72 hours

I noticed that for the past week I've only posted every three days. It was unintentional for the first few posts but once I saw it, I decided to keep the ball rolling at least for today. At least I'm posting with some kind of regularity again.

Stacy's mom has got it goin' on

I always liked the music video for Fountain of Waynes' "Stacy's Mom" and especially Rachel Hunter, the eponymous mom.

Embed from Getty Images

Not gonna lie, I would have the hots for Stacy's mom too.

Life is like a hurricane here in Duckburg

So did you know that there's a new DuckTales cartoon coming next year? I sure as frell didn't until Tor.com posted a YouTube video of the cast singing the theme song.



Yup, that's David Frakking Tennant singing! And he'll be playing Scrooge McDuck too! I don't get Disney XD on my TV, but I'm still excited. I wonder if this will lead to a reboot of Darkwing Duck?

DuckTales was one of my favorite cartoons when I was a young lad. I never missed an episode. Gizmoduck was one of my favorite characters, along with Launchpad McQuack.

Things I would do if I were Bill Gates rich #1: In which I piss off the city of Los Angeles and possibly the entire state of California

I'm test driving "Things I would do if I were Bill Gates rich" is going to be semi-regular feature because I often think about what I would do if I were as rich as Gates. I mean, the man's worth what, $80 billion at this point? I can do a lot of good and the most dastardly evil with that kind of cash.

Today's inaugural post is based on something interesting I learned yesterday. Did you know that prior to 1960, the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team was based in the Land of a Thousand Lakes, Minnesota? They were called the Minneapolis Lakers back then. Their name suddenly makes a lot more sense with that piece of info. I'm sure you might see where I'm going with this and either cackling or shaking your head, but either way, keep reading.

Wikipedia.

As I already said, you can do a lot with $80 billion, be it good or evil and what I would do here could go either way. Guessed what I would do yet? Yup, I would buy the Lakers with the express purpose of moving them back to Minnesota. Now, if you live in LA, this would piss you off to no end. If you live in Minnesota, this would be either great news or just plain weird. Certainly the Timberwolves would probably be nonplussed at having to share the state with the Lakers.

Of course, the NBA is unlikely to ever allow such a relocation for multiple reasons ranging from whether Minnesota could support two basketball teams to the loss of revenue from a big market like Los Angeles.

This is a future episode of The Flash right here

If there isn't an episode of the show where Barry gets turned into "The Puppet-Flash" then the show's existence has been for nothing. NOTHING!

Trying to post more

To say that I've been lackadaisical about posting on here for the past several months would be a gross understatement. Still, I like Blogger since it's better for long form posting than Tumblr and I can post stuff here that I probably wouldn't over there. Inspiration came in the form of Wil Wheaton who posted recently about having the same problem and resolving to post on his blog once a day for the entire month of December. With that in mind, I plan to post here at least once a day period for as long as I can. I already started today and I think the trick will be to queue posts ahead of time so that I can have a buffer if I need it.

Barring what would otherwise go on my sci-fi and fantasy blogs, I'll be posting about everything and anything I can think of or that I think is interesting. So yeah, sometimes it might be a long post where I talk about stuff, other times it might be about a TV show, comic book thingamabob, or just a link dump. Pic spams too.

Let's see how long I can keep this up.

I've been doing some naughty-cle reading

My reading this part of the year has been scattershot. I'll start one book, then jump to another only to jump to yet another. Somehow in all of this I picked up a copy of Mr. Midshipman Hornblower and started tearing through it faster than most of the books I've finished this year.

This is a bit unexpected because I've never read nautical fiction before and didn't think that it would be my sort of thing. Unless this is some one-off fluke, I might have been wrong about that assumption. I checked the book out from the library on Sunday and now I'm more than halfway through. I wouldn't be surprised if I finish it off today or tomorrow.

For those who don't know: Mr. Midshipman Hornblower is the first book in C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower series, which followers the career of the aforementioned Hornblower from a young Midshipman (which I think is what they called Ensigns back then) to an Admiral and noble in the Royal Navy during the late 18th and 19th century. Mr. Midshipman Hornblower is set during the French Revolution and the Revolutionary Wars fought during that period. The later books transition to the Napoleonic Wars. While it is the first book in the Hornblower series, it isn't the first one written. Forester wrote Beat to Quarters first, which featured an older Hornblower, then decided after the success of that book to go back and trace Hornblower's naval career from the beginning on up.

No idea if I'll read any of the other books in the series, but I might since I like this one so much.

I would excel at this question

I decided to forego watching Legends of Tomorrow and Supernatural tonight in favor of watching yet another Trivial Pursuit let's play Achievement Hunter just put out today. I love watching these things because of how they tend to screw up on what should otherwise be easy questions. Especially Gavin who, despite being British, will always get questions about his country wrong. Anyways, the new episode had a nice gem in it that made me giddy.

Beyond Optimus and Bumblebee they had no clue who else was an Autobot. It was fun watching them figure it out.

Dare I?

A couple of weeks ago Achievement Hunter uploaded a Let's Play to their subchannel of the same name where Geoff, Gavin, Jack, and Ryan played a surprisingly rousing game of...Uno. Yup, Uno. Just the other day, they uploaded another Uno video, Uno: The Movie.



It's two hours and forty-four minutes long. Yikes. On one hand, I want to watch the entire thing because the first Uno video was hilarious. On the other hand, fuck, it's longer than a lot of actual movies. At the end of the day, it really comes down to whether or not I have the patience and endurance to watch five people play an Uno Xbox game.

I'm gonna need a substantial amount of root beer and snacks.

2016 is like the worst serial killer ever - RIP Florence Henderson

Well, that both sucks and is a surprising death. 2016 seems to be going after celebrities that you just expect to shake loose from the mortal coil. See also Bowie, Rickman, Prince, and pretty much every other famous person who has gone to the great beyond this year.

I realized something not long after finding out Florence Henderson had died - the entire center column on the The Brady Bunch's title card is dead.

It's like the worst game of tic-tac-toe ever.

"My name is Jesse Quick and I'm the fastest woman alive"

I had planned on posting these preview pictures of Jesse Quick in her sweet new costume from SpoilerTV before the "New Rogues" episode of The Flash premiered this week, but then I saw something shiny and I just got distracted. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I still wanted to post the pictures because, dang, that costume is nice. So backstory for context, last season Jesse Wells (Earth-2 Harrison Wells' daughter) and Wally West were struck by a particle wave from Team Flash's attempt to recreate the same wave that gave Barry and all of the Earth-1 metas their powers in order to restore Barry's after he lost them to Zoom. Still with me? So Jesse nor Wally showed signs of having gotten powers.But in the season 3 premiere, Wally had them as Kid Flash in the Flashpoint timeline Barry created when he traveled back in time to save his mother, but didn't have them in the new timeline Barry created when he went back and stopped himself from saving her.

Yeah, time travel is very confusing and I think the entire Flash fandom wants to smack Barry upside the head.

So anyways, while Wally doesn't appear to have his Speed Force powers in the new timeline, guess who does? Yup, Jesse Wells. She and Harry return to Earth-1 (this is a bit of weirdness because this is actually their first trip to this incarnation of Earth-1 because Earth-2 and the rest of the multiverse is unaffected by Barry's time travel shenanigans) so that Team Flash can run her through a battery of tests, which is actually just a lie on Harry's part because he wants them to talk his daughter out of wanting to be a speedster. As you can tell below, he relented and they stick around long enough for Barry to train her. Harry also gifts her a costume, courtesy of Cisco and without further adieu, let's check it out.

Not bad, not bad at all. The Arrowverse wardrobe department has a better handle on costumes than Warner Bros. does. No rubber suits or molded fake muscles here! Not a surprise, really. I mean, the Arrowverse has thinks on lock better than DC's cinematic universe, which comes off as a confused, jumbled mess.

What do you think about Jesse Quick's costume?

Grab a plate and feast your eyes on the final Rogue One trailer

"If the Empire has this kind of power, then what chance do we have?"
"We have hope. Rebellions are built on hope."



I'm hyped for December, how about you?

It sure was, it sure was

I watched the first half of the MacGyver reboot and just like I said in this post, it was terrible. The only aspect of the original series that carried over to the reboot is MacGyverisms and even then, they're not as inventive and clever as in the original. In fact, the show is about as bland as CBS's other dramas.

So who else thinks the MacGyver reboot is going to be a burning tire dump?

Oh boy...
(via IMDb)

The funny thing is, I've wanted a reboot off and on for the past few years, but the one birthed forth by CBS looks like an absolute disaster. The only two characters from the original series that made it into the reboot are MacGyver himself and Jack Dalton, who was MacGyver's friend who showed up from time to time. Dana Elcar's Pete Thornton has been genderswapped and is now Patricia Thornton, but that doesn't bother me. What does is the non-existence of the Phoenix Foundation, the NGO that MacGyver worked for and Thornton ran in the original series. Instead, it's been replaced by the "Department of External Services" that MacGyver created himself. Lucas Till, who plays MacGyver is 26 years old and presumably, the character is at least close to that, but sure, he creates a secret government agency. Makes perfect TV logic. I'm guessing Donald Trump is president in that universe.

Honestly, I don't think the show's going to make it because the episode premiering tonight is the show's second pilot. The first one was scrapped back in June and every character not named Angus MacGyver and Jack Dalton went with it. I don't know, but it seems like ditching a pilot and shooting a new one like four months before the premiere bodes not well for a TV show's chances of survival. Add to it that it's airing on Fridays, a timeslot regular used as a dumping ground for shows on their way towards cancellation and for ones that aren't expected to make it and yeah, this thing is doomed. I give it three episodes before CBS scraps any further episode orders and six before it gets canned. The question will be if the remaining eps are still shown on TV or dumped on the CBS website.

Review: The Veldt by Ray Bradbury is a chilling tale of technological addiction gone horribly wrong [SPOILERS]

I have a terrible secret, though that I may as well share now: I’ve never read any of Ray Bradbury’s books. The fault is entirely on me. Outside of comics and the internet, I wasn’t much of a prolific reader growing up. Things didn’t change until the Summer of 2011 when I finally got into fantasy and soon after, science fiction. And yet, in those four years I still haven’t read any of his books from beginning to end nor any of his short fiction until now. It’s something I’m working to rectify and that brings us back around to October as my own Ray Bradbury Reading Month.

I decided the other day that I would dedicated the month of October to reading some of the works of Bradbury. He’s a man for whom my thinkbox associates with the fall season and that month in particular. It might have something to do with his books Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Halloween Tree, and his short story collection, October Country, among others, all of which I plan on reading. 

So, with that in mind I decided that it would be best to sample his work before diving in headfirst and what better place to start than with one of his most well known collections, The Illustrated Man? What better story than The Veldt?

Women resoundingly kicked some ass at the Hugo Awards

And I can't even begin or really want to imagine how pissed off the Sad/Rabid Puppies are over this (but more on that later). Here are the nominees and winners for each category.

Best Novel

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)
Uprooted by Naomi Novik (Del Rey)
Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie (Orbit)
Seveneves: A Novel by Neal Stephenson (William Morrow)
The Cinder Spires: The Aeronaut’s Windlass by Jim Butcher (Roc)

Best Novella

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com)
Penric’s Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold (Spectrum)
Slow Bullets by Alastair Reynolds (Tachyon)
Perfect State by Brandon Sanderson (Dragonsteel Entertainment)
The Builders by Daniel Polansky (Tor.com)

Best Novelette

“Folding Beijing” by Hao Jingfang, trans. Ken Liu (Uncanny Magazine, Jan-Feb 2015)
“And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead” by Brooke Bolander (Lightspeed, Feb 2015)
“Obits” by Stephen King (The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, Scribner)
“What Price Humanity?” by David VanDyke (There Will Be War Volume X, Castalia House)
“Flashpoint: Titan” by CHEAH Kai Wai (There Will Be War Volume X, Castalia House)
est Short Story (2,706 final ballots, 2451 nominating ballots)
“Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld, January 2015)
Space Raptor Butt Invasion by Chuck Tingle (Amazon Digital Services)
“Asymmetrical Warfare” by S. R. Algernon (Nature, Mar 2015)
“Seven Kill Tiger” by Charles Shao (There Will Be War Volume X, Castalia House)
“If You Were an Award, My Love” by Juan Tabo and S. Harris (voxday.blogspot.com, Jun 2015)

Best Related Work

No Award
Between Light and Shadow: An Exploration of the Fiction of Gene Wolfe, 1951 to 1986 by Marc Aramini (Castalia House)
“The Story of Moira Greyland” by Moira Greyland (askthebigot.com)
“The First Draft of My Appendix N Book” by Jeffro Johnson (jeffro.wordpress.com)
“Safe Space as Rape Room” by Daniel Eness (castaliahouse.com)
SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police by Vox Day (Castalia House)

Best Graphic Story

The Sandman: Overture written by Neil Gaiman, art by J.H. Williams III (Vertigo)
Invisible Republic Vol 1 written by Corinna Bechko and Gabriel Hardman, art by Gabriel Hardman (Image Comics)
The Divine written by Boaz Lavie, art by Asaf Hanuka and Tomer Hanuka (First Second)
Full Frontal Nerdity by Aaron Williams (ffn.nodwick.com)
Erin Dies Alone written by Grey Carter, art by Cory Rydell (dyingalone.net)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

The Martian screenplay by Drew Goddard, directed by Ridley Scott (Scott Free Productions; Kinberg Genre; TSG Entertainment; 20th Century Fox)
Mad Max: Fury Road written by George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, and Nico Lathouris, directed by George Miller (Village Roadshow Pictures; Kennedy Miller Mitchell; RatPac-Dune Entertainment; Warner Bros. Pictures)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens written by Lawrence Kasdan, J. J. Abrams, and Michael Arndt, directed by J.J. Abrams (Lucasfilm Ltd.; Bad Robot Productions; Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
Ex Machina written and directed by Alex Garland (Film4; DNA Films; Universal Pictures)
Avengers: Age of Ultron written and directed by Joss Whedon (Marvel Studios; Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form

Jessica Jones: “AKA Smile” written by Scott Reynolds, Melissa Rosenberg, and Jamie King, directed by Michael Rymer (Marvel Television; ABC Studios; Tall Girls Productions; Netflix)
Doctor Who: “Heaven Sent” written by Steven Moffat, directed by Rachel Talalay (BBC Television)
Grimm: “Headache” written by Jim Kouf and David Greenwalt, directed by Jim Kouf (Universal Television; GK Productions; Hazy Mills Productions; Open 4 Business Productions; NBCUniversal Television Distribution)
Supernatural: “Just My Imagination” written by Jenny Klein, directed by Richard Speight Jr. (Kripke Enterprises; Wonderland Sound and Vision; Warner Bros. Television)
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: “The Cutie Map” Parts 1 and 2 written by Scott Sonneborn, M.A. Larson, and Meghan McCarthy, directed by Jayson Thiessen and Jim Miller (DHX Media/Vancouver; Hasbro Studios)

Best Editor, Short Form

Ellen Datlow
Sheila Williams
Neil Clarke
John Joseph Adams
Jerry Pournelle

Best Editor, Long Form

Sheila E. Gilbert
Liz Gorinsky
Toni Weisskopf
Jim Minz
Vox Day

Best Professional Artist

Abigail Larson
Michal Karcz
Larry Elmore
Larry Rostant
Lars Braad Andersen

Best Semiprozine

Uncanny Magazine edited by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas, Michi Trota, and Erika Ensign & Steven Schapansky
Strange Horizons edited by Catherine Krahe, Julia Rios, A. J. Odasso, Vanessa Rose Phin, Maureen Kincaid Speller, and the Strange Horizons staff
Beneath Ceaseless Skies edited by Scott H. Andrews
Daily Science Fiction edited by Michele-Lee Barasso and Jonathan Laden
Sci Phi Journal edited by Jason Rennie

Best Fanzine

File 770 edited by Mike Glyer
Lady Business edited by Clare, Ira, Jodie, KJ, Renay, and Susan
Tangent Online edited by Dave Truesdale
Superversive SF edited by Jason Rennie
Castalia House Blog edited by Jeffro Johnson

Best Fancast

No Award
Tales to Terrify, Stephen Kilpatrick
The Rageaholic, RazörFist
8-4 Play, Mark MacDonald, John Ricciardi, Hiroko Minamoto, and Justin Epperson
Cane and Rinse, Cane and Rinse
HelloGreedo, HelloGreedo

Best Fan Writer

Mike Glyer
Jeffro Johnson
Morgan Holmes
Shamus Young
Douglas Ernst

Best Fan Artist

Steve Stiles
Christian Quinot
Matthew Callahan
Kukuruyo
disse86

The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer

Award for the best new professional science fiction or fantasy writer of 2014 or 2015, sponsored by Dell Magazines. (Not a Hugo Award, but administered along with the Hugo Awards.)

Andy Weir *
Alyssa Wong *
Pierce Brown *
Sebastien de Castell *
Brian Niemeier

* Finalists in their 2nd year of eligibility.

Congrats to all of the winners!

Brie Larson is preparing very hard for her role as Captain Marvel

LARSON INDUSTRIES R&D DEPT. 📸: @ALECKSU pic.twitter.com/e2BiLuovGh

— Brie Larson (@brielarson) August 6, 2016

Such dedication to her craft. Much due diligence. Wow.

This month's reading: Magician: Apprentice (Feist) and The White Lioness (Mankell)

Hopefully not the only two books I'll read this month, but I'm satisfied either way.

(via Inspector Wallander.org)

When Inspector Kurt Wallander is called in to investigate the execution-style murder of a Swedish housewife, it initially seems like a routine case. He uncovers a suspicious stalker who may have committed the murder out of brutal passion. But when the suspect's alibi turns out to be airtight, Wallander must look deeper into the case, and what he discovers is far more complex -- and dangerous -- than he ever imagined: He soon uncovers an assassination plot and finds himself in a tangle with the secret police and a ruthless ex-KGB agent. Combining compelling insights into the sinister side of modern life with a riveting tale of international intrigue, The White Lioness keeps you on the knife edge of suspense.

I love the Kurt Wallander books. Never did see any episodes of the BBC adaption because I always missed them since PBS isn't exactly at the top of my watch list. What's funny is that Kenneth Branagh isn't who I picture as Wallander whenever I read one of these books. You know who does? Martin Freeman. No idea if it's because of time on Sherlock or what, but he just strikes my imagination as a better fit for Kurt Wallander.

To the forest on the shore of the Kingdom of the Isles, the orphan Pug came to study with the master magician Kulgan. But though his courage won him a place at court and the heart of a lovely Princess, he was ill at ease with the normal ways of wizardry.

Yet Pug's strange sort of magic would one day change forever the fates of two worlds. For dark beings from another world had opened a rift in the fabric of spacetime to being again the age-old battle between the forces of Order and Chaos.

I've read Magician: Apprentice once before in 2012 and I had a sudden urge the other day to reread it. For those who don't know, Apprentice and it's sequel/companion, Magician: Master are two halves of the same book, titled simply Magician. For whatever reason, when it was published in the U.S., the book was split in two, making the original Riftwar Saga a quartet instead of a trilogy. I never got around to reading the rest of the saga, but I want to and a re-read is the way place to start.

August's Icon of the Month: Jyn Erso from Rogue One

Sure, it might be premature to label Jyn Erso an "icon" before Rogue One has even hit theaters, but given the meager number of women action heroes, she's already certified as a future icon.

Not much is known about Erso yet, but that'll obviously change as we get closer to Rogue One's release date. We do know that she's got a rap sheet that includes forgery, possession of stolen property, aggravated assault, and resisting arrest. Nothing huge, but I'm hoping that there's more in her criminal record, because I can't imagine the Rebels recruiting someone for such a dangerous mission based entirely on what is honestly petty crimes.

I have high hopes for Rogue One because it'll be interesting to see a war movie set in the Star Wars universe. Hell, it'll be nice to see a Star Wars movie with (hopefully) no Jedi.

Check out my Wonder Woman mug

Found it at the Big Lots in town for only $4. Makes an excellent tea mug.

In which Nerds of a Feather rank Kurt Vonnegut's novels

Right here. I haven't read any of his books yet, despite owning four of them, but I've read two of his short stories and they were pretty good. Whenever there's a book by a single author that's been praised to high heaven but everybody, I'm less inclined to read them for some reason. I'm not opposed to it, but there's definite procrastination on my part. I guess it's because I'm afraid that I'll read the book and it won't live up to the hype and that in turn could cast doubt on whether or not I'm "smart enough" to grok the work like everybody clearly does.

Well that, and satire doesn't seem to be up my alley. Catch-22 did nothing for me and boy, did I ever try my best to get into it.

IT'S OVER 9000!!!!!!

I referenced the famous "It's over 9000!" meme from Dragon Ball Z in a comment over at HeroPress and forgot that not everybody has watched the same cartoons and shows that I did growing up, so for the sake of context, here's the original version of the scene:



And here's a much more hilarious remix:



There's actually quite a few remixes of that scene. The internet is amazing.

#Dallas

They'll run out of capes at some point

So unless you've been living under a rock for the past month or you just don't watch Supergirl, it was recently announced that Superman will finally make an appearance in the second season. The Man of Steel's has been on the show several times before, but CBS never showed the man in full, opting instead to show his cape or even his boots. I assumed that this was because of the DC Cinematic Universe and Warner Bros not wanting Supes to appear on the small screen, but I'm guessing now that it was because The CW still owned the TV rights.

So who's putting on the blue tights and (hopefully) red trunks this time?

Hopefully, Superman will be scruff-free.

Tyler Hoechlin from MTV's Teen Wolf. An interesting choice that I'm still on the fence about, but I've been wrong in my opinions before and I'm sure Hoechlin will knock it out of the park. According to the Variety article, Hoechlin will be in the first two episodes of season two, which makes sense considering what Kara might have found in the season finale.

I'm really hoping for a more traditional costume and not some 52 reboot nonsense.

Picture via Wikimedia.

Welcome to the "new" Nerd Trash

Where everything is the same except for the address! As I explained over on the old blog, I decided to change the url from nerdy-blog to nerd-trash because 1. I wanted the name and address to match, and 2. I never liked having the word blog followed immediately by blogspot in the old address. I also explained that I created a new blog rather than just change the address on the old one because I want the folks who read and follow Nerd Trash (if anybody actually does, lol) to be able to find the new one because I'm 99% sure that you lose your followers if you change the url on a Blogger blog.

Sure, I'll miss the 200k+ pageviews I had managed to rack up, but I can always start anew and the same content is still here for people to find.

Oh and I put up a new header too. I found some dynamite fonts over at Google Fonts and decided to throw something together in MS Paint. It's a considerable improvement, IMO, over the old banners. Hope you guys like it.

July's Icon of the Month: Superman (Christopher Reeve)

More specifically, the Christopher Reeve Superman. I plan on using the other incarnations in future installments and honestly, he's my favorite one.

Why do I like the Reeve Superman so much? Well, part of it because I watched the first two movies before any other adaptions and so my thinkbox automatically jumps to him whenever Superman movies or TV shows come up. The other reason is because in my opinion, Christopher Reeve is, was, and always will be Superman because of how he lived his life after his tragic accident. Aside from a brief period right after the accident, he didn't wallow in self-pity or become a recluse from society. Instead, he worked and worked to try and defy his doctors and get his body working again. He was never fully successful in that endeavor, but he did have some success near the end of his life. I also admire his dedication to stem cell research and how he campaigned tirelessly to get as much funding for it as possible. The thing about it that always gets me is that he knew full well that a cure for spinal injuries and paralysis would never be found in his lifetime or in the lifetime or other disabled people but that a cure would be found and it would benefit future generations. His desire to see that nobody should have to endure that kind of tragedy ever again is both inspiring and humbling and makes him the real Superman.

I hear tell that it's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll

I cockblocked myself in a dream last night

Last night I had a sex dream and everything was going great...right up till I woke up. I don't usually remember much or anything of my dreams once I wake up, but occasionally I'll bits if they stand out. What I can remember is was standing on the front porch of my house, about to go inside when this woman walks by. I should mention at this point that we were both naked. I've never been nor will I ever be a nudist, so I have no idea why we were in our birthday suits and not being arrested for it.

Like I said earlier, I don't usually remember much of anything about my dreams, but I do remember this woman more than anything else in it. She's African-American and about my age. Her skin was sort of a middle tone, neither dark or light. Her hair was about shoulder length, corkscrew curly, and the best way I can describe the color was like red clay, but darker. Her body was pretty fit - not muscular, but she obviously took care of herself. She had a very small bust, bordering on being flat-chested. I don't recall whether or not she had any pubic hair either because of bad memory or I simply didn't look down there. I'd say she was my height (around 6'2) or close to it and she had some freckles under his eyes that made her even more stunning. I've never seen this woman or anyone resembling her before in my life, so I have to figure that she's a composite created by my mind using different black women I've seen on TV, the internet, and in real life.


So anyways, she's walking by the house but stops and we get to chatting and flirting. The latter was mostly her because I know less than zilch about flirtation. Somehow this leads to me inviting her up to my bedroom just to hang out and talk. At this point, provided that you're still reading this, you're probably going "Oh sure, talk, mmhmm." but I'm fairly confident that that was the intention for the simple fact that this would fit my personality to a T. I could have a supermodel or my favorite adult actress in this bedroom right now and having sex wouldn't be the first thing on my mind. I'm not saying it wouldn't be like the second thing on my mind, but it certainly wouldn't be at the top.

There's a few oddities at this point that I think are worth noting. First, the bedroom as it appeared in my dream wasn't the same as it is in real life. Whereas mine is longer than it is wide, the dream version was as wide as it was long. The window I open as soon as we walk in was different too. Whereas mine is in the middle of one one in real life, the dream one was situated right at the corner where two of the walls meet. It was narrower too. The other big difference? We were suddenly both clothed. My dreams tend to go through small changes like that for no rhyme or reason.

So like I said, we walk into the bedroom, now with clothes on, and I go and open the window. We're both wearing t-shirts and shorts, but hers are more like the kind that a person might wear if they're out for a run or otherwise exercising. Mine are more casual and what I usually wear during the summer. I also want to say that I might have sat down on the window sill, but I think that's a post-dream inclusion from my mind. She takes a seat on my unmade bed and we do actually hang out and chat just like I said.

So then I go over and sit on the bed beside her, still talking, but now things are starting the change. There's like a unspoken understanding that passes through us that things are going to progress from just talking to something else. We start making out and fumbling and all of the other things I assume happens when you start running the bases. Soon, the bed is even more of a mess than it was before. She's on her back and I'm kneeling between her legs and we're both scrambling to get our clothes off. There's an urgency radiating from both of us as if our lives, our very existence depends on us having sex. A desperate need. Like fire needs oxygen. I have no shame or embarrassment in saying that I've never had sex, so I have no idea if what I'm describing is an actual thing people feel when they want to have sex with each other or not. If it is, then I now totally understand why sex is so popular.

Unfortunately, just as we finish stripping and we're just starting to get to it...I wake up. My dreams start to get absurd just before I wake up and that's what happened here. I's all foggy, but I recall saying something about a hoe (the gardening tool) and Dream Girl snickered and said "hoe". We both did, actually and that's the weird part. We were both standing side by side, still naked, when we both said it, then I walked away and stood across from her. Apparently I went and stood beside her just so we could both snicker and say "hoe". Then I woke up. Like I said, my dreams get absurd right before I wake up.

And that folks, is how I cockblocked myself.

I just thought of the worst possible job to have

Cleaning the donation rooms at a sperm bank. I imagine the cleaners put on one of those hazmat suits that scientists at the CDC wear when they're handling diseases. You know, the suits you sometimes see in movies with the air hoses in the back?

"Oh god, why can't they ever make it in the cup on the first try?"
"What the...how'd they get it on the ceiling?!"
"I knew I should never have gone to ITT Tech."

Why did Constantinople get the works? That's nobody's business but the Turks

Of course I went with the Tiny Toon Adventures music video. I remember watching this when I was a kid along with "Particle Man". If I had known who They Might Be Giants were, I'd probably have become a fan.

The new Spider-Man game looks interesting

I originally saw gifs from this video and thought they were from a trailer for Spider-Man: Homecoming. I was like "why'd they change the costume so soon after Civil War?" Had I a PlayStation 4, this would probably make it on my "to buy" list. Of course, that's just a trailer with no gameplay footage, so this could very well end up being a crappy game. Still, the cinematics look pretty.

Literally every ghost hunting show ever

Ghost hunter: "So we set up a camera to record in this room because it has a strong presence for supernatural activity."
Me: "Sounds reasonable."
Ghost hunter: "We reviewed the footage after several hours and we found solid evidence of an otherworldly presence."
Me: "Wow, really?"
[Ghost hunter plays footage and freeze frames on a single shot]
Ghost hunter: "Alright, see that object right there? [points at something on the TV screen] That's an ecto-plasmic apparition, a ghost!"
Me: "...That's a dust mote, dude."
Ghost hunter: "What? No! That's totally a ghost, man! Incontrovertable proof that there's life after death and that all things supernatural are real."
Me: "Or that it's just a dust mote. That room hasn't been cleaned since the Ford Administration and was dusty as all hell."
Ghost hunter: "..."
Me: "..."
Ghost hunter: "Nope, totally a ghost."
Me: "Ugh..."

I will never not love iMac G3 ads

Remember the late 90s when Steve Jobs returned to Apple and saved his former company from oblivion? I don't because I wasn't into computers, but I do remember when my high school got a bunch of the then hot iMac G3s and iBooks.

It probably sounds dumb nowadays, but the biggest selling point for the iMacs and iBooks back then was their appearance. Keep in mind that up till then, colors for computers were limited to I think beige and black, so having the option of bright, fun colors was a huge deal.

 Too bad that design aesthetic didn't stick around for very long. Apple ditched it pretty quick for white and black color schemes. The rest of the computer and electronic industry isn't much better. Sure, there are laptops that come in different colors, but they're not as vibrant and eye catching as the iMacs and iBooks.

Yup, taking a break from Tumblr

I don't know why, but that blog that followed me last night just rattled the hell out of me. Like I said, I've seen some weird stuff on Tumblr before, but that was just a whole new level of depravity that I never wanted to be aware of. I don't think I'm going to quit Tumblr completely. I might return or not, it depends on how I feel about it. It would be a shame to quit it forever because despite all of its flaws, Tumblr is a pretty good resource for pictures and what not. Just ask Cal. It would be a shame to give that up.

OF COURSE John Cena can speak Mandarin

Because he is a man of culture and refinement who wears jorts while wrestling backwoods cult leaders and dudes with bad haircuts.

Confession: I like Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe"

I was in a Big Lots¹ today on a snack run while that song was blaring over the speakers and caught myself singing along under my breath and starting to groove a little. I'm not one to get jiggy with it (why yes, I am white, how'd you know?), but I realized that as far as modern pop songs go, "Call Me Maybe" isn't terrible. I wouldn't listen to it all of the time or with any real frequency, but I certainly wouldn't turn the dial if it came on the radio.



It manages to strike a balance between bubblegum pop, dance-pop, and regular pop music without going too far in any one direction, which broadens its appeal to wider audiences. It's a shame that this song has muffled Jepsen's music career by making her the Call Me Maybe Girl. Someone Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera managed to avoid that pitfall.

¹: I guess if you don't have a Big Lots in your country, it's a discount store and buys and re-sells stuff that other retail outlets want or need to offload.

I think I might be done with Tumblr, or, this is why people turn to drink

So tonight I decided to check to see if I had any new followers to my Tumblr, Fuck Yeah, Nerdery, and you know what? Really wish I hadn't on both counts my Tumblr is now being followed by a dd/lg kink blog. What's that, you ask? It's a very disturbing D/s (dominate/submissive) subculture where a guy pretends to be the dad to the woman in the relationship. I had no idea till now just how incredibly sickening and disturbing that subculture is. If you've never used Tumblr, there's a feature where if you mouse over someone's name or icon, a mini-profile pops up. So long story short, I moused over this person's name and boy, did I ever regret it. Apparently women in dd/lg relationships actually pretend to be underage and this woman in particular pretends to be a 4-6 year old.

Just...why? I've been on Tumblr 2010 and while I've seen things I wish I hadn't, this is the first time I've ever wanted to quit.

Just when you think people can't get any more fucked up, the internet proves you wrong.

Public Service Announcement: That's not what my e-mail is for, folks

I keep getting e-mails from different companies trying to get me to blog for them or post about their stuff and folks, it just isn't going to happen. I don't know if they're actual people or bots because the emails are similar in that the sender claims to love reading my "nerdy posts" and want me to guest blog or pimp their products. If not bots, then it's very obviously a form letter that they send out to en masse. The "praise" is so generic that it if you replaced the word 'nerdy' with another adjective, it would change the message at all.

In any case, be it man, bot, cyborg, or sentient alien jellyfish, that's not why I have my email listed on here. I slapped it onto the sidebar so that folks could send me links to fun stuff they wanted to share or that I might want to post here, not so someone could try and squeeze free content out of me.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

Awww yeah, new John Scalzi book next year

So Tor.com posted the cover to John Scalzi's next book the other day and I am hyped as dicks for this. Scalzi is one of my favorite, if not most favorite science fiction writer and the man has yet to let me down when it comes to dropping good reads. Seriously, read Old Man's War, Lock-In, or any of his other books and you'll be a convert for sure. Here's the summary:

Our universe is ruled by physics and faster than light travel is not possible -- until the discovery of The Flow, an extra-dimensional field we can access at certain points in space-time that transport us to other worlds, around other stars.

Humanity flows away from Earth, into space, and in time forgets our home world and creates a new empire, the Interdependency, whose ethos requires that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It’s a hedge against interstellar war -- and a system of control for the rulers of the empire.

The Flow is eternal -- but it is not static. Just as a river changes course, The Flow changes as well, cutting off worlds from the rest of humanity. When it’s discovered that The Flow is moving, possibly cutting off all human worlds from faster than light travel forever, three individuals -- a scientist, a starship captain and the Empress of the Interdependency -- are in a race against time to discover what, if anything, can be salvaged from an interstellar empire on the brink of collapse.

I cannot wait until March 21 or next year. I mean that literally. I can't wait almost a year!

And this is how you clinch that "World's #1 Dad" mug

Also I will never not love that Kevin Smith and his wife named their daughter after Harley Quinn.

Marvel's Most Wanted canceled...again

Seriously, what is it with ABC and this show? This is the second time the network has canned Most Wanted, with the first time being not long after it was announced last year. In fact, I think it was originally scrapped in May or June 2015. Well, if anything, that means the show will be revived later this year...then canceled again the following Summer.

I guess on the bright side, if Most Wanted really is dead (and I'll doubt it until they cut off its head, burn the body and bury the ashes at a crossroads), then that means Bobbi and Lance will somehow be finding their way back to the team.

This is why we can't have nice things: Agent Carter canceled

WELL SHIT. But sure ABC, renew Grey's Anatomy instead. It's not like that shows been on TV for a thousand years and is about as stale as the opening monologue of a late night talk show.

Agent Carter was too good for this world, too pure.

Russian invasion

I was checking the stats on my fantasy blog, Sword, Dragons, and Nerds this morning and noted that I had 105 hits yesterday and over 230 today. Now, I know that blog doesn't get anywhere near that many hits in normal circumstances and out of curiosity, checked this and my scifi blog, Rayguns and Space Suits and sure enough, they're also registering higher than normal hits. Some more snooping and I figured out the source of these abundant pageviews: Russia. According to the "Audience" section of Blogger's stats page, Russia is well ahead of even the United States in terms of visits to my blogs.

I also know that the hits are total BS. The other stats aren't showing any particular website that these "visitors" are coming over from, so I'm obviously not being slashdotted and they're not finding my blogs via search engines, so that leaves only one possibility: bots.

This is one of those things that Blogger needs to address. They need to implement a way of keeping hits from bots from showing up as pageviews.

A good Tumblr ad

Tumblr is starting to develop a reputation among its userbase for having truly terrible and irrelevant ads, but I finally had one come across my dash that isn't so bad.

I mean, it didn't make me want to click on it since I have an inherent distrust of internet ads, but at least this one wasn't about mortgages or medicare.

And really, all of Harrison Ford's movies are must-see, even the crappy ones.

May Icon of the Month: Deanna Troi

Well, we had a bit of a stumble with the Icon of the Month series last month. Somehow, I forgot to post one for April and by the time I remembered, it was just too late. It didn't seem quite fair to post one halfway into the month, so I opted to skip it. Fortunately, I did remember this month, so let's get on with it.

I chose Deanna Troi both because she's one of my favorite Trek characters and because I feel like she's under-appreciated. Unfortunately, I believe there's a mentality that Troi was a pointless character that served no other purpose than to be the show's T&A. Sadly, there is some truth in the latter argument as it did seem like there were people involved in the The Next Generation's production that seemed to view Troi as just that.

To me, though, Troi had a lot of potential that was just never utilized and developed. We saw glimpses of it with her empathetic powers coupled with her natural intuition and diplomatic skills. One dumb criticism I've seen of her is about her having her own seat on the bridge of the Enterprise when she was "just" a counselor. That ignores her aforementioned skills and abilities. After all, she was usually the one briefing Picard on whatever alien races they were going to meet during a diplomatic mission. She was also the one he turned to when he needed input on what someone or something was feeling during the various shenanigans the Enterprise found itself in. It's worth noting that in the Star Trek: Titan book series, this role she had on TNG is reflected in her position as Diplomatic Officer of the USS Titan.

Another critique is in her "lack" of piloting skills, that the two times she was shown at the helm of the Enterprise-D and E, she crashed them into either a planet or another ship. This is really incredibly stupid because it ignores the context of those two instances. With the former, the saucer section was caught in the explosion of the Enterprise-D's stardrive section (this happened in Star Trek: Generations, btw) and was sent crashing down to the nearby planet. If anything, Deanna turned the crash into a crash landing and saved everybody. In the case of the latter (Star Trek: Nemesis), she rammed the Enterprise-E into Shinzon's ship because Picard ordered her to.

In terms of favorite episodes of moments, one that comes to mind is Disaster. In this one, the Enterprise is hit by two quantum filaments and left severely damaged and disabled, with the cast being trapped in different parts of the ship. Troi finds herself in command of the bridge owing both to her rank as Lieutenant Commander and that the bridge officer that was in charge took an exploding control panel to the face. She's ultimately faced with two choices when it's discovered that the ship is losing antimatter containment and will blow up if it isn't fixed. Ensign Ro argues for a saucer separation because they have no idea if anybody in the stardrive is still alive and that it's better to save the people in the saucer than for everybody to die. O'Brien argues against this and Troi ultimately agrees with him, but at the end of the episode notes that Ro could just have easily been right.

There's another episode, Face of the Enemy, where she's kidnapped and forced to pose as a member of the Romulan Tal Shiar in order to help with the defection of a Romulan Viceproconsul and his two aides. It was interesting watching her take on the mentality of a Tal Shiar agent which is the polar opposite of her normal personality.

All in all, Deanna Troi is a character that could and should have been handled better by the writers, but still managed to be as memorable as any other Star Trek character, male or female.

Recent book hauls

I got a good number of books recently and so I thought I'd show them off.

First up is a nice collection I bought at the library's twice annual sale. Normally, I wait until the bag sale on the weekend before buying any books in bulk, but I also like visiting at the beginning just to see what they have and if there's anything I might want to buy on the spot.

I only paid $7 for the whole lot, which isn't bad at all. I didn't realize until after I got home and checked the Honorverse Wiki that I had almost all of the main Honor Harrington and the spinoff Saganami Island series. I'm missing two for the former and one for the latter. I did feel some guilt for buying so many books by one author and depriving them of money, but then realized that I'm going to have to purchase new copies of all of the paperbacks in that picture because of their poor condition. And that's in addition to the missing books I'm going to buy and all of the other books in the franchise. No, no, David Weber is still going to be making a pretty penny from me in the end. :P

As for The Once and Future King, it replaces the paperback copy that I rather stupidly got rid of in last year's book purge.


So that was just the haul from Wednesday, April 13. The bag sale was on the following Saturday and Sunday, but I only went on Saturday due to the paucity of books to be had.

Unfortunately, the names on the spines of a couple of the books aren't legible. The one underneath The Night Manager in the first picture is a John Le Carre omnibus from Chatham River Press containing the classic The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, A Little Town in Germany, and The Looking Glass War. The green and white book sandwiched between the Trevanian and John Sanford omnibuses is a copy of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. I'm actually not much of a poetry reader, but I couldn't pass up a classic. I'm ecstatic that I scored not one, not two, but three Kurt Vonneguts! I've been jonesing to read Slaughterhouse-Five for ages, but strangely the library doesn't have any copies. They have copies of his other books, just not Slaughterhouse-Five.

I was pretty letdown by the aforementioned paucity of books that the library had on sale. Normally they're practically overflowing with books and my usual routine is to fill two tote bags, empty them into a box and then head back in to fill them up again. It's not uncommon for me to end up with well over fifty books and only paying $12^[1], then going through them over the months until the next sale and ditching the ones I don't want. This year, they just didn't have that many. I noticed on the Wednesday that there were a lot more people at the sale than what I've normally seen. It's more common for people to wait until the week when books are cheaper, but this year was different. Oh well, there's always the sale in October and I didn't manage to pick up a nice horde in any case.

See anything you like? Let me know down in the comments.


^[1]: But sometimes I've paid less because one of the elderly ladies who mans the table keeps thinking that I'm a member of "The Friends of the Library" group because my tote bags have their name on it. I'm not a member, though. I just bought them from the library because I needed them. Oh well, I'm not conflicted over it. Probably should be, but it is what it is.