Month: August 2008

• Patton Oswalt’s commencement speech at his old high school — “I’m going to get out of your way now. Get out there. Let’s see which one of you is up here in twenty years. If you’re lacking confidence, remember – I wouldn’t have picked me.” [via]
• Two cavemen walk into a bar… The world’s ten oldest jokes. And still funnier than Dane Cook. [via]
• Remember that “Obama is too thin” story that ran in The Wall Street Journal the other day? The reporter’s sources came from trolling Yahoo message boards. Ah, journalism! [via]
• Wanna see what Buffy: The Animated Series might have looked like? Well now you can, with this spec video. It’s not phenomenal, and I think this ship has sailed, but it could have been very cool. And I was impressed: Giselle Loren sounds more or less exactly like Sarah Michelle Gellar. I’m in the mood suddenly to revisit some of earlier Buffy episodes. [via]
• Nancy Kress on the point of fiction. I’m not sure I agree with her completely, but it’s an interesting take nonetheless. [via]
• George Bush: “Wall Street got drunk.” Well, I guess if anyone would know about getting drunk… [via]
• An interesting writing experiment: rewriting science fiction as fantasy and vice versa. [via]
• Is reading online really reading? There’s a part of me that wants to say, “Of course it is. Get with the times, old fogies.” But there’s also a part that wants to say, “Um, no, it’s really not.” [via]
• I’m not sure how I feel about eating food from a company whose founder thinks “frozen foods taste better than anything I could grow in my garden.” But I may not have a choice. [via]
• And, like a cancer, Wal-Mart spreads [via]
• You’ve no doubt heard (everywhere) that there really is water on Mars. And apparently a liquid lake on Saturn’s Titan. [via]
• A “Garfield Minus Garfield” book raises all sorts of interesting copyright issues, but if Ballantine is going ahead, I suspect Paws Media (if not Jim Davis himself) is on board, so maybe it’s a non-issue, really. Davis is, apparently, a fan, so that helps. [via]
• You know, I’m not really a Deerhoof fan, but this is a really interesting idea: releasing your new single as sheet music and asking other bands to record covers. [via]
• Note to Mike Myers: Please just stop.
• Remake Farscape in Battlestar Galactica‘s image? As Abigail Nussbaum notes, this is a very bad idea indeed. It completely misses the point of what made Farscape so special and misunderstands the nature of camp. (Which, for the most part, Farscape never was.)
• Vampire energy. Looking around the room, I think about as guilty of this as the next person. Although I do make sure to unplug my laptop when I leave for work in the morning. [via]
• It’s okay to plead the Fifth. Why you should never talk to the police.
• “How many of us do you think could become a Batman? If you found the percentage of billionaires and multiply that by the percentage of people who become Olympic decathletes, you could probably get a close estimate.” [via]

If you’re going to be in New York this weekend, my friend Remi — whose terrific artwork you may have seen in the second, third and fourth issues of Kaleidotrope — will be performing with his improv group as part of the Del Close Marathon on Sunday. Weekend passes, which you can buy at the door, will get you in to see not just Proletariat Princess’ show, but a whole weekend of great improv comedy. Sitting is still a sometimes iffy proposition for me*, so I don’t know if I’ll make it for all of that. But I do hope to stop by for at least a little bit on Sunday afternoon.

Check it out!

* I think the herniated disc is getting a little better, and I have my second steroid injection this afternoon, but a whole day (much less weekend) of sitting just doesn’t sound like a good idea.