Pixel Scroll 7/27/16 It’s Only Pixels I Recall; I Really Don’t Know Scrolls At All

(1) THE CORRELATION OF MARKET FORCES. John Z. Upjohn delivers another stinging social criticism on Alexandra Erin’s blog — “Sad Puppies Review Books: Caps For Sale”.

caps-for-sale-240x300

A head-based cap delivery service is so woefully inefficient that it is no surprise he does not sell a single cap all day. “Not even a red cap,” he laments, which suggests that he knows that red caps are best, even if he insists on wearing his ridiculous checked one. Yet they are the ones at the top of the stack, where no one can reach them. SJWs don’t believe in simple market forces like supply and demand. If he knows that red caps are the caps preferred by the majority, there’s no financial reason for him to stock anything else. It’s okay for people to like other caps, but they can’t just expect to be pandered to!

(2) THAT ROTTEN VELOUR. Esquire studies “Why Star Trek’s Uniforms Haven’t Changed Much in 50 Years”.

Remember, this was the Age of Aquarius, when bold hues reigned supreme and NBC was billing itself as the “full-color network.” You can also see nods to the costumes’ 1960s heritage in the boots’ go-go contour, especially their Cuban heels. The flared trousers even suggested the evolution of bell-bottoms.

Beyond the prevailing cultural mood, Roddenberry’s working kit entailed some heavy ergonomic thinking. “No matter how many times NASA described the outfit of the future,” he once quipped, “it always sounded like long underwear.”

“Gene’s idea was that a replicator would redo the clothes every day,” said Andrea Weaver, a Star Trek women’s costumer. “In his mind, the crew would go in and the clothes would materialize, molded to the body form.”

That form was all-important. “Roddenberry’s theory,” said Joseph D’Agosta, the casting director, “was that by the 23rd Century, diet would be down to a science and everyone would be thin.”

Unfortunately, 20th Century reality didn’t always match 23rd Century fitness. “We found ourselves having to stay away from longer shots wherever possible,” Roddenberry observed, “as the simple plain lines of our basic costume render most unflattering any extra poundage around the waist.”

(3) UNIQUE WORKSHOP. Whoever heard of a writer’s workshop that pays for you to attend? The deadline to apply for Taliesin Nexus’ Calliope Workshop for Fiction and Nonfiction Authors is August 8.

Calling the next great American author!  If that’s you, then this September 9-11 get ready to have us fly you out to New York City, put you up in a hotel, and spend an entire weekend developing your work at the Calliope Authors Workshop.  You will have the opportunity to get thorough notes on your in-progress work as well as career advice from successful novelists, nonfiction authors, publishers, and literary agents.

(4) A STEP IN TIME. After seeing all those movies and cartoons in which someone stands inside the giant dinosaur footprint, well, here’s one in which you really can — “Meter-wide dinosaur print, one of largest ever, found in Bolivia”.

A footprint measuring over a meter wide that was made by a meat-eating predator some 80 million years ago has been discovered in Bolivia, one of the largest of its kind ever found.

The print, which measures 1.2 meters (1.3 yards) across, probably belonged to the abelisaurus, a biped dinosaur that once roamed South America, said Argentine paleontologist Sebastian Apesteguia, who is studying the find.

(5) BRONYCON REPORT. Wesley Yiin of the Washington Post says “The grown men who love ‘My Little Pony’ aren’t who you think they are”. His article about Bronycon takes a sympathetic look at the fans.

More than half a decade into the Brony phenomenon, the grown men who love “My Little Pony” understand that the world remains curious about them. So they kicked off their recent BronyCon gathering in Baltimore with a crash course on dealing with the media, from which a couple of helpful pointers emerged:

  • Don’t use jargon like “OC” or even “original character.” Simply explain that the Pony-inspired name you go by in Brony circles is, for example, “Champ Romanhoof,” the persona claimed by Chaim Freedman, a 17-year-old Brony from New Jersey.
  • Do ask for their credentials. Certain publications of a conservative bent have been quick to smear Bronies. You’ll never be able to convince these kind of journalists that Bronyism is not a weird sex fetish, nor a sad childhood hang-up, but just another earnest, all-American fan community.
  • Do talk up the narratives you’d like reporters to work into their stories, such as the money Bronies raise for charity. “The media,” emphasizes Jake Hughes, the leader of this seminar, “is not the enemy.”

Hughes, who goes by “Jake the Army Guy” at conventions, is a communications specialist for the Army with a stuffed Pinkie Pie toy perched on his shoulder, which perfectly complements his denim biker vest. Like many people in this room, Hughes has gotten his fair share of flak for loving a kids’ cartoon inspired by a cheesy plastic toy marketed to little girls during the Reagan administration. (Once, he says, he was quoted in a story that complained of Bronies’ body odor.)

But no one’s in a defensive crouch here. BronyCon, which attracted more than 7,600 attendees this year, is the ultimate safe space: When you’re in a rainbow wonderland of fellow travelers wearing unicorn horns and technicolor manes, randomly hollering catchphrases like “Fun! Fun! Fun!” and singing fan-written songs with titles like “Mane Squeeze,” you can stop worrying about what’s normal and what’s weird or where you fit in.

(6) ANTICIPATING THE 1961 HUGOS. Galactic Journey’s Gideon Marcus is bracing himself for disappointment, in “[July 27, 1961] Breaking A Winning Streak (August 1961 Fantasy and Science Fiction)”.

Take a look at the back cover of this month’s Fantasy and Science Fiction.  There’s the usual array of highbrows with smug faces letting you know that they wouldn’t settle for a lesser sci-fi mag.  And next to them is the Hugo award that the magazine won last year at Pittsburgh’s WorldCon.  That’s the third Hugo in a row.

It may well be their last.

I used to love this little yellow magazine.  Sure, it’s the shortest of the Big Three (including Analog and Galaxy), but in the past, it boasted the highest quality stories.  I voted it best magazine for 1959 and 1960.

F&SF has seen a steady decline over the past year, however, and the last three issues have been particularly bad.  Take a look at what the August 1961 issue offers us….

(7) DEBUT REVIEWED. Paul Di Filippo reviews David D. Levine’s Arabella of Mars at Locus Online.

This seems to be a “steam engine time” kind of period in publishing, when writers who have focused exclusively on short fiction for many years now step forth with their long-anticipated debut novels….

(8) LITIGATION. Slender Man is an online fiction creation. Two Wisconsin girls, age 12 at the time, allegedly attempted to kill their classmate to please this character. They have lost their appeal to be tried as juveniles rather than adults.

Anyone 10 or older charged with first-degree attempted homicide is automatically considered an adult under Wisconsin law. But defense attorneys have argued that the case belongs in juvenile court, saying the adolescents suffer from mental illness and won’t get the treatment they need in the adult prison system.

Experts testified that one of the girls has schizophrenia and an oppositional defiant disorder that requires long-term mental health treatment. The other girl has been diagnosed with a delusional disorder and a condition known as schizotypy, which a psychologist testified made her vulnerable to believing in Slender Man.

In a pair of rulings Wednesday, the 2nd District Appeals court affirmed a lower court’s determination that it was reasonable to try both girls as adults. Citing the ruling last year, the appeals court said if the girls were found guilty in the juvenile system they would be released at age 18 with no supervision or mental health treatment.

It also noted that the evidence showed the crime was not accidental or impulsive, but planned out and violent. Given the serious nature of the offense, it would not be appropriate for the trial to take place in juvenile court, the appeals court ruled…..

According to a criminal complaint, the girls plotted for months before they lured Payton Leutner into a park in Waukesha, about 20 miles west of Milwaukee, and attacked her with a knife.

Leutner suffered 19 stab wounds, including one that doctors say narrowly missed a major artery near her heart. After the attack in a wooded park, she crawled to a road and was found lying on a sidewalk by a passing bicyclist. Despite the attack, she staged what her family called a “miraculous” recovery and was back in school in September three months later.

The girls told investigators they hoped that killing her would please Slender Man, a demon-like character they had read about in online horror stories. The tales describe Slender Man as an unnaturally thin, faceless creature who preys on children.

(9) LIEBMANN OBIT. SF Site News reports filker Michael Liebmann died on July 26. Liebmann founded GAFilk in 1999. More information at the link.

(10) JACK DAVIS OBIT. Artist Jack Davis (1924-2016) died July 27 at the age of 91. I knew him from MAD Magazine, though he was even better known for his movie posters, advertising art, and work in mainstream magazines.

Mark Evanier wrote an excellent appreciation of Davis at News From Me.

One of America’s all-time great cartoonists has left us at the age of 91. Jack Davis made his initial fame in EC Comics like Tales from the Crypt and MAD but went on to become one of the most visible (and imitated) creators of advertising, movie posters and record album covers ever. His ability to make anything funnier when he drew it and his keen eye for caricatures could be seen darn near everywhere in this country for well more than half a century.

(11) ANOTHER BALLOT SHARED. H.P. at Every Day Should Be Tuesday revealed his “2016 Hugo Awards Ballot”.

I didn’t wind up reading a lot of the nominees and blogged about even fewer, but I at least wanted to get my votes up.  To be honest, I’ve lost a certain amount of interest in the Hugos.  And despite the big, big nomination numbers, the Hugos don’t seem to be getting nearly as much attention this year in general. It will be interesting to see if that is reflected in the voting….

How could someone who voted Jeffro Johnson first in three Hugo categories ever weary of the fun?

(12) GRAPHIC DETAILS. Eric Franklin at Game Thyme not only shared part of his ballot, but his fascinating process for ranking the nominees in “Hugo Awards: Done Voting”.

I read as much as I could of the others. I looked at the art nominees.

And then I grabbed an excel spreadsheet and rated everything based on a +10 to -10 scale of “Good” and “Fun.” I plotted that on a graph, and figured out where my “No Award” point was – it’s equivalent to 0 Good, 0 Fun. Anything with a score worse than that scored below No Award.

I also weighted the spreadsheet in favor of Good.  So a Good 5, Fun 0 work will have a better score than a Good 0, Fun 5 work.

Remember that this is zero average. Mediocre scores for good and fun are the +2 / -2 range. 3-5 is good, 6+ is great.  -3 to -5 is bad. -6 and less is awful.

Then I fed it to a formula to determine the distance from 10,10, as if it were a triangle and I was calculating the hypotenuse. So low numbers were good, high numbers bad.

0, 0 in my spreadsheet, BTW, comes to a final score of  11.53, so anything above that level was out.

I’m going to discuss two categories, tell you how I voted, and discuss each nominee in that category. I’m going to discuss Best Novel and Best Dramatic Presentation: Long Form.

And yes, I know. I crazy-overthought this.

(13) JOURNEY’S END. Kate Paulk reaches the John W. Campbell Award and the Retro-Hugos in the culmination of her series for Mad Genius Club, “Hugo Finalist Highlights – The Retros and the Campbell Award Finalists”.

Brian Niemeier – DAMN YOU BRIAN NIEMEIER! Okay. Now I’ve got that out of my system. I couldn’t stop reading Nethereal. The combination of fantasy styling over science fiction with an intricate layered plot and remarkably human characters sucked me in and refused to let go. Of note: Niemeier is the only finalist in his first year of Campbell eligibility.

(14) UK GAMING CON FOLDS. Conception is a role playing game convention on the south coast of England. Held every year since 2000 it has raised over £150,000 for charity. There won’t be another.

It is with great sadness and regret that we must announce that the CONCEPTION Committee have unanimously decided to call it day.

There will no longer be a CONCEPTION 2017.

We have decided that after 17 years of hosting events at Hoburne Naish that we would rather end it on the virtual miracle that was this years event and retain the wonderful memories of CONCEPTIONs Past.

This choice was not an easy one for us to make. We have invested a considerable amount of time and effort on something that proved extraordinarily hard for us to let go. We emerged from CONCEPTION 2016 with some doubts and concerns about the future but also a renewed vigour for the challenges set by the new management. We were still optimistic that we could weather this re-structuring and re-development at Hoburne Holidays and still reliably host a convention in 2017.

However, recently even more changes have been forced upon us by Hoburne Holidays which severely limit the quantity of accommodation to a point where we cannot with any great certainly be assured that we can host the event in the same manner as we have in the past without badly tarnishing the experience for all our attendees.

So, rather than be forced to accept the uncertainty of dealing with Hoburne Holidays in the future or struggling to hurriedly find and negotiate terms with an alternative economically/ergonomically viable venue we decided to permanently discontinue the event.

[Via Ansible Links.]

(15) WORLDCON PREVIEW. One artist shares how his work is getting to the con.

(16) THE BAD NEWS. Unfortunately, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller won’t be making it to MACII.

Steve and I are very sorry, indeed, to announce that we will NOT be attending the 74th World Science Fiction Convention, MidAmeriCon II, to be held in Kansas City, August 17-21.

A direct casualty of this is the signing we were to do at the Bradley Fair Barnes and Noble, in Wichita, Kansas, on August 14.

We apologize to everyone who thought they’d have a chance to meet us, or to renew our acquaintance.  And we especially apologize for the lateness of the hour.  Up until this past Saturday, we were certain that we’d be attending.

So, here’s what we’d like you to do — go to the con, and have a terrific time.  Raise a glass of whatever it is you’re having, and share the toast with friends:  “To Plan B!” which is our own most-used salute.  Drop us a note, if you can, and tell us about the con. We’d like that.

(17) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY RABBIT

  • July 27, 1940 — Bugs Bunny made his cartoon debut.

(18) GREEN HARVEST. This is the kind of hard-hitting journalism you’ve been looking for. Fox News headlined this story “Sexy cosplayers can make $200,000 a year at comic book conventions”.

Scores of attractive women made their way to Comic Con in San Diego, Calif. last week to don skimpy cosplay outfits to entertain the convention’s superhero fans. Many do it just for fun, but for some it’s a job that pays well into the six figures.

“In addition to a per diem and travel costs, popular professional cosplayers can make at least $5,000 to $10,000 a show,” comic book expert Christian Beranek told FOX411. “If you add in mail order sales, crowd funding contributions and YouTube ad revenue, the top talents are pulling in close to $200,000 a year.”

(19) SAME BAT-TIME. Amazon would be delighted to sell you The Ultimate Batman 75th Year Limited Edition Watch Set.

  • DC Comics super hero are depicted from four eras of comic book history in the square-shaped watches.
  • In addition, there are four incarnations of the Bat-Signal depicted in the round-shaped Swatch-like minimalist watches. The watches from left to right as presented in the box; watches 1 and 2 of the set features Batman with his fists clenched. This muscular, determined Caped Crusader has spent the Modern Age of Comics defending Gotham City from its most notorious villains.
  • Watches 3 and 4 displays Batman dramatically staring up at the Bat-Signal. By the Bronze Age of Comics, artists had encased the super hero’s spare black bat emblem with a yellow oval. The insignia became the crime fighter’s trademark. Watches 5 and 6 then shows Batman swooping into the frame with his cape flying behind him. The image, from the Silver Age of Comics, accentuates the super hero’s signature glowing white eyes and utility belt.
  • Lastly, watches 7 and 8, highlights Batman as first envisioned by creator Bob Kane during the Golden Age of Comics. The super hero’s black cape and cowl and gray suit formed his iconic visual identity.

the-ultimate-batman-75th-year-limited-edition-watch-set-bat3104-2

(20) KILLING JOKE IS DOA. At Forbes, Scott Mendelson passes judgment: “’Batman: The Killing Joke’ Review: The Controversial Comic Is Now A Terrible Movie”.

Final paragraph:

We may not have gotten the Killing Joke adaptation that we wanted, but we may well have gotten the one we deserved.

(21) BIG PLANS. George R.R. Martin tells how he will celebrate the third anniversary of his theater.

Hard to believe, but we are coming up on the third anniversary of the re-opening of the Jean Cocteau Cinema. Santa Fe’s hometown movie theatre, and first art house, had been dark for seven years when we turned on the lights again and opened the doors in August 2013. Needless to say, that calls for a celebration… a week-long celebration, in fact!!!

(22) DIRECTOR’S TOUR. Tim Burton takes us inside the peculiar world of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.

[Thanks to JJ, David K.M. Klaus, Dawn Incognito, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Gregory N. Hullender.]

91 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 7/27/16 It’s Only Pixels I Recall; I Really Don’t Know Scrolls At All

  1. @Robert Whitaker Sirignano:
    Actually, with Mussolini, it was Mussolini: His Part in My Downfall, so the other way around. Along with Monty: His Part in My Victory. And the second volume was “Rommel?” “Gunner Who?”, so not matching the pattern.

    Milligan used humour to deal with some particularly nasty PTSD issues. There’s a reason why he would continue having nervous breakdowns through the production of the Goon Show.

  2. Aaron on July 28, 2016 at 10:04 am said:
    In Hugo-related stuff, I reviewed Invisible Republic, Volume 01. It was okay, but decidedly unsatisfying.

    I felt a bit more positively about it than you but I can easily think of a half dozen graphic novels from last year that I enjoyed more.

  3. (11) “ever weary the fun” s/b “ever weary of the fun”

    On a separate topic, those of you who have read The Phantom Tollbooth may recall Alec Bings. Like him, the thing I can’t see is whatever happens to be right in front of my nose. Is there a master list of Pixel scroll titles viewable anywhere? I’d like to avoid proposing duplicates.

    Poisoning Pixels in the Park
    A Natural History of Pixels
    A Transatlantic Pixel, Huzzah!
    Victory of PIxels

  4. A fair amount of the Retro fiction wasn’t in the packet…. The stuff that wasn’t on my bookshelves already took me, ohh, easily twenty minutes to find.

  5. Hmm, as long as we’re on a Joni Mitchell theme, how about: They Paved Pixeldice and Put Up a Scrolling Lot. 🙂

  6. Xtifr: I Was A Free Scroll In Paris?

    Though I bet if I look in the archive somebody already suggested it….

  7. Can scrollers help with identifying a short story?

    Possibly Bradbury – and I think I’ve seen a short film based on it too. It’s about children on a world where the rain last for years. Most of the children have never seen the sun, except one girl who was born on Earth. Now they prepare for a short time with sun before the next decade of rain.

    It sort of reminds me of this summer …

  8. Aaron on July 28, 2016 at 10:04 am said:

    In Hugo-related stuff, I reviewed Invisible Republic, Volume 01. It was okay, but decidedly unsatisfying.

    Yeah, good start to what might be a great story or what might just fizzle out into nothing or just become incoherent when the pieces come together. Too early in the plot to judge.

  9. In today’s Pokemon Go news, augmented reality has been defeated by spoofed GPS data. Have your phone claim you’re walking around, and the game lets you pick up Pokemon from the comfort of your own couch. (Augmented fiction?)

  10. With scroll titles (as with some other brilliant inspirations I get), I sometimes do a quick search with the title in quotes and file770.com last. Permutations may be necessary, even for ones I think are dead obvious. It has stopped me (in the name of love!) a couple of times.

    It is of course a perfect system, and like any such, can only be failed by the user. I’m sure my lack of imagination has kept me from trying enough combinations, and more importantly, from looking, when I was utterly sure of my originality without even having to check (it was that certain). But hey, at least I can feel like the exact phrasing I used was original, maybe.

    [added]
    Bradbury. Of course! That sounds depressing enough. Only it should be an Asimov story, and at the end the father’s weeping and whimpering terribly like a frightened child, “Bugs—all the bugs—we didn’t know at all. We didn’t know anything…”

  11. I felt a bit more positively about it than you but I can easily think of a half dozen graphic novels from last year that I enjoyed more.

    It probably didn’t help that I read it on the same day I read Saga, Volume 6

  12. @ Kip W
    Thanks! Then so far as I can tell, neither of these has been used.

    Flight of the Pixel Scroll
    But soft! what scroll through yonder pixel breaks?

    I was going to toss in “A fifth of Beethoven” but then I thought it over.

  13. @ Cathy: Missouri, for instance, has sent so many 14 year old boys to the maximum security penitentiary that the warden has opened a children’s wing.

    The number of levels of WRONG in that sentence, I cannot even begin to count them.

  14. @ Johan P: I see someone already beat me to the identification. But that story is a horrible downer, so if you want a palate-cleanser after re-reading it, this fanfic tells the story of what that little girl grew up to do.

  15. @Xtifr:

    They Paved Pixeldice and Put Up a Scrolling Lot.

    Of course, as the song’s title is actually Big Yellow Taxi, we’d have Big Scrolling Pixel instead.

  16. Cath
    …but then I thought it over.
    Oh, this speaks to my experience. Nothing like the feeling when I wipe out a line I laughed at a moment ago. Unless it’s the feeling when I can’t remember it an hour later.

  17. Yeah. Teens in solitary is a grim problem.

    We’re also getting it from the other side with undocumented immigrants getting warehoused in prisons awaiting legal proceedings. The teens can’t be with adults, so they end up in solitary.

    There has been a grim radio segment locally with people following an undocumented teen who is in solitary. He has not been charged with anything, it’s just where they put him, and then, if he acts out in any way (and what teen wouldn’t? Swearing counts as acting out) they take away his outdoor time.

    For the extra horrific icing, the jail is run privately, so they have absolutely no interest in getting people out easily. They keep turning away lawyers for not complying with their ever-changing rules of conduct–no underwire bras, no heels, whatever, except those were fine last time but not this time!–but they will not provide a list of rules because–get this–it’s proprietary information.

    It’s one of those situations so apocalyptically awful that I can’t think about for long or I have to start popping tabs of Vistaril.

  18. Camestros Felapton

    Wham, bang
    mon chien “Splat” morsure cheville a rouler
    Sa langue en buvant trop mon corflu
    Quand a moi peu surfi
    vide, smoffe
    J’ai du dormir dans la consuite
    Oil j’ai un flash
    ouh ouh ouh ouh!
    Avec 4 Hugeaux

  19. RedWombat on July 28, 2016 at 5:46 pm said:

    Yeah. Teens in solitary is a grim problem.

    It’s one of those situations so apocalyptically awful that I can’t think about for long or I have to start popping tabs of Vistaril.

    The appalling level of abuse in the Northern Territory in Australia has finally resulted in the government taking action. What is notable is that confirmed reports of this abuse are not new. What has caused the reaction has been the broadcast on television of video of what was being done.

    While people can think of the victims in the abstract rather than as people, it is possible for the abuse to continue.

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2016/jul/28/the-juvenile-detention-scandal-news-fatigue-and-the-power-of-an-image
    [and a warning on some of the images in this news story]

  20. Kip W on July 28, 2016 at 5:52 pm said:

    Camestros Felapton

    Wham, bang
    mon chien “Splat” morsure cheville a rouler
    Sa langue en buvant trop mon corflu
    Quand a moi peu surfi
    vide, smoffe
    J’ai du dormir dans la consuite
    Oil j’ai un flash
    ouh ouh ouh ouh!
    Avec 4 Hugeaux

    By Pixel Bertrand 🙂 King of the consuite divan 😉

  21. I have to say his cover of the song is way better than the original, by Elton Moscrollo.

    [Now I wish I’d had “chien doloroux” in that, but don’t see where to put it in those lines. And my edit time is going fast.]

    ps: Scroll, don’t tell!

  22. Petrea, that’s the only way I’d be playing this new Pokemon. Would also be willing to walk to kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom.

  23. “Arabella of Mars” is a terrific book. I tore through it in one sitting (Well, one sitting interrupted by a few hours of sleep). Looking forward to more in the series.

    There are so many more ways to overthink than I ever dreamed of. I’ve no idea what Vivian said, but it’s impressive.

  24. @Petrea

    That’s actually been used semi-regularly in countries where PokeGo hasn’t been launched yet – ie spoof it so that you show as being in Australia or whatever, instead of in your own country where there is a scarcity of Pokemon.

    As the article says though, if caught this will result in a permaban like with most online games.

  25. For the extra horrific icing, the jail is run privately

    A sane Supreme Court would rule that incarceration in a private prison in and of itself is cruel and unusual punishment.

  26. @Lis Carey

    Publicly elected judges were a good idea for about eleven years. Problem is, those eleven years ended 150 years ago.

    To provide context: the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was harsh, punitive (and also would be unconstitutional today, for a host of reasons). A number of states that were admitted in the 1850s opted for electing their judges as a sort of turbo-charged jury nullification. Any judge who was too eager in helping the Marshals run down people escaping North could thus be booted next election day.

    Of course, this reason’s been kind of void for 150 years, and yes, those states like Massachusetts (and it’s often the one’s that started as Crown Colonies ) have a better system.

  27. @ Aaron: Now that’s a good reason for voting Democratic! If we get a sane Supreme Court, and someone has the snap to file an appeal on those grounds, we might be able to take down the whole private-prisons system in one fell swoop. It wouldn’t happen fast enough, but slowly is still better than not at all. Private prisons are an abomination unto civilization.

  28. @ Mike Glyer

    Since #19 still says “LIMNITED” and no beverages were appertained, apparently my correction lacked resolve. It promises to scroll harder in the future.

  29. Hal Winslow’s Old Buddy: The entry about the Batman watches has been un-LIMNITED. I even put in the photo I had but forgot to include. So appertain yourself a drink — make it a double!

  30. #22 — the white-eyed woman in the freeze frame of the youtube video reminds me greatly of the Charlton Heston movie “The Omega Man”.

Comments are closed.