jazzfish | net.residue

Horace Gerstenblut n'existe pas, or, why Daniel Pinkwater is the greatest living Surrealist: "It was not until quite recently, however, that I noticed that Pinkwater is actually a capital-S Surrealist, by which I mean that he is intentionally and with forethought following the artistic and literary principles established by André Breton and his circle in Paris in the 1920s as part of the Surrealist movement, and that he is alluding in his body of work to the Surrealists and their intellectual ideas." It may be time for another Pinkwater binge. (Also, it appears that there exists a very nice New York Review of Books edition of Lizard Music, the first Pinkwater I ever read. I may need to track this down.)

Top ten differences between white terrorists and others: "3. Doing a study on the danger of white terrorists at the Department of Homeland Security will get you sidelined by angry white Congressmen. Doing studies on other kinds of terrorists is a guaranteed promotion."

I don't wear many t-shirts these days, but I might have to buy this tour shirt (US link in case the other doesn't work) for the next time I visit my folks.

A slo-mo jello drop, via Greg Stolze, who says, "This is how I want Lovecraft monsters to move." See also: slo-mo water balloon popping and slo-mo popcorn popping.

Holy carp, the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma is no longer solved. The Emerging Revolution in Game Theory: "Until now, everyone thought the best strategy in iterative prisoner's dilemma was to copy your opponents behaviour in the previous round. ... So the news that there are other strategies that allow one player to not only beat the other but to determine their time in jail is nothing short of revolutionary."

"What If..." Movies reimagined for another time & place: the poster for "The Big Lebowski" is my favorite.

Along similar lines, a League of Extraordinary Gentlepersons circa 1996, and why do I live in a world where this does this not exist.

The Last Temptation of Christ: "A randomly selected person with the belief that he is Jesus has a 1/100,000 chance of being Jesus and a 99,999/100,000 chance of being a psychotic. So, Mr. Person With The Belief That He Is Jesus, do you think those numbers apply to you?"

Chicks Dig the Uniform: "So here – more by way of personal expression than public education – are some observations about being the wife of a deployed British soldier." These all sound familiar from my very limited experience as the kid of a soldier deployed in the first Gulf War, and they give me a little bit better understanding of what was going on with my parents post-1991.