pop culture | puppet wrangling

Monday various

Ten Things to Know About the Future of Comics. [via]
After this interview with Roger Ebert and his recent Fresh Air interview, I’m starting to think maybe I underestimated Justin Timberlake.
Inside the Lennon/McCartney connection [via]
If you sign on to social networks over public WiFi, you might want to check out Firesheep. Then, if you have the patience, you might want to wade into the debate over whether revealing this security hole to the general public does more harm or good.
And finally, There Will Be Blood for Nintendo.

Paul, the World Cup predicting octopus, has gone to the great octopus’ garden in the sky.
Sony will stop manufacturing the Walkman. In other news, Sony was still manufacturing the Walkman. [via]
Further proof that science fiction is more about the time it was created than about the future: 5 Things ‘Back to the Future’ Tells Us About the Past. [via]
Meanwhile, Realms of Fantasy closes shop. Again, and this time it looks like for good. I’m really disappointed by this news, not least of all because I subscribed in their recent save-the-magazine effort. It raises questions about the viability of print magazines in general, which, as somebody who puts together a twice-yearly zine, is something I’m quite interested in. Realms was a good genre magazine, and I’ll be sorry to see it go.
And finally, kind of weirdly tying all of this together in a way: The Space Squid Cuneiform Clay Tablet.
Of course, it’s not a real squid…and a squid isn’t the same thing as an octopus anyway…but there’s something fascinating about a zine (Space Squid) “printing one of their issues on the ultimate form of Dead Media: inscribed in cuneiform on a baked clay tablet.” Maybe that’s what Realms needed to do. Maybe that’s what I should do with Kaleidotrope. It’s a funny and clever stunt if nothing else. [via]

Roger Ebert: No Longer an Eater, Still a Cook
I’ve been told that the best thing to do when you get an earworm is to sing or hum “The Girl from Ipanema.” Of course, then you get that stuck in your head. Unhear It seems to work along similar reasoning. [via]
Worried about full-body scans at the airport? Okay, now imagine that technology deployed in street-roving vans. [via]
Mysterious full-size Dalek replica left anonymously at English school.
And finally, herding cats in IKEA [via]:

The Star Trek: TNG casting that almost was. Personally, I would have loved to have seen Yaphet Kotto as Picard or Wesley Snipes as Geordi.
It is possible to over-think things, even when you’re Superboy.
Alligators in the sewers: not just an urban legend anymore!
I think I’ve discovered a reason to visit Kansas City. [via]
And finally, we are doomed: The Jersey Shore‘s “The Situation” will make $5 million this year. Maybe their visit to the NY Stock Exchange wasn’t so crazy after all. Still: doomed.

It’s just a normal Monday here in New York, but it’s apparently Picnic Day in parts of Australia!

Picnic Day is a public holiday in the Northern Territory of Australia which takes place every year on the first Monday of August. It was originally declared a public holiday to enable Darwin’s railway workers to go to Adelaide River for a picnic.

I kind of love the specificity of that, the idea that an entire holiday sprung up just because that’s the day these workers had off from work. And come on, how can you not like a holiday called Picnic Day?
Justin Bieber has written a memoir. This is just ridiculous on so many levels.
Wait. Now Frank Miller worries about looking silly?
If Titanic II was intended as a cheap direct-to-video sequel to the James Cameron movie, that would be weird and maybe worth talking about. But since it’s just about a ship called Titanic II — and is really just your run-of-the-mill crappy direct-to-video disaster movie — it’s really not.
And finally…

For the past 20 years, scientists at the Farallones have been documenting more than just puffin nests and shark breeding around the windswept archipelago 27 miles west of the Golden Gate. They’ve been keeping a daily log of their dreams, which tend to be eerily similar.

Apparently, it’s called “day residue.” [via]