8.30.2006

The Somber Summary (or, the funereal Flash animation)

When one is in a foul mood, the gloom of Lemony Snicket's books can prove bracing. The final book in the series is scheduled to be released in six weeks - plenty of time to read the twelve preceding stories and their companion piece, Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography.

If. however, you are a 21st-century guy/gal-on-the-go and have only a matter of minutes to devote to this series, then you could certainly do worse than to listen to Tim Curry recap the twelve volumes as Brett Helquist's lovely drawings flash past your eyes.

I also highly recommend the AuthorTracker e-mail updates - they've proven invaluable to me. Without them, I might still be in the dark about the Friday the 13th (of October) release date for The End.

Speaking of which, The End looks rather grim for the Baudelaires, doesn't it?


8.29.2006

Turns the stomach

I cut running short today because I had to do a slow, careful, stomach-churning walk to the nearest bathroom - which, by the time I finally decided I couldn't tough it out any more, was about a mile and a half away.

It's five hours later, and the sketchy Thai food I had for lunch has finally decided to stop making its presence known. But as this Waiterrant post reminded me, bad food isn't the only thing that can tie your insides in knots. (You like how I connected those things? Think maybe I have a future in punditry?)

Waiter wrote, among other things, about hearing the news of a terrible plane crash in Kentucky. You can tell it's been a grim week for Cincinnati news when a story like this - 49 dead an hour away from here, aboard our local airline - is not at the top of the front page.

Nooo, the story of a 3-year-old autistic boy being wrapped with blankets and packing tape and locked in a closet for two days, then taken out to the country and incinerated by his foster parents, who later tried to cover up this horrible crime by saying he "wandered off" at the park - that definitely trumps the plane crash.

No wonder the follow-up on the man who was shot to death on his front porch Sunday got pushed below the fold.

And the trial of two 15-year-old boys who sodomized another boy with a pencil on a school bus is a mere blip on the radar; I can't even find the story anymore without help from Google News.

Hmm - this has turned into a depressing and rather inarticulate "what's the world coming to" kind of post. At least the Bengals are lookin' good! I went to the game Monday; perhaps I'll talk about it when I'm feeling cheerier.

8.25.2006

Suck it, Pluto!




Take that, tiny lopsided-orbit Kuiper object!

(Sorry about the wacky colors; Photoshop was not kind to my PDF)

8.10.2006

Oh, ew.

This LA Times profile of the man behind "Girls Gone Wild" just really could not get any more disgusting.

That's because of the man, not the reporter, by the way. I'm rather jealous of AE right now.

8.09.2006

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