While stopped at a traffic signal last night, I looked off toward the crescent Moon where it sat near the horizon, curve pointed downward and slightly to the right. An airplane flew past, on approach to land at a nearby airport.
The flight path, distance and viewing angle made it look like the airplane was the same size as the Moon, and it passed by just below the crescent.
If only I’d had a camera, preferably one with really fast film and a good zoom lens…
How To Read a Book a Day by The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent. (via @johannadc) – I don’t think this will work for the new Wheel of Time book.
Belly Button Lint and Bogus Ads – a marketer on refusing to participate in campaigns that mislead or flat-out lie about the product.
There’s something wrong with this advertisement for flu vaccination services:
The slogan just bugs me, because they got the metaphor wrong.
Think about it: Vaccines work by training your body’s immune system to recognize a particular type of germ ahead of time, so that if you get exposed to the real thing later on, you can fight it off before it actually manages to make you sick. In terms of a warfare metaphor, it’s about training the troops who guard the home front so that if the enemy successfully invades past your borders, you can fight them off before they become entrenched.
The first line of defense would be something that stops them from invading in the first place. A well-defended border, in terms of ground troops. The Coast Guard in terms of sea. Radar and anti-aircraft missiles to identity and shoot down incoming enemy aircraft.
Your first line of defense against the flu? That would be your skin.
So wash your hands!
</pedantic>
An incredible photo recreation of Georges Seurat’s painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jette. The photo was staged back in 2006, but I hadn’t seen it until it popped up on Reddit a few days ago. I find it amusing that people have been posting lyric fragments from Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park With George in notes on the photo!
There’s also a side-by-side comparison of the painting and the recreation.
Update: the photo is by Mark’s Postcards from Beloit, who has posted an album of more shots from the photoshoot featuring Friends of Riverfront in Beloit, Wisconsin. Used here under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 (attribution, no commercial use or derivatives) licence.
On the last weekend of October, I made it out to the second annual Long Beach Comic Con. It’s shaping up to be a very artist–, writer– and dealer-focused convention.
A couple of years ago, Wizard World Los Angeles seemed to be all about people looking for deals on comics and collectibles (in which case, why not just go to Frank and Son or the Shrine?). When the show resurfaced in Anaheim this year, it seemed to be all about the celebrity autographs.
If you just want to see the photos, check out the photo set on Flickr. Otherwise, read on!
The first thing everyone noticed was the row of themed cars out in front of the convention center: A Camaro painted up as Bumblebee, a replica of KITT from Knight Rider, cars from less geeky shows like Starsky and Hutch and (IIRC) Magnum, P.I.…and a car that had been modified to look like a Rebel Alliance small fighter, complete with an R2 unit!
The main floor at Long Beach was bigger this year than last, though nowhere near as big as Anaheim. Unlike Anaheim, they used most of their space.
All the publishers were clustered near the entrance, with Aspen and BOOM! the most prominent, followed by Top Cow, Image and Avatar in the next row with other small press, along with the celebrity autograph area off to one side.
The rest of the floor was structured with a huge Artist’s Alley at its core, surrounded by retailers on either side. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that it was two Artist’s Alley areas with dealers wrapped around them in a sort of F shape.
If you went to Anaheim Comic-Con this year, remember how big the celebrity signing area was, and how small the artists’ area was? Flip it. My gut instinct says that there were more artists with tables here than there were in San Diego, but then it could just be that they’re a bigger percentage of the smaller space.
NyQuil Regret (n): the moment during a sleepless night when you realize you should’ve taken the damn blue green pill.
