Magnificent Valor

Recommended Method for Donning

2010-12-11T17:28:00.000-08:00

Five Frames of Foliage

2010-11-17T13:18:00.000-08:00

Sex Attractant

2010-09-25T21:08:00.000-07:00

The Pharaoh's Dream

2010-09-14T22:44:00.000-07:00

Alan Moore is...

2010-07-27T20:05:00.001-07:00

YAHWEH, LORD OF HOSTS

He ain't your daddy's "I am."

So You Don't Have To

2010-05-10T18:44:00.000-07:00

The Trees Have Eyes

2010-05-02T20:13:00.000-07:00

Mistscape

2010-03-10T17:55:00.000-08:00

Midnight Launch

2010-03-08T22:55:00.001-08:00

Hoo boy. Someone's not getting any sleep tonight.

OMG PS3 Y2K WTF

2010-03-01T07:32:00.000-08:00

8001050F

Do Not Reheat

2010-02-10T20:44:00.000-08:00

All 1,000 Of Your Kids Will Live Again

2010-01-29T21:35:00.000-08:00

Axe Cop is a comic about a cop who has an axe. Also, there's Flute Cop, who gets dinosaur blood on him and turns into Dinosaur Soldier, then eats an avocado that turns him into Avocado Soldier, then obtains the godlike powers granted by a unicorn horn and becomes Uni-Avocado Soldier.

The series is produced by the Nicolle brothers. Ethan, the artist, is 29. Malachai, the writer, is a five-year-old. In other words, this comic is the best idea anyone has ever had.

Everyone on Earth needs to go visit this site so that the brothers can become the richest brothers in the whole world and afford to make their own planet with a castle that has its own pizza place in it, because their awesomeness is TOO MUCH FOR THE EARTH.

A Little Dose of Springtime Cheer

2010-01-26T20:25:00.000-08:00

The Windows Are Filled With Frost

2010-01-24T14:40:00.000-08:00

Sigh...

2010-01-13T12:08:00.001-08:00

Do I really have to live on the same planet as this guy?

Nine Below Zero and 3 O'Clock in the Afternoon

2010-01-08T08:17:00.001-08:00

Greetings from the depths of the "Arctic Blast," as the nation's weathermen, with that inimitable wit of theirs, have taken to calling the hemi-continent-engulfing cold snap. Apparently it's not bad enough that I have to endure a temperature gradient between my endothermic entrails and the outside air of about a hundred degrees - the media have to make it sound like a cool and refreshing snack special from Dairy Queen.

Phone Pix Redux, or, Rage of the Latex Long Dog

2010-01-02T14:23:00.000-08:00

A little more than Kindle, and less than kind...

2009-12-01T08:41:00.000-08:00

So it seems Amazon is looking to exploit the new Twilight film's fifteen minutes of lucre in order to sell more Kindles. (As opposed to selling more hardcopies of the book, which would just mean selling more kindling! Ha ha ha...! 'Cause, you see, all you could do with 'em is burn - oh, never mind. I'll leave those kind of jokes for the late-late-late-night talk show hosts.)

Here's the ad:

Now, at first, I though this was a bit silly, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it makes. After all, Twilight is a story about teenage love, right? Well, I can't think of a better way to experience teenage emotional connections than to do so the same way teenagers do: squinting at mawkish text on the screen of some overpriced gadget! So get your loved ones a Kindle - and if that's not "kind" enough, hook 'em up with some cheap, digital popcorn while you're at it. Just remember you only have about four more minutes before it goes stale.

I'm Always Watching

2009-10-22T15:08:00.000-07:00

Click to Biggie-size

I'm Taking Over This Blog...For CRIME!!

2009-10-18T10:53:00.000-07:00

Dave Lartigue over at Dave Ex Machina has just rolled out this week's installment of "Space Cabby Sunday," his ongoing chronicle of the eponymous working class hero. This latest adventure pits Space Cabby in a race against a ship controlled by "Piloton," the "super-electronic brain." Unfortunately, being "super-electronic" apparently doesn't mean "smart enough to avoid capture by bandits." The ship's captors, thieving villains though they are, are not without a certain flair for rhetoric, as they proudly proclaim that they're "taking over the ship...for CRIME!!"

Frankly, I don't know how I'm going to get through the whole day at work tomorrow without announcing, "I'm taking over this cubicle... for CRIME!!"

I love the way their announcement makes it seem like they're claiming the ship as the sovereign territory...of CRIME!! "We have been invested with plenipotentiary powers to conclude any and all treaties and establish extraterritorial zones of jurisdiction...FOR CRIME!!!"

Reflected Sky

2009-10-15T21:33:00.001-07:00

Fichigan Limbo

2009-10-15T19:38:00.000-07:00

I would say that life in a college town has its drawbacks, but such an equivocal condemnation suggests that life in a college town has advantages as well, which, given the fact that used bookstores and independent record shops are things of the past, is no longer remotely true. Among the more obnoxious aspects of life in Studentia is the poor quality of most bathroom grafitti. Admittedly, the English Building on my local campus can usually be relied upon for more interesting - or at least amusing - scrawled offerings; one stall on the first floor was formerly home to an entire essay offering an impassioned defense of hip-hop artist MF Doom. Still, if I am forced to avail myself of a restroom on campus, I try to stick to the upper floors of the various halls and labs, as these tend to be the haunts of teachers, researchers, and graduate assistants, rather than drooling undergrads. Unfortunately, even here, the level of discourse can disappoint:

Yes, hurling crude insults at your school's sporting rivals is indeed a mentally trying task, so make it easy on yourself by just copying the slogan off the front of your shirt!
Inevitably, some wag complemented this anti-Michigan salvo by transcribing the reverse of the ubiquitous tee:

I'm sure the inhabitants of Ann Arbor, MI are stung to the quick by this dazzling invective.

And yet, even the most depressing of stall doors will sometimes offer up an unexpected treat; after I had read through all the bathroom boilerplate on this door, discovering the tiny note at the bottom brought a smile to my face:

Sadly, no eight-inch tall dancers have ever undulated their way into that stall (at least to my knowledge), but whoever is responsible for that little snippet of random silliness certainly managed to make my day.

Misled by Devious Waggle Dancers

2009-09-24T13:01:00.000-07:00

Admit It, You'll Click On This

2009-09-24T10:56:00.000-07:00

"Great tits: murderous rapacious flesh-rending predators!"

I've Had to Create A New Tag Just For These Kinds of Pictures

2009-09-13T17:37:00.000-07:00

While I'm on the subject of Mass Effect, I have to bring up this odd interlude:

I understand that physics modeling in video games is a complicated business, and I'm frequently impressed with modern physics engines when they function properly, so I can take the occasional inevitable glitch in stride. Mass Effect is perhaps a bit more prone to such glitches than other similar games due to its largely physics-based combat, with telekinetic combatants hurling people and objects about with abandon. In this case, however, there was no biotic mishap to blame, just an odd little error that occured in vehicular combat.

As I was passing through a tunnel on the planet Therum, my M35 "Mako" rover was confronted by a squad of Geth rocket troopers. Medium infantry are easy prey for the Mako's powerful main gun, but the turret's limited firing angles make close-quarters fighting problematic, and the damage from Geth rockets can add up in a hurry on the higher difficuly levels (I was playing on "Hardcore," the fourth of five settings), so while I leveled my weapons at one opponent I neutralized another via the simple expedient of running him over. I continued to drive back and forth over him while I dealt with his companions, but when I had finished, the Mako reared suddenly, as though it had run up on some invisible obstacle. I tried to move on, but the left-hand wheels continued to hover in the air. Puzzled, I got out of the rover to investigate, and found that the body of the trooper had become stuck inside the chassis of the Mako, its motionless legs dangling from the rover's nose. Not knowing what else to do, I fired at the legs, and this somehow caused the glitched Geth to stop interacting physically with the environment; the Mako dropped to the ground, and the trooper's head now peeped up out of the nose. I got back behind the wheel and backed the rover off of the thing, then hopped back out for another look - and I was stunned to find the Geth frozen in the very image of the Christ! Toes hovering just inches off the ground, arms spread wide, head thrown back in agony or exaltation, pulse rifle clutched tightly in its fist as if it intended to open fire on the heavens and cry, "Eloi! Eloi! Lema sabachthani!"

Gameplay ground to a halt for nearly fifteen minutes, as I couldn't tear myself away from this astonishing sight. I didn't have my XBox hooked up properly for screen captures, so I had to content myself with some digicam photos of the screen itself. Eventually I forced myself to reboard the Mako and continue with my mission; when I rotated the view for one last look, I found the apparition had vanished into thin air.

Life Imitating Artifice

2009-09-08T11:02:00.000-07:00

I am no stranger to the wonders of generators, those fonts of improbable concepts and wonderfully unsettling titles, and have passed many an hour delighting in such artificially-generated gems as "The Sexy Bedroom of Santa Claus," "The Cycle of the Degenerate Dead," "The Enemy Hospital of Satan," "FrankenConvict," "The Cathouse of the Screaming Urge," "Jesse James Destroys the Souls," "The Lovely Need of Hercules," "Bikini Saturday," and, of course, the all-time classic, "Flesh From the End of Time." Sometimes, however, one comes across an actual title that surpasses anything the gods of code and chance could ever produce:
The Sexual Labyrinth of Nikolai Gogol. Yes. It's real.

For God So Loved the World

2009-09-02T19:53:00.000-07:00

...he gave up, like, his favorite Polly Pocket.

Mortal Coil

2009-08-26T18:35:00.000-07:00

Thirty PSes of Silver

2009-08-19T13:42:00.000-07:00

Now that Sony has finally stopped playing coy about the new slim version of the Playstation 3, it has been revealed that the garish original color scheme of the classic "PS" logo is being dropped in favor of an all-silver look that will be "standard across all platforms." It certainly fits in well with the Slim's matte black casing, moreso than the brightly colored original did with the "phat" PS3's piano-black chassis. However, now that the design of the PS logo has been called to my close attention, I'm noticing for the first time what a striking resemblance it bears to the ancient Chi-Rho christogram:

Further ~~tomfoolery~~ research on my part has brought to light possible evidence that those behind the Playstation project have been working since the early days of the Christian Church to control the destiny of mankind, as shown in this ancient image of an Imperial standard:

PS + PX = PSX???

Could the release of the Slim PS3 be merely the next phase in a millennia-old conspiracy to dominate the world? Is the installation of a Playstation in every home part of the ANNUNAKI LIZARD-MEN's plot to use BLUE-LASER DIODE TECHNOLOGY to MASTER MEN'S MINDS???

If so, great! I'm gonna invest everything I got in Tinfoil Hats, LLC.

I am Pupating with Impunity

2009-08-19T11:03:00.000-07:00

The blog Ugly Overload provides interesting glimpses into the less glamorous but no less fascinating areas of biology. What's more, the titles of the posts often double as great band names! Here is the current list of recent posts/lineup for Uglyfest 2009:

Ant Raft
Satanic Bonding
Pupating With Impunity
Philippine Fairytale
Liver Fluke Life
Casting Call
Squinty-eyed Tarsier
Baldy Raccoon
Ode to the Horseshoe Bat

The sequel to "I Am A Strange Loop" is "I Am A Wonderful Green Conductor"

2009-08-10T14:18:00.000-07:00

I'M A TREE

2009-08-10T11:18:00.000-07:00

There are some Metal Gear fans among this blog's readership, right? (Don't worry, I'm not pretending this blog actually has a readership.) Sarcasm aside, on the off chance that any interested parties stumble across this blog, I urge you to check out Peachi's livejournal for some brilliantly silly and incisive adaptations of most of the Metal Gear saga, among other things. You can also find her awesome Persona 4 comic that's been making its way around the blogosphere lately, as well as links to her other sites with more of her cool fan art. So hop on over to hiimdaisy today!

Speaking of stumbling across this place, MagVal-dot-BloSpo currently pops up as the third hit on a Google search for "magnificent valor!" And is that not just what the people of this strife-weary world are all searching for? No? They're all looking up "celeb + nude + trampoline + bbq sauce" instead? Rats.

P@L1ned

2009-08-06T11:15:00.000-07:00

As the gaming sites are reporting today, someone on eBay is claiming to have an XBox 360 autographed by the Once-and-Maybe-Would-Be-Future Queen, Sarah Palin. He's willing to let go of this piece of history (no lie - it's catalogued in "Historical Memorabilia") for the bargain-basement price of $1.1 million (plus shipping). But it's not a "Buy-It-Now," it's an open auction, so if you feel like paying more, you're free to bid away. I feel I should comment on this meeting of the political and gaming worlds, so I'll just plagiarize my own recent comments on Facebook:

Here in this great Country of Ours, pwning n00bs

here in the greatness of rivers and mountains that is in Alaska,

where bears and mighty salmon game side by side,

truly separates the Covenant from the Combine,

the GRAW2s from the CoD4MWs,

by the grace of Him whose thumbstick guides us all,

in America, amen.

May you know the grace of Him whose thumbstick guides us all...

...or, if you prefer, may you be touched by His Noodly Thumbstick.

GOP Gov Stuns Nation By Leading Remotely Interesting Life

2009-07-16T12:14:00.001-07:00

Apologies to the Tonight Show

Marshall Clement Sanford, son of Marshall Clement Sanford,

(1)was born to a middle-class family in Florida,
(2)earned bachelor's and master degrees in business,
(3)worked as a student for Goldman Sachs,
(4)started his own successful leasing and brokerage firm,
(5)earned a 92 rating from the American Conservative Union during his days as a legislator, and
(6)transgressed against all his ostensible principles, cheated on his wife, and threw his gubernatorial responsibilites to the four winds by running off to South America and having a steamy, wildly passionate affair with a seductive, brilliant Argentine beauty.

It is a measure of the perversity of American values - and Republican values in particular - that the only one of Mr. Sanford's accomplishments people seem to think he should be ashamed of...

...is the one thing in his bland, by-the-numbers, white-bread, white-guy existence that he - by any sane standards - ought to be proud of.

By Popular Demand

2009-05-29T10:54:00.000-07:00

This is an essay I recently wrote for a composition class. It was a self-assigned paper; the task to which I set myself was to write a catalog review in the style of S.J. Perelman's legendary skewerings from The New Yorker. Tens of people have been clamoring for its publication, so here is the fruit of my labors:

It's hard to believe, nowadays, that I was once a mere boy of nine years - harder still to believe that I was once a mere girl of nine years, but that is neither here nor there. Amongst the fast-fading memories of my halcyon days, there is still one that remains as vivid as only a small child's stark terror can make it. People in my family tended to speak in hushed tones of Great-Aunt Vi's kitchen; those who'd been inside refused to speak of it at all, or indeed to speak at all. Aunt Vi was like some dark priestess of cookery, whose culinary feats came at a price too great and terrible for a mere mortal to bear. From the day Aunt Vi oh-so-casually asked me to step into the kitchen and fetch a basket of yeast rolls, the idea of cooking has been inextricably associated with a surpassing dread. Within that realm of darkness and flame lurked more obscure devices for the manipulation of more obscure foods in more obscure ways than anyone ought to know about. I think it was the truly mind-boggling “eggplant defibrillator” that finally set me to shrieking and running for dear life. Aunt Vi found me, of course, about an hour later, cowering before a shelf of implements that must have come from the kitchen of Hieronymus Bosch. Still, cooking is all the rage these days, so, squelching my trepidation, I set out, at long last, to master the art with the help of the good folks at The Pampered Chef.

The antiseptic quaintness of the universe as envisioned by the P.C. makes one's kitchen look positively inviting - at first. The mind is set at ease by the alchemical mysteries of the "Suds Pump," a novel device which achieves new levels of cleanliness through a radical combination of "soap" and "water." I was a little fuzzy on the nature of the "Greek Rub," though that too sounds quite soothing. (Apparently some customers prefer to be rubbed by a Jamaican jerk - no accounting for taste, I suppose.) The P.C. bookshelf is packed with effervescent offerings such as Spin on Salads, spiritual fare like Stoneware Inspirations, and the heart-pounding action of 29 Minutes to Dinner. The promise of a "Small Oval Baker" made the P.C. kitchen seem friendly and innocuous, though I couldn't help but feel they were being a little insensitive toward the man. (There was also mention of a "Deep-Covered Baker," presumably involved in culinary espionage of some sort; I would guess he is either the author or the protagonist of 29 Minutes.)

However, just when I felt I was beginning to feel comfortable amongst all the culinaria, the bewildering profusion of gadgetry on display sapped my newfound confidence. The "Bamboo Cheese Board" left me concerned about the inexorable progress of genetic science - what couldn't they get cheese out of these days? I worried also about what Olympian quantities of carné would necessitate the use of an industrial-grade "Meat Lifter." (A roast piled high with bamboo cheese, perhaps?) Ice cream must be tougher than I remember, since P.C.'s "Ice Cream Dipper" relies on some mysterious liquid that draws heat from the very flesh of your hands. (In my day, ice-cream scoops were all-metal affairs that relied on the tried-and-true "drawing heat from hot things" method.) The "Pie Crust Shield" sounds like some particularly laughable artifact from Dungeons and Dragons, and I take strong exception to anyone passing off a thirty-nine-dollar piece of tableware as a "Trifle Bowl." And while I applaud Pampered Chef's exhortation to help "Whip Cancer^®," I can't help but be more concerned by the implication that Cancer^® apparently now has its own brand name^TM, legal team^®, and image consultants^ECCH. The final straw was the expectation that I should fork over $59.50 to buy my food an "Ultimate Mandoline." If my “penultimate guitare” isn't good enough for the rutabagas, they'll just have to make do.

I wish now that morbid curiosity hadn't compelled me to take a peek at the cutlery section, for there I found a parade of horrors that would have warmed old Auntie's heart. The "7-inch Santoku" looks like it would do as well for a shiv as my old "6-inch Stiletto." The Pampered Chef "Salad Chopper" is fooling no one: it's clearly just a repurposed taser gun. For those with an inveterate hatred of fresh fruit, there's the "Apple Peeler/Corer/Slicer," a vise-like monstrosity that could probably not only process your Granny Smiths, but also isolate, sleep-deprive, and water-board them as well. Amidst all this black-and-chrome armament, the bright red plastic of "My Safe Cutter" draws the eye like a bloodstain. This purports to be for children; however, I've noticed that my neighborhood "Safe Cracker" carries a similar implement. The endless parade of sharp edges includes the "Serrated Peeler" and the "Rotary Grater" and I'm sure the "Spring-Loaded Eviscerator" would have come along in due course if I hadn't lost my nerve at that point and pitched the catalogue into the potato cupboard.

So I admit it, folks: I'm no Aunt Vi. I haven't the intestinal fortitude to dabble in the diabolical art of cooking, no matter how deceptively domestic it may seem. I’m sure Auntie is watching me from the afterworld, smirking at me in that endearing way she always had, and dragging one finger suggestively across her throat in that maddening way she always had. Well, old girl, I concede: you were more of a man in the kitchen than I could ever be. I have quit the battlefield in shame and disarray, and I’m sure it would be a balm to your soul to know it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I going to hop back into bed, put a damp towel on my forehead, and order out for dinner.

Orientalism

2009-05-29T10:09:00.001-07:00

Here's the cover of an English-language book on East Asian cinema, featuring an image from a Korean film popular in the West.

Here's the cover of an English-language book on East Asian cinema, featuring an image from a Chinese film popular in the West.

Leaving aside the highly problematic (to say the least) editorial decision to represent East Asian cinema - and, by extension, East Asia - as an affluent man in Western dress about to get his head blown off (and the unsettling implications about Western views of Asia), this gives one a skewed view of Asian film. I mean, it's not like Asian directors have some obsessive interest with putting guns to people's heads. Just because one watches a film from East Asia, that doesn't mean you can take it for granted that someone's going to get their skull excava-

[sigh] Never mind. Just...never mind.

Before humans walked this land...

2009-04-13T14:06:00.000-07:00

...an elder race of maggot-men erected a crude ziggurat to their unspeakable god.

The Depressing Thing Is, These Are in Color.

2009-04-13T13:42:00.000-07:00

Well, all but one. Can you spot the oddball?

Bad Ways to Go

2009-03-26T13:25:00.000-07:00

Execution, Gangland-Style

Ginger and Sugar together was sweet - short and sweet. Sugar was Boss Starchi's moll... and Ginger found out the cold, hard way that you don't pitch woo at the boss's girl.

Stuck in the Event Horizon of a Clickwheel

Poetic justice, you bastard. You downloaded that song so that you could mercilessly Rick-roll your friends and loved ones. Thanks to time dilation, you'll have eternity to regret it.

Struck Down By the Hand of God While Wearing a Cartoon Character Costume

The puddy-tats above, not satisfied with taking your life, have decided to rob you of your dignity as well.

Just Don't Ask About the "Simplex Fields"

2009-03-25T12:23:00.000-07:00

Pseudomonarchia Daemonum for the 21st Century

2009-03-25T09:08:00.001-07:00

DOMINATOR OF SOULS

CONDEMNER OF SOULS

WATCHER OF SOULS

REAVER OF SOULS

EATER OF SOULS

Cellphone Shots

2009-03-25T08:56:00.001-07:00

Stars Do Have More Fun

2009-03-25T08:43:00.000-07:00

I'll let these magazine covers speak for themselves.

Some Cat Photos

2009-03-04T20:07:00.000-08:00

Because this is my blog and no one can stop me.

Corner of Green and Golgotha

2009-02-26T16:29:00.001-08:00

Smaller Worlds in Color

2009-02-10T19:53:00.000-08:00

Nashville in Black and White

2009-02-10T19:45:00.000-08:00