Been dealing with more exciting health issues lately, thus the blog slowdown. In the meanwhile, please to enjoy this cutaway artwork:
Feb 082011
Feb 062011
Who didn’t see this coming?
ElBaradei: The Israelis Have A Peace Treaty With Mubarak, Not With The Egyptian People
In short El Baradei is hinting to the Israelies that they should start surrendering their territory if they don’t want to be bombed.
Feb 062011
An article about how Britain seems to be overrun with a wave of extraordinarily tacky gravesites, including this one:
And the one featuring Bart Simpson is by far the most dignified of the bunch.
It’s one thing to remember the dead. It’s another to lavish vast sums and large plots of land on them. Hermetically sealed silk-lined bronze sarcophagi, for example, when a cardboard box would make a hell of a lot more sense. LEGAL NOTICE: When I die, I demand that not more than $100 be spent on my future “accomodations.” Hell, go out in the woods somewhere with a backhoe, dig a hole and dump me in it unceremoniously. Really, I seriously doubt at that point that I’ll mind.
One of the more goofy and disturbing “memorials” shows that even in this area, people are throwing lots of money towards China to get cheap crap.
Feb 052011
Haven’t had a sale in a while, so here ya go, one-third off of most items. All downloadable drawings and documents and APRs, as well as Reichdream items. Sale excludes matter-mail items and APR subscriptions. Minimum order: $20.
There has *got* to be a way to do this with Paypal in a way that doesn’t seem lame, but I don’t know what it is. So, here’s what I’ve got: order the “coupon” below (a nominal fifty cents), and at least $20 more items… and I will refund you 1/3 of the total. More steps than would seem necessary, but I think it should be workable. Sale will remain up throughout most of Sunday, I expect.
Remember to order the “coupon” and the items all in one order. Otherwise… it won’t work. No “coupon,” no savings…
Sale has ended.
Feb 052011
First up: if Wikileaks is to be believed, the Obama administration has offered to sell out our British allies. How fun.
A series of classified messages sent to Washington by US negotiators show how information on Britain’s nuclear capability was crucial to securing Russia’s support for the “New START” deal.
Although the treaty was not supposed to have any impact on Britain, the leaked cables show that Russia used the talks to demand more information about the UK’s Trident missiles, which are manufactured and maintained in the US.
Washington lobbied London in 2009 for permission to supply Moscow with detailed data about the performance of UK missiles. The UK refused, but the US agreed to hand over the serial numbers of Trident missiles it transfers to Britain.
If true, this is Big News. But I wouldn’t expect to see much about it on CNN.
Up next: the governor of Tokyo (shouldn’t that be “mayor?” Shrug) apparently wants nukes.
Shintaro Ishihara, 78, a former actor and author who has been governor of Tokyo since 1999 and has frequently provoked anger among Japan’s neighbours, made his latest demand after a diplomatic row sparked by the arrest of a Chinese fishing vessel captain operating in Japanese waters.
“If Japan had had nuclear (weapons), there would not have been any (Chinese encroachment) on the Senkakus,” he said. “And North Korea would not have abducted our citizens.”
Neat. This is sure to go over well.
Feb 052011
OK, the “proof” of the D-188A issue showed up in the mail today. First impressions: it’s a good sized work (it can consider itself a book without shame) and the image quality is pretty good. The photo quality is good, the colors are about right, line drawings are good and crisp. Where it falls down, though, is that the formatting is *way* off. I used the Word doc “blank” that was provided by Magcloud, the same one I used on “Photographing Stuff,” but the margins for the text are well outside the printed region. At least two letters are chopped off the outside. Bah.
So, I gotta fix that…
Feb 052011
The perfect NSFW response to discussions about todays news:
Feb 052011
Lest y’all think I’m raking in the monies with my document business… in doing my book keeping, I found that on January 18, I sold a particular item and this sale was the very first time I’d sold 100 of any non-APR item. Most items have sold in the single digits, or low double digits. The next best seller is at 52.
Feb 032011
Remember how we were supposed to avoid violent political rhetoric, and how it was the conservatives who were saying all those violent things anyway?
Yeah, about that…
[youtube E3ctO7fdrcc]
Feb 032011
I just watched “Mega Python vs. Gatoroid” on the syfy channel. It was, at every level, a horrible, horrible movie. Well, it was produced by “The Asylum” (what who done brung us such masterpieces as “Sharktopus” and “Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus”), so you *know* going in that the writing is going to suck, the acting is going to suck and the special effects are going to suck. They certainly outdid themselves on that score with this one… the special effects were especially crappy, so much so that I think they may have been *intentionally* made that bad.
Some movies are so bad that they are entertaining, such as “Plan 9 From Outer Space” or “Battlefield Earth.” But most “Asylum” movies are just bad, virtually unwatchably so. But this time, it was actually a hoot, and kept distracting me from the work I was doing (building up a hydrocal mold backing for the X-42 project). The fact that this gem “starred” former teen singers Tiffany and Debbie Gibson, who have both aged really well IMO, may have contributed to that. The two have diverged greatly in shape… Gibson is stick-thin, Tiffany could give Christina Hendricks a run for her money.
Still, I can’t quite tell if it’s “so bad it’s good” yet. There is only one thing to do: bring MST3K back and set Mike and the Bots to work on this.