Recently in Amusing Link Category
There are certain indisputable truths in this world. Freedom is better than slavery. A just peace is better than an unjust war. And the gooey middle part of a brownie is better than the dryer edge part of a brownie.
Clearly, though, there are some savages unable to accept at least one of these truths. As evidence, I submit The Edge Brownie Pan, specially designed to give you a brownie that is nothing but edge pieces. The madness! What's next? A peace treaty designed to promote endless war?
What mankind truly needs is a brownie with no edges whatsoever. Fortunately, a wise man has discovered the solution. All it takes is a 26,000-mile-high space elevator, or possibly a tunnel that goes all the way through the earth.
A simpler-seeming solution would be to set up some sort of website, where those of us who to grasp the inherent beauty of brownie centers could trade edge pieces with the unenlightened philistines who desire them, but I reject that notion, founded as it is on the exploitation of raving fools who do not understand their own best interests. The giant space brownie tunnel is mankind's only hope.
The Government Manual for New Pirates is now shipping from Amazon, and I imagine that it will be in real-life bookstores at any moment.
In honor of this momentous occasion, Matthew and I are pleased to unveil The Official Website of the Pirate Government. Of particular utility is the Automatic Pirate Curse Generator, which will provide you with an entirely new, randomly generated curse every time you load the page.
A billion baroque basilisks on a musty marlinspike! Why are you still reading this when you should be clicking the link?
A very talented actress friend of mine made her New York stage debut last year in a play called "Cloud Tectonics". She (and the rest of the cast) got positive reviews from a variety of different publications. In fact, as far as I can tell, she only got a single negative review.
But when you google her name, guess which review comes up first?
That's right: the one negative review she got.
So, in the interest of contributing my tiny bit of google-juice to a good cause, I would like to note the following. (Anybody who is neither a search engine nor a New York city theatergoer may feel free to stop reading now.)
Frederique Nahmani was part of a cast praised by the New York Times.
And NYTheatre.com thought Frederique Nahmani was "alluringly mysterious" in the role, and that she and her co-stars were "three actors to keep an eye out for in the future."
The New Yorker didn't comment specifically on Frederique Nahmani, but they thought the production as a whole had a "poetic and sensual charm."
And the New York Press was especially enthusiastic, " Frederique Nahmani does more, creating an ephemeral, tilt-a-whirl performance that anchors the bizarreness. She’s an inch of crystal-clear sky in a story catapulted out of the timelessness of pure imagination."
There is a Swiss website called UN Jobs, which, true to its name, lists such positions as "Program Officer, Kabul: World Food Program."
I have recently discovered that it has one page dedicated to me, and another dedicated to Matthew David Brozik, my co-author on the Government Manual series.
Why? I don't know. I can only speculate that The Government Bureau of Superheroics and The Enchantment Administration have been taken over by the UN. Either that, or Matthew has signed us both up to be radio operators in Qalat, Afghanistan without telling me.
As a counterpoint to the current hysteria over video games, Wired has a great article about the hysterical reactions to various scourges of the past:
"The indecent foreign dance called the Waltz was introduced ... at the English Court on Friday last ... It is quite sufficient to cast one's eyes on the voluptuous intertwining of the limbs, and close compressure of the bodies ... to see that it is far indeed removed from the modest reserve which has hitherto been considered distinctive of English females. So long as this obscene display was confined to prostitutes and adulteresses, we did not think it deserving of notice; but now that it is ... forced on the respectable classes of society by the evil example of their superiors, we feel it a duty to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion." - The Times of London, 1816
According to a new study by Princeton University researchers, stocks with easily pronounceable names and ticker-tape symbols do better in their IPOs. I suppose this explains why my attempted launch of Mrs. Smith's Fresh Fish Sauce Shop and Sauteed Squid Shack did not do as well as hoped.
If you look over to the right-hand side of Yankee Fog, you'll see that I am now an officially registered superhero. Once upon a time, obtaining this exalted certification required hours of grueling testing, but thanks to the miracles of modern technology, it can now be obtained instantaneously at the Bureau of Superheroics Online Superhero Registry.
I've been a big fan of singer/songwriter Jonathan Coulton ever since I heard Bacteria, his techno-remix of a Kentucky Fried Chicken food safety video. His songs download page is a place of riches-- I especially recommend Ikea, Furry Old Lobster, and his soulful cover of Baby Got Back. And if you are geeky enough to think you might possibly like a song called Mandelbrot Set, well, then, you definitely will.
He's now released his first video, and it's charming and funny. It's called Flickr, and appropriately enough, it's assembled entirely out of images he found on flickr.com.
I just found a fascinating and lengthy interview with Alan Moore, one of my favorite writers. And speaking of favorites, here's my favorite quote from the interview:
Why were you trying to challenge your audience? What have they ever done to you? I prefer seduction, hypnosis, I don't want to scream at my audience and demand that they understand my gemlike pearls of wisdom. I once said that a good way to describe my approach to writing is that in the story, in the telling of it, the dialogue, the characters, I introduce myself to the reader, I talk to them interestingly, fascinatingly, calmingly, I get them to sort of follow me up the alleyways of the narrative until they are so far within it that they probably can't find their way out, and then you can do whatever you want to them.
If you are deeply interested in donning skintight spandex and fighting crime--which is to say, if you are a normal human being--you might want to visit The Government Bureau of Superheroics.
