The Daily Adventures of Mercat

It was much better than I anticipated. I remember seeing a preview last year and thinking "man, those costumes look like shit." So I had low expectations. And the costumes did bother me, a little, not not to the extent they did last time I saw them, which must have been pre- postproduction. (...Production?)

Anyway, I spent way too long thinking, "Who is that actor, is that Mac?" and finally I had to whip out imdb and I realized no, omg, it's fucking Bootstrap Bill. Skarrrrrrsgarrrrrrrd

Fabulous.

Although the writing on that felt kind of weird to me, like they just kind of jammed his character and the younger girl (intern? family? wtf?) in there to provide comic relief and insight to the mythology. They didn't really do great justice to Natalie Portman's role, either, I feel... I mean, yes, this is a movie about Thor. But these are the Earthlings (feels weird to say that) and they were kind of... too much relegated to side-story? Idk.

The costumes still bother me, btw. The "Vikings" at least. (Viking gods? I really don't know what to call them.)

Although I do like how they dealt with them being "gods", because, let's face it, that really bothered me and admittedly I have never read the comics, but I could just not wrap my head around why the fuck a god was hanging out with mutated and superpowered humans.

Liked the nod to Stark, I laughed my ass off. And the note to Banner, nice touch. Felt odd to me they left out Captain America, though-- although maybe I just missed it.

Mad props to Chris Helmsworth, who gave much more depth to a character than I expected, and made him look noble in the process (Thor, that is). Loved the whole "vikings clearly not in the right time period and not knowing how to deal with modern society" issues (the cup bit, the horse bit, no pun intended).

Did not really like how they treated Loki. He is a trickster god, is he not? Chaos for the sake of chaos and trickery for fun? His jealousy was 1) not ragey enough, 2) not rationed well (blame the writers? idk), and 3) just out of place at any rate. That bothered me.

Also, interesting to see, despite the fact that magic alien Vikings had asians (Japanese?) and blacks, women are still relegated to a lesser class . Ironic that these are then "gods". MODERN ANALYSIS, I HAS IT. (In fact, going by numbers alone it seems the visible women might have been better off on Earth than in Asgard-- here we had two [I'm guessing] astrophysicists, and Asgard had one woman fighter and Odin's wife, and then a bunch of pretty women fawning over the victors at the end. Although I also did just realize I don't think there was a single visible female agent in all of SHIELD's shenanigans, either.)

Also, LOVED Stan Lee's bit in this one. So awesome.

Rainbow Bridge, fucking high-tension foot thick labradorite shit? FUCKING LOVED THAT. Can I have that as a real life design material? PLEASE?! And the Futurist buildings on Asgard were neat for the most part. Stiiiiiill super hate their fashion sense, though. (Seriously though, what was that labradorite stuff? I hope they had some mad set for the close-ups and it wasn't all CGI, because it was BITCHIN'.)

Um, and, yeah, at least one scene with a fucking eight-legged horse goddamn fuck yes Viking mythology! No ravens though, I was sad.



AND OH MY GOD I SAW THE FIRST FULL-LENGTH TRAILER FOR COWBOYS VS. ALIENS FUUUCCCKKK YEESSSSSSS I AM SO EXCITED NOW. IT LOOKS AMAZING. I KEEP FORGETTING HOW MANY AMAZING PEOPLE ARE IN IT. DANIEL CRAIG AND HARRISON FORD OBVIOUSLY BUT ALSO OLIVIA WILDE AND SAM ROCKWELL AND DIRECTED BY JON FAVREAU AND OMG. CAN'T. WAIT.

(Also, I know even though Favreau is done with Iron Man stuff-- sadface-- the fact that Kenneth Branagh did Thor-- love him, ever since I saw his Hamlet-- and Joss Fucking Whedon is doing the Avengers, and I finally saw the newer Hulk and it was not bad by any means, and Thor surpassed my expectations so I have a little higher hopes for Captain America, and I kind of want Wolverine to be in the Avengers even though I don't think that's happening, oh my god, I kind of love the whole Avengers thing now. Can you imagine sitting down for a marathon of Hulk and Iron Man and Iron Man 2 and maybe Wolverine and Thor and Captain America and FUCK YES. Damn.)

Also-also it was really nice to just get out of the house after all the earlier shit and hang out with Johnny. And do some Waffle House philosophizing also, always good. (Not to mention always being our own MST3K...) Trading shockingly relevatory gossip back and forth (on both ends! he hadn't heard Downie was married and I... got other stories I cannot pass on, sorry... I'm not even supposed to know, and admittedly I'm a little sad my other friend didn't think he could come to me? oh well, I'm over it, I'm more happy for him than upset at all). BUT YES. Also found out he's been a redditor for a while and I am admittedly slipping into its grip. For about the past month or so... Don't even know how I ended up there initially. But. Time marches on.

THIS IS A LARGE POST, I AM WARNING YOU.

HOLY SHIT I SUCK AT POSTING. This thing has been sitting on my desktop for a month and a half, christ, shame on me. Anyway. I'm trying to make better habits for myself... Some are getting better (I keep a real schedule on my ipod! I'm under 100 firefox tabs consistently!) and some not (I don't check my calendar, I forget things, I haven't organized many piles of files on my new computer... from a year ago...)

Shia says Indy V will be crazy. idk what to think. I'm excited but hesitant at the same time? Eeengh. Like I said after Indy IV, I mean, at least they can't do that one anymore. (Also, I told you so. Also-also, I am kind of sick of hearing about your stereotypical MacGuffins: the spear of Longinus, Noah's Ark, all that stuff.) GO TO HAWAII, PLEEEEASE

But, uuuuhhh, if Spielberg pitched a script, I'm guessing this is happening. So... yay?

...I'm depressed that that last sentence has a question mark attached to it. :(

HOLY SHIT YOU KNOW WHAT'S DEPRESSING?! WHY ON EARTH IS THIS A MOVIE. WHO ON EARTH THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA. SHANE VAN DYKE WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU ATTACHED TO THIS, YOU WERE AWESOME ON DIAGNOSIS MURDER AND NOW YOU ARE VERY NOT-AWESOME. AUGH.





Um...yes.

Also--ADORABLE KITTANZ:




While we're doing videos, this time-lapse-experiment-turned-art-video is absolutely fantastic:

ANTS in my scanner > a five years time-lapse! from françois vautier on Vimeo.

I hope this is just some lawyers having fun, and were not actually hired over legitimate offense.

I didn't even know they had finished the script for this, shit. Three months away was apparently a COMPLETE NEWS ISOLATION, much moreso than usual. (Nobody famous died.)

This movie looks awesome! That hat looks awful. (Short crown + extra-wide brim = grossnasty.)

Ghostbusters/AC/DC mashup:




Lady Gaga kidnaps Comissioner Gordon. Guys, I was about to say "I want to live in that world", and then, you know, I remembered that Lady Gaga is a real person and kicks major ass.

A good essay on Iron Man 2, which I am still excited about. The awesome thing about disappearing from the world for three months to memorize a metric assload of numbers until you've lost 15 pounds is that, when you get back, all the movies you just watched in theatres (and loved) are about to come out on dvd. Fuck. Yeah.

Some awesome shots from the filming of Star Wars.

So, "mad science", you say?!



That is the kind of awesome shit I'd like to do with my life. (I must say, though, that the closest I've ever come was destroying an antique rusted oven with a sledgehammer. Also fun, except for the part where the paint chips were popping off the bent metal everywhere...)

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT HOLY CRAPCAKES. NIGHTMARES. NIGHTMARES BEYOND BELIEF.

Jesus, it's about time! They better make these. Not that I'm planning to buy any, but, yeah...

Oh, James Cameron. I thought I couldn't hate Avatar any more, but I was wrong. You think you're God's gift to cinematography when really it sounds like you're just a rich bully. I kind of want to go see Pirahna 3D, even if I hate it, just to fucking spite you. Goddamn.

BUT THE GOOD NEWS? Rick Moranis may come out of retirement for Ghostbusters 3. HELL. FUCKING. YES. As long as this shit is better than the game (a bit repetitive story-wise, in relation to the movies). Also, I thought we were already clear that Oscar is Venkman's? There's some banter toward the beginning of the second one that that is what I took away from it.

OH HEY THERE BLACKBEARD. Why the fuck don't you have cannon fuses in your beard?! Jesus, the man should look MUCH more epic than that. For god's sake his body circled his ship seven times before sinking after he was beheaded! (Fuck yeah pirate lore.)

Chewie: not nearly as adorable as Winnie. But still hilariously adorable.

Here! Have a picture of Viggo the Carpathian.

Okay, now, look. I am all about crazy costumes but I don't even know what's going on here.



So adorable.

If the world is making you feel weary (although I don't see how that's possible after all those adorable kitties), I prescribe this.

Next video: An apparently sanctioned-by-Lucas video about the dumping of Jabba's cargo. With a creepy animation of Han Solo. (BUT I SAW THAT RAIDERS REFERENCE. I SAW IT.)

...Definitely thought it was going to be something like River Tam in the box though, the shape was eerily similar.

Heheheh kitty parkour.

HOLY SHITBALLS this woman has completely missed the point of feminism. Oh my god this article is rage-inducing. OH. MY. GOD.

Good news, videogamers! Playing video games enhances decision-making skills. That is, it enhances your ability to make choices faster.


Oh! An antibiotic-resistant superbug. Awesome. This may be our downfall. However, if you're worried about the apocalypse, I just thought you'd like to know that science seems sometimes straight-up fictional. I know a lot of zombie movies/novels/etc. lately have been leaning on diseases like ebola, mad cow disease, or other things to explain the basis for the disease. So here's a crazy fact: mad cow disease causes cattle's eyes to glow. WTF.

Rechargeable cars are less hurtful to the environment than gas, even if charged using "dirty fuel". And it's crazy, if it could charge using renewable sources--solar, wind, etc.--it's FORTY PERCENT cleaner than a gas-using car. Holy shit. Why is the world so resistant to changing how we use our resources? :(

(Answer: laziness, greed, but it still pisses me the fuck off.)

I read an article the other day about how an old solar panel from the White House was rediscovered, and some students, led by Bill McKibben, took it to the White House to see if they would take it back as a symbol of good faith and an attempt to move conservation forward in the eye of current US politics. Some of the statistics were incredibly impressive--like the fact that seed sales increased by 30% the year Michelle Obama was promoting her White House garden. But the kids were taken into a "war room" and basically told no. The whole thing made me so sad, particularly because I remember McKibben speaking to my freshman class on his book we all read, and because we were stuck in a hot, sweaty gym with a rather heavy book (as in, the material, not the book itself), he kind of got ignored by most people. And trying to sort out the fifty interested students in a room of 1000 or however many it was is not really a simple task. Anyway. The whole thing just makes me depressed for the state of our politics. I don't understand why people want to spend so much money on stuff and on keeping things the way they are instead of helping people who need help, helping the WORLD that needs help. I don't know. Maybe that's my bias of too many years of marianist catholic education speaking. I'm too hopeful, I suppose.


Cats drawn as Marvel characters! Adorable. And hilarious. Particularly Spidey and the Sandman.

OKgo's new video to encourage the adoption of shelter pets. Amazing as usual.

Surprise! Facebook is fucking with you again. And this is why I keep all my info private except to people I know.

NEWSIES IS GOING TO BROADWAY, hilariousyesfantasticyesssss.

If superheros were hipsters. I particularly like PBRman. Also I feel like Spiderman isn't that far from Tobey McGuire Spiderman because DEAR LORD DO I HATE HIM. (Also, LOL at Aquaman--Northwesterners are a silly people. I learned that this summer.)

Mysterious civilization hidden in the Amazon--I think this is the same thing (SPOILER ALERT!) Lost City of Z talks about. BUT NOBODY KNOWS. It's fascinating.

Carnivorous plants dwndling across US; I wonder if this might have anything to do with all the bugkiller sprays we use? (No idea, just a thought.)

Shark attack survivors team up to save sharks.

ATHLETE'S FOOT MEDICATION COULD CURE WHITE NOSE SYNDROME! Finally, a hint of good news on that front.

Bug people are crazy. So are geologists.

Some foreign memes for you. I particularly like Makmende, for some reason. I suppose it's like Chuck Norris, but cooler, because Chuck Norris has kind of turned out to be a douche. (Clint Eastwood = cooler than Chuck Norris.)

A really good article about building the mosque. It sums up my feelings on the subject pretty well.

Where can you find Ned and Chuck, Henry Jones (Sr.), and (old school!) Zaphod Beeblebrox? Cons, of course. (Those PD outfits are fantastic, though, seriously.)

Interesting bit of Raiders trivia.

Oh my god, remember the ad for Iron Man 2 where Pepper smooches Tony's helmet, and it wasn't in the movie, and everybody got upset? I present to you--THE ALTERNATE OPENING:



(Fan. fucking. tastic. Why did they not do this one, now?)

And another fantastic short.


Star Wars yoga, absolutely hilarious. And rather clever.

Obscure Taco Bell trivia! A.k.a. the random shit I will bring up in conversation that may eventually lead to me singing the Gordita Anthem. This, in fact, happened this week despite me finding the article months ago, although it did not lead to Gordita-anthemizing, which is a shame.

Here is a fantastic interview with Patrick Stewart, and within it is a fantastically creepy tidbit of their interpretation of Macbeth, ( which I am cutting for the rare case of spoilers )

Is that not fantastically Halloween-y in the best manner? It absolutely is.

First of all, this article is rather old. Second, I doubt it is more than tongue-in-cheek coincidence, and three, Hex of the Hydra sounds godawful. Like the books series.

OH MY GOD. So I was watching the new Sherlock Holmes (not for the first time), but I also decided to watch the bonus material. Apparently they decided Jude Law was more of the ladies' man than RDJ, so they took to calling him Hotson on set.

omg. Hotson.

I can't even. It's hilarious. Anythus.


Much like Rule 34 of the internets, I surmise there must be a similar rule about blogs and personal interests. If you have thought of it, someone, somewhere, has already posted about it online. There is a cool blog called Strange Maps that posts, well, non-generic maps. This particular post has some interesting material on worldviews. It's rather fascinating, but my main point of this whole thing is that the Bulgarians think Poles are all sexy fembots.

I. Don't. Even. Know.






What I do know is that I need to post things more often because I have AT LEAST this many more links piled up in my Google Reader waiting for me to take action. And FIVE MORE old posts on my desktop from before I left this summer! Luckily those posts actually have some real content, like some book reviews.

So, real stuff now, we went to the Yellow Springs Street Festival today. I got an awesome monster shirt, a necklace for my medusa costume, and a beaverfelt antique collapsible tophat! The sad part is I got home and realized the tophat is too small :( BUT I refuse to get rid of it for the time being. I also walked RIGHT PAST Dave Chappelle without even noticing at first, who was saying that the street fair was "like Yellow Springs normally, but gayer". Which... I don't know what that means? Because it's almost the opposite. All the out-of-town people come to visit for the day, so the percentage of hippies is decreased by at least some...

Also my sister finally found the CORRECT version of the Taco Bell Gordita Anthem (thank you, 1998) and I downloaded it for the sake of posterity. POSTERITY I TELL YOU.



(begins at 1:40ish if it doesn't play correctly.)

[EDIT] If I had been paying attention or had any creative/organizational method of linkspamming (Captain Obvious Hint: I don't) I would have posted the Ghostbusters/Rick Moranis thing followed by the carnivorous plants thing followed by the Newsies thing. Points to you if you know how those three are related.

Alas, I did not, and I also need to post this in the case I missed posting it before:



Also-also, tomorrow is 42 DAY as in, the date is binary for 42 (101010), and it happens only once every hundred years, and tomorrow we are getting together to watch the Hitchhiker's Guide movie, probably have a Vogon poetry reading, and get our brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick. Coincidentally that is the name of my ipod and there will be no citruses anywhere near my electronics, thankyouverymuch. (I've taken to naming my electronic devices after science fiction things, or other related items; this new lappy is HELPeR486.)

Also-also-also, I am very afraid for this Pan-galactic Gargleblaster recipe, which is, essentially, take Everclear, cut with liquors:

...er, scratch that. I may be looking at the wrong recipe. Anyway, there's a lot of alcohol, plus a little bit of mixers, add olive, et voila.

If I weren't so convinced I'll be smashed rather quickly, I'd throw in a gin & tonic to boot. Maybe I'll pour one out for my gpa who seemed delighted about the affair but clearly can't make it (and probably shouldn't be consuming high levels of alcohols).

Sometimes I agree.

Oh god, it IS horrifying.

When Superman invaded the KKK. Life is awesome sometimes.

hehehehe, space.

This whole thing pisses me off. Yeah, maybe it's a little low-cut for a movie premiere, but it's the preimiere for Kick-Ass, and if you haven't noticed, I'm going to take a stab with the whole hot-pink hair thing and say she probably doesn't give a whit what you think of her. Not to mention, half the headlines talk about her husband (and call her "Mrs. Wossy") despite the fact that she's the fucking screenwriter. And somehow, they pointed this all out and still managed to completely miss the point?! I don't know. I really don't.

Oh, Liam Neeson. I still don't get this movie.

NOOOOO MOUNTAIN DEW THROWBACK TASTES HORRIBLE :C

ICHC is a Mensa favorite site. I don't know if that means they have a sense of humor or they're no better than the rest of us. Oh, humanity. You and your ego.

Old hat, but these George Takei ads creep me out a little. I mean, he's awesome, but his voice is just... weird.

Oh, FUCK YOU, Gizmodo. The dude did not "sneak a peek". HE TOOK A FUCKING PICTURE. (Oh, and remember, these are impossible to misuse, remember? At least it didn't take long. Maybe they'll realize what a dumbass idea these are.)

NOOOOOOOO why do they release all these lovely bright colors after I just got a new lappy?! AUGH. Turquoise or hot pink or lime green or sunset orange would have been SO SUPERIOR to dark blue.

Didn't know there was an Indiana Jones timeline. However, this guy seems thoroughly unamused? I really hate when people get interviewed and respond with stuff like that. At the least, make your answers interesting if you have nothing to add.

FUCK YES TREASURE ISLAND A LA THE NEW SHERLOCK HOLMES. AND APPARENTLY TWO STUDIOS ARE DOING THREE MUSKETEERS.

MOTHA'
FUCKIN'
HELLS YEAH

I really love the English's sense of humor. Or humour, as it were. Anyway, St. George is also the patron saint of... Barcelona? No, Valencia? I think it was Valencia. I remember seeing little Winnie-the-Poohs dressed up as St. George in the Disney Store in Valencia. I really wish I had bought one now, that would just be too awesome.

Heheheheheh.

A rather disturbing state of political affairs. I just... yeah. There are no words.

Petri Dish cookies! If I ever have a mad science party, these will be involved.

Natalie Portman to star in Pride & Prejudice & Zombies! THIS CASTING IS PERFECT. Why? Because people already confuse her with Kiera Knightley already, and they are both awesome, AND SHE IS AWESOME, and they are GOING TO BE KILLING ZOMBIES. Heeeeeeee this cannot come out on dvd soon enough. Also...? I really want to see a zombie Christmas movie. It would be fantastical, I'm sure.

So, last night, instead of going to the POD Christmas party like I was planning, since Kim and Melissa and everyone else and I had had our Christmas dinner here at our apartment, and Melissa got Jon the Beatles Rock Band, we ended up going to the guys' house to play Beatles Rock Band. For four hours. In which time we beat the whole game and moved on to regular Rock Band. BUT. I got really excited because the game was pretty fun, and since Laura and I still need the drum and mike set for our GH, maybe I could find a RB compatible pack so I could buy the Queen Rock Band! Right? So I just did a little research... the Queen Rock Band that I saw at WalMart is apparently a 10-song disc. LAME AS FUCK. I mean, I realize Queen doesn't have maybe quite as many recognizable songs as the Beatles do, but ffs they didn't put Don't Stop Me Now on there! So I am not buying it. Poop.

Also, they put Tie Your Mother Down on there. Nobody loves that song.

ELTON JOHN IS ON GH5 THOUGH? That is amazing. I'm just waiting for some sort of Billy Joel version of RB... Obvs you don't really have guitar jams, but who knows, they made DJ Hero, maybe they can come up with something clever to be a piano/other instruments. (He has a lot of brass and sax parts... idk how that would work though without looking rather stupid.)

An internet safety code for the next generation. And yet they will still have the fabulous opportunity to fall prey to rickrolling and goatse. The internet really is a fabulous place, you know.

Calvin and Hobbes covered by different artists. Very cool. The first one's a little depressing though, no?

You see, the strange thing is, I didn't have any caffiene yesterday. So all these weird dreams I've been having, which is usually a caffiene thing--this time, it is not the case.

Last night, I had a completely acid trippy dream. It involved a Batman who was Batman but wasn't Bruce Wayne (and not Terry what's his face either, he was honestly this Batman but imagine some random blonde guy under the mask, and think more like the bluish coloration of the cartoon style) and several other superheroes (combo Marvel and DC, in case you cared) and a gang fight (sort of Xmen movie-style) involving some people who thought superheroes were actually Harry-Potter-style witches and wizards.

IT WAS VERY CRACKED OUT.

There's more, but it's so far out there that I overload my brain thinking about it. See, the weird thing with my dreams are, they're not at all "fortune-teller"-y, they're just my brain processing things I experienced during the day, or random neurons firing, I don't know. But I don't usually get a case like this where ALMOST EVERYTHING is something I consciously thought about during that day, particularly, in this case, the hour before I went to bed:

1) A concrete block--I met with Mark and Kay to talk about their brick garden wall design, and we talked about doing a concrete block center with a brick/tiling facade rather than a straight up brick structure.

2) The superheroes--I was upset I had to hang out in the lab until 1 am and that I was missing Robot Chicken. The night before, Robot Chicken was the episode where the construction workers are designing the Chachapoyan temple from Raiders, and then later in the episode there is the Justice League sidekick party-thing.

3) A nutcase teenager Sarah Palin lookalike--I read an article about her (and feminism, interestingly enough) an hour or so before I went to bed.

4) The fact that one area looked like Liz Markus' house--I referred to her in discussion once during the day, but that's about it.

Batman and some of the other stuff are usual enough occurrences that I'm not exactly surprised they showed up, but it was still weird.

The part I can't figure out? The Harry-Potter obsessed gang... I just do not know.

[EDIT] OH AND BATMAN-WHO-WAS-NOT-BRUCE-WAYNE HAD PARENTS. AND A LITTLE SISTER WHO WAS ABOUT EIGHT YEARS OLD. AND SHE WAS WEARING LIT CHRISTMAS LIGHTS, WHICH I SAW ON A HOUSE IN THE GHETTO COMING HOME FROM THE COMPUTER LAB AT 1 AM.

WHAT
THE
FUCK,

BRAIN

Tiiiiiiiiime to do a tab dump.

Caring for your introvert. A really good article. ( copied here in case the page disappears )


I agree with that whole thing.

This is pretty cool; apparently if you are cremated in Japan, they take only the bones to put in the urn. Here we put the ashes. That's pretty cool. (Do we burn up the bones into ashes?)

I spent the other day catching up on Shortpacked! because I realized I hadn't read it since before Indy IV came out, and it probably had some related comics. It did. This is pretty much the only feeling I still have from my first viewing that I haven't processed. I mean... the janitor? Also, I'm pretty sure they just had regular ties, not bowties. (Although, let's face it, if I'm going to be picky, Indy was wearing jeans and a tee, not his getup anyhow.)

Apparently there's radium in the paint of older watches? I'm not quite sure what to make of it. I mean, people wore the watches, right? And I'm pretty sure that glass doesn't keep radiation out. And I didn't know radiation acted like "dust", either...? I guess it's that "light is both a wave and a particle" thing. *ees a mystery*

...I need a little gif of that cupcakes worm thing or something shrugging that says "is a mystery", because I would have been using it all the time recently. Not really sure why.

Do I sense some Twilight mockery? Why yes I do.

Lol, greasers are their natural enemy? Or is that another Indy knock...

Yeah, I'm flinching at that rock photo. Good photogrophy, that.

Food stroage, interesting. The paranoid part of me is intrigued.

OMFG CATE BLANCHETT WANTS TO DO CANCER VIXEN. That book is fucking amazing. It's well-written and clever, and it introduced me to the word 'asstlers'. (Ass antlers. Tramp stamps. You know.)

Anyway, that's all I have for now. Guh am I tired.