From Worth 1000 via Super Punch, found whilst I was trying to find the name of that one hooded alien in Mos Eisley.

In related news, it makes me happy to live in a world where you can type “mos eisley alien hood” into a search engine and get an immediate answer. (It’s Garindan.)

I’m tending toward ambivalence where posts about zombies are concerned. On the one necrotic, rotting hand, they were never really my favorite monsters even before their recent explosion in popular media left me with a severe case of burnout. On the other hand, their overexposure has resulted in some pretty clever riffs on the subject material. Hollywood is Dead is one such riff.

Artist Matt Busch has reimagined classic movie posters as the products of some alternate universe where zombies are the norm. He’s carefuly re-created the original poster and then given it a severe case of zombification, right down to the tagline and actors’ names.

The artwork is available on T-shirts and posters, which would be a fun way to dress up a bare wall. Shadaughter is a big fan of Audrey Hepburn; maybe I’ll get her the “Breakfast is Tiffany” poster as a gift.

Cross-posted at The Art of Darkness

Jamie Lu Dunbar, the creator of BANG! The Universe Verse, is planning a sequel which will explore the origin and evolution of life on Earth. Where BANG! was fine in black and white (being mostly about space), IT’S ALIVE! would be much more compelling in color. Creating the required color illustrations will require an upgrade in Jamie’s technology, so he’s asking for the help of fans.

He’s set up a Kickstarter website with a short video explaining his needs, and a button to donate. There’s something in it for you: If he raises the funds he needs, he’ll make the second book available as a free PDF on his site (which is what he did with the first one).

Promoting solid information about evolution is never a bad thing; click over and help a unicellular organism out.

(via The Meming of Life)

1. What Roger Zelazny novel features Siddhartha, Binder of Demons?
2. What was the name of the semi-regular “science fiction” segment of The Muppet Show?
3. Aldous Huxley’s classic SF novel Brave New World took its title from a line in a famous play. What was the play?
4. What do these writers have in common? Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison, Larry Niven, Normon Spinrad, Theodore Sturgeon
   A) They have all used pseudonyms
   B) They have all collaborated with Gregory Benford
   C) They have all written about Atlantis
   D) They have all written for Star Trek
5. Who helped R. Daneel Olivaw develop the zeroth Law of Robotics?
6. In this James Blish novel John Amalfi is mayor of a future New York, which flies through interstellar space trading work for supplies. Name it!
7. Who wrote Forbidden Planet?
8. On The X-Files, what did Scully’s father nickname her?
9. What was the purpose of the Kanamits’ book “To Serve Man”?
10. What novel won the first Hugo Award in 1953?

(Answers below the fold)

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Comic creator Daniel Merlin Goodbrey has recently begun a new Webcomic, 100 Planets, which is an odd little minimalist strip involving a very 50s-esque spaceship’s encounters with planets such as The Planet Where You’re Always 10 Minutes Late and The Planet of Our Perfect Robotic Duplicates. They’re mostly sort of surreal, but a couple are rather touching.

The strip is updated every Monday and is only on Planet 20 right now, so it’s easy to catch up.

So far, I think this one is my favorite.

The weirdest part about being a parent is having to pretend to your child that the world makes sense.
– amuirin

Saw a kid wearing ripped up clothes while getting out of a ’89 Bronco II. I told him how awesome it is here in the future.
– YeahImAshley

I’d like to tell you I can keep you safe Son but lets be realistic here, we’re dealing with a closet that has a God damn monster in it.
– OverlandParker

Maybe the dingo gave your baby to someone who wasn’t so fucking neglectful. You ever consider that?
– Brain_Wash

I would’ve bought you flowers, but a drunk hamster lives about as long, costs the same, and is much more entertaining.
– sucittaM

I bet Edward Scissorhands is very much afraid of Edward Rockhands.
– JerryThomas

The USPS revealed a new wedding stamp today featuring pansies. If this is their way of acknowledging gay marriage, I call Bullshit.
– CelticWombat

It’s sort of my opinion that anybody who goes, “I’ll just let a random stranger beam any image they want onto my monitor,” (which, at its heart, is what Chatroulette is) probably deserves what they get.* Which is why what Lionsgate did is hilarious: They leveraged the service to create a highly amusing ad campaign for their upcoming The Last Exorcism.

This is their “best of” reaction reel, with the faux-possessed girl on the right and various Chatroulette users’ reactions on the left. Hee.

(via Baxter King)

*See, for instance, an example of 4chan trolling soon after the service was launched.

Cross-posted at The Art of Darkness

Rachel Bloom from Upright Citizens Brigade really likes her some Ray Bradbury. (Yesterday she reported that Mr. Bradbury had seen the video and enjoyed it.)

As someone commented over at BoingBoing:

If I were Bradbury, I would open every lecture, panel, and signing with this video for the foreseeable future: “Before we begin, have you seen this?”

1. In what novel does Stanislaw Lem create the ultimate bureaucracy?
2. In The Matrix, what is the name of Morpheus’ “hovercraft?”
3. What book begins with the line, “Looking back to all that has occured to me since that eventful day, I am scarcely able to believe in the reality of my adventures?”
4. What was the first and only U.S. mission to Mercury?
5. Which of these is not a part of the Childe Cycle?
   A) Dorsai
   B) Necromancer
   C) Tactics Of Mistake
   D) The Dragon And The George
   E) The Final Encyclopedia
6. Sales of this film’s score were better than sales of movie tickets. Name this 1980 movie (based on a well-known cartoon), and name the band who did its theme.
7. Robert A. Heinlein’s If This Goes On… is sometimes known as Revolt in _____?
8. What bleakly futuristic 1979 film stars Paul Newman as a seal hunter in a frozen city of a post-industrial wasteland?
9. Who were the Sardaukar?
10. In Ed Wood, Bill Murray plays Ed Wood’s friend and occasional actor Bunny Breckinridge. In Plan 9 From Outer Space, what character did the real Breckinridge play?

(Answers below the fold)

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Visual arts student Alexander Lehmann spent three years working on this film as his graduation project. It’s a music video for a Dutch band called NOISIA, and it’s kind of amazing.

(via Whatever)