I’ve long disliked how TIME titles its news pieces with rhetorical questions and pretends that what happens on Facebook is news. Apparently The Onion is even more fed-up than I am:

TIME Announces New Version Of Magazine Aimed At Adults

Occasionally I post videos that I think media people would find interesting on Canted under the category of “YouTube Finds.” Some pay homage to classic movies of decades past. Others are contemporary works that are aesthetically impressive as works of media art. The two videos I posted there last week fall under the latter category, and they’re both so good that I had to re-post them here.

The first is “Le Cafe,” a silly (well animated, but silly all the same) video about a man who relies on coffee to get him through the work day. My roommate Steven Bosse, a man who likewise needs his coffee on a regular basis, showed it to me one afternoon and added afterward, “This is why I don’t use our coffee maker”:

The other is a short film that I heard about sometime ago—”The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello.” This Australian film by Anthony and Julia Lucas was nominated in 2006 for an Academy Award in the category of Best Animated Short. I’ve been wanting to see it for awhile now, but I only just became aware that the full thing was up on YouTube a few days ago.

When trying to analyze whether a book or film is “steampunk,” it often feels like the term is artificially placed or forced. Not with “Jasper Morello.” It comes chock full of brass, steel, complex machinery, airships, aether rifles—we’re talking full commitment here. Beyond being a prime example of the subgenre that happens to strike my fancy though, the animation style is a work of pure artistry:

A rider alert from SunTran’s website this past weekend reads:

Elephant Walk Could Delay Downtown Buses

On Sunday, July 4 from around 2:30 to 4 p.m., buses in the downtown area may experience minor delays due to the circus elephants walking from the Tucson Convention Center to the train depot. We ask passengers to be patient during this time.

I wonder what, exactly, passengers who decided not to be patient during that time could’ve done about it.

This came up on my Facebook newsfeed this afternoon and I had to re-post it:

The 9 Most Badass Bible Verses

I don’t think the average person realizes just how obscenely ridiculous much of the Old Testament is. This one is my personal favorite. It’s from the Second Book of Kings (2:23-24).

From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. “Go on up, you baldhead!” they said. “Go on up, you baldhead!” He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.

Summoning bears to maul punk kids for calling you names? Is that even necessary? And why hasn’t Hollywood ever made a movie with this in it? I didn’t even believe it was an actual Bible quote until I looked it up on BibleGateway.com.

I was going to put a disclaimer on this post saying that the compilation I linked to may not be appropriate for all readers, and then I remembered that it’s all from the Bible and I felt weird about saying that.

Over lunch today a friend of mine brought up a rumor she heard about hardcore fans of Twilight (there’s even a term for them: “Twihards”) violently attacking people who profess to be non-fans (there’s a term for them, too: “anti’s”). None of us had heard of so-called Twilight attacks before, so I decided to see what I could dig up on the InterWeb.

If it’s a widespread phenomenon, the mainstream news hasn’t picked up on it yet. I couldn’t find anything on it through a Google News search (if anyone else does, feel free to e-mail me the link).

Less official sources of news (a.k.a. the online rumor mills that we technically term as “message boards”) have plenty to say about it. Geekologie has a post on it that’s already a year old. There’s this news item on Deviant Art (likewise over a year old). And for those who love lists, there’s a fan history wiki that documents a number of cases. Whether all of them (or even most of them) are true, who can say?

My initial reaction after hearing about it was that this is sheer madness that the world is descending into, but after giving it some thought, it’s really not all that surprising. After all, how many fights have broken out over who’s a Yankees fan or who’s a Red Sox fan? To say nothing of the soccer riots that have broken out in dozens of countries and which, over the years, have claimed hundreds of lives. Throwing a few punches at people that hate your favorite book might seem ridiculous, but then no one has called in the riot police on Twilight fans.

Yet.

After tackling it, The Onion proceeds to pummel it mercilessly.

Key quote: “Forcing prisoners to wander in an infinite labyrinth living in fear of being torn limb from limb by the minotaur may seem harsh to some people now, but you have to remember what it was like after 9/11.”

http://www.theonion.com/content/themes/common/assets/onn_embed/embedded_player.swf?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theonion.com%2Fcontent%2Ffiles%2Fimages%2FMINATOUR_MAZE_article.jpg&videoid=97618&title=Is%20Using%20A%20Minotaur%20To%20Gore%20Detainees%20A%20Form%20Of%20Torture%3F
Is Using A Minotaur To Gore Detainees A Form Of Torture?

Two clothing related conversations in brief.

The first:

“I’m giving you a dollar.”

–I’m not taking it.

“C’mon! Just take it. That way I will be fully justified in eating half your fries.”

–It’s a dollar. It doesn’t make that much of a difference. Do I really look so poor and rundown that I need one dollar to compensate for you eating my fries?

“Yes, you do. You look like a poor and destitute college kid. Just look at your Hawaiian pants.”

–(Looking down.) I believe they’re called “shorts.”

The second:

–How do you manage to wear pants in this heat?

“I don’t know. I seem to be doing all right. When it gets hot out I’ll put shorts on.”

–You’re the kind of kid I tell stories about when I go back home. I tell people (in thick, aristocratic British accent), “Oh yes, and when it’s ninety degrees outside they still wear pants. Really? Hurmbababum.”

“Where are you from again?”

–Nineteenth-century New England.