An awesome tribute to a sci-fi master from comedian Rachel Bloom (NSFW: language).
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1IxOS4VzKM
Author Archives: Ajee Prior
Slowed Down Science Fiction Classics
“Bottled in Cork”
Tom Scharpling hones his directorial chops with this great new Ted Leo music video which also features comedians (and regular guests of Scharpling’s The Best Show on WFMU) Paul F. Tompkins, Julie Klausner and John Hodgman.
Leo himself is a frequent guest on Scharpling’s radio program and has performed music for WFMU’s annual marathon, and on one episode of The Best Show (RealAudio required) Ted Leo invited Scharpling’s radio audience to write a song with him which he later arranged and performed on the program: the hilariously bleak “The World is in The Turlet“.
Truly this is a smorgasbord of win.
The Value of Nothing by Raj Patel
“I’m done explaining to people why fanfic is okay.”
You think fanfic is a personal affront to the many hours you’ve spent carefully crafting your characters. You think fanfic is “immoral and illegal.” You think fanfic is just plagiarism. You think fanfic is illegal. You think fanfic is cheating. You think fanfic is for people who are too stupid/lazy/unimaginative to write stories of their own. You think there are exceptions for people who write published derivative works as part of a brand or franchise, because they’re clearly only doing it because they have to. You’re personally traumatized by the idea that someone else could look at your characters and decide that you did it wrong and they need to fix it/add original characters to your universe/send your characters to the moon/Japan/their hometown. You think all fanfic is basically porn. You’re revolted by the very idea that fanfic writers think what they do is legitimate.
We get it.
Congratulations! You’ve just summarily dismissed as criminal, immoral, and unimaginative each of the following Pulitzer Prize-winning works…
“It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.”
That’s a quote from the Greek playwright Aeschylus, and it fits the following—I offer it only as highbrow pretense to a specific lowbrow anticipation: namely, I’d be lying if I said I had no interest in seeing this.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKwjU_pSSW4
Hello. I’m the Doctor. Basically…run.
Get yer Simpsonized Doctor Who wallpaper here! Get it while it’s piping hot!
Box falls out of sky, man falls out of box, man eats fish custard
Science Tackles A Case of The Mondays
Blogger Steve Schwartz points to an interview with Dr. Peter Bentley (author of When Shit Happens; The Science of A Really Bad Day) where the doctor is asked whether there’s science between having a bad day and Bentley responds in the affirmative:
Yes, and it’s our fault, I’m afraid! The statistics show that people who believe in bad luck will have more accidents on Friday the 13th. Those who have a negative attitude are more likely to endow normal little mishaps with some mystical significance. Some psychologists even suggest that it’s a way of subconsciously avoiding responsibility for our actions. “It was Friday 13th, so I was bound to stick my fingers with superglue” or “Accidents happen in threes, so after the first mishap the next two were inevitable.” Of course it’s nonsense.
Schwartz lays out his thoughts on bad days and supplies a few helpful tips and links. Worth checking out.
Agencies admit saving body scan pix
Of course they do.
Despite claims by the TSA that electronic body scan images “cannot be stored or recorded,” some federal police agencies are in fact saving tens of thousands of images, according to a report by CNET News.
The body scanners, increasingly found in airports, courthouses and other places where security is high, use an assortment of technologies. These include millimeter wave scanners — in which the subject is harmlessly pelted with extremely high frequency radio waves which reflect a picture back to the device — and backscatter X-ray — which measures low-powered reflective X-rays to produce clearer body shots, shots that can reveal alarmingly precise anatomical detail.
According to CNET, the U.S. Marshals Service admitted this week that it had saved thousands of images that had been recorded from a security checkpoint in a Florida courthouse.
The revelation comes at a tense time. Two weeks ago, when Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said such scanners would appear in every major airport, privacy advocates such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington D.C. filed a lawsuit to stop the device rollout. ((Rothman, Wilson. “Police Agencies Admit to Saving Body Scan Images.” MSNBC. NBC, 4 Aug. 2010. Web.))
Did anyone really believe them when they said they wouldn’t?
Related links:
Tom Scharpling’s Giving Birth To Smiles
3 Hours of Mirth, Music and Mayhem
Proud New Jersey native Tom Scharpling’s radio persona is that of a beleaguered salt-of-the-earth radio DJ who endures 3 hours of community radio and its parade of odd callers on a weekly basis. The show itself is a studied parody of the discomfiture, pugnacity and bravado of its host and his punk ethos has kept “The Best Show on WFMU” going strong for 10 years. It remains one of my favorite podcasts since I stumbled upon it back in 2005; I was immediately hooked by the absurdist do-it-yourself nature of his show and his informal delivery.
Tom, a comedy writer by trade ((Scharpling briskly avoids on-air discussion about being writer and executive producer for the television series “Monk“)), teases out the potential humor in each of his calls like a prospector sifting for gold and he and frequently indulges in a pathological need to hang up on people before they can finish their final sentence. I enjoy his show for many reasons: the improvisational format, Tom’s mock insolence, his comic disdain for amateur podcasts, his partner-in-crime John Wurster ((Wurster is the drummer for the fantastic Superchunk and he is name-checked in The Dead Milkmen’s classic “Stuart“)), who calls as various dullards from fictional Newbridge who each vex and threaten him, his excellent taste in music, his fantastic guests, his rogues’ gallery of peculiar callers and his recurring (and unrequited) beef with public radio icon Garrison Keillor and Mickey Dolenz of The Monkees. Continue reading
“Everybody Wants To Rule The World”
Ted Leo And The Pharmacists cover Tears For Fears for the A.V. Club’s fantastic “Undercover” series.
Welcome to your life
There’s no turning back
Even while we sleep
We will find you acting on your best behavior
Turn your back on Mother Nature
Everybody wants to rule the worldIt’s my own design
It’s my own remorse
Help me to decide
Help me make the most
Of freedom and of pleasure
Nothing ever lasts forever
Everybody wants to rule the worldThere’s a room where the light won’t find you
Holding hands while the walls come tumbling down
When they do I’ll be right behind you
So glad we’ve almost made it
So sad they had to fade it
Everybody wants to rule the worldI can’t stand this indecision
Married with a lack of vision
Everybody wants to rule the world
Say that you’ll never never never never need it
One headline why believe it?
Everybody wants to rule the worldAll for freedom and for pleasure
Nothing ever lasts forever
Everybody wants to rule the world
Staying Alive for Dummies
There are morals which seem to your average citizen prima facie obvious. You know–the stuff so basic that even Aesop never felt compelled to write a fable for them (“…and that’s how Lion realized that poking his wiener at a cactus was A Bad Idea. Moral: Don’t be an total idiot. The End.”)
And yet there are those daring, thick-skulled few who flaunt the tenets of self-preservation and boldly ((really? “boldly”?? )) hurl themselves at the swirling chaos of nature’s indifferent whim, each genome etched with the plea: “fuck me up bad, existence. I’m begging for it!”
Like this poor fellow, for instance:
There had to be alcohol involved, because I can’t think of anyone soberly electing to wind-surf during a freaking tropical storm. I hope this guy is okay; I’m sure this experience will be cataloged in the Bad Idea file.