a quick one

I just got back from Thanksgiving at the Old Homestead. It was good to see the Marmoset in all his simian glory for a few days. I'm also glad to see he has resumed blogging , at least for now.

I am a busy man and have a ridiculous amount of things to do this week, so let's get on with it:

• In news from Great Britain, Fairies stop developers' bulldozers in their tracks. There is nothing I can say to make that funnier than it already is.
• I don't see why this even made the news. I firmly believe that anyone who says they've never wanted to shoot Bret Michaels is a liar.
• To keep the Marmoset writing, I submit to him a topic for his next entry: the part of Rocky Junior will now be played by a prince of the WB.
• Last but not least, there are Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanies. The Marmoset might want to invest in one, to help keep his brain Karl Rove-free.
  

That's it here, so see you next week.

ps- The moral of the story: when you type the words "karl rove satan" into Google, it's amazing what comes back.

This really sucks... YOUR BLOOD

Okay, bad title.

Anyway, in addition to conversing with Skippy over a long Thanksgiving weekend, I settled in to play an old favorite from the 8-bit Nintendo world, Castlevania. The protagonist of this Indiana Jones-meets-George Romero thriller wields a whip, which, for some reason, kills the undead. Is he a lion tamer? Are there strict gun- and sword-control laws in Transylvania? Who knows? But what is clear is that this has to be the HARDEST VIDEO GAME EVER DEVISED.

The first few levels go by quickly, until level 6, where bad guys come at you like junkies to Frosty the Crackman. If you do survive--and I only do about half the time--you fight the Grim Reaper, and his four reappearing, flying, flashing sickles of doom. If you're lucky, you get to fight him with a boomerang that, even in 8-bit graphics, looks like it was designed by Nerf.

I only got past him once, and was promptly pushed off a bridge by a giant bat about 10 times in a row. So if anyone out there can enlighten me as to what Dracula looks like, or if he's even
IN the damn game, I'm all ears.

Dubya Khan

According to the Guardian's Technology blog, the list of 20 Greatest Geek Novels has been released. I confess, with a strange mixture of pride and shame, that I've read 13 of the 20 novels. Does that make me 65% geek? Or is that 40%, since I only liked 8 of them? I'm guessing that the higher number is more accurate, or else I wouldn't be wondering about this at all.

The author of the post says he is "amazed Neal Stephenson didn't do better". Granted, Neal Stephenson is a prince among geeks, and he has written some incredible books. But he has three books on the list -- Snow Crash (#11), Cryptonomicon (#13), and The Diamond Age (#18). That's more than anyone else (Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick being tied for second with 2 books each). How much better was he supposed to do?

Finally, to leave you with a special closing thought for this Thanksgiving week, here's a photo of President Bush cheering democracy in Mongolia.

Go on, tell me that picture isn't funny. I dare you.

But seriously folks, Bush and the Mongols actually have a great deal in common: they're just simple country folk with a special talent for trashing Baghdad.

a sad day

It pained me to learn today that Arrested Development, after three consistently brilliant seasons, has been cancelled. It had its time slot changed, it was off the air more often than not in the last few months, and Fox discovered that their ratings didn't improve. Gee, I wonder why?

At least it will be on for a few more episodes, and there is hope -- however slim -- that it could be restored. I would like to ask everyone who reads this to please tune in to FOX on Monday, December 5th for the next episode. Please, in the name of all that is funny, mark your calendars.

Meanwhile, Stacked lives on (at the same network, no less), and Aquaman is about to get his own show. Yes, Aquaman. The superhero who talks to fish. There is no justice in this world.

<insert appropriate piano music here>


In similarly depressing news, the Sci-Fi Channel has announced that their SciFiction page will be shut down at the end of next month. SciFiction is an online collection of hundreds of science fiction tales: some new, some old, nearly all good. Even the bad ones are much more entertaining than 99% of the crapola Sci-Fi puts on the air. They cover a very wide variety of stories, from the hilarious to the bizarre to the disgusting to the disturbingly beautiful. These four, plus the simply brilliant (and Nebula-winning) Empire of Ice Cream, are probably my favorites of the lot. I suggest going there and enjoying the stories while they last.

On baseball, Legos, and the power of mullets

First off, a big congratulations to Cardinals' ace Chris Carpenter on winning the 2005 Cy Young Award. He is the first Cardinal to win the award since the great Bob Gibson in 1968 and 1970. Carpenter definitely earned it, winning an unbelievable 17 games in a row.

NOTE: For those who don't know, the Cy Young is the award for the best pitcher of the year. It's named after the legendary Denton "Cyclone" Young, who threw the first perfect game in 1904, and whose record for most wins (511) has stood for almost a century.

So, hats off to Carpenter. This almost makes up for this week's Other Big Story in St. Louis. Almost.

In other news, JibJab, the official role models of the Daily Marmoset, added a new section to their website recently. It's a collection of funny websites entitled Oddities. Many of the sites are ones you probably have seen before, but then again you can't really argue with the classics. (Which reminds me: if you need some shopping ideas, the Marmoset would love a copy of the new Tino album for Christmas.) One of them was an old personal favorite I'd long forgotten. But there are plenty of other gems. A few examples:

• Shame on me for not posting the Shining trailer sooner.
  
• Speaking of shame, Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) should hang her head and weep for her entry in America's Funniest Senators. Her joke scored lower than the thoroughly humor-free Rick Santorum, who didn't post a joke at all.
  
• The Brick Testament includes thousands of illustrations for the Bible using Lego figures. Some are more entertaining than others, but I especially enjoyed the Book of Judges. I think I finally understand why picture books about Samson disturbed me as a kid.
• Last but not least, check out Super Greg. This is funny for many, many reasons, not least of which is his name. Don't you think so, Marmoset?
  

Write on

For a long time, I've been meaning to make myself write more non-blog stuff. At the same time, I can always use yet another way to kill time at work (shhh!). So thank goodness it's November, and time for the seventh annual National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short.

Someone told me about this last year, and I (briefly) tried it. The idea is to try and crank out a whole 50,000 word novel in 30 days. The idea, I think, is to produce large volumes of text with little or no regard to quality, which is an idea that generally makes my librarian brain cringe. But, I thought what the hell, and set up a profile. Maybe I'll actually write a novel this month, or more likely, a lot of smaller things that may or may not add up to 50,000 words. Or not. Stay tuned for details. Or don't.

Speaking of good writing, there are very few blogs I read on a regular basis, but I just found a new one, Schrute-Space, which I'll follow with great interest. Dwight rocks and so does his show.