Under anesthetic, subdivided and synthetic

It are daethkow.livejournal.com's birfday today. So w00ts all around.

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It's beeform.livejournal.com's birfday today! w00t w00t!

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So after being struck senseless by the digital effects in The Avengers, I wondered which movie I'd seen with the worst effects...and you know, I didn't even have to finish the thought in my mind. Of course it's Birdemic: Shock and Terror (entire thing online here, but...really, why?). No Syfy movie rivals its raw awfulness -- not Sharktopus, not Ice Twister nor Alien Tornado, or even, I'm sure, the upcoming (and I am not joking) Piranhaconda. It also helps that Birdemic's acting is a raw wad of suck, too.



Feel free to disagree with me, but you are wrong.

Anyway. Plenty of Avengers- (and really Coulson-) related images below, still. No huge spoilers, though, I don't think (about as many as in the last installment).

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I own five, maybe six football jerseys. They're all of the same player: twelve-time Pro Bowler and future Hall of Famer (Tiaina Baul) Junior Seau. I named the main character in my thesis after him. Have his action figures, have a collectible card of him dressed up like a stealth fighter. Calling him my favorite professional athlete is...yeah, pretty much right on the money.

And now he's dead at 43. Yes, this brings the '94 Chargers death toll up to eight, but none of them could be as much of a gutpunch as this (and nothing as shocking, reminding me too much of the sudden loss of Reggie Lewis 19 years ago). For now, probably the definitive word on the man comes from Eric Olsen, offensive lineman for the New Orleans Saints (distilled from his Twitter feed):

Wow this is a tough one.. When I was a frosh in HS Junior Seau worked the Jay Fiedler Football camp and at the end of one of the days he challenged any1 to a 1 on 1. Being one of the 'big' kids, I was volunteered by my buddies and went up in front of the whole camp to face...This monster of a man. Shaking in my cleats, he gave me a wink before a coach gave the cadence. He let me pancake him. And he sold it too...I can't even tell you how good I felt at that moment; it changed me forever. The whole camp cheered for me, a chubby kid that didn't know...If he even liked football. From then on I was addicted. All thanks 2 this 10 time all-pro that felt like making some snot-nosed kid's day...Doesn't seem like much but it meant a lot to me. Sorry for the essay just had to share. RIP Junior I'll never forget what you did for me.

In 1997, Junior won the NFL's Man of the Year award. Ten years earlier, Dave Duerson won that award. Last year Duerson texted his family to say that he wanted to donate his brain for research into the links between professional football and degenerative brain damage, then killed himself with a gunshot to the chest.

Former teammate turned commentator Marcellus Wiley said "Today is the worst day." I hate to admit it, but he's right. A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave....

So, yeah. Picspam. Many of these are (as Junior was) always in motion, so be prepared. Also find what appears to be a storyboard of the first draft of the Avengers script before Joss tightened it up. ( 36 pics below.... )

Sorry, the RPG one needs to be seen full to enjoy. Picasa's quirks are really starting to get to me.

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...And yet you'll note a ton of cannabis pictures bel...wait. No, not "cannabis," but certainly "capybara." Same thing, right? (In Argentina, they're both fish.)

Also, more ducklings than you've ever seen.

I promise.

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Oh, I heart me some Community. It has been greatly missed. Since it's already had a zombie episode, should The Walking Dead have an episode where they go to community college? It might have less pointless banter. ( 78 pics below.... )

I've always liked February 29th. It's just such an...aberration, like Brigadoon or something. With less singing.

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Forgot to mention -- trivia night in Capital City went swimmingly. After getting shut out of the prizes in the last go-round's "pop culture" contest, we won last week's outing by five points. The health and 2011 best-sellers categories thumped us hard, but the "identify these '80s cartoon shows by still frames" (I never thought knowing that the show's full title was Rubik, The Amazing Cube would ever be relevant in the slightest) and "portmanteaus" were cakewalks. Sadly, my two library LED lights I brought home don't seem to work. Still, I got a pen. w00t w00t.

Also -- nontrivial but picspam-tangental -- a billion thanks to maggiebloome, without whose Tumblr (ltcoblivious) I would be lost and bereft. Many of these pics are yanked, still screaming and squirming, from her feed. She shines.

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Not going dark today. Seems to miss the point. The point is that SOPA and PIPA are onerous and unnecessary pieces of legislation at best, and at worst are a bullet into the face of the Internet. If you're reading this, I don't think you disagree, and yet it bears reiteration. We have the DMCA, and that's an intrusive enough piece of shit legislation that we don't need to give Warner Bros. or Scholastic the capacity to cripple someone's Internet access if they use the words "Harry Potter" on a Sims skin. If you don't think the DMCA gives you enough tools to fight piracy, what do you want, your own private army? Blackwater?

Wait. Don't answer that.

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