Is this thing on?

Hi! I'm bringing Giant Dorkgasm back from the dead after three years to make a very important statement:

I'M WITH HER!!!!!!!!!!!

Please, if you haven't yet and still can, register to vote. If you need to be away from your polling place on November 8th, vote early if your state allows it. Otherwise, please look into absentee voting. You should start the process as soon as possible so there's enough time for you to be processed, get your absentee ballot, and mail it back in time for your state's deadline.

#ImWithHer #ImWithHer #ImWithHer #ImWithHer #ImWithHer #ImWithHer #ImWithHer

Is this thing on?

Hi! I'm bringing Giant Dorkgasm back from the dead after three years to make a very important statement:

I'M WITH HER!!!!!!!!!!!

Please, if you haven't yet and still can, register to vote. If you need to be away from your polling place on November 8th, vote early if your state allows it. Otherwise, please look into absentee voting. You should start the process as soon as possible so there's enough time for you to be processed, get your absentee ballot, and mail it back in time for your state's deadline.

#ImWithHer #ImWithHer #ImWithHer #ImWithHer #ImWithHer #ImWithHer #ImWithHer

Fan-gasm Friday: She-Ra Cosplay!

I miss New York Comic Con so much already! But, hey, it's less than a year until the next one!

This year I made my costume, and it was a little more complex than donning a tie and a mustache for last year's Commissioner Gordon outfit.

I took on She-Ra Princess of Power complete with headgear, and through this process I learned that cosplay isn't truly cosplay unless you've got something on your head.

Ta-Da! All the embellishments (cuffs, chest thingie, headpiece, chocker) are yellow foam cut into individual pieces and then glued together. All painted bronze. The jewel is from a toy ring. The belt is a belt I hacked. Dress is from American Apparel. Cape, which doesn't show in this photo, is from a Supergirl costume I already had. And my favorite detail is that I ran out of time to get a Sword of Protection, so, yes, that is a lightsaber, because who doesn't already have a lightsaber lying around?

She-Ra cosplay. NYCC 2013

Aaaand in case you're interested, here's that Commissioner Gordon outfit from NYCC 2012.

Yup. Very few people got it.

So few people got my Commissioner get up that I was forced to wear a second costume on the following day.

Shockingly enough, even less people got Cheryl Tunt from Archer. Also 2012.

Oddly, there were a TON of Archer cosplayers this year. I saw maybe three in the whole weekend last year, but this year they were everywhere. Gotta say, even though there were some good Cheryls this year, none of them had my "You're not my supervisor!!" speech bubble. :)

Thirsty Thursday: Pangalactic Gargleblaster

I think the Pangalactic Gargleblaster from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy is arguably the most famous nerdy beverage.

Invented by Zaphod Beeblebrox, it's recommended one never drink more than two of what the Guide considers the best drink in the galaxy. Ford Prefect once had three, and I recall that he was a hot mess afterwards.

Some kind soul has shared an Earth version recipe over on All Recipes.

Bottoms up!

Vampire Vednesday!

I recently attended a panel at New York Comic Con on monsters in contemporary fiction. The fact that this panel existed is a fine example of why Comic Cons are pretty much the greatest things ever.

Much of the conversation was about zombies, since zombies are terrifying and have been very "in" for the past decade. The authors on the panel seemed fairly certain that zombies were going to stay "in" for the foreseeable future, but posited that vampires were passé.

Mindless, soulless zombies create more mindless, soulless zombies (much like members of the Tea Party), so their complete takeover of any world in which they exist feels inescapable. They surround hope and crawl and gnaw and moan it away. They lack humanity, so it's nearly impossible to imagine a scenario in which one would be okay with actually turning into a zombie.

I think this keeps them perpetually terrifying.

Sidenote: this is a game!

It was suggested at this panel that vampires don't really have any of that going for them. Yes, vampires can create more vampires, but they don't have to. Vampires usually just kill, so unlike zombies, they are not constantly growing as a species.

But vampires also keep a piece of themselves. They are capable of thought and speech. They can form bonds with one another and with people. They take pleasure in things. All in all, if you had to be turned into a vampire, it could suck (awful pun intended), but it doesn't have to. You live forever. You probably have more sex. Winona Ryder will be there. And you don't have to give up your friends, hobbies, and ability to not be rotting all the time.

So what's so scary? Yes, they can kill you, but so can too much sunshine, a bathtub, a flight of stairs, or fried eggs. I mean, every day you don't die, you've sort of battled death and won, right? Facing death is a lot less scary than facing the loss of your humanity, right? I mean, if you become a zombie, you might unknowingly eat/zombify everyone you ever loved. Plus your guts would leak and you'd smell really bad all the time.

So my question is, are vampires still scary? And if not, is it because 

1. They were never scary to begin with
2. We have scarier monsters (like zombies)
3. Twilight ruined everything?

Tumblr Tuesday

This isn't my Tumblr, but it might as well be.

What Shall We Call Playwrights pretty much is all my feels and all my brains all the time.

And, in case you didn't know it, yes, I am a playwright in addition to being the Dorktress. I wear many caps and look kind of dumb and tweeny in all of them.

Mugshot Monday: The Servant Girl Annihilator

First off, can we talk about how this is the best name for a murderer EVER?? (oh, hi. It's been over a year since the last post!) And the origin of this name is pretty sweet, too, as the Servant Girl Annihilator was never called such a thing by the press, but by O. Henry himself in a series of letters and a bitchy essay about how boring Austin, Texas was (apart from the occasional gruesome slaughter of a maid here and there). O. Henry, what would you have cattily named me? Le sigh.

Anyway, if you were living in Austin, Texas in the mid-1880's, like O. was, you had an 8 in 17,000 chance of being awakened in the middle of the night, dragged from your bed, severely mutilated and murdered outdoors. Fun!!

The Servant Girl Annihilator killed six women (well, 5 women and 1 little girl) and two men in such a manner and injured several other folks who got in his way. Apparently all the women had "a sharp object" inserted into their ears. I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest they also had tiny paper letters shoved under their fingernails. But even if the fingernail bit isn't true, the victims were all slashed, seemingly with an axe at times, but always with a knife as well.

While the killer was never brought to justice, it is widely suspected (I mean, widely-ish. Have you ever heard of this before just now? Where is this movie??) that a Malay cook who went by the name of Maurice (crazy old Maurice) was the killer.

Maurice was in Austin working as a cook at a hotel called Pearl House, conveniently located within a few blocks of all the murders, who arrived in Austin just before the murders began and departed a couple of weeks after the final two murders. The last two took place on Christmas Eve 1885, because YAY CHRISTMAS!

Why do we care? Maurice frequently worked on ships and traveled around the world from job to job. He was in Austin at the time of these icky slaughters, and then he moved to Whitechapel in 1888. Sounding familiar yet? No?

DUDE IS TOTALLY JACK THE RIPPER, Y'ALL!!!!!!!!!

'sall I'm sayin'.

HAPPY "ASYLUM OF THE DALEKS" DAY!!

Hi All!


I'm sure you're all aware of the fiasco that was movietickets.com. It crashed like the Titanic into the TARDIS the moment BBC America tweeted that Doctor Who series 7 NYC premiere tickets were for sale.

However, I was one of the lucky few to purchase tickets to the event held on August 25th at the Ziegfeld Theatre in midtown Manhattan!! Tickets were 11 cents each in honor of the 11th Doctor, but of course, movietickets.com included a $1 fee for each ticket, so best $2.22 I've ever spent? Yurp.

I picked up my tickets a day early, because I knew it would be a madhouse the day of the screening.

Bruce Banner green nail polish, chipping away in excitement. Batman is jealous of my tix!

Totes pumped!!

Smart move really, because the line outside the theatre was reDONK when I got there the next day. Of course, I had to dress first.

Unlike a good 40% of the crowd, I didn't dress as the Doctor or Amy. Nope, I kept it simple. Not too fanatic. Just a Dalek t-shirt, some bow tie earrings, and a pair of suspenders. Low key, right? Right??

Anyway, I didn't take a ton of photos at the actual event because 1) I didn't want to miss anything and 2) the lighting in the theatre before and after the screening was not optimal for pic snapping and 3) obviously BBC America was taking better photos throughout, and we all know anything related to Doctor Who makes it onto the Internet pretty quickly.

Anyway, there were a couple of BBC America trailers before the episode started up, including one for The Spies of Warsaw, starring David Tennant, so you can imagine how the crowd reacted every time his face popped onto the screen.

Crowd: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! (But louder)

The episode was great. It's amazing thinking about how the Doctor Who budget has increased over the decades. This episode looks like a movie. It's beautiful, and I can't wait to see it again and to watch all of series 7!!

Anyway, here are some of my non-spoilery highlights. REPEAT THERE ARE NO SPOILERS! :)

1. The poster outside the Ziegfeld was great and made me feel like I was at some massive, amazing event. Which I was. :)

Photo from BBC America

2. Matt Smith wore polka dotted, tall socks that showed because he'd rolled his trouser legs up. I'm assuming he rolled them up specifically to show his amazing socks.

3. Chris Hardwick practically begged for Matt's endorsement for him to play the 12th Doctor. It was kind of adorable, because everyone in the audience wanted the same thing for themselves. Ultimately, I believe, Matt's vote went to another excellent choice. You should watch the Q&A. I don't think any possible female Doctors were mentioned. It is a point of contention among so many nerds.

4. We saw teasers for the next several episodes, and I am sooooooo excited to see the TARDIS in New York City in the upcoming "The Angels Take Manhattan"!!!!!!!!!

5. During the Q & A, an audience member said that he was making a Doctor Who musical for YouTube. I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for that.

Photo from BBC America

6. Karen's dress.

7. Matt and Karen arrived in not one, but TWO Deloreans. I'm pretty sure you have to pull those up from the bottom of the Atlantic ocean. Although, these two had New Jersey plates...

8. Before the screening started, the lights were dimmed and hundreds of blue and green Sonic Screwdrivers were lifted into the air and waved about much like Zippos at 1980's rock concerts.

9. I've never seen so many fezzes in one place before, and I've been to a Shriner's parade. Just saying.

10. The fact that, because I picked up my tickets early, I got to skip the enormous ticket line and waltz right into the movie theatre like an effing star!

11. Feeling British for an evening. So much BBC. So much Doctor Who. So much awesome.

12. Karen chewed gum during the Q&A. Not sure how I feel about it, but I noticed, so I thought I'd share. Whovians are weird for details.

13. Every time something cool happened in the episode, everyone cheered. Particularly for Rory's slide. That's not a spoiler, because you have no idea what it means. But you will. ;)

14. Also before the screening started, someone started the audience clapping out the four pulse drum lick that the Master hates so thoroughly.

15. Not being the nerdiest person in the room. By a long shot.

16. Just knowing I was in the same room as THE DOCTOR!!!

17. Before the Q&A kicked off, Matt Smith asked for a show of hands for who thought putting spoilers online was a bad idea. Every hand in the theatre went into the air.

18. Someone asked Karen and Matt what Shakespearean play they would most like to do together. They had one picked already, and Karen said, "Macbeth." However, being an actor, she immediately freaked out about having said "Macbeth" in a theatre, so she turned around 3 times, ran to an exit, and ran back. Technically, you're supposed to leave the theatre completely, but I think her theatre karma will be just fine.

19. Matt and Karen both gushed about how great filming and being in New York is. Rightly so.

20. Daleks. Lots and lots and lots and lots of Daleks.

21. I saw Doctor Who tattoos!

22. Matt and Karen both agreed that the fans in the US are more involved and intense than the ones in the UK. Seems pretty obvious, I think, but it was cool to hear the cast say it.

23. All the "Top 11" lists that played before the screening. Little clips of things like "Top 11 gadgets," "Top 11 bad guys," etc. Pretty fun looking back at all the doctors enemies and toys and friends and destinations.

24. Bow ties everywhere. Regardless of gender. Because bow ties are cool.

Photo from BBC America

25. The amazing community of Whovians around the world and right here in NYC!

Few more tidbits, I recommend checking out the fun, short "Pond Life" series here before watching the episode tonight!

Also, the full Q&A will be up on the Nerdist Channel later today!

OMG this photo!

Actual Dorkgasm

Geeky Crafting

Bonnie Burton would be proud, y'all. Though, I'm guessing Ardian Syaf might be a little pissed about me cutting up issue #4 of the New 52 Batgirl.

 But check out my shooz!!!

With a little help from this:

They went from this:

To this:

Rest assured that I will be rocking the hell out of these as often as humanly possible.

Also, please note that the bubbles in the last image have been tidied up. My Batgirl stilettos are ready to fight crime. 

All you wanna do is ride around Sally

Ride, Sally Ride.

Today the world lost an inspiring woman. We all at some point thought, "Yep. I'm going to go into outer space. I could totally pass all the astronaut tests because I'm brilliant and assume I can do a pull up."* Sadly, we aren't really taking into consideration that we don't have Ph.D.s in physics and didn't do a shit ton of research on astrophysics and free electron laser physics in our early 20's [or maybe you did. I bow before you].

However, regardless of our academic records, I'm sure at one point or another we've all been pretty darned impressed by Sally Ride.

Sally Ride, the first American woman to enter space, died today at the age of 61. She'd been fighting pancreatic cancer.

Let's also note that at age 32 she was the youngest American (at the time) to enter space. Let's also note that she was the first lesbian to enter space.

Thanks for all the inspiration, bravery, and brilliance Dr. Ride!

If, somehow or other, you happen to be reading a dorky blog about dorky things, but don't know about Sally Ride's life, please consider watching this very informative video:

*I definitely cannot do a pull up. I've only ever successfully done two in my life, and after doing them I thought, "well, I'm strong enough to do pull ups now. No need to continue exercising."

Fan art makes me smile with my [nerdy] heart

Today I saw Doctor Who fan art that looked like me. My head exploded into a bajillion happy pieces, of course. [just like what would happen if the TARDIS ever exploded, but I'm not saying that it ever has or will - TIME TRAVEL!!!!!!]

Anyway, in case you're wondering (duh), Gladys drew these totally SQUEEEEE-worthy Doctors as ladies, and Five looks a lot like yours truly, making me freak out with giddy geek joy. It's messy.

SEE??

Obviously, this lead me down the nerd fan art road, and all roads lead to Rome, but I couldn't find fan art for the BBC/HBO series ROME. However, I did find this nifty drawing of Rory as a Roman, probs chasing the Pandorica or some such thing.

Below are my favorite finds of the day. Most are Whovian, but there are a couple other goodies. I gathered them over a 24 hour period and didn't think I'd be blogging about them at the start, so I wasn't keeping track of sources. As I kept seeing more and more goodies, I knew I'd want to share them. If the art is yours and you'd like a link back to your site, please feel free to message me or leave a comment.

Veronica Mars A5G5RGY

So I'm a decade late, but I just started watching Veronica Mars. While it's all good murdery fun so far one weird thing I noticed tonight was that in the opening credits the notebook doodles under Ms. Dent feature a car with California plates that read "A5G5RGY". Now that looks like a pretty legit license plate right? Nothing like a good old ASSORGY on the back of your car eh? Oops. I mean A5G5RGY. Get your minds out of the gutter, damnit!

A5G5RGY

I knew I'd seen this before and if you were a wee lad or lass on the internets a decade ago you probably have too. Maybe Sydney Tamiia Poitier was absent when the producers were handing out opening credit doodles because she ended up getting a nod to the famous Floridian ASSORGY plate instead of mayhaps a more appropriate sketch of a keyboard or pencil. Just the way the booty bounces I guess.

WARNING - Cover your child's ears

Do you know of Fascinating Aïda?

No??

You're in for a treat. Fascinating Aïda is a British comedy cabaret act that is more than a little dirty. My new favorite number is below.

They been tossing their lewd humor around Europe since the 1980's. Learn more about them here, but really, just watch all of these and then sing the songs softly to yourself while standing in line at the grocery store.

This requires sound

oh the drama.

Scifi Why: Starfleet Uniforms

Why are Starfleet uniforms so tight? I posit that it’s to cultivate an atmosphere of trust and openness towards others, primarily those species that have not made contact with Starfleet yet. I started thinking about this yesterday after reading this NYTimes article about Woolrich, an American clothing company that has tailored a new line of chinos specifically for the purpose of carrying concealed weapons. I guess I’m just more comfortable seeing a phaser or gun out in the open, dangling from someone’s belt, than being taken by surprise and shot at when I start screaming at the guy who just cut me off in the bike lane.

Anyhow, those uniforms couldn’t have been an easy thing for the cast of TNG to put up with. Patrick Stewart has gone as far as saying that they were on their way to causing him permanent back and neck damage! Ouch! Not to mention the embarrassment they must have inflicted upon the cast as some of them aged from strapping taut-bodied 30 somethings to less-than-in-shape, slightly-more-round-than-they-used-to-be 40 somethings. OK fine. It was really just Jonathan Frakes and his Ding Dong addiction.


And then there’s poor Brent Spiner playing the android Data. He must have felt a ton of pressure to appear ageless throughout the seven year run of the show. Good on ya Starfleet for probably promoting unhealthy body image issues for the entire cast, all for the sake of garnering trust with unknown entities. The future is hard. Let’s go shopping.

**P.S. to my wife: “sexy star trek costume” is totally in my search history for research purposes. Ex astris, scientia!

A little poll

Happy Easter

He is risen! And hopefully I is, too.

Sorry for the long absence. Let's not get into it. Let's just talk about zombies.

Easter is the day when we celebrate the rise of the Second Zombie! Now I know what a lot of you are thinking: "Jesus was the first zombie!"

WRONG! Don't forget miracle of miracles - Lazarus! Zombie Numero Uno!

And since he is so sorely over-looked year after year (the poor guy doesn't get his own holiday, nor is his story ever told from his perspective in any of the books of the bible), I thought, "let's celebrate Lazarus! What was he like? What did he want?  What happened to him?"

Let's imagine his story from his P.O.V., shall we?

****

Dude, feeling totes sick. Like, gonna die any second now sick. I just barfed and sharted at the same time. This is bad. Real bad. Blood in my urine bad.

...

I know! Jesus will help me! He can't be far off, right? I mean, I live in Bethany and he's in Jerusalem and that's not so far. I'll send my sisters Mary and Martha to get him, he'll show up, I'll be fine. Phew. Feeling better already.

...

K. I know it probably took them a little while to get to Jerusalem, but where ARE they? Mary? Martha? Jesus? I think I have a fever.

...

Mary and Martha are back. No Jesus. Apparently he had "some shit to deal with." WTF? I'm dying!

...

Well, I'm dead. Sucks.

....

Aaaaand now I'm buried. At least I'm not sharting uncontrollably any more.

....

I think the rock in front of tomb just moved. It matters not as I am still, like, totes dead.

...

Whoa. Jesus just called to me. Like for realsies. Just hollered, "yo Lazarus, get out here." I know I'm dead and all, but I feel oddly compelled to get up and just.... Holy cats, I'm standing up. I'm walking! I can see Jesus! And Mary! And Martha!

And all I wanna do is eat their brains. BRAINSSSSSSSSSSSS!

****

A pretty compelling tale, right? And in honor of Lazarus the first zombie, I shall now eat candy brains and reflect on the Book of John, Chapters 11 and 12. Happy Easter!

Sidenote: enjoy this infographic. Faith comes from understanding. :)

Cat Fights Dog With Lightsaber

Obviously the cat has the red, Sith lightsaber

Space and back

Watch this now!

Darth Vader on a Unicycle Wearing a Kilt and Playing the Bagpipes

Darth Vader on a unicycle wearing a kilt and playing the bagpipes. We'll give you one guess as to what city this happened in...

iPhone

Oh hello. Be dazzled and amazed as I post from an iPhone!

Robot Quadrotors Perform James Bond Theme

Robot Quadrotors Perform James Bond Theme. Doomed I tell you, doomed.

They won't be so cute when they are swarming around your carcass harvesting brains for the first prototype Cybermen.

Haterade: Fictional Racial Slurs

Finally got around to watching Gran Torino this weekend. Turns out Clint Eastwood is the ultra-violent racist grandfather I never wanted or had. Anyway, he spewed so many ethnophaulisms I needed the help of The Racial Slur Database to fully comprehend the movie. Which got me thinking about scifi/fantasy. (Well fine, when am I not?) But this time it was mostly about the fictional words and contexts authors create to express racism in their universes. Here's a list of some I think are interesting.

For expressing racism against robots:

• Skin Job - Blade Runner (1982), Battlestar Galactica (2004)
• Toaster - Battlestar Galactica (1978, 2004)
• Outmodes - Robots (2005)

For expressing racism against the undead:

• Suckheads - Blade (1998)
• Fanger - True Blood (2008)

For expressing racism against genetically modified/different organisms:

• Windup - The Windup Girl (2009)
• Heechy Keechy - The Windup Girl (2009)
• Mutie - X-Men
• Mutts, Muttation - The Hunger Games (2008)

For expressing racism against aliens:

• Prawn - District 9 (2009)
• Buggers - Ender's Game (1985)
• Spoonhead - for Cardassians in Star Trek: TNG

For expressing racism against half-wizards, half-muggle people:

• Mudblood - Harry Potter

For expressing racism against humans:

• Meatbags - Bender in Futurama  (1999)
• Fleshy Ones - Nextwave (2006)
• Milksucker - Men in Black (1997)

For expressing racism against cartoons:

• Toon - Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988)

Are there any universes out there that non-homogenous and free from racism? Cause that would be cool.  Any interesting ones I missed above? Leave some haterade in the comments. I always thought when people called me a pizza bagel it was a compliment.

How Much Would the Death Star Cost to Build?

How much would the Death Star cost to build? Eleventy billion dollars? Close.

Happy Presidents' Day

Watch this cool/creepy video of all the POTUSes morphing from one to the other.

Can we all just agree now that Franklin Pierce was the hottest? Sorry, JFK, but dude looks like Jon Hamm!

14th President

Don Draper

Hmmm. Don Draper for President?

Inspector Spacetime

My fellow dorks, there comes a time in the life of dorks when we must band together to do what is right in our dorky world, when we must stand up and support our fellow dorks, and when we must throw money at the internet in order to make awesome crawl out of the womb of brain thoughts.

That time is now!

Rise up, my friends! And throw your money at the internet! Inspector Spacetime needs you!!

Travis Richey has promised that if he can raise the funds from fans, he will make a multi-episode web-series of Inspector Spacetime, the Doctor Who homage from Community. Richey has experience as an independent web series producer, and he also plays Inspector Spacetime on Community. It's a thousand (okay, three) nerdy things coming together at once! Help out by giving to his Kickstarter campaign.

Cease. And also, desist

Hi,

I know a lot of you come here looking for the bacon post. How do I know? Google analytics + that's the only post I put on reddit.com/baconswarm

Well, you've noticed it's not here. It's gone. There is no bacon.

I know. My heart aches, too. I mean, bacon! We all love bacon! It's made of bacon! And it tastes like awesomeness.

Here's the thing. Couple months ago, Google (they run Blogger, if you didn't know) took down the bacon post because they'd received a Cease and Desist. Crummy thing is, I don't know who sent it or what they were upset about, so I can't even edit the post to make everyone happy and smiley again. My guess is either Kevin Bacon's people are hella busy making sure no one ever associates his name with a delicious food (good luck with that one, fellas) or the clip from Wife Swap made someone grumpy.

BUT I DON'T KNOW!!!

It could just be that someone else is claiming that they had thought number 7 on my top ten reasons I love bacon list before I had thought number 7.

If I find out what the issue is, I will fix it with Time Lord speed and repost the bacon post, but until then, I just want everyone to rest assured. I still love bacon. And I always will.

xo,
The Dorktess

Doctor Who Bingo

I'm dying of bronchitis in NYC. The only way to get better is to visit the Doctor.

Thank goodness for Doctor Who bingo!

Please leave suggestions for additional bingo cards in the comments!

edit: here are so many more of these!

Just a thought, Doctor

Based on all your adventures I've seen so far, I think you always look cool in your own way, and I do love Converse sneakers, but shouldn't you be wearing waterproof shoes most of the time?

Piggyback Bandit

I don't usually read the sports page, but every now and then you find one of these gems.

Did you know there's a big, bad man who goes from high school to high school to cheer at basketball games? Did you know that after a team wins and they all cheer together, he always asks someone for a..

a....

a PIGGYBACK RIDE!?!?


Only, apparently, one time he didn't even ask! He just threw himself on some high school basketball player's back and TOOK a piggyback ride.

1. For some reason this is news.
2. Just go read the article on ESP effin' N.com. The man's even called the "Piggyback Bandit."

I die.

Valentines Day Love Song: Positronic Pimp

You do know the Futuristic Sex Robotz, don't you? Perhaps most famous for their "Snakes on a Plane" song. But this one is better.

Tatooine Tuesday

How'd we miss this??

Last September a planet was discovered. Big whoop, right? RIGHT! because it's the first planet that has been discovered that orbits two (count 'em! Two!) suns!!!

NASA scientists found it using the cool as f**k Kepler space telescope in the Kepler-16 System about 200 light years away.

I know what you're all thinking. If Tatooine really exists.......... does Han really exist?

And since I like you, you get to watch this, too.

Mopey Monday: Forlorn Furniture

Ever wished your household was as sad and miserable as you are?

Wish no longer, you pathetic putz! Two MFA design students at Parsons have hacked some random household goods to make the mopey! Using the darkest side of artificial intelligence, the pair of students have made a lamp that fades out in exhaustion and a chair that feels so meaningless and adrift if you're not sitting in it, that it will start to wander aimlessly around your apartment.

The chair sounds super sad, but the lamp idea I kinda like, as I hate having to put in the effort to turn off my lamps after I lit around in their light all day. I'm not really joking. Turning off lamps is the worst.

Check out the forlorn furnishings below.

Burcum Turkmen and Katie Koepfinger's "Emoti-bots" from Michelle Calabro on Vimeo.

Wildlife Control: Analog or Digital

Spanning Brooklyn to San Fran in some sort of The Postal Service like collaboration, the band Wildlife Control has released a great pixel art style video for their song "Analog or Digital". It features robots, dinosaurs and aliens so what are you waiting for?