Villains are people too

 Links!
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Horowitz

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek

http://assange.rt.com/horowitz-zizek-episode-two/ 
The second episode of Assange's show

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gTn323p-w8BJzR8bo9T-tD1jN78A?docId=CNG.ca8bef17738db813c03c40c8f4ba1ed3.321

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2012/04/discovery-channel-crashes-plane-for-documentary.html
Fuck planes

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/google-aware-of-data-scoop-20120429-1xsxx.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6uHR90Sq6k

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2012/05/20125315401489187.html

http://www.writingexcuses.com/2011/10/02/writing-excuses-6-18-hollywood-formula/


When villains are too evil

I first noticed this in The Cowboy Way. Woody Harrelson, Jack Bauer, and Winston Zeddimore are rescuing the daughter of an old friend. Said daughter has been kidnapped by a sweatshop owner who specialized in smuggling illegal aliens into New York and then enslaving them. At this point in the movie he's been brought low. His work is gone, he's been exposed, but he could get away and come back for revenge...

If he weren't so dedicated to hanging onto that one girl. He refuses to let her go, even after she becomes a liability. This is what I mean by villains needing their own goals, instead of just opposing the heroes. His goal is to get away, but since he's the bad guy he has to act stupidly evil.

The same is true for Gaston. When Maurice bursts in claiming Belle has been kidnapped by a Beast with huge fangs, fur, so on, no one thinks, "hey, maybe it's a wolf." Worse, seeing as they all think Maurice is crazy, Gaston never even looks for Belle.

      ...that crazy old coot is Belle's father, and his sanity's only so-... Holy shit, I think he killed her and dumped her body in the woods.

Even putting aside the wolf, there's a reasonable chance Maurice, whom everyone agrees is nuts, killed Belle and is trying to divert suspicion. If Gaston were any less lazy, he could track Belle down (as the bar just sang about how awesome at hunting he is) and probably save her before she decides Beast is her friend. Instead, he went straight to villainy.

Throw it into the sun

Links!

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/04/24/north-korea-threatens-to-reduce-seoul-to-ashes-in-less-than-four-minutes-as-tensions-escalate_n_1448057.html
They are adorable

http://phys.org/news/2012-04-japan-astronomers-distant-galaxy-cluster.html

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11845.htm
An interesting excerpt from a book I now want.

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0657.html

Time travel makes me right

I is not a clever man, so I lied. I can't do two shows a week (trying somehow almost prevented me from doing one) so it's back to the old format. The problem is a combination of music (I had twenty songs lined up, listened to them again, and hated all of them; end your songs early! You have a great tune, but ten minutes is too fucking long!) Also, Bill Summerson is dead and recuperating in Florida. He should be back in a week or two.



No news, since Bill is a dead and lazy bastard, so extra links! Many piss me off.

Links

http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/15/opinion/coker-book-publishing/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn

This chaps my ass. Itunes and various conspire to fix prices on ebooks to prevent  prices from getting too low (courtesy of Amazon) and to encourage print sales. Which makes Amazon the bad guy? Ebooks are necessarily cheaper because they are not a physical product - for the same reason an album on digital download and on cd are not priced the same. When I see an ebook priced at $25 I laugh and find another author who doesn't have his head up his ass.

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/16/150568478/christian-conservatives-poverty-not-government-business
Who gives a shit what Jesus would do. I'm gonna go ahead and call it that no one cares what the Bible says. If Jesus is in favor of absolute capitalism, dirty communism, or the hokey pokey, who gives a shit. Why is this a subject for debate? I'm good with the overall philosophical message, but how many social, economic, and military lessons can we take from a dead man? Say it with me: if Jesus wants something specific done, he can come down here and do it himself. (I am reading Paradise Lost and what surprises me most is how lazy God is. He knows everything, but can't get off his ass to stop the guy he created from corrupting his new creation. I guess Jersey Shore was on).

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/16/150563229/double-take-toons-doomsday-drones 
a good example of why political cartoons are dumber than a box of hammers. The first isn't so bad - Obama's drone happy! Fair enough. But did you need to put all the fucking markers on there? Did you have no faith in your audience?
And the bottom one makes no fucking sense. What the fuck is wrong with his teeth and fingers? What is the goddam message here?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDLXPpooA18&feature=player_embedded
I mock Anderson Cooper specifically, and all the news outlets, for being useless blabbing lumps, but I have to agree with this guy (http://www.salon.com/2012/04/18/attacks_on_rt_and_assange_reveal_much_about_the_critics/singleton/?miaou) that sometimes mocking them doesn't really do their uselessness justice. The day Assange (who had the baffling label of traitor, despite not being American) aired his show, CNN spent all day mooning over Dick Clark's corpse. I'm sure he was great, but did you really need to call in the guy who walked Clark's dog that one time?

Late Facts: I've never seen a birth, so I picture it as a disgusting slip-n-slide.

Superlate Facts: Codex Alera is like Narnia, but with rape and crucifixions. 

I is not a clever man

Second try, pretty sure I don't have any spelling errors. Ye can enbiggen the text below, make it full-screen and fanciful.

Murder-Whisper Free

Doing two of these in a week is harder than I expected.





Bill mentions it in the News, but am I the only other person creeped out that someone put a bounty on Zimmerman's head? Is that something we do now? If so, I could get out of my student loans easy-peasy. I wouldn't be able to pay the bounty, of course, which would create a vicious cycle of bounties placed and lack of funds generating more bounties. We could make a bounty economy, guys.

Late facts: the creepy girl in Case 39 is the same one from Silent Hill. I'd worry she's being type-cast, but she's being type-cast as the devil. And she fits the part.

Superlate facts: I'll upload a short-short story (in pdf form if I can figure it out) on Saturday. If ye want it, you can have it.

Special Edition 1

Links:

http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/a/anwar_al_awlaki/index.html

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/04/09/150250294/study-warns-of-autism-risk-for-children-of-obese-mothers
Holy shit, he wasn't kidding.


Sometimes I write weird things. Here's an excerpt from an epic poem I may or may not be working on, but is awesome nonetheless.

"No!" he cried, to an incandescent, hostile sky,
"anywhere but here, lest we fall under his mur'drous eye"
But as he turned to run, he found his 'scape route gone,
the path blocked by those perfect, monstrous
creatures, resembling humans only in form.

Their teeth flashed in ugly grins, devoid of all sympathy,
 his arms they pinned to his sides under that hateful sky.
in the midst of whirling scree,

He and the captain they bore, to their leader's
feet, to send them soon toward the furthest shore,
but no, he exclaimed, pain is their fate, their death
must wait, until I fully settle the score.

"Liar!" the hero proclaimed, full of fear,
yet his manliness maintained, in the face
of losing himself forevermore. "Your chance you
threw away, and on this desolate rock you'll
stay, for failing to heed the kind advice of
my well-loved leader, you deserve this fate and more.

For if you had only stayed, comfortable,
and out of the way, on the peaceful planet
where you were placed-"
At this the mad chief grew wroth, and with
great strength, picked the tiny Russian up,
and with full hate glittering in his eyes,
screamed his madness, triumph, revenge,
so that all the world must listen,
toward the sky:
"This IS Ceti-Alpha Five!"

Kill da wabbit

After a two week hiatus, that we may never know the cause for, the show returns.





The links:
http://blogs.aljazeera.com/asia/2012/03/19/no-one-asked-their-names

http://www.businessinsider.com/rogue-shooting-sparks-disgust-from-service-members-2012-3

http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Thompson,_Jr
I used this one to prove that there are good people who try to do the right thing. As easy as it is to sometimes believe the world is shit, there are people who try.

Things I am angry about:
http://killingthebuddha.com/mag/dispatch/religion-island/

Late facts: sometimes I do edit, and now is one of those times. Check out the link above, and ignore my earlier angry rant. It's a good article, and while I disagree with the assertion that science can't inspire art, the author has an interesting point.