“I had catfish for the second time. It was delicious, just like the first time.” – Mitt Romney
“And I’m really enjoying this so called … ‘iced cream.’” – Montgomery Burns
Unable to Visualize an Intervening Incarnation
A number of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ series intersect with one another, as well as with a few other books; so how do you know what order to read them in? You go here.
Missed It By Just One Planet
As Burroughs readers will recognise (though you don’t need to be a Burroughs reader to spot two moons too many for Venus), this Frazetta scene is supposed to illustrate one of Burroughs’ Mars stories, not this Venus story:
On the other hand, the following scene, clearly intended for one of Burroughs’ Venus stories, is being used to illustrate Poloda instead:
And the low-hanging stone moon in the background indicates that this scene is actually supposed to be Pellucidar, not Caspak:
I’m just sayin’.
Famous Blue Raincoat
A while ago I started using “Socks” and “Caps” as shorthand for social anarchists and anarcho-capitalists respectively. But then I drifted away from it, mainly because there seemed to be no useful article-of-clothing shorthand for us lefty individualist types in the middle.
Murray Bookchin manifesting deep ideologico-sartorial confusion
But there is! “Mack” (or “Mac,” but I’d prefer to avoid the association with either computers or hamburgers) is an abbreviation for an article of clothing – a Mac(k)intosh raincoat – and also works as an abbreviation for “FMAC,” itself an acronym for Kevin Carson’s phrase “free-market anti-capitalist.”
Okay, it’s a bit less intuitive than “Sock” or “Cap” – but on the other hand it has the advantage that macks are generally worn between socks and caps, which is just where we Macks generally find ourselves – because, y’know, we’re the vital center, while Socks and Caps are bewildered deviationists.
Also, it’s more embarrassing to be caught wearing only socks, or only a cap, than to be caught wearing only a mack – thus reinforcing our dialectical superiority. Plus Zerzanites can denounce all three groups, since Zerzanites don’t approve of clothing of any kind.
The Girl With the Xeroxed Tattoo
Warner Bros. is “ditching its drama pilot about a crime-solving girl hacker who teams up with a male police detective,” because Sony Pictures is “threatening legal action over similarities” with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
Attempts to decrease the similarities by “turning the white male cop into a black female lawyer and giving the loner hacker a boyfriend” apparently weren’t good enough, because “the series is based around [sic] a hacker.”
Wtf? Sony claims ownership of the mere concept of having a hacker as a main character?
Or is it just that it’s a female hacker? Maybe DC comics should be suing Sony then.
In related news, the Moffat-Vertue axis is still sabre-rattling against CBS for daring to imitate the idea of an updated Sherlock Holmes series.
Now I love the hell out of Sherlock, and I doubt that CBS’s effort will even remotely measure up. But before the BBC folks decide to resort to violence over this, they might remember that the idea of Holmes-in-the-present-day is not exactly one they invented.
R.I.P. Ralph McQuarrie
Details here.