Category: Entertainment

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I was thinking about the series of “Rogue Profiles” we’ve been getting every once in a while in The Flash and realized that quite a few villains based their M.O. on a childhood trauma.

It’s been long established that Heat Wave was trapped in a walk-in freezer during a school field trip, and has had a life-long obsession with heat. So when he decided to go into crime, a flamethrower was a natural choice.

The Pied Piper is another one: he was born deaf, and his wealthy parents found a doctor who could give him hearing. Naturally he became obsessed with sound, so sonic tech was his weapon of choice.

The Trickster was born into a family of acrobats but afraid of heights. So he invented “air walker” shoes, which he later used to start his criminal career — by holding up and robbing airplanes. Continue reading →

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Rob Cockerham of Cockeyed.com (home of the fascinating How Much is Inside? series) noticed the same model showing up in a lot of his spam (often wearing the same dress). He collected the advertisements, and linked them together in what he calls An Unsolicited Commercial Love Story.

Since he first wrote it up, other people have spotted the same model on banner ads, MSN articles and even a kiosk at UCLA. Where will “Alicia” show up next?

Aren’t stock photos fun?

(Via SpamBlogging)

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Across the street from the Irvine Civic Center:

Bunny crossing?!?

This brings back memories of days in UCI’s student housing. There were rabbits everywhere. The complex was right next to a big empty field, and rabbits would hop through all the time. “Oh, look, a rabbit!” “Yeah, yeah, same old, same old.”

But this is the first time I’ve seen a road sign. Of course, given that even the people in Irvine can’t stick to crosswalks, I expect there will still be problems with jaywalking (jayhopping?) rabbits!

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After four drive-bys, I finally managed to get a picture of the Gondor street sign. It was far enough away that it’s barely readable (this is the native resolution on a 5 megapixel image — it’s not shrunk, it’s just cropped). Eventually I ought to turn onto a side street, park the car, and walk to a nice vantage point instead of just holding the camera with one hand while zooming by and hoping I get an image.

Gondor Street Sign

I’ve updated Living in Middle Earth.

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You know how you see some numbers in one context so often that you think of that meaning when you see them somewhere else? Seriously: If you’ve spent a lot of time on the web and you notice the clock reading 4:04, or a price coming up as $4.04, etc., chances are you find it funny, right? It’s like realizing that someone’s initials are A.T.M.

Well, I was looking at the Star Wars Trilogy on Amazon and noticed it had 1394 reviews:

Star Wars: See all 1394 customer reviews

I saw that number, and my mind instantly thought “Firewire.”

(Yes, the question of the day is, “How can I make a post about Star Wars even more geeky?”)

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Well, I picked up JLA Secret Files 2004 today. Not because I read JLA, or even Justice League Elite (I read the first two issues, but it hasn’t really grabbed me), but because I figured there’d be a good image to scan of the Flash’s alternate costume for JLE. (It’s odd to be using that abbreviation again.)

The main story, as it turned out, focused on the Flash dividing his time between the two teams as they work cases that turn out to be related. It’s an OK story, up until the end, which features the most boneheaded use of super-speed I’ve seen in a long time. Continue reading →

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For quite a while now, the always-excellent This Is True newsletter has been advertising writer Randy Cassingham’s latest (?) project: JumboJoke, a weblog-style daily joke post. I finally took a look at it, and thought I’d share the following pair of lists based on our political parties’ often contradictory platforms and rhetoric:

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