Arts-&-Literature

Pearls Before Swine, today. :)

Never saw these particular comics, but apparently Marvel decided that the Seventies were a good time to release a new character based in the Fifties: 3-D Man. 3-D Man employed the Mysterious Powers of the Third Dimension to…Okay, there aren’t any really mysterious powers in the Third Dimension. Calling him 3-D Man was probably just wishful thinking on the part of the writer. The character seems about as 2-D as you can get, and is primarily memorable for a bad red/green outfit. (Get it, like 3-D glasses?) :) ...

“Go away, little Apocalyptic Squirrel…Go away.” - Pearls Before Swine If Linus from Peanuts had his own pet, this would have been it.

“Man, I don’t whistle past graveyards! I sit down, eat my lunch, insult a few birds, and take a nap!” - Bucky Katt from Get Fuzzy

Orange County Weekly does its best: So that’s right dude, meet me at the bleachers No principals, no student-teachers Both of us want to be the winner, but there can only be one So I’m gonna fight, gonna give it my all We learn that it was a “dude” who gossiped about Gwen. She challenges him to a fight at the bleachers. If he imagines it will be a fair, one-on-one fight, he is sadly mistaken. Gwen and her aforementioned “pack” will pounce on him like rabid wolves. ...

Police Officer: Thanks for helping us catch those copyright violators, Thor. We couldn’t have done it without you. Thor: My existence negates all your Judeo-Christian beliefs. Every one. The Apropos Comics archive, featuring Captain American Government, The Bat-Botanist, and The Amazing Amazon.com. :) Link courtesy of Metafilter

Another modest proposal from U.S. Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters. This time she proposes eliminating the current section of law that allows musicians to record covers, as long as they pay a fee. She proposes that a private organization set the rules and rates. Ms. Peters seems to be making this sort of grand gesture a habit. Link courtesy of the Lessig Blog

Okay, I don’t have a cat of my own to take pictures of, or even a neighborhood cat. But we did just watch Cat People --- the great 1942 Val Lewton original, not the Nastassja Kinski version from 1982. :) It’s always good when you watch a low-budget film that simply suggests horror outclass a film that has to show every detail. Of course, the original version does have a lead actor who apparently wasn’t paid to show any expression at all. ...

A House Appropriations subcommittee has voted to cut funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting by 25% next year, totally eliminating the budget in two years. They also voted to get rid of another program that supports children’s educational television. While I think it would be a good thing for public broadcasting to be able to shift from federal funds to other sources, simply so they could get out from under government criticism, this amounts to a direct assault on public television. The excuse made by the subcommittee chair, Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio), was that they needed to cut funding somewhere, and they would rather keep college grants and special education funds than the CPB. ...

One fan’s imagining of Jimmy Olsen’s memoirs: “Did I turn into a giant turtle monster? I sure did. Did I drink the elastic serum? You bet. Did I marry a gorilla? And how. Do I regret any of it? NOT ON YOUR LIFE, PAL.” You know, if Jimmy Olsen was really Robert Evans, that would make a great comic book. :)