So there’s this video that’s been making the rounds of a cat that discovers some kind of cosmic truth via a toothbrush:
Somehow it becomes even more hilarious when you add a certain something many of us enjoy on BBC America:
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I’ve been seeing the heartfelt tributes to Leonard Nimoy’s memory across the internet, but the more (wait for it) fascinating ones have included his seldom-remembered roles. Those involve things like the Outer Limits episode, “I, Robot”, Mission: Impossible, and more recently, Fringe.
But Spock is, of course, his signature role. Apart from the Star Trek movies and the TV show, there wasn’t a lot of “new stuff with Spock in it” for me to consume as a wee lad until the British puppet-parody show Spitting Image came along. Many will recall puppet-Spock appearing in the music video for the Genesis song, “Land of Confusion,” but did you know that “Spock” once tried to hijack a certain gold-statue-oriented awards show and give the glory to more… “deserving” actors?
I think teenage me was slightly offended that Mr. Spock would be portrayed like that, but perhaps this version was his doppelganger from the Dark Mirror universe? Maybe? 
I think I’ve got the next high-concept sci-fi economic thriller here…
on February 26, 2015 at 4:31 AMPosted In: From the Mouth of Madness, It's got Robots and Lasers
On Wednesday, the PRI radio show Marketplace had a story about how Baltimore sewers are in desperate need of incredibly costly repairs. The sewers will eventually fail without repair/replacement, and the bill for that will be approximately 1 trillion dollars. I thought about repairs I’ve done to my own house and how much I wish I could travel back to whenever a previous owner was about to do something stupid from my point of view (especially involving wiring) and make them do it right. This made me wonder:
When will the cost of replacing or repairing inadequate infrastructure far exceed the cost of building a working time machine?
Much like how my theory that working A.I. will be invented (or caused) by someone trying to make a better spam-bot, I wondered if someone would think it cost-effective to use a method of temporal travel that would let someone “encourage” the Baltimore sewer designers of the past to beef up their blueprints a bit. These odd people with impressive credentials show up, demand specs far in excess of what the engineers of the past think is needed or rational, and use carrot (maybe precious metals?) or stick (knowledge of future events, like the foreman embezzling from the city or something) to make the Baltimore sewer of the future not require a total rehab.
It kind of sounds like a scheme the Doctor might try to break up for fiddling with the timeline. If Mr. Moffat wants to commission me to put together a script, I’m ready to give Peter Capaldi a lot of interesting things to say about humanity’s waste disposal systems, among other things.
Prepare your cartoon nostalgia receptacles…
on February 25, 2015 at 6:00 PMPosted In: Nostalgia!, The Idiot Box
Disney says it’s bringing Ducktales back to the airwaves (or whatever you kids use these days) on their Disney XD channel in 2017. M’self, I’d like to see Gargoyles make a return, but continuing on from the final season when the show was a part of The Disney Afternoon and not the trainwreck the show became when it moved to Saturday mornings on ABC.
Not to be outdone, Netflix is looking to pull Inspector Gadget and Dangermouse out of the past, probably via Mr. Peabody’s WABAC machine. If you’re like me (and I know I am), you associate Dangermouse with the days when Nickelodeon was why you begged your parents to get this new “Cable TV” thing. Maybe it’ll lead to a comeback for the spinoff show, Count Duckula, which gave “Star Wars Day” its signature slogan:
I’m afraid to request many more shows I remember liking as a kid due to that whole “positive memory reinforcement” thing which allowed me to love Buck Rogers in the 25th Century without realizing how stiff Gil Gerard was. Maybe I’ll just leave it up to the professionals to decide.
• The image above comes from a search for Portal 2 mods. I screencapped the forum post it came from just in case it ever gets deleted.
• While on the topic of games by Valve, it would appear that at least one headcrab has played a Grand Theft Auto game.
• I’ve seen dice made from many materials, but I can’t help think that depleted uranium dice would impress your fellow gamers the most.
• You kids don’t know how easy you have it these days. Back in 1941, if you wanted to make Superman fan art, you had to make it out of wood.
• Coming soon to movies and/or TV, it’s the Settlers of Catan boardgame. I’m not sure how this will translate to an actual script, and I guess the coveted bad-boy role will be that of the thief. I’m also certain there’ll be a betting pool about how soon in the production a “wood for sheep” joke will appear.
• And finally, if you need to spice up your role-playing campaign, you could do worse than give these clever Monster Pamphlets a try.
Where’d he go? At least we had comics…
on February 24, 2015 at 4:38 PMPosted In: From the Mouth of Madness
There are times I’m really grateful that we live in a time where science and medicine have advanced to where they are. Without going into detail, I’ve had to be away from the blog to help out with an ill spouse. It wasn’t one serious thing, exactly. Without divulging gory details, one minor thing was mis-diagnosed which allowed other things to happen. When those were taken care of, other things decided to come out to play as well, and when those seemed to be getting better, a cold/flu/something was called in because the Powers What Is decided her lungs hadn’t been punished lately, and so on and so on. She was never in peril at any one time, but I figure if we lived in Ye Olde Times Before Yon Penicillinne, things would have become very dire.
But she’s gotten better, finally. I think all that Murphy’s Law can throw at her is a meteor strike, and if that happens, at least we get a free meteor.
So what news of the whole Patreon thing? Well, I’m announcing that starting in March, I’ll be posting one of two things (if not both) for contributors. One is a chapterized stab at a novel. I’ve got loads of decent concepts started, so all that remains is to pick one to inflict present to you for critique. I’ve also got a concept for a flash-fiction thing which I think is a rather novel concept, making fun of a type of narration common to video games and some horror stories. If it works (that is, if I can make it not sound like poo), it’d touch on just about any fictional setting where someone could make some kind of audio diary. This, too, will be up for critique and/or requests for continuation.
Thanks for sticking around, and I’ll be getting back to the “here’s some weirdness I found on the interwebs” stuff tonight!
Note: My own car has a dent, not quite as big as the one above, but significant, put there by a street sweeper. I’ve had my request to put a similar motto across it vetoed. The slogan “Hulk Smash!” was similarly nixed.
One Early-Access game that might be worth it…
on February 9, 2015 at 2:38 PMPosted In: Mystery Clip Theater, Video Gaming
Taking several image boards by storm has been the new early-access game, Besiege. At this point, you have a handful of levels where your goal is to build a siege engine of doom and sic it on a structure of some kind. It’s also got a mode that allows you to muck about with the designs to your heart’s content, and the results have been… interesting:
It’s only $7 on Steam at the moment, and if physics, fire, and building things that would seem at home in a Wacky Races cartoon, it’s worth the price of admission. The Monty Python-like trumpets and banners that appear on the sides of the screen are a nice touch, too.
