K-Squared Ramblings

On Army of Darkness

This weekend I finally watched Evil Dead 2. Aside from some nifty low-budget cinematography, it mostly confirmed that the only movie in the trilogy I actually like is Army of Darkness. Not surprising, since I like the sword and sorcery genre better than horror to begin with.

I also started thinking about what sets the Evil Dead trilogy apart from other 1980s horror series: instead of focusing on the villains, the later installments are all about the hero.

Friday the 13th? All about Jason. Nightmare on Elm Street? Freddie Kruger. Hellraiser? Pinhead and the Cenobites.

Evil Dead? Ash. Hail to the King.

At the comic store today, I noticed that there’s a whole line of sequel comics, focusing again on Ash (including “Ash Saves Obama”). But they’re not titled Evil Dead. They’re all Army of Darkness. It must have greater name recognition.

Geeky Pumpkins of Halloweens Past

I’m not much of a pumpkin carver myself, but Katie likes to get creative. Here are some Jack-O-Lanterns she’s done, inspired by science fiction, fantasy, comics and games.

From 2003… Gourdzilla!

Inspired by a Grand Ave. strip earlier that week.

Also, Aeryn Sun from Farscape!

More about these: 2003 Halloween Madness

From 2005… Puzzle Pirates’ Navigation puzzle!

Yes, the “Arrr!” on the wall is a projection.

More: Pumpkin Arrrrrt.

And finally, one that hasn’t been on this blog before: The Eye of Sauron, from 2002. Unfortunately we could only find one picture of it, and it was lit up from the outside, so you can’t see how awesome it looked in the dark.

(Evidently, whoever sat at this desk liked dogs.)

This year’s Jack-O-Lantern will be up soon!

All it Needs is an iPod

Seriously: this Starbucks VIA stand-up looks like it could use an iPod #

Download? Don’t Download?

• How appropriate! You can download @alyankovic’s “Don’t Download This Song” for free: http://j.mp/4zf5Rd (via @amazonmp3) #
• Whoa…the spamtraps are *full* of bogus Facebook password reset notices! #

GeoCities / Com & Line

• GeoCities lingered for a day, but has shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. # Over at Speed Force, I wrote a piece on GeoCities, RIP: Fandom’s Lost Pages.
• Interesting typo seen on a mailing list: “com and line option.” (command line) #

Vampire Castle

• Castle as a “space cowboy” – “Didn’t you wear that, like, 5 years ago?” #
• They so should have called this episode “Castle-vania” #

Droidmark

I wonder if Lucasfilm will try to assert trademark over the Motorola/Verizon Droid? #

One Letter Off Movies

Another Twitter meme: come up with movie titles just one letter off from the original, tagged #oneletteroffmovies. I posted these on my other account on Friday.

• New Dork Stories #
• Annie Get Your Gum #
• Fight Clue #
• There should be an Oz sequel called All About Ev. #
• Reaching a bit, but Key D’argo (Farscape) #
• Ok, I keep coming up with movie titles for and finding that someone else has already done them. Time for bed I think. #
• Okay, one more. There are those who call it…The Land Before Tim. #

Sci-Fi Remakes

There was a meme running through Twitter today to come up with movie titles for #scifiremakes. Here are my contributions.

• Shaka Sulu #
• Schindler’s Arcology #
• Obi-Wan Hur #
• Droids on the Side #
• Shuttlecraft 54, Where Are You? #

WoT Comics, SWHS, and a Mobile Alarm Clock

• Argh! Looks like the Wheel of Time comics are stalled again! # One issue left of New Spring, one issue into Eye of the World…
• And the award for Most Disturbing Use of an Alarm Clock in a Prime Time Show goes to… FlashForward! #
• XKCD on the Star Wars Holiday Special: True. Absolutely true. #
• Wish I knew what caused the Flickr spike yesterday. 71% of visits from “Unknown source,” but hits are spread around the usual con photos. #
• Oh, yeah: I got a weird kick out of recognizing that alarm clock on FlashForward as Clocky (before the disturbing part). #

Audio, Social Worker Spam, & Prius Hatch

• Fedora 12 claims PulseAudio improvements. Here’s hoping sound will actually work after suspend+resume again. #Linux #
• Also: iPod train wreck of the morning was the Cardcaptor Sakura theme followed by Garbage’s Supervixen. #
• What’s with all the “Be a social worker!” spam lately? It’s a change from the usual porn, pills, watches & software, but out of left field. #
• Future reference: Though there’s no lever to pop the hatch on the Prius, unlocking the doors allows someone else to open it from outside #

Breaking the Castle’s Fourth Wall

Hah! It turns out those ads for Heat Wave during Castle aren’t fake: ABC actually had someone write the Nikki Heat book as a tie-in #

The first time I remember seeing something like this was with (appropriately enough) Murder She Wrote, with a paperback mystery novel credited to Jessica Fletcher. In that case, though, the show had been on for years and was a television staple. DC Comics got into it in 1997 with The Life Story of the Flash, credited to Iris (West) Allen, which had previously been referenced in the comic books.

More recently, Lost had an in-universe book published in the real world: Bad Twin was billed as the final novel by one of the passengers on Oceanic 815 who didn’t make it through the first episode. I actually read that one. It was interesting enough, though it had little to do with the show beyond the presence of the Widmores.

Making Sense of Macho Watch Spam

I’ve been seeing spam with subjects including, “Every macho should have a cool watch” and “Look like real macho with that trendy watch!” I’ve also been seeing spam saying things like, “Don’t miss your chance to become a real macho and by that we mean increasing your male dimensions.” At first it was funny that two spam campaigns were using the promise of machismo to hawk completely different products for completely different purposes.

Then I thought: what if they’re not different purposes. What if they’re saying that once you’ve “increased your dimensions,” you’ll be able to wear another watch?

Follow more humorous spam observations at lol_spam.

Science Comics & Green Fail

• SMBC on “Teaching the Controversy” (comic) #
• SMBC comic on science and “Why?” #
• Sorting junk mail. Found “go green” renewal offer from gym that I canceled YEARS ago. They used to just spam me, now it’s paper. GREEN FAIL. #

Moz-something

A good tech support one-liner from (The customer is) Not Always Right: A Flock Of Explorers On A Safari Singing Opera.