Letters from a brass watch man

So in the vein of the now-famous Obama Hope poster (pictured above; well, at least Internet famous) come the inevitable photo manipulations and parodies, some of which are quite good.

HOPE! (, Bob)
HOPE! (with a crowbar)
NOPE!
POPE! (Scary, scary Palpatine pope...)
BORK!'
DOOM!
ANIME!
And finally, MARXISM!

Oh, hey - speaking again of NaNoWriMo, has anyone else noticed the lineup of authors they've got for the Pep Talks this year? Sci-fi guru Piers Anthony, Phillip Pullman and - here's for me the big one - Brian Jacques. (REDWALL ROCKS NO I DO NOT WISH TO HEAR ABOUT ITS INCIPIENT SYMBOLIC/OBVIOUS RACISM THAT IS MY CHILDHOOD YOU ARE HURTING STOP IT STOP IT NOW I WILL DESTROY YOU).

Ahem. I also note with some interest that they had a pep talk from Neil Gaiman last year. Score. Apologies if this isn't news to anyone more connected to the NaNoWriMo "scene," but I thought it was interesting, anyway.

There's probably a "fisher-of-men" joke in here somewhere, but that's honestly not my bag. I'll leave that one to all the disaffected Catholics out there. :)

Read this. Please. You will thank me for it later.

Taken from the AIM Dashboard just a few minutes ago. Apparently, being social is now defined as talking about celebrities with complete strangers. Christ. No wonder conversation is a dead art.

You know, there's a lot of truth in this.

... "There is no such thing as evolution. Only a list of animals that Admiral Adama has allowed to live."

Hmm.... new Internet meme, maybe?

So I haven't talked about the first two acts of the brilliant Josh Whedon (though his brother Zack is involved somehow?) online musical Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. (Though, man, who the hell did they get to do the web design for them? Maybe it was the Hulu people who did it. But in that case, couldn't they have picked someone who knows... you know... about tableless design? And other things that are kind of basic for an operation like this?) Anyway, my newfound web elitism aside, it's brilliant. The music, honestly, is fantastic; did anyone think that Neil Patrick Harris could sing? Because I really wouldn't have guessed.

Anyway, so, yes. Watch this. BSG's on hiatus; it's not like you have anything better to watch anyway.

... and also, business homework is boring.

This from Cabinet of Wonders: San Marco Clock Tower, Venice. Yes, this is somebody's living room. Yes, that is the pendulum for the gigantic clock tower directly above said living room.

... is this.

Cybernetics FTW.

I ask you – have you ever seen a scarier face than this?



This from CNN.com: N.Y. millionaire gets 11 years in prison for enslaving workers. The first line: "A millionaire who inflicted years of abuse on two Indonesian housekeepers held as virtual slaves in her Long Island mansion was sentenced Thursday to 11 years in prison."

My God. It's like she deliberately set out to become a real-life Cruella De Vil.

While looking for writing tools to get me past a certain block I seem to have picked up today (long story), ended up coming across a website I'd nearly forgotten about: They Fight Crime! My favorite examples:

He's a notorious Catholic dwarf from a doomed world. She's a blind cigar-chomping detective who can talk to animals. They fight crime!

He's a gun-slinging gay waffle chef with a mysterious suitcase handcuffed to his arm. She's an elegant antique-collecting lawyer with a birthmark shaped like Liberty's torch. They fight crime!

He's an immortal Jewish farmboy with acid for blood. She's a hard-bitten renegade mechanic who hides her beauty behind a pair of thick-framed spectacles. They fight crime!

(Don't spam the contact form, you'll make it cry. That's what I should have called the last post. Totally blocked up on that last time. Can you tell?)

Anyway, it's funny how I only caught on a year or so after the fact that I went to college in what is, undoubtedly, the really frakking scary part of Ohio. Take for example this wonderful little report from Mount Vernon, the town five minutes down the road from Kenyon: CNN: Teacher accused of burning cross on student's arm.

I swear. A mom-and-pop supermarket called Neff's and a cemetery on campus. It was like four years solid of noir nightmare fuel.

Though I owe you all an update, I must first ask:
Is this not, in fact, awesome?

Lots of cool stuff going on in the news that I haven't been paying attention too. Haven't even watched Obama's speech yet. Intending to catch up today...

More proof that I could never be a web cartoonist... EVER. Jeez oh man. All that work -- that's just downright amazing. Curious types can find the final strip here, by the way.