The Arflovers Blog has a regular Wacky Wonder Woman Wednesday feature, and this is a special Halloween Edition. It’s very Wonder Woman, very Wacky, and very very Wednesday.affordable company loanloans 403 bstudent loan f 108loan ace titleloan lending aircraftloan 30kloans home amalgamatedhome american closes loans Map

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UGO asks Neil Gaiman, Ozzy Osbourne, Clive Barker, Brian Posehn, Tiger Woods and many others what may be the burning question of our times: Who would in in a fight: a minotaur armed with a trident or a centaur armed with a crossbow?. We’re betting on the centaur because they have TWO eyes.

SoCal fires rampage.

Meanwhile, as the Colorado Rockies prepare to host the World Series, a couple of inches of snow fell on Coors field. Snow has never interrupted a game there, but then the Rockies have never been in the World Series before.

In a scene out of a biblical epic or perhaps crazed supervillain attack, the bugs descended last night on Cleveland’s Jacobs field during the playoff game between the Yankees and Indians. The bugs are apparently called “Canadian Soldiers.” Cleveland won the game in extra innings.

posted by Mark Coale

RIP Lois Maxwell.

Oh Miss Moneypenny, forever, typing memos, answering phones and taking dictation, secretly keeping the nation secure, all with spackled on eyeliner and an Aquanet Hairshield — I’d like to see James Bond type 100 wpm.

Speaking of educating the kids, Occasional Superheroine leads us to the NSA’s “kid’s site” complete with lovable with cartoon characters.

We’re the CryptoKids and we love cryptology.

What’s cryptology? Cryptology is making and breaking codes. It’s so cool. We make codes so we can send secret messages to our friends. And we try to figure out what other people are writing about by breaking their codes. It’s a lot of fun.

On this site, you can learn all about codes and ciphers, play lots of games and activities, and get to know each of us - Crypto Cat™, Decipher Dog™, Rosetta Stone, Slate, Joules, T.Top, and, of course, our leader CSS Sam.

For you folks surfing The Beat late tonight, check out tonight’s “Superhero” themed episode of MYTHBUSTERS, another favorite of the nerderotti out there.

As we type this (9 PM ET), the first showing has just started. It repeats again overnight at 1 AM and again tomorrow night at 7 ET.

Topics include:

Building a Batman-like grappling hook
Can a Phantom-like punch like an imprint on your face?
How fast can you change in a phone booth?
will a hook fired from a Batmobile-style vehicle allow for 90 degree turns?

Posted by Mark Coale

And also:

Every year there is one post or quote or something that exemplifies what it is like to be part of the big show, and this year, Mariah Huehner said it as she contemplates her first San Diego ever.

It feels like, right now, to me at least, that many of the people I know are having lives that’re taking off, Mine included. It’s very strange and amazing and completely immediate. That’s how right now feels. It’s like sitting in your car with music playing and you’re on a long stretch of highway. And a song you love but haven’t heard in awhile comes on. You can see your life stretching out in front of you and at the same time you can tangibly feel your life happening. Who you are, what you’re doing, where you were, and possibly where you’re going. Although where you’re going is the part that is happening right now and the fact that you know part of it, but not the whole, is the exhilarating, terrifying, goose-bumpy part. The part that makes everything more alive and real and NOW. Because you can feel it happening right NOW.

Yeah that’s it. Enjoy it while you can, everyone. Inky, I will see you on the other side.loans title hud onetoll free fax loanpayments total consolidation loan detail amounttotal consolidated detail payments loantraining commercial officers loan forlending in truth auto loansfiancial area services tulsa loansdateline tv microloan Map

If you’re like us, you’ve already mentally been in San Diego for about 10 days. Worries about where to eat dinner on Wednesday, how to get across the railroad tracks, anxieties over getting to Ralphs. Like a ski racer, we’ve been down the course in our brains a dozen times already. We’re already planning how to get from Hall G to Hall B at 3 pm Saturday.

On the one hand it’s all going to be so horribly exciting. Our friends who are half our age or going to the show for the first time or else embarking on their maiden voyage as members of the inner circle…we’re thrive on their energy, we suck their enthusiasm. Not that we don’t have our own enthusiasms and wishes and hopes.

The #1 hope? Waking up the morning of Monday, July 30th with some mental facilities intact.

Nothing else matters.

Global Gaming Network has the hot scoop!

Ruby Rocket, GGN’s Comic Maven and the site’s producer at Comic-Con. She’s well-known in the cosplay community for her stunning and professional comic-based costume designs.

[Via Cinematical]

Meanwhile, JK herself speaks:

We are almost there! As launch night looms, let’s all, please, ignore the misinformation popping up on the web and in the press on the plot of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I’d like to ask everyone who calls themselves a Potter fan to help preserve the secrecy of the plot for all those who are looking forward to reading the book at the same time on publication day. In a very short time you will know EVERYTHING!

Homer Simpson has taken his place beside an ancient fertility symbol of the British Isles the Cerne Abbas giant of Dorset. But some pagans aren’t happy.

Pagans have pledged to perform “rain magic” to wash away a cartoon character painted next to their famous fertility symbol - the Cerne Abbas giant.

A doughnut-brandishing Homer Simpson was painted next to the giant on the hill above Cerne Abbas, Dorset, to promote the new Simpsons film.

Many believe the ancient chalk outline of the naked, sexually aroused giant to be a symbol of ancient spirituality.

UPDATE: we were in a bit of a hurry when we wrote the above, but this deserves some more commentary. First off this story in the Pakistan Daily Times had the best title evah: Pagans say Homer is pants

Why is this such an epic moment in movie marketing? Well, we all know the Simpsons are the greatest cartoons of the 20th century. Jumping the shark or the whole aquarium, they are still icons of the greatest magnitude.

And this stunt shows why they are great.

Ponder one moment. A CARTOON CHARACTER HAS BEEN ETCHED ON A HILLSIDE BESIDE A 17TH CENTURY CHALK OUTLINE OF A NAKED, SEXUALLY AROUSED, CLUB-WEILDING GIANT. While that scarcely needs any embellishment to reinforce its wonderment, it becomes even more impressive when you compare the literacy and historical accumen of the Simpson marketers with other movie companies.

Did The Transformers set up shop at the Ring of Brodnor in Orkney?

Did Spider-Man swing through Petra?

Did Pirates of the Caribbean sail over to the Golden Buddha of Bangkok?

Did Shrek roll around the Caves of Lascaux?

NO NO NO and NO! Only the SIMPSONS had the guts to confront an ersatz neolithic fertility symbol on its own turf. Literally.

Plus, when you add it all up, the most amazing thing is that HOMER SIMPSON, A LICENSED CHARACTER KNOWN AROUND THE WORLD AND OWNED BY RUPERT MURDOCH IS ABOUT TO TOSS A DONUT ONTO THE JUNK OF A 17TH CENTURY CHALK OUTLINE OF A NAKED, SEXUALLY AROUSED, CLUB-WEILDING GIANT.
Game, set and match.

I’m going to be frank. I am deathly afraid of going online and having the last Harry Potter book spoiled for me. I am hearing that there are spoilers all over the place out there, and some foul Slytherin is bound to post something somewhere. So, since I’m super stressed out with deadlines anyway, I’m going to be curtailing my online wanderings a bit. If there is something I need to see, shoot me an email — but I will only be opening links from trusted operatives . That’s how serious I am about this. Dead serious. In fact, I already inadvertently read the first line of the new book, and I am so seriously bummed about that that I have learned my lesson. NO MORE WANDERING.

Now a few more notes. I was surfing some trusted sites, and was interested to see that Harry Potter has such a big following among Christians, and even right wing Christians. This is esp. refreshing given all the charges of Satanic witchcraft that some wackadoos have levelled at the books. Interestingly, Rowling herself has said she won’t discuss her religious beliefs because they would reveal too much about the outcome of the series.

“Yes, I am,” she says. [Christian.] “Which seems to offend the religious right far worse than if I said I thought there was no God. Every time I’ve been asked if I believe in God, I’ve said yes, because I do, but no one ever really has gone any more deeply into it than that, and I have to say that does suit me, because if I talk too freely about that I think the intelligent reader, whether 10 or 60, will be able to guess what’s coming in the books.”

Rowling is a church-goer and the pervasiveness of Christian holidays — Christmas, Easter, etc — show that the characters live in a predominantly Christian world. But God is never ever mentioned. Lev Grossman feels that this proves an atheist reading of the works.

But I don’t think it’s so simple.

Tolkien and Lewis were devout believers. While I enjoyed Narnia as a kid, after growing up (and converting into some kind of Zen Buddhist agnostic) I found the didactic allegory off putting. I reread the seven books for the first time in 25 yeas when the first movie came out, and they were good…but I didn’t enjoy them as much as I did as a sprout. (Mind you, I didn’t really enjoy Philip Pullman’s staunch ANTI-Catholicism in THE AMBER SPYGLASS, either. Axe grinding polemics are usually inferior to subtle symbolism as far a storytelling goes.)(Oh and VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER is still awesome.)

Lewis put his God and Christ right into Narnia. And significantly, he was a “Born again Anglican.” Having seen the light, he was compelled to shine it onto everyone.

Tolkien was, if anything, just as devout, but he left all matters of religion out of THE LORD OF THE RINGS. As far as I can tell, Tolkien never lost or found his faith — he had it all along — and so was more secure in it. Tolkien’s faith was implicit in his epic: the powers of faith, loyalty and salvation were SHOWN by the story, not the story itself. Although Tolkien disliked the wild paganism of Celtic legend, he was also wise enough to see the power of comparative religion and myth. Even in his letters, where Tolkien spells out his — very conervative– faith, his views in practice were far more humanist than many religions would allow. (Tolkien disapproved of Lewis polemic bent in the Narnia books.) No less a commentator than W.H. Auden “suggested that Tolkien had “succeeded where Milton failed’’ when it came to the question of reconciling free will with the notion of a God whose power is absolute.” Tolkien’s notion of justice meted out by a higher power with no need for earthly avengers fits as neatly into a Karmic interpretation as a Christian one.

And what of Rowling? She’s said Narnia is her inspiration, which sounds worrisome. Will Harry be slaughtered by Voldemort on a stone table only to arise in the dawn? Thus far Rowling has taken a more Tolkienian tack — religion is not mentioned in the Potterverse because for her true faith seems to lie beyond the boundaries of an imaginary world. She also understands that what many take as Christian symbols — blood, chalices, trees, etc etc — are actually universal symbols, many of them adopted from pagan faiths by the early Christian missionaries. The universal truths are the ones that matter. Everything is open to interpretation. So far. I have no doubt that sacrifice and transfiguration will have much to do with Harry Potter’s ultimate fate. My own faith is that I won’t be clubbed over the head with it.

And now, a prediction.

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Aragorn sat with his head bowed to his knees; only Elrond knew fully what this hour meant to him.
– The Fellowship of the Ring, “The Ring Goes South”

There will never be another moment like this. If you’ve missed out on Harry Potter-mania, you have only a few scant days, but it is not enough. For the last 10 years, the mystery has been growing, the questions have been pondered, the texts poured over for the slightest clues. Imagine if The Lord of the Rings had been published in seven parts and you had to wait two years to find out if Frodo made it to Mount Doom. (Actually, LoTR was published over a one year period, but the waiting couldn’t have been this intense.)

At 12:01 July 21st, I’ll be buying my copy of HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, and I’ll be sequestering myself from the internet until the last page is turned; and no, I won’t be jumping to the last page to find out what happens. If you read my post on spoilers, you know that — especially in my line of work — a surprise is a precious thing, and watching something that has captured the imaginations of so many unfold is a once in a lifetime thing. I’ve been reading Harry Potter for 8 years (a little late, admittedly), and J.K. Rowling has created an unmatched suspense. Perhaps only Charles Dickens, the great serializer had such a captive audience in literary history.

(Note: There will be movie spoilers in the jump, so please only continue if you have seen all the films.)

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VS

WHO WOULD WIN?

[Via Boing Boing, via Lileks]

Have Bruce Campbell walk you through his stash. A mystery unfolds.

sloan

Two separate studies using case-crossover analysis each calculated RR at 4,[47][48] while home loan equity nevada cohort study found RR, when adjusted for crash-risk exposure, of 1.

Harrison Ford on the set of Indy IV, photographed by Steven Spielberg.

To complete the trip to the past, check out details of the upcoming Beyond the Valley of the Replicants Deuper Deluxe edition of BLADE RUNNER at Film Ick. The trailer (Which was shown during AFI’s top 100 films special) includes NEW FOOTAGE. Mike Royer, I know you are excited.

With TUF off the air what ever will we do on Thursdays at 10? Well luckily for everyone, USA is premiering a show NEXT Thursday called BURN NOTICE starring Jeffrey Donovan as a Miami-based spook who has had his identity wrecked by the CIA, so he has to turn to being a private eye. Now why are mentioning this worthy successor to SILK STALKINGS? Because it co-stars THE ONE TRUE BRUCE, that’s why! Bruce plays a hard drinking washed up spy who’s a mentor and pal to the hero, a position otherwise known as the “Noah Beery/Roger Mosley” role. Has Bruce entered the autumn of his career, playing fat sidekicks in Hawaiian shirts? Why, yes he has, and you know what? WE DON’T CARE BECAUSE HE’S EARNED IT. Still, you might want to throw a few more lambs on the sacrificial fire and chant “EVIL DEAD 4, EVIL DEAD 4″ a few times while you’re at it. We have faith.

It’s not the same without you. We really miss your comments. In the meantime we’ve been forced to ponder an even more profound question: what happens when a strain of fandom simply dies out?

Imagine the death of a language…or a tribe or species. An entire mode of thought, a way of life, a strand of DNA…gone forever. Such was the idea that came over us yesterday when we were desperately Googling to find a picture of the Thunderbirds.

The Thunderbirds.

Thunderbirds are Go. You know, the wacky puppets. JEFF TRACY AND HIS FIVE SONS. According to Wikipedia:

Set in the 21st century … the show depicts the adventures of the Tracy family, which consists of millionaire former astronaut Jeff Tracy and his five sons: Scott (pilot of Thunderbird 1 and principal rescue co-ordinator), Virgil (pilot of Thunderbird 2), Alan (astronaut in Thunderbird 3), Gordon (aquanaut in Thunderbird 4) and John (principal duty astronaut on the space station Thunderbird 5) - each named after a Mercury astronaut - Scott Carpenter, Virgil Grissom, Alan Shepard, Gordon Cooper and John Glenn, respectively. Together with Jeff’s elderly mother called Grandma, the scientific genius and engineer “Brains”, the family’s manservant Kyrano and his daughter Tin-Tin, the Tracy family live on a remote, uncharted Pacific island. They are, in secret, the members of International Rescue, a private and highly-advanced emergency response organisation, which covers the globe and even reaches into space, rescuing people with their futuristic vehicles, the Thunderbirds.

Thunderbirds was an example of “supermarionation” — a technique pioneered by producer Gerry Anderson, which meant shooting puppets in front of miniatures. Anderson and wife Sylvia would go on to make CAPTAIN SCARLET and the “live” action : 1999 (above) which substituted Martin Landau and Barbara Bain for puppets in a very convincing fashion.

The spirit of the Thunderbirds lives on with music like The Go Team and perhaps even The Klaxons, but it’s actually the vehicles from Thunderbirds which are most admired by nerds — the models were very detailed and the curvy shapes seem to have a kind of timeless appeal to toy techies. We are old enough to have seen the show during its actual tv airings: the stilted puppets and resulting British boy’s own adventure aura was a bit off putting, but we were both disturbed and attracted by the freaky big eyed puppets. It was never a favorite like SPEED RACER, but it had its moment.

So yesterday, there we are trying to find a picture of the THUNDERBIRDS to illustrate our “tech team” post because nothing says “tech team” like Thunderbirds — TEAM AMERICA was a full-on take off on supermarionation and that “America Fuck Yeah” vibe is very much part of the original, which, coupled with these awkward dorky looking puppets just says…humor.

So there we are. It’s the internet. We’re used to finding what we want within about ten search results. But a Google image search turns up lots of pictures of aeroplanes and some stills from the horrible live action Thunderbirds movie…but very very little from the show.

Now this is odd. Normally anything even vaguely Nerd-centric, the internet is all over. Nerd knowledge is in very real danger of overcoming actual knowledge. For the nerd proof of this check out the article Wikigroaning on somethingawful.com which compares the entries on say, “lizards” with the one on “dragons” and finds out which Wikiers are more interested in. A more scholarly variation of this can be found here: What is Popular on Wikipedia and Why? Or put it this way: the average Radiohead album gets as much analysis on Wikipedia as something like, say, the Yalta conferenceand way more than the SALT Treaty. So sci-fi puppets, a slam dunk, yes?

But as we’re searching, the Thunderbirds are proving to be…obscure. The top-ranked pages are hosted on Geocities, a sure sign of cobwebsites, and link after link comes up dead. We’re looking at ancient pages in futura bold with that starry background. It’s like we took a step back in time to 1997 when fanatics were just coming out of the woodwork and enshrining their obsessions for the very first time.

Maybe we just weren’t looking in the right place, but it was like the whole race of Thunderbirds fans had…died out. Like the Shakers or something. It was scary! Were there no DVDs? No revivals?

Or perhaps even more sinisterly…are Thunderbirds fans just not internet savvy? Could that even be possible????

Perhaps they were all rendered sterile in some kind of radioactive explosion??? Or was the show just unavilable on DVD? But…NO! There’s a 12-dvd complete set available. That isn’t the answer. So why? WHY?

WHY ARE THE THUNDERBIRDS DYING OUT ON THE INTERNET????

Maybe it’s just because the show is old. Or perhaps….it is an evolutionary dead end, an appendix, a Neanderthal, a Commodore 64. Perhaps there is something that the vast hive mind of the Internet is just not interested in despite its nerdy basis. Perhaps… not… all… knowledge… is… equal.

Maybe that thing is…puppets. When did The Go Team last put out an album, anyway?

We don’t know.

But we are frightened.

Hold us.