Neko Case, “Man”
I have been losing my mind over this song all day since my friend Bill shared it.
I listened to this 8 times in a row before I left for FLAPJACKALYPSE and I feel like it’s helped me a lot.
T-minus 2 hours until FLAPJACKALYPSE. My goal was to be halfway to our goal by the time we sat down, and we are less than 50 bones, (or pancakes, or whatever it is you call them) away from that. Huge, huge thanks to everyone who’s kicked in so far, and if you haven’t, I will come up with something special for whoever pushes us over that halfway point.
Just to recap, we’re raising money for Laura’s House, an OC charity that works for/with victims of domestic violence. The link to donate is here.
I didn’t, because the literature is still at “LGBT” and I have to stick with the literature, but goddamn if I can’t stop smiling. it’s no QUILTBAGPIPE, but someday it will be.
there’s a lot going on here and i am absolutely not ready for all of it
GEPE - En la Naturaleza (4-3-2-1-0) (Video Oficial) (by quemasucabeza)
THIS MAN… THIS MONSTER!
I will forever love this panel and the associated cover. That said, I found the story itself to be a big disappointment. (I believe Bill disagrees with me on this.) From Wikipedia:
Roaming the streets, the Thing is offered a place to stay by a man who has become very interested in him. While Ben sleeps, the man uses a device to transfer the Thing’s powers to himself and goes to the Baxter Building, posing as the Thing, in hopes of eliminating Reed Richards, based on the misconception that Reed makes his discoveries for the glory.
When Ben wakes up to realizes that his powers are gone, he tries to warn Reed Richards that the “Thing” who is with him is an impostor. However, they believe that Ben himself is the impostor, and dismiss him from the Baxter Building. Meanwhile, at Metro University, Johnny Storm and Wyatt Wingfoot get involved in a squabble with football star Whitey Mullins, but it is broken up by Coach Thorne, who, when realizing that Wyatt’s father used to play on the Metro U. football team, offers him a position, which Wyatt refuses.
While back at the Baxter Building, Reed tests out his newest invention: A portal to the Negative Zone. Traveling in this anti-matter universe, he has the “Thing” hold the tether so that he is not lost in the realm. When the tether breaks, the Thing impostor, having realized how selfless Richards is, changes his opinion of him, and jumps into the Negative Zone portal to save him. He then throws Reed back through the portal into the positive matter universe, leaving himself to perish at the energy barrier that separates the positive and negative matter universes.
Meanwhile, the human Ben Grimm is about to visit Alicia to show her that he is back to normal and propose to her. However, he knocks on the door just at the exact moment when his impostor dies. Suddenly transformed back into the Thing, he flees the scene and returns to the Baxter Building. There, Reed and Sue realize that the friend they were just mourning is actually still alive and well, and that the impostor who was posing as him—whoever he was—had died a man.
It’s barely a story about Ben! The emotional punch of the story is that Reed is a wonderful selfless human being, with a “oh no, Ben is still The Thing” cheap pop thrown in at the end. For my money if you really want to appreciate Ben you should look for FF #40, where Dr. Doom has taken over the Baxter Building and is whomping on the Fantastic Four and Daredevil. They’ve all lost their powers somehow, so Ben is in his human form. Reed gives himself, Sue and Johnny back their powers using his Stimulator (yes, seriously), and when Doom still hands them their asses he turns the Stimulator on Ben.
“Mebbe I don’t wanna become The Thing again!” Ben cries. “I’m finally normal — like everyone else!” Tellingly, Mr. Fantastic overrules this concern. What unfolds next…a man confronts indescribable loss while fighting against a peak-skills early-period Doom. It’s poetry, it’s beautiful poetry. Comic Book Resources has all the panels
(via merlin)
Pictured, clockwise from top left: Eli Wallach as Tuco from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, Eli Wallach as someone from a project I do not recall, Eli Wallach as Dancer from The Lineup.and Eli Wallach as Silva Vacarro from Baby Doll.
For about a year over at Progressive Boink I wrote/drew a comic called Ask Eli Wallach. 3 frames, sometimes autobiographical, sometimes not, and then a drawing of Eli Wallach, sayin’ somethin’ that was generally a reflection on the three previous frames. This, one of my favorites, is the last one I did. Those previously unfamiliar might recognize Dancer (aka “Angry Wallach”) from my Twitter avatar.
Today, Friday June 7 2013, and today, Friday June 7 2013 only, if you donate to FLAPJACKALYPSE and you let me know (twitter, scientificpod(at)gmail.com, it don’t matter) I will draw another Ask Eli Wallach. I will do this for any amount you feel like donating, and this is in addition to the perks already offered. If you would like one about a particular thing, idea, feeling, whatever, I will promise to consider it. So check out the perks we outlined on the SB Nation page, or head over to Crowdrise to donate directly. It would mean a lot to me, I’d be really grateful and it’s for an awesome cause.
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About one of every four of those killed by drones in Pakistan between Sept. 3, 2010, and Oct. 30, 2011, were classified as “other militants,” the documents detail. The “other militants” label was used when the CIA could not determine the affiliation of those killed, prompting questions about how the agency could conclude they were a threat to U.S. national security.
EXCLUSIVE: CIA didn’t always know who it was killing in drone strikes, classified documents show - Open Channel (via firthofforth)
one of my recent favorites from This is America, Dude:
“American officials admit it is nearly impossible to judge a person’s age from thousands of feet in the air”
(via bostonreview)
I like “Skies to Blue” a lot and Tiny Dancer is one of those artists I wish would hurry up and release more stuff. (“Who Am I” is has grown on me but imo is clearly the lesser of the two available tracks.) Only over the past year or so have I started listening to seriously-less-established (as separate from just less popular) artists and it can be pretty dang frustrating sometimes.
(also shout out to Tiny Dancer for a totally fearless rejection of even the most basic tenants of SEO)
In 1897, a Bicycle Superhighway Was the Future of California Transit | Motherboard:
In 1897, a wealthy American businessman named Horace Dobbins began construction on a private, for-profit bicycle superhighway that would stretch from Pasadena to downtown Los Angeles. It may seem like a preposterous notion now—everyone knows Angelenos don’t get out of their cars—but at the time, amidst the height of a pre-automobile worldwide cycling boom, the idea attracted the attention of some hugely powerful players. And it almost got built.
Time to start daydreaming about what a bicycle superhighway would actually be like…
everyone knows Angelenos don’t get out of their cars
i just hissed so loud my throat fell out
(also it would look a lot like dedicated bike paths, which are installed in many cities (including Los Angeles!) and good fun to ride on)
Once, while explaining the concept of marginal utility to someone, I used pancakes as an example. “The first pancakes is great. You’re hungry, it’s delicious. But the value of each following pancake declines, like the third pancake is good but not as much as the first, and by the tenth you’re like,’what the hell, stop giving me pancakes.’”
Several years after that, we arrive at FLAPJACKALYPSE. In eight days, they will hand me pancakes. They will hand me pancakes and I will ask for more. Here is all you need to know, including how to donate to our selected charity, and what we’re offering in exchange for doing so: http://www.sbnation.com/2013/6/3/4381318/flapjackalypse-pancake-eating-contest-panquake
someone on quora asked who the best villain in fiction is
The answer to this question is Dr. Doom. In case anyone ever asks you, feel free to refer to the below, which is far from exhaustive:
1) He is, by some counts, the second smartest man in the Marvel Universe. (Reed Richards is first, although an argument can be made that Doom is first, based on a superior ability to cure The Thing.) He uses this intelligence to help his people (noble), but only his people (not so noble). Also, he’s only willing to help them if they allow him complete and total control of their lives. (Hell of ignoble, Doom.)
2) He is among the most powerful sorcerers in the Marvel Universe. No one else near the top of the intelligence scale even approaches ranking on the sorcery scale. Doom possesses both knowledge of dark arts and arcana that men such as Richards and Stark lack, but he possesses the capacity to use them, and the faith that this requires. In one arc, after capturing/defeating the final four, he locked Reed Richards in a library that contained everything Richards would need to know to defeat Doom, simply because he knew Richards didn’t have what it took to believe in magic. (Richards won because he contacted Dr. Strange, ie he cheated.)
3) He will engage in good, even going so far as to save the world, but only if he knows that Reed Richards can’t do it, and therefore by doing so he demonstrates his superiority over (and to!) Reed Richards.
Some of his more notable shenanigans:
1) He stole the power cosmic from the Silver Surfer. If there is a force beyond his own in the universe, he needs to control it. What separates him from other penny ante chumps in the world of fiction is that Doom quite frequently pulls it off.
2) Related to above, made a deal with Loki to lure Asgardians to Latveria so that he could dice them up and figure out if the source of their god powers was biological. Dr. Doom dissected god.
3) Took over the Baxter Building, headquarters of the Fantastic Four. Shot said building into space. Escaped without consequence because as sovereign ruler of Latveria, he possesses diplomatic immunity. Seriously. The diplomats in Lethal Weapon 2 were dealing drugs or something. Dr. Doom is stealing skyscrapers and shooting them into space.
4) Despite having ample powers of sorcery, he traded the soul of the only woman he has ever loved to a trio of demons in exchange for even greater powers of sorcery. Wore a suit of armor made from her skin for a while.
It goes on like this. There are plenty of bad people in the large world of fiction. None of them have both the exquisite sense of villainy and the absurd capabilities of Victor von Doom.
For the record, Doom is better than the Joker because the Joker is crazy (he can’t help it), he’s better than Vader because Doom has never helped anyone for reasons that were not on some level selfish, he’s better than Lex Luthor because Luthor can’t do magic, and he’s better than the shark from Jaws because if Doom is going to consume someone’s flesh, it’s going to be a norse god and not some piss-ant sheriff of some vacation spot.
ok favorite part is this little smile around 1:55 because oh my godddddd but also other favorite part is every other part
