Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

I wait with baited breath for the day I get my hands on a copy of this book...and for the day they release the feature film! (Don't tell me this wouldn't make the most awesome zombie movie ever put to film. You know it would.)

Little Known Facts

A rat can last longer without water than a camel.

Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it will digest itself.

The dot over the letter "i" is called a tittle.

A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.

A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate. I know some people like that!

A duck's quack doesn't echo. No one knows why.

A 2 X 4 is really 1-1/2 by 3-1/2.

During the chariot scene in "Ben Hur," a small red car can be seen in the distance.

On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily! That explains it!

Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants.

Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.

The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000.

There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with orange, purple and silver.

The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan." There was never a recorded Wendy before.

The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin in World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.

Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to s-l-o-w film down so you could see his moves.

The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA."

The original name for butterfly was flutterby.

The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time, the most known player on the market was the Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola.

Roses may be red, but violets are indeed violet.

By raising your legs slowly and laying on your back, you cannot sink into quicksand.

Celery has negative calories. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.

Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.

Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.

Sherlock Holmes NEVER said "Elementary, my dear Watson."

An old law in Bellingham, Washington, made it illegal for a woman to take more than 3 steps backwards while dancing.

The glue on Israeli postage is certified kosher.

The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Public Libraries.

Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them. Not to mention the other drawback.

Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.

Millennium Actress

Millennium Actress is an animated feature film by the creator of Tokyo Godfathers and Perfect Blue, Satoshi Kon. Released in 2001, the film quickly established itself as a cult classic here in America as one of the highest quality full-length anime films ever translated- in fact, the Chicago Tribune declared it as "[a] piece of cinematic art. It's modern day Japanese animation at its best..." (and yes, I feel a bit like I'm typing an essay for a class) . Its reception in its homeland of Japan was even more supportive- it freaking TIED with Miyazaki's Spirited Away for the Grand Prize of Japan Agency of Cultural Affairs Media Arts Festival.

Personally, I have to say it's one of the most amazing films I've ever seen. The story follows the life of a young actress as it simultaneously follows her last interview as an old woman, and as the plot progresses it becomes increasingly challenging to tell her life apart from her roles in the movies- every part she ever played seems to have a personal resonance with her character, and often the only way you can be sure if she's playing herself versus one of her characters is to keep track of who is in what costume!

Every character in the movie plays a 'role' in her life- even the interviewer and his cameraman show up to rescue her several times over the course of the movie. Of course, it helps that he really did save her once when he was a young man and she as a much younger woman! The border between what happened in her tumultuous life and what the women she played experienced in their lives is deliciously blurred.

Her personal story of heartache and lost love is echoed across the lives of her characters- every lovesick teenager and heartbroken geisha, every abandoned young ninja (kunoichi, for those in the know) and unsatisfied housewife has one obvious, beautiful factor in common.

Every single one of them spends her life hunting for her one, true, long lost love- and find more pleasure in the chasing of this love than they ever do in reaching it.

Her tale is sorrowful and yet also full of hope and loyalty. She falls in love with a man who is an artist and a revolutionary, only to come home one day and find out that he has been forced to flee the country to avoid capture and execution. Before he leaves, he gives her a little trinket- the key to "the most important thing". She takes the key and swears to return it to him one day, and on that day she will tell him what that most important thing is. She follows him to Manchuria, acting in more and more movies in the hope that one day, he will see her and return to her. She keeps the key for most of her life, barring a few periods when it was either lost or taken from her. Not once during the course of the movie does she say what "the most important thing" is.

The movie is visually stunning in addition to being a emotional voyage. Satoshi Kon's talent for beautiful character design and selection of background animation is evident in full force throughout the course of Millennium Actress. The animation itself is graceful and flows elegantly from scene to scene, which isn't an easy task considering how jarring some of the switches between time periods, costumes, and environments could have been, given the structure of the movie. Every scene displays a vibrant array of colors that enhance the mood of the film, either by illustrating the joy and exhilaration of the actress' first love, or by sharply countering the lovers' heart-rending separation.

I've personally recommended this movie to several people and advocate watching it to anyone who enjoys either anime or those really, really rare love stories that mean something far deeper than boy-meets-girl.

Militant Librarians and Other Curious Things

I'm not really sure why this amuses me so much, but I found this patch on Pegasus Publishing's site and couldn't stop laughing. I also found this...

...and proceeded to cry inside (it's Fizzgig from The Dark Crystal...who looks more and more like a decapitated Wookie the longer I look at him). At least it doesn't have sound effects.

Too Feeping Cute!

Have you ever seen a Feep before?

Well, fear not, because I'm done you the favor of uncovering the most freaking adorable productions of Dylan Edwards' Feeping Creatures! He creates these cuties out of polymer clay and a few other materials for variety and sells them on eBay (except for when he takes a table in a convention's dealer room, which is how I found him). He really does have a startling array of these Feeps to chose from- there are little statues, necklaces, magnets, and wine charms. Plus, there are about a million colors to chose from! Some even glow in the dark!

The first one I fell in love with was his Horned Blue Dragon, which unfortunately doesn't seem to be available anymore. However, his Tall Purple Dragon is just as cute, and is also (as of this posting) available on eBay. So is the Blue Sea Serpent, which has the most adorable little flippers I've ever seen! There's also the tiny Green Toothy Nautilus, which is actually a magnet.

I don't know if he's got another con appearance lined up or if his eBay business is keeping him satisfied, but I do know his productions are simply too freaking cute! I may need to get a little spiky dragon to keep me company at my desk...

I Promised Star Trek...

And now I shall deliver!

Everybody remember Amok Time? How about now? And Jesus Christ on a cracker, there are action figures! Give us a smile, huh?

And don't forget Trouble with Tribbles. You just gotta love the little furballs (unless you're a Klingon...or a Ferengi!)...and again, is there anything they won't make an action figure of?

Mirror Spock (with goatee), Mirror Kira and Dax...and holy crap I found the comic books!

And, to finish off on a classier note, I give you...Uhura.

Comic Books are Eating my Soul!

This is a re-post of one of my work-related blogs. I took out the really work-related stuff, but you can find the original post (and others put up by myself and my co-workers) at the Recycled Book Blog. Anyway, enjoy-

New (Actually Old) Discovery- I just picked up Preacher...and I'm so mad at myself for putting off reading it until now! If you are unfamiliar with the series, it's a story starring a (very) wayward Texas preacher named Jesse, his ex-girlfriend, Tulip, who hunts him down for abandoning her, and an Irish vampire called Cassidy who has a habit of getting into barroom brawls. In the first issue, Jesse is bestowed with 'the voice of God' by Genesis, a creature born from the so-called union of an angel and a demon. With this 'voice', Jesse has the power to command people to do his will...which results in various interesting and rather entertaining situations that I would rather not divulge and spoil for potential readers. Suffice to say that between Jesse's 'voice' and Cassidy's classic one-liners, I was laughing through both of the volumes I've so far read.

It's a great series, and very deserving of its popularity. Preacher is intelligent but accessible, clever but never cutesy, and above all a great read. Vertigo has struck gold once again with this series.

I've also picked up an older Marvel title, Universe X. What's fascinating about this one is that it's an alternate future epic, which not only projects new and terrifying ideas about what could happen to people we grew up thinking of as heroes. Some, like Warren Worthington III (X-Men's Angel) and Steve Rogers (Captain America) simply face age and their own faded glory. Others like Susan Storm Richards (the Invisible Woman) and Professor Xavier (if you don't know who he is, why are you reading a blog about comic books?) are no longer alive, and still others face a perversion of their powers that makes day to day life an unprecedented challenge (Namor the Submariner has been infused with the Human Torch's powers, meaning he can't leave his home under the sea without half of his body bursting into flames. Also, Daredevil is no longer the Man Without Fear- he is the Man Who Cannot Die, who performs outrageous stunts such as literally eating grenades in vain attempts to take his own life). Captain Marvel, on the other hand, returns from the dead (sort of...again) to save this universe from itself... only, he is reborn in the form of a golden-haired child, the son of Adam and Eve (both of whom are perfect constructed beings...and I'm sure you caught the reference behind the names). All in all, it's a heavy read, being two volumes (and each volume averaging 350 pages of illustrated greatness) of a dark, somewhat depressing revision of Marvel Universe history, but it's nonetheless a fascinating and thought-provoking look at our favorite, long-standing superheroes...and the ravages of time.

Universe X is part of a series of revised Marvel history which also includes Paradise X and Earth X.

Ladies and Gentlemen...

Welcome to the inaugural blog entry of Fangasm Central! After weeks of procrastination, I've finally managed to make myself put this blog together so I can have a place to post my reviews of various fun things (all to be geeky in nature, I promise)...and so I can have a place to post random awesome pictures that make me fangasm...like these Pacman cupcakes I discovered on Cake Wrecks! (Look at the little robot cupcakes, too! "Squee" with me!)

What else do I plan on accomplishing with this blog? Well, nothing really. I make no promises as to content other than that everything I post about will be uniformly awesome. And just wait until I get around to my analysis of Orson Scott Card's work...that will be sure to start a flame war (though probably not quite as badly as this fuck-up. Poor Steve Berman...).

I'm going to ramble and swear and rave and fangirl (which actually IS a verb, don't let other people lie to you) and plan out my con-going schedule, all while complaining about my kick-ass job and reading hopefully excellent SF/F.

And there will be Star Trek.