- Well, I guess I won’t be bringing any comics with me on my trip to Canada at the end of August. [via]
- Although apparently huge knives aren’t an issue when going through airport security. [via]
- The first coupon
- This Chewbacca supercut isn’t exactly exciting, but it is an interesting new look at Star Wars, and a weird focus on what actor Peter Mayhew was doing in every scene.
- And finally, Emoticons We Need in These Troubled Times [via]
various
Tuesday various
- While there’s a new strain of E.coli in Germany recently, high levels of Prozac are apparently killing off the bacteria in the Great Lakes.
- Noel Murray on ‘A My Name Is Alex’, a “very special episode” of Family Ties. It’s an interesting look at a show that hasn’t aged well, nor as badly as one might necessarily think.
- Crap Is Not the Same as Stuff You Don’t Like [via]:
If you don’t like something that’s fine. I’m never going to tell you your taste is wrong just because it doesn’t match mine. But if you don’t like something, Jesus fuck, tell me why.
- Doctor Who to give it a rest with all the Daleks. I can’t say this is exactly a bad thing.
- And finally, how can you resist a headline like this: What’s Flinging Comets Out of the Oort Cloud? [via]
Monday various
- Buy a “mega jug” (their words) of soda with your meal, and KFC will donate money to diabetes research. That’s irony coming full circle.
- The US State Department reportedly lobbied against a minimum wage increase in Haiti on behalf of textile corporations. That’s just scummy. [via]
- Fuckin’ A: profanity at the New Yorker. [via]
- China used prisoners in lucrative internet gaming work. [via]
- And finally, Jonathan Coulton on Snuggies and Business Models. The Planet Money podcast is worth listening to, if you haven’t already.
Thursday various
- Firefly Meets the Muppets. Yeah, like any of you aren’t going to click that link.
- Amber Benson’s remix of “Under Your Spell” is all kinds of weird.
- Doctor Who recipes. [via]
- Kids: don’t sell your kidneys for an iPad. Got that? Good. [via]
- And finally, Alan Rickman’s classy goodbye letter to Harry Potter. [via]
Wednesday various
- Human Centipede II already banned in the UK for sexual depravity. The description of the film sounds pretty horrific to me, even beyond the pale — and I’m someone who, amazingly enough, found some things to…well, not enjoy, exactly, about the first film, although I was less immediately repulsed by it than I would have expected. (Watching it over Twitter with friends may have softened the blow.)
But the idea of censoring it, of banning it from the country, doesn’t sit entirely well with me. I tend to agree with Sarah Ditum of The Guardian on this:
You get extremes of intelligence and stupidity as well as extremes of unpleasantness in horror, and if we’re happy to start banning stuff because of the latter, we might be losing a lot of stuff that falls into the former camp.
- Meanwhile, the fact that there will be a G.I. Joe sequel — and that it may very well star The Rock — fills me with a weird manic delight. The original was one of the most gloriously dumb movies I have ever seen. I am so renting any sequel, as terrible as it is likely to be.
- A lot of really interesting thoughts on X-Men: First Class. Though I liked it well enough — more than I expected to, less than I might have hoped — I’m not sure it deserves all this deep thought. But it’s all very interesting nonetheless. Spoiler warnings, of course.
- Any story that starts with “the night a drunk John Lennon and Harry Nilsson heckled the Smothers Brothers and got in a fight with Pam Grier” has got to be good.
- And finally, Paul Simon is simply a true class act. [via