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Neil Gaiman: Piracy boosts sales

It’s very telling to see someone extraordinarily popular, extraordinarily widely-read, and with a great deal to lose, put his own works up on the internet for free as an experiment, and change his mind about piracy when the empirical evidence proves his original thoughts on the matter wrong.

Just yesterday, I bought a copy of Watchmen — my first ever — despite having read it years ago. Why would I have bought it, if I already know the story? If I already read it for free once before? Because the content is worth it to me, and I never would have known that for certain if I hadn’t read it first.
Continue reading “Neil Gaiman: Piracy boosts sales”

Neil Gaiman: Piracy boosts sales

Invisible Children #Kony2012 filmmaker detained for masturbating in public

No idea whether he was on something or had a nervous breakdown or what, but apparently this is, um, a bit out of character for Jason Russell. The San Diego police department has taken him to a medical facility after he apparently went something close to crazy in public. Specifically, via NBC:

Jason Russell, 33, was allegedly found masturbating in public, vandalizing cars and possibly under the influence of something, according to Lt. Andra Brown. He was detained at the intersection of Ingraham Street and Riviera Road.

Brown said Russell was acting very strange.

“Due to the nature of the detention, he was not arrested,” she said at a press conference. “During the evaluation we learned we probably needed to take him to a medical facility because of statements he was saying.”

Continue reading “Invisible Children #Kony2012 filmmaker detained for masturbating in public”

Invisible Children #Kony2012 filmmaker detained for masturbating in public

Here we go again. Tory to reopen abortion debate in Canada

Despite Harper’s campaign promise that the abortion debate would not be reopened yet again, one of the bare few line items on his agenda I actually agree with, it looks like those “values” politicians in his extreme-right party just can’t leave well enough alone. Conservative MP Stephen Woodworth is attempting to get Parliament to take up debate on the topic by calling into question the legal definition of “human being” — and he may just get away with it, because he’s exercising his power as a private member to make his proposal, leading to debate and a vote. All this without sullying the Harper government’s reputation, such as it is, for following through on all its campaign promises.

Woodworth wants Parliament to create a committee of politicians whose task it will be to review a law that says unborn children are not legally considered human beings. If parliamentarians agree to Woodworth’s request, a special committee would review Section 223 of the Criminal Code that says a child becomes a human being only after its complete birth and not while it is still a fetus.

Continue reading “Here we go again. Tory to reopen abortion debate in Canada”

Here we go again. Tory to reopen abortion debate in Canada

Anti-woman Republican quotes, spoken by women

Sounds pretty different when women are saying these things, doesn’t it? Sounds more… wrong, somehow.

As though you could get any more wrong than a bunch of stodgy old men legislating or pontificating on how women’s rights need to be abrogated. And all while these rights are being destroyed systematically.

Yeah, when you piss off over half of the voting populace, you’ve got three courses of action: either stop trying to take away their rights, finish the job and also take away their right to vote, or simply accept defeat and withdraw your ideology from the marketplace of ideas. What’s it going to be, GOP?

Anti-woman Republican quotes, spoken by women

Mock The Movie: The Wasp Woman

Wasp Woman theatrical poster
Via IMDb

So, it sometimes takes us a while to settle on a monumentally bad flick to mock, partly because of monetary concerns (not every movie is legally available free or advertiser-sponsored on the internet), regional issues (not everyone can access Hulu for instance — e.g., pretty much everyone who doesn’t live in the continental US), and partly because only some movies make decent mock-fodder. In fact, scientists predict that if we can manage a pace of one movie a month, we’ll hit Peak Movie sometime in 2019. Unfortunately, this means we’ll eventually have to start mining the 2000s for horrible movies, though we’ve made a few forays into the Syfy library already.

But we’ve picked what I really hope will be a winner loser this week, from the Internet Archive.

Mock The Movie is back with a bang! Well, actually a sting… this week, we’ll be enjoying The Wasp Woman.

This cult classic features a truly diabolical villain – a cosmetics company founder and CEO.  Our boss lady is willing to do ANYTHING to boost sales, and that includes shady wasp science.  Well, we all know how these shady science schemes go…

“A queen of beauty by day…

              a lusting queen wasp by night!”

When will people learn that diabolical plans involving dubious science never, ever work? Hopefully never, or we wouldn’t have movies to mock!

Here’s how we do this Mock The Movie thing:

  1. Start following @MockTM on twitter.
  2. Start watching The Wasp Woman Thursday, March 15th, at 9PM EST.  It’s available here for free.
  3. Once you’ve got The Wasp Woman going, tweet your snarky comments to @MockTM.  Directing our tweets to @MockTM will keep our followers from being overwhelmed with our snark!
  4. Let the snark roll on twitter, but keep in mind… this movie was made in 1960.  In your @MockTM tweets try not to focus on special effects (or the lack thereof).  Instead, focus on the plot, characters, acting, story development, etc.  Let’s reserve our FX slams for a movie made in this decade.
Mock The Movie: The Wasp Woman

There’s No Tomorrow

This is pretty much what I would answer, if I could do it succinctly, every damned time someone asks Jodi and I why we aren’t having kids.

I think I’m going to go learn how to create flaming swords out of household parts. Also, could you guys kindly give me all your bottle caps? They might… I dunno… come in handy after the collapse. Even if said collapse doesn’t happen as a result of a nuclear apocalypse, I just want to be sure I get ahead of the dystopian future.

There’s No Tomorrow

Pastor Manning: Breitbart was murdered by Obama

Via Joe My God, enjoy some crazy babbling about conspiracy theories and legally-actionable slander about Barack Obama.

Something something Muslim, something something blah blah liberals are dumb, yadda yadda CIA, blah blah evidence that bin Laden isn’t dead blah Wikileaks blah, therefore Breitbart was murdered.

LOLWUT

Pastor Manning: Breitbart was murdered by Obama