Saturday, 4 pm at the DC Armory
Roller derby: Scare Force One vs. Heavy Metal Hookers, and Cherry Blossom Bombshells vs. DC Demoncats.

(I likely won't make the first part, due to work, but M. and others will be there for the whole show.)

As noted previously, my crazy Weird War 2 game, AE-WWII, is a great read in and of itself because they do an obtuse amount of historical research and pack a surprising amount of details into the background fluff. I constantly find myself reading a piece, then I hit up Wikipedia to learn more about crazy history. Hours have been lost pouring over articles on the Beast of Gevaudan, Operation Werewolf, Jilf al Kabir, Cecil Williamson, and much more.

And then you read something that you know is going to drive nerds' imaginations worldwide: they think they've found Cambyses' lost army, 2,500 years later.

I've been digging on the steampunk for a while. A friend was discussing a themed party at one point, and while no commitments have been made, it's thing like this that make me want to get started on a costume right now and come up with an excuse later: Steampunking the Nerf Maverick.

Season three of Metalocalypse kicks off this Sunday night. And, IIRC, this season is all 30-minute episodes.

Remember, remember the fifth of November,
Gunpowder treason and plot.
We see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!

THURSDAY NEWS:
* Now that the economy is growing again, I'm sure all the right wing blogs will praise the White House's efforts. Wait.
* The challenge of separating church and state in the Bible Belt.
* And some things never change: top Democratic donors receive White House perks. Michael Scherer explains why that matters.
* Further proof that Schwarzenegger is awesome.
* Why Reid went for the public option.
* Happy 40th birthday to the internet.
* Oh, yes: Ong Bak 2.
* Hollywood always shies away from strong female leads.
* SyFy to do an American version of Being Human, which is sad. (Both courtesy mscongeniality.)

"The Obama administration has clung for so long to the Bush administration's expansive claims of national security and executive power that it is in danger of turning President George W. Bush's cover-up of abuses committed in the name of fighting terrorism into President Barack Obama's cover-up."

TUESDAY NEWSDAY:
* Amnesty claims Israel is cutting off Palestinian water supplies. Classy.
* Much data collected by the FBI left untranslated.
* Threats to the president's life are up dramatically, straining the Secret Service.
* In unsurprising news, Bill Kristol picks his side in the Republican divide.
* Today's misplaced modifier: "Boca Raton grapples with exploding iguana population"
* Life photogallery: Women in the fight in WWII. (Courtesy surlyrodent.)
* I heard it on NPR: 'The Tao Of Wu,' RZA's philosophy.

Reminder: Sunday is the dramatic return of The Venture Brothers, one of the best written shows on TV. Also, the only TV show where I have seen someone pee on a mummy.

Blogging the voyage of the Beagle, by one Charles Darwin.

RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS:
* Whoah. Sotomayor's comment on treating corporations as individuals is quiet but huge news.
* 100 abandoned houses
* NSFW: Greta Christina, on why we should be willing to try anything twice.
* Crazy jumping robot beng built for the military.
* The tiny ancestor of a Tyrannosaurus, which would have totally been an awesome housepet.
* EW.com presents their twenty-five greatest cult TV shows. Of which I've seen *loads.*
* Interesting article on sexuality and the new Batwoman.

Concept art from the 1987 Masters of the Universe movie. Which is cooler than the movie turned out to be.

"Near the end of the 1930s, the Nazis were making inroads in Latin America. To quell that momentum, President Roosevelt named Nelson Rockefeller head of a special agency - a veritable international chamber of commerce and cultural exchange agency - that sent various Hollywood celebrities to visit these countries to, in effect, win the hearts and minds of the people. Hollywood was even asked to include Latin American themes in its movies to bolster good will. One such celebrity ambassador was Walt Disney, who traveled the area during the late summer of 1941. Disney saw the trip as an opportunity to look for 'new songs, dances, plots and personalities for our cartoons.'"

Mike Rowe discusses discovery, realization and lamb castration. (Courtesy mizunakat.)

(I'm a huge fan of Mr. Rowe, as I know I've gone on about before. He's just an excellent journalist and interviewer, and does a great job conveying the lives of average workers, and how their labor is the backbone of our society.)

As noted previously, I'm walking to the Metro at early o'clock, when all the wildlife is about as well. Normally, bunnies are spotted every other day or so, with deer making an occasional appearance. Fall dropped in this week (my favorite season) and wow. Today, turned on to the field on Strathmore, and there was a big ol' deer, full antlers and all, right on the bike path. He bolted, and was followed by a huge family of deer. At least two other adults, and maybe five baby deer, less than fifty yards away. It was crazy. Made the two big fat bunnies who didn't run far at all seem boring by comparison.

Chris Sims rates more Pokemon.

"Taken as a yin-yang whole, Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 constitute a globe-spanning feat of genre scholarship, blithely connecting the dots from Chinese kung fu to Japanese swordplay, from blaxploitation to manga to spaghetti Western. Tarantino's reference-happy method is often dismissed as know-it-all geekery or stunted nostalgia, the video-store dreams of an eternal fanboy. But there is something strikingly of the moment and perhaps even utopian about Kill Bill's obsessive pastiche, which at once celebrates and demonstrates the possibilities of the voracious, hyperlinked 21st-century media gestalt: the idea that whole histories and entire worlds of pop culture are up for grabs, waiting to be revived, reclaimed, remixed."

"An amino acid has been found on a comet for the first time, a new analysis of samples from NASA's Stardust mission reveals. The discovery confirms that some of the building blocks of life were delivered to the early Earth from space."
(Courtesy theantichrist.)

Forty years ago today, an actual human being set foot on the freakin' Moon, which is so crazily awesome that I still can't quite wrap my mind around it, even though it happened years before I was born. Just to prove we weren't getting too full of ourselves, upon touching down on the Sea of Tranquillity, we managed to screw up the special quote we wanted to deliver there. Later, we would leave a plaque up there with Richard Nixon's signature on it.

FRIDAY NEWS:
* Top read: Michael Scherer on the dark heart of Russia.
* Former Iranian president Rafsanjani calls for the release of jailed protesters.
* FiveThirtyEight.com on conservative activist judges.
* Eating well on fifty dollars a week.
* Japan's 'love hotels' thrive in tough economic times.
* Neat: creating erotica for the blind.
* Whoah! "Turkmenistan has launched the latest stage of a plan to channel water across thousands of kilometres of desert to create a vast inland sea."
* More on the rebooted Nightmare on Elm Street.
* Hmmm. Was undecided about Zombieland, but the new trailer isn't bad...
* Whoah. Newly-discovered Phineas Gage daguerreotype!

"Searching for Kuchi & Finding Lizards" by Michael Yon.

More fascinating stories from the Ghor Province, in Afghanistan.