Tuesday various

  • I’ll bet Chelsea Clinton didn’t have wedding invites this adorably geeky. [via]
  • Oh my god! The triceratops may never have existed! That’s so–oh, wait, it might have been the younger form of another dinosaur that looks almost identical except for some cranial features? And, if it is the case that they’re one and the same, palaeontologists will just rename them both triceratops? Wow, what seemed like a stunning revelation is curiously a non-story by paragraph’s end.
  • Syfy Announces Development Slate of 7 New Scripted Projects. Only eighteen of them are Battlestar Galactica or Stargate spinoffs. [via] [Related: Cracked on the Syfy Channel.]
  • I think what I find most interesting and amusing about this whole recent Neil Gaiman/Todd McFarlane thing is that the judge’s decision is ultimately an argument over comics continuity.
  • And finally, as someone who, as part of his day job, spends a great deal of time hunting down potential authors and reviewers at universities, can I just say how right xkcd is?

Thursday various

Wednesday various

  • It’s as I always suspected: Twilight will kill you.
  • Heaven knows Kaleidotrope contributor Genevieve Valentine isn’t a fan:

    The good news is that if you are seeing a Twilight movie to mock it, you’ll feast every time.

  • The Fab Faux’s live cover of Abbey Road raises a really interesting question: what is the difference between a really great cover band and a classical orchestra? [via]
  • Meanwhile, Janis Ian covers herself (with a few tweaks) for this year’s Nebula Awards. [via]
  • And finally, also meanwhile, all those covers on Glee would probably get the school in a lot of trouble [via]:

    These worlds don’t match. Both Glee and the RIAA can’t be right. It’s hard to imagine glee club coach Will Schuester giving his students a tough speech on how they can’t do mash-ups anymore because of copyright law (but if he did, it might make people rethink the law). Instead, copyright violations are rewarded in Glee — after Sue’s Physical video goes viral, Olivia Newton-John contacts Sue so they can film a new, improved video together.

Wednesday various

  • Presenting The Human Centipede Video Game. Warning: will spoil the movie (which in turn may spoil your appetite) and possibly your enjoyment of the original Centipede game.
  • Marina Sirtis and Jonathan Frakes really do have great chemistry together. It’s almost enough to forgive their shared bathtub scene in Insurrection. They’re refreshingly candid and engaged.
  • Meanwhile, I am not immune to the cuteness of the sloth.
  • Juliette Wade on teeth in science fiction [via]
  • And finally, ever wonder what happens in Disneyland after dark? (And no, it’s not that Cory Doctorow scales the fence and performs his technomagic in the forgotten recesses of Tomorrowland…although, can you prove that he doesn’t?) [via]

Tuesday various

  • It goes without saying that “Arizona’s draconian new immigration law is an abomination,” right? [via]
  • In semi-related news: Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black. [via]
  • The Canadian Science Fiction Review is an interesting idea, though I’m not sure I like their chances for getting fully funded by May 15, I’m sad to say. I was also surprised to discover that On Spec, “the Canadian Magazine of the Fantastic,” isn’t an SFWA qualifying market. [via]
  • I’m an editor, and even I don’t think we should get book royalties. [via]
  • And finally, Neil Gaiman on the path not taken:

    The nearest to a real job I ever came actually, is when I was starting out as a young journalist, my father informed me—he knew that I’d starve as a journalist—he had this great idea, I could show off show homes and I could write while I wasn’t showing people around, and I sort of really didn’t want to say no because it was such a kind thing to do, and I was starving.

    So I got on a bus and I went all the way across London by bus and went to this place where I was going to meet this guy for an interview and I sat in the reception for an hour, then they said “we’re really sorry, he’s had to go home, it’s too late” and I said oh okay, and I went back across London by bus. And then I thought, well that was that. I didn’t plan on going back across London by bus, it was a ridiculous bus journey, so I never went back, and that was the nearest I ever got to having a real job.

    Imagine if that guy had shown up!