YOU CAN'T TRIPLE-STAMP A DOUBLE STAMP!

Today's xkcd = AWESOME

Also of the awesome: my phone rang today as I was walking down the street and I tried to pull it out my pocket and flip it open one-handed (other hand was carrying laptop) and somewhow managed to throw it underneath a taxi. Beneath the back wheels. On a busy shopping street. I had to crawl in underneath the boot get it out. It was undamaged and still ringing, however. LG make good phones, you guys.

Someone has put up bits of Kev & The Authority at scans_daily! I don't care if you don't like comics, you must check this out. This is in the running to be my favourite single issue of a comic, ever. *points to icon* Extremely funny and, just, genius work from Ennis and Fabry, here. I'll make the entire thing available to anyone who wants any more.

Stolen from vensre: European Geography quiz (I got 71% even though I was REALLY close on most of them. Well, a couple. Ok, one or two. Geography's not my strong point, ok?) and US Sate quiz (74%). Despite the fact that I got a higher score for the US one I have real trouble with US States. When I read about them I tend to divide them into east and west according to their assumed hillbilliness quotient (yeah, that's a technical term). What? Indiana and Tenessee are in the east and Washington's on the west coast? Since when is Montana on the Canadian border? Yes, I sudied the Pesidential election maps; yes, I got out the atlas to read that excellent O11/O12 roadtrip fic; yes, I even studied the War of Independence (for that reason I got most of the east coast right). For some reason (namely, I am stupid) it just doesn't stick. I mean, I owe the fact that I know where Florida is purely to Piers Anthony.

Anyway. Found via boing_boing: the website for Matthew Herbert's Plat du Jour. Herbert and his mates have created an album made entirely of found/food instuments. Check out the images and making of sections! One of my favourites:
we recreated the meal that nigella lawson cooked for george bush when he came to britain to thank tony blair for his support during the iraq during the meal... then we drove over the meal with a chieftan mk 10 battle tank from the mid-late sixties.
....an advisor to the foreign office baked the apple pie with his fiancee using one of nigella's recipes. it was then taken to manassas, the site of one of the opening battles of the american civil war, where it was shot by an us ex-military intelligence officer using a 9mm luger (1937approx) as used by a nazi sd officer, colt 45 (model 1911) high standard .22...
There is, as you can see, a definite political/philosophical idea behind it. Lord knows if it will sound any good but I am interested in hearing it.

Just a little quickie (but not really) update. Have been bizarrely busy lately and have barely gotten on the comp at all, woe. And in the next couple of weeks I have three essays due, so I I'm going to get very, very behind, I think.
BUT, check out the cool topics I get to do my essays on:
For Anarchism and Libertarianism: Ursula Le Guin's The Disposessed
For Beauty, Pleasures and Principles: The sublime in the LotR films.
For Politics, Ideology and Discourse: Queer theory and Alexander, and The Persian Boy (well, I haven't really formulated the question for that one yet...). Means I'll have to watch Alexander again, but I can skip all the crappy bits at least and stick to Jared Leto's moony eyes.

Totally to my surprise, I have become a rather large fan of Battlestar Galactica. It's weird for me because generally my key into a TV series is the characters first, and scenario second; the main reason I watch Stargate, for instance, is to see Jack, Daniel, Sam, Teal'c, Hammond, Janet, etc. But BSG I first turned on just to perve on Jamie Bamber and CKR, and none of the characters except Boomer have grabbed me in the way that I'm used to. But the scenario is great, the writing is awesome, the acting just as good. 1.11, Kobol's Last Gleaming pt 1, was one of the best hours of genre TV I've ever seen; the trailer alone blew me away. And one by one, the other characters are getting to me, although I've felt little need to read fic yet. The next season better hurry up! Plus, there are just so many cool women!! It blows me away. Now all we need is a queer character, like, GASP, there are queers in the ENLIGHTENED FUTURE? and this thing'll break some real ground.

Authority: Revolution #9: FUCKING AWESOME!!!!!
Lucifer #62: I am loving this series so much, and I was so happy to see the return of Jayesh and Karl, I have been waiting and waiting for them to pop back up. Yay!

Saw Tori Amos on Monday. I was closer to the stage than I thought I would be, but I still had a lot of trouble seeing her clearly, especially when the light was all green or all blue, and I've had a headache the last few days from straining my eyes. I so need new glasses. The supporting guest was the dude from George, and he actually played Polyserena, which I like a whole lot, and he also covered Black is the Colour of my True Love's Hair. But other than that I could have left him.

Tori herself was so funny and charming and adorable. I almost sort of didn't really believe she existed till I saw her live, she's just that kind of personality. But yeah, she was excellent, so amazingly talented. Her song choices were limited because she had no backing band, but I still thought she could have had more variety, it was mostly her "light" ballads, whcih got a little samey, none of her thumpers (such as Sugar and Professional Widow) and only one arty freakout (like I Can't See New York), which was the Beekeeper, and it was the highlight of the evening, absolutely mesmerising. Actually, that, Original Sinsuality, and Mother Revolution were arguably the best songs of the night, and they're all from her latest which is pretty weak in spots (well, the three songs I've mentioned, plus Marys of the Sea, are the best songs on the album, and they're really excellent, so I suppose it's not so surprising that they were high points).

( setlist, minus a few songs I've forgotten, in an approximate order. * means especially good )

eeeeeee! The Serentiy trailer is up!!

Like:
River kicking ass although it seems a little slowly choreographed after movies like CTHD and Hero and HoFD etc.
Adam Baldwin the hotty.
Gina Torres the hotty.
Wash the funny.
Special effects.

Dislike:
Where's the funny?!
Concession to lame trailer conventions including lame lame quotes and lame lame lame Joss promotions and lame lame lame lame font effects and ubiquitous Mal voiceover.
So, the only characters in the movie are Mal and River and Jubal Early the bad dude? Does Inara speak at all? What about Kaylee?
Where's Book, dammit? I wanna know his secret!

Which is not to say that I don't have complete faith it'll be an excellent and quite funny movie, just that the trailer could really use some work.

And does anyone know where quicktime is hiding the cached movie file nowdays, or does it just not do a local cache anymore? (Fuckers! You would think they'd want the ads to get around)

In other news: I waaaaaaaaant!

I don't have much of a life now uni has started, it seems.

Very funny short comic.

Still on comics, if you read WE3 you should find this very, very amusing; if you didn't it'd be pretty confusing, but still funny.

I just can't listen to Richard Taylor speak and luckily I don't have to with this report of a lecture-type appearance of Taylor and his wife Tania Rodgers. j/k, I would totally go if I had the chance, it just sounds so wonderful. I cannot get enough of behind-the-scenes Lord of the Rings and this report is entertaining and interesting. Taylor and Rodgers sound like as much of a cute and dedicated and perfect-for-each-other couple as Fran and Peter, how cool is that? I guess there must have been tons of the production, actually.

Speaking of New Zealand, I am just going to totally move there one day. Prince Charles was heckled by two topless New Zealand women as he met the public in the country's capital city.. So. fucking. brilliant; such an original and attention-getting way of protesting that actually ties in with what they're protesting about! What awesome women! I don't know who is cooler, them or those dads protesting Blair in superhero costumes.

And in the random media corner, there's this: Why There Are So Many Doors in Movies: Codexes, Ligatures and the Internet. Short, well-written, interesting piece about the internet and where it's going, and the way patterns repeat as new media are invented. Sounds dry but really not.

I hate to say it, but....it's so true! *laughswhileweeping* Which isn't to say I HATED Planetary #22 but jeez, there's two left! Can we get to the PLOT, please? Cassady and Martin gave that issue 500% more class than it deserved.

Am reading The War of the Jewels, book 11 (!) in the History of Middle Earth series...saga...whatever. It's a very slow read and I would enjoy it more if the things that even Tolkein had crossed out as unwanted in his manuscript weren't included. If it were something more along the lines of Silmirillian.... Still, it is interesting stuff. I love the lore of Middle Earth (even if I can barely keep it straight in my head). I suppose "History" refers not only to the ME Universe but also the history of its composition.

Lainy I feel so betrayed! I went by your work today to stalk perve on visit you and you weren't there! I had to wander around all by myself! Although to be fair I did find a cool new graphic novel and reserved something else. If only it didn't take like ten days to haul something out of storage....

eeee! So, yesterday I was at the comic store bemoaning the fact that I have no money to buy all the titles I want and Peter the owner said, hey, why don't you do some review for our website and I'll give you a discount or you can just bring em back in or whatever and so I'm like hell yeah! And he gave me WE3 to review, and it was awesome! So I wrote a review and it's now on the website. Ta dah! My check is in the mail, I'm assuming... Upon reflection I think I've rated it too highly, an 8 would probably be more accurate, but eh. I hate rating systems anyway.

ETA: Saw Sideways today. Very funny, much more so than I expected. Giamatti was great of course, but the standouts for me were Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh, who were just GORGEOUS. Ah, theat speech where Madsen talks about wine, I fell in love. The ending was a bit disappointing; without them in it it lost a lot of life and was a bit anti-climactic. But that's life, I guess.

Oh my God, Will Eisner died. This man wrote some of the best comics out there, a total genius. Neil Gaiman has a very touching memorial to him here.