. And do you know what i like about comedy? You can't laugh and be afraid at the same time--of anything. If you're laughing, I defy you to be afraid."
--Stephen Colbert, some Parade interview
(via ontd)
Posted by Groonk at 04:47 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Interviews, Just Freaking Neat, Religion
Wearing a Dead Mouse Says a Lot About You
As the story goes, Courtney Love gave a dead mouse to some guy and the fool wore it.
Sidenote: Pete Doherty, inspired by Love, gave a dead rodent to Kate Moss.
What in fuck, people?!?
(via ontd)
Posted by Groonk at 03:53 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Animals
WRISTCUTTERS still on My Must See List
WRISTCUTTERS is a love story. It has Patrick Fugit, Shannyn Sossamon, Shea Whigham, and Tom Waits to name a few.
I think I'm gonna like it.
(via ontd my wristcutters space)
Posted by Groonk at 03:11 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Movies
Iranian President Ahmadinejad still Crazy and Delusional
We all know that Ahmadinejad believes the Holocaust to be a fiction perpetrated by, I don't know, whatever racist little elves speak into his ears at night.
Nowadays he says Iran is completely devoid of gay people and that women in Iran are as free as de-feathered birds.
Columbia University President Lee Bollinger excoriated Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday, going through a long list of documented actions and remarks by the firebrand Iranian leader and his government."Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator," Bollinger said to applause from many of the 600 people in the room for a speech from the Iranian leader.
[...]
Asked about widely documented government abuse of women and homosexuals in his country, Ahmadinejad said, "We don't have homosexuals" in Iran. "I don't know who told you we had it," he said.
He also repeatedly said that women have freedoms in Iran and refused to comment on reports that their freedom is severely constrained.
(via cnn and dunc)
Posted by Groonk at 02:41 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of World
September 23, 2007
Stephen Fry is a MAJOR Futurephone Geek
And that's just fine, thank you very much. It's nice to see famous creative types wallowing in their geekiness.
"I have never seen a SmartPhone I haven't bought"
Stephen Fry
(via warren ellis)
Posted by Groonk at 11:28 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Blogged
My Respect for Alan Moore's Works is Evolving
To paraphrase Mr Ellis, 'you can do fucking anything in comics.'
(via topshelfcomix)
Posted by Groonk at 01:41 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Comics, Sex, Video
September 21, 2007
Very Clever, those Crows
Aesop wasn't wrong, yes?
(via james gunn blog)
Posted by Groonk at 12:00 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Animals, Video
September 20, 2007
I Don't Recall Emmy Nominations Ever being Funny
The Colbert one is very winful. Yet, they did not win.
Conundrum.
(via ontd)
Posted by Groonk at 06:35 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Funny, Video
September 19, 2007
Aussie Slang Dictionary is Not a "Bush Bash"
I assumed wrongly that I already had a link to an Australian Slang Dictionary.
It wasn't easy but we've tried to include uniquely Australian slang here and to exclude British and American slang even though these are commonly used in Australia. We see no point in informing the world that "fridge" is Australian slang for a "refrigerator".
(via aussie slang dictionary)
Posted by Groonk at 02:48 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Grammar
Seattle Rides a SLUT to Work
I admit it. I just wanted to be a 12 year old and talk about SLUTs without being slapped.
SEATTLE - Officially, it's the South Lake Union Streetcar. But in the neighborhood where the new line runs, it's called the South Lake Union Trolley — or, the SLUT. At Kapow! Coffee, a shop in the old Cascade neighborhood, 100 T-shirts bearing the words "Ride the SLUT" sold out in days, and another 100 are on order."We're welcoming the SLUT into the neighborhood," said Jerry Johnson, 29, a part-time barista.
(heads-up via Dunc)
Posted by Groonk at 02:41 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of USA
September 17, 2007
Scientists Finally Catch Up to Arthur C Clarke's Imagination
Cassini flew within 1,000 miles of Iapetus on Monday and snapped images of its rugged, two-toned surface. As it was sending data back to Earth, it was hit by a cosmic ray that caused a power switch to trip. The spacecraft was not damaged, but had to turn off its instruments and relay only limited information.Mission controllers have since sent commands for Cassini to resume normal transmission and scientists recovered all the data from the moon flyby despite a nearly 12-hour delay. The spacecraft was expected to be fully functional by week's end.
Clarke surprised the Cassini team with a five-minute video played Tuesday during an internal meeting at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Clarke, who lives in Sri Lanka, told scientists he looked forward to viewing photos from the flyby.
(via discovery)
Posted by Groonk at 01:24 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Science
10 was Right to be Afraid
Thank you, Super Deluxe. I understand all now.
(via Super Deluxe)
Posted by Groonk at 01:21 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Funny, Just Freaking Neat, Video
September 15, 2007
World's Largest RC Craft Flys Around a Bit
Watching it take off is the coolest thing. That's if you're into aviation like I am. It's little more than a passing fancy these days.
On one special day my life will onace more be filled with flying awesome. That'll be the day I can re-afford lessons.
(via live leak)
Posted by Groonk at 10:34 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Technology, Video
FANBOYS Trailer. Not the Kiwi One. The USA One.
Yeah, it's all a bit confusing when you overthink like me. A New Zealand short film called Fanboys hit the internets in 2003. Damn if I didn't recall it until I read the copy on wiki. Then it all came flooding over me like carbonite in a freezing chamber.
What I know about the new FANBOYS is that Veronica Mars(Kristen Bell, y'all.) graces it with her awesomeness, the new Jimmy Olsen(Sam Huntington was hands down the best actor in SUPERMAN RETURNS) has a lead in it and, of course, the funny looking Star Wars loving/parodying trailer have me saving up 8 bucks for January 2008.
(via ontd)
Posted by Groonk at 09:51 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Movies, Trailers
WWII Tank Vet Reunites with Holocaust Survivors
On Friday, the now 86-year-old retired state Supreme Court judge reunited with three of the survivors of the Nazi death train his unit found near Magdeburg, about 50 miles southwest of Berlin. The train was on its way to another concentration camp.[...]
The reunion has its roots in a class project launched by Matthew Rozell, a history teacher at Hudson Falls High School. In the early 1990s, he created an elective course for seniors to collect stories from local veterans and post them on a Web site.
One of Rozell's students was Walsh's grandson, who told the teacher about his grandfather's wartime service. Several years ago, Rozell interviewed Walsh and George Gross, a fellow tank commander from Spring Valley, Calif.
Their account of the train liberation was posted on the project's Web site, along with black-and-white photographs taken that day by the major leading their patrol.
That's where some of the child survivors of the Nazi train, now in their 60s and 70s, found their story.
Learn about: A Train Near Magdeburg
Main Link: The World War Two Living History Project (WW2LHP)
(via yahoo news)
Posted by Groonk at 08:29 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of History, WorldWarII
September 14, 2007
You Can't Deny Your Monkey/Bird Love
(link via dunc)
Posted by Groonk at 06:30 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Animals
Southwest Fascist Patrol: Women Deemed too Hot to Fly
I get that a company can draw the line at who it wants to serve. What I don't get is why they get to lecture their bullshit afterwards.
BTW Southwest, suffrage happened for many reasons in the USA 1920. And one of those reasons was not so you can preach "family values" on your flying tin cans.
Setara Qassim says it was not her idea that 100 degree day she flew back from Las Vegas on Southwest Airlines.
Ebbert, a Mesa College student and Hooters waitress, was allowed to stay on the plane, but only after she put up a fight and, she says, was lectured on how to dress properly.[...]
(via diesel sweeties and other news places)
Posted by Groonk at 02:14 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Culture, USA
September 10, 2007
Viking Queen Raised from Her Rest
Archaeologists exhumed the body of a Viking queen on Monday, hoping to solve a riddle about whether a woman buried with her 1,200 years ago was a servant killed to be a companion into the afterlife.As a less gruesome alternative, the two women in the grass-covered Oseberg mound in south Norway might be a royal mother and daughter who died of the same disease and were buried together in 834.
"We will do DNA tests to try to find out. I don't know of any Viking skeletons that have been analyzed as we plan to do," Egil Mikkelsen, director of Oslo's Museum of Cultural History, told Reuters at the graveside.
[...]
Mikkelsen said he saw no ethical objections to opening the grave, partly because the two were buried so long ago and no one even knew their names.
Posted by Groonk at 12:28 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of History, Research
Solar Power Plane Record
A lightweight, solar-powered plane built by British defence and security technology company QinetiQ has broken a world record for unmanned flight by staying aloft for 54 hours, the firm said Monday.The Zephyr, which has an 18-metre (59-feet) wingspan and weighs just 30 kilogrammes (66 pounds), smashed the previous best of 30 hours 24 minutes by nearly a whole day, flying to a maximum height of 58,355 feet.
It then flew a second time, again beating the previous benchmark set by a jet-powered US Air Force plane six years ago with a time of 33 hours 43 minutes to a height of 52,247 feet.
(via yahoo)
Posted by Groonk at 12:22 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Technology
Dragon Con: In the News and with a History
The parade is one of the highlights of the four-day DragonCon event, billed as the country's largest annual convention for fans of sci-fi, fantasy, horror, comics, art, games and computers. It features more than 600 hours of panels, workshops demonstrations and discussions with authors, editors, artists, game designers and media personalities.
DragonCon is named for its beginnings in the Dragon Alliance of Gamers and Role-Players, a local science fiction and gaming group. The first convention was in 1987 and had about 1,400 attendees. By 1989, author Anne McCaffrey was lured as the convention's guest of honor, and by 1990, suspense writer Tom Clancy joined the fun.
[...]
Od's blood. You tell me that's not a Geek Homecoming.
(via ap news and 7d)
Posted by Groonk at 11:58 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Culture
There was such a Person Named Madeleine L'Engle
Madeline L'Engle's thoughts will be sorely missed.
"A Wrinkle in Time" was not the sort of book you were assigned in school; with its New Testament quotations and witchy supporting characters it was at once too Christian and too blasphemous. It was the sort of book you discovered on your own, shelved as it was in the big kids' section, and that you read ferociously into the night with a mug of Swiss Miss -- a replica of Meg's homemade cocoa. You didn't talk about the book at school. Meg's awkwardness, her anger, her imperfections were too intensely private, too attuned to your own gangly self-loathing. As with "Bridge to Terabithia" or the Ramona Quimby series, you wondered, perhaps, if it had been written for you.
You learned about tesseracts -- those convenient shortcuts that made dimension-skipping possible for Meg, her genius little brother Charles Wallace, and her boyfriend, Calvin, who saw behind her dorky specs a pair of "dreamboat eyes." You also learned about Einstein's theory of relativity, a smattering of Latin and a goodly amount of Shakespeare.
Woven through every story line: the unfailing message to be yourself, delivered not in a syrupy parental way but in a jarring and often scary one. In "Wrinkle" the trio travels to the planet Camazots, where children can be euthanized for bouncing a ball out of rhythm and society is controlled by a giant, pulsing brain called IT. Attempting to resist conformity, Meg recites the Declaration of Independence, only to have IT reply that "all men are created equal" is exactly the point: On Camazots "everybody is the same as everybody else."
"No!" Meg shouts triumphantly. " Like and equal are not the same thing at all!"
(via washington post)
Posted by Groonk at 05:33 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, People Who Died
Mos Def Continues to Amuse Me
I still don't much like Bill Maher though.
Def lost me on his OJ opinions. Otherwise...good show.
(via ontd)
Posted by Groonk at 03:08 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Politics, USA, Video
September 09, 2007
CSI has Nothing on Space Scientists. They Found the Dinosaur Killer
This information revealed at the best time ever.
The extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago can be traced to a collision between two monster rocks in the asteroid belt nearly 100 million years earlier, scientists report on Wednesday.The smash drove a giant sliver of rock into Earth's path, eventually causing the climate-changing impact that ended the reign of the dinosaurs and enabled the rise of mammals — including, eventually, us.
Other asteroid fragments smashed into the Moon, Venus and Mars, pocking their faces with mighty craters, the researchers believe.
[...]
The sleuths were guided by an intriguing clue — a large asteroid called Baptistina, which shares the same orbital track as a group of smaller rocks.
Turning the clock back, the simulation found that the Baptistina bits not only fit together, they were also remnants of a giant parent asteroid, around 105 miles across, that once cruised the innermost region of the asteroid belt.
Around 160 million years ago — the best bet in a range of 140-190 million years — this behemoth was whacked by another giant some 37 miles across.
(via discovery)
Posted by Groonk at 07:32 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Dinosaurs, Research
September 08, 2007
The Pope Says Things. I Foolishly Rant into the Night.
Pope Benedict rejected the concept that abortion could be considered a human right on Friday and urged European leaders to do everything possible to raise birth rates and make their countries more child-friendly.The 80-year-old German Pontiff told diplomats and representatives of international organizations that Europe could not deny its Christian roots because Christianity had played a decisive role in forging its history and culture.
"It was in Europe that the notion of human rights was first formulated. The fundamental human right, the presupposition of every other right, is the right to life itself," he said in an address at the former imperial Hofburg Palace.
Well that's a right fucking nice idea. Given that we(humanity) have not created a stable outpost elsewhere in the Solar System and new land is being created at below a snails pace: where exactly are you gonna put these extra people?
And where was the church when the slave trade was big business? When Buying and selling human beings was overlooked by the church during this time.
Just asking.
As for children friendly countries: I'm all for that. Keep on that track, please.
(via yahoo and my shoddy duck taped soapbox)
Posted by Groonk at 02:31 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Religion
September 04, 2007
When All Else Fails... Well... You Know...
Dance!:
James Brown is your dance instructor. Learn all you can.
(link via ponzu)
Posted by Groonk at 01:50 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Video
