My money's on the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
(link),Jan 20
RT @WardQNormal: The trouble with conspiracy theories is that a lack of evidence is not taken as proof it's not real, but instead as proof the conspiracy is indeed everywhere. This is like thinking that the reason you never see elephants hiding up in treetops is because they're good at it.,Jan 12
Publius Clodius was a populist demagogue in the late Roman Republic. He knew how to whip a mob up into a frenzy, but he wasn't clever enough to use them effectively. He failed.,Jan 7
One of these seems to say "Come on down!" (link),Jan 7
Just a reminder that I still have a bunch of old original art for sale. These all come to us from the 1980's, with drawings from The Runestaff, the Leslie Fish/Rudyard Kipling Cold Iron songbook, The Folk Harp Journal, and more.
(link)(link),Jan 14
I don’t consider myself a materialistic kind of guy. I’m not all starry eyed and goofy about it, but I don’t often find myself desiring things. Tools, yes: things, no.
And although there are quite a few home improvements I could make to my bathroom (and here, dear reader, I underestimate) I have never until today wanted thousands of dollars worth of bathroom fixtures so that I could design a whole new bathroom around them.
Maybe it’s a phase.
But look at these incredibly unnecessary faucets! Look, and desire them!
These (and more!) retro rocket styled faucets are from "New Retro Bath" – a phrase I believe I have never typed before – and they make me wish I was pointlessly wealthy enough to have a use for them. Which, you know, means being able to afford them.
Just picture the stainless steel walls and portholes of my new imaginary bathroom. The oscilloscopes! The blinky lights! The mysterious levers marked "DANGER!" And I haven’t even started to think about the sound effects.
In my ongoing quest for more examples of things I don’t understand, but do admire*, I’ve stumbled on this collection of vintage science images from the Science Service of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
Wonderful old photographs of lab equipment and industrial machines of all sorts!
There’s also this collection, which I found first and which (I think) is separate from the subjects menu at that first link.
These collections are a terrific resource for visualizing nearly plausible mad science labs!
Mister Doortree’s Golden Age Comic Book Stories – which doesn’t limit itself to comics, but also features collections of work from all sorts of illustrators – has punched my buttons yet again with this gallery of art by Frank Frazetta.
Some of the pieces are collaborations with Roy G. Krenkel, and they come from the old Ace paperbacks of Edgar Rice Burroughs from the sixties and early seventies… which are the editions I read, as it happens, and I’m sure that contributes to the button punching I mentioned.
The big one at right is one of my favorites, and one I wish had been offered as a print (I’m pretty sure it never has). It and a few of the others are from Burroughs’ Venus series, which is the series I continue to like best, and whose Frazetta covers I’ve always also liked in gobs and cartloads.
There have been several announcements about Buck Rogers revivals over the past couple of years, and I can’t say I’ve been too excited about any of them; but I find that I do like this teaser for an announced web series based on the original, 1928 Buck. I’m a little mystified by the announcement that Gil Gerard, star of that 1970s version that still gives me stomach cramps, is somehow involved.
But what’s not to like about this shot? Fingers crossed.
There’s a web site with that new car smell right here, and
forums over here. It looks like filming started in late September for a late 2010 launch.
Here’s one of Brian Despain’s wonderful paintings. He seems to be working on a series of "100 Robots", though there’s very little information about that at his web site; still, the Gallery is so enjoyable that I, for one, hope he won’t be stopping at 100.
His work’s featured in a show at the Roqla Rue Gallery in Seattle, through December 5th. (Found a little indirectly through i09)
And lest I lose myself in a capitalistic orgy of self-congratulation – which, now that I’ve typed it, sounds a lot kinkier than I thought it would* – I’ve got to point you at Doc Atomic’s 2010 Ray Gun Calendar: twelve months of disintegrators! Muahahahahaha!
And ha!
* that means that I bet if you Googled it, you’d find something you’d rather not have found.
[tags]ray gun, raygun, calendar,retro, science fiction, sci fi, disintegrator, blaster, things not to take on an airplane[/tags]
I’ve had an account at DeviantArt for years now – that’s where my Retropolis archival prints come from – and though I don’t get very active on any of the social networking sites, I’ve always enjoyed the opportunity to stumble over really neat art that I’d otherwise never have seen.
So as I was doing test renderings this morning I just browsed through the artwork that I’ve faved there over the years, and I figured I’d share some of it with you.
The Life Magazine web site is displaying a gallery of box art from vintage space toys – lots of robots, of course, but there are all the other accessories that amateur spacemen needed back in the day: ray guns, rockets, radios, and even holsters. ‘Cause, you know, our motto was "be prepared". I think that was us, anyway.
They’re including links to buy prints of the images from Getty Images, but those links didn’t want to work for me. Your mileage may vary.
Now you – yes, you! – can turn your iPhone into a Quantum Universe Splitter, enabling you to branch into alternate universes whenever you’re faced with a problem that has two possible solutions. Chocolate, or vanilla? World Peace, or World Domination? Fritters, or bagels?
Because as they tell us, every one of these choices splits off a branching alternate reality, right? So here you go. Just what Walter Bishop on Fringe wishes he’d invented, except that he, like your humble correspondent, seems like a landline kind of guy. This App does not run on a 1947 Stromberg-Carlson, or I’d have one myself.
As you may learn on its web site, the Universe Splitter App connects directly to a quantum random number generator in a Geneva laboratory – which helpfully tells you which of the two possible universes you are in and – therefore – decides which of the two courses you’re meant to take. Don’t take the other one, or it’ll be raining frog-flavored ice cream in Peru on Thursday. Flight 815 will crash again. And more. Just don’t go there, okay?
This helpful App is the brainchild of my old friend Eric Daniels, animator and Quantum Bifurcator. And it’s only $1.99, which on the bell curve of Quantum Mechanics devices is, you know, subatomic.
My money's on the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
(link),Jan 20
RT @WardQNormal: The trouble with conspiracy theories is that a lack of evidence is not taken as proof it's not real, but instead as proof the conspiracy is indeed everywhere. This is like thinking that the reason you never see elephants hiding up in treetops is because they're good at it.,Jan 12
Publius Clodius was a populist demagogue in the late Roman Republic. He knew how to whip a mob up into a frenzy, but he wasn't clever enough to use them effectively. He failed.,Jan 7
One of these seems to say "Come on down!" (link),Jan 7
Just a reminder that I still have a bunch of old original art for sale. These all come to us from the 1980's, with drawings from The Runestaff, the Leslie Fish/Rudyard Kipling Cold Iron songbook, The Folk Harp Journal, and more.
(link)(link),Jan 14
I don’t consider myself a materialistic kind of guy. I’m not all starry eyed and goofy about it, but I don’t often find myself desiring things. Tools, yes: things, no.
