Real Men Take Care of Their Children

08:57 am - Off-LiveJournal Blogroll and News Links

This will be growing by about two or three links per day as I get my bookmark data gradually transcribed here.


Most Recent Edit: Thor's Day, the 19th of Ninthmonth ("November"), 2009 C.E., 3:57 p.m., C.S.T.


Amygdala; Animation World Magazine; Apostropher; Ariel Gore

Bad Astronomy; Bear's Battlestar Galactica Blog; Bob Mitchell in the 21st Century; Brendan Calling; By Ken Levine

Chaos Manor Musings; Chaos Manor Reviews; Classically Liberal; Consumerist; Crooks And Liars; The Crotchety Old Fan; Cult News from Rick Ross

The Daily Dish; The Daily Superman; The Daily WTF; Dandelion Salad; Darth Mojo; Disloyal Opposition

Eschaton; Exposing LJ Abuse

The Faculty Lounge; Fafblog; Felicia Day; File 770; For What It's Worth

Generation Y; Goodbye, Microsoft; Grits for Breakfast

Hero Complex; The Hill; Hullabaloo

Ideas; iFeminists.net; Instapinch

J. Neil Schulman @ RationalReview.com; Johnny Dollar's Place; JustOneMinute

L. Neil Smith At Random; Lance Mannion

Mightygodking; Mises.org Weblog; My Favorite Books

Neal Rubin's Blog; Neptunus Lex; News From Me; Notes from a Final Frontiersman; notmymayor

Oberon Zell-Ravenheart; The One Ring; Operation Yellow Elephant; Orcinus

Pangloss; Papers, Please!; PeterDavid.Net; Physorg.com; The Planetary Society blog; Pro Libertate

Real Live Preacher

Schneier On Security; SciFi Wire, SFScope; The Sideshow; Skippy's List; Slacktivist; Soul of Star Trek; The Space Review, Space Solar Power; Spider Robinson; Starship Dimensions; Startrekdom; Sunni and the Conspirators; Susie Bright's Journal; Swingers' Chatter

Tailspin's Tales; This Modern World; Thomas Jefferson Center; Threat Level; Tom Wilson USA...Large Man, Good Blog; Toonopedia; Topless Robot; Trek Movie Report; Trek Today

An Unfortunate Set of Events

View from Above; Views from the Cyberhenge

Waiter Rant; We'll Know When We Get There; Wendy McElroy.com; The Wild Hunt; Wren's Nest News; WWdN: in Exile

Zoe Paleologa

Current Mood: working

04:05 pm - "That Trick Never Works!"

Having been reminded in a couple of weblogs that last week was the 50th anniversary of the premier of Rocky and His Friends, I am also reminded of sitting with some of my friends years later and ago -- 1986, actually -- all of us unwinding after a Doctor Who convention in the restaurant of the lamented, lost Henry VIII Hotel in Bridgeton (with Patrick Troughton and Nicholas Courtney one table over) when I suddenly came up with:

"Hey, Doc, watch me pull a Sontaran out of my hat!"

"Again, Harry?[*] That trick never works!"

"This time for sure."

(pulls out Dalek instead) "Exterminate!"

"No doubt about it, I've got to get meself a new hat!"

It was about nine o'clock on Sunday night, after everything else at the con was finished, with all of us tired and it probably seeming funnier at the time than it does now, with Messrs. Troughton and Courtney looking over at us, no doubt wondering why we were all in convulsions from laughter, but it still was a great "you had to be there" moment.

Those were the days.


[*] Harry Sullivan, of course.

Current Mood: nostalgic

10:11 am - Monday Morning Video #25: "I Need a Big Damn Hero"

This is the Monday Morning Video, twenty-fifth in a series of videos intended to help you get your work week off to a better start.

Today, I need a big damn hero. Hell, we all need big damn heroes. So here they are:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mher704il6I

It's been way too long since I watched my boxed set. Time to dig it out, along with my copy of Serenity.

05:16 pm - Monday Morning Video #24: Superman, Stewart, and Sesame Street

This is a very late edition of the Monday Morning Video, twenty-fourth in a series of videos intended to help you get your work week off to a better start.

Since I again wasn't feeling well this morning, instead of skipping, as I did last week, instead I'm posting two videos celebrating a third subject: the recent 40th Anniversary of Sesame Street.

First, the Man of Steel substantiates his favorite sibilant:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hRKBPTu8vw

Then Patrick Stewart solos sublimely about whether this is a B or not a B (yes, that is a question):



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA7lv1SDzno

Current Mood: silly

11:41 am - No Monday Morning Video Today

I'm not feeling well, so I'm not up to searching for a cool video this morning. I'll have a new one next week, unless I decide to do one tomorrow instead.

[organ music plays]

Announcer:

"Will he have a new video? Stay tuned tomorrow and next week for our possible thrilling answer! And in the meantime, be sure to stock up on our sponsor, Little Chocolate Donuts, John Belushi's Breakfast of Champions!

This has been Don Pardo speaking.

Current Mood: tired

12:06 pm - Monday Morning Video #23: Patrick Stewart in Jeffery

This is the Monday Morning Video, twenty-third in a series of videos intended to help you get your work week off to a better start.

Remembering the late William Rotsler's rules for convention masquerade costume presentations ("Short is good, funny is better. Short and funny is best."), here is Patrick Stewart in three quick scenes from Jeffrey.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea7bj5MsyAU

05:05 pm - Mom

My mother died four years ago today.

Today hasn't been as bad as earlier anniversaries of her death. I've been merely melancholy rather than crying outright as I usually do on this date. On the other hand, I've had bouts of tears almost daily for most of the last fortnight, so maybe I'm just cried out for a while.

I know I will never get over this, that I will feel the hole in my heart of her absence (and that of my father, too) every day for the rest of my life.

"Mourning never ends." -- Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, Illuminatus!

Current Mood: sad

01:33 pm - Writer's Block: "Seeing Stars"

retro_rider55

Current Mood: nostalgic

01:29 pm - Monday Morning Video #22: "Sweeney Floyd: The Dim-Wit Barber of Mayberry"

This is the Monday Morning Video, twenty-second in a series of videos intended to help you get your work week off to a better start.

It was difficult to find something Halloweenish which wasn't too gross and/or scary for my own tender sensibilities, yet fit the Holiday theme and still was funny, so it was either this or fifteen minutes (not funny but nonetheless magnificent minutes) of Vincent Price performing a one-man show of "The Cask of Amontillado", which I will save perhaps for Poe's birthday next October. In the meantime...



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk4i7OKWSJw

By the way, with regard to the title and some of the verses, while Floyd was always intended to be a little slow on the pickup (although not to the level of the Pyle brothers), actor Howard McNear did actually have a stroke during the course of the series, which affected his speech, slowed his ability to react to other actors, and required him to spend most of his time in a chair. In a remarkable act of decency, Andy Griffith and Executive Producer Sheldon Leonard kept him working on the show, enabling him to keep his dignity. He never was a dimwit, and I think the video maker put that in just to keep the title rhythmically similar to the original, as Floyd was certainly never hard-hearted or ill-tempered in any way that even satirically he could be called a "demon barber".

Current Mood: mischievous

11:25 am - Monday Morning Video #21: "Internet Killed the Video Star"

This is the Monday Morning Video, twenty-first in a series of videos intended to help you get your work week off to a better start.

Being from 2000, this is already dated in a few ways (most obviously the failure to predict flatscreen monitors becoming common) but it still holds up in most others.

Note that two of the boxes of discards in the closet are labled "Commodore Amiga" and "Apple IIgs", two innovative personal computer technologies which didn't survive the Attack of the Marketing Departments. To this day, bit for bit, the most fun sustained computing experiences I've ever had were with my Apple IIgs. I guess as with your first Doctor or your first starship command, as it were, your first computer remains the one you love best.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiB0VgOKojg

Current Mood: geeky

11:03 am - Monday Morning Video #20: Why There Will Never Be a Universal Translator

This is the Monday Morning Video, twentieth in a series of videos intended to help you get your work week off to a better start.

This is why Star Trek's Universal Translator for non-Human languages will never happen...

...because this can occur with a language we already understand.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ_mlwnAmr0

Current Mood: misunderstood

12:38 pm - Love Begets Love

Love repaid with love, thirty years later.

Current Mood: impressed

07:00 am - Monday Morning Video #19: (reprise) "Surprise!"

This is the Monday Morning Video, nineteenth in a series of videos intended to help you get your work week off to a better start.

Actually, this is a re-run of a video I used during SpaceWeek, back on Wednesday, July 15th, the reason being that yesterday was the 52nd Anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 1 and the beginning of the Space Race.

"Surprise!", lyrics and music by Leslie Fish



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-mZ9pKvCmk

Current Mood: sleepy

03:52 pm - Monday Morning Video #18: Engage, You're Adorable

This is the Monday Morning Video, eighteenth in a series of videos intended to help you get your work week off to a better start.

I'm late today because Kevin is home with influenza. His pediatrician is swamped -- maybe I can get him in to see her tomorrow if I call when they open at 8 a.m., but no Tamiflu prescription without an office visit. In the meantime he's getting acetaminophen, loratadine-d, and vitamin C (we're out of zinc until Wednesday night) and being urged to drink as much water as he can.

Anyway, this was probably the only Starfleet bridge set ever built which was large enough to dance upon.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjNKyoRudOQ

Current Mood: busy