Looking over the links I have to post today, I realize that everything in this post seems designed to appeal to my dear friend Chip. Victorian phantasmagoria, futuristic technology, post-ironic television criticism, it’s all here. Chip, this one’s for you.
The 19th Century
The possible origin of the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland.
Atlas Obscura has an entry on the Beverley Messenger Rabbit located in St. Mary’s Church in Beverley, England. It is a church that C.L. Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, knew well from visits there as a child. Although the church claims the White Rabbit, it is only conjecture (though credible conjecture) that it inspired the character. If it’s true, I find it interesting in that it shows that Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass were much more personal pieces of art than its status today suggests.
The coolest bulldog.
Store here, if you want to order online.
Alien vs. Pooh
This is exactly what it sounds like. Imagine a classic Milne Winnie-the-Pooh story, except characters end with violent death at the hand of alien spawn.
The 20th Century
Television tropes.
A database of television clichés and commonly-used tropes. A somewhat randomly selected entry on the “Power Trio:”
A show that thematically centers on the tension between two opposing ideas will manifest that tension through three central characters: one character representing each opposing idea, and a character who must integrate and reconcile the opposition. A common form has characters representing the Freudian Ego, Superego, and Id:
“The id contains primitive desires (hunger, rage and sex), the super-ego contains internalized norms, morality and taboos, and the ego mediates between the two and may include or give rise to the sense of self and the well being of humans.”
Sometimes the same dynamics play out with just two characters, but in those cases the representatives of opposing sides must learn to negotiate with each other. In a Power Trio, they are free to be more extreme, and it falls to the leader to lay the smack down and keep the group integrated. In short, Opposites Attract + 1. See also Five Man Band, Two Guys And A Girl, Terrible Trio, Three Faces Of Eve, and Three Amigos. There is a closely related ensemble in Evil Duo. A Comic Trio uses the same ingredients, but the leader is crazy, the action one is stupid, and the thinking one is powerless. See also Cast Calculus. Depending on the fandom and its tendency for shipping, a power trio may easily become an OT 3. See also: The Three Faces Of Eve.
President Johnson orders pants.
President Johnson was a badass. We have evidence of this, in the form of a recovered tape which has Johnson ordering six pairs of pants because he liked the first pair the clothing company sent. Except he needs them adjusted because, I shit you not, his balls were too big for the inseam. Obama, that’s how he passed social security, the civil rights act, and got us bogged down in Vietnam, without even being elected! (Ok, the first time).
Entertaining quotes from this conversation:
I vary 10 to 15 pounds a month.
Now, another thing: the crotch, down where your nuts hang, is always a little too tight… It’s like riding a wire fence.
…see if you can’t leave me about an inch from where my zipper [belches] ends around my –back to my bunghole.
The 21st Century
Scientists create invisibility cloak.
Sorry, I’m going to stiff you with one of those science stories that sounds awesome until you realize that what was actually accomplished is still at the microscopic level. In this case, researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany and Imperial College London have created an invisibility cloak. That’s 100 microns by 30 microns. It’s like saying that Bernoulli invented the 747 in 1738 because he worked out the foundational math.
Still, it’s pretty cool that objects like this might be seen in my lifetime.
I can’t explain why I like this video. But I do.
[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/3924090]
An awesome collection of GIFs. Yes, GIFs.
If you want to feel like you’re being brainwashed, click here.
