MemeMachineGo!

The Internet Theologian Explains The Da Vinci Code:

Q: That’s another question. Why, in the book, is the Catholic Church the only Christian body in the world? Doesn’t Brown realize there are countless different Christian denominations, often with widely varying views on Jesus? Where, for the love of Pete, are the Orthodox?

A: Look, can you imagine a Lutheran synod or a group of Orthodox bishops commissioning a mad albino monk to hunt down an inquisitive Harvard professor? Do the Lutherans even have monks, let alone mad, albino ones? So there you go.

While fact-checking a quote for a future entry, I encountered this handy guide to unconfirmed Jefferson quotes.

• Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
• We should build an aristocracy of achievement based on a democracy of opportunity.
• An informed citizenry is the bulwark of a democracy.
• Information is the currency of democracy.
• A nation is as good as its values.
• There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people.
• When the government fears the people, there is liberty; When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.
• I have nothing but contempt for anyone who can spell a word only one way.
• I am a big believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have.
  

Misattributing that first quote above has been offered as proof of the perfidy and intellectual bankrupty of Democrats albeit by a self-described right-wing warmonger.

I was at Pegasus Books this weekend, and they had a wide selection of remaindered British editions, including a recent matching trade paper release of Neil Gaiman’s prose books. Among these was this author’s preferred text edition of American Gods, to my knowledge, previously available only as part of this $200 limited edition package. I couldn’t quite justify that for an extra 12,000 words of American Gods, but $8 I could.

Look for it at a remaindered bookstore near you.

They also had a Phil Dick title I’d never seen before, Cantata-140, which proved to be a variant title of The Crack in Space.

For the love of God, Marduk! A killer in Sims 2:

After recuperating from his disastrous first day Marduk wanted to invite his underage friend Juliet over. Marduk called her and she insisted on bringing over a friend. I believe his name was Kent, although he and Marduk didn’t spend much time together on account of Kent and Juliet’s interest in playing SSX with each other. While Marduk was scheduling maid and gardening service Kent decided to take a little journey upstairs. I had almost forgotten about him, what with micro-managing Marduk’s phone conversations, when I heard a toilet flush. I sprung into action, erecting a brick wall around Kent and the toilet with large observation windows so that Marduk and I could monitor Kent’s “progress”. I removed the toilet and placed it in an unoccupied area of the bathroom.

Marduk played SSX with his new friend Juliet for a while and then sent her on her way. She didn’t seem to notice that Kent was missing in action. After a peek upstairs to watch Kent complain about pretty much everything, Marduk hurried off to bed. The next morning the maid arrived, cleaning up the tower completely oblivious to the cries for help coming from Kent. […] I heard a strange noise and scrolled down to the bathroom. To my glee Kent had at last expired and had the Grim Reaper towering over him with wonderful finality. After the Reaper had departed I collected Kent’s ashes.

I know a wolverine could chase a bear from its kill, but a bear getting treed by a housecat?

Stephen King says:

I don’t want to just mess with your head. I want to mess with your life. I want you to miss appointments, burn dinner, skip your homework. I want you to tell your wife to take that moonlight stroll on the beach at Waikiki with the resort tennis pro while you read a few more chapters.

The Non-verbal dictionary of Gestures, Signs & Body Language Cues has entries touching on many aspects of non-verbal communication. For instance, high-stand display:

Posture. 1. A vertically looming stance in which the body “enlarges” through extension of the limbs. 2. A primeval “pushup” intended to lift the quadrupedal body higher off the ground.

Usage: The high-stand is an antigravity display used to show a superior, confident, haughty attitude or mood. It is a forerunner of the aggressive pushup used by some lizards, and of our own assertive palm-down cue as well.

Culture. “Whereas high status communicators are generally relaxed in North America, in Japan they assume stiff, erect postures with feet firmly planted on the floor …” (Burgoon et al. 1989:194).

The premise of the forthcoming film, Idiocracy:

Private Joe Bowers, the definition of “average American”, is selected by the Pentagon to be the guinea pig for a top-secret hibernation program, set 1,000 years in the future. He discovers a society so incredibly dumbed-down that he’s easily the most intelligent person alive.

I wonder if the creators have even heard of The Marching Morons.

In that story, published in 1951, about a man of that age who finds himself centuries in the future, Kornbluth describes the roadside advertising:

Another animated job, in two panels, the familiar “Before and After.” The first said, “Just Any Cigar?” and was illustrated with a two-person domestic tragedy of a wife holding her nose while her coarse and red-faced husband puffed a slimy-looking rope. The second panel glowed, “or a Vuelta Abajo?” and was illustrated with—

Barlow blushed and looked at his feet until they had passed the sign.

There’s a stretch of freeway in south Los Angeles with a series of immense video billboards, intrusive and distracting, often featuring scantily clad women at any given time.

We’re getting there, Cyril. We’re getting there.

High concept.

It seems like every television season brings us a new crime fighting technique. CSI and Bones have investigators who solve crimes using forensic techniques. Monk has a crime fighter who uses his OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) to notice small details. Medium has a woman who uses her psychic powers to solve murders. Criminal Minds has FBI agents who use psychological profiling to learn about serial killers. Numb3rs uses a mathematician to fight crime.

It occurred to me today that having a person use writing techniques to solve crimes would be a fun show. Of course, many shows have has “mystery writers” who also solve crimes, such as Murder She Wrote, but none of them actually use literary techniques to solve the crimes. The writer would identify moments of foreshadowing and plot points. They would also be sure to remind people when it is too soon to solve the crime. That can only be done in the last ten minutes.