Arts-&-Literature

“There are times when total serenity isn’t enough. At such times I scarf a cheeseburger and fall asleep for the rest of the afternoon.” - Master Hu, the Peggle Owl

I think we can all see that Beyonce let Kanye win at Connect Four. Check out the winning row. :) Link courtesy of Best Week Ever.

Only accurate for extremely inclusive definitions of comedy. I prefer to think of it as his complete failure at attempting the longest filibuster. (“Let’s see…first, it wasn’t close to the record, and second, it wasn’t in a legislative body…”)

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting article about the difficulties faced when negotiating rights fees for essays an editor wants to include in a volume about New Criticism. It makes an interesting point: Doesn’t the rights holder, often a publisher, have an obligation to promote the work and make it available for scholarship? Here’s an idea that I’m sure has been said before: Copyright law should require the rights owner make the information available to the public in some fashion. If not available for more than, say, ten years, the copyright term would be severely shortened. In the case of printed material, it would mean that the rights holder would need to make the information available for some fee to the public either in a digital or printed form. That wouldn’t take care of the problem faced in putting together the New Criticism book, since the rights holder could still charge an exorbitant fee for the material, but it would give the publisher an incentive to not charge as much, because any use of the material in a book would count as being publicly available. ...

That’s really all there is to be said. Play the game, and don’t forget your grid paper. Link courtesy of Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

Richard Scarry’s Best Word Book Ever! has seen some changes down through the years, as seen in this Flickr gallery. The best part is that they added more girls, but did so by adding bows to heads and flowers to clothes. And let’s not forget nearsighted cats. :) Did they really have to change the caption “He comes promptly when he is called to breakfast” to “He goes to the kitchen to eat his breakfast”? Perhaps children in 1963 could count on being called for breakfast, while children in 1991 were counted on to make their own. ...

No, those three words are not from a spam promoting the way to greater girth…no, that would make too much sense. They are, however, the main plot device from movie #1 on the Cracked.com list The 10 Best Animated Movies for (Traumatizing) Kids. And here I was thinking Watership Down, which still bothers me, would be the freakiest movie on the list. (A commenter on the article points out the characters are not Raccoons, but Tanuki, otherwise known as Raccoon Dogs. I’m thinking adding the word Dog does not improve the idea.) ...

The DC Universe will be experiencing a Final Crisis next year, with a crossover series that appears to be the end of the Crisis on Infinite Earths > Identity Crisis > Infinite Crisis chain. Now, given the fact I was kind of disappointed with the results of Infinite Crisis (aside from 52), what could make me interested in this one? It’s going to be written by Grant Morrison. Well-played, DC…well-played indeed. Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but the characters pictured above – from left, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, Superman, Hawkman, and Batman – are all close to the original Silver Age Justice League of America. Everyone except Hawkman was in the original lineup, and he was one of the first ones to join. So where’s the Atom, Aquaman, and Martian Manhunter? (Okay, so right now Ray Palmer’s Atom and the original Aquaman are indisposed, but I don’t think it’s a good sign for J’onn J’onzz.) Just as long as we don’t get Snapper Carr (“Snap, snap!”). :) ...

Looks like Warner Bros. wants another $8.50 from me. Jonah Hex – hard to explain if you don’t already know – may get his own movie soon. I wonder if it will end with him running across his own stuffed body? While growing up, I was always a big costumed hero fan, reading a lot of Superman, Batman, and the Legion of Super-Heroes. However, I also really liked the “real-world” comics DC was putting out at the time, usually dealing with various modern wars or the American West. Jonah Hex was one of my favorite characters, along with Hans von Hammer (Enemy Ace), largely due to the moral complexity of the stories. ...

It was a very good ending to the series, and the next-to-last page sucker-punched me. :cry: AND NOW, A SPOILER: They’re all hobbits. ;)