1) A webcomic appreciation of Doctor Who. via @sinboy
2) The invasive species diet. I don’t care how much good it does for the planet, I’m not eating nutria.
3) The Dalek Relaxation Tape. Video.
4) Worst Album Covers Ever. Some of these are NSFW.
5) It’s Official: Star Wars Kinect Is the Worst Star Wars Thing Ever. I don’t know. To me, a little silliness if just fine.
6) D&D: The Important Questions
7) Awesome animated gifs. No, seriously for real.
1) A history of the McFarlane/Gaiman Miracleman lawsuit.
2) Trompe l’oeil graffiti vanishes Egyptian military barrier
3) A working scientific calculator, built from Minecraft blocks.
4) Two words: Explosive. Polymerization. (Video)
5) Eight “forgotten” live-action children’s shows from the eighties. I doubt “Small Wonder” has been forgotten, but “My Secret Identity” is the only other one I remember (but I’m a bit old for this time period)
6) Heroic Goofballs: Aardman takes on DC. Video
7) An infographic showing the last words of executed inmates in Texas.
1) United Artists’ Rejection Letter for STAR WARS. via @rodramsey
2) The Internet Justice League
4) Finally, a lit contest I can care about: 2011’s Oddest Book Titles of the Year. I’m rooting for the chicken sexer.
5) Why do innocent people confess to crimes they haven’t committed?
6) Against Big Bird, The Gods Themselves Contend in Vain. Big Bird wrests celestial justice from an Egyptian god in a Sesame Street special. For real.
7) A prosecutor and cartoonist creates A Criminal Lawyer’s Illustrated Guide to Crime.
1) Author Jim Hines matches the poses of women on urban fantasy covers.
2) Read this fantastic metafilter comment about libraries.
3) Twelve Creative Business Cards
4) The setting of Word of Warcraft recreated in Minecraft.
5) Comics need fewer creators and more owners.
6) How Pilot Season ensures that the right actors aren’t cast in the right TV show. Via
1) Former ‘Static Shock’ Writer John Rozum on ‘What was Really Going on Behind the Scenes’.
2) Harry Potter and the Chinese Bootleg Subtitles.
3) Classic depictions of Venus Photoshopped to make her thinner.
4) This karate rap is even worse than you expect. Video.
5) A scented candle for ebook haters.
6) How to use a women’s urinal. “I am convinced that women could pee standing up, with the same accuracy as a man (which means, what, 90% accuracy?), if they practiced as often as men do.” Via @ccfinlay
The Dusk Society set a… well, is it a new low? Because I’ve read some genuine shit in my time, and this book, while it was definitely bad, was mostly just dull and anti-dramatic. The villain continually thought up reasons not to kill his enemies, the photo-based art was ugly, and if there was an interesting way to get a plot point across, this book dodged it.
Sure, it’s supposed to be fore kids, so they didn’t want a lot of bloody murder, but you can’t call a villain worse than Satan if all he ever does is collect magic trinkets and tell his henches not to kill people.
The plot covers the recruitment of four modern teens into a monster-fighting society (they each have Speshul Powers Or Skills). I got bored with it less than halfway through, but my son read the whole thing, laughing all the way through.
Then you get to the end of the book, when the sexy teacher in the bad clothes who inducted the students into the Dusk Society offers a contract to the reader. Would YOU like to be a secret monster fighter???
The large size is easier to read. But here’s what the contract says:
Contract
I solemnly promise to serve The Dusk Society, with my life* if needed.
I understand that my life will at risk–everyday.
————
Signature of member
Notice that asterisk? What it refers to is handled in a caption, not even on the contract itself. It reads:
*UPON DEATH, ALL YOUR LIFE SAVINGS AND PROPERTY WILL BE SEIZED BY THE DUSK SOCIETY. WITHOUT NOTICE, THE DUSK SOCIETY MAY ALSO EXERCISE THE RIGHT TO ACQUIRE THE SAVINGS AND PROPERTY OF ANY SURVIVING RELATIVES.
That is one helluva clause, isn’t it? I’m tempted to make a joke about asking kids under 18 to sign contracts, or about the ways cults enrich themselves from their members, but in truth this sort of dopey story choice just makes me depressed.
By the way, that thing beside the couch is a cat.
1) Rick Santorum quotes as New Yorker cartoons.
2) The 50 most brilliant, obnoxious, or delightfully sociopathic Facebook posts of 2011.
3) The TSA’s biggest success stories of 2011, and what it means.
5) War Horse: An Illustrated Review
6) Charles Stross makes some predictions for the future. This worked out so well for Heinlein…
7) 10 Stubborn Body Myths That Just Won’t Die, Debunked by Science
1) How to make your own chocolate D&D dice.
2) The Invisible Mother in Victorian photographs.
3) Best Christmas Webcomic Ever: “Poop us some candy, poop man!”
4) I love light shows projected onto buildings, and this one is especially good. Video.
5) The Great Successor Is Right Over Here You Guys.
7) Scene from THERE WILL BE BLOOD with gaze locations: Video. Via Rod Ramsey.
1) For folks who are still waiting for the Twenty Palace prequel, I have already self-published a number of short stories and novellas. None of them are in the 20P universe, but one is a historical fantasy set near Seattle in 1879, and the rest are second world fantasies. Some have never been published anywhere else: Kindle | Nook
2) Note for folks who visit that B&N page: I’m not the photographer, and I’ve never published scraped text through Hephaestus Books
3) Today is my tenth anniversary. The traditional gift is an ebook, right?
4) Last night we had our anniversary dinner. We ate steaks from Don and Joe’s, roast beets, green beans, and fingerling potatoes, a fancy cheese that I lost the label for and can’t ID right now, a delicious tiny lemon cheesecake from The Confectional, and a bottle of Beringer Cab from 1997 that we bought for our wedding. Thumbs up to all of it.
5) My son read a D&D comic and now wants to play the game. Do I have time to run a fantasy campaign? Shit to the no.
1) The World’s Most Controversial Lego Model.
2) The Schweizer Guide to Spotting Tangents. Some nuance on comic art that I hadn’t heard about.
3) Mount Rainier casts a shadow on the clouds.
5) Dahlia Lithwick earns respect for this article on Occupy Wall Street and modern media messaging.
6) Only remaining martial arts master searches for a student worthy of learning shastar vidya.
7) Creepy Old-Time Halloween Photos. Yeah, it’s a slide show. They’re still really creepy.
Bonus death-themed #8 because it’s Halloween and not all of these are holiday-related: A fantastic obituary.
