I normally don’t like to do two trailer reviews back to back… however, I don’t normally get emailed the greatest trailer of all time.

I’m not kidding.

This trailer was built from everything I’ve ever loved, cared about, or been interested in. They apparently used some advanced brain-reading technology to drain the information from my head while I was sleeping and mold it into the shape of a trailer.

I’ve gushed over trailers before. After awhile they all blend in, the same sights, sounds and general mayhem. Then a trailer comes along that features CLINT FUCKING EASTWOOD TAKING ON AN ASIAN MOB. The pleasure center of my brain has just grown five sizes too big and shattered the device used to measure it much like what happened to the Grinch and his super-sized heart. That center then expended its entire contents leaving me numb, empty and unable to taste food. Does this brain-metaphor conflict with the one from the paragraph above? No, that's how great this trailer is.

Which Clint Eastwood, you ask? (Let’s pretend that you don’t know the answer due to being alive and having a rough idea of Clint’s age. Let’s pretend that this conversation takes place in a world outside of time and human history. A place in the clouds filled with grim-looking beings in robes weighing the relative worth of Earthlings based on randomly selected objects created by us. Got it? Cool.) A GRIZZLED AND WORLD WEARY CLINT ON THE WRONG SIDE OF SEVENTY.



My life should be divided into two parts. Pre-that trailer, and post- that trailer. I honestly had goose bumps after watching it.

I now have a handy way of summing up who and what I am. I meet a new person who asks what movies I like, I show him that trailer.

Meet a new person who asks what kind of stuff I like, I show him that trailer.

Someone asks me what kinds of food I like, what my favorite color is, what my feelings on the environment are, I show them that trailer.

Some highlights –

- The slow build. They know what we’re waiting for, (Clint punching/shooting something while spitting out a gravelly voiced one-liner) and they make us wait… then deliver the goods like nobody’s business. He’s like William Munny brought into the modern world. Like Newman’s "Nobody’s Fool" character with a gun, like a meaner Dirty Harry.

- The nod to The Outlaw Josey Wales, with the Clint spitting followed by an old woman spitting a tobacco-filled swallow onto the ground. Kinda wish that dog from Josey Wales was around to take the shot.

- Another bonus is that I was reasonably sure Eastwood had put this kind of role behind him. I know he’s sworn off westerns, and I just assumed a more action-type guy even in a more character-type story would be asking too much. Happy to be wrong.

- Military medals in the display box sort of mirrors the moment in Pale Rider when he takes off his priest’s collar, puts it into a box, then takes his guns out of the same box.

- He may have made giving someone the “finger gun” cool again with one fell swoop.


I'm already anxious for the sequel. Every movie should feature him beating up a different ethnicity, culminating in him eventually punching out an alien from Mars.




TheCoolerKIng's column appears each Sunday at SuicideGirls.com. Click HERE for further reading. He's also doing this: HowToBeatUpAnything

Winner in the category for "Most Promising Horror Film with the Lamest Sounding Title" is clearly this low budget film called… Splinter? Yes, Splinter.

The title immediately conjures up images of a red-faced toddler running screaming through his backyard into… the waiting arms of his caring mother who quickly removes the offendeing sliver, dabs on some Neosporin and then pats him on the head.

Not exactly blood-curdling stuff. Is there a scary splinter scenario? I’m trying to think of one and coming up empty. Tough to base a horror premise around a situation ranking just below “banging your shin” on the fear scale (fear-ometer?).

I know nothing about this film that’s not included in the trailer (though that's more than enough to justify seeing it). In fact, I Googled it after watching and was blown away to see both Tom Sizemore and Edward James Olmos listed on the IMDB page. “Holy shit,” I thought. “Those two bad-asses are in it and they don’t even mention it?” Are they The Splinter? Do they get splinters? Does one of them play that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle rat guy?

Sadly, I had erred. No such pile of awesomeness exists. I had accidentally clicked on the imdb page for the 2006 version of Splinter. A film that is summarized there with the following opener: “On the mean streets of LA, two gangsters…” That sentence doesn’t end with “get eaten by some ten-foot tall, tree-based monster.” So I got the hell out of there. Back to the real Splinter.

This is one of my favorite styles of horror film. The “introduce tough guy who is then dwarfed by some larger, actual tough guy.” Similar to the great From Dusk Till Dawn, which introduced bad-ass criminals who are then topped by crazy ferocious vampires. One of whom is also Tom Savini. Same here. Introduce crooks, top them with the unseen, TBD tree-beast. Or is it a zombie type tree virus? I’m not sure. LOOK, IT HAS SPLINTERS, ALRIGHT!!! What more do you want???

They really missed the boat on taglines though. They went with: “It will get under your skin.” Not bad, but I’d have gone with:

“This fall… get the tweezers.”

Or

“Get ready for pain… equivalent to that of a paper cut.”

Or maybe

“Prepare yourself… for a persistent nagging itch from where a sliver of wood once was.”

Bonus points for making it a story contained almost entirely in a gas station mini-mart. Like Dawn of the Dawn, only tiny, and probably nowhere near as good.

The only real negative: guy number one saying, “Uh, I think I’m gonna like camping,” after his girlfriend kisses him against the car. Seriously? What’s wrong with you? You’re making a connection there. Why not, [KISS] "I think I’m gonna like eating dinner." [KISS] "I think I’m gonna like nuclear physics." [KISS] "Kissing preceding anything indicates the thing that follows is prettttty cool. [KISS] "Oh, and I think I'm gonna like teaching old ladies about the Internet."

I’ll still see it though. Oh, I’ll see it, alright. It’s Halloween-time, come on…


TheCoolerKIng's column appears each Sunday at SuicideGirls.com. Click HERE for further reading. He's also doing this: HowToBeatUpAnything

Hi, I’m Mur. I’m a geek. While I have embraced this geekdom for the past fifteen or so years, it was terrible to go through high school when my girlfriends didn’t share my passion for They Might Be Giants or Star Wars, and none of the boys wanted anything to do with me.

Well, romantically, that is. I had several friends who thought I was -– say it with me -– one of the guys. I ran for student government; I lost to a girl named Valerie. My Bloom County–inspired campaign signs were defaced and torn down. Forget running for homecoming queen; that’s just ridiculous. No one would even consider geeky little me for such a lofty position.

I was ignored; the smart one who kept her head down and worked backstage in the theater department. The one who wanted to be a writer.

Of course, in college I made friends who understood me, cared about me, and didn’t seem to think that I needed heels and pretty hair to fit in. And now that I’m an adult, more or less, I’m geeky, confident, and don’t give a damn about those who made high school a depressing place.

So. How many of you have the same story? Many, I bet. There were several of us geeks in high school, several who saw those four years as long, arduous tests intended to cause so much trauma to us in order to prepare us for the rest of our lives. But as I make friends, many of whom tell me of their geeky status in high school, one question stands out to me.

What happened to all the popular kids?

Seriously. Where did they all go? There are several explanations, I suppose. They could all be right in front of me, just not wanting to say so, uncomfortably hiding under the radar in the same way that kids whose parents paid for their college educations did when friends swapped student loan or work study stories. If you have no “high school was hell” stories, then you’re not terribly interesting in many social circles. Especially if your stories revolve around, “I made high school hell for others.”

Another option would be that they went into careers that exist outside of my world. I hang out with a lot of artists, writers, and computer engineers. I suppose most of those jobs are done by classically geeky people. I always assumed that the popular kids went off to get jobs as investment bankers or spouses of investment bankers. I don’t know any investment bankers. This does not bother me.

But my favorite option is the Lost Island of the Prom Queens. I was chatting with my arch-nemesis Matt Wallace the other day, and I said that I wondered if the popular people just stopped once they left high school; that they had reached the pinnacle of their lives. He said they were all shipped, in their prom dresses and rented tuxes, to the Lost Island of the Prom Queens. This of course upsets the boys, as the island is named for their dates, not them. And broken tiaras lie in dusty corners like discarded bones.

(Incidentally, Matt was also a geek in high school, a journalism geek who had a menacing frame and left at age sixteen to become a pro wrestler. Now he writes horror. Think I’m kidding?)

I do remember a book from the 90’s where the main protagonist was a woman who had been the prom queen in high school, the most popular girl ever, whose life did stop at eighteen. She led a life of aimless depression because her court had been disbanded and she didn’t know what to do with herself. That made the most sense to me; for most of us, life began when we escaped high school. For the popular kids, everything changed. They likely went somewhere that forced them to start from scratch. Maybe they pledged the Greek lifestyle (I know very little about that, as I didn’t pledge) –– you do meet people who were in frats and sororities –– but no one ever talks about their prom queen heyday.

I’d love to end this column with a report on my ten year high school reunion, on how I went back, confident and happy, and saw for my own eyes what happened to Jessica, Beth, Joleta, Teddy, Craig, and David. The beautiful ones, the popular ones. Those for whom high school served as their own personal golden eating trough, what are they doing? I’d love to tell that story, but, well… I wasn’t invited to the ten year reunion.

Remember what I said about being ignored?

I still haven’t gotten past high school angst. I’m thirty-five, confident, happily married, and actually doing what I wanted to do since I was twelve. And yet I still get shaken and return to the same horrific awkwardness and shyness that I felt back in the day (like the time I desperately tried to get David to notice me). I sometimes wonder if I would be better off if I found out where they were now, what they were doing. Then I realize I’m a lot happier thinking of them on the Lost Island of the Prom Queens.

Yup. Thirty-five, confident, and petty. That’s me.


Mur Lafferty is an author and podcaster who recently released her first novel, Playing For Keeps. She Speaks Geek every month on SuicideGirls.com. Click HERE for more of Mur's musings.

Vampires are awesome. Everyone knows that. And that's a fact that's unlikely to change anytime soon. For some reason the vampire genre never seems to go out of style, despite all manner of shitty and sub-par efforts. Blood, sweat, tears and cash are wasted in vain attempts to bring newer, shinier product to the public, which, most often, is ultimately inferior. It's a process that repeats itself every couple of months. Vampires are kind of bulletproof which maybe explains why people just throw stuff together and expect it to do well.

Another problem is that the genre has already peaked. The greatest vampire work of all-time is obviously Blade 3.

Uh, now that I think about it, actually, it's the Joss Whedon masterpiece Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Hilarity, heart, depth, meaning, re-invention, subtext, metaphor, genius, and bad-ass villains galore... Yeah, not so top-able. Then came Angel which took everything great about Buffy, moved it to Los Angeles and had it open a detective agency. Yup.

"Hey, look at that proverbial bar, it's rising up into the clouds! Oh well, let's make movies about Aliens."

Only they didn't. They kept making vampire products. Admirable if not ill-advised. And here we are, years later, looking around at a mixed bag of vamp offerings.

Moonlight is still hanging around, I believe. A show that tried to go the Angel-vamp-detective route without the whole Joss Whedon part, which, to say the least, is a rather curious strategy.

One of the greatest vampire books of all-time, Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, had a shot at being a pretty good vampire movie last year until they decided to take all the vampires out of it.

Twilight is on the horizon but it's a kid's movie based on kid's books.

The most promising recent offering was HBO's True Blood. It had HBO and a critically acclaimed writer/director attached, what more could you want? The answer was "many, many things." Alan Ball seems to have made a piece of vampire fiction without having ever seen a piece of vampire fiction (which, he kinda admits). The heavy-handed vampires as a minority group set-up has already been done. Puns like "God Hates Fangs" are atrocious and shouldn't have been done.

This show also commits the common sin of mistaking "updating" vampires for "putting tattoos and S&M gear" on vampires. I was all set to stop watching this series when last week's episode gave us the show's first enjoyable moment, a vampire mind-controlling a cop into handing over his gun. That was cool but not "wait four episodes to get to" cool.

All is not as bleak on the vamp-front as it appears, however. This looks intriguing.



Not bad at all. And did that kid use the phrase "go steady"? I wonder, is that the mistake of the sub-titler, in assuming we still use that phrase, or do they actually use that phrase in Sweden? Charming either way.

When all else fails, there's always Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Season 8., which is easily the best vampire stuff around. God damn it, does Joss Whedon have to do everything vamp-related all by himself? Apparently he does.



TheCoolerKIng's column appears each Sunday at SuicideGirls.com. Click HERE for further reading. He's also doing this: HowToBeatUpAnything

I have always been a creature of habit. I will watch a beloved TV show or movie multiple times, like slipping into a favorite pair of fuzzy socks. When I was a kid, we subscribed to HBO and I was in heaven with the movies and shows that I enjoyed playing not just once, but multiple times in a month. I could watch the featured movie several times and Fraggle Rock three times a week (although it bugged me that I always seemed to miss The Beast of Bluerock, and the fact that I remember that, but not the last name of one of my college boyfriends, is scary indeed.)

When it was summer, step back, cause I could watch damn near anything at any time. I was a pretty vanilla kid –– I didn’t really do much my parents forbade me. So I didn’t use HBO to watch naughty movies, but I did watch an awful lot of TV. And one summer I remember clearly, June was the Month of Willow.

You remember Willow, right? Val Kilmer. A redheaded warrior. A baby. A little guy. Those are all the details I remember, but I remember loving it. I loved it so much I think I watched it every time it was on. And I don’t have HBO these days, so I don’t know how their programming goes, but at that time, that meant a LOT of showings.

But even with these warm memories, I don’t want to watch it these days. I don’t even want to rent it for my kid, unless she watches it without me. Because I know from bitter experience that, seen through adult eyes, the movie will suck…

I’m not saying it was a good movie then. I’m saying I didn’t care. And there are many movies from that era that I saw and loved but today don’t hold up. We recently rented Labyrinth, and while David Bowie still has an amazing allure of The Goblin King (and what preteen girl didn’t feel herself getting sexually aware in viewing this movie and Bowie’s tight outfits?), the movie doesn’t stand the test of time. Now I feel it's insipid, and I’m too cynical to buy the true friendship plotline. And then the end was shallow, because theme of growing up kinda gets shattered when your room is full of muppets at the very end.

I like kids’ movies these days. I have enjoyed everything Hayao Miyazaki has put out, from My Neighbor Totoro to the darker Spirited Away. I enjoyed taking my kid to see Nim’s Island, even though it required a bit of suspension of disbelief. Jerry Seinfeld’s Bee Movie was wretched drek, with dangling plotlines and a main plot that was too uncomfortably close to bestiality –– or would that be insectiality? –– for my comfort.

But the key here is my daughter liked it, just like I liked Willow, Superman III (and I remember seeing Supergirl more than once, but I’m pretty sure I hated it), and the Beastmaster. And my common sense is telling me that I should not see these movies again, I should let them stay in my memory where they were fascinating tales of adventure and magic and superheroes and plot holes and weak characters couldn’t ruin things like they can as an adult.

Part of me is sad. We all know you lose innocence with experience and knowledge. And frankly, if I thought that these movies were examples of strong, compelling plotlines and incredible conflict and characters that live on in your memory for years to come, then I might as well just forget ever becoming a writer for real. So it’s good that I understand that this is not strong writing. It’s good that I can now appreciate better movies. But it’s sad that I can’t watch these movies again with the trusting, wide-eyed view of a child who believes that something wonderful is about to happen, since the same thing happened last week.

And now it’s strange the way I look at some stories. I can suspend my disbelief and enjoy some things - things I know from the beginning are likely not terribly good. In fact, friends had told me Johnny Mnemonic was the worst movie ever, and I went into it expecting something scatologically horrifying, and ended up enjoying it. On the other hand, I watched half of the pilot of Fringe this week, the new show from JJ Abrams, and was disgusted with the basic characterization - especially of the BAD HOMELAND SECURITY GUY. He may as well have worn a T-shirt that said I AM YOUR FOIL, I AM HERE TO MAKE YOUR LIFE HARDER, AND THEREFORE MORE INTERESTING TO THE VIEWER. I probably would have enjoyed it more, except that it had Abrams’ name attached to it, and therefore I expected a lot more.

I am not a movie snob. Heck, I even liked Solarbabies when it came out, probably because I was a roller-skating kid and that movie was about science fiction AND roller skating kids, and how can you not have a hit with that? While perusing Rotten Tomatoes, though, I discovered it needs to stay in my memory as something neat instead of be revisited like I was re-watch Real Genius or Star Wars; that site gives it 0% on the tomatometer.

I’ll keep my memories, thanks.
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Mur Lafferty is an author and podcaster who recently released her first novel, Playing For Keeps. She Speaks Geek every month on SuicideGirls.com. Click HERE for more of Mur's musings.

It's no secret Brett Ratner (Rush Hour, Rush Hour The Second One, Rush Hour Again, and the worst X-Men movie) is an awful director. Sure, he's not the worst, as people are likely to point out, but he's quite bad at making movies and I don't think that's debatable. He's not such a likable guy, either. And he's made less likable due to the fact that he doesn't seem to mind being such a shitty director. Basically, he's Paris Hilton with a camera.

And much like he did with the X-Men franchise, he's considering ruining something many, many people enjoy.

Ahh, they've seen his work with Chris Tucker, then. I wonder how far into Rush Hour 3 they got before coming to this conclusion? I'm guessing, a paragraph into the copy on the back of the dvd box.

Genius. Yes, he had Miley do that thing with a guitar that every person who has ever picked up a guitar jokily pretends to do with it.

Very astute. Sure to anger the vocal contingent arguing the opposite side of that heated debate. Really, what the hell is he saying? Is there a group out there claiming that Guitar Hero hasn't sold record numbers of games, become an institution and basically (on some level) altered the way music is sold and bought? Yes, it's popular dumb-ass.

Why indeed, Brett.

Again. Not that you would make a bad movie... again. And you would. Please try to prove me wrong. But do it far from here and quietly. If, somehow, you succeed, then release it. But not a day before.

isn't that the plot of a Fred Savage movie? I was going to say, the Fred Savage movie but then I remembered The Princess Bride. By the way, what contest did Brett Ratner win to get where he is?

Please let them have brochures. And possibly an infomercial. Do they just charge you by the level of douchebaggery he's able to bring you to? I'm saying yes.

Again, genius. A version of Guitar Hero that allows you to go on tour and he comes up with... Guitar Hero, ahem, World Tour.

Exec- "Yeah come up with a name for our new Honda Civic. It's a turbo."

Brett - "Ok! Uhh...How about Honda Turbo?"

Exec- Yes!

Brett Ratner. Is there anything the man can't do... terribly?




TheCoolerKIng enjoys taking cheap shots at a-holes...He does it each Sunday at SuicideGirls.com. Click HERE for more of his rants.

Suicide Girls just learned of NoKnownSurvivors, a new viral experience that allows visitors to explore the narrative world of EA's new survival horror game, DEAD SPACE. Over the next couple months the site will employ interactive components, 3D, voice acting, video and Papervision to tell two tragic four chapter stories. The first, "Misplaced Affection", is the story of an organ replacement technician who falls hard for a female security officer. The second, "13", will tell the tale of a sleeper agent who makes the wrong decisions.

You can view it all at the haunting NoKnownSurvivors content hub. It looks to be pretty vast and wide-reaching - beginning with 9 severed body parts, each one representing a chapter. Each week before a chapter goes live, its assigned body part begins to mutate, finally evolving in to a mature necromorph part (necromorphs are re-animated, mutated corpses of fallen crew members).

Each Monday (it started last week on August 25th) a new necromorph part will be live and clickable. The second chapter just launched this past Monday - so head on over and check it out. SG also will have some exclusive content from NoKnownSurvivors coming soon.

EA apparently has a lot of eggs in the Dead Space basket and the game landscape is due for some good dark suspense and anti-gravity guts right about now. Dead Space comes out on October 21st.

IGN's feature on NoKnownSurvivors.

Do people still like Westerns these days? Good old, solid, straight up Westerns?

I do. And I hope I'm not alone. (In general, obviously, but here I'm referring to "alone in my love of westerns.")

The trailer reviews I've done here usually consist of me geeking out about some over-the-top action explosion extravaganza:

A trailer about an anthropomorphic chainsaw that is destined to kill a dragon made of lion heads...

Or a wise-cracking robot that punches ghosts to death. (Yes, I know they're already dead, but it's his job...)

Or, like, vampires vs. knives. vs. minotaurs vs. Canada...

Stuff like that. (By the way, someone feel free to make any of the aforementioned trailers and then send them to me. Please?)

But this isn't that. And yet it still managed to knock the shit out of the part of me that likes movies. Yup, nothing but a classic, slow burn Western packed with tough talk, guns and more tough talk... and more guns. And it is awesome.



Ed Harris, god damn Viggo Mortensen, and the great-grandfather of the guy John McClane vanquishes in Die Hard: With A Vengeance, aka Jeremy Irons. The only way this movie could be better is if Viggo played all the roles himself, including the guns.

I defy anyone to not love or "eh" their way through that trailer. The only complaint I can even imagine would be that it's not twice as long. Or that it's not yet something you can pick up in your hands, cradle, and take to bed with you. I guess my problem would be that it is only one "thing" and I wish it were somehow "two things." I gots two eyeballs, after all.

Someday, when I die, I'd like to be buried in this movie. That day is whenever this movie tells me it is.


Go see this. Go support the Western. Who knows how it will do at the box office, I'm guessing so-so. We shouldn't let that happen. Time to saddle up and ride out... um, to your local cineplex, in support of the Western. The genre that needs no flash and no gimmicks to pummel the hell out of yer brain parts.





TheCoolerKing thinks "dying ain't much of a living, boy"

I’m so often feeling “Kumbaya” about the aspects of my geeky lifestyle that it hits me like a train every time two aspects don’t quite mesh. In this moment, it's my love of geeky toys vs. my card carrying EFF member's stance against DRM and other shackles on digital content.

On one hand, I love my toys. I added up how much tech I carry around with me (camera, digital recorder, Flip video cam, iPod, Blackberry…) and was a little amazed. I never thought I was a gadget-head, and I am usually one to hold back when something shiny hits the market so I can get opinions on it and allow the company to work out kinks (I’m still not sold on the iPhone). But when I do get the toys, I love them dearly.

On the other hand, I’m an avid enthusiast for open media, Creative Commons, and digital content. I love what the Internet has done for creators and the doors it’s opened for us. DRM (Digital Rights Management) is a foul word in my language, and I am very pro-sharing of content, believing the artists’ fans will give back if/when they can. (And I hope this will be proven next week as my book Playing For Keeps will be released via free PDF and a print version on Amazon.com.)

I didn’t think these two things could butt heads, but I was wrong. I discovered this when my mother bought me an Amazon Kindle for my birthday.

Now, I’d heard that the Kindle was pure evil in a tapered, white tablet. It has DRM on the files, it won’t let you share, it’s unmodifiable (one of the requirements of DRM is you have to keep the device pure, else people can modify it to unlock said content), it won’t support simple PDFs. It is too expensive and it eats babies.

I’d also heard that the Kindle was going to be the ebook reader to end all readers. Its wireless capability would allow for amazing versatility in regards to purchasing books, emailing files to the Kindle, even listening to music while you read. The screen is ePaper, as readable as regular paper (no glare, no backlight), and buying content is so simple I would see my kid’s college money draining away.

So my Kindle in hand, I contacted a friend who’s a staunch anti-DRM advocate. I asked him, “My mom bought me a Kindle for my birthday. What’s an anti-DRM woman to do?”

His advice was to sell it and buy a Palm.

Possibly good advice if I’d won it, but considering my own mother gave it to me, I feel it’s rude to treat it like a big Amazon gift certificate. And besides. It’s shiny.

I was delighted to find that the Kindle was inspired in part by one of my favorite books, The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, which centers around an interactive smart book that falls into the hands of a little poor girl and is instrumental in raising her.

I spent a lot of time exploring the capabilities of the Kindle, from the basic browser (I can log into Twitter, but can’t seem to actually tweet from it) to putting music on it to testing out the various PDF conversions. Lack of PDF support was one of the biggest issues with the release of the Kindle, but the conversion support that allows you to email DOC and TXT files to your Kindle (among others) seems to work with PDF now. At least, I was able to get a PDF on my Kindle with no problems. (I also checked out the program Stanza, which also converted it to a Kindle-friendly format, but removed the paragraph breaks of my books, which would get rather annoying. For windows users I believe the MOBIpocket program works for conversion. But try just emailing a PDF first and see how that does.)

But damn. It’s shiny. It looks good. The instant gratification factor is high. The thought of putting all my ebooks that I didn’t want to read on my computer makes me giddy. I am not on board with paying for otherwise free blogs, but I did get a subscription to Asimov’s and was thrilled when the August and September issues landed on my Kindle. I’d like to have the cover art of the magazine, but that’s a minor quibble. And the deal is, honestly, I can see a lot of room for improvement. I mean that in the best way; the problems are clear and look like they can be fixed in the next generation - no page numbers is puzzling, some people dislike the blink in the page that comes before a new page loads, etc. But damn, a Kindle with these minor problems fixed would be formidable.

But the big problem still exists: I can’t stand DRM. It’s a principle thing. I’m not fuming at being unable to send the file to all my buddies, I’m annoyed at the assumption that I’m a criminal and would do so if they didn’t stop me. Also, I’ve purchased this content, but I can only read it on my Kindle. If I drop my Kindle and break it, too bad! I have to buy another Kindle to keep reading. I don’t like not having access to content I pay for.

And as a creator, DRM offends me. It feels vaguely unsettling to have this device (shiny!) and enjoy it a lot (so shiny!) and yet when I consider my book coming out in a couple of weeks, I don’t want it to be available for the Kindle. I don’t want my content crippled by DRM; if people want to download my PDF and put it on their Kindle, rock on with their bad selves. But I want them to have the same control over the content they pay for that I demand from the content I purchase.

Thus, even as I squee and dance around with my shiny toy, this small, gnawing sense of hypocrisy is always there. I’ll read others’ DRM protected work, but won’t do the same for my own. I am considering how to deal with this, but I haven’t reached a conclusion yet. As far as I know, my publisher doesn’t release Kindle editions yet, which I know is just a cop-out for me, but this is a bridge I must cross eventually.

So make it easy on a conflicted geek with principles and a shiny toy, Amazon. Kill the DRM. Then I can happily squee, put my books on your Kindle, and when the second gen comes out, maybe I’ll even buy one myself. OK?

(It’s so shiny!)

Mur Lafferty is a writer and podcaster from Durham, NC. Her first book, Playing For Keeps, will be released in print August 25 - there are no plans for a Kindle edition.

This week’s Watchmen festival is finally wrapping up for me. I’m done. How much Watchmen can one guy take? Upon arriving, I thought this was a Comic Book Festival, but I was sadly mistaken. This was an awesome Watchmen commercial that I actually got to walk around in. How exciting is that?

As soon as I got off the train, I saw every person on the street was carrying a big Watchmen bag. They had Watchmen posters, and Watchmen toys and photos with their favorite Watchmen characters. Not everyone who wanted to see the Watchmen panel were able to get it, but the creators of the movie and the entire cast were there. And they talked about the movie!!!!

I found all the money the studio spent promoting Watchmen at Comic Con to be ridiculous. These are nerds. It is like trying to sell guns to the NRA. You know how the studio could market The Watchmen to nerds? Go to a remote town in Alaska and find a nerd. Then just walk up to him and whisper, “There’s going to be a Watchmen movie.” At that point, every nerd in the world will know. They have some sort of communication device.



Watchmen ship! Oh my God!



Watchmen toys! Holy shit!

Too bad The Watchmen trailer fucking blows.

One does not know terror until one walks the floor of Comic Con San Diego. There are poor bastards walking around dressed like Wookies, many soldiers from the future and a surprising number of attractive lady nerds in small outfits to drive the male nerds insane.

I was a witness to much female male nerd interaction. In the Suicide Girls booth there was a constant and epic display of no social skills. One gentleman slid up and asked Nixon if he could get a photo, while he stared at the floor. She said yes, and you could tell he was excited because he glanced up for a moment. I told him I would take the picture and he crept up near Nixon. I raised the camera for the shot, while dude kept staring at the ground. He is now the proud owner of a picture of himself, standing next to Nixon, as he hunches over and looks at the ground. Just what every boy wants to masturbate to.

While walking the floor with a friend, we came across two young women, obviously hired by a company to bring attention to their booth. The young women were in skimpy bikini outfits, and holding foam spears. They were obviously slightly dangerous jungle women of some sort. My friend thought it was amusing and asked to take a picture. That’s when the guy in charge of the booth said, “Get in line.” At that point we became aware of a line of a couple hundred sad gentleman, all waiting eagerly to have a picture taken with two women, who are sad actresses working at a Comic Con dressed up like jungle women, because they are not actually the real characters from the game. So, two hundred fellas were waiting in line to get a picture with two women because they were in small outfits. I cried for them.

I also have to report a wizard is asleep right now on the second floor in front of room 5B. I’m not sure how that works. I think wizards sleep for a couple hundred years once they nod off.

And I saw the Batman movie before I came down here. I am saddened to have to report that the Joker has put on a shitload of weight, and in one case was seen arguing with his girlfriend, who is some sort of garden nymph. I didn’t even know he was seeing someone.

Good times at the Con.

Wherever I go this year, all I hear is what the Comic Con used to be. My friends, strangers on the street and even Hollywood writers who used to come here years ago all agree the convention has changed - for the worse. Hollywood has arrived and with it the parties, celebrities and studios. Tonight I went to the William Morris party and it was full of people who would never have gone to a Comic Con until Spiderman was made. And I'm not kidding. I looked around that party tonight and did not see one person I thought should be outside of Hollywood. They brought Hollywood to the Comic Con, and it was disgusting.

During the party I was standing next to two writers. One who is an Oscar nominated writer, who has been attending the Comic Con for 20 years, and another who is a comedy celebrity, who has written several comics and also been attending for years. A man approached us, a writer who has had his work produced by Hollywood, and he said this:

Then he moved on. He is the epitome of the problem. Comic Con has become a place for Hollywood to play. It is no longer about the Comics. Upon entering the convention center, one is overwhelmed by a massive Watchmen display. Watchmen bags are being given out to every fan who enters - because if there is one person the studios need to win over, it's the insane Watchmen fan. No way these people would go see a theatrical production of the most popular comic book of all time. The comics have now been shoved over to a corner, in the back of the convention center. Now, the Comic Con is about big business and big business is big, bad movies. This should now be called, "Nerd movie con."

Do you know how grocery stores work? If French's Mustard wants to be on the shelf, they have to pay the store. And companies have to pay more money for better shelf space. It costs more to be at eye level than it does to be on the bottom shelf. The same thing has now happened to Comic Con, and guess who pays? The big companies. The guys who don't have the money end up in the back - and they just happen to be the backbone of the convention.

What has happened to the Comic Con can be summed up by a friend's story when he arrived at his hotel. He has been coming to the Comic Con for years - but this year decided to stay at the Hard Rock. The Hard Rock was just built this year.

When he pulled into the hotel, the valet said,

My friend answered,

The valet answered

"Paris fucking Hilton" Holy shit. Let's all just take a moment to soak in the fact that Hollywood now wants a waste of skin, like Paris Hilton, to show up at a fucking Comic Book Convention. Talk about the end of something great. When Paris Hilton shows up to get her picture taken on the red carpet at a Comic Con event, you know the Comic Con is over. Nerds, this is the wooden stake to the vampire's heart. It really could not be worse.

Much like Slam Dance sprung forth after Sundance became a huge, steaming turd, something else will pop up to take the place of Hollywood's new pal. But, it will never be as great as Comic Con. Hollywood killed another great.

Well, I was supposed to arrive in San Diego today and make my way to Comic Con. The powers that be at SG paid my way and in exchange, I am supposed to write updates of the goings on. Holy shit did that not happen.

I missed the convention today because the Hyatt decided it would be an awesome idea to allow some guy to change the name on my reservation and put some other dude in the room. You know, the room SG paid for. Brilliant booking and management by the Hyatt. I was quite impressed. So, I spent the day wandering around from bar to bar, while some of the SG staff wasted their time dealing with the Hyatt's douchebag and very unapologetic manager, Adolpho Calvillo. Adolpho used such awesome phrases as, "Hey, if it was our fault..."

Dude, you changed the name on a reservation. That's the definition of "your fault."

Anyway, now I'm in my room and the room stealer is on the street. That only took four hours. The manager, Adolpho, really was a douchebag. But not to me, he was complete asshole to the lovely Viquiv, who did not on any way deserve his bullshit. So, if you're ever in San Diego, be sure not to stay at the Manchester Grand Hyatt, because they may just give your room away to a random dude and then act like assholes about it.

So, sadly this is all I know about Comic Con. Dudes were several rows deep to get just a glimpse of an SG. It was described as "insane."

On the train to SD, I saw a gentleman reading a novel with a dragon on the front and immediately understood that he was probably never going to feel the inside of a woman. He was really a sad case. But I was happy for him, because he has this weekend. Dudes like him get to rule the world and become a massive tribe, crawling the streets of San Diego for four fucking days. It's a God damn great thing. I have seen many of his kind wandering the streets today.

An entire family of five dressed up like The Flash? You're God damn right. That's how shit rolls around these parts. A woman in a bathing suit and goggles? Why the fuck not? It's Comic Con. Lots of guys wandering the streets in V masks, scaring old ladies? Oh, yes. How about an overweight Batman, sitting on a lawn, smoking a cigarette? Fuckin' A right.

I bumped into Patton Oswalt in the Marriot Lobby. He was on his way to a Mystery Science Theater show. Tomorrow the Comedians of Comedy will perform and there will also be a Sarah Silverman panel.

As of now, the parties are beginning. The movie studios have pretty much ruined Comic Con and William Morris is throwing a big bash tonight. It's very Hollywood - exactly what this convention should not be. It should be about the dude I saw on the train. Those guys should have one week a year where they get to be kings without every dick from Hollywood descending on the town and turning it into a giant movie commercial.

Now, I'm off to that William Morris party.

For those of you who don't know, SG will have a booth at Comic Con in San Diego this week, July 23-27. Suicide Girls will be manning (wow, that was an odd way to put it) booth 433. In the booth you will find merchandise, access to the website and over 30 Suicide Girls. Also, on Saturday, you can pick a fight with me, FearTheReaper. And, yes, I am meaner in person.

Most importantly, one of our members has been nominated for the prestigious Eisner Award. Former newswire editor, Gerry_D, is up for Best New Series for his new comic book, The Infinite Horizon.

The Infinite Horizon is a retelling of Homer's Odyssey in a horrible near future. The Middle East war zone has expanded and China is shooting down American satellites. Shit is just going wrong. Our hero, The Captain, tries to lead his men out of this hellhole, back to the arms of his wife, Penelope.

Gerry's up against the big boys, but I still expect him to win. I plan to attend the awards ceremony and if Gerry does not walk out of there with an award, I will kick Joss Whedon in his testicles. Also, Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, David Aja, Fred Chao and Jason Aaron will get a nut kick. There will be quite a bit of testicle kicking.

I will be posting regular updates of the goings on at Comic Con this weekend, when I am not drunk. Or, maybe if I am drunk.

That awesome title is compliments of my pal, the fellow dragons-vikings-aliens loving Drake. It's the title of the email she sent me which delivered the below bit of awesomeness into my formerly cold, dark empty world.

I'm sorry, how else would you describe a world without a viking-dragons-aliens movie? Yeah I thought so. I don't know how I did it, I really don't, waking up each day to toil in the fields (metaphorical), drinking stale beer (actual), putting my starry-eyed head down each night (uh, the starry-eyed part is a metaphor, but I really did put my head down so...?) dreaming of the way things could be... Some night dreaming of Vikings... Other nights of alien dragons, but never putting the two together...

But now, some genius has.

By the way, I'm printing out the email that brought this cinematic beauty into my life and I'm framing it. The frame will read "the greatest email of all-time" and it will hang in the place of my old "greatest email" that formerly hung there, the one announcing the arrival of my fifth born son. (Sorry Eias! And sorry I missed your birth too! But I did love the email you sent once you'd grown old enough to write it... for awhile anyays, lol... Anywhoo, sorry I haven't been able to visit, talk soon xoxo.)

Behold. The sun is about to shine brighter (and with the extra light you'll be able to much more easily spot the incoming dragons) the air's gonna taste sweeter, and a 50 pound broadsword will soon be cleaving your smiling, super-excited skull.



Okay, let's sum that up briefly. It starts, STARTS, with a Viking war. THAT'S WHERE MOST MOVIES FINISH. That's all 300 was and they weren't even Vikings! These guys are. Vikings. Are you following me?

Then an alien guy in spacemen armor crashes to Earth... the Earth with Vikings! (Note: this is where I paused the video to "collect myself" which involved both swooning and a fanning of myself with a nearby magazine.)

Then the new guy interloper super casually reveals - like you and I might reveal we watched the latest episode of Venture Bros. and it was great or that we were pondering dinner options, and leaning towards Thai - He casually puts it out there, y'know, if yer interested, that he's been hunting dragons.

This trailer has (literally and metaphorically) kicked me in the fucking neck. I think it's called Outlander. I think it's going to show us a new way of life...

(Note to self: try shining this trailer onto spots of parched, barren Earth, to see if crops will grow. Also, remember to rub it on the stomach of the 87-year-old woman down the street, so she can have children once again.)



TheCoolerKing kind of enjoyed that Matthew Mconnahey fighting dragons movie, but not enough to look up the proper spelling of his name.

I suppose I should be happy. I wrote a story back in January that lamented the current sad state of the ninja. His once fearsome image abused, parodied, left meaningless in the modern era. And the last straw, some suburban smash and grab artist (that's slang people who know of such things use, right? I thought it sounded tough) dressing up as a ninja to rob houses.

So, yeah, I should be ecstatic, what I most wanted in this world has come to fruition, man once again dreads those black-clad harbringers of doom... and yet, all I feel is dissapointment in the stupidity of humans. Humans from New Jersey.

I spend a good deal of my waking hours defending my beloved homeland, from half-hearted shots targeting IROCS, puffy sneakers, mullets and other NJ staples, and I'm happy to keep on defending her. I love NJ. But the fact that this incident happened there makes things... harder.

Wow. A school. An institution dedicated to teaching the young about the world, and life, and how to behave... was locked down after some dude thought he saw a fucking ninja. LOCKED DOWN.

What happened to that built-in response present in all of us that kicks in on those occasions when one thinks he sees a ninja, to say, "Hmmm, I'm guessing there's a reasonable explanation here, and that I did not, in fact, just see a ninja." You know the one I mean, right?

Ahhh, there's that reasonable explanation! We were just talking about you! I knew you'd turn up, reasonable explanation, you crazy kid you...

So some gym teacher or drunk-on-gas-fumes maintenance man thinks he sees a ninja and -- (TheCoolerKing is tapped on the shoulder and directed to this other account of the story.)

Damn it. It's like NJ is testing my faith. I believe in you NJ, I do, but why must you make it so damn hard. I looked the other way when you forwarded spiky hair, I pretended not to notice when you embraced fleece hoodies and embroidered jeans but this... I cannot abide by this.

Let's think about this... The person in charge or books and knowledge and with access to everything from visual records of actual ninjas, to tomes cataloguing arcane rituals like "Halloween," thought he saw a ninja... Yay, mankind!

How many other people attending that party were late, and decided to cut through the woods that day, I wonder?

Librarian: "Hi, I'm the guy who just called about the ninja... Now I see a fairy princess! Send help right away! Oh shit, she's with Harry Potter! And just behind them is Spider-Man, and he's carrying a lunchbox!

Hmmm. Now George W. Bush has joined them, but he's much smaller than I'd have thought, if I'd ever thought, and his head is weird. It's almost mask-like in spots. I'd investigate further but why take chances, right? Send an airplane to kill them please hurry!"

The most emmbarrassing half hour in NJ history since the invention of the Oakley Razer Blade.

Not that there aren't enough documented moments of stupidity here already, but, what's the point of a lockdown? If it was an actual ninja after all, one of two things would've happened, neither of which would've been impacted by the doors getting locked.

1) The ninja slips effortlessly into the school without making a whisper, butchers everyone inside, then goes on to slaughter the local cops, hundreds of tough-acting guidos, the U.S. Army, a few dozen marines and eventually, anyone on the planet not a ninja.

2) If the ninja was off the lackey variety, the shop teacher/ex special forces vet laying low at the school uses a saw blade to kill the ninja and fifty of his brothers without breaking a sweat, before going on the road, desperate to outrun his past, and all that he's done...

Please NJ, next time get a closer look.



TheCoolerKing misses taylor ham and cheese on a bagel.

Teens with powers! A concept that's launched a thousand great comic books, numerous hit films and at least one best show of all-time. Dating, homework and super-ability is a winning formula. Except when metaphorical chemists are not involved and the potion created from the formula turns out to be of the lethal, agonizing death variety.

Like these, for example.

Top 6 Worst Movie Teens With Super Powers

6) Teen Wolf - What's not to love about a teenage werewolf, you say? Well, this one does nothing but pine for the "popular girl" (Who, in this movie, acts in school plays. In my school that was as far as you could get from popular. Honestly, your sport could've been "intramural stabbing people" and you'd have had a better shot at dating.) Teen Wolf dresses up like a confederate soldier for the school play, and plays basketball. What? You're gifted with the coolest monster power of all time and you use it to become a super-jock. Eat silver, dumb-ass.

I never quite got how lycanthropy was supposed to help you win a basketball game, either. Isn't basketball a finesse sport? I could see if he was fighting in the UFC (werewolves have zero takedown defense) or playing football maybe but no, not basketball. It's technique and skill, which don't improve with the additon of fur and four-inch claws to your body. They should've just made a water polo Creature from the Black Lagoon movie.


5) Scott Baio in Zapped - Nerd caught in a science experiment gone awry develops telekinetic powers. Like Spider-Man minus everything good about Spider-Man... and plus lots of girls skirts magically (creepily) lifted. Willy Aames practices for "being terrible" years later in "Charles in Charge" by being terrible here. (Where he also played a Baio sidekick. They're like the straight-to-video version of Cusack/Piven.)

I think he fights jocks and woos the popular girl, like most of the guys on this list. I think we see what happens when you develop powers and don't immediately devote yourself to fighting crime. Your chances are even worse if you developed your powers in the '80s and plummet further if the budget for your movie is eight dollars.

Oh, and the tagline on the poster (accompanying a shot of Baio zapping a girl's skirt up) is, "They're getting a little behind in their classwork." I can't decide how I feel about that.


4) Asian "Gadget"Kid from The Goonies - The actor who played him made one of my earlier lists for his portrayal of Short Round in Temple of Doom. Here he plays "Data" and his special power is inventing crappy gadgets that do nothing. I've noticed a lot of people have this power.

People jump on the race thing much quicker that they should, and I don't think this is racist but... I don't know, I think we can agree "goofball Asian gadget guy" isn't the greatest character in the world. Wasn't one of his inventions slippery shoes? Fantastic. Just to clarify, this movie might be amazing and totally still hold up, I'm only saying this character stinks.


3) Tina from Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood - This movie is notable (well, er, somewhat) because for the first time I can remember, since setting up the unstoppable killing machine that is Jason Voorhees, they actually pit him against someone in his league.

Tina has super bad-ass telekinetic powers and pummels the shit out of Jason the first two times they square off. She causes a lamp to snake out of the ceiling, wrap around his neck and choke him into the air. Then she electrocutes him and knocks him out cold. Pretty great stuff.

Why is she here? Well, she ultimately loses. Even with her arsenal of mayhem, she loses. I don't know, maybe I'm underestimating the ole gore-loving goalie but, I think with a little planning she could've annihilated him to the point off disintegration. Oh, and reason two is, her powers are what reanimates Jason in the first place, at the start of the movie. Finish what you started! Put him back in the Earth! But nope, she fails.


2) The Frog Brothers from The Lost Boys - I thought about putting in Jason Patric's "Michael" due to his whiny, mopey downer of a vampire character, who spends most of the film, sleeping and eating chinese take-out... but, my issue with him is pretty much the one I had with Teen Wolf, and you heard it so...

I'm gonna throw the Frog Bros. in here for talking the talk and then running the run... away from vampires and any possibility of danger. They choke in the underground lair at the start of the movie, they panic at the dinner with head vamp Edward Hermann, and they finally man up in time to threaten some six-year-old kid who's like 4% vampire during the finale, and then immediately get scared off by Jami Gertz. If a princess kissed the Frog Brothers they'd turn into... something slightly better at fighting vampires than the Frog Brothers.


1) Soul Man - The power to eat tanning pills and transform into a black man! While simultaneously offending everyone! I've actually watched this movie more than one time. Hard to believe, even if I was 12-years-old. I'm not sure if this is the movie that dimmed the bright light that was once C. Thomas Howell's career, but it didn't help things. You know who else is in this movie? Fucking James Earl Jones. Weird and unsettling.

As I recall Soul Man ultimately wins over skeptical blacks everywhere by punching out two guys who made racist jokes throughout the movie, that he earlier tolerated. This wipes out the fact that he stole a scholarship from a deserving black candidate by pretending to be black, emulated black stereotypes, romanced the black woman he earlier stole the scholarship from and on top of everything else (I'm fairly certain) spoke "jive" too.




TheCoolerKing's special teen power was being a jerk. A power he has to this day.

Back in the day, people would mark time by the passage of the seasons. Later, they turned this passage of time into “years” and “months”. Some Roman emperor guys came along and tried to change how stuff was counted based on their own vanity, and generally pissed off some mathematicians. After that, since there was no way of being creative with math anymore, people started measuring time using different ways. It seems we can’t just leave it alone. Some people measure time based on animal or human evolution. Some people like to measure billions of years at a time based on planetary changes. Others measure by economic changes in a country, wars, or popes. Or wars and popes.

Remember the time of Pope Pius XII? Wasn’t too helpful during WWII. Died of hiccups. Yeah, that guy.

I discovered, however, that I have my own way of measuring time now. Eras are defined by releases of Nintendo’s Mario Kart games.

BMK (Before Mario Kart) was my high school years, a dark time when I only knew of Atari games – PacMan, Defender, and yes, E.T. – and arcade games. I struggled with my geek identity, attempting to be a pretty high school girl to attract the boys (FAIL) instead of just settling back into my comfy geek personality. In college, I saved up for a SNES and then came year 0 – CMKE (Common Mario Kart Era).

It marked my independence: leaving college, getting my first apartment, living with a guy who slept in chain mail (he was my roommate, not lover… ‘cause ow…), discovering Rolling Rock beer, and setting up my SNES to my roommate’s TV to drive around in a circle, collect coins and weapons and try to figure out why this was the best damn driving game I’d ever played. Was it the oversized Bowser in the ridiculously tiny Shriner’s-type car that made it fun? The ability to hop your car down the street like a pimp? (I found way too much amusement in the bouncing cars.) Or did it matter? These likely are mysteries into which one should not delve too deeply; one should just accept the glory of Super Mario Kart. One does not question miracles.

I began judging people by their reaction to Mario Kart. I didn’t judge on an economic level – as if they didn’t have/couldn’t afford Mario Kart, they were lesser beings. My apartment was open to all who would embrace Mario Kart in their hearts. I made some friends just based on the friendly challenge that my Luigi could beat their Donkey Kong Jr. The holy drink was Rolling Rock and the holy throne was my futon, where we played for hours. If someone did not accept Mario Kart, she was dead to me.

As many prophets do, I had a dark point in my life when I turned my face from my true calling. I purchased a Playstation instead of a GameCube or an N64, missing out on the next few Mario Kart releases. I was aware of them, aware of the passage of each era, being something I had to eventually go back to or else be lost. And when I got my DS and was able to go back to the holy charting of time passage, I took the opportunity and didn’t look back. Luckily Mario Kart accepted my devotion without question and I drove that hand-held whenever and wherever I could. But I missed the larger, TV console version of the game, I have to admit. So when the Wii version came out, that was the true return to the fold for me.

In the era before now, I was a young woman in college, living in an apartment with four people, enticing others to play Mario Kart with me, drinking the holy Rock of the Rolling, and experiencing true independence for the first time. And I can touch that feeling, touch that era, by playing the Mario Kart Wii. Back in the day of my personal independence, in the days of Clinton in the White House, in the days where CDs of “Best Music of the '90s” were already being sold on TV (with the decade barely begun) and the Internet still the realm of bearded Usenet fanatics. A more innocent time.

In the era after this one, I wonder what life will be like when Uber Mario Kart comes out for the Nintendo Virtual Reality Dome and I’ll think back to now, with the dark days of war, Bush in the White House, unbelievable gas prices, and unemployment, but also the bright spots of my personal life, my family, friends, and teaching my daughter the fine points of Mario Kart Wii.

Some historians measure history by plain old years. Me, I think I’m going to measure it by Mario Kart. I’m a Nintendo loyalist right now, and can’t see missing another release. So as long as they keep releasing the games, I’ll keep marking my life by little red shells and banana peels.



Mur Lafferty is a writer and podcaster from Durham, NC. She is host of the award-winning podcast I Should Be Writing and producer and writer behind the zombie audio drama The Takeover. Her first novel, Playing For Keeps, is scheduled for release in August from Swarm Press. She is not a mythical creature.

John Kanzius is a retired radio executive living out his retirement in Florida. He may also be the man responsible for curing cancer. At first, when you read the story of his adventure into medical research, you might think “bullshit.” But that’s only until you read that several major medical research hospitals have taken up his cause, and that John has been raising millions of dollars to help fund research.

Radio waves! How? Powerful radio waves can heat metal, so John built a prototype high-powered radio transmitter in his garage, grabbed a hot dog, injected it with copper sulfate, and subjected it to his treatment. The hotdog heated to the point where cells would die, but only in the area of the injection. The rest of the hot dog was the same temperature as it had been before the test.

He nuked a hot dog. Big fuckin’ deal, right? Yeah, actually. It kind of is. This device would allow doctors to focus treatment on a single area, neutralizing the targeted cells but leaving the surrounding cells healthy and unharmed.

To address the issue of injecting patients with metal, John suggested metal nanoparticles instead of chemical solutions. Trillions of nanoparticles can be injected into the body with just a few milliliters of solution.

Rick said “ho-ho, good luck with that,” but shut his mouth when Curley called him back and let him know that he and Kanzius had managed to get his vial of nanoparticles to boil in Kanzius' machine. “Rick, you’re not going to believe this. He just blew the smithereens out of your nanoparticles!” Rick paused and then responded: “Holy shit.”

Unfortunately, there have been numerous studies that succeed in treating cancer in lab environments and in test animals, but fail in humans. Human trials are about four years away, and right now they can only target focused tumors (no metastasized cancers, yet), but the researchers involved are hopeful.

Sadly, John might not be around by the time his invention proves itself. His only option at this point is a bone marrow transplant, which would only prolong his pain and suffering.

From Slashdot’s crowdsourcing-justince department comes the heartwarming tale of a stolen car, the idiots who stole it, and a posse of car enthusiast-slash-forum-posters turned detectives who tracked the orchestrator of the act down and got him arrested.

The car did not come back. As Mr. Ironside put it, it went for a “permanent test drive.” He quickly posted a plea for help at Beyond.ca, where in a matter of days, a forum member was able to capture a picture of the suspect, inside the car, displaying the hand disfigurement that unquestionably identified him.

Soon after, another member spotted the suspect driving the car and tailed him, locating the moron’s home. The picture mentioned earlier was used to track down his Facebook page. Forum members eventually drove to the suspect’s home, blockaded the road with their vehicles. The owner of the car joined them and called the police, who responded in minutes. Someone had the presence of mind to video-tape the arrest:



”…you want to go on a test drive? How’s the car?” the man behind the camera asks - absolutely priceless. Jamie “The Claw” Jacobson (nickname given to him by forum members), 18 years old, now faces charges of theft over $5,000 and a court date on April 16th.

His friend in the car lost his hat to an eBay auction. No word on criminal charges for the Yankee's fan, or whether or not he was arrested.

The hat was found after the car was searched, along with receipts from a car wash and a 4-liter jug of oil. I guess Jamie-boy thought he was going to keep his new wheels.

Some are arguing the vigilante-esq tactics of the individuals who were instrumental in catching the thief. Should they have left the police work to the police or gone through with their efforts that ultimately landed Bozo in jail?

punk has been witness to the recovery of at least two vehicles via the efforts of VW Vortex members here in Arizona.

You can view the original call for help and the events that followed in the original forum post, here