New Meme

From here. [Link]

The initial idea was to create a team of four heroes, a.la the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, only the catch is that each hero must be a character portrayed by the same actor.

Here's mine

Johnny Depp

• Emo creation - Edward Scissorhands (Edward Scissorhands)
• Investigator - Ichabod Crane (Sleepy Hollow)
• Lovable rogue - Captain Jack Sparrow (Pirates of the Caribbean)
• Inventor - Willy Wonka (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)

Gene Wilder

• Gunfighter - Jim (Blazing Saddles)
• Mad Scientist - Dr. Frankenstein (Young Frankenstein)
• Investigator - Sigerson Holmes (Sherlock Holmses' Smarter Brother)
• Inventor - Willy Wonka (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory)

Rutger Hauer

• Android muscle - Roy Batty (Blade Runner)
• Knight - Captain Navarre (Ladyhawke)
• Blind swordsman - Nick Parker (Blind Fury)
• Bounty hunter - Nick Randall (Wanted: Dead or Alive)

Arnold Schwarzenegger

• Robotic muscle - Terminator (Terminator 2: Judgment Day)
• Covert muscle - Harry Tasker (True Lies)
• Fatherly muscle - John Matrix (Commando)
• Cimmerian muscle - Conan (Conan the Barbarian)

William Hurt

• Monster hunter - Gen Thaddeus 'Thunderbolt' Ross (The Incredible Hulk)
• Space explorer - Prof. John Robinson (Lost in Space)
• Investigator - Inspector Arkady Renko (Gorky Park)
• Research scientist - Prof. Eddie Jessup (Altered States)

Keanu Reeves

• Time traveler and rock musician - Ted Logan (Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure)
• Pop quiz hotshot - Officer Jack Traven (Speed)
  
• Monster hunter - Jonathon Harker (Bram Stoker's Dracula)
• The One - Neo (The Matrix)

Here is a variation, cartoon voiceover.
Steve Blum

• Bounty hunter - Spike Spiegel (Cowboy Bebop)
• Negotiator with a big robot - Roger Smith (The Big O)
• The best there is at what he does - Wolverine (Wolverine and the X-Men)
• Swordsman - Mugen (Samauri Champloo)

The Internet Memes Page

Cool. [Link]

Some of my favorites:

• Peanut butter jelly time
• All your base are belong to us
• Demotivators (which sparked many, many massive threads of RPG related motivational posters on rpg.net)
• Chuck Norris Facts
• Pirates vs ninjas
• More cowbell

The periodic table of awesome

This is, unsurprisingly, awesome. [Link]

I especially like how the groups of elements all make sense in a theme. Batman and Chuck Norris are together, Ninjas are near Pirates. All is well with the world.

Scientific Sleuths

Cool idea. What scientist would make a good detective for a story, sort of like how Steve Allen wrote of himself solving murders. [Link]

Yeah, there's a swashbuckling Nikola Tesla book or two, and Einstein turns up in a few places, but that's not really the same thing. We need some good ideas for mystery novels in which improbable scientists turn to solving crimes.

So, a question for the audience:

What famous scientist should be featured as a detective in a mystery novel?

Remember, part of the fun of the genre is in having the amateur detective turn out to be as improbable as possible (I mean, there's a whole series of mysteries with Groucho Marx as the detective...). Richard Feynman would be an OK choice, but he makes much too much sense, as he's already a larger-than-life figure. Stephen Hawking would be much better.

My Choices:

• Leonardo Da Vinci The Original Renaissance Man
  
• Benjamin Franklin The First American, solving crimes with connections to Freemasonry in the Colonies or England at the Hellfire Club, or in France during the Revolutionary War
  
• Steve Wozniak Apple Computers (an engineer, not a scientist, but still interesting) He's really smart and quirky. Steve travels to your town and people start dropping like flies. It's Murder, she wrote for a new generation.
  
• Kernighan and Ritchie The C Programming Language, Murder at Bell Labs, with them as team detectives, with clues found in a user account on an early Unix system.
  

Code Monkey Meeting of Memes

From WFMU's Beware of the Blog [Link]

No doubt you've seen by now the "Code Monkey" dance, a rather popular YouTube video of a young lady named Emily doing a little dance to Jonathan Coulton's song "Code Monkey". This little video, posted three months ago, has been linked to by NPR and the New York Times, and made the song very popular -- so much so, that when Jonathan was playing Chicago last night (with opening act and occasional background singers Paul and Storm), he asked if the Evanston actress was in the crowd. Of course she was, and of course she was invited to join the band onstage for a live recreation of the dance. And of course that performance was taped and posted onto YouTube, where we can all marvel at the meta-ness of it all.

The original video



The meeting

LOLSheviks

Soviet Propaganda Posters + LOL = Fun. [Link] [LOLSheviks]

Real life X-COM

UFO Reporting center operates out of former missile site.

The National UFO Reporting Center, which moved to this sparsely populated farm country from Seattle last year, is basically a telephone, tape recorder and desktop computer run in an underground bunker by one man who collects and publishes UFO reports from across the country.

Director Peter Davenport took over the UFO center's work from founder Robert Gribble in 1994. It had been located for years in Seattle's University District, until Davenport decided he wanted a change and paid $100,000 for the former Atlas missile site about 50 miles west of Spokane.

"There was the allure of owning my own missile site," Davenport said.

Missile Site No. 6 now contains a large row of file cabinets and boxes, neatly organized by date, containing thousands of reports of UFO sightings stretching back decades.

Two Great Tastes...

That taste great together: LOLCats and Cthulhu.

Ten Character Meme

So, my ten favorite fictional characters...hmm. Right off the top of my head:

1. Daria Morgendorfer (Daria)
2. Miles Naismith Vorkosigan (Vorkosigan books)
3. Buddy Baker (Animal Man)
4. Vladimir Taltos (Jhereg)
5. Mackenzie Calhoun (Star Trek: New Frontiers)
6. Guy Gardner (Green Lantern)
7. Willow Rosenberg (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
8. Aaron Stack (Machine Man)
9. James Bolivar diGriz (Stainless Steel Rat)
10. Hiro Nakamura (Heroes)

1. Divide the list up by even and odd. Which group of five would make a better Five Man Band (like a Power Rangers team)? Who would you slot in each position: Leader, Lancer (second-in-command), Big Guy, Smart Guy, The Chick? If you think the team would be improved by swapping one character between the even and odd groups, which ones would you switch?

Leader Calhoun
Lancer diGriz
Big Guy Willow
Smart Guy Daria
The Chick Buddy

Calhoun is the obvious leader with diGriz as the rebel. Willow here is powered up Willow, not early science nerd Willow, otherwise she would be competing with Daria for the Smart Guy position. Daria fills the Smart Guy position with Buddy as the Chick.

Leader Miles
Lancer Guy
Big Guy Vlad
Smart Guy Aaron
The Chick Hiro

Miles is the leader because he would just start ordering people around, Guy is in the Lancer spot because he wants to be leader and no one else wants him to be one. Vlad is the Big Guy as he does carry a weapon called Godslayer. Aaron is the Smart Guy because the fleshy ones need him to be and Hiro is the Chick.

2. Gender-swap 2, 8 & 10. Which character would have the most change in their story arc? Which the least? Would any of these characters have to have a complete personality change to be believable as the opposite sex?

Miles
Aaron
Hiro

Miles' would probably change the least because Lois McMaster Bujold has said that Miles is built as a feminist character because of his underdog status in a very patriarchal society. Although Aaron is a robot, he did have a romance with Jocasta. Hiro would probably change most because of Japanese attitudes about women. His father would probably not have read him adventure stories in his youth, so no Hiro.

3. Compare the matchups of 1 & 8 and 5 & 9. (Ignore canon sexual preferences for the moment.) Which couple would be more compatible? Which couple would be more plausible to people from either principal's home culture?

Daria
Aaron

Well, Aaron is a robot, but he is smart and sarcastic, so once Daria got over the whole toaster thing, they would be compatible.

Calhoun
diGriz

Calhoun and diGriz both have very flexible ideas about following the rules, but they also save the world on a regular basis. They would probably argue over who's in charge.

4. Your team is 3, 4 & 9. The mission consists of a social challenge, a mental challenge and a physical challenge. Which team member do you assign to each challenge?

Buddy
Vlad
diGriz

diGriz gets the social as the smooth talking conman he is. Buddy gets the physical as he is a superhero. Vlad gets the mental as he is fairly smart as well as devious.

5. 7 becomes 1's boss for a week in some plausible fashion. How's their working relationship?

Willow
Daria

They would be impressed with the other's intellect and probably become good friends.

6. 2 finds him/her/itself inserted into 6's continuity. As far as anyone other than 2 or 6 is concerned, they've always been there. What role would 2 be presumed to have had in 6's story, and could they fit in without going wonky?

Miles in Green Lantern. Miles should not, under any circumstance be given a ring. But if he gets to speak to the Guardians, he can probably convince them he should have one, and if not, then to assign a squad of Lanterns to him.

7. 3 and 5 get three wishes. The catch is that they have to agree on all three wishes before they get the benefits of any of them. What three wishes would they make?

Buddy
Calhoun

I have no idea. Buddy has very down to earth needs; keeping his family safe. Calhoun would be thinking bigger I think. Maybe making surte his planet was never invaded.

8. 1 and 2 are brainwashed by a one-time artifact that works even on people immune to mind control to attack and kill 4. They keep their normal personality, skills and competence level, except any Code vs. Killing has been turned off. Can 4 survive? How?

Daria
Miles
Vlad

Vlad is always having people and other things try to kill him. He has lots of experience. Daria, not a killer and no real skills in that area. Miles on the other hand, has lots of experience and if he has time to plan, he stands a good chance at a first strike, but Vlad has a Great Weapon, so killing him is very difficult.

9. 6, 7, 9 & 10 must help an orphanage full of small and depressed children have a merry Christmas. Who does what, knowing that at the very least the kids will be expecting a visit from Santa?

Guy
Willow
diGriz
Hiro

Guy visits with the children, using his experience as a former social worker and teacher to find out what they need and cheer them up. Willow decorates with Hiro's help. diGriz steals the contents of a Toys-R-Us and dresses as Santa Claus while Hiro teleports gifts into each child's stocking.

10. 3 and 8 are challenged to circumnavigate the Earth in eighty days or less, using only forms of transportation invented before 1900. Can they do it, or will they be fatally distracted by sidequests or their own personality conflicts?

Buddy
Aaron

As superheroes, they will constantly be saving lives and getting distracted, but they will make it and finish 10 minutes late because they were stopping a bank robbery. There would probably be lots of snarky dialog as well, preferably written by Grant Morrison and Warren Ellis.