Under anesthetic, subdivided and synthetic

It's post #3000! ( 27 pics below.... )

w00t w00ts out to daethkow today, and in celebration, animated .gif goodness. ( 13 big pics below.... )

Firstly, danke to all for good wishes last weekend. Mega-kudos to rewil for the Robin Riggs Suicide Squad (yes, I'm stoked on the news of a new issue, gimmicky as it is; in terms of authorial dream teams, Ostrander and Simone's about as good as you can roll) goodness.

And before y'all get worried, no, this is not an indicator of any sort of new pace. I think I've posted quite a few of these before, but some just follow through naturally from last week. Yes, I confess to going back to the memetic well a few too many times this time out; sue me. Today, well, about what you'd expect -- Batman, moose, inexplicable Internet phenomena and dated/tired memes. Surprise. (Also, you'll never guess who, according to Picasa, is the most-frequently included face in my computer's library of picture files.) ( 49 pics below.... )

It's a special occasion. (It's also Kansas's 140th birfday, but who cares?) A few naughty words, but nothing you haven't come to expect by now. ( 33 pics below.... )

Yes, I've been working on this, and it's mostly fixed. Mostly. And what better occasion to let it roar? (And immediately I realize that it can't handle images with spaces in the name. Will fix it when I move it to its permanent server....)

Edit: Script installed on permanent server. No more watermarks: the capacity is there, but this is about driving traffic to the other LJs, not about advertising the cache engine.

( 49 pics below.... )

Tonight's the night we've all been waiting for. Tonight the Democratic primaries end. Obama's going to win South Dakota and Montana -- I'm guessing 53/47 and 59/41 respectively -- and if not by then, then as soon as those results are in, expect the superdelegates to (finally) mass and carry him across the proverbial threshold. (Huh, AP suddenly agrees. I'm not sure where they're getting their numbers to call it...*now*, but I don't disagree.)

Not sure where the Clintons go from here. I'm not even convinced yet that they admit defeat tonight. Not that it matters. The race is still as over after tonight as it was two months ago. The difference is neither the Clintons nor the Republicans can perpetuate the illusion that the finish line hasn't been crossed. The most promising sign for the Obama camp has to be that the RNC and McCain haven't been able to land a solid blow on Obama during this prolonged primary -- that's got to give them a boost coming into the general election. The Obama/McCain polls are probably as close now as they'll ever be, I'm afraid.

In less relevant but much more entertaining news, my discoveries on the second screening of Iron Man:

-- Tony Stark has a Wii. I imagine he's written a JARVIS interface, and JARVIS's Mii looks very similar to Edwin Jarvis.

-- At least at one point -- before crashing the party he wasn't invited to -- the voice recognition is just a bit precognitive, transcribing the words before they were spoken. Now that's efficiency.

-- Between this, V for Vendetta and Batman Begins (and, to a lesser extent, Hellboy), we're finally in an age of solidly good comic book movies. There will be the occasional misfire (Ang Lee's Hulk, Daredevil) and catastrophic celluloid atrocity (Catwoman), but there's some pretty solid work being put into these movies, now. (The Spider-Man series has about one and a half really good movies in it.)

Strange thing is I think Iron Man holds together tighter than V or Batman, especially on multiple watchings, if only because it's fun, in a way the old comics certainly never were. (Mark Millar did a decent job in ramping Tony Stark up to 11 in both mainstream and Ultimate Marvel continuity. If I ever use the phrase "Mark Millar did a decent job" again, get me off the meds.) I think a lot of that is the medium -- it's quite a bit easier to show that frivolity and festivity on the screen than it is in print; print somehow paints it as being obnoxious or careless. Lot of it is the skill of the moviemakers -- Favreau made sure the scenes fill in the characters in exactly the right way unless he's looking for a deliberately ambiguous shade. The actors are all approaching their tasks with no lack of skill (I do have a newfound appreciation for Clark Gregg), and they're obviously having fun. And that brings us full circle again -- the movie can draw us back in again because unlike Evey or Bruce, Tony's all about the upside of life, the perks and the smiles, being the playboy Bruce Wayne only pretends at.

I told my nephew if he didn't like the movie he could kick me in the face. I'm not going to make that promise to everyone, but I will say it's the best summer popcorn movie I've seen in a long time. Muchly recommended.

No, I know I said I'm not doing birfday posts anymore. But this was too synchronized to be believed and must be justly celebrated: Ender's Game now a reality

Last June, David of Gaming Today interviewed Orson Scott Card and discovered many interesting facts. Our article was picked up by many media outlets and really put the gaming spotlight on the possibility that Orson Scott Card’s books were worthy of becoming video games. A little more than 6 months later, Chair Entertainment has announced a partnership with Orson Scott Card to start working on a game. They have purchased the rights to use the Ender’s Game series of books to create a gaming series based on the writings of Orson Scott Card. I’m not sure how much our articles had to do with this decision, but we certainly were the catalyst for the idea receiving plenty of attention in the video game world. We look forward to seeing what direction Chair takes with this.

Yes, not only is it Pearl Harbor Day, it's also querldox's birfday, so hippo birdies, dawg. (Hey, it's an easy date to remember.) To celebrate, birdies, squirlz, geekery and some Super-specific geekery, to boot. ( 38 pics below.... )

Yes, he's 18 (Gary Oldman taught him to play bass guitar?), and the man (Dan) deserves an award -- Oscar, Nobel, sainthood, something -- for putting up with the hordes of fandom as well as he has to date. After watching OotP this weekend, I didn't even notice that he and his underaged cohorts were holding their own in one of the strongest casts assembled on the silver screen -- they've completed the illusion, and it's pretty impressive. (Yates being aboard for Half-Blud Prince is one of the better bits of news I've heard in a while.)

On that note, let's play picspam. Pics should be Deathly-Hallows-specific-spoiler-free, but the links aren't. ( 34 pics below.... )

And I hope y'all have found some new and interesting LJs as part of this little experiment, too. That's why I keep the link back -- to give credit where due and allow you to ferret through the consciousness responsible for the individual images. There are some clever and creative people on LJ, and some...people we should...probably be keeping an eye on. But that's what my friends-list is for. Anyhow. ( 48 pics below.... )