The Great Pyramids... not so great, aktually.

When I found out that in the year 2010, the Great Pyramids are still around, you bet I took a flight to Egypt before they went the way of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus!  Imagine how intrepid I felt as I took my taxi to Giza, how amazing it was gonna be seeing something that old, that remote-- a drifting starship of immortality on the seas of sand...

Not pictured:  P'Zone personal pan pizza with extra cheese

Oh well.

I guess you guys have your cake (or pie in this case) and eat it too in this century, don'tcha?

Noooo! All that Work for Nothing!

In the wake of 9/11, I spent YEARS developing the perfect torture technique; a little something I like to call "Whiskeyboarding".

Now I come to find that there's a Cape who is almost certainly immune.

Damn you, The Irishman, damn you. 

Your Sunday Morning WTF

Teenage choir boys.

Dressed up like cats.

Singing Rossini.


Listen, be amazed, and squirm uncomfortably.

We Don't Want Her Either.

So Agent Mixsae was the Pint Sized Tyrant all along?

If friend of the blog CrossFire says so, it must be true:  http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=134310255&blogId=509281507


Great!  We always wanted a turncoat superhero in our ranks!  GO ROACH!


Before I got too excited, though, I did some Googling (being a time traveler from the future doesn't make me omniscient) and after careful consideration, you guys can have her back.  No really.  I insist.

Sweet Dreams!

My new favorite thing?  Watching out for solar flares and geomagnetic storms.  It sounds all high-tech and sexy until you learn that it boils down to glancing at the widget on my homepage.


Anywho, imagine my excitement when there was a Class M solar flare on Tuesday!  (Okay, not that exciting.  There's two higher classes than "M".)  But you should be warned: Now that the solar wind has hit Earth, watch out for the Auroras in the extreme north and south hemispheres and really weird dreams tonight.

Nasa Scientists fap to this

I was on board until Jeff Zucker turned into Captain America

Taiwanese are so confused by America's War on Late Night that their media produced this video to help explain what's going on.







What I like best?  All the avatars have asian host mannerisms (watch it again) which look so alien on an American comedian.  Small difference, surreal effect.

Do you Think he'll Respond?

Since we missed the boat on getting the entire Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien (it went to the girl who offered her cat wearing makeup), ROACH is not going to let the opporitunity to let Coco's latest ad go unheeded:  http://losangeles.craigslist.org/sfv/cas/1558679241.html

This is the actual email sent:

Mister O'Brien or Representative Thereof,


  The Ruthless Organization Against Citizen Heroes (ROACH) has reviewed your Craigslist ad and would like to have you in for an interview.  We feel that your particular brand of presentation will be a valuable asset in our small but fast-growing company.  Hours are flexible, housing provided in henchmen barracks (family suite).  Competitive pay with opportunity for advancement, must be familiar with current death ray technology and Microsoft Excel.


Reply at your earliest convenience,

Agent Beryllium
Head of Evil Human Resources
http://joinroach.com/

(The Potentate is so gonna kill me if this gets on-air and the servers crash.  After he picks his jaw up off the floor, 'natch.)

When an RLSH Brags about their Martial Skill with Swords...

This is exactly what comes to mind:






Reality will never measure up to how cool you think it looks when you do it.

Coming out of the Closet

You live in an exciting time.  How do I know?  Because I've read history books that say so.

I recently got the go ahead to come clean on who I really am.  In fact, they know that I do it today because my bosses already read about it.  I come from the future, specifically the year 3170CE.  It's a future that I will never see again because of our own technical limitations (time travel is possible but it ain't perfect) but after slumming it for a few months?  I think I like it here.

Why am I here?  To make sure that things go right.  ROACH is a pretty big deal, history-wise.  Real-Life Superheroes play into things too.  They don't get "conquered" so much as "transcended".  I can't say much more about it than that, but things are looking pretty good from this point.


Anyway, don't think this means that I'm going to stop blogging about fashion, science and lolcats (they're extinct in my time so enjoy them while you can).  I've always been into 20th century "wirepunk" and the geek culture of your era, and it's AMAZING seeing it firsthand.


The future is bright.


Radioactively Yours,
Beryllium

Awesome Doctor Who Episode Made Real

I can tell you, based on information I can't divulge quite yet, that at least on Neptune?  Yes, there are diamonds.  Scads of them.  And it's beautiful.

Not quite this beautiful, and strangely lacking in David Tennant, but still very lovely.

Read about it here:  http://news.discovery.com/space/diamond-oceans-jupiter-uranus.html 

 

It has Occoured to Me...

... one of the major reasons the Heroes say they wear outlandish costumes is to "raise awareness" for their various causes. For the life of me, I cannot recall what any of those causes are, what charitable stream belongs to what Cape; and I am paying much more attention than your average person.

Wait, one exception: The guy with the arrows all over his costume. He's doing it right. I remember precisely what his pet cause is. I don't even remember his name, but I sure remember what he stands for: helping people navigate a big city.

A t-shirt with "Feed the Homeless" writ large would be a useful costume for raising awareness.

A personal logo emblazoned on the chest and body armor? Not so much.

Nikola Stardust

Since I am such a fan of Nikola Tesla AND David Bowie, imagine my delight when I saw the Wall Street Journal's startling rendering of what their lovechild might look like.

Uncanny, isn't it?

Edit:  Ooops, my bad.  It seems that David Bowie played the famous scientist in 2006's "The Prestige" and the drawing is based on that performance.  Apologies to my readers as well as the leader of the Guild of Calamitous Intent.

Intelligence Tests Continue...

We're SO CLOSE.

If we can just breed the general hatred for mankind out of our newest crop of hyperintelligent feline-human hybrids, we'll be set.  Just think about it:  instead of relying on happenstance recording devices that are too easily run over by cars, the cats themselves will be able to tell us what happened, what they saw, and in extreme cases, ingratiate themselves to the young children of diplomats.

The language program is going slower than expected, however.  After intensive trailing, our best subject in the program has learned all of two phrases in spanish:  "Tocas mi pollo" (a seemingly innocuous nonsense phrase at first, but we suspect that the literal translation, "touch my chicken meat as you would a musical instrument" suggests something dirtier to the feline mind) and "Ojala que muera"(the meaning here is much more clear: "I hope you die").

Work continues.


(video courtesy of Klaatu42)

Learn from Past Failures

Mmmm... Waffles.

So tasty I couldn't keep my eyes in focus.

The best part of knowing evil chefs?  They know where the truly delicious, dangerous 'noms are to be had.

See more at Fatal Phyllo and The Aluminum Chef's Blog:  http://thedestructivekitchen.blogspot.com/2010/01/culinary-torture-devices.html

Classy Torture

Here at ROACH, we have class.  When we get around to waterboarding you, it won't be to the frothy beats of Britney Spears or Metallica's triumphant howls of rage and pain played for 16 hours straight at ear-splitting volume.

No, here at ROACH we are much, much more evil.

You will be subjected to the midi version of this...





... just loud enough.



Legal:  By posting below about how ROACH is threatening to torture people, you are hereby stripped of your legal status as "human in possession of a functional prefrontal cortex" until such time you can distinguish satire from the real thing.

Another Culinary Genius, Ripe for the Plucking

He doesn't seem to mind crafting the occasional supervillan, so he should be easy to sway.

Just think!  Every man in the feild gets an air-dropped bento lunch made right here in the USA designed by this man!

... I'm not sure how he'd go about rendering The Potentate in food, though.  A cone of grey-dyed cottage cheese just doesn't seem very appealing.

Next Year's Halloween...

... we are totally kidnapping this guy and having him do the lights for the ROACH compound.

Why the Arch-Villain Videophone Never Caught On

3D is no problem, but color?  Haha, keep dreaming!

We've seen it a million times in movies and TV:  No evil mastermind calls via cellphone or landline when he can boot up the 'ol videophone instead.

Back when I was a wee isotope, we were promised that videophones were the future.  In fact, our school got one in a grant and I can remember one time that they were used to have a short, awkward conversation with another school that had a videophone.  You'd never have guessed we were in the "Gifted and Talented" program by the looks on our faces as we tried to figure out how this was better than just picking up a goddamn phone. 

I was content to make goofy faces when I thought my own teacher wasn't looking.

Can you hear me now?

Back then, it was akward and new and weird.   There was no etiquette and it was so expensive that you felt you had to say important stuff to justify the cost instead of, say, last night's Seinfeld and how it interrupted your very important cartoon-watching schedule.

With skype and VIoP becoming the norm, and everyone having webcams, how is it that we aren't using this technology?


Joel Stein of the New York Times has the answer:

As soon as you begin to talk, I feel trapped and desperately scan the room for tasks I can do to justify the enormous waste of time that is your talking. I wash dishes, I file receipts, I read news sites, I make little fake suicide faces to my wife Cassandra about how much I want to hang up that cause her to yell "Joel, I need you now" in a really unconvincing way that I've asked her not to do, but I still can't stop making the suicide faces. In desperate times, when I am on my cell phone in the middle of nowhere, I will pace. The only other time I pace is when I stub a toe or burn myself. But when I start talking, I assume that you are sitting perfectly still, rapt.

He goes on to explain how Star Trek did it right:

The only sci-fi show that understood this was Star Trek. Bones and Jim would use their flip phones to talk quickly about beaming or health issues. The only time they'd fire up the videophone was when a Klingon was sitting in a spaceship 20 yards away with guns pointed at them. Even then I think Sulu was checking out GoFugYourself.com

Read the entire article here.

Abnormality Illustrates the Unseen Levels of Evil Management

They even remembered the evil sous chefs.

You'll have to visit Cracked.com to see it in it's full glory. 

Bill Nye: A Traitor Since the 80s.

At least he doesn't look any more or less ridiculous than today's Capes.

The Amateur Hero's Guide to Not Killing Someone Dead-er

Ah, medical emergencies.  The golden ticket to being a Hero, and as The Red Cross assures us, anyone can save a life, so it's just a matter of sitting back and waiting for some sucker to keel over and almost die (almost being the operative word) so you can rush to the scene and save them.

As a connoseiur of danger, I've been privvy to one or two medical emergencies myself.  Usually on the receiving end.  I'll never forget that time when I was at Our Lady of Perpetual Misery School for Girls and a science experiment went horribly wrong, the classroom had to be evacuated, and I ended up taking an ambulance ride because mixing Sulfiric Acid and Sucrose leaves behind a nasty little gas called Sulfiric Dioxide, most commonly hanging around active pits of lava.

Aw crap, now you know my weakness:  Volcanoes.

Yes, to kill me, you'll have to find an active volcano and put me downwind of it, and make sure I don't have my inhaler on me.


BUT WHERE WILL YOU FIND A VOLCANO AT THIS HOUR?   MUAHA-HA-HA-HA!

 But where will you find a FIRST GRADER at this hour?  

Did you think of THAT, hot-shot?!

Right.  Anyway, a classmate announced that I needed an emergency tracheotomy, and when bystanders wouldn't let her stab me in the neck, she began to flick water in my face to somehow "make the air easier to breathe" by "moisturizing" it.


To this day I regret not punching that stupid cunt for relying on the then-popular show ER for her medical tips.

Actually, I think I might have tried to punch her and missed.  Understandable, because I was too busy dying at the time to aim properly.
 

... Which leads me to the point of this post, Cracked.com's newest featured article 6 Life Saving Techniques From the Movies (That Can Kill You).


Have fun not accidentally killing people, Good Samaritans.

Christmas Tree Disposal

... the Supervillan way.

Batman Syndrome

Butthurt personified

Not all RLSHs reject reality.  In fact, quite a few of them are wholly aware of their surroundings and social standing and seek to improve both!

Then there are the "bad boys" of the RLSH movement.  These are the ones who, if they hear criticism, respond with a bellicose "Fuck you, you don't understand me, you just have no idea how badass I am, and your doubt only confirms how incredibly darkly awesome I am!".

Immune to reason, they see doubters as evidence that they are doing something right.

Even other RLSHs hate these guys.

Other primates (hell, even some species of bird) interpret criticism as a signal that their habits need to change in order to maintain a healthy social life. Sufferers of Batman Syndrome reject this Darwinian notion in favor of a theory that roughly translates to "The more people that think I'm nuts, the more right I must be".  The only times this ever plays out successfully is in a handful of conspiracy theory flicks, and in Batman comics.


Youtube proves a fruitful breeding ground for these individuals, too far gone for intervention.

He disguises himself as Baghead, but everyone knows that

baghead is more than three feet tall.

Of course, "Batman Syndrome" is a phrase that lends itself to multiple interpretations, so here's another one to add to the pile.