ZOMG Narnia!
I know, right???
Fuck this clapping for Tink shit; you can find me inside any wardrobe, frantically shoving against the back wall.
Image via Brosnakes.
It! Is! Time!
Category Archives: Books
Once, Upon a Midnight Cleary
because up here the sun does not set this time of year until about 1:30 am and then only in a sort of curtseying manner, bobbing back up again in an hour or less. So you can actually read a newspaper by the daylight at midnight here in Yellowknife.
Which is why the market for spooky stories is somewhat depressed, locally. We’ll see what happens when the 24 hour darkness sets in, and to judge by some of the Inuit Art, whatever sets in then, it ain’t equanimity.
Shaman Drum Dancer by Nelson Takkiruq
See?
So, the market for ghoulies and ghosties and things that go bump in the night appears to be at a minimum now, yet somehow I still managed to drum up a squeal of morbid joy when I saw that the slow-grinding wheels of film production had, at last, released this:
Edgar Allan Poe-ster
for lo, opening night cannot come fast enough for those of us here at Operation Global Media Domination HQ. We are indeed looking forward to watching our old Twitter buddy bring to (unsteady, morbid, doomed) life one of the greatest of American Writers. Ah! If only I had my copy of Closed on Account of Rabies with me, and perhaps a bottle of Amontillado (they don’t sell it at the liquor store, but I bet Chef Pierre could rustle me up some) I could set the mood. For now, these small talismans, the poster and this YouTube of Christopher Walken reading The Raven from that very album will have to do.
Cheerful, isn’t it?
The Importance of Being Guido
Snooki is the Rocking Horse Loser
What do you get when you take two actors currently starring in The Importance of Being Earnest and give them transcripts from the Jersey Shore and instructions to stay in character?
This:
via EmilyGracey
and part two:
Really? With TAMPONS???
and part three:
and part four:
Seriously, what IS it about grilled cheese that makes people like this?
and five:
You’re welcome.
on the existence of Tumblr, of Hogwarts, and of Awesomeness
Oft and oft have I been asked the purpose of that oblique, self-referential sphere of the interwebs known as Tumblr. And as oft as I have been asked, I have either answered or have asked for cash dollars upfront. But here, ladies and gentlemen and the undecided, here at last is the justification for tumblr, laid out as plainly as the schnozz on your pan. This, my friends, cannot be topped, not even by Jake Gyllenhaal on a late and sloppy Friday night.
If you got a letter saying you were accepted at Hogwarts:
You’d look up from whatever you were doing like:
You would then spend the next couple of days like:
You would then go to diagon alley and you’d be all like:
You’d go from shop to shop like:
Then, on september 1st you’d run through the barrier on platform 9 3/4 like:
You’d meet people on the hogwarts express like:
You would realise they’re just like you and you’d be all like:
Then you would jam for the rest of the year like:
THIS post right here? This is what Tumblr was invented for.
On the Morally Ambivalent Robin Hood Criminal Archetype in the Early Twenty-First Century OR Julian Assange is a Big, Fat Stainless Steel Rat
which is nothing less, although possibly nothing more, than a comparison of Julian Paul Assange, founder of Wikileaks, recipient of the Sydney Peace Foundation medal, the UK Media Award from Amnesty International, the Sam Adams award, the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, (etc etc TK already) and the minor sci-fi character James Bolivar (“Slippery Jim”) diGriz, aka de rat van roestvrij, aka die Edelstahlratte, aka El Escurridizo, aka un criminale al nichel-cromo, aka (my favorite) Ratinox, aka the (you thought we’d never get here, didn’t you?) Stainless Steel Rat, protagonist of Harry Harrison’s The Stainless Steel Rat books
Harry Harrison on OK Cupid oh and Cupid is SO NOT OKAY with using a fake name
Did I say “Harry Harrison?” Gee, it’s awfully early in the post to be that confused: of course I did! That name should ring a few bells for Assangeologists, particularly those of a fangirlish turn, for it is the usernomdeplume that Assange employed on sites as High Nerdy as delicious and as decidedly non-nerdy as OKCupid (come for the casual sex, stay for the quizzes!).
That’s so funny: every guy I know calls himself “Steve” on dating sites.
Well, it occurred to one (and that one this one, this one right here) that, worthy as Mr. Harrison’s screenplay for Soylent Green undoubtedly was, that sort of thing won’t get you far on a dating site (although it is a people business, come to think of it but now that I have, I wish I hadn’t. Not to say it doesn’t explain a whole lot about my dating life, but ENOUGH of that line of thinking, moving ON! What? What? STOP LOOKING AT ME) dystopian dramas really don’t pull the chicks like being a dashing James Bond villain-type.
Viva Julian the TinTinja, but that's a whole OTHER post.
Of the type typified by the above-mentioned and highly morally ambivalent Stainless Steel Rat. So I’m thinking, Golly, if I were a dashing James Bond villain-type of man who was strongly identifying with the works of Harry Harrison (not Harrison himself, because that would be creepy and somewhat self-defeating on a dating site as he is well out of Top Pulling age range although I’m sure a charming enough man in person and with some advantageous lighting) I would be identifying with ol’ Slippery Jim, you bet your sweet bippy I would, whatever that is, because whatever Harrison’s other books, Return to Eden, West of Eden, and Winter in Eden are about, I’m relatively sure they are NOT related to the rather tedious Anne Rice erotic novel, and believe me, there’s nobody in there you’d actually want to identify with, particularly if they could be played convincingly in a movie by Rosie O’Donnell, as none of them were, according to the reviews. And Clan of the Cave Bear, which I imagine to be much the same, didn’t get anybody laid. So, that.
And here, an interlude, because my English teachers taught me you can never have too many references in a scholarly work of this nature.
DiGriz himself, although an accomplished liar and a notorious intergalctic thief, did have values, he saw his exploits as not only a means to get rich but also as an entertainment for the masses which caused his plans to get bigger, brasher and bolder…he had a reputation to uphold after all. He was also quite proud of the fact that he never took a penny from anyone without insurance cover and his intended targets were usually powerful institutions with little scruples themselves.
But where was I? Oh yes, introducing Ratinox. Did you ever see the old Batman tv series? Stick with me here, this is good stuff. There’s a payoff, I promise. So, “Batman” was my sister’s first word, but no, that’s not the payoff (unless you’re the proud parent who can swan around the play group for weeks like a queen because YOUR little girl’s first word had two syllables and was a superhero besides; OR you are The Sister, in which case you’re used to this bullshit but are glad it’s you-centric for once). In those old Batman series, as rich a guide to the world of comic comicbook criminality as existed, just before the villain tried to kill off Bats and the Boy Blunder, he’d tell them the whole plan from start to finish, slowly, presumably for those in the audience too stupid to riddle out the riddles (which meant everyone who couldn’t afford the kinds of drugs the writers were on at the time). And so it is with the comic comicbook criminality of Slippery Jim diGriz, who will tell you just everything about himself if you read far enough through the books, and you will, if only to see if his wife finally does kill him or not.
So, let us read. All excerpts below are just from The Stainless Steel Rat for President
