Ed Rondthaler

This guy, a brilliant typographist, and a married man for 72 years, just recently died at 104 on August 19th. I found this video while searching the web for typography blogs (and I found a pretty good one).

Is This Awesome? [y/n]

First off, I must console all of our avid fans (of which we have thousands, surely) who missed us over the weekend. Ironically, we tend to post more during the busy week than in the relatively less busy weekends. Of course, we were understandable delayed; we had to attend a 2-day long party. With chicks. And electronic music. Yeah.

You can see Steven and I right there on the right. Riiiiiight there. See us? No? Screw you.

Now that that’s settled, it’s time to get onto important business.

Ladies and Germs, the time has come to cast away silly pretensions, to go through life with our eyes closed, pretending we don’t know. It is the time to stop lying, to take of our masks of indifference, to stare ourselves in the face, with or without mirror, and finally admit to ourselves a simple truth:

There are people in this world named “Thorbjørn”, and we are not them.

Don’t worry, men, tears are acceptable, although if I wanted to save face, I would go grab an onion and bite into it posthaste. But you really aren’t the important people here anyway. No, the important people are the Thorbjørns of the world. Oh, Thorbjørns, what tragic figures. You are endowed with quite possibly the most manly moniker ever conceived, yet you are trapped by ice floes in the frigid north-lands of Norway, unable to contact the rest of the world and let them know how awesome your name is. Until now.

Let me enlighten any of the ignorant among our readership as per the origin of the name “Thorbjørn”. According to Wikipedia, the Norse gods frequently meddled in mortal affairs, in some cases when two Viking clans met in battle to resolve a disagreement (which happened quite often, explaining the world’s current lack of Vikings). In these cases, the gods would, and I quote, “send forth Thor to participate in the confrontation on whichever side they favored. In this case, Thor would take the form of a large black bear and charge ahead of the selected victors when the battling lines clashed, literally ripping the hapless losers to shreds.” (Wikipedia)

Thorbjørn: When you know you've lost the battle.

If you haven’t completely lost your cool by now, then you don’t fully understand. Let me explain it to you - Thorbjørn literally translates to “Thor’s bear”, i.e. the black bear into which Thor tranformed when he felt like eviscerating entire Viking clans. Not only that, but Wikipedia continues to state that both sides of the battle would lose their honor in this case, the losers for being utterly defeated (they could not retreat, for this would cause them to lose even more honor) and the winners for having such an unfair advantage (a god in the form of a bear [! {!!}]). The winners of course, could not refuse to fight, for to do so would be to displease the gods. Let’s recap. Basically, Thorbjørn rocked the battlefield so hard that he even made Vikings feel bad about winning.

“Question.”

“Yes, Jimmy?”

HOW THE HELL DID THESE PEOPLE’S PARENTS MAKE THE DECISION TO NAME THEM THUSLY?! There must be some ridiculous threshold of awesomeness that determines whether you child will be named Thorbjørn or just plain Olaf. I mean, seriously, the baby would have had to hack it’s way through its mother’s womb and jump out in full Viking garb, roaring, for me to even consider naming it Thorbjørn.

I think that there’s a lesson here for all of us, and I think it can be fairly divided into three parts:

1. Thorbjørn is the greatest name ever. Seriously, this is better than naming your kid Zeus Chuck Norris Hasselhoff. Which I don’t recommend, for the record.

2. If more people were named Thorbjørn, war would end. Don’t believe me? Then you obviously didn’t read the paragraph above about how Thorbjørn makes both sides of a battle lose, in their hearts.

3. You should name your child Thorbjørn. If you don’t, you are basically dooming the human race to extinction due to lack of awesome.

Thank you for your time.

Hot Fruit Sex

Now that I have your attention, allow me to direct you to possibly one of the most entertaining news stories I’ve read about since this story on China trying to control the weather for the olympics.

Some pretty hot stuff.

A man in England is in a tizzy over the fact that some Haribo candy wrappers feature a lime fornicating with other fruits. Now, admittedly, they do look like they are getting pretty hot and heavy, and by using the whole sex thing, I don’t know how people are avoiding the obvious idea that they are eating a fruit baby when they eat the candy. But what separates this story from other stories about inanimate objects having sex is that the fellow who finds these wrappers to be offensive has some of the best diction I have ever seen ever. Here is part of the article to show you what I mean:

Mr Simpkins of Pontefract, West Yorkshire, told The Sun: “The lemon and lime are locked in what appears to be a carnal encounter.

“The lime, who I assume to be the gentleman in this coupling, has a particularly lurid expression on his face.

“I demanded to see the shop manager and, during a heated exchange, my wife became quite distressed and had to sit down in the car park.”

Just based off the way that guy talks, I automatically want to side with him. I mean, ‘lurid’ and ‘carnal encounter’? The last time I heard those words used was in my fantasy Victorian-era detective show. Even better is the fact that the man’s wife is so overcome by stress when thinking about the wrappers she has to sit down in the car park. Getting frazzled about candy wrappers featuring a lime who also happens to be a player is like getting frazzled about two androgynous stick figures makin’ some loving.

In the future, everyone wears pink anti-gravity top-hats while having sex.

Does anyone else have any wild and crazy stories relating to candy? If so, why not tell them, in the comments?!

The Graveyard Book

While at the library the other day I came across a book by one of my favorite living authors, Neil Gaiman, which I had not seen before, entitled The Graveyard Book. Published last fall, it won the 2009 Newbery Medal and the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Novel (!).

It is categorized as a book for children of grades 5-8, but since I like Gaiman so much, and the synopsis looked intriguing, I checked it out. I haven’t started it quite yet (I’m currently reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies), but from what I could glean from the cover it’s a re-telling of The Jungle Book by Kipling, the twist being that this young orphan has been raised by ghosts in a graveyard rather than by wolves in the jungle. Having recently read (or tried to read) East of Eden, of which I was not a huge fan, but which is a modern re-telling of the story told in Genesis, it got me to thinking as to what the specific merits and implications of such re-tellings are, aesthetically and philosophically. Once I finish the book I will let you know my thoughts. I’m expected great things from an already highly-acclaimed book by one of my favorite storytellers.

A Quick Redesign Update

So, as some of you may know, I’m in the process of redesigning Danger Syndicate, and I think it’s coming along nicely. I’ve gotten to the point where I can start coding in PHP and WordPress, after which I’ll be able to put it live on the site, and make changes from there. Let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions by commenting or emailing us.

Music Tuesday: I like it better than monday cos of the “yew” sound in the middle.

Current musical addiction: Electro-house! Its like everything you loved about electro and house combined. There’s not much more to say about it than that. Just lissen’ yo’self reallll good:

Wolfgang Gartner is for sure my new fave. And he’s from Austin, the home-land of D.S.

District 9: A Three-Part Review

So I (Steven) was thinking of reviewing District 9 myself, but I thought it would be much better to do a joint review on it. Zach, Jeff and I saw it last Friday night, and overall thought it fantastic. However, presented here are our more detailed opinions.

Warning: We will not censor our information, and there will be spoilers. If you haven’t seen the movie, go see it. It’s good. Really good. If you have, read on.

Jeff

I first want to point out that the only reason this movie was made (according to the Wikipedia article) was that the Halo movie fell through due to disagreements and Peter Jackson felt obligated to fund another film for Blomkamp, so, yeah, I’m really glad that they never made that Halo film (even though the trailer looked pretty sweet). Also, just to throw it out there before I get into the grit, I really, really enjoyed this movie. I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a movie in theatres this much since probably The Dark Knight.

While this film was unique and great in many ways, some of which Steven writes about below, one thing that struck me throughout the movie was a parallel, I believe intentional, between the prawns and the Formic species from Ender’s Game. The thought actually didn’t occur to me immediately, but some time into the movie when one of the “interviewees” says that the aliens don’t understand the concept of ownership. Other parts in the movie kept obscurely reminding me of the Formics as I watched, but when I got home after the movie I cracked open my copy of Ender’s Game, opened up the Formic Wiki page, and start to find more and more of what I think are references to the Formics. Among them are the lack of ownership in Prawn society, the derogatory handle of “Prawn” (corresponds to “Buggers”), a hive mind society, and also the negative human reaction to actions that the Prawns didn’t even think would be a problem. The Wiki page for the Formics deals with this, and it is a theme critical to Ender’s Game, one that I thought was quite blatantly borrowed for District 9. Says the Wiki page:

“Humanity’s first contact with the Formics resulted in bloodshed, leading humans to conclude that the Formics were hostile. However, the Formics had not intended any hostility. As a species with a hive mind, they believed that an individual is expendable. Thus, when they killed individual humans upon first contact, the Formics ‘gave it no more thought than a human would [give] clipping his toenails’. It was meant not to be a hostile act, but rather serve as an acknowledgement of human beings as another hive minded species. Once the Formics realized that humans were sentient individuals, unlike themselves, they immediately halted their attacks. Unfortunately, without any means of communication between the two species, humanity did not realize this fact.”

So once you’ve seen the movie you can see a lot of parallels that I really enjoyed between the two fictional species. Essentially, this movie was not only great as far as the cinematography, acting, and directing went, but also in that it dealt with some great themes regarding alien races that are very reminiscent of what Orson Scott Card used in Ender.

Steven

In the beginning, this movie seemed like some sort of allegory to the oppression of blacks in the early-/mid-20th century, and there were many parallels — the discrimination, the “Humans Only” signs, the treatment, the slums the aliens were living in, the derogatory “prawns” — but, in the end, it turned out to be much more than a simple metaphor.

At first, the interview-style cinematography and dialogue annoyed me, because I like my movies to be more cinema-like, and less non-fictional, but the documentary style paid off in the end, and the present-tense epilogue was very nice. The last third of the movie was solid action anyway, which made up for it.

However, the single best aspect of District 9 was how realistic of a situation it was. Aliens have almost always been portrayed as intelligent, and usually with superior technology, and these (and other) sci-fi tropes were used. What made District 9 a completely atypical alien invasion film was that it wasn’t an invasion, and it wasn’t a straight-up massacre. The humans initially tried to help the aliens, and even though this ended up badly, and with violence and discrimination, I think it portrayed a more realistic idea of what would happen if aliens actually did come to our planet. We wouldn’t blow them up a la Independence Day, we would try to make peace at first, or at least experiment on them. And if aliens came to our planet, most likely they would do so on a scientific mission, not one of conquest.

Zach

District 9 is easily one of the best movies I’ve seen in a theatre in a pretty long time. What I think seperated it most from the average alien film is the fact that the further you get into the movie, the more you want the aliens to win. Most of the humans are pretty much total assholes, whilst the majority of the aliens are portrayed as more tragic figures. And Wikus van der Marwe, the main character, isn’t your average action movie star. On multiple occasions I actually thought that he was being pretty stupid, but then, you have to realize he is really just meant to be a guy who is ridiculously freaked out about turning into an alien.

So while the first half of the movie is generally meant to pull at your heartstrings (which is does quite well), the second part is donated to nothing but complete awesomeness. This movie easily has the most number of people exploding from being shot with alien laser rifles in any movie about accepting one another I’ve ever seen. Not only that, Wikus gets in an alien Mech thing and pretty much shows everyone whose boss. It is awesome. To the billionth power.

And if all that isn’t good enough, the alien leader is named Christopher Johnson.

Conclusion

So, to conclude, District 9 was maybe one of the better movies in a while. There’s really not a whole lot more I can say to wrap this up, except for that you should definitely go and see this movie, and you should subsequently tell us what you thought of it in the comments.

Bloody Deathcorpse 3000

I thought this group deserved a little more pride than Jeff was willing to give them in his previous post. So, I made the band an actual poster. Look for them in a town near you!

Reader poll: Would you buy this on a T-shirt? Because I sure would.

A Much Too Serious Post

Disclaimer: I tend to ramble. A lot. If you just want to read about the topic at hand, feel free to skip down to the fourth paragraph, but after that’s over, I won’t make any promises…

Ladies and gentlemen, everyone has their pet peeves, it is true. Steven, for example, will murder you if you come within one foot of his laryngeal prominence, Zach hates sugar so much that his pancreas refuses to process it, and Jonesy doesn’t like it when people laugh. I consider myself a fairly relaxed person, one might even go so far as to say “chill”, but there is one thing that gets me so tense I can hardly think; I absolutely cannot stand the word “talk”. It is true, yes! I hate hearing the word, completely loathe it, and take all precautions to avoid using it in conversation.

If you have any trouble understanding my distaste, let me make it perfectly clear; “talk” is, quite simply, a hideously ugly word. It is a word that reminds me not of the arching balustrades of an ancient college, or the romantic vistas atop a mist-cloaked mountain, but of a harsh, barbaric swampland, of kill or be killed, and of a primal animal fury. It’s a problem. Now, all of this intense imagery based on a single word sound might flabbergast (a fun and bubbly word, by the way) some of you, so let me give you a short background of my linguistic leanings.

I grew up reading Tolkien. Tolkien Tolkien Tolkien Tolkien Tolkien. I am fairly sure that the majority of my posts will in some way relate to him and/or his body of works, so I think I should get it out of the way right now that I LOVE TOLKIEN. As many of you perhaps know, Tolkien was by trade a philologist, and the base of his writings, specifically the Lord of the Rings and beyond, were always langauges, which influenced the look, actions, and even architecture and climates of the peoples who spoke them; in fact, Tolkien invented Quenya before he even thought of elves or Middle Earth, in the trenches during WWI, to pass the time. The reason that this is at all relevent is that Tolkien’s languages, especially Quenya, sound beautiful. In fact, this recording may be my favorite recording of a person speaking. Ever. In short, I am used to reading and hearing phrases like “i arani nar assaile ar antuare nu Anar”, and am thus acclimated to language that looks and sounds elegant.

Elegant. This is a word that only applies to English when it is properly spoken or written, but in my opinion it is a word that never applies to “talk”. “Talk” is harsh, strident, and cutting word, a word that sounds like an onomatopoeia, but not a nice one like “purr” or “moo”. It reminds me most of the noise a seagull makes, an “awk” sound, and being preceded by a very articulate consonant, T, it really doesn’t have much going for it in the way of aural grace. And to be honest, the reason I hate the word “talk” isn’t actually because of how it sounds, but because of the relationship between its sound and its definition. “Talk” is a word that describes a very frequent and, frankly, mundane act, that of communicating in some way, which we do every day. Yet “talk” has none of the smooth, familiar sound that one would expect from a word of that usage. “Talk” would be fine if it represented something that was both infrequent and perhaps undesirable, like “kill”, but as is it has the same effect as a bluegrass band named “Bloody Deathcorpse 3000″.

You get the idea.

It often baffles me when people use the word “talk”, since there are so many better words at one’s disposal. “Speak”, for example, is not only an incredibly smooth word, but is easy and fun to say, most likely because of the “s” and the long “e” that takes less muscle to form than “talk”’s hard “a”. Another great substitute for “talk” is “colloquy”, which not only sounds badass but makes you seem really intelligent and Shakespearean. Other options are “converse”, “discourse”, “orate”, “convey”, etc.

I know that this issue will probably never end for me. People will continue to use “talk” in conversation, causing me to grit my teeth, as nothing short of an oppressive government would likely be able to erase a word from the English language (hmmm… good idea), but my hope is that after reading this some of you out there will throw of the bonds of the vernacular and turn to some better everyday alternatives for “talk”.

-Jeff

Thrift Shopping

A few weeks ago, Zach, Jeff, and I went to our local Savers and bought 20 ties each for around $4.50. Each of the twenty cent ties were likely originally priced upwards of $20, and some of the high-quality silk ones could have easily been $40 at any other department store. I don’t think any more evidence is needed to show you guys why I’ve embraced thrift shopping.

Last November was when I first started shopping thrift. The first thing I bought was a nice leather jacket for $10, which I wore on the coldest days of that winter. It worked wonderfully, and will probably be with me for a while. I bought a shirt at a Goodwill a few weeks later, and then forgot about thrift shopping for a few months. In May, I revisited it, and really got into this summer, buying pants, shirts, shoes, ties, jackets, and clock parts regularly (some of you readers may already know of my hobby of designing and building clocks).

This fly guy probably shops at Savers.

But the price isn’t what really keeps me coming back. I don’t really need that many clothes. What keeps me coming back is the restocking of quirky new things and discontinued fashions. Department stores these days are, by far, more reliable in terms of size and selection: when someone walks into a J. C. Penny, he knows exactly what he’ll find and where. At a store like Savers or Goodwill, you really have no idea what you might find, which means that in addition to saving hundreds of dollars on an entire suit, that suit might look like the one to the right there (Zach actually found a red pinstripe zoot suit jacket the other day, higher in quality than the one pictured, for about $10. But alas, it was too large).

As a reference, here is everything I’ve purchased from Savers or another thrift shop: Four pairs of pants (green corduroy, white formal, white informal, and blue/white pinstripe), three dress shirts (silver, black, and brown plaid), a plaid vest, a leather jacket, nine old clocks, 22 ties and a red paisley neckerchief, a white pair of shoes, a stereo amplifier and two speakers (which are actually pretty good), countless books (which will be covered in another post), and a plush unicorn. I’m sure Jeff and Zach could add to this list significantly, as the three of us frequent Savers about once a week (one of our better finds has been a four-foot tall plush bear).

Only a handful of my Savers tie collection.

If you aren’t buying from thrift shops, you are seriously missing out. I suggest finding a Savers near you and going there immediately. And let us know what you’ve found! Commenters, feel free to discuss your thrift shopping adventures.