He is hilarious, he is poignant, and he’s even a nice guy. Ladies and gentlemen, Mike Birbiglia performed in my city tonight, and I got to meet him. A good night was had.
Mike Birbiglia
Geek Tweaking my iPhone: Stargate screens
Mere minutes later, here are the four screen pairings I made for my phone based on Stargate.
Geek Tweaking my iPhone
The first thing I did when I purchased my iPhone last year was, obviously, “slide to unlock.” That was when I saw a great opportunity to add some geeky customization to the lock screen and home screen. Would others be able to see it? Only when I hold my phone out to them and say “hey, check out this cool thing I did. No, I don’t have a girlfriend. Why do you ask?”
Here are a few of the lock/home screen pairs I made up. Next post will show some more, all made when I was watching all three Stargate television series in order. Why do you keep asking if I have a girlfriend or not?
Death and Return of Superman Film
Are you super fucking excited by the title of this post? Are you giddy at the thought of seeing this story done right in a feature length format? Well simmer down. It’s not a full length adaptation. What it IS, though, is a short film by Max Landis (son of film luminary John Landis) presenting an educational and…unorthodox retelling of the comic book story that shook the comic book industry, and the world, two decades ago. Watch for Elijah Wood and Simon Pegg to appear, and a surprise cameo in the final moments.
Star Wars, Old Timey Style
Inspired by the podcast Top 5, available through Major Spoilers (find links on the right) I decided to make a poster showing what Star Wars should have looked like if it were made a few decades earlier.
Sharp Dressed (Bat)Man
StumbleUpon brought me to this particular image. As a big fan of Batman, I can only say that I love this image. The image was created by Benjamin Andrew Moore. His web info is listed below, and I highly recommend visiting his site! He creates the kind of work that makes me wish I was better at what I do.
E-Mail: bam@benjaminandrewmoore.com
Twitter: @benandrewmoore
Short fiction, 2/9/12
I was born here.
The door creaks and moans its protest as I enter. The floorboards cough dust upon my bare feet with every step. I lay my hands on the old furniture, still covered in the yellowing bed sheets, looking like so many corpses, and wonder why I bothered protecting sofas and chairs that I thought never again would receive guests.
I was born here.
I pull the curtains back from the dirt-coated windows and turn to see the now illuminated living room and, for a fleeting moment, it looks as it did once upon a time. The cat stretches on the new carpet, the Christmas tree blinks and shines in the corner, my family gathers around the television, my nephew thumps across the floor in search of new adventure. When I bat my eyes the years reassert themselves, and the cold clenches down upon the house once again. It takes me several seconds to realize that my mouth was open and my breath was drawn, ready to speak to these old ghosts. A loneliness the world has never known settles into my chest.
I was born here.
I light the candles. I remove the sheets. I clean the windows and the floor. I make everything come to life again. I sit down in the old recliner, preparing the stories I will tell. The door creaks and moans its protest as you enter. Come in. Sit down.
I have so much to tell you.
Short short story – 2/6/12
Redecorating
Mom painted the living room wall again. Of course she painted the entire room, but she always starts with that wall. She keeps coming up with reasons. Nicotine stains were getting bad, a new color will make the room look bigger, a new décor for the new millennium. Each time she does it, I watch her. It gets easier after the first wall. But I can see the pain in her face as she moves the roller up and down that side of the room. She pushes harder, adds an extra coat that she doesn’t need. It is because in her mind she still sees what was there before. So do I. But I’ve learned to control it.
We see Dad, sitting on the floor. The blood on the wall, almost dry, paints a trail from his head up to the six foot high smattering of holes in the wall, made by the household shotgun he used to keep in the hall closet. Self-defense, the police decided. Dad attacked her after she discovered obvious stains on their bed. The white stains were from him. The red stains were not. She defended herself and, at the same time, got her revenge.
I like the new wall color.
Don’t try this at home
“Crazy Ivan” is a comic strip character I made years ago. I don’t really know why. But here is his greatest adventure.
Why I occasionally get freaked out by Christians.
I should start by saying that I don’t get freaked out by all Christians. Only some of them. The ones who evangelize to strangers like a rabid car salesman. The ones who think gay people will destroy the world with their ridiculous notions of “love” and “equality” and other such nonsense. The ones who said the country was doomed because the President was a Muslim, even though he isn’t.
Basically, the crazy, crazy, crazy ones.
When I saw this news story, I decided I had to make this the first current events topic I would write about on this blog. It’s got it all! The courts doing good things, a teenager standing up for her beliefs, and yes…the crazy crazy crazy ones I just mentioned. For a full article on this subject you can CLICK HERE to visit the Washington Post article. To sum up, a 16-year old girl named Jessica objected to a prayer that was hung on the wall of her school auditorium. Some people in her situation might just let it be. The prayer doesn’t come off the wall and wrestle you into believing in God. But still it bothered her, and frankly it’s her right to be bothered by religious representation in her public school. She brought legal action into the mix to have the prayer removed or covered, and a judge ruled that the law was on her side with this, so the prayer has now been covered by a tarp.
Simple, yes? Christian students who like the prayer can write it in their notebooks and carry it with them all day instead of looking at it on the auditorium wall, advocates for keeping religion out of public school can be glad for this small victory, and Jessica, an Atheist, is no longer faced with the daily feeling of that wall hanging telling her she doesn’t belong there. Unfortunately, this is the point where the crazy crazy crazies come in.
Jessica has been receiving death threats from her fellow students. You read that correctly. Her follow students, Christians who theoretically believe in things like “love thy neighbor” and “peace be with you” are threatening to kill a 16-year old girl for exercising her legal rights and wishing to be comfortable in her own school while doing so in a way that does not demonize Christians in any way. If anyone else thinks that sounds a little like a Jihad, you’re not alone. These children, the ones who think God is best served by having an Atheist slaughtered for making sense, are the ones that freak me out. Why? See for yourself;
That last one may just look like a guy laughing at Jessica’s misfortune, but after looking into his twitter account a little you’ll find him suggesting that Casey Anthony should adopt Jessica, and on Martin Luther King Jr. Day he posted that MLK’s dream was to be white, and wished everyone a Happy James Earl Ray Day. So yes, not only is he religiously intolerant, he’s also a racist. And a bad person. A bad, bad person.
If you’re not freaked out too, I would have to ask why. This girl has to be taken to school by a police escort for safety. Anchor dropping, burning in hell, and an Atheist holocaust; sounds more like tough love than God’s love, if by tough you mean psychotic and homicidal. Why does it end up this way? Are these kids being taught to hate Atheists when they go to church? Taught to hate ALL non-Christians? Or are they all coming to this interpretation on their own after hearing the weekly sermons? Do they even GO to church? I attended church every week for many years in my late teens and early 20’s. Not pressured or forced by family. I went of my own accord because I needed something to relieve some depression I was going through at the time. I don’t remember anyone preaching about killing Atheists. Or killing anyone. So let’s assume, and hope really hard, that churches are not instructing children to go threaten Atheists with death. Where else are they getting the idea? Home? Maybe their parents are the ones who want the Atheists wiped out and are passing that desire on to their kids. But what are the chances that this many kids are going to have parents in favor of a new round of Crusades? Okay, we’ll cross that one off as well. Sifting through the remaining possibilities and……hey, this one looks a little promising. They don’t actually want her dead. They just want the attention that comes to people who very publicly say they want someone dead.
Think about it; it’s a topic that is easy to jump on bandwagon style. Plenty of people local and nationwide would get behind it because religious intolerance and Christian fanaticism is not exactly hard to find. It makes them all look tough and devout and hardcore while not having to prove it because really, who is going to challenge them to prove their devotion by making an assassination attempt in school? They don’t hate all non-Christians, because Jessica cannot be the only student in the school who doesn’t go to church. There must be others, but the Death Tweeters don’t go after them because there is no media attention in it for them. This is the part that people may not like reading, but it has to be said. If any of these hateful students wanted Jessica dead, she’d probably already be dead. I’ll use myself as an example here; If I was planning to kill someone for having beliefs different than mine, I would not be tweeting about it first. “Nail her to a cross” is something you hear from a person who wants to sound dangerous but doesn’t have the necessary constitution to actually be dangerous. They want to sling the hurtful barbs and scare Jessica, make some headlines, gain some scary reputation, without any of the pesky jail time that goes with following through on the things they’ve been saying.
My bottom-line opinion: I’m not freaked out by these kids anymore, because they are not the crazy crazy crazies. I seriously worked this out while writing this post. It ended up going in a direction different than I originally expected. I’m still freaked out by the actual Christian fanatics, but these kids are certainly not them. Well, maybe a few are. But certainly not all of them. Most of them are just attention whores who think death threats are cool. But it’s okay, because I’m “sure” they have been saved by God’s grace. Right?
PlanetRise Creative 