No, I won't give you Alan Moore's phone number.

No, I won't tell you what his snail mail address is.

Alan Moore doesn't have e-mail. If he did, and I knew what it was, I wouldn't give it to you.

Please, please, please don't ask me to.

Man...

...he's probably tearing the roof off of the sucka right this very minute.


...maybe I can go outside later and try to see the mothership take off.


*sulk*

I'm SICK of all the fucking e-commerce web sites telling me that firefox 3 isn't a supported browser, and that I need firefox 2.x or higher. Get your fucking code fixed please. I'm starting to make purchasing descicoins based on how will support my preffered browser... This means you dollar fucking rent a car.

-jl

No... not Dr. Horrible, the new Web Productio from Josh Whedon. Well, it IS really funny, and I recomend you check it out.

No, the really funny bit is that I was just talking with Alan, the owner of Borderlands Books, and we were talking about methods of entertainment distribution, and I commented that while movie theaters and DVD's and television rained king right now, it wouldn't be too long before full feature lenght "movies" or "serial TV" would be able to be supported without TV, or theaters at all. Itunes had demonstrated that people are willing to pay a small fee to download individual episodes of TV, and DVD Sales after the first broadcast are now redefining serial television, and the kinds of stories it can and should tell.

During all this, I mentioned that if someone who had an established name brand produced a "TV show", and sold it via itunes, he could probably make a bit of money, by completley bypassing the existing studio system, and tradtional methods of entertainment distribution. He could probably even pick up a season DVD sale down the road, after he milked the download sales. I mentioned Joss Whedon as an example of someone who could probably do this. I did this with no knowledge whatsoever of Dr. Horrible.

-jl

I was going to hold off on this until Wednesday night (or Preview Night for those SDCC-bound), but after 1) talking to James Lucas, and 2) seeing Matthew's inks for Stumptown #1, I'm rather impatient. Add to that a large amount of pure geek-joy at the work Matthew and mercuryeric did, and I'm feeling in a sharing mood.

Besides, I haven't posted a graphic in a while. Beware, the file's a little on the big side, and you'll want to make with the clicky-clicky to zoom in and get all the detail.

( Here's the promo poster we'll be giving out at the con. )

We'll have about 200-250 of them to hand out on Saturday.

Those of you who've been following this blog for a while may recall me soliciting the names of fictional PIs about a year or so back. Now you know why.

Thanks to everyone for their considerable help in compiling the list.

Edited to add:

In the interest of full disclosure, I stole this idea shamelessly from ( this )

Jim Rockford being the patron saint of all modern-day PIs, as far as I'm concerned.

Thanks to Deadend Margo's friend's husband, we have free tickets to Pitchfork. The great thing about this is it removes any pressure to get our full money's worth, so even if the warnings of thunderstorms and muggy weather come true, we can enjoy it. In fact, I'm more likely to stick around through rain and heat, whereas if I'd paid money I'd more prone to leave and curse the climate.

Damn. I guess this means I'm one of those who will eat a rancid cat sandwhich if there's a big "NOW ONLY TWO CENTS" sign next to it.

a) I realized that today would be an excellent day to contribute to Batman's favorite 501 non-profit wildlife conservancy charity, which is obviously Bat Conservation International. http://www.batcon.org/joinbci/MM.asp
(They sent me a note to renew this week, so it was on my mind. BCI is one of several charities I support.)

b) Every once in a while I think of setting up some kind of blog or maillist for "upcoming events, mostly local, I think of as cool", so...
( screendump of upcoming events I wrote down on calendar )
ovrclokd, look at mid-September.

A last minute reminder....

Geek Singles Night at 7pm on Saturday, July 19th!

If you're still looking for that special someone -- specifically, a special someone who appreciates the value of a natural 20 or has the complete run of Babylon 5 on DVD -- you're in luck! On Saturday, July 19th, SweetonGeeks will be bringing its Geek Singles Night to Pandemonium Books for an evening of fun, low-intensity mingling targeted squarely at people of the nerdish persuasion. The event is sponsored by the SweetonGeek.com, MENSA, Bawls G33kb33r and Geek Monthly Magazine, and will have food, snacks and raffle prizes!


The Dark Knight at 7:15pm on Sunday July 20th at the AMC Harvard Square 5!

I know, I know...most of you reading this have already seen the movie, but if you want to see it again, you can for only $8!  Just swing by the store and buy the passes!


Hope to see you there!

This is on Mom's behalf. She needs some supporting info to explain basic facts of life to neighbors who are not inclined to be cooperative about holding off on some spraying because it makes her sick and miserable.

Y'all who deal with such stuff, like her and me: please recommend some good basic info pages to look at, preferably written very simply and clearly.

Posts from anyone come by to argue that we're all deluded, and other argument bait, will be ruthlessly pruned. Fair warning.

The real satire in this month's New Yorker comes in its last pages, where David Denby does a piss-take on a critic upset by how loud and bright action films are:

In brief, Warner Bros. has continued to drain the poetry, fantasy, and comedy out of Tim Burton’s original conception for “Batman” (1989), completing the job of coarsening the material into hyperviolent summer action spectacle...it has a kicky sadism in scene after scene, which keeps you on edge and sends you out onto the street with post-movie stress disorder.

Ah the poetry of Tim Burton's Batman: Jack Nicholson mincing around an art museum to a third rate Prince songs while Kim Basinger stares mutely while the audience marvels at how little screen time the titular character merits.

The magazine missed perfection as it didn't assign the film to Anthony "Tina Fey is fat" Lane, who could have added a few creepy comments about Maggie Gyllenhaal's age and body.

For some reason, I can't stop laughing at today's Penny Arcade.

It has been a high crime to predict the death of the king. And yet, here I make such a prediction: my beloved Clovis, wise ruler of my computer life, will probably come to his end in 2008 Q3.

Those latter days will (most likely) see the release of the next generation of MacBook Pros, and so a general discounting of the current 2.5/2.6 GHz dual-core version. My employee, the WGU, will also have its back-to-school discounting in place. No, I will not go to the shiny new next generation: the latest iteration will be a huge enough upgrade as it was. And, time was, Clovis was one step below the bleeding edge, and he's still my favorite computer purchase of all time.

If the new generation does not come out in Q3 as predicted, I'm still doing it. I couldn't wait any longer; I keep catching myself looking up the MacBook Pro in the Apple Store. I'm writing this post right now to prevent myself doing something stupid like going into credit card debit for a shiny, SHINY new computer that will enable me to run around in Shattrath City with nary an fps slowdown. (Currently: 1 fps, maybe 2 frames a second if I'm lucky.)

Oh, those first six months are going to be beautiful... in three months. (Can he hold out, folks? Will HE?)

The Central Square Theatre is offering Pandemonium customers a $5 discount on tickets to its upcoming production "QED - An Evening with Richard Feynman," a one-man tour-de-force about one of the 20th century's most brilliant and eccentric scientists.

Written by Peter Parnell, "QED" runs from July 24th through August 3rd at the new Central Square Theater. The show will be followed by a discussion panel with various scientists, including Bob Jaffe, Marc Abrahams, David Kaiser, Owen Gingerich, Frank Wilczek, and Jerry Friedman. To take advantage of the discount offer, head over to Ovation Tickets and enter the discount code scifi20.

I, uh... may need a bit of hand holding here.

( school stuffs )

I dreamed that the Governator approved a huge budget for renovating California schools, including my alma mater. But every submission had to meet standards designed by Sunset magazine editors, who decided this was their chance to make every school a beautiful and elegant school. And everyone had to be really serious in submitting their proposals. If it looked like you were having any fun, your school could be stricken off for insufficient worthiness.

I got so annoyed I woke up.

Oh, look. Randall Monroe decided to be a geek asshole today.

Alan Sokal's literary criticism hoax is funny and all that stuff. However, it's hardly a problem unique to literary criticism, as demonstrated by the Bodganov brothers. Apparently the physics community is vulnerable to that sort of thing as well. Who'd have guessed?

The discussion thread is pretty good.

Originally published at Distractions. You can comment here or there.

No, I haven’t watched it yet (although the bit I did see was cute). But look! here’s a trailer for Watchmen! No, here it is! Or here!

Maybe that’s what’s clogging the tubes. Or maybe it’s just the weekend, and my Internet doesn’t like working the weekend.