The important things in life

Luis Martinez stopped at the Subway sandwich shop and ordered this thing they call a Philly Cheesesteak…and he ordered it with ketchup. The Subway worker, Lawrence Ordone, objected.

"That’s when I flew off the handle," said Ordone.

"He shoved a chair to the side, like knocked it down to come at me, and I said, ‘This is going to be serious,’" said Martinez.

"I said, ‘Let’s go, fight me like a man,’" said Ordone.

"I was scared. Next thing, I’m thinking a gun’s going to come out," said Martinez.

Ordone said he blocked the customer so he couldn’t get out.

"He threatened to kill me in front of my wife," said Martinez.

These are important issues that a man should engage in battle over: everyone KNOWS that a true Philly cheesesteak is served with ketchup and fried onions. The abomination that the Subway serves lacks both. And now we have learned that Subway employees are willing to fight to the death to preserve their heresy.

Oh, and American cheese? Pffft. It’s supposed to be Cheez-Whiz.

By the way, Ordone was fired — Subway apparently objects to their employees assaulting customers. They still, however, refuse to serve ketchup.

Briefing from the radioactive badlands of the American Southwest, 1954

[We are fortunate to have this transcript, taken by a company stenographer, from one of the early efforts of the resistance to instruct an army company in tactics. Although we now have more sophisticated technologies to hold these invaders in check, it is instructive too see how the American military in the 1950s struggled to cope with an unusual enemy, a struggle that was described in an excellent documentary produced by Warner Bros.]

Men — and ladies — the purpose of this briefing is to instruct you in the basic anatomy of the enemy. We have lost many soldiers to the assumption that these are just elephant sized beasts and that this is an exercise in big-game hunting; post-mortem analysis has found that many wounds that appear as if they should be instantly lethal actually miss major organs and allow the monsters to rampage on relatively unimpaired. I am here to shake up your assumptions and give you better targeting instruction so that you will more effectively kill the enemy.

Get this out of your heads right now. These are not overgrown familiar animals. These are giant ants.

[Read more…]

Wait, that’s not a super-villain!

Here’s an interesting scenario: how an ‘evil’ super-genius could take over the world. Basically, it involves building a new nation-state which openly and thoroughly embraces science and technology, not just electronics, but also biotechnology. It’s a little bit pat — apparently, there are no trade-offs and compromises in building a super-scientific nation, and none of the technologies ever create any new problems of their own — but what struck me most is that there’s nothing villainous in the story at all. It pisses off conservative nations (like the US), and makes everyone panic over the imminent obsolescence of their technologies, but no, the ‘super-villain’ isn’t trying to harm anyone, but just trying to advance humanity.

Also, there’s a Mary Sue element to it all. The guy just moves to a poverty-stricken African nation, and purely by the power of his amazing intelligence, instantly raise a science city…infrastructure isn’t an issue, the collaborative nature of science doesn’t come into play, he just takes over this large population to do the manual labor for his genius.

Sorry, the world doesn’t work that way. It is an interesting twist on the comic book super villain, but it’s been done before — isn’t this just Dr Doom?

Darwin and I have something in common!

Apparently, Turkey is publishing “A series of books for primary schoolchildren, describing Charles Darwin as a Jew with a big nose who kept the company of monkeys and other historical figures in anti-Semitic terms.” Darwin was Jewish? Well, checking my email rather than my pedigree, I have a long list of people who’ve tried to insult me by calling me a “dirty Jew”, too.

Maybe ol’ Chuck and I can share the honor of being titular Jews. I’ll have to introduce myself when we meet in Sheol..

“Usul, we have wormsign the likes of which even God has never seen.”

I must take a brief break from grading to bring you some snowblower porn.

That strange moan you hear right now is the sound of a thousand Minnesotans moistening the crotches of their jeans. In a moment you’ll hear a faint sigh as they all go out to their garages to gaze disappointedly at the suddenly insignificant machinery stored there.

Well, except for the Minnesotans who are watching the whole ten minutes of this video a second time.

Torturing SF authors for charity

Ryan is considering the sexualization of the female body in geek art, and like all of us people with Y chromosomes, my first thought was, “But what about the meeeeeennnnzzz?” (if you’re reading this aloud, as I’m sure you do, be sure to put a good nasal whine into the phrase). Fortunately, my question has been answered, because Jim Hines and John Scalzi are using SF book covers as guides for posing sexily.

You might not want to click on that link if you’re the sensitive sort.

Scalzi is always willing to indulge in these kinds of stunts, and I’m thinking that a truly malicious sort of person could send him SF and comic book covers that would land him in the hospital with severe spinal injuries and broken ribs and shattered legs. Because, you see, this is what happens to us poor, weak, pitiful men when we try to keep up with those infinitely flexible creatures made out of rubber bands and balloons called “women”.