- Novelist proposes to girlfriend in print. I suppose there are worse ways to go about it. [via]
- The house from H.P. Lovecraft’s story “The Shunned House” is for sale. I don’t think I’ve ever read the story in question. I know I don’t have $925,000 to spend. [via]
- Super Mario propaganda posters. I like these, although I do sometimes wonder about my generation’s continued obsession with all things Super Mario. [via]
- Tom Baker’s touching tribute to Elisabeth Sladen. [via]
- And finally, China Mieville’s re-interpretation of Marley & Me is…interesting.
love
Tuesday various
- Lots of people are pointing out why retroactively censoring Huckleberry Finn is a bad idea, but I think I like what Gerry Canavan says most:
If we’re going to retroactively censor Mark Twain, I’d say “slave†seems significantly more offensive to me than “n*gger†insofar as it accedes to the noxious proposition that some people can be slaves in the first place. People can be enslaved, of course—but no person is a slave. In my own rare writing and teaching on slavery I try to favor “so-called slave†and “enslaved person†in a quiet effort to highlight that slavery is not an essence but a structure of violent domination.
It’s not the fact that we’re still having this conversation that bothers me — we should have continued and open discussions about race — it’s that we’re still faced with people who think not discussing it, pretending the words we don’t like don’t exist, is the right way to go.
- In happier news, Nel Gaiman and Amanda Palmer are married. As Patton Oswalt writes:
Marriage of @amandapalmer and @neilhimself confirmed. Like the Hatfield/Coy War, the Nerd/Goth schism is laid to rest — by love!
- And in other amusing, geeky wedding news, Doctor Who‘s David Tennant is engaged to one-time co-star Georgia Moffett. As Peter David amusingly notes:
The Tenth Doctor is going to be marrying his own daughter who also happens to be the daughter of the Fifth Doctor and Trillian from the TV version of “Hitchhiker.â€
Most meta engagement EV-er.
- Speaking of Doctor Who, these one-of-a-kind nesting dolls may very well be the coolest thing ever. [via]
- And finally, Udo Kier…honestly, in interview, the man comes across like he’s playing an Udo Kier character — erudite, macabre, and often delightfully unhinged:
I cannot answer you, because it’s totally unknown to me what you just asked me, and also very boring.
Tuesday various
- No more Caps Lock? FAREWELL, OLD FRIEND. [via]
- I bet you didn’t know Inception and Sex & the City 2 are essentially the same movie, did you?
- The day Niagara Falls ran dry. [via]
- One man was responsible for one-third of the world’s spam. Then again, I haven’t actually noticed a drop-off in my own spam since his arrest. [via]
- And finally, the bar for wedding proposals has been lifted: