- Tintin’s Lovecraftian Adventures
- Along the same lines: What If…Herge Created the X-Men?
- And also, what if Charles Schulz illustrated H.P. Lovecraft? [via]
- Today in infographics: The Rules of Magic, Doctor Who Timeline, and Good Versus Evil in the Superhero Comic Color Palette [via and via]
- The truly odd story of New York’s Hartwick College and their “Methuselah” trust from a one-time benefactor:
Because thanks to an eccentric New York lawyer in the 1930s, this college in a corner of the Catskills inherited a thousand-year trust that would not mature until the year 2936: a gift whose accumulated compound interest, the New York Times reported in 1961, “could ultimately shatter the nation’s financial structure.†The mossy stone walls and ivy-covered brickwork of Hartwick College were a ticking time-bomb of compounding interest—a very, very slowly ticking time bomb.
One suspects they’d have rather gotten a new squash court. [via]
- Sorry, folks on my Christmas list: Mailing Chicken Pox Lollipops Is Illegal, Reckless. Maybe just a card? [via]
- A Tree Grows in Queens (Right Through An Auto Body Shop!) [via]
- “Sure. Alternate realities. You could have, like, a world without shrimp. Or with, you know, nothing but shrimp…” – Anya
First top predator was giant shrimp with amazing eyes. (“You have amazing eyes! Please don’t eat me, giant killer shrimp!”)
- The Higgs boson: Why scientists hate that you call it the ‘God particle’ [via]
- And finally, Bobby McFerin demonstrates the power of the pentatonic scale [via]:
comics
Tuesday various
- “The days of aliens spouting gibberish with no grammatical structure are over…” Creating a new language for A Game of Thrones
- Along the same lines, 20 awesomely untranslatable words from around the world. I particularly like
Yagan (indigenous language of Tierra del Fuego) – “the wordless, yet meaningful look shared by two people who both desire to initiate something but are both reluctant to start†[via]
- Are we truly living in the age of fanfiction?
What’s been truly bizarre, though, is the way the mainstream has slowly headed in the same direction, and without anyone noticing it, we seem to have handed over our entire industry to the creation of fanfiction on a corporate level, and at this point, I’m not sure how we’re expecting the pendulum to ever swing back. I know people love to blame Spielberg and Lucas for creating the modern blockbuster age, but at least when they decided to pay tribute to their inspirations, they did so in interesting ways. Spielberg has talked about how his frustrations at hearing that only English filmmakers could direct James Bond movies led to the creation of Indiana Jones, and Lucas was working out his love of Flash Gordon when he created “Star Wars.” Those are healthy ways to work through your love of something, and absolutely make sense as important pieces in the creative process. What’s scary is how these days, filmmakers wouldn’t bother with that last step, the part where you take your inspirations and run them through your own filter. Now, instead, we live in an age where we are simply doing the source material again and again and again, and where original creation seems to be almost frowned upon as a “risk.” [via]
- See also: they’re re-making Starship Troopers. And The Munsters. As a “dramatic re-imagining.”
- It’s so sad to see Monty Python members fight among themselves.
- Blackwater is changing its name. This is like if the Devil started asking us to call him Gus.[via]
- David Milch to adapt William Faulkner? I am so there.
- They’re coming to crowd-fund you, Barbara… ‘Living Dead’ Fans Digging Up Funds to Keep Chapel from Going Under
- Bruce Wayne’s medical records [via]
- And finally, I haven’t seen the new Tintin movie, but this fan-made opening sequence is really quite wonderful. [via]
The Adventures of Tintin from James Curran on Vimeo.
Monday various
- A Collection of Rejected Titles for Classic Books [via]
- 12 Futuristic Finalists: Zombie Safe House Competition. Because the zombie apocalypse is coming, whether you’re ready for it or not. [via]
- Bulgarian environmentalists ask that Expendables 2 producers please not explode their bats
- Tasha Robinson of the AV Club asks Scott Tobias of same “why didn’t you like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World?” There’s some interesting food for thought, not just on Scott Pilgrim (which I happen to love, at least in its movie form) but on movies in general — particularly what Tobias calls “assemblages of awesome stuff…that are not, in fact, awesome.”
- And finally, abandoned Alan Moore comic would have destroyed the DC Universe. Yeah, hard to believe they didn’t go ahead with “an arc that would paint many of the company’s characters in the worst light possible and then kill them off.”
Thursday various
- The Call of Cthulhu by Dr. Seuss [via]
- Don’t trust anyone you meet online. [via]
- Perks of Being an English Major [via]
- Science fiction vs. literary fiction
- And finally, Ira Glass’ sex tape:
For the most part, this is pretty SFW visually, although fairly explicit in other ways. I include it mostly because it’s a pitch-perfect parody. [via]
Tuesday various
- “They were digging a new foundation in Manhattan / When they discovered a slave cemetary there” 19th-c. African-American village unearthed in what is now NYC’s Central Park
- Drug Dealers May Have Wiped Out “Uncontacted” Amazon Tribe [via]
- Where’s WALL-E? [via]
- If the Kindle is $0 next August, I’m totally buying one. Otherwise, not so much.
- And finally, A tear jerking story about Animal Crossing [via]