WINNIE SMASH PUNY HUMAN!

Art of Andrew Harkins (via BoingBoing)

- Dave

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Underground comic book pioneer, Harvey Pekar, died today. He was 70 years old. His most famous series “American Splendor” was an autobiographical chronicle that started in the late 70s and lasted several decades.

Actor, Paul Giamatti, played Pekar in the 2003 movie adaptation of Pekar’s “American Splendor.”

If you haven’t seen it, you should. It’s a pretty good movie.

I discovered a new science fiction magazine online that publishes original and reprinted science fiction stories and interviews.

According to the Light Speed Magazine “about us” page:

Lightspeed is an online magazine focusing exclusively on science fiction. Here you can expect to see all types of science fiction, from near-future, sociological soft sf, to far-future, star-spanning hard sf, and anything and everything in between. No subject will be considered off-limits, and we encourage our writers to take chances with their fiction and push the envelope.

Each month at Lightspeed, we bring you a mix of originals and reprints, and featuring a variety of authors—from the bestsellers and award-winners you already know to the best new voices you haven’t heard of yet. When you read Lightspeed, it is our hope that you’ll see where science fiction comes from, where it is now, and where it’s going.

Lightspeed also features a variety of nonfiction features, fiction podcasts, and Q&As with our authors that go behind-the-scenes of their stories.

Our regular publication schedule each month includes two pieces of original fiction and two fiction reprints, along with four nonfiction articles. Fiction posts on Tuesdays, nonfiction on Thursdays.

I hope they can sustain their business model, because they have some great content so far.

You can also donate to help keep them going.

Enjoy.

- Dave

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This is an interesting 20 year old British interview with Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (the creators of the Watchmen).

This episode of Prisoners of Gravity was broadcast in 1991 and it is a half hour documentary about Alan Moore and David Gibbons’ genre twisting series Watchmen. Contained within this video is the presenter, Command Rick, asking both David Gibbons and Alan Moore a series of questions about the structures they imposed on the series and the various thematic layers within the twelve issues.

Via Ectoplasmosis

There are 3 parts of this video that you can watch through the player above.

- Dave

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(This Monkey Western was brought to you by my brother Nate.)

- Dave

(Top to bottom) William Burroughs, Ernest Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson.

I think writers holding guns seem more dangerous than “normal” people holding guns.  Perhaps it has something to do with the combination of  intelligence and violence that seems to intensify both characteristics.

Or maybe they were all a bit crazy (since two of the three writers above shot themselves).

Powerful photos, either way.

- Dave

See the rest of them here.

- Dave

Tropical storm Edouard is supposed to hit us in Houston tonight around midnight.

Our storm supplies consist of olives, vermouth and vodka.  It worked for Rita, why not Edouard?

I’ll try to post some photos or video of the tropical storm experience here later tonight.

- Dave

UPDATE: Monday, July 04 – 7:55PM (CST) – Edouard is now slated to make landfall in Galveston around 1PM tomorrow.

The sky is turning that weird swirling khaki brown tonight to signal a whopper of a storm is coming.

Josh and Tara will be in town tomorrow night, making that long trek from New York that they tried to make a few months ago. Let’s hope mother nature is a bit nicer to them this time around.

- Dave

Update for a douche-bag – The Sky in Houston I was referring to above.

There is a severe weather alert in Houston this weekend because the temperature dropped into the 40s overnight.   Ask anyone north of the Mason-Dixon line if 40 degrees is cold and they will laugh and shoosh you away for bothering them.

Silly weather alerts.

-Dave