HSU IT Department

Buttbart.com - A spoofy version of Breitbart, featuring Domald Tromp, the star of a series of books by mysterious author Chuck Tingle (other Tingle titles include Space Raptor Butt Invasion and My Ass Is Haunted By The Gay Unicorn Colonel). I wish the site had more content, but just the article titles alone are a hoot.

How Would Dracula Deal With Isis? - I think the title says it all, here.

Evolutionary biology meets Adam and Eve in the archives - Artist Jenifer Wightman has designed and hand-printed a leaf to match the Gutenberg Bible, correcting some of its misinformation ;) I love the idea, her approach to it, and the way so many archives are open to her proposal.

Two articles (here) and (here) in which a YouTube engineer explains how YouTube's goal of maximizing engagement unintentionally promotes videos that discredit the media and favor conspiracy theories, divisive content, and general nuttiness.

Once you've read those you'll be depressed and discouraged, so here's a very funny one to end with:
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Deficiency, in which The Medical Journal of Australia explains The Hobbit in terms of Vitamin D deficiencies XD Hugely funny, especially for the completely poker-faced approach it takes.

So there you go: the fruits of falling down teh interwebz rabbit hole today.

Oh, and it's still snowing here. ::curses quietly but viciously::

(click through for more photos)

Take the day off from work and read "DM of the Rings," a very funny comic in which a long-suffering dungeon master tries to persuade Dave -- I mean Frodo -- and eight other players to stay in character as he leads them through a lengthy adventure in a strange new place called Middle Earth. I have been giggling away for an hour straight and we're not even through Moria yet. If you have ever been a DM/GM (*koff*tcpip*koff*), you'll find the creator's comments underneath each episode funny as hell, too -- I was particularly amused by those for Episode XIII.

"Lord of the Rings is more or less the foundation of modern D&D. The latter rose from the former, although the two are now so estranged that to reunite them would be an act of savage madness. Imagine a gaggle of modern hack-n-slash roleplayers who had somehow never been exposed to the original Tolkien mythos, and then imagine taking those players and trying to introduce them to Tolkien via a D&D campaign..."

Episode I: The Copious Backstory ==>

THANK YOU to everyone :) for the warm birthday wishes and virtual gifts, and to the wonderful rivertempest for the real gift of Snape's wand (yes! Snape's wand!!!) -- it is a thing of beauty and I shall cherish it.

Also, my mom sent me this. She knows me well lol.

HAHAHAHAAAAA!

That is all.



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I recently discovered the parodic stylings of Minerva mctabby and have laughed myself nearly into a cracked rib. Be sure to put down any beverages before proceeding...Ready? OK!

The Head of Slytherin is a delightfully demented and decadent little piece set to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." There's voyeurism, slash, and polyjuiced rhyming smut -- who could ask for more?? Apparently it was written back in 2002 for something called "the Severus Snape Fuh-Q Fest," which sounds fabulous and quite possibly worth reviving. Here's a sample:

(If you need a refresher on the melody)
I would never have believed it of my stooges, Crabbe and Goyle,
But I saw them sneak off somewhere with a flask of massage oil.
I pursued - and found him waiting, with a cauldron on the boil -
The Head of Slytherin.
Then there's the hilarious That Potter Slash, also by McTabby, a parody of everyone's favorite Dr. Seuss book Green Eggs and Ham:

Would you, could you
Harry/Snape?
Read it! Read it!
No escape!

Serious giggles lie ahead. Read (or sing) aloud for best effect.

I don't know who azalea is, but as soon as I can stop laughing she's got my vote for Cleverest Shakespeare Adaptation of the Year. Or maybe the decade. Her spoof of King Lear, entitled (what else?) King Winchester, contains, among other gems, the following:


Dean: For God’s sake, let us sit upon the couch,
And talk about this in a reasonable way.

Sam: O, insupportable!
Dean: Dude, calm thyself.

Dean: ...How shall Sammy fare, outside our lines of salt
And from the cover of my Glock remov’d?

*snort*

OK, I'm VASTLY behind on book reviews so will have to sum up ("Let me explain...No, there is no time -- let me sum up"). So: four tonight and (if all goes well and the goddess of motivation smiles on me) four tomorrow.

Nightlights, a Twilight parody. Meh. Hilarious bit at the beginning spoofing Bella's klutziness -- which was a major gripe of mine in the first book, it was made such a major deal I assumed that at a minimum she would turn out to have some degenerative neurological condition -- and a very funny bit where she thinks she's meeting Edvart's parents but he turns out have some kind of address dyslexia and went to the wrong house. Other than that, not very clever.

No Blade of Grass (U.S. title), a revisit but just as good on the fourth or fifth re-read as the first. A British (therefore stiff-upper-lippy) post-apocalypse novel, in which the Chung-Li virus destroys all grasses on the planet and a small band of friends and family must fight their way from London to an idyllic (defensible) valley in Wales. Not quite so I'm-the-man-and-I-will-save-you as Alas Babylon, but more intense in that the effects are immediate rather than remote. Alas, Babylon has a very unrealistic view of survivable nuclear war; Grass gives us a world that's truly dead, no arguments, no way to stop it, and very impersonally since it's a virus. I can't believe they haven't made this into a movie yet, it has all the elements of a fantastic high-concept SF flick. They'd have to do something to update the female roles but other than that all the pieces are in place.

Bible Stories for Adults by James Morrow. Not bad but didn't wow me. The first story (unless I've missed something) seems to suggest that the Chinese are descended from a diseased whore who escaped the Biblical Deluge. I can only hope I've misread that one. The rest are quite fun -- quirky, irreverent, pointed critiques of religion which I always love (being a pagan or possibly an atheist, depending on the news). Asimov would like them, I think, as several of them employ robots to prove the essential inhumanity of mankind. I especially liked 'Spelling God with the Wrong Blocks," in which a bunch of Creationist robots burn Darwinian heretics at the stake and await the Great Genital Coming (no pun intended, I'm sure). Morrow also wrote Towing Jehovah, in which God dies and his body gets towed south by a barge, and Only Begotten Daughter, in which Jesus has a sister, both of which I highly recommend.

Mystery of Grace by Charles de Lint. Sadly, this disappointed me. Not entirely -- not in the writing or characters (Grace the grease monkey, love her!) which are both elegant as always, and the resolution (involving Mexican bruja traditions and faith in the saints) was appropriate and well done, as I've come to expect from Monsieur de Lint. I liked the idea that Grace and John (not to mention the evil witch in the penthouse) have to learn to let go of some things, but the fact that Grace had no interest in moving on until ( spoilers ) It feels like a cheat, almost. So it's OK, but not his best.

Wow. I'm tired now.

oops, bad coding...better now...

Hilarious review on "The Onion" -- "But where's the bad acting??" ROTFL!!!