Archives for category: I must retire to my nerdery

chuck lorre’s production company card at the end of ‘the big bang theory’ always has a few paragraphs he’s written about whatever was on his mind at the time the show went out. this week’s (card #270, after ‘the gorilla experiment’) is particularly amusing:

Jillian had a urinary tract infection…again.

That sentence appeared in my head a few days ago, just as you see it above. I have no idea what it means, other than the obvious, and I don’t know anyone named Jillian. Regardless, I thought it’d be interesting to begin a vanity card with it and just see where it goes.

Jillian had a urinary tract infection…again. Her doctor liked to abbreviate the condition to UTI. She liked to abbreviate it to TMH – Too Much Humping. Regardless, the road back to vaginal happiness was always the same: cranberry juice and abstinence. Thankfully, her boyfriend, Dudley, was always very understanding. He’d just smile, hold her in his arms and say, “Well, babe, when one door closes, another one opens up.” She’d always giggle and blush when he’d say that, but deep down she wished she had the courage to cover his mouth and nose with a chloroform-soaked rag, and then, while he was unconscious, snip off his testicles with the little scissors she uses to groom her schnauzer.

All of which explains why the next sentence popped into my head recently.

Nobody sang Bee Gees songs on karaoke night like Dudley.

after checking out these maps i’m really wishing i owned ‘jurassic park’ on dvd (had it on vhs, but i no longer have a vcr).

new best thing ever: number one, a commander riker photo blog. this week: guest illustrations! below, a great riker from john campbell of pictures for sad children:

bonus riker from steve wolfhard (who draws one of my favorite comics ever, cat rackham): got the trombone in there!

really pissed that I can’t see this while I’m in Illinois:

hard to decide whether luke’s or stormtrooper’s is my favorite.

read the article on io9.

in honor of today, ‘star trek out on dvd and blu-ray’ day, i present to you this article.

samizdat.com - the rules of the game

christian swinehart has a great essay up on his blog called ‘the rules of the game‘ about choose your own adventure books. i LOVED these when i was a kid (and, ok, i still love them – a shout out here to ‘lots of boys’) and would spend hours trying to get to every possible ending. this essay examines the structural differences choose your own adventure books have undergone over the years, as well as the patterns authors used to organize the books’ pages themselves, and it is all illustrated with beautifully designed infographics.

samizdat.com - the rules of the game

swinehart also includes animations of the reader paths through the books which i found to be hypnotizing, and in the colophon, a link to chris boraski’s fully-playable/readable html port of ‘zork: the cavern of doom’, on which swinehart has based his dynamic version of ‘zork’. in swinehart’s dynamic version, you can see a visualization of your progress á là his animations, which is very cool and quite elegant. use the links at the top of the main article page to see the animations, galleries, and play the game/read the book.

via eric

i could stare at these for hours. click to embiggen.

xkcd - movie narrative charts

for the new yorker! see it here. it’s really good – and heartbreaking as usual. i assume it’s a pull-out (mask in the middle).

the new yorker - nov. 2, 2009

via eric