Though by posting this, I am undoubtedly fueling some insidious viral marketing campaign, I feel that it is for the good of the Blogosphere that I share my discovery. I stumbled upon a Super Hero Generator this morning. I pushed a few buttons, and then… Shazam!
While today may have been Gay Crown Friday, I somehow forgot to actually make the darn crown. Do’oh! How about a banana hat, instead?
I’ll make up for it by answering yet another Friday Five.
This weekend was rather disappointing. For much of Saturday, I was occupied with work-related issues. Sunday was hardly more rewarding, though I did at last complete my Weird Sound Generator.
Now, let’s turn from the WSG to BSG. After diligently clicking away from any potential Internet spoilers, I finally got to watch the return of Battlestar Galactica thanks to the magic of TiVO. I thought the mid-season cliffhanger was brilliant. Of course, I also thought Farscape’s final scene was brilliant- after all that Aeryn and John have been through and done, in the end, they’re mowed down for trespassing. Genius!
Now, what I didn’t particularly care for was the wait of almost a year to find out What Happens Next, and I must admit that by the time the ads for the new episodes rolled around, I was only mildly curious as to the answer to that question. And I really didn’t care much who the Last Cylon was. That revelation came as no real shock, as they planted the idea way, way, way back when Baltar invented the Cylon detector. What did surprise me was the existence of other Cylons.
What I suspect we will learn is that Earth just happens to be about 2,000 light years from the Colonies. Some of the Cylons of Earth, having knowledge of their Impending Doom™, found a way to encode themselves as pure information, and then transmitted the information in the direction of the Colonies. The signal reached the Colonies and was received by the Colonial Cylons. The signal overwrote their Colonial programming, replacing it with programming from Earth. This programming resulted in the war, the creation of hybrids, and finally the return of the bio-Cylons. Of course, this scenario raises the question of how the Earth Cylons could know that the Colonies would have their own Cylons to receive the signal.
Now, even if the above happens to be proven incorrect, there’s at least one more very good question. First of all, who nuked Earth? We were all too ready to believe that the Cylons reached Earth first, perhaps even during the Cylon War, and we were also ready to believe the anvilicious idea that Earth nuked itself, which still may prove to be the case. However, think back to Kobol. In more than one instance, the Colonial gods were spoken of not as abstract personifications, but as tangible beings. So perhaps Earth was the recipient of the wrath of the gods.
Then there’s the question of the corpse of Kara Thrace. Though it wouldn’t be a terribly original idea, perhaps there’s some kind of Keeper of Earth waiting for the return of the bio-Cylons. When Starbuck’s ship fell into the vortex, it was actually wormholed to Earth, where she would have been given a sign by the Keeper and then be sent back to lead the others. Unfortunately, she crashed. The Keeper then had no choice but to extract what memories it could from the corpse and then implant them into a clone.
Finally, there’s the question of what role Hera, the hybrid child of human and Cylon, has to play in the future. If the idea of wrathful space gods turns out to be true, then perhaps it’s the case that the gods themselves are human-Cylon hybrids from an even earlier trip around the wheel.
And now for something that doesn’t involve (much) singing or dancing. Like the little engine that could, or perhaps more like Monty Python’s Black Knight, Kintore-Z won’t let a missing limb or two keep him from finishing his workout… or winning the Baca Robocup, a Japanese competition celebrating absurd robotics.
via Pink Tentacle
Continuing on with the theme of change, I’ve often imagined becoming a rich, famous, bestselling writer of either epic space opera or perhaps plausible cyber-crime. I never really thought of writing mainstream stuff, let alone for teens, until I found a mix-and-match plot generator. Voila! Instant after-school special material!
As the story opens, the main character is in a drunken stupor because she killed a small child. On the advice of her favorite uncle, she is making a video about the traumatic past, during which her puppy tragically committed suicide. While recording these events, she meets a boy who is even worse off than the main character, and soon runs away helping the main character realize that life has no meaning.
Now all I need is a great title. In fact, I just happen to know of a Random Title Generator which suggests that I should call my tale of anguish and grief The Sucking Magic. Erm… no, let’s try that again. How about Rose of Death? That will be a perfect title, once I make it into a glaringly obvious pun by naming a character Rose. And also have her rise from the dead. I’m thinking it will be… the small child? No, even better, the puppy, whose spirit will mercilessly torment the main character, driving her mad with guilt, which in turn results in the demise of the small child in a tragic Tupperware accident.
Of course, just on the slim chance the book is banned, or worse, reviled by critics and parent-teacher associations alike, I’ll release it under a pen name. Fortunately, I just happen to know of a Random Pen Name Generator. It suggests the nom de plume of Vernon Griffes.
Of course, since every great book needs an equally great cover, I thought back to the Album Cover Meme. So I did a Flickr search for "Rose of Death" and found a picture of a hat released under Creative Commons. A few hasty minutes with the Gimp and voila!
Oh my, where does the time go. It seems like I just wrote a post about a dull weekend, and now I’m writing another. And the previous week’s post is still visible. Fortunately for me, the folk who brought us NaBloPoMo are continuing last year’s tradition of declaring a theme for each month of the year to inspire otherwise uninspired folks like myself. The theme for January (which is, I admit, nearly half-over already) is change.
What’s something I’d like to change? Well, as I complained mentioned last week, I’ve come to the astounding realization that sitting at home is boring. I resolved to "get out of the house" and have a particular activity and destination in mind when I did so. And much to my delight and surprise, it happened.
This Wednesday, I went to a game night held by a local community center. It was fun and casual, and I made some nice acquaintances over pizza, beer, and Trivial Pursuit.
Then, on Saturday, I went to a dinner party. It was a big dinner party, and in a rather small house, and so was rather crowded. Since I dislike crowds, I ended up spending most of my time on the porch with the smokers. I suppose there would be some that would tell me that by doing so, I actually missed out on the event, much as one would miss out on a roller coaster by riding it with one’s eyes closed. "You should have been in that sea of opportunity, networking!" they’d chide. "Mingle! Circulate! Network! Netwooooork!"
Uh, right. Some people are energized by such loud and chaotic situations, and some find such situations stressful and draining. I’m in the latter group. Given the choice of being squeezed into a room with a bunch of folks trying too hard to be friendly, or casually drinking a beer on a porch and remarking on the brightness of the moon, I’d definitely prefer the latter.
It’s the return of Memeday with this Friday Five.
Alas, the fun, festivity and frivolity of Holidailies has come to an end. This will have been my 23rd Holidailies post, thus exceeding the "realistic" goal of twenty posts by three. Yes! No shame of defeat for me!
The final prompt of the challenge is epiphany. I was only dimly aware that a holiday of that name exists. What a fabulous idea for a holiday, the celebration of a flash of insight! We could celebrate Sir Isaac Newton’s fabled conk on the head which led eventually to the invention of calculus. We could celebrate Friedrich August Kekulé and his dream of snakes that led him to discover the molecular structure of benzene. We could celebrate Archimedes in his bathtub, and all the other Eureka moments.
I see that the actual Epiphany commemorates the arrival of the kings of Orient in Bethlehem. I was always under the impression that their arrival was perfectly timed to the birth, as they are almost always present in nativity scenes. Making things even odder is the fact that by this time of year, most people have long since taken down their mangers, angels and other Christmas paraphernalia. In fact, by about noon on Christmas, I’d say everyone’s spent themselves in the modern-day orgy of consumerism and won’t be ready to have another go until Backoween commences sometime in, what is it now, July? Or have we sunk so far that Back-to-School sales start before the school year is out?
Anyway, you can imagine how the kings might feel about their holiday nowadays, latecomers to the party, bearing wine and snacks, not knowing that coffee has already been served, or worse, that the hostess is already hungover.
And now for something completely different rather similar to the dancing astromechs.
ERIK
