We have one at the Murkworks–or we did, because Paul just discovered this recall announcement talking about several different brands of dehumidifiers being recalled. DUE TO CAUSING FIRE DAMAGE.
Yeah, that’s just a LITTLE bit too much water removal there.
Couple other articles on the story:
In short, YIKES and check your dehumidifiers. ‘Cause I’m generally a pro-not-letting-our-houses-burn-down voter, people.
Back in the day, there was Mystery Science Theater 3000. And when MST3K was no more, lo, there came unto us RiffTrax, but also Cinematic Titanic! And the brains behind RiffTrax (all hallowed be the name of Mike Nelson) said unto the people, “We shall have a Kickstarter, for lo, Twilight in an unriffed state makes us sore afraid.” And the people looked upon this Kickstarter and gave unto it their moneys, and even though they could not riff Twilight and had to riff Starship Troopers instead, they pronounced it GOOD.
And now, RiffTrax has started handing out the shiny rewards for the Kickstarter backers. Among these is a brand new riff treatment of “Mr. B Natural”–which is a short all you diehard MST3K fans out there should remember (and shudder at). I cannot provide you the pointer to the riffed version of this, because hey, it’s a Kickstarter reward and I donated good money for that. 😉 But I CAN point you at this–the entirely uncut, unriffed, 26-minute-long original version of the short. Brace yourselves, people.
What’s REALLY scary about this (well, aside from the androgynous music demon appearing in a 12-year-old boy’s room, that is) is that Dara started googling around for the music instrument company so prominently plugged all throughout this thing. She determined that they are the originators of a whole bunch of various brands of student-grade band and orchestra instruments, and from that, we learned that my original flute (the Yamaha that I played from fourth grade clear up into high school), my current silver flute (the Artley that I got at a pawn shop in college), and my piccolo (an Armstrong) are all brands originated by these people.
Which means MY INSTRUMENTS CAME FROM THE PEOPLE WHO DID MR. B NATURAL AUGH.
I would also like to note categorically and for the record that at no point in fourth grade, when I was deciding to be a flute player, did this chick appear to me. I make no guarantees however about the boys who were in my school’s music classes at the time.
And here’s another thing that never happened to me when I was in band, either! In the uncut short you can see the band teacher consulting a chart to try to figure out what instrument Buzz should play. Dara and I both boggled at that, so Dara googled for that too and found this thing, which is apparently a later iteration of the same chart.
Me, I just got handed a checklist and was told to tick off my first, second, and third choices of instruments! One presumes we were not actually a Conn-Selmer school. On the whole, though, I think I still came out ahead.
My turn’s come up again to post on the Here Be Magic blog, so you can find my post right over here! This time, I answer the excellent question that was given me by my pal Dejah on Facebook, asking what city I’d choose to defend (and stay in for the rest of my life) if I had access to Warder power.
C’mon over and tell me what city YOU would choose!
Not too long ago on Facebook I was giggling over the Easter egg on Google Maps that actually takes you into a TARDIS interior if you click on certain police boxes that show up in the UK. Related to that story, I went and dug up this old pic of myself from 1995, from when Dara and I went to the Worldcon in Glasgow in Scotland that year. We called this “Anna Buys a Used TARDIS”.
Anna Buys a Used TARDIS
I posted it to Facebook and was promptly asked whether I lost the vehicle in a card game. This was my reply!
Certainly not. There was a PERFECTLY LOGICAL EXPLANATION for the entire affair. See, this little Scottish dude with an umbrella showed up and said to me, “YOU! I NEED YOUR HELP! I seem to have parked my police box here without proof of ownership and aheh, well, I’ve got something I’ve DESPERATELY got to take care of. I don’t suppose I could convince you to buy it from me for oh, say, half an hour?”
“What?” I said? “Why only half an hour?”
“Well,” the little Scottish dude with the umbrella explained, “that’s the RULE. But if you’ve bought it from me that makes you the legitimate owner. It’ll be safe then!”
“Ummmm okay?” I said dubiously, but what the hell, we were only just wandering around being tourists anyway, and it was going to be nice to hang out for a bit. “I’ll give you five pence for it.”
“SOLD!” he said, and dashed off like his shoes were on fire. That’s when things got REALLY weird, because THEN a guy with curly blond hair and the most hideous coat I’d EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE showed up.
The blond guy started to argue with me about the police box being HIS, but I said quite firmly that I HAD just paid five pence for it. So then he stormed off, gesticulating and pontificating wildly, and I was about to say bugger to the whole thing when a THIRD guy showed up. This one had pointy hair and a pinstriped suit on and he was running as fast as his red trainers could carry him. “For the love of all that’s holy, GET OUT OF THE WAY!” he bellowed as he charged past. “Also, you might want to duck!”
I ducked because somebody was firing FRIGGING LASERS over my head, and when I turned around, wait, what? Stompy robots? In Scotland? Da hell? They weren’t even wearing kilts or playing bagpipes. Just kept blithering on about YOU WILL BE DELETED, and they stomped off after the guy with the pointy hair.
By then, I can tell you, I was DEEPLY confused. But that was when the door to the police box opened from the inside, and the little Scottish dude with the umbrella poked his head out and smiled at me. “Here you are then, here’s your five pence back! Also, you might want to have a dash of this nitro nine. On your way now. Be on the lookout for those robots.”
Which was when the police box promptly vanished, with a WHRR-WHRR-WHRR noise that I was pretty sure that police boxes weren’t actually supposed to make. So I went on my way, wondering what the HELL had just happened, and chucked the nitro nine over the fence just so that last robot would explode nicely.
And then I had tea.
Cross my hearts, this was exactly how it happened.
Picked up in paperback from B&N:
Picked up from Smashwords:
mmegaeraPicked up electronically from B&N:
And, picked up electronically from Kobo, which were all electronic re-buys of books previously owned in print:
154 for the year.
Jesus jumping Christ on a pogo stick, this again?
I just read Foz Meadows’ post over here responding to Paul Cook’s piece at Amazing Stories about “When Science Fiction Isn’t Science Fiction”. Foz has several quotes from the piece in question, and, SPOILER ALERT: apparently, according to Mr. Cook, SF isn’t SF when it’s written by women. Because they’re writing about girly things that only women with their girly brains would be interested in, and that people like Lois McMaster Bujold are writing thinly disguised romance novels, not “real SF”.
Lois. McMaster. Bujold. Let that sink in for a minute, you guys.
Also, he has a side helping of going all ranty mcrantypants about steampunk, especially when steampunk involves zombies, so apparently Cherie Priest isn’t writing real SF either.
And I’m not sure what makes me go WHAT IS THIS I DON’T EVEN more: that he’s got it in his pointy little head that only women are interested in reading about things like balls, gossiping in corridors, palace intrigues, and the like; that presumably, by contrast, he must therefore also believe that women aren’t interested in reading about rocketships or whatever ground he feels that “real SF” actually breaks; or that he pulls in comparisons to Alexandre Dumas. Comma, the guy who wrote The Three Musketeers, which last I checked was chock full of swashbuckly manly action and palace intrigue, so I can’t even figure out where the hell he was going with this.
(I don’t even know where the hell I’d fall in this guy’s perception of readership, either. I am a female reader who gives exactly zero fucks about fancy shoes or fancy purses in my personal life. I’m way more interested in spending my money on computers and musical instruments. I also generally give zero fucks about sex scenes, but I do like reading about a love story. I’ve got some hard SF on my shelves, too. None of which would make a damn bit of difference, I think, since I am after all still a girl.)
And don’t even get me started on the digs against the entire romance genre. I’ve expressed my deep frustration before with SF readers snarking on romance (and how a LOT of it is driven by sexism). A whole HELL of a lot of other writers have continued to express their frustration over this as the year continues, including this excellent post by Ann Aguirre, asking exactly what the hell is wrong with having sex in SF, anyway?
I saw James Nicoll link up to this a couple days ago too, and only paid passing attention at the time. I kind of wish I’d continued to pay passing attention. But on the other hand, women in SF/F don’t really have the luxury of not paying attention to this.
We have to keep talking about it until it stops.
ETA: Link roundup for other people’s commentary!
J.B. Whelan has a great skewering of this entire concept, written by his wife Stephanie, quoted in full over here. BWAHAHAHAHA.
Chris Meadows points and laughs.
Cora Buhlert facepalms right along with the rest of us.
Steven Brust pretty much makes the o.O face over here.
Finally did grab Plants Vs. Zombies 2 for my iPad 2, and I’ve been playing the hell out of it, pretty much as expected. I was a little dubious going on, since this is a Free to Play game and the whole Free to Play concept does make me sort of make this face: o.O
That said, PopCap was swearing up and down that you’re supposed to be able to complete the game without having to make any purchases. So far, I can attest that this seems to be the case. As of this writing, I’ve completed the three main levels but haven’t unlocked the boss level yet.
So what then is different about playing this game vs. playing the original?
The Free to Play experience is a big one. You will find that a lot of the familiar plants you got for free on leveling up in the original game are now plants that you have to unlock. And by ‘unlock’, I mean, you can either buy them immediately to get them, or else you can play through to the point in the game to which you get to unlock them for free. I found this only slightly annoying–I DO love that Squash that whomps on zombies, I do love it so–and have so far been generally pleased at the pacing of when you get what plants.
Some familiar plants from the first game behave slightly differently than their first game versions, too, so keep an eye out for that. For example, the twin sunflower is no longer an upgrade to the standard sunflower–it’s its own plant. So you can’t plant it on top of a single sunflower.
There are also plenty of new plants, several of which are highly entertaining. I like the Snapdragon that spits fire a LOT, as well as the Lightning Reed.
And, of course, this game in theory has an actual plot (above and beyond OHNOEZ ZOMBIES ARE INVADING YOUR LAWN, that is). You’ve been recruited to come with Crazy Dave from the first game on a time travel jaunt to try to locate his missing taco, so he can eat it again! Because of COURSE Dave has a time machine, and of COURSE the whole point of this is to find his taco. It’s really rather adorable. Now how you get from this to zombies in Ancient Egypt, the Pirate Seas, and the Wild West, you got me! But who cares? They’re ZOMBIES and if you played the first game, you absolutely know what to do.
Be on the lookout for zombies with new attacks, too, based on whatever world you’re in at the moment. Ancient Egypt has Pharaoh zombies that can steal your sun, Anubis zombies that can generate new gravestones, archaeologist zombies with torches that can set your plants on fire, and zombies in sarcophagi which are real hard to take down. Over in Pirate Seas, you’ll find the zombies keep saying “BRAINS AHOY”, which totally made me giggle. And be on the lookout there for zombies carried by parrots who can fly over your plants, and the tiny zombie you may remember from the first game as being carried by the Gargantuars now being shot out of cannons. And in the Wild West, I’m deeply charmed by the Saloon Piano Player zombie, who, once he starts tinkling the ivories, gets all the zombies currently on the screen dancing. Also, two words: ZOMBIE CHICKENS.
Music-wise, many of the gameplay themes are familiar, yet with amusing variations and new instruments depending on which world you’re in. Listen for the squeezebox in Pirate Seas and the banjo in Wild West.
They’ve tweaked Crazy Dave’s appearance a bit, as well as the appearance of pretty much all of the plants, yet everything still looks generally familiar. And I like as well that once you finish playing a level proper, you can keep doing side branches of it with interesting puzzles in order to pick up more stars and keys to unlock yet more stuff.
Also: as near as I can tell the whole front-facing camera thing does indeed ONLY come into play if you want to add a photo to your player profile on game startup. Which I didn’t even bother to use. I just tried the UI just to see what it would do, and it gave me a message saying that the photo would only be saved to “this device”–which makes me think this feature is entirely unnecessary. For my money, they should have left it out in order to make the game available to generation 1 iPads as well.
On the whole though this game is definitely entertaining, and while the sheer fact that I’ve seen these game mechanics before does diminish the freshness a bit, nonetheless all the new additions are delightful. Especially the zombie chickens. Here’s hoping the game will be deployed out to other platforms and that a version will deploy to desktops, in particular. I totally want this thing on my Mac, and I want to give them money for their work!