Certain elements in cinema tend to occur in clusters. I’m talking about groups of tropes that stick together and recur in different films with only minor alterations. Stereotypical characters, repetitive martial arts attack patterns, overwraught exclamations and pithy wisecracks. The big, quiet, intimidating guy who turns out to be clever/nice in the end, the post-slash [...]
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Proto-lewd punnery and double-entendre overheard at a party:
The difference between a straight man and a gay man is a six pack…
Followed by:
Makes sense. He’s more beer-curious than bi-curious.
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A silly project for another time:
Describing the process of baking cookies in the fashion of a formal scientific journal article, complete with an abstract, background, methodology, results, and discussion. Perhaps a bibliography for good measure.
Maybe I’ve been in research too long, but the notion of parsing just about anything mundane into the language and format [...]
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A truism or two about how assorted careerpeople respond to the professional imperative.
A Researcher’s Motto:
Publish or perish!
A Blogger’s Motto:
Post or perish!
A Preacher’s Motto:
Parish or perish!
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Terrible, every single one of them.
Constellation of Bone
Death Triad
The Sidewalk Lickers
Black Glass Shards
Drowning in Magma
Sven and the Seven Deadly Songs
Shut Your Life Hole
Hedgehog Eats Ferret
Shanks and his Bloody Knives
Ennuinvincible
If any of these names actually end up being taken, I’d definitely go to a concert or two just to see the people who have the guts/psychoses [...]
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Posted in Business, Computing, Musing, Silly, tagged alliance, gaming, guild, management, morale, multiplayer, team-building, World of Warcraft, WoW on April 12, 2008 | No Comments »
Wouldn’t it be a good morale-boosting strategy for corporations to encourage the development of in-company gaming groups? For example, could mean formal all-company-member World of Warcraft guilds, Team Fortress sides split up by department, or giant free-for-alls in any old multiplayer game.
Certainly seems more entertaining and lower-hassle than the old-fashioned notion of corporate softball leagues. [...]
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Telegyresis.
The ability to alter the direction and magnitude of the spin of an object at a distance.
Huh?
It’s a “special ability.” You know, the kind found in stories about mutants and warlocks or robots and morlocks. Telegyresis is a specialized branch of telekinesis, the general ability to move things or apply force at will from a [...]
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Posted in Art, General, Silly, tagged humor, graph, chart, robot, gynoid, research, ghost in the shell, star trek, battlestar galactica, terminator, number six, motoko kusanagi, seven of nine on April 7, 2008 | No Comments »
A graph showing the relationship between the amount of effort humans put into making robots and the amount of sexy female robots found in popular culture.
The graph is fictional, but I’m not convinced the relationship is false.
P.S. Yes, I know that humorous graphs are all the rage these days. I couldn’t help myself in this [...]
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Anarchist.
“Better a ghost of a revolution than an elder of an empire.”
Fascist.
“Better a soldier in restricting armor than a barbarian in the finest of furs.”
Socialist.
“Better an overbearing father than an absent mother.”
Capitalist.
“Better an open range herd than a farm-fattened few.”
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Posted in Art, Silly, tagged band, band names, Comedy, funny, humor, Music, names, Silly on March 24, 2008 | No Comments »
Sadly cliche, but irresistible. Fictional band names! Rock away.
Malassezia furfur
Uppercut Sunday
Fifth Fraction From Fibonacci
The Complex Conjugates
Evidence of Oreos
The Vile Vials
Doctor Bunsen and the Backroom Burners
Whifff!
Spawn Moore and the Overlords
Stars Seen Behind Your Eyelids
This is way too fun.
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Posted in Art, Silly, Society & Politics, tagged Literature, Art, allegory, parable, story, disgusting, drunk, neo-aesopian, question on March 23, 2008 | No Comments »
There’s a bathroom at a party. It’s not very clean, not totally filthy, but has some toilets, a few sinks, and a big trash bin.
A rich man stumbles into the bathroom, drunk and about to vomit. He goes over to a sink and lets loose. The sink is too shallow to catch the vomit gracefully [...]
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Perhaps a weapon style to be used in some martial arts flick, perhaps just the fevered product of a dream of ninjas.
Chain-like weapons are interesting for their ability to provide the user extended reach, high speeds of impact, and entanglement of opponents. However, successful entanglement can require continued exertion from the wielder, as they must [...]
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Has anyone ever completed an epidemiological study/simulation examining the potential effects of a disease that behaves in a manner comparable to that described by modern horror zombie movies? There’s some wiggle room in the precise characteristics of any zombie-causing pathology, possibly leading to wide geekly contention regarding the study’s assumptions, but I’m sure it would [...]
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Energy is a big topic these days, and I have to say I’ve run into some rotting bad ideas. Let’s try to top ‘em.
Photovoltaic panels in mirrors. Surely you don’t need all of the light reflected off your mirror to preen in the morning? By adding these indoor solar panel [...]
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Would it be possible to get a pseudo-randomly generated patent application through the U.S. Patent System? How about a bunch of patents with the same parameters, but different random seeds? I’m sure that the success of such an experiment would depend closely on the initial parameters chosen.
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