September is banned books month and in celebration of all the great banned books that later were recognized as classics, the Washington D.C. library set up quite a clever scavenger hunt. Hidden in businesses around the city are copies of once-banned books -find one and it's yours. It's not just a matter of finding a free book of course, the program is a great way to look back on the history of censored books and each title will be wrapped in a cover that explains why the book was challenged. Clues to finding the secret treasures can be found on the library's Twitter account.
Family life is wonderful, but it’s also wonderful when each person in a family can have a space for themselves, to do with what they will. For the man of the house, that retreat space is often called a man cave, whether it’s an office, garage, bedroom, workshop, recreation room, or a shed at the back of the property. And there are many ways to optimize that space for the purpose you intend. It could become a game room, home theater, bar, music studio, hobby room, lounge, or just a spot with a comfy chair and a TV away from everyone else. Housely has some tips on equipping your man cave according to your interests and tastes, plus 100 images of what that space could become.
Getting kids to stop playing Star Wars after watching the movies is like getting them to stop making messes or breaking stuff, in other words impossible.
And when they see those cute little critters pretending to fly the Millennium Falcon around the house or having a lightsaber battle in the living room their parents can't help but play along.
This Lunar Baboon comic is dedicated to those grown-ups who refuse to stop acting like kids- even after they've had children!
David Gerrold wrote several Star Trek episodes, but he will always be remembered for “The Trouble with Tribbles,” which became a classic. It was funny! The tribbles exposed the humorous side of the Enterprise crew, it was a welcome break from meeting aliens who happened to be shaped somewhat like humans, and it introduced many of us to the concept of invasive species. Gerrold tells us how that idea came about.
It was really about rabbits in Australia. My thinking was that not every alien we meet is going to be ugly and not every alien we meet is going to be immediately dangerous. We’re not going to recognize the danger to us until it might be too late. So, the rabbits in Australia were perfect. Little fuzzy creatures that are fun to pet and they purr, but they breed like crazy. Next thing you know Captain Kirk is up to here in them. When they bought the story they gave me a chance to write the script. I wasn’t yet recognized as a professional writer but they gave me a few weeks to write the script…which I did over the first weekend. My thinking was to have something there for all of the other characters: Uhura, Chekov, and Scotty. It was just the right combination of idea and humor and character that it all came together very well. And then the best part was that we had such a talented and amazing cast that brought it to life in a way that here we are talking about it a half century later.
It can be hard to serve as gamemaster and maintain your friendship with the players in your tabletop roleplaying group, because gamers take character death very seriously.
They also get pissed off if you don't award them enough experience points, give them enough magic items, or if you keep rolling really high for enemies.
But, as this Is It Canon comic by Rock Paper Cynic and Big Simple Comics shows, there's one quest which will defeat even the most experienced role players and make your group hate you at the same time- trial by noob.
The future as imagined by Gene Roddenberry was ruled by law, at least for the United Federation of Planets’ exploration, diplomacy, and defense entity known as Starfleet. Over the course of the original Star Trek TV series (and subsequent series), we heard references to the Prime Directive, which was an order to “not interfere in the natural cultural and scientific development of a civilization, particularly those that are pre-warp.” That created a fine line to walk for a spaceship crew whose mission was to to explore strange new worlds and to seek out new life and new civilizations. The Enterprise crew violated the Prime Directive almost weekly, but still used the order to moderate their decisions at times.
When Star Trek premiered on television 50 years ago today, many of the young people watching grew up to be lifelong Trek fans. Some became lawyers. Ars Technica consulted some of those lawyers who are well-versed in Star Trek lore to explain and give their opinions on the Prime Directive and how it would work for the earth in 2016. In a nutshell, it wouldn’t. Read the reasons why at Ars Technica.
Sure anyone could dress as Winona Ryder's character in Stranger Things, but if you really want to sell your Joyce Byers cosplay, you need a few accessories and ideally -a haunted, light-covered wall. Now that's doing the character justice. Amanda Meldrum and Roy Holt have the right idea with this cosplay!
The first episode of Star Trek was broadcast on September 8, 1966, making the futuristic universe of the Enterprise 50 years old today. There were 79 episodes of the original series, all featuring some character, entity, group, or concept that provided conflict. Not all of them were what we’d normally call villains, but they are all pictured and ranked at Uproxx. That means 77 "villains," because a couple appeared in more than one episode. Which is your favorite: Elaan of Troyius, Nomad, Harvey Mudd, Khan, Balok, the Doomsday Machine, or some other villain? Yeah, it’s the Tribbles. Gotta be the Tribbles.
Illustrators get used to receiving requests for drawings, especially as they develop their skills around friends and family members who feel requests are the best way to encourage a budding artist.
But those encouraging folks don't ask the artist to draw sick and twisted scenes featuring pop culture characters in sexual and/or gratuitously violent situations, at least not in public.
However, any artist who has worked the fan con circuit, sold their artwork online or taken commissions knows there are sick people out there looking for an artist to draw the stuff of nightmares.
Tom Fowler, artist/writer for Rick and Morty, was asked to draw a gross scene featuring Sauron, the Pterodactyl man from the Savage Lands, hypnotizing a teenage Storm into becoming his sex slave, akin to this panel:
Tom drew up a much tamer version for that weirdo, stating "I'd robbed this creep of his boner, and that's the real satisfaction that a cartoonist should feel".
Believe it or not the requests aren't always sexual- Tristan Jones, artist from ALIENS: Defiance, one got this request:
There was this guy that asked me to draw him, which is usually an immediate no from me on the spot at conventions, but as Jack Skellington (whatever that meant, I assumed it meant drawing Jack slightly heavier set and with this dude's hair) as a Ghostbuster, busting the ghost of his mother (who he had a photo of) from Jack's reindeer sleigh.
But then he talks about a different request which was racy to say the least...why, perverts, WHY?
Being part of a Disney couple looks like a whole new world of awesome, but we only get to see a small and triumphantly joyous part of their lives in the movies.
But things get real after the movie magic wears off and the main characters settle into their lives together, discovering they were caught up in the moment and may have made a horrible mistake.
Very few Disney couples seem like they're cut out for a long-term relationship if you really think about it, because they rarely have anything in common, culturally or otherwise.
But maybe they make it all work out because happily ever after? *shrug*
Paul Westover illustrated these childhood ruining moments that take place approximately six months to a year after the movie, moments that may be the perfect setup for a dramatic sequel.
Starting a new job at a big retail store like Target can be confusing, nerve wracking and scary in many ways, but there's also enough stuff going on that you'll never be bored for long.
20-year-old Tom Grennell found himself awestruck by his time spent toiling within the Target, and all the magical and horrifying moments that make working retail such a strange experience, so he chose to share his story for the good of us all.
Tom has yet to be fired from Target, and his Tales From The Checkout Line are so popular he has decided to keep journaling so we can continue to follow his heroic quest to survive his retail job.
Shaving can be so tedious, and often causes razor bumps and burn, so I shave as little as possible because it's just so much easier to constantly sport a beard.
But then I wake up one day and hate how that overgrown beard looks on my face so off it goes, leaving my cheeks smooth as a baby's bottom...which sucks for different reasons.
As this For Lack Of A Better Comic strip shows guys who are frenemies with their beards can't stop the cycle of facial hair love and hate!
Hitting “reply all” on a multi-person email can start a chain reaction that never ends. In fact, it can be like rolling a snowball down a mountain, where it gathers more and more snow until it’s bigger than a house. Sometimes it ends in a picnic and a viral story, like the Berkeley Spampocalypse last year. But usually, it just annoys everyone. The New York Times has some advice on such an event. -Thanks, John Farrier!
We love Stranger Things and all of its great 80s referrences and if you love it as much as the rest of us, you won't want to miss this great list of trivia about the show featured on Thrillist. For example, did you know the show was originally intended to be set in Montauk, New York and it was even going to be named Montauk? In fact, even after they moved it to Indiana, the creators still wanted to keep the name.
The article can also tell you how the crew helped keep the youngsters on set from being too scared of the horrible monster and the Upside Down.
Remy noticed a trend in broadcast journalism, particularly CNN, that everyone else has also noticed and wrote a clever song about it. If that’s not the formula for a viral video, I don’t know what is.
When Ted Turner first launched CNN, the whole idea was to have news available to people 24 hours a day. But that in itself caused a problem, because TV channels are expected to be self-supporting. When networks only had news at 6 and 10, the ratings and advertising for their entertainment programs supported the journalism. Now even journalism must live and die by ratings. -via reddit
