Primate Typings

Dude, even his regular speaking is wonderful and odd.

(via Scalzi)

In response to a poll on Facebook about if children should be forced to say the pledge of allegiance in school, I wrote the following.

I cheerfully offer my allegiance every time it comes up in my presence, but I’d vote no if I cared enough to vote in a Facebook poll.

 It’s bad enough the government rounds up millions of U.S. citizens every weekday and forces them into government buildings where it can lecture them for hours at a time. Giving the government employees the authority to force those citizens to pledge their eternal loyalty to that government is really too much. Especially when someone’s legitimate excuse is often a stupid excuse is someone else’s eyes. Since the determination of legitimate would be made by one government employee or another that means that all too often the government will make the determination that gives itself more power. As a tool for human interaction, law is a sledgehammer, not a scalpel.

 Better to leave the issue to the pledgers and their parents rather that the teachers or the courts.

4th Letter lets Marvel’s favorite Canadian superhero weigh in on the healthcare debate.

A piece of his mind.

More of the 4th Letter crews thoughts on the latest issue of Ultimatum here.

Wolf Loves Pork

 

Neat bit of photographic animation. (via Tor)

I often give Neil Gaiman’s works as presents. Fantasy and horror and superheroes make his stories tango and polka and twist. In fact, I have one of his books being delivered from Amazon via UPS that I will give as a gift later this year.

 “Who Killed Amanda Palmer” is not that book. I got it today from JSR Merchandising, and it came by FedEx. Amanda Palmer was a singer and musician. She was one half of the Dresden Dolls. The Dolls have a song that turns up on our local college radio every now and then called “Coin Operated Doll”. I bought the song and put it on my iPod. John Scalzi claims the song works better as a video. John Scalzi is wrong. The visuals of the song without the video are so much more magical.

 Download the video below. Please do not watch it.

High Quality here. Low quality here.

Shut your eyes tightly and enjoy.

 The book “Who Killed Amanda Palmer” is magic of the blackest sort. Apparently, Palmer has made a habit of being dead in photographs for a while. While working on her lastest solo project, she decided being dead for it would be great. So she had even more photographs of her corpse taken. She also ran into Neil Gaiman and asked him if he wanted to write short stories to go with the pictures. Eventually that became a book of photographs taken by Kyle Cassidy, Beth Hommel, and others, with lyrics by Palmer and stories by Gaiman to go along with the album by Palmer. Somewhere during that time, Amanda and Neil started dating. I’m unclear on whether or not she was alive during the first date, but it’s impolite to pry, so we’ll just have to make due with whispers and innuendo.

That can’t be good for the furniture.

 The resulting book is beautiful, dark, and unpleasant. Page after page of pictures of dead women, clearly killed in unpleasant ways, both mundane and magical, makes for a work that I hope no visitors to my house randomly pick up. Palmer’s lyrics and Gaiman’s stories make a great accompaniment for the images. Noteworthy are a couple of Gaiman’s stories where he has to explain why Amanda is dead right there and then standing a couple feet away in the same photo, sometimes as a bystander, sometimes as the murderer.

It is an unsettling book that destroyed my initial excitement of getting a new Gaiman-based gift for friends. Instead, I’ll tuck it on the shelf between some of his other works, where it will hopefully sit unnoticed by visitors to my small private library. No one should be exposed to such materials, unaware of their existence. Unless they’re already Gaiman fans and heard of Amanda Palmer’s death, and thus forewarned, pull it of the shelf….

The musical accompaniment.

*boggle*

(Stolen outright from Mark Waid)

What will the public do when the end of the Mayan calendar comes and goes? It will run out in 2012. So enjoy the next three years. After that, we’ll have to go back to the boring old Christian apocalypse.

Boooooooooooom!

Ah well.

Pretty much exactly what the title says. Pictures of Russians staging Fallout 3.

 

The Brotherhood of Steel interview some locals

More here! (via Topless Robot)