Probably one of the funnier videos I’ve seen on YouTube lately:

“For Pete’s sake, you knocked her bloody block off! Wanna take advantage of her?”

I met Sarah downtown for lunch earlier at 5th Street Wine & Deli. While we were eating, she said, “That guy over there looks like the dude from the Barenaked Ladies.”

I glanced over my shoulder at the dude in question. “Yeah, I suppose so.”

A few minutes later, we overheard another customer say: “Holy shit — you’re him aren’t you? You’re from Barenaked Ladies.”

The guy replied with something modest, like, “Yep, that’s me.”

Sarah looked at me. “I told you.”

He was with another member of the band, and some other random guy. Further eavesdropping revealed that they were in Dayton to do an interview at the radio station, and stopped in to get a sandwich.

It was very odd, but I am happy to report that neither Sarah nor I got all fannishly creepy like some of the other customers. That’s us: too cool for school.

The water cascading down from the chrome shower head in harsh streams was hot, painful in a strange but pleasant way, and made her skin feel nearly numb. She enjoyed the sensation.

After several more minutes of this, she twisted the hot water handle to OFF. The searing water quickly turned became frigid, and even though she was expecting it, still hit her like a slap in the face from Jack Frost. She gritted her teeth against the unpleasantness, enduring it for thirty seconds that felt like thirty minutes, and at last shut off the water.

Such was her regular showering routine, and had been for years, since the time her training had begun up on the mountain, in that cabin with no electricity. She’d despised it at first, but after several weeks of shivering under the freezing-cold water, she’d become used to it.

Now, she still just barely tolerated it, but could appreciate the immediate call to alertness it provided.

Templesmith really is an amazing artist:

The above is the cover for the upcoming POPGUN Vol. 4 anthology.

(Via BoingBoing.)

I think writers’ room for the show EUREKA contains the single awesomest, and probably nerdiest, wall clock ever:

For a better view of it, go to this post on the official EUREKA writers’ blog and scroll down. It should be the fifth picture.

Uncommon Goods sells it for $25, and will also include a cheat sheet for those of us who don’t possess Ph.D’s in mathematics from MIT:

12 – a radical
1 – Legendre’s constant is a mathematical constant occurring in a formula conjectured by Adrien-Marie Legendre to capture the asymptotic behavior of the prime-counting function. Its value is now known to be exactly 1.
2 – A joke in the math world: An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first one orders a beer. The second orders half a beer. The third, a quarter of a beer. The bartender says, “You’re all idiots,” and pours two beers.
3 – A unicode character XML “numeric character reference.”

I actually knew what 8:00 is — an illustration of binary code — so I guess I’m not a complete #MathFail.

Was supposed to go to the Pub with Brandon tonight for some good old-fashioned trivia, but then Gaia decided to once again fuck the Midwest U.S. in the ass with her massive frozen strap-on . . . and thus there was no trivia tonight.

So instead, I stayed in, read a book — LIVE AND LET DIE, by Ian Fleming — and made some dinner. There was baked fish and seasoned mashed potatoes — instant, of course — to be eaten, followed by the delicious sugar cookies my sister made over the weekend. In the process I kind of got drunk, which was unexpected, but honestly, not unwelcome.

Think now I might throw in THE ROAD WARRIOR, then maybe do some writing, assuming I’m still awake. All-in-all, not a bad night, considering the snow. SEE GAIA? I ISN’T AFRAID OF YOU. PEOPLE CAN HAVE FUN EVEN WHEN THERE IS SNOW. WHO IS FUCKING WHOM NOW?

‘Night . . .

These Bookbooks are very cool, and I would very much like to have one. The only issue is that they are designed for MacBooks, but I bet with some fiddling my Toshiba Satellite could be made to fit in the 15″ model.

Protecting your MacBook is a top priority and it’s job one for BookBook. Slip your Mac inside the velvety soft, padded interior. Zip it closed and your baby is nestled between two tough, rigid leather hardback covers for a solid level of impact absorbing protection. The rigid spine serves as crush protection for an additional line of defense. BookBook creates a hardback book structure that safeguards your MacBook like few other cases can. Far better than any floppy neoprene bag ever will. End of story.

I also wouldn’t mind owning one of these doormats shaped like an “Enter” key:

A doormat like this says: “Enter if you like, but beware — you may not return.” Get it? Return? Like, as in the “Enter” key is sometimes called the “Return” key?

[whistles as he walks off]

I finished reading Warren Ellis’s SHVERING SANDS yesterday, a collection of essays and various writings Ellis has spewed onto the Web over the last seven years.

What I enjoy about Ellis’s writing is that not only does he entertain me as a dancing monkey would, but he also brings to my attention interesting and weird things I might otherwise never have known.

For instance, in one entry he was discussing how drug use can sometimes fuel stories writers might otherwise not have come up with. In particular he mentioned Terence McKenna, a writer/philosopher who used psychedelics in part to form his view of the world. One of Ellis’s favorite McKenna stories was about a time bifurcation that posited a world where Jesus Christ had never been born, and the positive effects this had therein.

I had never heard of McKenna before, but the story sounded interesting, so a quick google later and I was able to locate a copy of the essay in question, “The Great Timestream Bifurcation”:

The soliton of improbability which interacted with our world occurred two thousand years ago in the phenomenon of the Immaculate Conception. An event that I think you and I can agree is highly improbable! But let us take it at face value and see if we can work with it. When the Immaculate Conception occurred through the collision of the soliton of improbability with this Galilean village girl called Marian or Mary, in one world she became impregnated with a figure destined for a great religious and political future: our world. The world in which Christ was born, became a young man, taught his message, and went to his execution around 27 AD. Another world sprang into existence at the moment of the Immaculate Conception and in that world nothing whatsoever happened to this young Galilean girl. She continued to live with Joseph. He continued to make fine furniture. Eventually they were able to move to the better side of Nazareth. And that was their story.

So you see I’m suggesting that at the time of Christ, a parallel world came into existence that knew nothing of Christ. And consequently the forces which shattered Roman civilization never came into existence in that parallel world.

The essay isn’t very long, and if you’re into this sort of thing, it’s definitely worth a couple of minutes of your time to read. McKenna’s take on the Tunguska event is particularly cool.

And if you like having a middle-aged Englishman shout at you (or you enjoy HOUSE), you should definitely buy SHIVERING SANDS.

In this episode of STAR TREK, Kirk prepares to make First Contact with a Big Shoulder Pad being from Soarbuhm VII:

(From Things That Are Doing It.)