But what about 5-year-old zombies?

I went down to Atlanta to visit friends and see Paul&Storm and Jonathan Coulton in concert. I hope to get around to writing about that, but first, a couple facts:

27

57%

You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm In Recovery

Found on Marvelous News:


First of all, Operation Hulk sounds like the Mad Lib General Ross fills out every morning at work:
"Hey, Samson. Give me an '-er' noun and your favorite pet."
"Um...'policer' and 'goldfish'?"
"Fine. Tell the men we're deploying at 1100 hours for Operation Hulk Policer Goldfish. Prepare the underwater officers. Agamemnon, I need a past tense verb and the name of someone at the table."
"Yawn... 'broke' and 'Glenn Talbot'."
"Perfect! Send word that, at 1230 hours, we move on Operation Hulk Broke Glenn Talbot. Poor man. Deserves my daughter, but that monster made that impossible. Betty: a gerund and an adverb."
"Daaaaaad...oh, fine. 'Moving' and 'Gratefully'."
"That'll do, I guess. Get the Hulkbusters ready by 1400 hours for Operation Hulk Moving Gratefully...uh...hmm. Oh! Okay, get Century 21 and Atlantic Van Lines on the phone. We need Banner's house cleared out and all his stuff shipped to the Hulkbuster base by Friday. Gets him out of our hair, am I right?"

Meanwhile, look at Hulk's hand in that picture: he got in a fight with Voldemort right before this was taken. Maybe that's the reason that he's farting noxious fumes: Hulk's body absorbs the Killing Curse and digests it, shooting the remnants out as a defense mechanism.

And what about those other indentations. Don't you hate it when you fall asleep on top of your teddy bear, heart and butterflies? I'm surprised he didn't have a keyboard one on his face, but then, why would Hulk fall asleep at a computer?

And while we're on the 'Why' question: Why are Spider- and Iron Man the physicians in attendance? I'd personally go with Doctor Strange and Mister Fantastic...you know, men with MDs, not just technically smart guys who probably think the heart is on the far right side of the ches...oh wait (looks at box art)...okay, maybe they know better than I do.

I do notice though that this game is meant to be played for 15 minutes. 15 whole minutes, huh? That sure is an entertaining game if you can take a good 20 minutes to pull it out, set up all the pieces explain the rules...and then it'll keep your 6-or-more-year-old entertained for half the time it takes to cook a pizza. Or, to be fair, as long as it'd take to watch an episode of almost any show on Adult Swim.

Okay, now we should open the box and look at the board itself.



And definitely click on the picture to see it full size.

Okay, so I'm going to try to guess what those are supposed to be. I assume I'll be hitting on at least a couple of their bad puns, but probably not all of them...
1) Missile Toe
2) Bear Foot
3) Sea An(kle)nemone
4) Never-Changes-Pants Crotch Sweat
5) The Bruce banner (get it? get it?)
6) Pulled Hamstring?
7) Butterflies In Hulk's Love Handles? Moth-Eaten Clothes?
8) Hulk's Heart Isn't In The Right Place
9) Shoulder Boombox? (Is that supposed to be a rib cage?)
10) Lightning Reflexes? Shooting Pain Up Your Left Arm? The Shocker? General Thunder Ross? The Thunder Of Mighty Guns? Waitwaitwait: it must be misplaced from his hands. It's Thunderclap.
11) Green Thumb
12) Form Of A Fist Made Of Ice...

I think my favorite, by far, is that apparent sea anemone. What the hell is that? From when Hulk went wading near the Great Barrier Reef? Or when he landed in the Danbury Aquarium? Ridiculous.

Random Song Select

I have been challenged!

My friend Ted posted this in his blog (and then emailed me a personal link to it as a pointed challenge).

A friend of his found a Photoshop game to keep graphically-inclined people occupied for hours. The game is to create an album cover using random elements.
Find a random phrase (using the Wikipedia Random Article function); that'll be the band name.
Find a random quote (using a random quote generator); the last four words of the last quote on the page will be the album title.
Find a random picture (using Flickr's Interesting Photos); the third photo will be the background image for the album.

Now build the album cover from those three pieces, making use of all your Photoshop skills.

I've been making them all night while I wait for other people or whenever I get a second. Here's what I came up with:

Timeline of Afghanistan is heavily influenced by Evanescence, Linkin Park and the entire Dollar Bin at your local Indie CD store. They feel that they've got a lot to be sorry about, sorry for, and sorry in so far as. Their new CD is a concept album based on what the drummer's troubled youth would have been like if he had tried just one more time to run away from home. Rider Specifications: four (4) bottles of L'Oreal Pox Black nail polish in each band member's dressing room, one (1) bowl of flowers and one (1) hairdryer plugged in next to said bowl.



The Lee County, Florida Sheriff's Office has been talking about putting out an album since 1983, when they first realized 3/4 of their officers had, at one time or another, learned how to play an instrument. It all came together when they needed to raise money to get to a crime-stoppers convention in Illinois and needed to make some money to afford plane tickets. Their first effort (and they had so much fun, they swear it won't be their last) includes their hit single, "Off The Cuffs," a tribute to Jimmy Buffet's music and Lee County's most notorious baddies. Rider Specifications: For the show to go on, there must be at least 30 kids under the age of 12 and/or 40 senior citizens over 60 in the audience.



Fur Seal plays Death Metal with no concern for the fact that a good 95% of the Adult Swim show Metalocalypse has been directly lifted from footage from their episode of Behind The Music. Their lead singer's name is Körgin Billy. That's not a typo or a pseudonym; his parents gave him that name at birth...along with his abdominal scars. Rider Specifications: Someone for the entire band to simultaneously hate, otherwise, they'll turn on each other pre-concert like a pack of rabid opossums.



Anneli Jäätteenmäki's Cabinet is a Swedish supergroup, made up of former members of Ace of Base, Abba, The Cardigans, The Hives and The Hellacopters, from before any of the groups became famous. The lead singer has a crush on Ian Anderson, and she hides his name in every one of the band's songs: anagrams, acrostics, or just using the string of letters '-ian' at the ends of words like 'Canadian' and 'Edwardian.' In fact, she's hidden his name twice on the cover of this newest release; Christ, she's like a demented Highlights editor. Rider Specifications: An open cash bar. Yes, it actually uses that phrase. Most venues assume it means they want to mix their own drinks and leave the money on the counter. No one's complained yet.



Command History likes to think of themselves as Weezer-meets-Barenaked-Ladies, but really they're just a cheap Smash Mouth knockoff. You know, like Sugar Ray. Rider Specifications: Glasses tape. They only wear their glasses on stage; they've all had Lasik. Really, guys? Really?



Varandinha is former Bollywood actress Varandinha Rajadhyaksha branching out to achieve mainstream international diva status. The only way to describe her music is kitschily catchy. Imagine if Shakira had been an Indian princess, and you're almost there. Rider Specifications: Two (2) bottles of suntan lotion, One (1) copy of the latest Danielle Steel paperback, four (4) steak kabobs... she should probably just kiss Richard Gere and get it over with.



Château LaFleur is an all-bisexual 7-member French punk band that prides itself on the sheer number of permutations for in-band relationships it has to offer the media. They also are steadfastly anti-SETI, a sentiment echoed on their new CD. They believe that if/when humans and extraterrestrials talk/meet, we should let it be on their terms and stop wasting all this money on clogging up intergalactic communication frequencies. Also, they hated Jody Foster in Contact. Rider Specifications: Wall-to-wall pillow mats, Jacques Brel over the intercom, and 2 hours of uninterrupted sex time before and after each performance.



Wow. My bands spread out quite a bit, didn't they? That's show biz for you.

1) Pata Pata Pon, 2) Pata Pata Pon, 3) Pata Pata Pon 4) Pata Pata Pon

Every time my Patapons go into Fever mode, their call and response sounds like they're saying "Let the bodies hit the floor."

A Little Less Conversation

While talking with my friend David the other day, we got to discussing our favorite movies, as friends are wont to do periodically. As always, I brought up the fact that sets my opinion apart from that of the rest of the civilized world: I really love the movie Van Helsing.



I like the movie-monster pastiche it presents, enjoy both the male and female leads (Hugh Jackman & Kate Beckinsale), applaud the true-to-Shelley handling of Frankenstein's Monster, get into the action hardcore, and feel on the whole that it does a good job of transporting a James Bond flick to the 1800s.

I do understand that the movie has several glaring flaws (e.g. Dracula's overacting, the insanity of the subplots, and Kate Beckinsale being an 1800s female who dresses like Madonna and acts like Victoria Beckham), but I forgave the movie all those faults because it looked so goddamn awesome.

I mock movies like it's my job, but this is one of those ones I give a free pass because it gives me all the elements of the most kickass movie ever, and it doesn't give me time during the movie to realize that half of the reasons I like it are my own extrapolations from actual scenes.

That's right: I like Van Helsing partially because I have added to it in my head, making it a better movie by creating new dialog, plot points and action sequences. And I love the movie more every time I watch it...because each viewing means I get to make up more.

Now that I've defended my position pretty soundly, I'll return to the topic at hand: talking about Van Helsing with David. David said that the primary reason he could not even make himself watch the movie is that, when he thinks of Van Helsing, he thinks of the old man who stoically defeated Dracula. In other words, Peter Cushing:



He therefore finds it distasteful and/or untenable that Van Helsing would be a thirty-something action hero. In other words: Hugh Jackman:



To which I replied (in all seriousness), "I can see that. It'd be like if someone's putting out a Sherlock Holmes movie, and you find out it's starring Jason Statham."



Jason Statham, star of the Transporter films, Crank, and (shudder) the DungeonSiege movie -- the man I would consider this generation's Bruce Willis-- playing Sherlock Holmes (also played at one point by Peter Cushing, incidentally), the legendary proponent of Mind Over Matter, Brain Over Brawn, who usually had Watson along simply so somebody else could get powder burns on their hands. Ridiculous and analogous, right?

We agreed on that point, and a few moments went by... at which point I realized that I really, really wanted to see that movie. Not Van Helsing, but:



What a kickass Sherlock Holmes movie that would be. Logical, yes. Willing to bash a few Moriarty-goon skulls to get enough breathing room to use his own, Hells yeah. Able to identify mud by color, chemical content and region of origin, true. Able to pleasure femme-fatale Irene Adler (maybe sexed up in this version to Irina Adlokov) and good girl Mary Russell alike,

Watson could be Mos Def or Paul Rudd or someone similar, and the Baker Street Irregulars would be a teenage street gang led by Shia Labeouf. Moriarty...okay, I'll keep Dennis Hopper as a fallback option, but top choice: Stephen Dorff.



Because even though he's not really that big a name around Hollywood, he may have been the one decent thing about the movie Blade (oh, all right, Jeff, the wall of fetuses was also pretty cool).

Now that I've cemented plans for that movie, obviously, we need others to be similarly directed and cast.

Let's see:
Van Helsing --> Hugh Jackman (today's Kurt Russell)
Sherlock Holmes --> Jason Statham (today's Bruce Willis)
...

Hmm...how about something for Clive Owen (today's Mel Gibson...in...in a good way though)…



They’re making a Hobbit movie, right? Let him be Gandalf. Let’s see those Middle Earth baddies try to pick on the short guys when they’ve got One-step-better-than-Viggo-Mortensen at their backs.



And for Vin Diesel (today's Sylvester Stallone)...



Obviously, we need an Albert Einstein flick. Just before the climax, he realizes he’ll never escape from Germany if he’s got wild, poofy Doc Brown hair, so he shaves it all off and kicks some Nazi ass in:



And something for Daniel Craig (today's Michael Biehn)...



Let's see...some classic role usually played by an older man that stereotypically calls for urbanity and stiff sensibility, but that Daniel Craig can endow with action and bring back to the forefront of an awesome-factor-starved viewing public's consciousness... Oh! I know!

In-The-Field Manual 1: Emails

And Now, a Simon FitzKit In-The-Field Manual...

E-Mail Addresses:
Several Varieties That Just Do NetWork For Me

In the olden days of radio, television and Commodore 64 computers, there were only two modes of personal communication: telephones and letters.

This is not to say that talking face to face, HAM operating, Morse code, smoke signals, flashlight-blinking, drawing The Dancing Men, using Navajos in wartime, and body language were not around, per se...it's just that for purposes of simplicity, this reporter will not be counting them as 'modes' of communication, but rather as 'medians'. A fine distinction that all lovers of mathematics are sure to appreciate. Tangent complete.

Both telephonics and epistulature allowed for decent-sized messages to be delivered from sender to recipient in a fairly timely manner, and this was due to one thing and one thing only:

STANDARDIZED CONTACT INFORMATION.

When you found yourself wanting to contact a business associate of personal acquaintance via telephone, you simply rotary-spun their seven uniquely-stringed digits and added three more if they lived in some distant mecca like Chatanooga or Newport News.

And when you put your feet up on the desk and dictated to Miss Maxwell a four-page editorial that the Post never printed --much to the paper and the general public's loss-- you made sure she typed out an envelope with FIRST LINE: Name, SECOND LINE: Street, and THIRD LINE: City, State and Zip Code...possibly adding a fourth line if the letter was to be Attention of a particular individual.

However, today, the youths use "E-Mail."

Short for "Electronic Mailing System Using Computers Instead Of A Postal Service," E-Mails were created to make communication speedier and more readily available for perusal. However, somewhere along the way, people... got Stupid.

Take a look at these examples:

unycornwomyn@hotmail.com

Obviously, 'unicornwomyn' and 'unicornwomon' had already been taken. And while it may be more genderally acceptable to spell 'womyn' with a 'y' instead of an 'a', there can be little argument that horses with a horn in their foreheads don't normally try to buck patriarchal oppression. People aren't going to easily understand your wacky alternative spelling any more than they do your wacky alternative lifestyle, so if your first choice was taken, change words, not letters.

shtkckr@netscape.com

Same thing to you, sir, with an added warning. Deleting letters is as confusing as changing them, and your choice of words makes contacting you that much more difficult. "Yes, please do E-Mail me, prospective employer. My E-Mail address is shit-kicker...only leave out all the vowels...at netscape dot com. What's your E-Ma... oh I shouldn't E-Mail you, you'll E-Mail me? Oh. Oh, right then. Good afternoon."

henryrichardforrest-marchester@gmail.com

Now, this young man went with the usually valid and admirable tack of making his E-Mail his name. However, he got a little carried away with himself... as it were. 'henrymarchester' would have been fine. So too would have been 'henry.marchester' or 'henry_marchester' or if that hyphenated last name is so important, go with just 'forrest-marchester'...but the full-on johnjacobjingleheimerschmidt treatment is a trifle too much. Just think of the poor PTA member who compiles the school's E-Mail list into a handy booklet. Think of how hard she has to work to format those columns to fit on one page-width. Think of how it takes more time to write your E-Mail than it takes most people to write the alphabet. Think on that, Henry Richard Forrest-Marchester...Think.

thetimehascomethewalrussaid@earthlink.net

Too long. No clever phrase is worth the annoyance of typing it out over and over every time you have other things to talk about. Save that kind of witty one-liner for use as the case-sensitive password to your first apartment's Wi-Fi connection. Or, alternatively, learn embroidery and make yourself another be-sentenced pillow for your drawing room.

wierdyoghurt@excite.com

Hey! Brighteyes! Learn to spell. Meanwhile, your doppleganger over at 'weirdyoghurt@excite.com' has been spamfiltering all your party E-Vites...or has she been...accepting them? Om-in-ous-Chord!

bulbasaur494@comic.com

Trust me on this, it's not worth it to only be the 494th person at comic.com to want to be contacted via 'bulbasaur.' Regardless of how kicking and radical his vine-whip attack may be, your friends aren't going to remember what number ticket you pulled in the E-Mail queue. If you've got so little fear of public humiliation, why not 'iambulbasaur' or 'hugabulbasaur' or 'bulbabulba'... or even 'istillwatchpokemon'. All equally pathetic but infinitely easier to recall.

angelinajolie@aol.com

No. You're not Angelina Jolie, and you're not going to trick me again. NEXT.

ar653020@appstate.edu

Now, this wasn't young AR's fault. It's the school's idiocy. "Want to email your classmates? All you need to know are their first and last initials...and a random 6-digit sequence." Plans are probably in the works to make these emails more readily available and more easily attributable to their owners, but that road, unfortunately, leads to bar-code tattoo parlors.

basgegcon@gmail.com

This reporter sees what you did there. "Scrambled 'EGGS' in 'BACON'"...scrambled eggs and bacon. Very clever. It's short, sweet, and at gmail.com. This reporter is all for it...except for the anagramming of EGGS into gobblety-gook. For you see, you can't tell people what your E-Mail address is. "It's scrambled EGGS 'n BACON at gmail dot com"? No. That gives away your joke, and your doppleganger over at scrambledeggsandbacon@gmail.com will steal all your friends. "Anagram EGGS and put it inside BACON"? Too vague. "Anagram EGGS and put it after the 'a' in BACON"? We still don't know what gibberish anagram of EGGS to use. "Bahs-gehg-cohn"? That's the most promising route, but try saying it aloud and imagine having to transcribe it.

Oh, prattle. Now this reporter's just needlessly nitpicking; basgegcon@gmail.com is possible the most bully E-Mail considered to date. Way to go, Basgegcon, you've won my admiration, and the official Simon FitzKit Piranha Trophy!



Until next time, this is Simon FitzKit...IN THE FIELD!

DON'T EAT AT JOE'S

Found via Sketch:

FROM WIKIPEDIA:
*****************************
A Hobson's choice is a free choice in which only one option is offered, and one may refuse to take that option. The choice is therefore between taking the option or not taking it. The phrase is said to originate from Thomas Hobson (1544–1630), a livery stable owner at Cambridge, England who, in order to rotate the use of his horses, offered customers the choice of either taking the horse in the stall nearest the door—or taking none at all. It is analogous to the expression "my way or the highway".
...
In the 1980s there existed a restaurant popular with students in Cambridge (England). Its name was Hobson's Choice. The menu was... Dish of the Day.
*****************************

Well, if they could get away with one restaurant so blatantly based on an obscure-reference gimmick, obviously, I can get away with far more than that.

Fine Dining For The Well-Informed


Come on down to MORTON'S FORK, the cozy little country cafe that's just off the beltway! Wikipedia says, "Morton's Fork is an expression that describes a choice between two equally unpleasant alternatives." And here at MORTON'S FORK, our chef serves up all sorts of equally unpleasant menu options! Scrambled eggs drenched in vinegar! Peanut butter and banana soup! A goblet of menstrual blood! So many things on the menu, you'll have a hard time deciding. Because they're just that nasty.
PS: That logo is from the actual MORTON'S FORK restaurant. Yeah, Britain actually creates these things that I want to make fun of. God bless you, United Kingdom.


Or try THE STRANGE LOOP for some slightly different Italian cuisine. Wikipedia says, "A strange loop arises when, by moving up or down through a hierarchical system, one finds oneself back where one started." Yes, stop on by THE STRANGE LOOP, the home of the bottomless Spaghetti Bowl!


Or what about THE GOLDEN HAMMER, that fancy Chinese place right around the corner from wherever you live? Wikipedia says, "A golden hammer is any tool, technology, paradigm, snake oil, buzzword or similar whose proponents enthusiastically sing its praises. They predict that it will solve multiple problems, including some for which it is obviously not suitable." Are you hungry? Thirsty? Tired? Bad dancer? Looking for love? Trying to better your backhand? Need to purchase some silver polish but only believe in the barter system and only have Odyssey of the Mind pins to trade? Then order the mu shu pork. We so good it hurt.


And for dessert, stop on by HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO, where it's always Buy-One-Get-One-Free Day at the bakery!

...Actually, that last one would probably be pretty damn popular.