If you’d like to join me for the podcast of my second novel, you can find the listing of them as they’re released at the Marvellous Hairy website. While you’re there, sign up for my newsletter to catch all the news as it happens.
The first episode (which is about twenty minutes long and covers the first two chapters) can be found at my other blog, on my author’s site. You can also subscribe at iTunes, and soon at Podiobooks.com.
This is a similar notion as the Vintage Ads of Fictional Futures contest we ran last year, but a little more artistic. Franco Brambilla has taken some of his grampa’s old Swiss postcards, and painted in aliens. Very cool. You can find Franco Brambilla’s site here. Via BoingBoing.
Now, I know it’s unfair to tar every TV news report with the same brush, particularly as the clip I’m going to show you comes from a Fox News affiliate. But still, it does kind of speak to the medium. I can just see how this went down in the newsroom:
Reporter: There’s this great story about a bear terrorizing this lady.
Producer: Can you get pictures of the bear? I don’t want a god-damned story about a bear without video of a frickin’ bear.
Reporter: No problem. I’m sure we’ll be able to get pictures.
Producer: Okay. If you’re going to waste the whole afternoon with a camera crew, we have to have pictures.
Reporter: Don’t worry. There will be a bear in the story.
You can find it here if the embed thingy doesn’t work. At least the report finally answers the question: “does a bear scat in the woods?”
MONKEY SEE is a charming and satirical examination of the question: “what would happen if monkeys could talk, and they had their own 401(k)s?”
It is also a love story, an etiquette manual for talking apes, parenting help for said primates, and a demented “how-to” guide for the aspiring evil scientist.
You’ll notice I used the words “evil scientist”, not “mad scientist”, because really, you can’t explain anything to mad scientists. They spend most of their time frothing at the mouth or terrorizing the village after drinking/injecting/inserting/stepping into/ or otherwise using the newly minted insane formula/device they have created to solve the problem of “what should I do this afternoon after I’ve finished eating bugs?”
Evil scientists, on the other hand, have a plan.
So it is with Dr. Harold Cogitomni, who is hatching a diabolical (evil) plan, to turn a Spider Monkey (Gigi), into a 60-foot, poison-breathing (to be clear, breath that is poisonous to others), crystal-spike-tailed behemoth capable of crushing houses and tanks. (Always a useful ability in a behemoth, or even your run-of-the-mill leviathan.) Continue Reading →
Research scientists from NaziWorks 3000 (The Caring Company) were thrilled to finally track down the source of the mysterious transmissions they had been receiving for centuries, proving once and for all the existence of non-human non-robotic sources of intelligence in the multi-verse.
Unfortunately, the creatures of Bonodminton have fixated on an unlikely “sport” outlawed by the Corporate Imperium twelve centuries ago for being extremely suggestive and silly.
The creatures will be eliminated as soon as the fleet of Red Juggernauts arrives at their desolate, shuttle-cock infested planet.
From Toulouse Le Grandfig in the Land of the Future | photo by Odegaard
Some may claim his research is so much fluff, but Georg Steinhauser of the Vienna University of Technology has plumbed the depths of a question that has vexed humans for millennia — why are men subjected to the humiliation of navel lint, but women are spared this mortifying phenomenon?
Now, if you had asked me yesterday what causes regular deposits of down in the male belly-button , I would have said that it’s because men have abdominal hair, and women do not. And now, after four years of research, Steinhauser has the scientific answer:
Men have abdominal hair, and women do not.
According to the New Scientist:
Since March 2005, Steinhauser has collected 503 pieces of navel fluff from his own belly button. The fluff was usually the same colour as the shirt he was wearing, which led him to suspect that it was derived from his clothing.
I would just like to take this opportunity to thank Steinhauser for blowing the lid off this taboo subject. With any luck, we will soon have a charity devoted to helping those male “innies” stigmatized by the tragedy of navel lint. We could bring ridiculous value to the first fundraiser by carding, combing and spinning the navel-wool, and then having a team of crack knitters turn out “self-actualization scarves” for sale.
I can hear you saying, this is an April Fool’s joke, right? No, the paper’s here.
Alltop is an innie, and humor-blogs.com is an outie. Weird, eh? More at the New Scientist. A HT to the other gents at The Emily Chesley Reading Circle for giving me an excuse to use the phrase “bringing ridiculous value” in a headline.
