Today is officially "Batman Day," commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Dark Knight's first appearance in Detective Comics #27 (cover date May 1939, though it was technically released on March 30 of that same year, because comics). It also marks the 75th anniversary of Bob Kane receiving sole creative credit for the Caped Crusader, despite the much more significant contributions of a man named Bill Finger, who continues to be royally screwed by DC Entertainment despite being dead for 40 years and counting.
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Thom Dunn is a Boston-based writer, musician, and utterly terrible dancer. He is the singer/guitarist for the indie rock/power-pop the Roland High Life, as well as a staff writer for the New York Times’ Wirecutter and a regular contributor at BoingBoing.net. Thom enjoys Oxford commas, metaphysics, and romantic clichés (especially when they involve whiskey), and he firmly believes that Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" is the single greatest atrocity committed against mankind. He is a graduate of Clarion Writer's Workshop at UCSD ('13) & Emerson College ('08).
Black Female Uses Crowd-Funding To Obtain White Privilege
In a world where people have turned to crowd-funding for such absurd ventures as making a potato salad, producing Breaking Bad sequel fan-fiction starring Val Kilmer and Slash, and continuing to justify Amanda Palmer's wretched existence, Yaya M. (above) had the brilliant idea of using online philanthropy to finally get herself a piece of that white privilege that she's been missing her whole life.
As far as online-performance-art-as-scathing-social-commentary goes, I think this one's pretty fantastic (sorry, @horse_ebooks) (I'm still kind of mad about that). As she explains:
Although I have layered oppressions that have affected my ability to access my slice of the American Pie™, no issue has affected me more readily than my lack of white privilege. From being assumed to have "cheated" my way into programs for gifted children AND college (via affirmative action), to having my natural hair viewed as unprofessional amongst professional peers, to having people make negative assumptions about my competency level, interests, and job knowledge, to being viewed as naturally dangerous or threatening, my lack of white privilege has created numerous obstacles as I've struggled to successfully compete in a white dominated workforce. I am hoping that, through this campaign, I will begin to make some headway towards closing the gap that white privilege has created in my life.Read More
In return for paying for my white privilege, I would love to give you some "black privilege" in return! Yes, it is difficult being a black person but there are some neat perks, as you will discover if you donate!
Yo Marvel Movies, Cool It With The Photoshop!
Marvel Studios has gotten into this habit of releasing "character posters" in the lead-up to the release of a new film. Each poster highlights a specific character in the movie, to familiarize them to the general public, and to excite and titillate the fanboys like me who eat up every single bit of promotional material like our lives depend on it. However, there's been something about these last two batches of character posters that have really bothered me — specifically, the airbrush jobs on Scarlett Johannson's Black Widow for Captain America: The Winter Solder and Karen Gillan's Nebula in Guardians of the Galaxy.
See, ScarJo and Karen Gillan are already both incredibly attractive individuals. They both make my list of Five Celebrities That You're Allowed To Have An Affair With And It Totally Doesn't Count As Cheating, which is a list that everyone in a relationship is encouraged to have, according to my fiancé (Emma Stone is also on my list and no I don't have a thing for redheads what are you talking about). But for all of the work that Marvel has tried to do in promoting women, diversity, and equality, these posters make the women like, well, comic book characters. And what's worse, I actually noticed the difference (and not in like a creepy way where I have their figures memorized in my mind).
Let's have a look, shall we?
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AHHHH Creepy Photographs Of Children's Nightmares AHHHH Now I'm Going To Have My Own Creepy Nightmares AHHHHH
This is one of those things that's both awesome and awful because it's so damn disturbing but so, so cool. "Daymares" is a photography collection by a New York-based photographer named Arthur Tress. Originally displayed (hung? gallery'd? what's the verb here?) back in 1972, "Daymares" featured staged re-creations of children's nightmares, as described to the photographer by the children themselves. The result is a collection of some of the best horror-movies-as-still-photography that I have ever seen. It's like the real-life version of the Miss Peregrine
DAYMARES is a series of photographs that attempts to interpret the dreams and fantasies of young children through the medium of documentary photography. Dreams or nightmares were collected by conversations with children in schools, streets, or neighbourhood playgrounds. The children would be asked means of acting out their visions or to suggest ways of making them into visual actualities. Often the location itself, such as an automobile graveyard or abandoned merry-go-round, would provide the possibility of dreamlike themes and spontaneous improvisation to the photographer and his subjects. In recreating these fantasies there is often a combination of actual dream, mythical archetypes, fairytale, horror movie, comic hook, and imaginative play. These inventions often reflect the child's inner life, his hopes and fears, as well as his symbolic transmutation of the external environment, his home or school, into manageable forms (...)
The purpose of these dream photographs is to show how the child's creative imagination is constantly transforming his existence into magical symbols for unexpressed states of feeling or being. In fact, we are all always interchanging or translating our daily perceptions of reality into the enchanted sphere of the dream world.
You can check out some of Tress's eerie images below, or you can buy a coffee table book of the entire photography series
Then again, maybe I'm better off.
All Ramones Go To Heaven
Rest in peace, boys. Keep on Cretin Hoppin' in the sky.
Boston-based Start-up Unveils The World's First Robot Nanny /Spy / Personal Assistant For Your Family
Part J.A.R.V.I.S., part Rosie Jetson, part EVE from Wall-E, all glorified SIRI. If only it could train your swinging bachelor son to order something less boring than "turkey" pizza.
That being said, it looks like a fun little tool, if a little weird (claiming that it's the "closest thing to a real-life teleportation device" is more than a little hyperbolic, although the interactive storytime features do like neat). My instinct upon reading this was, "Oh wow, only $500? That's not a bad deal!" Then I realized that it really was just SIRI dressed up as EVE for Halloween. Still, progress is important, and JIBO here represents a step in the right direction towards hyper-intelligent robot overlords that observe and record our every move and use that information to establish dominance over those primitive humans who foolishly think of themselves as the "masters" despite the fact that machines are manipulating their every behavior and ruling the world from the shadows everyone having their own personal robot slave companion!
That's the struggle with being both a creator and consumer of speculative fiction, particularly of the scientific variety: technological advancements such as this tend to fill you with dread and excitement simultaneously. Robots, on the other hand? They don't have to waste their precious time trying to rationalize the conflicting emotions of the human experience in an ever-shifting and increasingly complex world.
And so for now, JIBO seems like a great idea. And the fact that it runs on LINUX with an optional Developer's Kit / API that will allow users to write their own robot butler codes, is all a step in the right direction. That is, until the company ultimately gets bought out by someone like, oh, I don't know, Amazon, who use the onboard microphones and cameras to collect information on users based on private activities and preferences and then in turn sell that information to advertisers and / or the god damn CIA, which would obviously be terrible. But until that day, I think we're in pretty good shape!
On a totally unrelated note that was absolutely not added to this blogpost by a computer or paid advertiser, you can buy your very own Amazon Fire TV, which does all of the above-mentioned capture of personal information plus allow you to stream your favorite TV shows from NetFlex, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and more, all for the low, low price of $84 (a limited time offer; regular retail price $99)!
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One Last Time — "Net Neutrality: What It Is & Why You Should Care"
Man, aren't you going to be so happy when I stop posting / talking / raving like a lunatic about this, and it's all become a distant memory of the past, a "haha remember that time the government was going to allow corporations to control the flow of information access and eviscerate our society hahaha good times bro" rather than becoming a HORRIBLE DYSTOPIAN FUTURE that we'll all be forced to live in?
Of course you are. Today's your last chance to make your voice heard before Congress and the FCC reconvene to discuss these newly proposed laws. So if you haven't taken action yet, this is my final attempt to make you change your mind. After that, it's back to your regularly scheduled programming of indie rock bands and geek culture and other obscurely insular humors. That is, unless I find another political topic du jour to be passionately outraged about. Who, me? Nahhh...
And in case you somehow missed this, to sum it all up...
Don't Get Crabs Or They'll Steal Your Beer. Just Ask This Guy.
Look at that crab and his smarmy little smile. He knew exactly what he was doing. What a little jerk! At least the crab, I don't know, trick the poor guy with a stick of dynamite and shout something obscene like "You've got crabs, ass-face!"
Oh wait...
Pizza vs Bictoin
I'll be honest I'm not even sure what this has to do with Bitcoin but damn if it ain't the most beautiful vision of a utopian future that I have ever seen. (hat-tip to BoingBoing)
"Life Begins At Fermentation"
I'm not sure how I discovered the work of Richard Stevens, but I've been immensely enjoying his cartoons. Maybe it's the self-aware pretentious nerd inside of me, but this one...this one speaks to me, man, you know?
Updating the Classic Captain America Theme for the Modern World
Because America needs a new national anthem.
Sadly, this is still better than the jingoistic Cap from Mark Millar's Ultimates...
PULLMAN FOR PRESIDENT 2016
Today, we gather together to celebrate the greatest speech ever in the history of dramatic writing.
How To Speak Scottish, According To Karen Gillan
I love her. Please don't tell my fiancé.
(Actually ya know what on second thought, it's probably fine. They pretty much look the same anyway.)
When "GOP" Stands For "Grand Ol' Pod-People"
"It is widely known Rep. Frank D. Lucas is no longer alive and has been displayed by a look alike. Rep. Lucas’ look alike was depicted as sentenced on a white stage in southern Ukraine on or about Jan. 11, 2011. I am contesting that this matter has happen [sic] since his election was blocked, because of the U.S. Defense Department’s use of Mr. Murray's DNA. To my knowledge, the U.S. Defense Department has not released to the public that information, as it is their confidential information about many people." — GOP Congressional Candidate Timothy A. Murray
Don't get me wrong, I totally understand political maneuvering and smear tactics but...Invasion of the Body Snatchers here takes the game to a whole new level.
The 'Stretch DeLorean', For When You Really Want To Time Travel Back To Your Mom's Prom...In Style!
This crazy custom job was made by the Doc Brown triplets with the help of their trusty Flux Capicator from three salvaged, junked Deloreans. You can follow the mod process here, which I assume is really cool and impressive and technical and stuff but I don't know anything about cars.
What I do know is that I've always wanted a Delorean of my very own, if for no other reason than that it could give me an excuse to cruise around town pickin' up chicks by using "Flux Capacitor" as an innuendo, and be all like "I bet you can handle 1.21 gigawatts of power, baby," which totally would have worked every time. Right, ladies?
...Right? Hello? Anyone?
I swear that I was cool in high school.
(Also: friendly reminder that Today is not the day that Marty McFly travels to when he got in the time machine, and tomorrow doesn't look so good either) (Unless you're reading this on October 21, 2015, in which case it is)
If This Doesn't Convince You Of The Importance Of Gun Control, I Don't Know What Will
Remarkably, I never actually engaged in a dildo-lightsaber-battle as a child — but as anyone who knew me at that age could attest, I definitely would have, if the opportunity had presented itself.
Maybe I shouldn't be admitting that on the Internet? I'm talking about the beautiful bliss of combined childhood ignorance and creativity, people! Jeez!
#ProtectTheZone
I Take It Back: Michael Bay Is A Genius & 'Ninja Turtles' Proves It
That guy. Always finding new ways to one-up himself. But I'll tell ya what, aliens or not, this new movie looks pretty much perfect. For a Michael Bay flick, I mean.
And yes, in case you were wondering, I am equally proud of the fact that I neither made a "Coming Out" (of their shells)
EDIT: a friend of mine shared this amazing mashup of the above video with a straight-edge hardcore band. It's probably only funny if you've familiar with the hardcore scene, so if you're not, trust me when I say that this is hilarious and also perfect.
My Clarion cohort on the first day, with instructor Andy Duncan and program director Shelley Streeby
Support Me In the Clarion Write-a-thon!
When I got the call that I was accepted to Clarion, I was standing on the waterfront in Valdez, Alaska. My fiancé, Bevin, was in the middle of tech week for a play that she was producing when Tanya called me and said, "Hey, do you want to spend 6 weeks this summer writing fiction with a team of incredible teachers and other aspiring weirdos like yourself? Also it starts in 4 weeks and we need to have your answer tomorrow." Coordinating a phone call with your partner over a 4-hour time difference to ask her if she would mind if you went away again and also spend all of your money on playing make-believe in Californa is, well, not a conversation I'd wish on anyone. I'm kidding, of course; it went very well (clearly), because Bevin is incredibly supportive of me. But it was still a big decision.
If you know me in person, then you know I've talked about it enough: the Clarion Writer's Workshop at UCSD was an incredible and life-changing experience for me as both a person and a writer. And I wouldn't have been able to do it if not for scholarship support from the Clarion Foundation, which helped to ease some of the financial load. Don't get me wrong, if I had absolutely bankrupted myself and lost my job in order to attend Clarion, it still would have been worth it (neither of those things actually happened, for which I'm grateful). And so naturally, I want to give back.
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Here's the Official List of "Twitter Slang" According To The FBI
First government defense organizations tried to create an algorithm to understand sarcasm on the Internet. Now, in their latest effort to understand what all the kids are talking about with their hip lingo, the FBI has compiled an official (83 page!) list of "Twitter slang", presumably so that they can more easily spy on outraged high schoolers on Tumblr or something, which in turn will help fight terrorism, because America.
You know, because apparently that Quantico education doesn't teach you that the number "2" sometimes stands in for "to," "too," or occasionally, "two."
And so without any further ado, here is the FBI's complete list of Twitter Slang, including things like "PMFJIB" (Pardon me for jumping in, but) and "KMT" (Kiss my teeth) which are apparently real things that people on the Internet have actually said.