I'm So Vain. . .

. . . I probably think this link is about me.

Seriously, it's cool to be linked to by other website. I'm pretty sure the person who runs it has commented here before, yet somehow I only just discovered Aren't We Nerdy this past week. The site's premise involves listing- Jeff Foxowrthy style- all the various signs that a given person might, indeed, be nerdy.

Like being able to name all eleven Doctors from Dr. Who in a single breath.

Or being being the proud owner of a shirt that says "I only kiss sueprheroes."

Or splitting your days between preparing notes for an introductory physics course, writing the first draft of a live-action Sailor Moon screenplay, and figuring out ways to try and meet Miyuu Sawai. . . again.

So to get into the spirit of Aren't We Nerdy. . . even moreso. . . I thought I'd share yet another of the many nerdy ideas that bouce incessantly through my head. After all. . .

What is the most resilient parasite?
Bacteria?
A virus?
An intestinal worm?
An idea?
Please. . . I'm talkin' 'bout Disco.



Resilient... highly contagious. Once disco has taken hold of the brain it's almost impossible to eradicate. Disco that is fully boogied - fully gotten-down - that sticks.

Disco hit its peak in the late 1970's-- coincidentally, this was an era that saw a massive resurgence in the popularity of science fiction. Star Wars. Superman. Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It was inevitable that unstoppable force of this sci-fi wave would collide with the immovable object that was disco fever.

The results of this collision were sublime.

So much so that I found myself thinking. . . this really needs to come back!

Hence. . . quite possibly the greatest idea I've ever had. . .

DISCO INCEPTION.

That's right. A fully funkified re-imagining of Hans Zimmer's original score to the film Inception. A groove that gets down not one, not two, but three levels of boogie.

Seriously, I have put way more thought and energy into this than anyone should, and I really need to get it out of my system. The whole thing has turned into a swirl of ideas, images and sounds in my head, so forigve me if what follows seems to lack cohesion more than usual:

- We open (yes. . . I even imagined a lame 70's style music video to go with it) with Inception's (in)famous closing shot of the perpetually spinning top. As we close in, the spinning top gradually morphs into a spinning disco ball, by means of effects that would make the chroma-key from William Shatner's Rocketman look sophisticated by comparison.

- We're on the disco floor. Dancing projections abound. We hear the sound of "Time", the final track of the Inception score, only. . . funkier. It's tempo is more upbeat. It's accompanied by snaring drums and waka-waka guitars¹. The legendarily deep sounds of Zimmer's brass section have been replaced by the snazzy, jazzy, high-pitched horns of disco.

- Then, we hear the chorus-- one which I've never been able to get out of my head since it first appeared:

IN-CEP-TION!
I'll dig myself right deep in your heaaaaart!
IN-CEP-TION!
I'll dig right to the deepest paaaaaaart!

There's also a second part to the chorus, but it changes every time it pops into my head. The first part, however, is always consistent.

- After the first verse or two-- I've thought up lyrics, but never bothered to write them down-- we see Cobb, Eames, Arthur, and Saito strut onto the dance floor, their trademark upscale suits unbuttoned near the top. The crowd clears, and the quartet proceed to set the dance floor on fire in ways that John Travolta could only. . . ahem. . . "dream" of.

- Then. . . we go deeper. See, I imagined sturcturing the song the sam way that Nolan structured the film, as a set of nested songs. We'll go to the next "level" of groove, which basically amounts to another song- a discofied version of another one of Zimmer's original tracks. Then we go to the next level, and then. . .

- Limbo. A Deodato-esque surreal-groove rendition of "Waiting for a Train". Then. . .

- The Kick. A disco cover of "Non, Je ne Regrette Rien." (This isn't quite a disco version, but it's approriately campy).

- We go back up the levels, hearing the "kick" during each transition, until we're right back to the first song:

IN-CEP-TION!
I'll dig myself right deep in your heaaaaart!
IN-CEP-TION!
I'll dig right to the deepest paaaaaaart!

- And then we pull out from the disco ball. . . back to the spinning top. Back to reality. . . the dream is over.

OR IS IT?!?!?

And that's Disco Inception.

Whew. . . How did this start again?

Right! Aren't We Nerdy. Go there! Boogie Woogie Oogie, right now!



1) As you can see, I'm not the musician of the family.

Because my Mind Sometimes Wanders. . .

Here's my list of hypothetical hipster bands named after the worst episodes of Star Trek ever made:

The Naked Now
Spock's Brain & The Turnabout Intruders
The Sub Rosa
The Royales
Profit and Lace
Take Me Out to the Holosuite feat. The Vic Fontaine Orchestra
William T. Riker & The Shades of Grey
Menage a Troi
A Fistful of Datas
The 37's

And my personal favourite,

The Outrageous Okonas


Actually, I could imagine The Outrageous Okonas as a sort of Austrian Death Machine style concept band, writing Irish punk songs all named after lines from the episode:

"Acting Ensign Wesley Wesley Crusher"
"You're a Droid and I'm Annoyed"
"Tip O'Neil in a Dress"
"The Lieutenant Commanders of Mirth" (Actually, I was considering this as a band name)
"Take My Worf. Please!"
"My Timing is Digital"
"Have You Seen Any Good Looking Computers Lately?"
"Excellent Vision and a Healthy Libido"
"An Easy Room"
"A Monk, a Clone and a Ferengi Decide to Go Bowling Together. . ."
"Mischievous, Irreverent, and Somewhat Brazen"
"Cad, knave, rake, rascal, scoundrel, villain, wild elephant"
"Is That a Woman's Voice I Hear?"

. . . and on and on.

Oh, to be a Japanese nerd in the early '80s. . .

Back in the early eighties, Gainax-- the Japanese animation studio that would eventually produce Neon Genesis Evangelion, among many other famous anime-- produced opening animations for Japan's Daicon (lit. Big Con) science fiction convention. Having discovered these animations on YouTube more or less by accident about ten minutes ago, I must now share them with you because they are awesome.

Here's the first animated short, from Daicon III. The animation is a bit rough, but it shows the starship Enterprise getting blown up by a schoolgirl, so I have to include it.



Gainax's animation for Daicon IV is a significant improvement over Daicon III. The animation is smoother and. . . well, just watch (it really starts to get good at the 2:00 mark).



Note: the next part of the Sailor Moon script will be taking place at a science fiction convention, so consider this a warning.

He says the sun came out last night. He says it sang to him.

In a world where disco never died. . .
One man. . . will put the hose on Disco Inferno.
James Franco stars in . . . Dyskopia.

Yeah. . . I've been waiting for any excuse to use that pun. Anyway, here's Disco Close Encounters. Wait 'till the very end!



Why people ever believed that you can dance to John Williams, I will never know.

UPDATE: And who's the evil ruler of Dyskopia? John Travolta, of course! "When you were learning how to spell your name, I was being trained. . . TO CONQUER GALAXIES!"

Next Week?

Hi A.J.

I'm going to be pretty busy next week-- I have to attend a committee meeting and give my final presentation for my Octave course. But Friday night or Saturday should be good.

Would it be cool if Naomi came as well?


Oh. . . and for you other people reading this (and A.J. as well):

YOR!

(It's over twenty minutes long, but its worth it!)

Star Wars. . . Nothing but Star Wars . . . Give me Those Star Wars. . . Don't let them E-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-end!*

I'm in my mom's office, pissing away reading break and waiting for word on our cat Cedric, who's undergoing balldectomy getting neutered at I speak. To pass the time (which I could've been spending doing marking. . . or something-- anything-- out in the open air) I thought I'd write about the lastest bit of space news I've come across.

Sometime last night, while the rest of the western hemisphere stood in the freezing air waiting for a lunar eclipse, the US Navy shot down one of its own country's spy satellites. The satellite was in a decaying orbit, and some believed that it might be able to partially survive re-entry and crash somewhere on Earth--more specifically, somewhere on Earth that's Russia, China, North Korea, or Iran. There's also speculation that the spy satellite contains large amounts of unconsumed hydrazine rocket fuel, which might pose an environmental hazard (indeed, the fact that the fuel was unconsumed, and hence unable to laung the satellite to higher orbit and greater velocity, might explain why it is falling in the first place).

Naturally, the United States government is keeping mum about this whole affair. After all, government and military secrets are at stake, and besides, the whole thing is so embarrasing that. . . oh look, the Department of Defence posted a video of the Navy blowing up the satellite:



Apparently, the cloud of gas that appears after the explosion was indeed unburned hydrazine, according to a spectral analysis.

Now, I can understand the DOD posting the video in order to quell the public's worries of, how shall I put it, a KILLER FUCKING SATELLITE:



But, being the paranoid sort that I am, I couldn't help but wonder if there was something else going on here. Then I remembered that China, just one month ago, also blew up a satellite with a ground-based missile:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- China last week successfully used a missile to destroy an orbiting satellite, U.S. government officials told CNN on Thursday, in a test that could undermine relations with the West and pose a threat to satellites important to the U.S. military.

According to a spokesman for the National Security Council, the ground-based, medium-range ballistic missile knocked an old Chinese weather satellite from its orbit about 537 miles above Earth. The missile carried a "kill vehicle" and destroyed the satellite by ramming it.

The test took place on January 11. (There was a link to a video here, but I cut it out. You can find it at the main site.)

Aviation Week and Space Technology first reported the test: "Details emerging from space sources indicate that the Chinese Feng Yun 1C (FY-1C) polar orbit weather satellite launched in 1999 was attacked by an asat (anti-satellite) system launched from or near the Xichang Space Center."

A U.S. official, who would not agree to be identified, said the event was the first successful test of the missile after three failures.

The official said that U.S. "space tracking sensors" confirmed that the satellite is no longer in orbit and that the collision produced "hundreds of pieces of debris," that also are being tracked.

So. . . is all of this just an outer space pissing contest between China and the United States? Are we about to enter a new Cold War in Earth orbit? The U.S. has issued diplomatic protests, and President Bush has been waving that little of sabre of his over issues of American outer space policy for some time now:

The United States logged a formal diplomatic protest.

"We are aware of it and we are concerned, and we made it known," White House spokesman Tony Snow said.

Several U.S. allies, including Canada and Australia, have also registered protests, and the Japanese government said it was worrisome.

"Naturally, we are concerned about it from the viewpoint of security as well as peaceful use of space," said Yashuhisa Shiozaki, chief cabinet secretary. He said Japan has asked the Chinese government for an explanation.

Britain has complained about lack of consultation before the test and potential damage from the debris it left behind, The Associated Press reported.

The United States has been able to bring down satellites with missiles since the mid-1980s, according to a history of ASAT programs posted on the Union of Concerned Scientists Web site. In its own test, the U.S. military knocked a satellite out of orbit in 1985.

Under a space policy authorized by President Bush in August, the United States asserts a right to "freedom of action in space" and says it will "deter others from either impeding those rights or developing capabilities intended to do so."

The policy includes the right to "deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests."

Low Earth-orbit satellites have become indispensable for U.S. military communications, GPS navigation for smart bombs and troops, and for real-time surveillance. The Chinese test highlights the satellites' vulnerability.

"If we, for instance, got into a conflict over Taiwan, one of the first things they'd probably do would be to shoot down all of our lower Earth-orbit spy satellites, putting out our eyes," said John Pike of globalsecurity.org, a Web site that compiles information on worldwide security issues.

"The thing that is surprising and disturbing is that [the Chinese] have chosen this moment to demonstrate a military capability that can only be aimed at the United States," he said.

Again, maybe I'm being paranoid, but isn't it also strange that just a month later, the U.S. destroys one of it's own satellites, for all the world to see?

But Anyway. . . as long as you're here, read My Story II and give me some input, dammit! I plan to do this for money and acclaim and girls one day!

Links:

Bad Astronomy Blog Article

BBC Online Article on Spy Satellite

CNN Online Article on Chinese Missile Launch


*The title is based on Bill Murray's "Star Wars Song" from the early years of Saturday Night Live. I couldn't find the original clip, but I did find this video by DickSharpe80 which has the song on it.

LOLworf

I had kind of a stupid idea today that I thought I'd share. It's called LOLworf:



I thought it would be hilarious. It is hilarious, in theory at least. Undistputably. Just imagine Michael Dorn actually saying "I CAN HAS BLUDWEIN!!11!!1," in earnest, exactly as written.

Unfortunately, they weren't as easy to make as I though they would be. For one, there weren't many images of Worf on the web that were easily LOLifiable. Second, the only way I had to modify the few good pictures I did find was by using Microsoft Paint, which leaves an amateurish white box around the added text-- an ugly blemish on what otherwise is pure comedy gold.

Anyway, here are my other LOLworfs.

The Greatest Political Ad Your Sorry Asses Will EVAR See!

. . . which isn't saying much, I'll admit. Still, this ad from Republican Mike Huckabee beats Hillary Clinton's pathetic Sopranos parody by a long shot.

Chuck Norris' endorsements of Democratic presidential candidates cure cancer. Too bad he's. . . oh, never mind!

$100,000,000

In response to my last post, Naomi said:

hahahahahah wow. As if that isn't bad enough, their reunion tour is supposed to gross over $100 000 000.

$100,000,000. Really? Well then. . .

But methinks this is all part of a plan:

Just replace "Get the warhead" with "Launch a Spice Girls concert" and you get the idea.

Right-Wing Facebook

Social networking for Republican Dummiez!

Click Here!

My personal favourite. . . Rudy Giuliani's Profile:

Networks: GOP Presidential Primary
Sex: Republican Pro-Choice Male (Rare Species)
Relationship Status: Married³
Interested In: 9/11
Birthday: 57 B.N. (Before 9/11)
Hometown: New York City
Political Views: 9/11

Miyuu is an Angel in Disguise. . . LOOK INTO MY EYES!

Much as I love Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, I can still be honest about it. Like all children's shows, it is designed to sell toys. Most kids, at some level, understand that. However, for the slower, denser bunch, further measures may be neccessary. Thus, I present to you, courtesy of the Toei corporation, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon toy commericials, starring the unreasonably lovely Miyuu Sawai:

Sailor Moon Heart Moon Brooch and Moonlight Stick

Sailor Moon Makeup/Jewelery Set

Sailor Moon Henshin Phone

Sailor Moon Stationary Set

Sailor Moon Princess Harp

Sailor Moon Colouring Desk

Sailor Moon Henshin Dress-up

PLUS, act now and get these two pre-Sailor Moon Miyuu Sawai commercials absolutely free!

Quii

I've been taking a lot of useless internet quizzes in the last couple of months (How Logical Are You? What Kind of Pirate Are You? What Starship Crew Would You Be Part Of? etc.). Since some of these quizzes have cute little HTML decals for that person who just has to let the whole world know that they would indeed survive a zombie apocalypse, I decided to post a few of my prouder results.

If your blog were a movie, what would it be rated?



Why? Because my blog has three "fucks", two "asses" and a "hell." I shit you not.


Would you pass 8th grade science?

What's your bloated, useless corpse worth to science?

$5290.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth.

How much electrical power could your bloated, useless, still living corpse produce?

422 WATTS Body Battery Calculator - Find Out How Much Electricity Your Body is Producing - Dating

That's 69% more than the average person. I could power 4 lightbulbs, 106 ipods, 2 XBox 360's, and at least one DVD player runnning The Matrix.


Finally, a fairly comprehensive quiz on political orientation. This quiz actually puts me quite a bit further left, and way more small-'l' libertarian, than most US Democratic presidential candidates, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton:

MAAVELAA!!!!!!!. . . or, What's the Turkish Word for "Sadistic Jacuzzi Rapist?"

In fall of last year, shortly after I discovered the masterpiece that is Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, my friend Cal Hilde of Pox Eclipse fame introduced me to another intriguing facet of Japanese popular culture. . . JAPANESE SPIDERMAN!



For those of you already familiar with the basics of the Spiderman mythos. . . that won't help you much, since those magnificent bastards at the Toei corporation completely fucked up the Spiderman story. For instance, in the Japanese version, our friendly neighborhood "Supaidaaman" is not a square-yet-constantly-stoned-sounding science geek named "Pitaa Paakaa" but rather a fucking moter-cross champion named Yamashiro Takuya. And he doesn't get his powers from a radioactive spider, but rather. . . well, this is gonna take awhile.

The show begins, as all Japanese shows must, with a giant robot. This robot, referred to in the series as the "Marveller," crashes into the side of a mountain conviniently located in the suburbs of Tokyo. This giant robot, being, as it is, The Marveller, is capable of doing marvellous things, and as such is sought by an evil group of Borg-looking motherfuckers and one hot chick known, according to all the internet sources I could find after five minutes of Googling, as the "Iron Cross Army."

Meanwhile, Takuya-san, while in the middle of catching some sweet air on his orange Suzuki moterbike, starts to hear voices in his head and see giant spiders and spider accessories in unexpected places. In most situations, this could be dismissed as hallucinations caused by all the carbon monoxide fumes he breathes in while running his motorcycle indoors. But soon he enough, after witnessing the death of his Uncle Ben-san and getting his ass handed to him by Iron Cross Putties, he runs into a cave, falls into an even deeper cave, meets a man from the "Spider Planet," gets injected with "Supaidaa Elixuu". . .

You know what, just watch the fucking thing:

And there you go: a motorbiking, hallucinating, Arachno-zord controlling Spider-man who must verbally order is "supaidaa suturingu" to fire from his bracelet. In addition to everything else, Supaidaaman actually illustrates something that I noticed when watching Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: that English has basically become the Latin of Japanese pop culture -- the goto language whenever you want something to sound cool and otherworldly, be it magic (PGSM) or alien planets and sci-fi technology (Supaidaaman).

When Cal first showed this to me way back in twenty ought-six, I felt both grateful and more than a little upstaged, and I've been trying to find a way to return the favor. Last week, I found what I was looking for.

Ladies and Gentlemen (and especially Cal Hilde), I give you. . . 3 Dev Adam, aka, MOTHERFUCKING TURKISH SPIDERMAN!

That's right, the Turkish word for "Sadistic Jacuzzi Rapist" is, in fact, "Spiderman", which also seems to be the Turkish word for "Cardboard Tube Gerbil Torture" and "Look at Those Fucking Eyebrows!"

And who can stop this evil madman? Only Captain America and his. . . Mexican wrestler? As if we needed another country to fuck up Spiderman.

Anyway. . . Cal, I accept your concession of defeat in advance. And to anyone who may be reading, Cal or otherwise, please leave a comment. Inserting these YouTube videos directly into my blog is a tiresome ritual, and I'd like to know someone's actually bothering to read/watch.

Yet tragically, he has never cried. . .

Remember Chuck Norris Facts TM.? Here one of them:

There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live.

And here's Mr. Norris' response:

It’s funny. It’s cute. But here’s what I really think about the theory of evolution: It’s not real. It is not the way we got here. In fact, the life you see on this planet is really just a list of creatures God has allowed to live. We are not creations of random chance. We are not accidents.

This was, I believe, part of Mr. Norris' very first column on the right-wing website WorldNutDaily (I've linked to an archive of his columns). I was reminded of this little episode of his by this video, which I found on Pharyngula:

Of course, after seeing this, I scoured YouTube to find more videos of He-Whose-Tears-Cure-Cancer making a right-wing ass of himself. Instead. . . I FOUND THIS!

In case you forget. . . It's Chuck. . . Norris!

Want more? Of coruse you do.

That Batman Thing

For Naomi and A.J. Kenway, that Batman thing I was telling you about:

What Stuff Means

I've gotten a few questions as to the meaning of my blog's title. And by "a few," I mean that Naomi asked who "Kyle" is.

"Kyle" is none other than Kyle Gass, the lead guitar player for the Greatest Band in the World TM., Tenacious D. The "me" in question is not me, but rather Jack Black.

To clarify, I've included two YouTube TM. videos from Tenacious D's brilliant HBO series, "Tenacious D." Enjoy.

As for the subtitle, it comes from one translation of the lyrics of the theme song for the Japanese live action adaptation of Sailor Moon. I've uploaded the entire first episode, not because I expect you to watch the whole thing (I'm not a cruel man) but because this is the only video on YouTube TM. that has the particular translation that I have alluded to. The opening credits begin at 1:10, and the alluded lyric appears at 1:37.

Now I like this show. Yet in watching it, I somehow feel Mishima's pain.