Codename:Beryllium

Happy Candlemas!

2012-02-02T04:08:00.000-08:00

Charles Dickens' cat would snuff out the candle on his desk when she wanted attention. Fermi does something similar with depleted uranium, except we're not quite sure where she keeps finding the stuff.

The Return of Spaghetti Cat

2012-01-29T12:24:00.000-08:00

Remember when a certain badly-made puppet became a television megastar? Now it appears that he has broken onto the music scene... as a censor bleep.

Whatever pays the bills, man. I've got to say that I like the A plus D Mashup much better.

A Thing of Beauty

2012-01-27T19:27:00.000-08:00

It's turrets singing Danny Elfman tunes. It brings tears to the eyes.

I Never Considered Dropping Acid...

2012-01-26T17:29:00.000-08:00

...Until I realized that I could take the LSD and then watch Ice Skating.

Newly Installed in the ROACH Canteen

2012-01-23T21:03:00.001-08:00

As you can see, it works.

Meanwhile in Jet City

2012-01-19T15:48:00.000-08:00

Take THAT, Norway!

2012-01-18T16:04:00.000-08:00

Shit Seattle People Say When it Snows

2012-01-17T23:44:00.000-08:00

Epic Pie Time

2012-01-12T09:53:00.000-08:00

This is what I imagine baking in Overlord's kitchen must be like, except with less pink. And less orange. And less yellow. Basically, run it through a black and white filter and that's pretty much it, except for DJ Pon3's blue-green striped hair, which bears an uncanny resemblance to Overlord's own.

GLaDOSiri

2012-01-01T13:06:00.000-08:00

Even if it didn't have all the extra touches of additional lines, it almost makes me want one of your primitive p.o.s. iPhones. We don't bother with voice anymore. It's mostly telepathic and you hear things in the voice of the person who sent it. It comes in really handy on dates. The other person usually doesn't realize that you're holding an extended conversation with your BFF about how awful the date is going. BlinkPhoto even lets then see how out of date their profile picture was.

You looked like that five years and twenty pounds ago. I want a refund.

And a Terrible New Year to You Too!

2011-12-31T17:49:00.000-08:00

... Zelda?

2011-12-31T08:48:00.001-08:00

All That Glitters: The History of Shiny Things from Etsy on Vimeo.

It's Not Orion Anymore

2011-12-26T07:13:00.000-08:00

Hate Mail from the Bible Belt, Commence!

2011-12-25T06:00:00.000-08:00

"IS NOTHING SACRED?!"

Look, first the early church fathers co-opted the whole Saturnalia feast (bravo, very good PR move), and then white people (still Catholic) co-opted what was a middle eastern/mediterranean story and re-interpreted the whole "there were farm animals in the room" thing to mean "Jesus was born in a stable" (everyone knows that back then your animals lived on the first floor of your home, and if someone was really tight up for crash space the first floor of your home was the first century equivalent of the living room couch), and then the protestants co-opted the story and said "Yo, it's cool to sympathize with Mary up until the moment she gives birth, but please ignore her after that" (you couldn't even let proto-feminists have that, could you?). Then white people in general went apeshit with "living nativities" which became "Christmas pageants" which became "Tri-City First Baptist Church's Christmas Nativity Musical Extravaganza with a custom-written score; 400 person choir; professional actors, costume design, light rigging and sound system; and DVD Blu-Ray available in the lobby for the low-low price of just $24.99".

It makes Jet City's little Homo Christmas Show look quite sincere in comparison.

David Sedaris' Essential Christmas Readings

2011-12-24T08:29:00.000-08:00

The Santaland Diaries

It's an Ubermas tradition around here: Pump it through the loudspeakers and remind the staff that it could be so much worse.

Six to Eight Black Men

We asked one of our correspondences if this was racist. He replied that he was tired of getting mail about Black Peter, but agreed that the essay itself was "dope".

2011-12-23T17:16:00.001-08:00

Cute chaser.

Check the Background

2011-12-23T08:29:00.000-08:00

Orlando is a great movie, by the way.

Raw Reindeer

2011-12-23T01:50:00.000-08:00

NSFL, unless lunch includes salted deer blood as a beverage.

Jólakötturinn, The Christmas Cat

2011-12-22T13:31:00.000-08:00

The ginormous cat’s sole purpose in life is to eat children (and adults, some say) that do not get a new piece of clothing before Christmas. Yes, it devours financially disadvantaged children.This is the kind of message Icelanders like to send out in their folklore: if you do not have the money or means of acquiring new items of clothing before the festival of lights, you will be eaten by a gigantic cat.

Truly, the spirit of Übermas.

Ambergris is Whale Vomit.

2011-12-21T08:37:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas for boy, 6, who won mince pie in a raffle

... and it's worth £3,000!

The luxury Christmas treat is decorated with the highest-grade platinum leaf and ambergris sugar and the pastry bound together with holy water from Lourdes.

He was probably imagining something much bigger. Also, something that isn't flavored with marine mammal excretions.

Fark Photoshop Contest: a World where there is Actually a War on Christmas.

2011-12-17T18:08:00.000-08:00

More at Fark.com

2011-12-16T10:40:00.000-08:00

And Now it's Stuck in Your Head Too.

2011-12-15T21:31:00.001-08:00

Non-Christian Christmas

2011-12-14T09:47:00.000-08:00

http://www.theroot.com/views/heathen-holidays-atheist-celebrates

I'm going to leave the atheist debate to elsewhere on the internet (where Atheists are approximately five times as obnoxious as Westboro Baptist Church could ever hope to be) and just say that 434 B.C. Cornwall is THE place to celebrate Christmas. Those blue-smeared bastards know how to party.

New LARVAE Class for Spring 2012

2011-12-14T09:01:00.000-08:00

Trust me, kids... you'll be doing this a lot in your first five or so years of Supervillainy Internship. You might as well put in the hours now so it will be automatic by the time you're eighteen.

Doctor Who 'Yo Momma' Jokes

2011-12-13T09:43:00.000-08:00

Bonus hipster 'satche.

2011-12-11T11:10:00.001-08:00

If They Called it "The Mr.Crankypants Gene" None of These Guys Would Want It

2011-12-10T10:35:00.000-08:00

Long story short: a guy who built a career on being very angry acts as "We're doing gene tests to see how a non-typical copy of a gene affects personality. Those guys? With the cameras hiding in the bushes? Yeah, they think they're here to see a lyre bird, don't mind them" ambassador to a whole bunch of other guys who are very angry; Bikers, Mexican gang veterans and the like, to see who has the shortened version of monoamine oxidase-A, the so-called "Warrior Gene".

And because it's called the Warrior Gene, some of them get really giddy about the prospect of having it, even if studies show that it's more or less a predisposition to throwing infantile tantrums when you don't get your way. And then stabbing people because of it.

Spoiler Alert! It turns out that genetic expression, interaction with other genes and environment have way more to do with how you end up than a single defective gene. Shocking, right?

Fermi Didn't Cooperate

2011-12-04T08:44:00.001-08:00

Blood for the blood gods, courtesy of a ticked off cat.

2011-12-03T10:58:00.001-08:00

Terry Pratchett Sums up my Feelings about Heroes Nicely.

2011-11-30T18:24:00.000-08:00

And that's why we watch BBC's Hogfather here at ROACH every Christmas instead of It's a Wonderful Life.

Enhance!

2011-11-29T11:26:00.000-08:00

Thank you, Agent Scully. It's too bad that you arrived to early on the scene to give a smackdown to the DNA test gun.

Ubermas is Upon Us

2011-11-27T11:34:00.000-08:00

And do you know what you should be playing? It's a little game called Snapdragon.

Brandy was heated and placed in a wide shallow bowl; raisins were placed in the brandy which was then set alight. Typically, lights were extinguished or dimmed to increase the eerie effect of the blue flames playing across the liquor. The aim of the game was to pluck the raisins out of the burning brandy and eat them, at the risk of being burnt.

Beryllium's Snapdragon guide:

Your cast iron frying pan is the ideal receptacle. Whatever you use should be tip-proof.
Don't overfill the dish.
Place a wet towel under it to catch any spillover.
There's no shame in playing it outside.
Tell your long-haired friends to tie their hair back.
Conveniently forget to tell your mortal enemies to do the same.
Brandy-soaked cherries are easier to pluck out of the dish. Not everyone can be as badass as Victorian six-year-olds.
Prunes add a whole new level of "WTF". Insist that it's the only way you stay regular.

The secret to being the biggest badass in the room? Practice beforehand. Train up a bit by running your fingers across candle flames and building callouses.

If no one else will play then just casually keep eating until they're gone. Insist that this is the only way you eat prunes. Ask "Want some?" with a manic smile. If a science-minded person who also knows that brandy burns at a low temperature accepts the offer, give them a brofist and enjoy your appetizer of death together.

And if you do? Please upload video. I will post it to this blog even if you are a superhero. Badassery knows no allegiances.

American Indian Comedy Slam

2011-11-25T15:25:00.000-08:00

I found this gem too late to covertly slip this in the holo-DVD-set when everyone else was fighting over drumsticks (six drumsticks per birds is still too few). The German side of the family supports me fully in doing it next year, because at least their side of the family didn't genocide an entire continent.

How to Make Thanksgiving with Family Bearable

2011-11-23T08:45:00.000-08:00

It's the holiday of gluttony, ergo, slipping bewildering foodstuffs to unassuming relatives and uploading it to the internet is a logical, and evil past time.

Try giving your grandma Pop Rocks.

Or your cousin's new baby.

If you can't find Pop Rocks, try a lemon.

And from experience, if you decide to play video games as a family? For fuck's sake make them single-player games that are interesting for other people to watch. Shit gets competitive when more than one person plays at a time. Lifelong feuds start that way. Tell your family that the other controllers are lost, stolen or broken. Be courteous and hand the controller off when someone else expresses an interest in playing.

Even if it's your three-year-old who wants to try her hand at Skyrim.

And when a political argument comes your way at the table? Ask the blow-hard to tell you the details of some situation where they were the hero. What they really want to do is talk about themselves, and if that means hearing about the one time they towed their friend out of a ditch (for the fourteenth time) and how they were a bonafide hero that day... well, it's a small price to pay for peace.

Caution: does not work on your hard-left family members, since every situation that made them a hero involves buying organic, convincing someone else to buy organic, or trolling conservatives. Sorry, liberals. You're just less interesting in that way. Instead, ask them about their future plans for helping orphans in Africa, their dreams to semi-retire to Tuscany and run a vinyard, or start an Etsy store filled with upcycled rocks.

Good luck, comrades. You'll need it.

My Little Pony: Villainy is Magic

2011-11-21T12:19:00.000-08:00

Agent Beryllium of ROACH

Evil Overlord

Evil Overlord: Ultra-rare Minion Stew Edition

Boy ponies coming soon. Pony maker by General Zoi.

2011-11-20T09:22:00.001-08:00

On sale here.

Yeah, You Could Call ROACH an "Agency"

2011-11-18T20:22:00.000-08:00

It doesn't change anything about the chair situation, though. Seriously, what is WRONG with this thing? It creaks and tilts to one side-- the only way to get it back to normal is get OUT of the chair, turn ON the life support panel and yank as hard as you can on the emergency eject lever.

Did I mention that the emergency eject lever doesn't DO anything? Bob from the R&D department let me in on that little secret. It's just there to keep the feds happy. Non-compliance with federal regulations means hefty fines, and who's going to miss one little ejection in the event of nuclear meltdown? Me, that's who. I'm going to miss it A LOT.

2011-11-16T12:53:00.003-08:00

2011-11-15T13:46:00.001-08:00

New Supervillain Christmas Find

2011-11-13T10:20:00.000-08:00

Remember this?

They made a full-length movie based on the idea (roughly-- not quite the same background story).

If A Christmas Story isn't edgy enough for you anymore (goddamn hipsters) then enjoy what the Finns consider wholesome holiday fare. Kids carry rifles and old men mill around naked, sometimes in close proximity to the gun-carrying tots. And no one thinks this is strange.

It's probably all those umlauts in the language. Does strange things to a person.

Rady Gaga's Bad Lomance

2011-11-09T10:44:00.000-08:00

But this being China, the lyrics have been rewritten so it's now a song about honoring the wisdom of the elderly and keeping family tradition alive, right?

Er, wait a minute...

There's an actual translation linked on Youtube?

LAO LAI QIAO GAGA - "Old Folks Going Gaga"

Oh, oh oh.... beloved son...
Oh, oh, oh... 'go Gaga' & perform a song...

Lalala... 'go Gaga'
Lala...lalala
We're performing, don't [pass it off as unimportant] (? Hunanese)(x2)
Your working days are too many, you hardly ever come home
At the other end of the phone, you're always busy with no end in sight
Busy with no end
Busy, busy, busy without end.
Your old folks pass their days learning and finding ways to amuse themselves
Cut back on the little details, but HOLD on to those grand occasions
Have to HOLD on,
Hold, hold, hold, have to HOLD on.
Beloved son, watch the singing on TV
Your father and mother didn't make any mistakes, did they?
Tonight, HOLD on as you see Mum & Dad within a second GO GAGA!
If you're satisfied, please stand up and applaud
Don't make us too nervous
If you're happy, sing along with us
Give us our moment on stage (?)

Lalala... 'go Gaga'
Lala...lalala
We're performing, don't [pass it off as unimportant] (? Hunanese)(x2)
Hey, hey! The joy of being OLD!
'Gaga' can show you something: I'm so happy!
(x2)

The Girls and I Went Shopping this Weekend

2011-11-07T13:25:00.000-08:00

It was like this. Without beards.

China's Fashion Week: Not-So-Cheap Knockoffs

2011-11-03T07:05:00.000-07:00

As I browsed this photoset on Buzzfeed, certain ensembles seemed familiar.

Suspect #1

At first, I was like...

But then I was like...

MY EYES ARE UP-- oh, nevermind.

Verdict: NOT GUILTY
Obviously based on the cover of The Great Gatsby, but it's too much to ask to hold out your arm winglets just so your dress makes sense. Katy Perry wins for having a more comfortable outfit. (You will never in your life hear that phrase spoken without it being immediately followed by a statement about Lady Gaga.)

Suspect #2

Where I've seen it before:

Yes, those are Pokemon cards

Verdict: GUILTY
It's also possible that the designer was making a statement about outdated technology. That still doesn't change how ugly the dress is.

Suspect #3

Not only has it been done:

But it got done a long time ago:

Verdict: GUILTY
When you can't put birds on it, it's a time-honored fashion week tradition to put a birdcage on your head. It's a tradition that needs to die.

Suspect #4

Are those wings made of...

...What I think they're made of?

Verdict: GUILTY
... but at least now we know that condom dresses are merely the pupal stage of much more interesting designs.

Five Reasons You Shouldn't do NaNoWriMo

2011-11-02T12:45:00.000-07:00

For those of you who aren't "in the know", NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is an annual non-event that has happened the last few Novembers, when pseudo-intellectuals and hipsters everywhere stake out tables at Starbucks and nurse a tall half-skinny half-1 percent extra hot split quad shot (two shots decaf, two shots regular) latte with whip over the span of six hours while hoping that everyone else is furtively glancing at them, jealous of their aura of talent and wit.

I write. I write not infrequently. I write enough that I'm comfortable typing awkward sentences like "I write not infrequently".

I do not, however, do NaNoWriMo, despite many friends doing it, going so far as to state (in writing) "NANOWRIMO IF YOU ARE NOT WRITING, YOU HAVE NO SOUUUUUUUUUL" when they've finally exhausted themselves trying to bully me into writing a goddamn fucking novel. They could have written several chapters instead of arguing with me.

Here's the list:

1) Not everyone is interested in writing fiction.

I've covered the reasons that nonfiction deserves your attention before. Nonfiction (even poorly-written nonfiction) will add to your storehouse of knowledge. It might be extremely useful knowledge, it might be mere trivia, but you'll walk away having learned a great many facts. Ask someone about what they learned from the most recent novel they read, and at best you'll get a broad semi-fictionalized outline of what it's like to be in an interesting line of work or go someplace exotic, but more likely you'll get preschool-grade answers. Lessons like "if you work hard enough, you'll eventually come out on top"* or "if you befriend that weird quiet person you might have a best friend for life"**.

Chances are if you are already bored by most fiction, you will detest writing it. You'd rather be focusing on real life. Some people will squawk that it's not fiction that's important; it's the act of writing, which brings me to my next point...

2) Writing does not make you a better person.

Fiction junkies especially will extol the life-changing effects of finishing their novel, but can they objectively, are they a better person because of it? A more egotistical person perhaps ("I wrote a novel" will be on their lips for the next decade whether they are picking up chicks in a dive bar or testifying in a homicide trial), but it can't be said with any certainty that putting words to paper makes them more ethical or interesting or smart. It simply means that they generated a large amount of text that (with any luck) follows a coherent storyline with a beginning, middle and end.

Oh, but certainly it makes them a better writer...

3) Writing more does not make you a better writer.

Editors make you a better writer. Your friends are not editors. They may be able to correct your grammar and point out holes in your narrative, but editing takes critical thinking skills that are harder and harder to come by. Yes, you can go back and polish your turd, but if it's a turd then you're pretty much fucked.

4) You're only doing it to be cool.

Be honest: If you really believed you had the Great American Novel in you, you'd have written it already. It would have consumed your life for days, weeks, or years, but it would be done by now. "I just needed motivation to start it", you say. Bullshit. You see yourself as an endlessly talent writer and you just can't stand the idea of everyone else having a novel written. You can't let a geek trend go without slavishly following it, whether it be a Tetris high score in the 90s or twenty years later with intricate constructions in Minecraft. You're terrified that if you say "I don't do NaNoWriMo" then people will think you're untalented and have no self-discipline to commit 2,000 words a day.

And speaking of 2,000 words a day...

5) If you don't have time or energy to write a novel, then congradulations: you are already at optimum output and efficiency.

It's true that you might be too tired or busy because of circumstances that suck. You work a shit job, you're in the middle of a messy divorce, or you're too sick to be worrying about how Dick and Jane hook up in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. These aren't excuses, like some NaNoWriMo adherents will accuse. "Stop watching TV and surfing the Internet and you'll have plenty of time". That's easy for these amateur writers to say: They have enough brain power and hours to spare. You, on the other hand? Your small children depend on you being there for them and not half asleep because you laid awake all night worrying about how to tie up loose ends in your manuscript. You have friends who need emotional support. You can't sequester yourself without letting your life and the lives of people around you fall apart.

You would not be served well by eliminating your guilty pleasures (the internet browsing and TV watching where you escape the toils of life) by taking on yet another responsibility and trying to hit another deadline.

NaNoWriMo hipsters have no such problems, hence they write about some fictional person's problems and insist they're better people than you.

Internet hipsters and faux intellectuals may harass you for the next four weeks about how you haven't started the novel that might change the nature of human discourse (notice how I didn't even touch publishing-- let's face it, your turd is not going to get published) you can tell them how your completely optimized life is too focused on the facts of here and now to be scrawling away at some ego-wank manuscript that won't impart any useful knowledge to readers while denying yourself the satisfaction of learning about the world around you and fostering real-time communication about those ideas, strengthening the social fabric of your immediate world and perhaps inspiring others to do the same. And then watch them squirm.

* You won't.
** Or you will end up dismembered in a freezer in a storage unit somewhere in Oklahoma.

Edit: Beryllium-approved sitw The Hairpin called NaNoWriMo "a festival of misery". *Hofist*

Nyan Turkey

2011-11-02T00:05:00.000-07:00

2011-11-01T00:06:00.000-07:00

Neil Gaiman: The Price

2011-10-31T15:38:00.000-07:00

Tramps and vagabonds have marks they make on gateposts and trees and doors, letting others of their kind know a little about the people who live at the houses and farms they pass on their travels. I think cats must leave similar signs; how else to explain the cats who turn up at our door through the year, hungry and flea-ridden and abandoned?

We take them in. We get rid of the fleas and the ticks, feed them and take them to the vet. We pay for them to get their shots, and, indignity upon indignity, we have them neutered or spayed.

And they stay with us, for a few months, or for a year, or for ever.

Most of them arrive in summer. We live in the country, just the right distance out of town for the city-dwellers to abandon their cats near us.

We never seem to have more than eight cats, rarely have less than three. The cat population of my house is currently as follows: Hermione and Pod, tabby and black respectively, the mad sisters who live in my attic office, and do not mingle; Princess, the blue-eyed long-haired white cat, who lived wild in the woods for years before she gave up her wild ways for soft sofas and beds; and, last but largest, Furball, Princess's cushion-like calico long-haired daughter, orange and black and white, whom I discovered as a tiny kitten in our garage one day, strangled and almost dead, her head poked through an old badminton net, and who surprised us all by not dying but instead growing up to be the best-natured cat I have ever encountered.

And then there is the black cat. Who has no other name than the Black Cat, and who turned up almost a month ago. We did not realise he was going to be living here at first: he looked too well-fed to be a stray, too old and jaunty to have been abandoned. He looked like a small panther, and he moved like a patch of night.

One day, in the summer, he was lurking about our ramshackle porch: eight or nine years old, at a guess, male, greenish-yellow of eye, very friendly, quite unperturbable. I assumed he belonged to a neighbouring farmer or household.

I went away for a few weeks, to finish writing a book, and when I came home he was still on our porch, living in an old cat- bed one of the children had found for him. He was, however, almost unrecognisable. Patches of fur had gone, and there were deep scratches on his grey skin. The tip of one ear was chewed away. There was a gash beneath one eye, a slice gone from one lip. He looked tired and thin.

We took the Black Cat to the vet, where we got him some antibiotics, which we fed him each night, along with soft cat food.

We wondered who he was fighting. Princess, our white, beautiful, near-feral queen? Raccoons? A rat-tailed, fanged possum?

Each night the scratches would be worse -- one night his side would be chewed-up; the next, it would be his underbelly, raked with claw marks and bloody to the touch.

When it got to that point, I took him down to the basement to recover, beside the furnace and the piles of boxes. He was surprisingly heavy, the Black Cat, and I picked him up and carried him down there, with a cat-basket, and a litter bin, and some food and water. I closed the door behind me. I had to wash the blood from my hands, when I left the basement.

He stayed down there for four days. At first he seemed too weak to feed himself: a cut beneath one eye had rendered him almost one-eyed, and he limped and lolled weakly, thick yellow pus oozing from the cut in his lip.

I went down there every morning and every night, and I fed him, and gave him antibiotics, which I mixed with his canned food, and I dabbed at the worst of the cuts, and spoke to him. He had diarrhoea, and, although I changed his litter daily, the basement stank evilly.

The four days that the Black Cat lived in the basement were a bad four days in my house: the baby slipped in the bath, and banged her head, and might have drowned; I learned that a project I had set my heart on -- adapting Hope Mirrlees' novel Lud in the Mist for the BBC -- was no longer going to happen, and I realised that I did not have the energy to begin again from scratch, pitching it to other networks, or to other media; my daughter left for Summer Camp, and immediately began to send home a plethora of heart-tearing letters and cards, five or six each day, imploring us to take her away; my son had some kind of fight with his best friend, to the point that they were no longer on speaking terms; and returning home one night, my wife hit a deer, who ran out in front of the car. The deer was killed, the car was left undriveable, and my wife sustained a small cut over one eye.

By the fourth day, the cat was prowling the basement, walking haltingly but impatiently between the stacks of books and comics, the boxes of mail and cassettes, of pictures and of gifts and of stuff. He mewed at me to let him out and, reluctantly, I did so.

He went back onto the porch, and slept there for the rest of the day.

The next morning there were deep, new gashes in his flanks, and clumps of black cat-hair -- his -- covered the wooden boards of the porch.

Letters arrived that day from my daughter, telling us that Camp was going better, and she thought she could survive a few days; my son and his friend sorted out their problem, although what the argument was about -- trading cards, computer games, Star Wars or A Girl -- I would never learn. The BBC Executive who had vetoed Lud in the Mist was discovered to have been taking bribes (well, 'questionable loans') from an independent production company, and was sent home on permanent leave: his successor, I was delighted to learn, when she faxed me, was the woman who had initially proposed the project to me before leaving the BBC.

I thought about returning the Black Cat to the basement, but decided against it. Instead, I resolved to try and discover what kind of animal was coming to our house each night, and from there to formulate a plan of action -- to trap it, perhaps.

For birthdays and at Christmas my family gives me gadgets and gizmos, pricy toys which excite my fancy but, ultimately, rarely leave their boxes. There is a food dehydrator and an electric carving knife, a bread-making machine, and, last year's present, a pair of see-in-the-dark binoculars. On Christmas Day I had put the batteries into the binoculars, and had walked about the basement in the dark, too impatient even to wait until nightfall, stalking a flock of imaginary Starlings. (You were warned not to turn it on in the light: that would have damaged the binoculars, and quite possibly your eyes as well.) Afterwards I had put the device back into its box, and it sat there still, in my office, beside the box of computer cables and forgotten bits and pieces.

Perhaps, I thought, if the creature, dog or cat or raccoon or what-have-you, were to see me sitting on the porch, it would not come, so I took a chair into the box-and-coat-room, little larger than a closet, which overlooks the porch, and, when everyone in the house was asleep, I went out onto the porch, and bade the Black Cat goodnight.

That cat, my wife had said, when he first arrived, is a person. And there was something very person-like in his huge, leonine face: his broad black nose, his greenish-yellow eyes, his fanged but amiable mouth (still leaking amber pus from the right lower lip).

I stroked his head, and scratched him beneath the chin, and wished him well. Then I went inside, and turned off the light on the porch.

I sat on my chair, in the darkness inside the house, with the see-in-the-dark binoculars on my lap. I had switched the binoculars on, and a trickle of greenish light came from the eyepieces.

Time passed, in the darkness.

I experimented with looking at the darkness with the binoculars, learning to focus, to see the world in shades of green. I found myself horrified by the number of swarming insects I could see in the night air: it was as if the night world were some kind of nightmarish soup, swimming with life. Then I lowered the binoculars from my eyes, and stared out at the rich blacks and blues of the night, empty and peaceful and calm.

Time passed. I struggled to keep awake, found myself profoundly missing cigarettes and coffee, my two lost addictions. Either of them would have kept my eyes open. But before I had tumbled too far into the world of sleep and dreams a yowl from the garden jerked me fully awake. I fumbled the binoculars to my eyes, and was disappointed to see that it was merely Princess, the white cat, streaking across the front garden like a patch of greenish-white light. She vanished into the woodland to the left of the house, and was gone.

I was about to settle myself back down, when it occurred to me to wonder what exactly had startled Princess so, and I began scanning the middle distance with the binoculars, looking for a huge raccoon, a dog, or a vicious possum. And there was indeed something coming down the driveway, towards the house. I could see it through the binoculars, clear as day.

It was the Devil.

I had never seen the Devil before, and, although I had written about him in the past, if pressed would have confessed that I had no belief in him, other than as an imaginary figure, tragic and Miltonion. The figure coming up the driveway was not Milton's Lucifer. It was the Devil.

My heart began to pound in my chest, to pound so hard that it hurt. I hoped it could not see me, that, in a dark house, behind window-glass, I was hidden.

The figure flickered and changed as it walked up the drive. One moment it was dark, bull-like, minotaurish, the next it was slim and female, and the next it was a cat itself, a scarred, huge grey-green wildcat, its face contorted with hate.

There are steps that lead up to my porch, four white wooden steps in need of a coat of paint (I knew they were white, although they were, like everything else, green through my binoculars). At the bottom of the steps, the Devil stopped, and called out something that I could not understand, three, perhaps four words in a whining, howling language that must have been old and forgotten when Babylon was young; and, although I did not understand the words, I felt the hairs raise on the back of my head as it called.

And then I heard, muffled through the glass, but still audible, a low growl, a challenge, and, slowly, unsteadily, a black figure walked down the steps of the house, away from me, toward the Devil. These days the Black Cat no longer moved like a panther, instead he stumbled and rocked, like a sailor only recently returned to land.

The Devil was a woman, now. She said something soothing and gentle to the cat, in a tongue that sounded like French, and reached out a hand to him. He sank his teeth into her arm, and her lip curled, and she spat at him.

The woman glanced up at me, then, and if I had doubted that she was the Devil before, I was certain of it now: the woman's eyes flashed red fire at me; but you can see no red through the night-vision binoculars, only shades of a green. And the Devil saw me, through the window. It saw me. I am in no doubt about that at all.

The Devil twisted and writhed, and now it was some kind of jackal, a flat-faced, huge-headed, bull-necked creature, halfway between a hyena and a dingo. There were maggots squirming in its mangy fur, and it began to walk up the steps.

The Black Cat leapt upon it, and in seconds they became a rolling, writhing thing, moving faster than my eyes could follow.

All this in silence.

And then a low roar -- down the country road at the bottom of our drive, in the distance, lumbered a late-night truck, its blazing headlights burning bright as green suns through the binoculars. I lowered them from my eyes, and saw only darkness, and the gentle yellow of headlights, and then the red of rear lights as it vanished off again into the nowhere at all.

When I raised the binoculars once more there was nothing to be seen. Only the Black Cat, on the steps, staring up into the air. I trained the binoculars up, and saw something flying away - - a vulture, perhaps, or an eagle -- and then it flew beyond the trees and was gone.

I went out onto the porch, and picked up the Black Cat, and stroked him, and said kind, soothing things to him. He mewled piteously when I first approached him, but, after a while, he went to sleep on my lap, and I put him into his basket, and went upstairs to my bed, to sleep myself. There was dried blood on my tee shirt and jeans, the following morning.

That was a week ago.

The thing that comes to my house does not come every night. But it comes most nights: we know it by the wounds on the cat, and the pain I can see in those leonine eyes. He has lost the use of his front left paw, and his right eye has closed for good.

I wonder what we did to deserve the Black Cat. I wonder who sent him. And, selfish and scared, I wonder how much more he has to give.

2011-10-31T15:14:00.001-07:00

Siouxie Says Hello

2011-10-31T11:03:00.001-07:00

2011-10-30T11:04:00.001-07:00

Caturday

2011-10-29T15:08:00.001-07:00

2011-10-28T19:38:00.000-07:00

Hetero-Ween

2011-10-27T16:06:00.000-07:00

The Seattle Stranger brought up a very good point: when gay folks say that they just want wholesome lives with their wedded partners, 2.5 kids and a small yappy dog just like anyone else in America, homophobes immediately counter with "Oooooh no, we're seen what you people do at your gay pride parades! Assless chaps and crazy crossdressers as far as the eye can see"".

They have a point. The unbridled* campy sexuality can be shocking for vanilla straights. Even the ones who have really kinky porn sites bookmarked. I can see their point: their kinks are carefully hidden from public view and we should stay out of people's bedrooms. If their only gripe is that "the homos" are flaunting it in public, yes, I think that's a valid critique.

With one exception.

Halloween is currently a free-for-all for extremely goofy, 'sexy' things that straight people will wear including men who really ought to know better. But you know what? It's all about being hedonistic and drunk and ogling at exposed flesh and having a great time while doing it. It's very 'in your face' and cathartic as long as you don't involve your children. (You'll notice that you never see a child in assless chaps at a gay pride parade, and kids are only invited to 'family friendly' pride areas. If you bring your impressionable kids to a really raunchy pride parade, you're just a bad parent no matter your orientation.)

So Camp Hetero can ease up, lay off, and enjoy their very own day to let their freak flags fly. If you've ever felt a twinge of jealousy that the homos have all the fun, you need to get a babysitter for Saturday night and go to the nearest club dressed as whatever monster/anthropomorphic sexy animal/inanimate object that floats your boat. Save Monday for the tykes. Kids are sticklers for the rules and they don't want to be at home on the actual day of Halloween.**

Happy Hetero-ween everybody!

*And the bridled, now that I think about it.

** Some children are being forced to to 'alternative' Halloweens by people who are afraid of the holiday's "satanic influence". You know what will make them resent it less? FULL SIZE CANDY BARS. Make it a church scavenger hunt where they have to solve riddles that are hidden in bible passages (and every kid gets a free bible!). If the grand finale involves digging into the dirt to find a "treasure chest" of especially good candy, they will love you forever and maybe not become goths in a few years.

2011-10-27T09:55:00.000-07:00

In Ankh-Morpork, in Discworld, if you happen to wake up in your coffin, there's a flyer pasted to the inside of the coffin lid with the address of a support group printed on it. If only all zombies had such small measures of dignity and compassion, maybe we wouldn't be where we are ~~today~~.

2011-10-26T17:38:00.001-07:00

2011-10-26T06:18:00.000-07:00

2011-10-25T17:47:00.001-07:00

Cracked.com's Horror Page

2011-10-25T11:41:00.000-07:00

Now that you're finished slogging through the Wikipedia list of creepy shit (you are done by now, right?), it's time to head over to comedy site/unintentional college course in biology, Cracked.com. They've just released four categories of Halloween-themed posts (zombies, real horror, pop culture and costumes) and if you've been wondering why all of your friends seem to have all of these new enlightened ideas, explanations and cool facts that you've never heard about, it's because they've been reading Cracked.com and you haven't*.

Not bad for a comedy site.

*I'm quite serious. It will make you a better person. Their history articles are airtight, and this is coming from someone who fucking knows their history. Their articles on the future aren't half bad, either.

2011-10-24T20:45:00.000-07:00

140 Creepy Wikipedia Articles

2011-10-24T12:30:00.000-07:00

Similar to last year's list, but you don't remember half of it anyway.

Fashion Tip from the Future no.6,071

2011-10-23T18:15:00.000-07:00

You don't need to have lost an eye to rock an eyepatch-- it can be a purely cosmetic choice for the wall-eyed individual. You will be the envy of your metalhead friends to have an excuse to wear one.

Salad Fingers: An Oldie but a Goodie

2011-10-23T11:23:00.000-07:00

If you've never seen it, you really ought to. Just... not after sunset.

Special thanks to John Bridges, who recommended this on the Agent Beryllium Facebook page.

Posting Pictures of Cats

2011-10-22T18:01:00.001-07:00

Ventriloquist Dummies

2011-10-21T18:16:00.001-07:00

... creepy now, heart-stoppingly scary a hundred years ago.

Soapbox Moment

2011-10-21T17:34:00.000-07:00

Found on OMG That Dress, but there's a whole lot more at My Culture Is Not a Trend, which is the one-stop shop for making everyone regret wearing that Indian war chief headdress at that party that one time. (Not that I have, but it stopped looking cool when I stopped to think about the whole 'genocide' thing.) Seriously. Hipters will say it's a tribute to a beautiful culture but it's a hard-won sacred object to them. Not anyone can just wear it.

MCiNaT makes one important point, though: Fictional characters are exempt. Tiger Lilly from Peter Pan? Yes, that character is a mish-mash that doesn't fairly represent individual tribal culture, yes it's the whole "I have a feather in a hairband that's how you can tell I'm an Indian" thing going on, but it's in context of a fictional movie. Everyone knows she's a fictional person. Disney's Pocahontas too, even though it tried a little harder to get the Powhatan culture right (no plains Indian war headresses) falls short of accuracy but again: it's heavily fictionalized and everyone knows it. The point at which you say "I'm a " and you think that's a valid basis for a costume? You need a reality check.

Guns Don't Kill People... When They're Filled With Peas

2011-10-20T20:53:00.000-07:00

via Boing Boing:

Farmer Beaton's Sons Treated To A Warm Reception By Irate Farmer On Hallowe'en Night -- A Double Barreled Shot Gun Did The Business
Two small boys, the sons of a farmer named Beaton, who lives just outside the west part of Fargo, were shot at by an irate farmer on Hallowe'en and as a result they came to Fargo yesterday and had about a handful of peas picked out of them by a physician.
The boys had greatly annoyed a neighboring farmer last Hallowe'en, and this year he waited for them with a double-barreled shotgun loaded with peas. The boys approached his place and he let fly with both barrels, and his marksmanship was excellent.
In future Hallowe'ens these particular boys will probably remain a long ways from that particular farmer.

To be fair, Halloween used to be a LOT more destructive. Forget smashed pumpkins, toilet paper and eggs. Roving gangs of youths would tear up fences, drive livestock out of their pens and into places where livestock generally don't do very well (like into other peoples' houses or into ponds), and sometimes just barge in and beat the occupants until they gave them money.

The 21st century is immeasurably more peaceful than the previous hundred or so.

A small part of me wonders if the large numbers of girls in slutty costumes is causation or correlation in decreased Halloween violence. Surely time spent ogling women in cheap lycra costumes cuts into your budgeted time for driving Mrs. O'Fogherty's cows into the pastor's parlor room...

2011-10-20T10:36:00.000-07:00

A break in the creepy posts for 4chan's Moot talking about identity online, which is not quite the same as running around in a rubber suit and mask, but rather explores the different facets of who we are and how we might not want our more embarrassing interests (Screamo? You just outed yourself, Moot.) announced to the world (or Google).

Sweet Music

2011-10-19T19:27:00.000-07:00

... And decay. Lots of decay.

I Don't Know How It Was Done...

2011-10-19T05:47:00.000-07:00

... But that is one patient cat.

Unintentionally Creepy.

2011-10-18T17:03:00.000-07:00

Yes, they are actually dressed as the Pixar lamp.

Post-Mortem Photography

2011-10-18T05:42:00.000-07:00

Sunken and half-closed eyes are the biggest giveaway. You know, after you count out "currently lying in a coffin".

Also, watch for the dead flapper in the Louise Brooks haircut. I think she might be my favorite. I'm a sucker for Louise Brooks.

I Warned You

2011-10-17T17:41:00.000-07:00

Just keep scrolling. You don't need to understand what she's saying, it's all told through the pictures.

Yep.

Just keep scrolling.

I'll wait here until you're done.

2011-10-17T09:32:00.000-07:00

... And at least one Utilikilt guy with ears and a tail.

Coffee Break

2011-10-11T14:39:00.000-07:00

In the midst of all this Phoenix Jones insanity, let's unwind and watch Gabriel Iglesias' Hot and Fluffy.

There's even cop jokes. No superhero jokes, but I've had enough of superheroes for today.

Jet City News: Phoenix Jones Unmasked

2011-10-10T18:35:00.000-07:00

Yes, there is HUGE news about Phoenix Jones*, but the details are still a bit sketchy. There will be a post on the main blog when we get more information.

But that's not why you clicked.

You clicked because you want to know the man behind the rubber mask.

Phoenix Jones' name has been common knowledge in the ROACH community, but as gentlepersons, we vowed to not unmask real life superheroes unless the media did it first.

The Seattle Stranger reblogged the story from The Smoking Gun.

And though we don't have a ROACH blog post for you yet, we have video of the assault for you:

Phoenix Jones Stops Assault from Ryan McNamee on Vimeo.

It should read "Phoenix Jones Assaults Bystanders with Tear Gas" but I'm just smugly happy that they posted the video at all, thinking that somehow it makes them look like the good guys.

I'm with Shoe Girl: It's not okay to spray tear gas on people. A costume does not give you permission to gas people indiscriminately. Hell, you shouldn't be tear-gassing people period. They didn't attack Phoenix Jones because they hate freedom and justice. They fought back because a man with a mask ran at them, started shoving people around, and then attacked them with aerosols developed for use in war.

* Though as a Beryllium exclusive, after talking to Tea Krulos who was on the scene I can tell you that it was not pepper spray. It was civilian-grade tear gas.

Faces of Terror

2011-10-07T09:18:00.000-07:00

What happens when you set up a flash camera in a haunted house that's triggered to go off immediately after a prop is activated? You get ongoing research into ROACH's newest anti-hero scheme: a haunted house where the homeless never say thank-you or get misty-eyed when you give them bottled water. We're thinking of calling it "ROACH House of Horrors: The Night that the Homeless refilled their Bottles at the Tap".

Want more? Go to Nightmares Fear Factory's Flicker Page.

2011-10-06T16:00:00.000-07:00

I've always hated Wonder Woman's costume. Firm breasts move with the arm. If, however, the ligaments are stretched and your boobs are saggy? Then they will stay right where they are in a bustier. Hence, for Wonder Woman's costume to work, she has to have some damn saggy tits to have not had a nip slip in 60 years. And at that size, not even doublestick tape will save them from flopping out when she's upside down or jumping (in which case they'd smack her in the face after escaping).

And star-spangled underwear? Were the original artists afraid that if the colors schemes were swapped then it would somehow suggest that-- gasp!-- she was hiding a tampon failure?

I have to say though, I a fondness for Powergirl's outfit. Her cleavage being where a logo would otherwise be is a clever touch for an unabashedly cheesecake character. Plus, I like her cape. It's a nice change from superhero shoulder curtains.

Life Since ROACH Hired Overlord's Cat

2011-10-05T13:00:00.000-07:00

It's Kind of Like That.

2011-10-04T14:00:00.000-07:00

2011-10-03T21:08:00.001-07:00

Get With The Times: No One is Doing 'The Robot' Anymore

2011-09-26T10:19:00.000-07:00

Everyone's doing the "Taiwanese CGI Avatar" these days.

The Phone

2011-09-24T12:28:00.000-07:00

More games that don't really qualify as "games": The Phone.

Halloween is Coming, Bring on the Strange and the Scary.

2011-09-21T10:10:00.000-07:00

Think of 99rooms as a postmodern minimalist arthouse flash site, heavy on the ambiance of industrial decay.

Turn down the lights, turn up the volume, and don't some crying to me if you don't 'get it'.

Animals Being Dicks

2011-09-20T13:51:00.000-07:00

...Because petty supervillainy isn't confined to Homo Sapiens

You got Chocolate in my Peanut Butter...

2011-09-18T11:25:00.001-07:00

... You got LMFAO in my North Korea.

Shades of Good and Evil

2011-09-16T09:11:00.000-07:00

via

2011-09-14T12:34:00.001-07:00

Games that Villains Should be Playing: On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness

2011-09-12T03:31:00.000-07:00

Are done with our decade-long hijacking hangover yet? I damn well hope so. We have better things to do than, say, watch a documentary on Al-Jazeera that consisted of nothing but an hour of a crusty old man babbling on and on about how he took pictures of the twin towers nearly every day and it was set to the soundtrack of Brokeback Mountain. Yes. On Al-Freakin'-Jazeera.

First, that's clearly stalker behavior. Second, the sound editor must have laughed all the way to the bank. Good work sir, I salute you.

Right. Back to business.

Penny Arcade is already a well-known property in the villain universe, but why should we be buying into their tie-in scrap heaps of a game?

First, it's two games (of a possible set of four) and it's set in an alternate universe 1920s where you can attack mimes with garden implements. And robots. And WASPs. And possibly cybernetic monkeys and scientists too, but I haven't gotten that far. Why are the 1920s so exciting? Because it's wrapped into the motherfucking Cthulhu mythos, that's why. That and the usual perks: the amusement parks are extra-seedy, the clothes are fab, and alternate universe technology has progressed beyond Steampunk and has moved onto far superior clockwork, cathode ray tubes and the nostalgic MacGuyver-ready detritus of the Golden Age of Industry.

Look closely: Episode 2 adds goggles to your fashion choices.

True to the source, characters are two-dimensional in the very best way (there's no pretension here, just highly amusing riffs on mystery and adventure archetypes) and the world around you is filled with slightly squirm inducing patent medicines, creatively titled filth-monger storefronts and lots and lots of puerile humor and swearing.

And perhaps the best thing? When they send you on "go gather a bunch of shit" missions, they are solved in seedy and underhanded ways that make you feel like you've accomplished something vaguely evil.

It's is of no use to henchman training, villain character building or any such constructive use of your time, but if you've been eyeing these games, you can't go wrong for $8 a pop on Steam.

They chained Mike Krahulik to his desk for six weeks to make the artwork.
True story.

2011-09-11T03:44:00.000-07:00

NEVER FORGET!!!

Caturday

2011-09-10T11:28:00.001-07:00

Pigeon Fight

2011-09-08T10:59:00.000-07:00

Fatal Phyllo got really excited once because she managed to kick a passing pigeon in the head. Little did we know that Russia had upped the ante terribly.

2011-08-28T23:05:00.001-07:00

Stuck in a Layover on my way to the Pleistocene Era

2011-08-26T10:21:00.000-07:00

Thank god for Wi-Fi.

Still Alive

2011-08-25T09:28:00.000-07:00

And I'm even still alive in this century, no less. There has just been an awful lot of time-hopping going on right now, leaving little time for updates*. First there were heart surgeons to constantly smack awake during their med school classes and when that didn't work, sneaking extra shots into their espressos.

Fifty six harebrained ideas later, we still couldn't save The White Skull.

Now we're planning the funeral (You would not believe the places he wants his ashes to go-- do you have any idea how to travel to the 34 seconds after the big bang? Because we sure as hell don't), figuring out how to divide his estate (Is it even legal to bequeath Hustler magazines to your ten year old self?), and finding new management for Damocles.

Frankly, I'm swamped.

*"But you're a time traveler!" I hear you protest. So here's the thing: Time travel causes some mean jet-lag. I try to stay in this timeline, because going forward or back by just a day or two causes the worst lag outside of getting out of your native timeline. The further you go, the less timesickness. Twenty years is 'I feel queasy', twenty minutes is 'I have never puked so much in my life'.

Quantum Locked Cat

2011-08-18T15:52:00.001-07:00

Looks Legit.

2011-08-17T16:15:00.001-07:00

Not You Too, Twilight Sparkle!

2011-08-15T19:32:00.000-07:00

Overlord vs Ponies. Who do you think would win?

The Scream

2011-08-13T18:34:00.000-07:00

It's time to reexamine the dark recesses of what drives the villain. To strip away the gadgeteer and mad scientists trappings and gaze inwards.

Munch would have made an excellent supervillain. I'll have to approach him to see what he thinks about it-- talk to him after the disastrous love affair, after the painting and after the lithograph (the superior version if you ask me), but before the electroshock therapy. Science and Technology can ruin a good villain when used injudiciously.

Hipster Lorem Ipsum

2011-08-13T10:36:00.000-07:00

The standard text placeholder is so last year. Now, it's been Hipsterized in two flavors: Latin with a liberal sprinkling of hipster phrases, and straight up irony-speak.

HipsterIpsum.me