weird

Thursday various

  • Following up on these 200 creepy stories about Calgary, Meredith has been posting similar stories for Washington, DC. I particularly like #4.

  • Ooh! Ray Bradbury is developing a new television miniseries!

  • This whole Harlequin Horizons “self-publishing imprint” business strikes me as deeply weird. It’s like, “We won’t buy your novel…but here’s how you can pay us to print it!” [via]

  • “[T]here is ‘no freestanding constitutional right not to be framed.'” Uh oh. [via]

  • And finally, a really excellent interview with Cormac McCarthy. [via]:

    Well, I don’t know what of our culture is going to survive, or if we survive. If you look at the Greek plays, they’re really good. And there’s just a handful of them. Well, how good would they be if there were 2,500 of them? But that’s the future looking back at us. Anything you can think of, there’s going to be millions of them. Just the sheer number of things will devalue them. I don’t care whether it’s art, literature, poetry or drama, whatever. The sheer volume of it will wash it out. I mean, if you had thousands of Greek plays to read, would they be that good? I don’t think so.

Thursday various

  • Giant Crack in Africa Will Create a New Ocean. Of course, it’ll be in a million years or so, but still. [via]
  • I’ve been impressed with Geist ever since Heather got me a subscription to the magazine — to the point that I didn’t think twice about renewing my subscription, even as I let my New Yorker subscription lapse again. I like the magazine not least as physical object, so I was a little dubious about the idea of a digital edition. But I think this has a certain goofy charm; it certainly replicates the turning of magazine pages better than the typical e-reader. Check it out — and maybe even consider subscribing!
  • I’ll admit, when I DVR a television show, I usually fast-forward through the commercials. Isn’t that the purpose for which the technology was first marketed? Apparently, I’m in a very small majority: nearly half of all DVR users don’t skip the ads. [via]
  • Now that he’s been elected New Jersey’s governor, I think Monty Python definitely should sue Chris Christie. [via]
  • And finally, though you’ve probably seen this all over the place, Joss Whedon’s open letter to The Terminator owners. That’s four zeroes after the one!

Wednesday various

Tuesday various

  • I actually don’t have a problem with new Winnie the Pooh stories by a different author, even if that means the introduction of a new character. I’m not in love with the idea, and would prefer to see something new — if Lottie the Otter is a worthy character, give her her own damn book? — but I’m more concerned with this being done to extend copyright, to prevent other new stories from being told.

  • So if God didn’t create heaven and earth, that begs the question: who did? (From a Biblical standpoint, that is. If you take the there-is-no-God, the-universe-was-not-created route, obviously it’s sort of a moot point altogether.) This seems more like a case of semantics, but interesting semantics nonetheless. [via]

  • “A van carrying beehives crashed into a truck on Monday, and huge swarms of bees broke free and stung the injured and rescue workers at the scene.” Yikes! As if the car crash wasn’t bad enough. [via]

  • Next week, my mom and I are going to see Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! at Carnegie Hall. Tickets are sold out, but you still have time to bid on a pair (for charity) if you’d also like to be there.

  • And finally, I really loved these Superhero Status Updates. [via]

Monday various