Tumblr Tuesday

This week's tumblr is of Wibbley-Wobbley Timey-Wimey proportions!

Eff Yeah, the TARDIS! is an awesome collection of TARDIS and Doctor Who related images, videos, quotes, and gifs. You're welcom, Whovians!

Sneak peak

Breakwater "Release the Beast" vs. Daft Punk "Robot Rock"

OK, so we didn't have the cool
helmets, but LOOK AT THESE
OUTFITS, DAMNIT!

A long funky time ago (1971), in a greater metropolitan area not too far away (Philly), well before I was, a funk band was born. This band was called Breakwater and they were some funky mammajammas. Inspired by my birth in 1979 they headed back into the studio to record their second album Splashdown. This album included a track called "Release the Beast" which once you listen to, you will immediately recognize.

ROCK!
ROBOT
ROCK!

I imagine most of you reading this weren't groovin' to that Sweet Philly sound on cassette tape in 1980 but rather first encountered this funktastic riff in 2005 when a duo of frenchmen released their third album Human After All. Yup. "Robot Rock" is pretty much that riff ad nauseum awesomeum. While all that's fine and good, did anyone know that a year before Human After All american hip-hop artist MURS (Musty Undiscovered Raccoon Smut is totally what that stands for) sampled the same Breakwater riff for the "Intro" track to the album Murs 3:16: The 9th Edition. Here it is:

Even some nerdy lyrics for ya:

Couldn't wait for George to make the new Star Wars scene

So I made my own episode 3:16

There you have it. The evolution of funk. Kinda. Also as an added bonus, somehow, most likely due to some hot tub time machine-esque technology, Breakwater is playing a show in Philly on 2/10/2012. Bet no one saw that coming! $12? 8PM. Do it if you are in the area. Oh, and if anyone from the internet loves me and wants to buy me an amazing robot rock shirt, men's L please.

Mugshot Monday

We all love an awesome tattoo, right? Right?? And wouldn't a badass hypothetical crime scene be the baddest assest of all tattoos?????

The video says it all.

Ginormous Fan Made Map of The Simpsons' Springfield

We have an somewhat estranged yet still fond relationship with The Simpsons here. Teacher. Mother. Secret lover. Well, for seasons 1-14 anyway. Regardless, some maniac Jerry Lerma and his friend Terry made this huge map of Springfield. Apologies, couldn't find the original source.

Remember that time @micronova and I attempted to watch and review every episode in order to sell merch? Yeah. We didn't get so far there.

Tumblr Tuesday

This is all you need to know. Sterling Archer Draper Pryce.

MF Doom "Kon Queso" vs. Spider-Man "The Canon of Doom"

Word up dorks! Sorry I missed y'all last week but I've been a bit under the weather. Now that I'm back to around 80% of my normal brain function it seems like I can almost sentence put together a again. What? Shut up.

Yo Firestar, you
wanna get with me?

This week we're checking out a dude who has been known by several names throughout his hip-hop career. Most awesomely though Daniel Dumile started free-styling incognito in 1997 under the moniker MF Doom. Metal Fingers, as his mother calls him, started out by wearing a stocking over his head to obscure his identity but thankfully stepped up his super-villain image a few notches by switching to a Dr. Doom-esque mask. In 2004 MF Doom released the album MM..FOOD, an anagram of his name, with tracks mostly featuring lyrics and samples having to do with, well, food.

Daily Dorkgasm

Somehow I'd never seen this before today. So good.

Daily Dorkgasm

Um... I just noticed for the first time that despite the fact that the sign on the outside of the TARDIS says "pull to open" I have only ever seen the doors pushed in.

Mind. Blown.

Dogs Bark the Imperial March

I...

...there are no words.

Vampire Vednesday

Vampires are sexy. No one really argues with that. Some might argue that specific vampires are not sexy. That's allowed. Count Von Count is not very sexy. Edward from Twilight is too moody and sexist to be sexy. Yes. I think Edward Cullen is sexist. We can duke it out in the comments if we must.

Looking very boy-band, Spike.

But most vampires are totally sexy. Eric Northman? Sexy. Lestat de Lioncourt? Sexy. Spike from Buffy? Sexy (but that hair is so 90's, Spike).

But the sexiest vampire of all time? I'm gonna vote for Carmilla. You don't know Carmilla? From the novella Carmilla? Shame!

Published about 25 years before Bram Stoker's Dracula, Carmilla was written by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and printed in a magazine called The Dark Blue.

In the novella, Laura is an 18 year old girl with a history of lesbian dreams involving beds and biting. When 18 year old Carmilla's carriage breaks down crashes has an accident (? How the eff do you word that?), Laura's dad invited Carmilla to stay with them for a while. Carmilla's mom, who was also in the carriage, takes off to who knows where to do who knows what (doesn't matter).

Of course Laura and Carmilla, who sleeps all day and stays awake all night, become besties right away, but Laura keeps trying to get Carmilla to stop hitting on her all the time. Meanwhile those biting and wrestling on the bed dreams keep getting worse for Laura, and to top it off, she's now sick all the time. Her pops eventually decides to take her to the country to get well. Carmilla and a governess are all set to follow them later in the day, since Carmilla is a sleepy head.

When they get to the country, Laura and her Dad hear a story about another girl who had dreams of being bitten and who got sick. Turns out a lady vampire named Millarca was biting the girl's nipples and she died. Laura's dad then remembers that they have an old family portrait of a woman named Mircala that looks exactly like Carmilla.

Holy cow! It's a vampire lady who loves ANAGRAMS! Carmilla then shows up on cue and gets all saucy. Long story short, a vampire hunter shows up and they kill Carmilla in her sleep in her grave, then Laura goes on a year long vacation to break herself of her sinful lesbian tendencies recover from the trauma.

It's an easy read, and Carmilla is pretty sexy and lustful throughout. She even has a hot mole on her neck. Not like a skin cancer mole, but a nice one, you know?

Here's an excerpt:

Sometimes after an hour of apathy, my strange and beautiful companion would take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure, renewed again and again; blushing softly, gazing in my face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing so fast that her dress rose and fell with the tumultuous respiration. It was like the ardour of a lover; it embarrassed me; it was hateful and yet overpowering; and with gloating eyes she drew me to her, and her hot lips travelled along my cheek in kisses; and she would whisper, almost in sobs, "You are mine, you shall be mine, and you and I are one for ever". ("Carmilla", Chapter 4).

You can get a free copy of Carmilla for your kindle through Amazon. Huzzah! Free book!

And speaking of anagrams, Bacon Reascend is an anagram you can make with my name. :)

Tumblr Tuesday

This week's tumblr is Comically Vintage! An amazing assortment of weird/funny/sexy/awkward images from old comics.

Get a soda and something to nosh on, because you'll be scrolling and giggling for a few hours. It's a pretty flawless tumblr.

Daily Dorkgasm

For you Dorks in NYC, I am just going to assume that you rely on the MTA quite a bit. Whether you're trudging to and from a day job or just taking the subway out to the airport so you can get the eff outta this crazy city, you probably use the buses and subways that link up the distant regions of this metropolis.

And if you're anything like everyone who rides the train with me, you probably hate the MTA at least two or three times a week. Well, here's some fascinating data to help you complain about them some more.

WNYC (NYC's local National Public Radio station) has compiled an awesome map that shows and explains subway lines that were planned and never built. Look how much more convenient your commute could have been!

Here's the current map in case you need to find your way to greener pastures.

Mugshot Mondays

I've been thinking a lot lately about how much I used to love New Orleans. I might still love it, but I can't decide for sure since I've not visited it post Hurricane Katrina.

Anyway, that got me to internetting, and internetting leads to finding disturbing stuff, because, hey! It's the internet!

So this week's Mugshot Monday comes to us all the way from New Orleans, LA, ladies and dorks!

Delphine LaLaurie was a bitch by all accounts. Sure she used to through pretty awesome parties and invite a lot of hoyty toyty types to her fancy mansion, but she just wasn't that nice.

Some background. It's the 1830's, so slavery is all the rage. Or at least legal anyway. We're in a mansion in the French Quarter. Ooh la la.

In 1933 neighbors reported that they'd seen a 12 year old female slave running from LaLaurie in the house. The girl eventually fell off the balcony trying to escape her owner's attack. It's said she's buried under a tree in the backyard.

Jump forward to April 10, 1934. Delphine LaLaurie (how much do I LOVE this lady's name? This much.) was throwing another one of her parties, like ya do, when a fire broke out in the kitchen. Police and firefighters showed up to douse the flames, and were shocked to find two slaves chained to the stove. The slaves had started the fire themselves to attract help. The kitchen slaves told the police to look in the attic.

While cops were presumably vomiting into their hats, LaLaurie made a quick getaway. The attic wound up being full of dead and dying slaves, all of which were victims of LaLaurie's bizarro experiments. Some slaves had their limbs broken and reshaped so they'd look like crabs. Some had had their mouths sewn shut. Others appeared to be midway through haphazard sex changes. In other words LaLaurie was basically the big forehead guy from The Human Centipede (DON'T WATCH THAT!)

LaLaurie was never caught, so she doesn't actually have a mugshot, but here's a portrait. It's the same thing really, just more old-timey.

Daily Dorkgasm

Panther sofa. That's all.

aaaaaand I'm back

Let's all give Zack a big round of applause for being a one man band while I was across the pond.  ::golf claps::

My dear little dorks! How I've missed you! I went to England, you see, and it was very distracting and jet laggy, but full of nerdy glory. I loved walking down streets full of people who consider Doctor Who a cultural staple instead of a question. And any city with as many free museums as London is top notch in my book.

But I can't tell you everything I did/saw/ate in one post! Because 1. I don't have the time for that bullshit and 2. I need to drag this out so you return and read more. Yes. I've admitted it. I want you to feel trapped TRAPPED by this blog. I want you to seek out its magical geek juice and come crawling back for more like the junkie you and I both know you are.

But anyway, I saw what I wanted to see! Remember this post? I said I'd skip The Doctor Who Experience, which I claimed was for tourists though I really skipped it to avoid spoilers of any sort! So instead I went to the Earl's Court underground station (on the Piccadilly Line) and saw the last big blue police box in London.

I particularly liked that it was old and bit up. Added a touch of TARDIS realism to it. Brilliant, no?

And if you happen to be a nerd living in London, and I didn't get a chance to meet up with you, my sincerest apologies! I had so much to see and was in and out of the city quite a lot. Love your train system, by the way. :)

And finally, London nerds click here.

Adam WarRock: The Browncoats Mixtape

Confession time again. I tried, at least four times during the years 2003-2010 to watch Firefly. I failed. Hard. I couldn't make it through the pilot. I don't know why exactly. Drugs? Depression? Narcolepsy? Soul crushing debilitation due to the idea that I wasn't in fact a beautiful and unique snowflake? Maybe a combination of all those things, but without fail I fell asleep while watching the pilot to Firefly. At least four times. It wasn't until after seeing Nathan Fillion be amazing in something as ridiculous as Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog that I was compelled to sit down and give Firefly my full attention. And that finally happened in 2011. And it was good. It wasn't the dorkgasm-inducing replacement for Star Wars that all my friends and the internet made it out to be (Hey George Lucas, the prequels were the reason I was depressed all that time, asshole.), but it was Whedonesque fun. No one can really replace Harrison Ford as a young man's icon of how to be a suave smuggler, but with Ford pushing 70 the world needs someone like Fillion to help fill the void. But enough about me and my weird issues.

The point is that Firefly had a pretty interesting western inspired soundtrack composed primarily by a dude named Greg Edmonson. Then, in 2011, The Internet's Foremost Comic Book Rapper, Adam WarRock, decided to take that entire soundtrack and release a mixtape of songs that sampled from it. That's right. You don't just get one Firefly related song, you've got basically an entire album of samply-goodness, and it's all free! You can download The Browncoats Mixtape here. The song "Mal" would definitely be the first single released off of it, so check that out below if you want before you grab the whole thing.

WarRock, a former lawyer, seems pretty prolific with the work he's done since launching his rap career.  Why not check out the West Coast Avengers Rap Mixtape, which is pretty much what it sounds like.

The entire concept of Adam WarRock was thrust upon me by the creators of Atomic Robo which I just started reading and think you should too.

Inside a Russian Rocket Factory

Lana Sator, as Russian woman, snuck into a Russian rocket manufacturer and took some incredible pictures.

Via awesome space blog It's Full of Stars.

80s Scifi/Fantasy Con Pics

Some fantastic pictures from Scifi/Fantasy Cons in the 1980s.

Ray, when someone asks you if you're a god, you say "YES"!

Via the talented but tri-state area defector, Jon Rivera, of such things as Heartbreak and Brickston Scooter Club.