At midnight on Tuesday, I went to Best Buy to buy the 2-disc special edition of Star Trek. I saved two bucks on it by going then. For a while I had been tempted by Target's DVD case that doubles as a model of the Enterprise, but I ultimately decided that Best Buy's plain ol' DVD case was a much better deal.

I look forward to watching it again, hopefully, this weekend, but I'm really looking foward to delving into the special features--especially the deleted scenes. Sure, some of the ones I was most looking forward to seeing have already been posted online, like Nero being interrogated by Klingons and Diora Baird as an Orion girl, but that doesn't make it any less exciting.


Sadly, not what the actual scene looks like.

But it turns out I have even more reason to be excited as one of the deleted scenes involved cameos from two of my favorite Star Trek aliens, inside the Klingon prison.

1. The Salt Vampire:



2. My absolute favoritest Star Trek alien of all time, The Gorn:



Now, I'm not 100% on board with their Gorn. Its face is too humanoid and I really miss the disco eyeballs. But that is an awesome design, otherwise, and I can't wait to see it in motion. Also, I now want to see a sequel with the Gorn as villains even more than I did before I saw that picture.

I'm especially glad that they chose to go the practical effects route. I never watched Star Trek: Enterprise while it was actually on the air, but after it was cancelled, I heard about the fact that one episode featured a Gorn. Finally, after all these years of waiting to see my favorite race make another appearance!

And then, I discovered that it looked like this:


What the fuck is this shit?!

So while some people have complained that this new Gorn sucks, I can't agree. At least the filmmakers knew better than to make it a CGI iguana/velociraptor hybrid.

Though I will grant you that saying, "They did it better than Enterprise", is setting a mighty low bar to hurdle.

So, earlier today I was chatting with some folks about the upcoming shitty remake of Clash of the Titans, which incidentally has the laziest tag line I've seen in ages, and it brought back a memory I had from when I was about 11 or 12.

I had a friend who had gotten me into Magic: The Gathering, and he had this fantasy magazine and it had an article listing various hypothetical match-ups. Like, Smaug vs. Puff the Magic Dragon. (A pretty hilarious one) Well, one of them was Godzilla vs. The Kraken from Clash of the Titans.


This guy...


...against this guy.

It was a surprisingly well-thought out battle, too. And, as you might expect, fairly even right up until Godzilla finally unleashes his atomic breath against Kraken and blows a hole right through its skull. Out of curiosity, I decided to look and see if anybody ever put that match-up online where I could relive the memories.

What did I find instead? Morons. I found morons.

( Morons! )

Say, remember that vampire fleshlight I was all horrified over?

Yeah, thanks to an article cleolinda linked to, I discovered that it's even worse than I had imagined. Much, much worse.

( Don't let your penis see this... )

As you all may recall, my intent for Halloween was to dress up as this fuzzy gentleman:



Even though it was only to pass out candy to trick-r-treaters. And so I did.

That wasn't the only lycanthropy on display. I didn't get a chance to carve a pumpkin this year, but I did draw myself a werewolf pumpkin.



And then, of course, I transformed into The Wolf Man...

( AAaaaaWWwwwOoooo... )

Earlier this week, I made a horrifying discovery. I thought myself pretty much inured to such things, but, well, it appears that I was wrong.

I've always found the sexualization of vampires a bit troubling. However, I had no idea just how troubling it truly could be.

Now, it may not be necessary to tell you this, but the following is pretty much not safe for work. Seriously, don't blame me if the boss catches you looking at it and he/she fires you....or worse, thinks you are into the same disturbing shit he/she is.

( NSFW, duh )

Well, I am going to attempt to realize a dream I have had since I was 8 or 9, and dress up as this handsome fellow:



I'm not going to any Halloween parties, however, so it will be mainly for answering the door and handing out candy. I haven't fully figured out my clothes for the costume, but I will be using a werewolf make-up kit that came rubber fangs, a make-up palette with brush, an adhesive, and werewolf fur. I will, however, be subbing some theatrical hair I bought separately for the fur since it was the absolute wrong color. I will be using some standard press-on nails, cut into the right shape, for my claws.

Having a beard means that at least part of the fur is already in place, so hopefully it will look good with the stuff I add on.

We haven't quite figured out Isabelle's costume yet. We were planning to have her dress as a gypsy so as to recreate the tragic romantic pairing from House of Frankenstein.



Unfortunately, none of the stores had a costume for her that didn't suck, so we may be improvising a costume out of the clothes she already has. Looking at the still from House of Frankenstein instead of relying on my own memory, I can see that her closet is probably a better and more accurate source than the tons of "skanky gypsy" costumes you could find in the store.

So we'll see how that turns out.

So, over at Shakesville earlier this evening, they were discussing an article that, as a both a horror fan and a liberal, immediately perked my ears up. A list by a troglodyte named John Hawkins:

10 Horror Movies For Conservatives To Watch This Halloween

Because, of course, as we all know conservative horror fans are a criminally overlooked niche. It's not as if there's an entire subgenre of horror films with implicit conservative leanings, or anything.

Still, let's see what the man has to say.

Halloween is almost upon us and you're probably thinking, "Gee, wouldn't it be great to kick back on the couch and rent a few conservative horror flicks for the big night?"

Ooh, you mean like Barack Obama's presidential inauguration video?


"I solemnly swear to burrrn...."

Here's the problem: horror films aren't family friendly. They're gory, they're violent, and they're vulgar. Even setting that aside, there really aren't very many "conservative" movies overall and there are almost no truly "conservative" horror flicks. Still, as a Right-Wing horror film aficionado, I can at least make a few solid recommendations that might have some extra-added appeal for conservatives.

I don't think he "understands" how to "properly" use "quotation marks" when he's "writing".

Of course, the true horror begins before Mr. Hawkins can even list the first movie he chose out of a hat. First you are greeted by the Lovecraftian sight of a banner ad for Sarah Palin's ghostwritten autobiography Going Rogue. (Sadly, not a sequel to Rogue, so do not expect it to end with Sarah Palin strapping dynamite to herself before leaping into the maw of a giant crocodile) Then there's the ad on the side of the page for "conservative t-shirts" featuring an Aryan woman wearing a shirt emblazoned with "I'D RATHER BE WATERBOARDING".

Geddit? Cuz torture is funny!

One wonders how anything on Mr. Hawkins's list can be remotely as horrifying.

( Have sex and you'll die! Vote Republican! )

Why do I do this myself? Why?

Before I begin my grievances in earnest, let me just direct your attention to the image above. Tell me that does not look like an H.R. Giger painting of a vagina. You can't do it, can you?

That face belongs to the film's villain, The Fallen. Yes, The Fallen is actually the name of a Decepticon and not a plural form as I had assumed when I first heard the movie's title in more blissfully ignorant times and assumed they were trying to make this their The Empire Strikes Back. Once I learned what it actually referred to, any illusions I had of this movie possessing a single good quality evaporated.

Incidentally, his unfortunate face is not the only handicap The Fallen, uh, faces. He also looks like a Bionicle toy come to life.


"I seek revenge on the artist that designed me!"

Between the face that resembles human genitals--which I can't even say is inadvertant since I've actually seen the film--and looking like a shameless rip-off of another toy line, even giving him Tony Todd's voice can't make him a compelling villain.

And the film's lame-ass villain isn't even the worst part of it. After all, Star Trek had a horribly lame villain and it still pretty much rocked. No, the problem with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is pretty much everything else.

( Can't we just let the Decepticons win? )

It's almost not worth mentioning the various things that pissed me off this week. I tried to save all my vitriol up for Mr. "Women Are Ruining Sci-Fi With Their Vaginas", but there were two other stories this week that got my back up.

One of course, being everybody losing their minds because Meghan McCain has boobs! And, like, oh my God, she doesn't completely cover them when she's home alone.


And I'm sure the fact that she's an intelligent young woman and a Republican who supports same-sex marriage had nothing to do with it, no sir.

Seriously, the picture everyone lost their shit over? Was this:



Oh my God, how dare she happen to have large breasts and find tank tops comfortable! Personally, the thing I find most remarkable about this picture is that every site that's reproduced it has done so with the image mirrored, as you can see above. I really don't understand this. Perhaps it was done to try and make you not notice that the focus of the image was clearly supposed to be the fucking book she's cramming into the camera and not her cleavage in the background.

But then, that'd be asking the people who were outraged to acknowledge that books exist. And that they can be read for pleasure or education. Can't have that, can we?

I happen to respect Meghan McCain, even if I'm mystified that such a progressive person would chose to self-identify as Republican, and I really don't think I can say anything else on this matter that she hasn't already said herself. All I can say is it's ridiculous she should have to be made to feel such shame over a photo that wouldn't raise a single eyebrow on the average Facebook page just because she happens to be busty.

Then, of course we have the case of the Justice of the Peace in Louisiana who has refused to grant marriage licenses to interracial couples. Thankfully, the bastard is pretty much catching all kinds of heat for that now, but it's still horribly troubling. The way the guy tried to defend his actions did not help, either.

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," [Keith] Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

No, you're not a racist--you're a racist fuckstick. Seriously, "they use my bathroom"? How can anybody say something so horribly disgusting and not realize how racist it is?

But it's his reason for denying interracial couples the right to marry that truly gets me.

Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.

Yes, we all know that biracial people never achieve anything in life because of the horrible discrimination they face. I mean, what, do you think a biracial person could ever manage to overcome that? What, next you'll be saying that it's possible for someone of mixed race to become President of the United States!


Oh, wait.

Racist fuckstick.

There has long been an ugly stereotype of the kind of people who like science fiction. Awkward, asocial straight male losers who live in their parents' basements, can't deal with the real world, and have never known a woman's touch. Hell, said stereotypical sci-fi nerd probably hates women with a venomous passion, though his genitals would explode if he got within visual range of a pair of breasts that didn't belong to his mother.

I hate this stereotype. It completely overlooks the existence of female sci-fi fans, for one, and it has led to a culture where even the phrase "science fiction" cannot be bandied about, and to call your film "science fiction" is as anathema as gleefully selling it as "porn". Better call it "speculative fiction" or "futuristic" instead.

Of course, I hate this stereotype even more whenever I encounter someone who fits it to a T. And, of course, Juniper of The BMMB put me onto the repulsive scent of one such nerd. A nerd who identifies himself as "Pro-male/Anti-feminist Tech"--which says a lot right there--and has written two articles for a place called "The Spearhead", whose logo is Freudian on all kinds of levels.


Sometimes a spearhead is just a spearhead. This time it's a decapitated penis.

The other article by "Pro-male/Anti-feminist Tech", from here on Mr. Douche, is a mind-numbing rant typical of the "Men's Rights" movement. Feminism is female supremacism, nobody's looking out for the white men, the false rape industry is out to get us, blah blah blah. Yes, the "false-rape industry". I did not put words in his mouth. He actually professes to believe that there is a shady organization at large in this world, composed of women plotting at random to take down innocent men by accusing them of rape. Presumably for fun and profit.


"Come on, ladies, we have to make our false accusation quota!"

Now, I don't know about anyone else, but if you're seriously concerned that some woman might suddenly decide to falsely accuse you of rape, well, you may want to take a good long look at what you might have done to make you a likely candidate for such accusations. Owning anything written by Tucker Max, for instance.

However, the article that my dear Juni linked me to, knowing full well my own self-destructive nature would make me read all of it and even skim the *gag* comments section, was "The War on Science Fiction and Marvin Minsky". The gist of which is, of course, women are ruining science fiction with their filthy lady parts.

( Incidentally: Futuristic Lady Parts = Awesome Band Name )

So, this morning, NASA bombed the moon, ostensibly to discover whether or not the moon has water. Nevertheless, we have, effectively, opened fire upon a clestial body.

I think we all know what happens next...

( The Inevitable Conclusion )

Before we get to the subject of today's rant on Conservative Fuckheads Who Shouldn't Be Allowed Access to a Keyboard, let's take a moment to consider a basic life lesson. It's a very important life lesson, one that should never be forgotten.

This is a black person:



This is a gorilla:



Now, this should seem like an incredibly obvious question to most of you, but what is the one thing you should never, ever, ever do with these two?

That's right, you should never compare them. Ever. For any reason. This is not a hard rule to remember. In fact, it's pretty fucking simple. One of the most popular ways that racists liked to dehumanize black people was to compare them to "monkeys" or "gorillas" or even just "apes". It should thus be pretty Goddamned obvious that comparing a black person to an ape in any manner is automatically a racist fuckdick thing to do.

You can see where this is going.

Yes, once again some completely insensitive conservative douchebag named Paul A. Ibbetson, has decided to attack Obama by comparing him to a chimpanzee. But not just any chimpanzee. He could've settled for comparing him to the criminal chimp in Bedtime For Bonzo, who is put back on the straight and narrow thanks to the loving guidance of Ronald Reagan. But, no, that wouldn't do. Hell, he could even have compared him to the cute little chimp in Konga who, through the machinations of a mad scientist, becomes a murderous gorilla that grows to monstrous size and rampages through London. Surely there's some socialist allegory in that that would be ripe for the taking. Those guys do love their evil socialist metaphors.

No, Mr. Ibbetson went all the way and compared Obama to the entire human race being enslaved by apes.

Yes, that's right: I present to you, in safely diluted form, Paul A. Ibbetson's "A Return to The Planet of The Apes". That link will present you with excerpts from the article, carefully wrapped in snark for your safety. If you so wish it, you can get to the actual article from there.

And unlike the article's author, I refuse to stoop to parroting, "It's a madhouse!" at you.

( He's a racist! A RACIST! )

Just for fun--and because somebody else posted a video of it on their journal--I thought I'd take a moment to point out what is possibly the best example of why those who are Godzilla fans become Godzilla fans.

You might think that it's just because of the city stomping. Well, there's that, but it's so much more than that, and the clip I am about to show you from Invasion of Astro-Monster (aka Monster Zero) illustrates that beautifully. First, some background.

Godzilla, that's the big guy below for those of you who honestly had no idea...


...and his buddy Rodan...


...have been "borrowed" by some aliens, in order to help them rid their planet of the nefarious space demon, King Ghidorah.


And so, they fight, as illustrated in the following clip. And it is awesome. But it is not the fight that shows the true reason we become Godzilla fans. No, it is what happens at the end of the fight:



Yes, you saw that right. Godzilla just celebrated his victory with a little jig. It's silly, it's goofy, and it should be totally unexpected from a beast who, only two movies before was an unstoppable force of nature interested only in destroying everything in his path. And yet, it feels totally natural.

Godzilla is not just a monster, nor is he merely a guy in a rubber suit. He is a character. And nothing illustrates that fact better than seeing him do a giddy little jig after beating the snot out of a big bully like King Ghidorah.

So just remember whenever you're feeling down, just think of:

So, earlier today I'm in the BMMB chat room, just hanging out, when paladine drops a bomb on me: The chief of staff for Republican Senator Tom Coburn has just said that reading Playboy makes you gay.


Just look at that Goddamn homo.

I try to puzzle this out. That statement does not make sense in any language I know. And then it hits me:

He must mean because when you touch your own penis, you automatically want to touch other penises! I mean, you can't have just one of those, right? They're like Lay's potato chips!


I'm gonna be hearing from their lawyers, aren't I?

Well, good ol' paladine goes ahead and links to the article where he found the quote. And lo, and behold, I'm more or less right.

Now, you could just read that article--it's not long--and you'd feel just as fulfilled in having learned that Playboy makes you into a queer. But, really, you expect me to do more than just link to that, don't you?

( Playboy, the Rainbow Gateway Drug... )

Like accidentally discovering this picture today:



Letting a child use an alligator as a draft horse is simultaneously the worst idea ever and the most awesome thing I wish I could have done as a kid.

I love movies. I love DVDs. That should be clear to anybody who's read even a handful of my entries on here.

One of the things I love about movies is the poster art. There's nothing quite like a good poster. One of the reasons I love owning movies so much is not just that I can then watch them any time I wish, but so that I can gaze at that lovely poster art any time I want to.

Unfortunately, these days DVD distributors don't seem at all interested in giving you a copy of that movie you loved with its gorgeous original poster art. No, for whatever reason, the average DVD cover these days seems to have been created in five minutes by an intern with the most basic photoshop skills. Seriously, I have to wonder if I shouldn't apply to be a DVD cover designer. It seems as if they'll let anyone do it.

What really makes it burn, though, is when the original poster art is so cool and the end result is so awfully pathetic. I mean, let's look at any example of bad DVD photoshop that doesn't bother me because the original cover wasn't that spectacular to begin with:




See? That's some sad photoshop there, but it's not like their original option was all that great. Want to see an example that really pisses me off?




Seriously, what the fucking hell? Who decided it was a good idea to go from a poster that kicks all sorts of ass and crams nearly every monster in the film onto like one massive daikaiju brawl, to that puke-colored monstrosity that barely bothers throwing three monsters on it and throws Not-Keanu down there in the bottom. Oh, and it sort of spoils the "surprise" appearance of Kaiser Ghidorah.

That's not even the worst of it, though...

( Photoshop Kills, Man )

Immediately after Twilight's success at the box office, it was reported that there was one good bit of news about it being so successful: Platinum Dunes, the folks behind the shitastic remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, and the upcoming A Nightmare on Elm Street redux, decided to scrap their remake of the Southern gothic vampire film Near Dark. Apparently this was because they feared that their film would be too similar to Twilight.

This in and of itself is sort of funny, since that runs pretty much opposite of the usual studio M.O. when it comes to successful films. When I finally got around to seeing Near Dark, I realized that it was silly to think anyone could ever have confused the two. The only thing they have in common is that they both involve an ordinary human falling for a beautiful vampire and being assimilated into said vampire's clan. Even there the differences are pretty damn stark: the human is a man and the beautiful vampire is a woman, and the vampire clan are not a bunch of "vegetarians" by any stretch of the imagination.

However, I'm glad that the remake got ditched anyways. Near Dark has some glaring flaws, mainly in its third act, but there's no way in Hell I'd trust the jokers over at Platinum Dunes to fix it. So it's a good thing that they decided the comparisons to Twilight should be avoided at all costs.

So, imagine my digust when I was browsing the DVDs at Best Buy--I'm always on the look out for another awesome DVD I can't get--and discovered that the fine folks at Lions Gate had no such qualms about drawing dishonest parallels to Twilight on the new DVD edition:



At first maybe you think that they merely tried their damnedest to make Adrain Pasdar (the human, remember) look like Robert Pattinson, which would be bad enough. But it's even worse than that. They completely copied the DVD cover for Twilight. Right down to the "bad" vampires hanging out at the bottom of the image.



And, I assure you, the attempts to make Near Dark look like an Asylum rip-off of Twilight continue on the back of the DVD cover. As I said, it's hilariously disingenuous because they've made Adrian Pasdar look like the vampire and Jenny Wright look like the human. Hell, on the front cover they even try to make her appear brunette when she's a blonde in the film!

So, yeah, this pisses me off. On the other hand, as El Santo said over on The BMMB, I would dearly love to be a fly on the wall when an unsuspecting Twihard witnesses the scene where Bill Paxton slashes a biker's throat with his boot spur.

There were several movies I was genuinely excited for this summer. Star Trek; Terminator: Salvation; Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; and District 9 were the biggest ones.

Star Trek was flawed, but it met my expectations well. Terminator: Salvation pretty much had no reason to exist, but it was a fun waste of time. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was better than I was expecting, but ultimately was missing something.

So that brings us to District 9. From the trailers, it was clearly a sort of a riff on Alien Nation, but for once the oppressed aliens didn't look just like us--a trope I'm as sick of as any true sci-fi fan should be--but instead looked like some unholy combination of Cthulhu and a katydid. Or, as the film calls them in a clever dig at the tendency of oppressors to denegrate the oppressed by comparing them to a "lower" life form: "Prawns".



Also, the trailers featured a giant alien robot wrecking shit. How could I not love that? So, yeah, I was psyched to see this...and then, for a variety of reasons, I had to put off seeing it for a week. In that week, I heard tons of rave reviews--and more than a few negative reviews rife with charges of racism--so I was even more psyched.

Turns out a week can make a big difference. I left the theater, I confess, feeling disappointed. I wanted to like the film, and indeed, there are parts that I liked--but it never made the connection I was hoping for.



( There's a lot of secrets in District 9... )

Science fiction is not always about that perfect, ideal future that we're going to spend the rest of our lives in. Sometimes it's all about how much the future is going to suck. Sometimes it's just about robots blowing shit up.


Sometimes it's about all that and awesome space ships.

Yet, when most of us think about science fiction writers, we think of fairly intelligent people who dream of a future where we've all grown beyond our petty shit and learned to work together. (And occasionally get married to aliens) We generally think of them as fairly enlightened and relatively forward-thinking.

However, there are some science fiction authors who are apparently offended at being stereotyped as "intelligent". Orson Scott Card is one of these and I'm quite happy to say that I have never purchased nor read any of his work. And, today, thanks to the always delightful Amelia on The BMMB, I discovered that one John C. Wright is another of these anti-intellectual authors in a genre usually known for its attempts at intellectualism.

I'd never even heard of John C. Wright, to the best of my knowledge, before Amelia pointed out this charming livejournal entry that he wrote. You may try to read it at your own risk. I could barely make it halfway down the page before I had to look away for fear the stupidity might melt my brain. Also, he's locked comments to the entry, no doubt because he got sick of being told what an idiot he was five ways from Sunday.

[EDIT: In fact, he's taken that entry down since I wrote this. But don't worry, every other entry on his journal is just as hateful and homophobic. This man is a troll of the highest magnitude]

See, Wright has an issue with the SyFy Channel. Now, admittedly, this is rather like saying you have an issue with mosquitoes. Except, of course, his issue is incredibly stupid. He's pissed that they backed down in the face of "homosex activists" who were angry that SyFy had committed the "thoughtcrime" of not having enough positive portrayals of gay or lesbian characters on its network. Yes, the parts in quotes are his actual words. This guy is a published author (and, according to his rant, a guy with a doctorate in law) and the cleverest derogatory name he can think to call gay people is "homosex".

As an aside, "Homosex Thoughtcrime" is a pretty sweet band name.

( HOMOSEX! )