Tom Smith

I went out to gas up the car this morning, and -- thanks to the light layer of freezing drizzle -- it was already a bit of a hockey rink.

Weather forecasts say there will be unseasonable cold, snow that won't melt off the roads, and ice all the way down to frickin' Miami.

I can drive for two days, pay for hotels, and be a nervous wreck... or I can stay home and have exactly the same weather.

So, please forgive me, those of you who were hoping to see me at GAFilk. I'd love to be there, I'd planned to be there... but I'm a nervous nelly driving in this kinda stuff. Hugs to all, I hope you have a blast, and I'll see you at other cons.

Who is going to GAFilk this year?

Shared by Wil Wheaton, 100 games in 100 cupcakes.

How many have you played (or, if it's easier, not played)? I'm gonna go through the list, then update this post.

ETA: The really scary thing is that I have played all but about fifteen of 'em. I hadn't heard of a few, like Carcasonne. I missed a few because I forgot their names, e.g., Twixt. I haven't got around to Settlers of Catan yet. I misidentified Liar's Dice as Yahtzee, and the one for Charades (#32) was just weird.

Sometime tomorrow, I was planning on hitting the road for GAFilk.

See, I'm supposed to be at MarsCon in Virginia next weekend. My thought was, I'll go down to GAFilk, see everyone, get some hugs, play for awhile, then continue off to my dad's in north central Florida, and approach MarsCon from the south. Conveniently getting out of a Michigan January for a week and a half.

I do not know if I am going to do this.

The lesser problem is, I am fighting off a bit of a cold. (I saw my doctor on Tuesday, and she confirmed that's really all it is, a cold. I also got my flu and H1N1 shots, so I am now impervious, ha ha.) I don't want to give my friends whatever it is I have.

Much more to the point, the weather forecasts along the trip look awful. Literally, the entire I-75 corridor, from Findlay, OH down to Florida, is for not merely snow and cold, but a lot of snow and some deep cold.

I don't know what I'm going to do yet. I might try to skirt out of town tomorrow morning. I might wait till Friday, arriving at GAFilk Saturday.

I might say the heck with it, and hope nothing bad comes before I head off to MarsCon next week.

Grumble.

What's your plan for the weekend look like?

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A couple of weeks ago, Rep. Parker Griffith of Alabama switched parties, becoming a newly-minted Republican. He was first elected to the House in... 2008.

And, gee, it hasn't worked out like he must've thought it would.

How politically tone-deaf can you get? And who exactly did he think he was going to court with this move?

Have fun, dude. You now are living proof that one man can make a difference -- with a single action, you have angered and cut off both sides.

In about an hour, the Food Network will debut an Iron Chef special, Super Chef Battle: Emeril Lagasse and Mario Batali vs. Bobby Flay and White House chef Cristeta "Cris" Comerford. It's on at 8:00 p.m. EST, and again at midnight, and a few more times on Thursday. I'll watch it as soon as I can download it, and we can talk about it here.

Can't help it. I'm rooting for Mario.

ETA: A diary at dKos has pictures and video.

Engaging Luke Ski Mode in three... two... one... engage!

And why we love her. (h/t jblaque)

So, I made boneless Buffalo chicken this afternoon. Blue cheese dressing, too. (The recipe called for Stilton, but implied Gorgonzola would be fine, and it was.)

I didn't have a thermometer at hand, and I didn't think to do the popcorn trick (put three popcorn kernels in the oil; when they've all popped, you're ready), so the oil wasn't hot enough to properly fry the coating. I'm pretty sure the chicken was cooked all right, though -- it was in the hot oil for over ten minutes, and the marinade kept it moist. The Buffalo sauce came out great, just a bit hotter than I like, so next time I know what to do.

My tummy's a bit ufda right this second, but it really did taste good. And it wasn't so much work that I won't do it again.

Commit any culinary triumphs lately? (huskiebear and jss1113, we know you have, so if you'd be so kind as to share your Iron Chef LJ techniques...?)

Driftglass hammers the shit out of the notion of "centrism":

"If Christ is not Risen... then our preaching is in vain."

I have always thought that this admonition by Paul to the Christ community of Corinth (1 Cor 15:15) was one of the most brilliant and starkly honest moments in the New Testament. It is not the interpretation of Christianity to which I subscribe (like Jefferson, I prefer my Jebus without a side order of miracles) but I admire its magnificent simplicity: Paul acting as Attorney for the Defense, reducing the totality of Christian doctrine as he understood it to a single hypothetical syllogism --

1. If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not risen.
2. 2. And if Christ has not risen, then everything we believe is a nonsense.

[...]

Speaking for every Liberal in America, it has long since gone well beyond annoying and bizarre that, year after year, we have to repeat and re-prove this same point to the same, wingnut-doting Villagers over and over again.

We now fully and finally understand that it doesn't matter.

We know that Newt Fucking Gingrich -- one of the hands-down, all-time Kings of Bile and the Politics of Personal Destruction -- will continue to be welcomed onto the Mouse Circus forever, where he will continue to say things like "You can’t build on bitterness!" without being laughed into the street.

[...]

Because we know that, in the end, reflexively loathing Liberals for being right and excusing the grotesque failures of Conservatives to create a wholly false "Sensible Center" will always be to Villagers what the Risen Christ was to Paul: the central pillar of their theology, without which their entire world would fall apart.

(h/t jblaque)

ETA: Apparently some of you think I, or the author of this article, are attacking Christianity. No no no no no. He used the "If Christ is not risen..." argument as a metaphor, to compare it with how the Villagers -- the politicians, punditry, and media -- cling to the notion of a political "center" that is somehow perfect and desirable (and toward which liberal/progressives must move to accommodate the Right). What he's saying is, exactly as with risen Christ (and please please note that it is being used as a metaphor here), philosophically the Villagers have to have a "center", because if they don't then they might have to actually examine the idea that they have been wrong about pretty much everything. They can't do that, ergo a "center".

I caught up with The Waters of Mars, and just finished watching The End of Time. Pretty darn cool stuff all around. Excellent character writing, with acting to match.

But I am very worried about the New Guy.

Thoughts?

Unabashed plug: Torchlight, an action RPG by Runic Games, which includes some of the Diablo II team. Freakin' gorgeous, freakin' addictive, moddable, relatively small download and hard-drive footprint, and, oh yeah, on sale for half-price ($9.95) until the 4th. (If you get it after, it's still worth the $20.) If you love the Diablo style of game, seriously, check this one out. And, if you've never played that kind of clickfest, give this one a try -- the demo gives you two hours of play free.

Any good entry-to-mid-level computer games we need to know about?

Happy New Year to us all. Here's hoping we're on an upward trend (or, as a commenter at Eschaton put it, may this be the year the pendulum picks up momentum on a leftward swing).

As a special gift for you all, here are the completely unexpurgated, unprocessed, raw-as-they-get MP3s of my Dec. 11 concert in Dayton, Part 1 and Part 2. I'll likely buff 'em up a bit later in the week, a little EQ and such, and then actually sell 'em, but for now, enjoy.

ETA: I hope you won't think it too gauche of me to point out that all of my downloads are still on sale. :)

Darth Cheney and the Republican Noise Machine in The Great War On Terror.

It's nearly a wrap on 2009, and, without getting into details, I think we can all agree it wasn't exactly what we hoped for. Here's hoping 2010 is at the least a bit easier for us all to get through.

There is a splendid party tonight, put on every year by dear friends I don't see enough of. There is Anne's invitation to come out and watch silly videos and then go tomorrow to see Sherlock Holmes. I will likely indulge in neither, as I'm getting a cold -- nothing dire, just a couple days of mildly sore throat and now stopped-up sinuses. Murfle. Fortunately, I have orange juice and roasted garlic soup and chips and salsa and Robitussin.

I no longer bother with New Year's Resolutions. They're so easy to break, and then you feel as if you've failed, and you get depressed and don't get back to 'em. I have a couple of goals: Herbert West and Girl Genius. And about a dozen more songs for Sounds Familiar. And the revised Big Book of Stupid Filk Tricks. Those would be really nice.

What are you doing tonight, if anything? And what goals do you have for the new year, if any?

Great sadness for us old-time indie wrestling fans. "Dr. Death", Steve Williams*, has lost his battle with throat cancer at the age of 49. Back in the Mid-South/UWF days, where so many great stars got their first real TV exposure, Dr. Death was roughly the Hulk Hogan character. A superb athlete (four-time All-American with Oklahoma) and a charismatic head-basher, Dr. Death was one of my favorites when I rediscovered TV wrestling in the mid-1980s. Here's video of his final match earlier this year, and here's lots of videos of his moves and matches. We'll miss you, Doc.


* There is always a touch of confusion when casual fans find out that "Stone Cold" Steve Austin's real name is Steve Williams. This ain't the same guy.

It's all Luke's fault.

All of the downloads are on sale until the end of New Year's Weekend. Albums six bucks, live shows $1.99 and $2.99.

Too freakin' cool.

Scientists have demonstrated a way to harness the motion of swimming bacteria to turn tiny gears. This bacteria-driven mechanism could someday power micro-machines that combine living organisms and man-made materials.

To build their rudimentary device, the research team first fashioned silicon gears measuring a mere 0.01 inches (380 micrometers) across and 0.002 inches (50 micrometers) thick. With their slanted teeth, the gears look rather like tiny ninja stars.

The microgears were then placed into a nutrient broth swarming with the microbe Bacillus subtilis, the workhorses in this setup. When supplied with nutrients and oxygen the bacteria scoot about randomly.

Nicked from AmericaBlog.

If you could have cyborg parts, would you get 'em? And, if so, what would they be? Assume Six Million Dollar Man rules, i.e., they feel real and work without stressing the rest of your weak, puny human physiology. I'd likely go for new legs, hips, and lower back at this point, maybe with a few USB jacks in convenient locations.

It would be very easy to just embed the entire musical Scrooge, but these are some of my favorite scenes:

• "I Hate People"
• Jacob Marley
• "December the Twenty-Fifth"
• the Spirit of Christmas Present
• "Thank You Very Much"
• Scrooge's vision of Hell (not often seen, possibly too intense for the kids)
• Scrooge is a changed man
• "I Like Life" (reprise)
• "Thank You Very Much" (reprise)

The entire movie is on YouTube, and if you haven't seen it I think you'll like it.

Several other vids I was planning to link to here were linked to in the previous vid thread, but there's no shortage of the good stuff:

• Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, Part 1 (again, you can watch the whole thing)
• GBTV
• "Christmas At Ground Zero"
• "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence"
• "I Believe In Father Christmas" by Greg Lake
• Bob & Doug's "Twelve Days of Christmas"

There are a gazillion more I haven't linked to -- 'cause that's for you. :)

I would TOTALLY see this. Thanks to huskiebear.

What kind of HP mash-up would you make, if you could? I've seen 'em with Superman, Transformers, Pride and Prejudice, Devil May Cry, Twilight, Batman, Pirates of the Caribbean, and remember that I tend to stick with only Harry/Hermione fics at Portkey. And of course there are a lot of variations of this.

The real reason I love Dickens:

There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say... Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!

I say again, because I must never forget it or let you think I might have forgotten it: Thank you for being in my life. You keep me grounded. You get all the jokes. You give so much of yourselves. And you make everything worth it. I love you all.

Merry Christmas.

You better watch out.

( And I'm sure we can add to this.... )

Once again, the phenomenal user community of the Garritan Personal Orchestra has come up with a whole album of Christmas music, complete with cover and label art, free for the download. Scroll to the bottom of the page for links to the previous five albums.

Any cool free music you've found on the 'net? Not videos, we'll do those later today.

Let's go out with a bang, shall we...?

• Twisted Sister -- "O Come All Ye Faithful"
• TV Pigs -- "Merry Christmaquazika"
• Lou Monte -- "Dominick the Italian Christmas Donkey"
• Fred Figglehorn -- "Christmas Cash" and "Christmas Is Creepy"
• Rather Good Stuff -- "Communist Christmas" and Merry Squidmas" (kinda gross)
• Just 'cause I found it while cruising YouTube, the literal-video version of "Safety Dance"

Tomorrow and Friday we'll do some of the good ones. :)

( I love you guys, so... of all the Spongebob holidays mashups out there -- this seems to be the shortest.... )

Possibly NSFW.

jblaque reminds me of something markbernstein and I have loved for a long time: the storytelling duo of Geoffrey Lewis and Geoff Levin, performing under the name Celestial Navigations.

It is hard to overstate how wonderful this stuff is, and fortunately easy to demonstrate:


Not to mention the incredible "Horses".

Any good storytelling you've found lately to share? Audiobooks count.

This is closer to what I originally had in mind for this series:

Ah, yes, the Antler Surprise. Nothing directly offensive, but so NSFW.

So freakin' cool.

Been savin' this one up special for ya:

Wowzers.

If you happen to be in Ann Arbor tonight, jimhines is having a book signing at our best indie book store, Nicola's, over in the Westgate Shopping Center. If you need more reason than that, there's a superb Thai restaurant right next door, and Zingerman's Roadhouse just across the parking lot (follow your nose to the whole-hog barbecue).

Any good books we should be catching up on?

johno tells us of an excellent artist, Elana Kestrel. A good number of you may have her work already: she created the ASCII Jumpgate pins so popular during Babylon 5's Usenet days. (Mine hangs proudly on the pin banner in my bedroom.)

Well, Elana has Stage 4 breast cancer and is in need of some help. And the easiest way to help her is to buy some pins.

Not health, not care, not reform.

SCIENCE!

ETA: I have no idea what happened to the original Yahoo News link. Got it fixed, and found another take at Wired.

Sadness. Roy E. Disney, the nephew of Walt Disney, has passed away at the age of 79. He cared a great deal about the concept of Disney as good family entertainment and not just a money tree, and was a great champion of animation. Thanks to hughcasey for the heads-up.

We've done this recently, but it's always a good time for it: what are your favorite Disney animated features? (Not Pixar, that is.) Mine include Snow White, both Fantasias, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Emperor's New Groove, Sleeping Beauty, and The Many Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh.

Brain go 'splodey now.

Another two-fer. First, a Bohemian Christmas:

And, as a bonus, an audio-only track of "A Christmas Duel" by The Hives and Cyndi Lauper (NSFW).

Televangelist Oral Roberts has passed away at the age of 91.

You know how I feel about the man and his work. But... an old man, a fellow human, has died. May he rest well. Condolences to his family and friends.

Steampunk, that is. The Shadow Conspiracy: Tales from the Age of Steam is the latest release from the authors of Book View Café, the Internet’s largest professional author cooperative.

The stories of The Shadow Conspiracy revolve around the premise that something... else happened on the stormy summer of 1816 at the gathering of poets, far beyond the creation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. These tales focus on the dreamers, experimenters and engineers of this alternative timeline who work their mechanical and metaphysical magic both for good... and evil. Edited by Phyllis Irene Radford and Laura Anne Gilman, authors include Judith Tarr, Sarah Zettel, Steven Piziks, and Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff. The collection will be available for the Kindle, Sony eReader, B&N Nook and a wide variety of smartphone reader apps.

To celebrate the launch, BVC will be holding a twitter fic contest from the 15th through the 17th. The subject of the contest is machines and monsters. The first place winner will receive an ebook copy of The Shadow Conspiracy and a hardcover edition of editor Laura Anne Gilman’s Flesh and Fire. Second place winner will receive an ebook copy of The Shadow Conspiracy and a hardcover edition of P.R. Frost’s Faery Moon. Details can be found at the BVC twitter fic contest page (http://www.bookviewcafe.com/index.php/News/BVC-Twitter-Fic-Contest-9-The-Shadow-Conspiracy).

(h/t sazettel)

Any new books, stories or fic you'd like to tell us about? Stuff you're written, stuff you've read -- link 'em up.

A two-fer, actually:

(h/t docwebster)

A bit early, but this is too good not to have up now. See, I have not been a fan of this particular song... until now.

(h/t hughcasey)

Merry Dokken Christmas.