Wow. Barack Obama is apparently now following my updates on Twitter. To which I say:

Dude, don't you have, like, more important things to be spending your time on?

Although, to say that I'm beyond flattered is an understatement.

And yay for John Edwards for giving his support to Obama. I very much hope that when Obama takes the White House, there will be room for Edwards somewhere. Vice President, hopefully, or Attorney General at the very least.

Oh, and just in case you didn't know:

This will be a bit long and rambly, so please bear with me.

Officially in the inter-term break now, and though I had a workshop and meeting on campus yesterday, the rest of my week is free. I plan to laze about some, write some, and prepare for Term 2 some, possibly in that order. Janet's off today, so we headed to IKEA with her mum and after a nice breakfast of Swedish pancakes, hard-boiled egg, and carrot cake, wandered about the store noting pieces of fürni or various decorative bits that we could use in our as-yet-nonexistent own flat.

The fiction-writing sabbatical last week went well: the first two days were instruction and activities, and the last three were critique workshops of student stories. Just thinking out loud here, but I may change this format when I do it again at the end of Term 3; for one thing, the stories that were submitted were extremely short (I think the longest was three pages), and were almost exclusively first drafts. This meant hurried work, and often ending the story far too soon; I have no problems with flash fiction, as long as they are complete and developed. For next time, I think I'll approach it more as a process, where we're focusing on different aspects throughout the week, with plenty of time in class to actually work on their stories, so that they end up with a good complete story by the end of the week.

I also noticed that when I asked direct questions, more often than not I got back complete silence. This occasionally happens in my regular classes as well (though I'm trying to get them out of that habit). Part of it, I'm guessing, is that I was a new teacher for most of them, and they didn't feel comfortable enough to engage in discussion. But I definitely think that another part is as a result of the corporate culture so prevalent here, not just in the school but in the whole country. The kids are so afraid of getting the wrong answer that they don't speak up at all; I can understand this to some extent (it's a natural feeling), but I really try to get them to understand that sometimes the best way to learn is through failure. If you're always right, or if you don't give yourself a chance to be wrong, you're never really learning anything.

Okay, what else? A trip to Kinokuniya yesterday yielded Daniel Alarcón's novel Lost City Radio (which they were holding behind the desk for me, and which I'd ordered almost immediately after finishing his collection War by Candlelight), plus an added unexpected bonus: Neil Gaiman's short novel for kids, Odd and the Frost Giants (which, not being in the UK, I was expecting not to be able to read, but there it was on a display with other kids' and YA fiction, for the equivalent cover price of £1.00, with no import fees added, a very nice additional surprise; I started the book last night (around 100 pp. in large type), and finished it this morning).

The plugged-in krewe over at io9 reveal the news that sequels to two of my beloved childhood skiffy films are in development: Tron and The Last Starfighter. All I can say to the filmmakers is this: please don't try to be all cute and self-referential and hip, don't play to the target demographic because most of them probably haven't seen the originals, and don't make your CGI too slick in comparison. Part of why I still love both Tron and The Last Starfighter is their very early adoption of computer graphics, and the unapologetic integration with live-action; they may look cheesy by today's standards, but the look is an important part of each story. Tron takes place within the realm of computers and The Last Starfighter is basically about a video game that turns out to be real. Chunky, true, but done that way for an aesthetic reason (and not just because of the limitations of CGI at that time, although this is indeed part of it). If you watch Revenge of the Sith and immediately follow it with A New Hope, your brain has to twist itself in knots to reconcile the fact that these are sequential movies, because they look so incredibly different, down even to the quality of the film stock.

All right, enough blather. Back to your regularly-scheduled programming.

From the ASIFA-Hollywood Annie Awards on 8th Feb. 2008: The voice cast of Spongebob Squarepants (Tom Kenny, Bill Fagerbakke, Carolyn Lawrence, and Rodger Bumpass) dub their voices onto scenes from Casablanca, Singin' in the Rain and The Godfather. Made of pure uncut awesome.

I seem to have gotten marrael officially hooked on Doctor Who. Seriously, it's the fastest transition from "Why are you wasting your time on that?" to "OMG how do I find this episode, and did you see what was posted on Outpost Gallifrey about . . ?" geekout I've ever seen.

Mwa-ha-ha!

Mine is an evil laugh.

Speaking of The Tick, here's a clip from "That Mustache Feeling," one of my favorite episodes. The seventies guitar as The Tick saunters down the street cracks me up every time I see this; Uncle Doug was truly inspired for this little ditty.

Warning: audio is a bit loud in the clip, so you might want to turn down the volume before hitting the play button.

Thirteen years ago at a family reunion in Connecticut (it may have been Christmas, or possibly Thanksgiving, or maybe just summer vacation), my uncle, musician and composer Doug Katsaros, played a tape of cartoons for us of a new show that featured his original music. The cartoon was goofy and satirical and hilarious, and we couldn't stop watching (I think he had the first six episodes on that tape). It featured superheroes, but no superheroes I'd ever heard of; sometimes ineffective, sometimes causing more destruction than the villains they were hoping to stop. A fantastic send-up of the entire genre, and it made me howl with laughter.

The show, of course, was The Tick.

After that, I followed the show religiously, first on Fox, then on Comedy Central. It quickly became one of my favorites. During a marathon, I taped something like ten shows in a row, and every so often when I needed a pick-me-up, I'd put the tape in, and the enthusiasm of the Big Blue Goon would put me in a better mood; sadly, as with many of my things, I had to get rid of the tape before the big move, although I notice that both seasons one and two are now on DVD.

Anyway, this is all to say that when Carolyn Kellogg mentioned the theme of "headless" in her call for entries for Hot Metal Bridge #2, my brain went straight to that goofy cartoon show. Thankfully, the editors at HMB took the story I sent them, and the issue went live today.

My contribution: "Screwhead."

I would often, when watching the cartoon series “The Tick,” wonder about a certain henchman, the one with a giant thumbscrew for a head. Not fortunate enough to warrant his own super-villain moniker, he is simply named Dean. Gifted with incredible strength used for the bidding of City crime boss Chairface Chippendale, Dean can go toe-to-toe with The Tick, bending a steel ladder around the hero’s frame, or holding him in a bear hug while other villains pummel the Great Blue Hope in the stomach. But Dean is always defeated, usually outwitted or outfoxed, because having a giant thumbscrew for a head is not really conducive to a life of intellectual rigor.

Probably my least categorizable piece of fiction: part-memoir, part-fanfic, part-pomo-self-examination, part-working-class-lament. And all in 1200 words! My first publication in a more "literary" venue, and it shares electrons with contributions from George Saunders, Brian Evenson, Daphne Gottlieb, Roy Kesey, Kevin Moffett, Christopher Bakken, Kate Burgo, Erin Fitzgerald, Tod Goldberg, Kevin O'Cuinn, Jack Pendarvis, Justin Runge, Richard Siken, and Patsy Zettler.

If you're interested, do that clicky thing.

Spoooooooooooooon!

A 5:40 clip from the Robot Chicken Star Wars special. Hilarious.

Update: Well, that was fast; the YouTube clip has already been taken down. However, you can watch the special in its entirety at the Robot Chicken website.

1. "The Great Plastic Bag Plague" by Tara Lohan at AlterNet. We are drowning in a sea of plastic bags, and some of the statistics here are just mindboggling: "The Algalita Marine Research Foundation learned that 'broken, degraded plastic pieces outweigh surface zooplankton in the central North Pacific by a factor of 6-1. That means six pounds of plastic for every single pound of zooplankton.' Which means, when birds and sea animals or looking for food -- more often, they are finding plastic."

2. the_flea_king introduces us to Dr. Julius T. Roundbottom at the exquisite new site Clockpunk.com (syndicated at dr_roundbottom). Jeremy has outdone himself once again with the presentation and content here, whish is just amazing, and pushes all of my geeksquee buttons.

3. "It's capitalism or a habitable planet - you can't have both" by Robert Newman at Guardian Unlimited (via willshetterly). This opinion piece is over a year old, but still an interesting and timely read. You'll have to decide for yourself if he's right.

4. MonkeyBrain Books is having a September two-for-one sale. "Buy any book direct from us through www.monkeybrainbooks.com at the regular price, and receive another book of equal or lesser value free of charge." And they take PayPal. The new Hal Duncan novella, Escape From Hell! is looking mighty tempting...

5. Keepon, the squashy yellow dancing robot, dances to Spoon's "Don't You Evah." Awesome. Cute dancing robots and music by Spoon; what more do you need?

The ElectriClerk (photo by Gregg Roth)

The Boston Globe has just posted a wonderful article by Peter Bebergal on "The Age of Steampunk" (via everywhere, may require free registration). It goes into the literary origins of the term and genre, and does a good job describing the steampunk aesthetic and its appeal.

I mean, just look at the photo above. Andrew H. Leman's The ElectriClerk, inspired by Terry Gilliam's film Brazil, was made from a 1988 Macintosh SE computer, a c. 1923 Underwood typewriter, a fresnel lens, and assorted mechanical and electronic parts. Damn gorgeous. How could you not love it?

"Knights Of Cydonia" by UK band Muse. (via JeffV)

A kick-ass steampunk CG-animated short from Blur Studio. (via Brass Goggles)

(Link here if the embedding doesn't show up.)

Both from ThinkGeek today:


USB Memory Watch


TARDIS 4 Port USB Hub

Hey, you could plug the watch...into the TARDIS! And d00d! They're both time-related! Ah, I keel me!

New from Threadless. Ha!

Presenting the CORSAIR Ergonomic Keyboard for Pirates:



(via JJA)

EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! I! AM! DELICIOUS!

Newly reprinted and available from Threadless:



This one cracks me up. I also like how it requires not only knowledge of art history, but also of geek culture.

In my excitement, I couldn't find anyone to take a photo, so this one is in front of the bathroom mirror, and everything is, naturally, backwards.

Yay! My three Threadless tees arrived today, and they all fit perfectly! W00ts!

Awesome. (via Warren Ellis)

I've only seen one episode of Doctor Who (back when I was a wee lad, on PBS, one of the Tom Baker episodes, since I definitely remember the scarf), and I've felt a bit deprived because of that, especially when folks talk about the new episodes out right now.

But I did always dig that theme song. This afternoon, for background music I was listening to Dean Gray's excellent mashup album American Edit (an album I hadn't listened to in a while, and one which made me shell out my hard-earned cyberbucks to buy Green Day's original album American Idiot (which is on heavy rotation on the ol' iPod; are you listening, Warner Brothers?)), and up came track 2, "Doctor Who on Holiday," which combines "Holiday" with The Timelords' "Doctorin' the Tardis."

And this naturally led me to YouTube to find the original title sequence for the television show. Among the many intros was the above video, produced sometime in the 1980s, and which features musician and composer Peter Howell at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop creating the theme song with syths and other electronic equipment before the advent of midi systems or multi-track software. A really interesting behind-the-scenes look into how the theme song of the most popular British SF show evar was (re)made.

A couple of weeks ago, I was trying to decide between all the groovy t-shirts at Threadless. Today, I got an email newsletter from them, including an announcement of two reprints available again. I decided to snag both of these, plus one from the earlier list:

Haikus are easy but...
Nothing Rhymes With Orange
Robot Dance Contest



They should be here in a few weeks. Hee!