Alone and Unobserved

It has come to my attention that SOME OF YOU have ignored the gushing praise I’ve lavished on Avery Edison on Twitter, and my stern directives to the effect that YE SHALL ALL READ WHAT SHE WRITES AND LOVE IT GODDAMMIT. Some of you, I’m told, aren’t even on Twitter, which is just sad. *tsk tsk tsk*

So I’m diversifying, and bringing my call to action here to my blog, which hardly anyone reads anymore because I never update it. STOP PICKING ON ME I’M IN GRAD SCHOOL. (That’s my current excuse for everything. “I’ll be a better librarian when I’m out of school.” “I can’t empty the dishwasher, I’m in grad school.” “I don’t have time to do homework, DON’T YOU KNOW I’M A GRAD STUDENT???”)

Where to find Avery Edison online:

twitter.com/aedison

Random funny.

AveryEdison.com

Jesus and Judas! …and more!

The Small Picture, Commonplace and Proud Nature

Photo comics.

Answering Yahoos

Avery answers questions from Yahoo! Answers with tact, compassion and aplomb. Hahaha! I kid. She totally skewers the questioners, because they are idiots.

UPDATED November 11, 2009:
I Don’t Know What’s Worse — The Zombie Apocalypse, Or The Patriarchy. Probably The Zombie Thing.

Avery’s 2009 NaNoWriMo novel. About holding off the ZOMBIE HORDES.

You really should check her out, because oh, my word, she is FUNNY.

An ancient code in the monuments of Ottawa.
A ruthless cult determined to protect it.
A desperate race to uncover the Mormon Church’s darkest secret.

When renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to the National Gallery of Canada to analyze a mysterious geometric form—etched into the floor next to the disemboweled corpse of the head docent—he discovers evidence of the unthinkable: the resurgence of the ancient cult of the Quintifori, a secret branch of the Mormon Church that has surfaced from the shadows to carry out its legendary vendetta against its mortal enemy, the Vatican.

Langdon’s worst fears are confirmed when a messenger from the Quintifori appears at the Parliament Buildings to deliver a macabre ultimatum: Turn over the archbishop, or one cherub will disappear from the Sistine Chapel every day. With the deadline fast approaching, Langdon joins forces with the saucy and charming daughter of the murdered docent in a desperate bid to crack the code that will reveal the cult’s secret plan.

Embarking on a frantic hunt, Langdon and his companion follow a 900-year-old trail through Ottawa’s most venerable monuments and sacred monuments, pursued by a Norwegian assassin the cult has sent to thwart them. What they discover threatens to expose a conspiracy that goes all the way back to Joseph Smith and the very founding of the Mormon Church.

Generate your own thrilling Dan Brown thriller in seconds with Slate.com’s Dan Brown Sequel Generator!

(H/T to Ryan Shattuck of RevolutionsforFunandProfit.com.)

I put up a new comic! It stars many of my friends, some of whom might decide to no longer be my friends if they saw the comic. So… it’s our little secret.

Subtitle: “Take My Wife!”

Via RichardDawkins.net

Storm: A Beat Poem by Tim Minchin

The Colbert Coalition’s Anti-Gay Marriage Ad

I watched the movie Alien last night, and, since there was no one present to make snarky comments to, I turned to Twitter. That’s right, I live-Twittered the movie! Below are all 28 updates, from the first (which presciently prefigured all the mayhem in store) to the last (which presciently prefigures the fact that Alien has a SEQUEL).

(I stopped the film several times, which is why the timestamps run 129 minutes while the film only runs 117.)

[ 2008-12-30 22:35:01 ]
Eating brown rice & Quorn and watching Alien. They’re approaching the face-hugger nest NO DON’T GO OVER THERE!!!

[ 2008-12-30 22:40:19 ]
Someone’s face is about to get hugged. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, mister!

[ 2008-12-30 22:55:07 ]
FACE=HUGGED (also, @ping.fm = back?)

[ 2008-12-30 23:05:14 ]
Ack! Chestburster! CHESTBURSTER!!!!

[ 2008-12-30 23:10:05 ]
None of you are safe! It’s a ship of death you are on!! DEEEAAAAAAATH!!!!! (I wish I had some popcorn.)

[ 2008-12-30 23:22:37 ]
The alien just sucker-punched him. With its MOUTH. I call unfair advantage.

[ 2008-12-30 23:28:37 ]
Now a guy is crawling through tight ducts w/ flamethrower. Even w/o a killer alien, that’s the kind of situation that does not end well.

[ 2008-12-30 23:32:32 ]
I can’t believe they can’t track something that produces that much snot. And–yup, he just put his hand in it YUM

[ 2008-12-30 23:37:42 ]
It just wanted to hug you, man! Stop screaming and struggling! The alien is FILLED WITH LOVE

[ 2008-12-30 23:40:55 ]
Sorry, Ripley. Mother is all out of happy answers. (Also: I never realized that “project the screen on their faces” trick was quite so old.)

[ 2008-12-30 23:47:24 ]
Never trust a man with milk in his veins, for he will use his terrifying strength to–wait, that’s not what rolled-up magazines are for!!!

[ 2008-12-30 23:52:49 ]
There’s some alchemy of milk and camera angles that made that guy’s severed head look like a rubber mask for a moment. No, look, he’s back!

[ 2008-12-31 00:01:09 ]
Somehow I didn’t expect “coolant” to come in such small bottles. Maybe this is the recreational size, from Ripley’s private stash?

[ 2008-12-31 00:04:40 ]
So the cat whose existence surprised you earlier–you know, the one you almost tazed to death–suddenly has a name, and is worth your life?

[ 2008-12-31 00:07:38 ]
JUST FOLLOW THE RIVER OF MUCUS OMG

[ 2008-12-31 00:17:48 ]
This self-destruct is brought to you by your disapproving grandmother.

[ 2008-12-31 00:19:41 ]
“You BITCH!”

[ 2008-12-31 00:22:01 ]
Mother’s very disappointed in you, Ripley. The alien is too.

[ 2008-12-31 00:23:41 ]
Mother, how many times you gotta explode? Why won’t you just DIE?!

[ 2008-12-31 00:27:11 ]
Ripley’s down to her panties. Should I be excited? IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME?? (Maybe I’m gay. OH NOES)

[ 2008-12-31 00:29:19 ]
Ms. Weaver’s ass is (was?) flatter than her chest. It’s flatter than Debra Messing’s chest!

[ 2008-12-31 00:30:36 ]
ACKTHPP OMG THE ALIEN JUST TRIED TO MOLEST HER!!! WITH ITS HAND!!!

[ 2008-12-31 00:33:26 ]
Ripley repulses the alien’s advance and remains unmoved by its sultry bedroom demeanor and shameless vamping.

[ 2008-12-31 00:34:42 ]
Okay, that was WAY more crotch than I wanted to see, lady.

[ 2008-12-31 00:37:39 ]
The alien gives her another sultry come-hither stare, but Ripley’s eyes are full of DEATH. And her hands are full of toy harpoon gun.

[ 2008-12-31 00:40:59 ]
Look out! There’s a man in an odd rubber suit, clambering outside on the hull!!!! Obviously a pervert.

[ 2008-12-31 00:43:36 ]
Now she’s reclining in a caftan. And now it’s over! Now: bed. Tomorrow: New Year’s Eve!!!

[ 2008-12-31 00:44:26 ]
Now I need to rewatch Aliens. But not tonight.

…it’ll be too late, and then you won’t have to worry about it, right? Right??

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhDRVKDcXQo&hl=en&fs=1]

Dear J. Crew:

While I haven’t bought anything in your store or at your website since purchasing that grotesquely oversized saddlebag two years ago—at which point I gave you both my email and physical addresses in order to receive a significant discount on said item—I appreciate receiving your catalog every month. As I have no use for women’s clothes, women’s jewelry or women*, I always page immediately to the back one-seventh of the catalog and look through the menswear section. This gives me literally seconds of enjoyment before the catalog ends up adorning either my trashcan or my settee.

I have one complaint, however, and one request.

You know that I’m not reading your catalog for the clothes, right? So why do only one or two of the menswear pages feature attractive models, as opposed to the majority of the womenswear pages? Is the lesbian vote more important than mine?

On the same note: in the future, please make sure to feature the following model in all of your catalogs, instead of only in most of them. I think we can both agree that “most” is not good enough when it comes to Mr. Teh Hotness.

Mr. Teh Hotness, as currently featured on jcrew.com

Mr. Teh Hotness 2

Thank you.

Sincerely yours, &c.,

Sean Tibbitts

* Ladies, I kid! I of course exempt black pencil skirts, drop earrings, my mother and my sisters** from this unfair generalization. (back)

** Well, some of my sisters. (back)

I hope you all enjoyed the three Rufus Wainwright videos I posted yesterday. Remember, there are many more of his videos and many, many more of his tracks to watch and listen to. YouTube and iTunes are your friends! Also: bittorrent.

If you don’t know what “slash fiction” is, Mr. Neil Gaiman has your back. Or had your back, back in 2002. But his words are timeless: in response to a reader’s request, he explained that

. . . slash fiction is basically erotic fan fiction, normally TV series based, pairing off two (er or more I suppose) members of the same sex who don’t normally couple for the cameras. From the “/” mark in the middle of “Kirk/Spock” or “K/S” fiction, which is where it all started. (“But Spock,” said Kirk, huskily, realising, finally, irrevocably, what his true self had been trying to tell him ever since the beginning of season one, “it’s so huge. And it’s green.” “And it would be logical for you to… touch it, Captain,” said Spock. And so on. It’s normally written by extremely nice ladies. I have several very sane, respected, and respectable friends who write slash fiction, and do not try to make me read it.)

Thanks to Dan Guy the webgoblin for this quote.

Oktapodi
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhNvQZ7DrNk&hl=en&fs=1]

[Via Fabulist]

Mr. Rogers Can See You
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBTpSqE3ipY&hl=en&fs=1]
[Via ericdsnider.com]

I wasn’t hungry at noon today, so I spent my lunch hour exercising in the library’s tiny workout room. Afterwards I was changing in the likewise tiny locker room, feeling a sense of manly accomplishment, when I heard a noise from the bathroom stall. My immediate reaction was to think, There’s someone else in here. How long have they been there? What have they overheard??? Oh, right, they heard me holding forth at length about my underwear.

You see, I have a slight problem. I talk to myself, out loud, ALL THE TIME.

If I’m in a room with you but think I’m alone, I may treat you to:

• A monologue on my views on the state of health care in the United States, possibly compared and contrasted with the health care systems of other countries
• One half of a conversation with a person who is not physically present about how they have failed me personally in the past and what I will expect of them in the future if they are to return to my good graces
• A lengthy discussion of the circumstances under which I dropped a glass jar of instant coffee on my foot, and what the resulting lump looks like, and whether I think it will ever heal (I change my mind on this point hourly)

Or, as today, you might hear a one-sided discussion on whether I think my undershirt is too sheer to serve as a workout top (I decided it was, but I wore it anyway).

Some of these bizarre little soliloquies become blog posts, or inspire blog posts (like this one!). Some become stories, or ideas for novels. And some serve only as further evidence that I am a tool short of a shed. Fortunately, it turned out that I really was alone today in the locker room. So, while my secret is still safe and I won’t be committed to a mental hospital yet, I’m starting to hear noises on top of talking to people who aren’t there. Maybe there is a medication I should be taking?

[Photo of painting "LABYRINTH: Maybe I am Crazy" by Emin Sinanyan.]