Arms and influence

Random search oddity

One of the stranger search results that I've seen in a while.

Baddus Catticus: Not a badass

We haven't seen any sign of Baddus Catticus (pawsoffury@killyousoon.com) in quite a while. I didn't thing Baddus would back down from a confrontation, but I guess I'll live with the disappointment.

[If you're confused, let's just say you have to know our cat to fully understand. She's evil, I tell you! Evil!]

YBLB! ROTFL!

I hope this is someone's idea of a joke: a service for sending automated e-mail messages to all your friends and relatives who were not bodily carried into Heaven during the Rapture.

Getting into heaven, AT&T style

[This post is catharsis. I've wasted a great deal of time getting a simple answer out of AT&T, which requires getting through their automated service, the blind, stupid, snarling watchdog preventing you from easily speaking to a person.]

--Hello, and welcome to Heaven! Due to the recent volume of souls passing through the Pearly Gates, we have implemented this automated system to help you reach your final rewards more quickly.

--Please speak clearly, and tell me why you're here. For example, you might say, "I'd like to apply for our Eternal Bliss Plus program."

I've just finished 700 years in Purgatory, and I'd like to be admitted to Heaven.

--I'm sorry, but I couldn't understand what you said. Could you repeat it, using as few words as possible?

Purgatory. Finished. Enter. Heaven. Now.

--I think you said, "I need to spend some time in Purgatory before entering Heaven." Is that what you need?

No. I'm done in Purgatory.

--I'll send you now to Purgatory. Is that correct?

NO! STOP!

--I'm sorry, I didn't understand what you said. Let's try this. If you want to apply for our Eternal Bliss Plus program, press or say Aleph. If you have questions about the Friends and Family program in Heaven, press or say Beth.  If you'd like to trade in your Good Deeds Credits for products and services in Heaven, press or say Gimel. If you think that you were sent to Heaven by mistake, and need to be transferred to Hell, press or say Daleth.

None of these options help me. I need to talk to someone about getting out of Purgatory. PUR-GA-TOR-EE.

--I'll send you now to Purgatory.

NOOOOOOOOO...

What's "Eugene" in Arabic?

Researchers find that unpopular names correlate with higher rates of delinquency. No word on whether the TSA will give special attention to air travelers named Gladys or Floyd.

Don 't bogart that joint, Rummy

Since I've been writing about really serious stuff, I thought I'd give everyone a brief respite with something funny I stole from Castle Argghh! while I was reading their post about the Norman Conquest.

Why Rumsfield Really Got Fired! - video powered by Metacafe

Revolutionary food ideas

If the Dunkin Donuts debacle is a good reason to post the script from a Monty Python album, why not post a related video?

And then there's this video, which resembles far too much political "discussion" on American TV and radio:

HRC in the bunker

Warning: There's a lot of salty language in this very funny video. But it's also very funny.

Casual Fridays: Buy this album now

The new Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, is one of the best albums I've heard in a long, long time. You've heard the phrase, "If this music doesn't make you get up and dance, you must be dead." Along the same lines, if this album's lyrics and music don't grab you by the lapels and slap you around, you must be deaf or soulless.

It helps that Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! is one of Cave's most approachable albums. The songs are just as good as "Red Right Hand," "Tupelo," "The Mercy Seat," or other, earlier tunes. It's just that this album starts with  songs that aren't quite as musically off-beat as some of Cave's earlier work.

Cave knows how to write lyrics and music that both demand your attention. The first song on the album, "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!" sounds a little like the Velvet Underground, and the words have the punch of a dark Biblical parable. (Click here for an interview in which Cave explains his fascination and frustration with Bible stories.) Cave's sardonic humor reaches full force with "We Call Upon The Author To Explain," with  Steppenwolf-like bass and guitar lines. And you can't get more carnal than "Lie Down Here (& Be My Girl)", probably the randiest song since Springsteen's "I'm On Fire" or "The Fever." The lyrics from "Jesus of the Moon" are both beautiful and disturbing in the fashion of Leonard Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat."

I feel that I'm being a bit unfair to Cave by comparing this album to the work of other people. I'm definitely not saying that Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! is a series of pastiches of other people's work. Quite the opposite: this album has the distinct sound and words that have made Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds one of the most interesting (and under-appreciated) groups around.

Maybe these lines from "More News From Nowhere" will show exactly how good a songwriter Cave can be:

Now Betty X is like Betty Y minus that fatal chromosome
Her hair is like the wine dark sea in which sailors come home
I say hey baby I say hey Betty X
I lean close up to her throat
This light you are carrying is like a lamp
Hanging from a distant boat

And if that doesn't convince you, here's the video for the title cut:

Casual Friday: Movies for the weekend

Thought I'd recommend a couple of movies I've seen in the last few months that fit the theme of this blog...

Children of the Revolution
One sure sign that you've enjoyed a movie: you don't want to give anything away. The premise hooked me immediately: a comedy about an Australian who might or might not be the illegitimate son of Stalin. And that's all I'll say about the plot. Very good performances by Judy Davis, Sam Neill, Geoffrey Rush, and F. Murray Abraham as Stalin.

The Tunnel
One of the most exciting movies I've ever seen. Really. Screw all the childish, violent fantasies of American filmmakers, and give me more East Berliners trying to escape to the West.

Justice League: The New Frontier
The core stories about Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Green Lantern, the Flash, and the Martian Manhunter, told as a parable about America in the 1950s and early 1960s. It felt like what comics might have been like if Le Carre and Greene had written them.

Max
A much-overlooked movie about a young Hitler, failing to be one kind of artist, and becoming another one. One of the best movies in English about the Weimar period, and where the Nazis fit into or clashed with other movements.

Everyone misses his saving roll eventually

[Today's perfect storm of geekdom is almost past!]

This week, Gary Gygax, the co-creator of the Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game, passed away. I've seen remembrances springing up across the Internet. That's not surprising, since D&D was a landmark in popular culture with wider effects than are often appreciated.

Generation D: the original D&D
Before D&D, there was the miniatures branch of the wargaming hobby. People would use painted lead figures (you didn't say "toy soldiers," unless you wanted a punch in the snoot) to depict history's great battles. Gygax co-authored Chainmail, a set of rules for playing medieval miniature battles that included some elements straight from Tolkein and other fantasy stories, such as dragons, orcs, and elves.

Later, Gygax and his collaborator, Dave Arneson, decided that it would be fun to tell stories, not on the scale of the siege of Minas Tirith or the Battle of Pelennor Fields, but with a tighter focus on individual protagonists--more like the hobbits on the difficult journey to Mount Doom.

And thus the first edition of Dungeons and Dragons was born. The rules consisted of three small books, packed in a white box. The text was poorly organized and often confusingly written. The artwork was...Well, let's just say that the "artists" might not have been holding their pens with their hands, if you get my drift. The game itself was electrifying.

That's when I became a D&D geek. I fell in love with my copy of the white box set, and I soon found fellow enthusiasts. Although the plots were never as epic as Lord of the Rings or the Norse sagas, they did have their own odd fascination. In fact, it was hard to say that some games had a plot at all. You were the good guys, waiting around a tavern to do good deeds. A mysterious stranger approached and asked you to [fetch a powerful artifact/kill a terrible creature/unlock an ancient mystery] in the underground labyrinth nearby.

Way down into the hole you went, fighting a Stalingrad-esque battle from room to room. Every fight left you a little more experienced, and if you were lucky, a little richer. Once you learned how to trounce puny creatures like oversized rats and irritating goblins, you could graduate to tougher challenges.

Eventually, the rules improved. Not only did TSR, the publisher of D&D, come out with an "advanced" edition, but other companies started writing their own role-playing games (RPGs). This new medium could be the weekend entertainment for teenagers, or the vehicle for someone to describe their own world of high fantasy. (For one in a really different vein than the normal Western European medieval fantasy, check out Glorontha.)

Over time, the plots got better, too. Instead of "dungeon crawls," a form of high fantasy freebooting, many of the published storylines were just as involved as Tolkein. Players had dramatic moments--this heroic deed, that noble death--that they determined, as the protagonists in an interesting story.

The new game, D&D, had sired a new hobby. Another generation quickly followed with the spread of personal computers.

Generation E: the electronic RPG
Many computer game designers were D&D players, so it was natural to bring the D&D motif to another new hobby. Games like Wizardry and The Bard's Tale were as unsophisticated as the early D&D adventures, but they had the same fascinations. Another series of games, Ultima, gained a loyal following because of the more interesting plots and characters. The Ultima games also pushed the envelope of personal computer technology; many computer manufacturers owed their sales of next-
generation hardware to impatient Ultima fans.

Unintentionally, D&D and its computer cousins accomplished something else: they made fantasy a mainstream genre. George Lucas accomplished much the same thing with Star Wars, which made the "space opera" form of science fiction wildly popular. (Three seasons of the original Star Trek never generated anything like the mania around the first Star Wars film.)

During the 1960s, Tolkein was fashionable. Led Zeppelin mentioned Tolkein characters in their songs; the Beatles pondered making a Lord of the Rings movie. However, Tolkien remained a bit of a fad, which failed to inspire long-term interest in the fantasy genre beyond The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

D&D gave many people a taste for heroic fantasy that they might never have developed. Come for the rousing good fun of playing D&D over the weekend with your classmates. Stay for the wealth of novels and short stories in a genre you never knew existed.

Generation F: fashionability
Today, the SF section of chain bookstores are stuffed with fantasy novels. Fantasy is so popular, in fact, that some science fiction authors grumble about the vulgar tastes for this lower form of imaginative fiction. The Lord of the Rings movies were huge commercial successes--something unimaginable from the vantage point of 1974, when the first D&D boxed set was published. Celebrities like Steven Colbert and Vin Diesel talk fondly about their D&D roots. Millions of World of Warcraft players are  fighting their way through a virtual world that fits the D&D mold completely.

Gygax may have died in relative obscurity to other cultural innovators. He faded from view in the RPG hobby after he left TSR in the mid-1980s. Gygax authored other games like D&D--but they were too much like D&D to attract any attention.

D&D may have been Gygax's one shining moment that he could not repeat--but so what? We should all have such an impact on generations of people.

[For another Gygax tribute, with links to several others, click here.]

Master of BOO YEAH!

[And the geekdom keeps rolling on...]

Certain computer games have established a cachet so great that you almost don't have to say anything about them. The games were so fun, so addictive, so interesting that a certain generation of gamers just know, from the brief incantation of the game's name, that you're part of the brotherhood.

Here's a sample invocation:

MASTER OF ORION.

You know what I'm talking about.

If you don't, imagine the game that went beyond any science fiction book, TV show, or movie. You were in charge of a civilization clawing its way into the galaxy. Colonies on other planets! Space exploration on a galactic scale! Scientific breakthroughs! Aliens! Space battles! Add some diplomacy, economics, politics, and you have the recipe for one of the most engaging games you've ever played.

By engaging, I mean a game so good you could not tear yourself away from it. With all the dramatic events described in the previous paragraph unfolding in parallel, there was always a good reason to play for just one more turn. You had to see what happened when you declared war on the sneaky aliens that kept stealing your hard-earned technologies. You had to add to the defense of a colony that the sneak aliens were sure to attack. You had to build and deploy a fleet to intercept the sneaky aliens before they reached that colony in the first place. You had to upgrade your ship designs, before building the fleet, to incorporate some new wonder-weapon you just developed. Whoops, there went another hour...

Unfortunately, the pinnacle of space empire bliss, Master of Orion II, was published 12 years ago. The third in the series degenerated into a tedious accounting exercise, and would-be heirs just didn't have the alchemy of Master of Orion.

Until now.

I've started playing a new game, Galactic Civilizations II, which has every promise of being the new Master of Orion. The first version was a bit funky; the new version is just plain cool. Here's a quick video overview:

I'd say more...But I have an empire to run.

Hornblower in space

I've been following a weird reading trajectory lately. Apparently, my need for escapism was a lot bigger than I expected, so I've been loading up on the sub-genre "military science fiction." Heeding Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap"), I've been careful to follow other people's recommendations. Thank the gods for the Internet. Sure, you can waste a lot of time on the Web, but other people can help you save a lot of time--such as time spent finding out what's really crap, and what's worth reading.

Since military SF is where my head has been lately, I thought I'd share some recommendations. Some are recent acquisitions; others are books that I read a long time ago. I'm not going to give you a mini-review of each book, but I will add a little information that might pinpoint something worth reading.

TOP PICKS
John Scalzi, the "Resurrected" series. A shotgun packed full of neat ideas. I won't give anything away--just read them.

Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers. One of the most misunderstood books ever. No, it's not a fascist tract, as some critics claim. Instead, it's a long musing on the meaning and importance of citizenship that's completely different, and better, than the silly movie "inspired" by the book.

Steakley, Armor. If Heinlein had dropped the political parable to focus more on the plot for its own sake, and if he had been a somewhat better writer, you'd end up with something like Armor. Same motif (ground-pounders versus aliens), different reasons for reading (a better escapist read).

David Feintuch, the "Hope" series. Very Hornblower-esque, in that the main character starts as a midshipman in a very Royal Navy-like setting. The characters and writing were good, and the situations stayed interesting until the last book or two, when the series lost steam.

Hook, the Human/Zor series. At first, I thought it would be another Hornblower retread. However, it turned into a weird but effective melange of space opera and alien mythology (!).

Joe Haldeman, The Forever War. Even if the author intended it to be a Vietnam metaphor, it doesn't quite read that way. On its own merits, it's a great book about soldiers getting more and more disconnected from the people they're defending.

Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game. I never liked the sequels, but the original is still a must-read book.

Frank Herbert, Dune. Of course it's a military SF book! Jihad, anyone?

WORTH READING
Walter Jon Williams, the "Empire's Fall" trilogy. Surprisingly prosaic space opera from one of the most imaginative writers around. Still worth reading, however, for the entertainment value.

Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, The Mote In God's Eye. A good novel about humans facing a potential alien enemy whom they really don't understand. Skip the excruciating sequel.

Various writers, the Man/Kzin wars collections. Several SF authors contributed to this series of short stories, all based on Larry Niven's "Known Space" setting, specifically on the bitter war between humans and the Kzinti.

Keith Laumer, the Bolo stories. If you put artificial intelligences inside heavily-armed robo-tanks, you know there's going to be trouble.

EH, MAYBE NOT
Campbell, the "Lost Fleet" series. I've read two of these recently. They're OK, but for "naval SF," the battles are surprisingly weak. Lots of scenes about how the hero is just plain amazing, even though he's amazingly humble. Too many borrowed ideas and motifs (fleet on the run remind you of anything?).

David Weber, the Honor Harrington series. The first couple of books were OK, but then they collapsed into tedious narratives, flat characters, and uninteresting political rants. Other people like 'em, but I just can't get into them.

HAVEN'T READ YET, SO CAN'T RECOMMEND
David Drake. I have one of the new collected Hammer's Slammers volumes on my shelf, begging for attention.

Lois McMaster Bujold, the Vorkosigan series. I read one of these volumes too long ago to remember the details, so it's almost as if I never read it at all!

Friday cat blogging

I see your cute cat pictures, and raise you a video.

(OK, I admit, it's not much. I just got my new Flip video camera. So sue me.)

Deconstructing Shatner

Sometimes, your greatness is defined by your own artistic contributions. At other times, you deserve recognition for the creativity you inspire in others. For illustration of the latter case, take a gander at this video. You won't be disappointed.

A tonic for a gray day

This week, the weather here has been gray, gray, unrelentingly gray, the gray of tombstones and bureaucrats' souls. Today we took a Wagnerian turn, rain driven by jackhammer gusts of wind. I don't know about you, but I need a pick-me-up.

Last-minute gift ideas

From Lawyers, Guns, and Money.

Political science breakthrough!

Poliblogger's motto is, "Politics is the master science." Well, he won't be surprised to hear that political scientists have discovered a new form of government.

Discovering Japan

I'm on a business trip for the next few days, so I'll be posting sporadically. I promise to return with souvenirs for everyone.

Friday follies: Halloween and Lovecraft

Since we're rapidly approaching Halloween, I thought I'd say a few words about H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu mythos. Whatever you think of Lovecraft as a writer, you have to give him credit for two major accomplishments. First, he conceived of horror fiction in an entirely original way. Instead of ghosts, werewolves, and vampires, Lovecraft's stories featured antagonists that resembled nothing from Western folklore. They inhabited a world somewhere between horror and science fiction, in which god-like beings plot the destruction of the world when "the stars are right," while in Antarctica, biologically-engineered creatures that killed their alien creators still lurk.

By cutting free of the conventions of horror fiction, Lovecraft frightens his readers at a more cerebral level. The monsters may be horrible to look at (often indescribably so), but it's the back story that really sticks it to you. The monsters you see are just the front-line troops of a cosmic conspiracy in which the odds are stacked heavily against human beings. Yikes!

Lovecraft also spawned an entire sub-genre of horror fiction. Dozens of writers have contributed to the "Mythos." It's a hoot to see how the more successful authors have kept the Mythos fresh and interesting.
For Lovecraft newbies and veterans alike, you may enjoy the following videos. The first is an interview with Neil Gaiman, in which he describes the lure of things Lovecraftian. The other is the only movie that ever "got" the Mythos. As Gaiman explains, it's hard to successfully film the Mythos, but this five minute flick comes awfully darn close.

The face of the enemy

Stephen Colbert's hates bears; I hate raccoons. Trash-eating little bastards with sharp teeth and almost human-like hands.

Last night, three of them infiltrated our kitchen. Fortunately, they made so much noise breaking into the house that I woke up right away. Bright lights and foot-stomping convinced them to vacate the premises. They managed to rip open a bag of cat food, but that's as bad as it got.

It's my fault for not closing the garage door firmly enough. Still, they had to push it open, feel daring enough to enter the garage, and then go through the cat door connecting the kitchen to the garage. They have cojones, I'll admit. Tiny, shrivelled, trash-smeared cojones.

Suzanne and the Stones

On a lighter note, here are a couple of music videos worth watching. First, Leonard Cohen and Judy Collins perform a great duet of Cohen's "Suzanne":

Then, on a silly note, here's one of the goofiest videos ever. Great song from the Stones, but what's up with the sailor suits? And bubbles?

Saturday morning programming

Before I get down to anything serious, I thought I'd share a couple of clips apropos of the weekend.

Batman meets Star Trek
If William Shatner and Adam West had actually been on screen together for more than a few seconds, televisions around the globe would have self-destructed. If there ever had been a Batman/Star Trek crossover, it definitely would have looked something like these amateur films, made with a frightening attention to detail.

"Hans, I just noticed something..."
From a BBC skit show, two German officers have an epiphany.

In other news...

Gestern war mein Geburtstag.

(For some reason, I can't say it directly.)

Folksy video festival

You'll spot what connects these two videos right away. I found the first after watching Ratatouille, and the second after the required quarterly viewing of Walker, Texas Ranger clips.

Putting children first

A slightly different perspective:

I join the legion of the damned

Last week, I started using Microsoft Project at work. Please kill me.

Optimus Prime, Lord of the Pit

Since the Transformers movie is coming soon, I thought I'd share this clip.

Weekend follies: Bowie and Cher

I have a fascination with the strange places that talented people often find themselves. Case in point is this video of David Bowie on Cher's variety show, from some point in the 1970s.

Why was Bowie on this show? Why would the same guy who recorded some of the most off-beat songs in rock history, helped pioneer glam rock, collaborated with Iggy Pop, and starred in The Man Who Fell to Earth feel a need to sing pop standards on a culturally-safe American TV show? I have no idea.

If you need to cleanse your palette after the Bowie/Cher video, try this painfully funny moment between Bowie and Ricky Gervais.

Casual Friday: The bookshelf

Picking up from Armchair Generalist, I'll tell you what I'm reading, as of today. As usual, it's a mix of one or two main books, plus magazines and various things I've printed from Internet sites.

The latest book is The Republic of Pirates. Buccaneers are fashionable, thanks to a particular series of egregious pirate movies, but I've always been interested in the early history of European settlement of the Americas. Therefore, Republic of Pirates is the perfect book for me, a fresh look at how the "golden age of piracy" happened as a result of the unusual military and political conditions between 1715 and 1725. I've just started the book, but so far, it's a fascinating read.

I've also been skimming an Osprey book on the Sengoku Jidai ("warring states") period of Japanese history. My favorite wargame publisher, GMT Games, just sent me my copy of their new game, Ran, which simulates several battles from this period. Therefore, I'm refreshing my knowledge of this period before diving into the game. Twilight Samurai just arrived from Netflix, so it may be all-bushido, all the time, at Kingdaddy Arms for a few days.

For my own entertainment, I'm finishing off the latest issue of Military History Quarterly (MHQ). This weekend, I might catch up on some professional publications that I need to read. It hasn't been as warm in  our Northern California as I'd hoped, so my plan for a reading-filled afternoon in the sun may not materialize. (Reading, yes. Sun, maybe. Warmth, we can only hope.)

Casual Fridays: From the sublime to the ridiculous

I'm glad that the Fab Four had enough sense not to continue in this vein.

If you need to feel clean after that swim in the popular culture sewer, watch this clip of a post-Beatles George Harrison with Paul Simon.

Random cool stuff

I've tripped over enough neat things on the web this week that I had to share them. Let's start with a completely novel cover version of The Who's "Baba O'Riley." This video is cool in the same way as The Langley School Project, another source of unexpectedly compelling covers.

Here's the Mother of All Movie Trailers. (When will studios get the message, and start producing better trailers that can't be so easily lampooned?)

And, finally, let's imagine Donald Rumsfeld on the job market.

Top SF movies

After reading Armchair Generalist's "My favorite science fiction movies" list, I couldn't resist drafting one of my own. Be forewarned: some of these I haven't seen in a long, long time, and I might look at them differently, were I to watch them again now. I remember them fondly enough, however, to put them on this list.

I've emphasized movies that are science fiction, not another genre in SF garb. (For example, I wouldn't put a movie like Battle Beyond The Stars on the list because it's merely a Western with aliens. Plus, it's not that good a movie, even if John Sayles wrote the screenplay.) Science fiction is the literature of "what if," and not merely from a scientific perspective.

• 2001: A Space Odyssey. You don't get ideas bigger than the past and future evolution of mankind.
• Alien/Aliens. Really, two parts of a single story. We can forget the next two movies ever happened. A biological thriller in a blue collar future.
• Blade Runner. Take a good SF novel, and make an even better movie.
• Brazil. One of the best "SF as social satire" movies.
• Children of Men. The more I think about this recent parable, the more it strikes me as one of the most challenging SF stories I've seen on the screen in a long, long time.
• Dark Star. A weird comedy, with a pure SF premise.
• The Day the Earth Stood Still. The movie that does the best job of saying how humanity needs to grow up before it moves into the rest of the universe.
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers. To this day, one of the creepiest movies ever made, with just the right undercurrent of social satire about modern paranoia.
• The Man Who Fell To Earth. See a kind alien come to Earth for help, but end up devoured  by mass consumer culture.
• Star Wars. Rebellion! Planet killers! Psionic knights! Aliens! If only Lucas had stopped after the first two movies.
• The Terminator. While the sequel was the better action movie, the original was the better SF tale.
• Them! If you think a 50s movie about giant ants is too goofy to merit your attention, think again. Mankind is on the cusp of extinction because of the unintended side effects of--you guessed it--nuclear technology.
• The Time Machine. This George Pal movie holds up better than War of the Worlds, in part because of its faith to the original H.G. Wells story.
• The Thing (From Another World). While I love the John Carpenter remake, I'm putting the original on the list in case you've never seen it. In its own way, it's just as good, in part because the plot focuses more on the dilemmas the scientists face in dealing with the invader.

Why not more movies from the last 20 years or so? The answer isn't, Because I'm an old fart now, dagnabbit! Fewer SF movies are being made, even though more movies about the future, aliens, spaceships, psionics, and other stock SF elements get filmed. Aliens don't make a movie automatically SF, just as on-screen murder doesn't turn The Texas Chainsaw Massacre into a mystery.  We can argue over what defines science fiction, but the answer is, "Many things that look on the surface as if they were SF, really aren't."

 

My guess why there's less real SF in the movies? Special effects. When you can't fall back on stunning visuals, you have to tell a jaw-dropping story.

(P.S. I'm a big Firefly fan, too, but I don't think that Serenity is one of the best SF movies ever made.)

Happy Mother's Day

Peter Gabriel's "Shaking The Tree" should be the official song of Mother's Day.

Or, if you prefer the live version, click here.

More pop culture references

[Today seems to be the day for off-topic, pop culture-related posts. While most bloggers write this kind of content for "Casual Fridays," I do it when I see fit. Ha. I laugh in the face of convention. I am the master of my own fate, the captain of my own, er, blog.]

Poliblogger recently linked to Dave's Long Box, a well-written, funny blog about comics. If you've ever been a Marvel or DC fan, this site is for you.

G vs. E

I almost jumped out of my skin when I saw that Good Vs. Evil, one of my favorite (and sadly canceled) TV shows, is in repeats on the Chiller channel. If you've never seen G vs. E, as it was also known, I suggest that you run, not walk, to your Tivo box and get a season pass.

Good Vs. Evil had an extremely oddball premise, which made it a real labor of love for its creators. Imagine a 70s cop show crossed with the Exorcist, with bits of The Office and Entertainment Tonight added for good measure. It's impossible to explain why it works, but it does.

In Los Angeles, as soulless a place as you can find, Chandler Smythe and Henry McNeil are agents of "The Corp," fighting the minions of darkness. Everyone in The Corp is about 29 rungs in the org chart below the kind of person you normally see in this kind of epic Manichean battle. They're not exactly competent, but they try. The boss, Deacon Jones (yes, the NFL Hall of Famer) acts as the Greek chorus, with the occasional demon-disabling tackle thrown in. 

Unfortunately, like Firefly, Good Vs. Evil had a very short run. You'll never laugh harder at dismembered dolls, someone buried alive, or the evil machinations of Emmanuel Lewis.

MC Nuts

Funny, I never thought that Wordsworth needed enhancement, especially by a rapping squirrel named MC Nuts.

It's Pehechaan time!

Some people might unwind after a long day with a glass of wine, some relaxing music, and an engrossing novel. But how can that possibly compete with the Indian doppelgänger of John Waters, enticing young men and women to shake their heads until they suffer permanent neck damage? Seriously, there's no competition.

Some kryptonite is red

Fellow Cold War buffs might enjoy this history of commie super-villains (in two parts, here and here).

Mohammed's Radio

Whenever possible, you should end your day on a strange and beautiful note. Here's one for tonight, Warren Zevon performing "Mohammed's Radio" with Jackson Browne. Sweet dreams, all.

I'm the goddamn Blogman!

Then again, this was no surprise, if you know me:

You scored as Batman, the Dark Knight. As the Dark Knight of Gotham, Batman is a vigilante who deals out his own brand of justice to the criminals and corrupt of the city. He follows his own code and is often misunderstood. He has few friends or allies, but finds comfort in his cause. William Wallace 71% Batman, the Dark Knight 71% Maximus 67%