My Top 5 List Is Starting To Look Like A Frikkin Necrology!

Posted by Dan as Uncategorized

So I came home from work tonight and Courtney tells me George Carlin died. Fuck!

The really depressing thing is that out of my top 5 favorite comedians, all but one of them are dead. Still, there’s quite a lot of great comics out there so I have hope that my list may one day mutate into something a bit less morbid.

With respect to George Carlin who I never met in real life, but who was always one of my favorite teachers, I prefer not to think of him as dead so much as simply no longer producing new material.

Here’s my Top 5 favorite stand-up comedians, bringin’ the funny as only they can.

Nobody out there is thinking Dennis is looking a little moribund lately are they?

New and Improved with cool stuff… like content!

Posted by Dan as Actual Blogging, Video Clips, music

Yeah, okay, I haven’t updated in a while. Probably just long enough to have to start over with a new reader base. That’s okay though, I never claimed I was a good blogger. I’ve got lots of new essays in the pipe and I’ll start posting them soon. In the meantime, anyone out there who’s still listening chime in and tell me what y’all think of the new digs.

So, Courtney has been obsessively watching and re-watching Kingdom Hospital (like she does). Anyway there’s this cool song called Red Dragon Tattoo that plays several times throughout the show. Never realized that it was by Fountains of Wayne. These are the guys that do Stacy’s Mom, Someone To Love, and Strapped For Cash, the latter two of which are all over alterna-radio right now. I liked this little confluence of epiphanies so much that I just had to go out and buy their newest album. It was a sign from the music gods, you see. Anyway, the new album is cool so far. I’ll post a proper review after I’ve listened through it 10 times. That way, if it’s bad I’ll have built up enough venom to be really entertaining. In the meantime, here’s a quickie acoustic set they did for Capital 106.3 which is the big rock station in Des Moines. Enjoy.

The Art of Juli Adams

Posted by Dan as Actual Blogging, Link Blogging, Promoting

Every year our local arts museum The Hockaday Museum of the Arts sponsors an arts festival in Depot Park. Depot is a small park on Main Street in Kalispell, but they cram it full of potters and statue makers, and crafts makers of all kinds, musicians, and artists… lots of artists. I usually don’t go because the artists, while good, mostly concentrate on the local landscape and the local flora and fauna. I grew up here. I got local flora and fauna coming out my wazoo. If I want to see the local landscape all I have to do is look out the window.

The wife, however, thinks differently. Being the smashingly brilliant lady that she is and coming here from Illinois, she has a whole different level of appreciation for the local artists (not to mention art in general) than I do. So this year she dragged me to the thing, and imagine my surprise when I ran across this brilliant young lady from the Seattle Washington area.

Her name is Juli Adams and she’s a brilliant painter. She also needs to be working in comics (which I gather she is currently not, too bad really.) Her stuff has a definite Slave Labor Graphics vibe to it, and it’s just amazing.

Check out her website at Juli Adams.com.

She also has a blog at The Art of Juli Adams.

And if you have a yen to show some love for this wonderful painter, you can get her prints online at Ladieninscollectibles.com.

As the owners of five cats, we couldn’t resist buying the print pictured at the top of the post. The print is called Showdown, and it captures perfectly that slow build to a hissy fit that all cats go through every so often.

Back from the dead, and ready to party!

Posted by Dan as Blogcritics, Comics, Graphic Novel Review, Link Blogging

So okay, I haven’t really updated this thing in eons, but I haven’t exactly been idle either. Case in point is the new review of the excellent new graphic novel from Big Head Press, The Architect. Written by the great Mike Baron and drawn by artist without peer, Andie Tong, it’s a stellar read and I highly recommend picking up a copy at your earliest convenience.

The review is located here and I think it turned out well. I really like the new magazine style layout of Blogcritics. The site is much easier to navigate than it was.

As a special note to anyone who cares about things like this, yes… I know that’s a picture of The Probability Broach that accompanies the article. I’m pretty sure what happened is that the dingbat BC editor who put the final touches on my review temporarily got all lost and confused when he couldn’t find a product picture of The Architect on Amazon.com, and instead of use an outside source for a picture or maybe… oh, I dunno… NO PICTURE AT ALL!!! He instead used something from the same company. Ah well, irritating to be sure, but not the end of the world I expect.

Because he hasn’t updated in a while!

Posted by Dan as Comics, Link Blogging, Promoting

Okay, I’m totally using this without his permission, but he hasn’t updated his blog in a while, so I’m hoping he’ll notice this and throw his ravenous fans (like me!) a bone, and update his damned blog. This is the one comics project for 2007 that I am most looking forward to. Check it out!

Spartans Versus Persians and Once Again, Gerard Butler’s Nekkid’ Ass!

Posted by Dan as Blogcritics, Movie Review, Movies

If you haven’t seen 300 yet, you should drop what you’re doing, call Mr. Moviephone, go get tickets, or whatever it is you do, and go see it. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. This movie kicks ass on so many levels, it’s hard to decide where to begin. First, a bit of back story I think.

In a nutshell, in 480 BC, Persia invaded Greece with what was at the time, the largest army ever assembled. What we know of the invasion, we get from several sources, but the most detailed account, and the one with the most interesting bits, is by the Greek Historian Herodotus. The great Persian God-King Xerxes made a play to conquer Greece by threat and bribery, and when the two great city-states of Athens and Sparta told him to get bent, he invaded. While Athens navy held off the bulk of the invading ships, Sparta, which was hamstrung by an outdated set of laws that required the King to get approval from their oracle before declaring war, did nothing.

In a desperate ploy, the Spartan King Leonidas hand picks 300 elite soldiers to accompany him to a mountain pass known as The Hot Gates near Thermopylae. The mountain pass acts as a natural funnel where the Greeks can make a stand against an army whose numbers suddenly count for little. The rest is history as 300 Spartans and about seven thousand other Greek soldiers hold off an army of at least 100,000 strong, for three days. On the third day, the Persians are told of an alternate route around The Hot Gates. About to be outflanked, Leonidas orders the remaining soldiers into a retreat. He stays behind with his remaining Spartans and about 1,000 Thespian soldiers to cover the withdrawal.

Later, Leonidas’ martyrdom galvanizes Sparta into action, and together with their Athenian counterparts, they hand Xerxes a defeat that begins a downward spiral that will end 150 years later when Alexander the Great ends the Persian empire on a more permanent basis. And you all thought history wasn’t fun!

In 1998 the great comics writer and artist Frank Miller created a masterful retelling of this historical account. Setting up the characters with fully fleshed personalities and rendering them in his highly stylized trademark drawing style, resulted in a modern classic of the comics art form.

Enter Zack Snyder, fresh off his success remaking George Romero’s classic Dawn of the Dead, Zack dives into the 300 project headfirst.

The result is 117 minutes of fun, and one of the best movies ever made. Because the Grecian topography has changed radically in the 2,500 years since the battle, location shooting would prove impossible. Instead, Zack filmed the entire movie in front of a blue screen. The backgrounds and scenery were filled in later by CGI. While I’m not completely sold on this technique (previously used in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, as well as the Matrix movies,) in this case, as with the previous Miller adaptation Sin City, the CGI allows the cinematographers and the set designers the freedom to adapt the comic panel by panel. It’s a perfect fit. Not only do the characters look and act true to Miller’s work, but even the scenes that were added to pad the story for motion picture pacing, look and feel like they’re right out of Miller’s story.

Gerard Butler is absolutely perfect as King Leonidas. He looks the part as do all the actors playing the Spartans. There are more six packs in this movie than at a frat house on pledge night. Butler turns in an Oscar worthy performance that makes Russell Crowe’s Gladiator look like a little girl in a pink frilly dress. Leonidas opposite number Xerxes is played to absolute perfection by an almost unrecognizable Rodrigo Santoro. When these two fine actors are on scene together they bring every acting skill they’ve ever learned to bear, resulting in some of the most intensely brilliant scenes ever filmed. It’s like watching a precision practice run from the George C. Scott school of caffeine frenzied scenery chewing. You will believe these two actors are opposing battlefield generals.

The writing is dynamic and fluid, allowing plenty of breathing room for the battlefield action. Scriptwriters Kurt Johnstad and Michael B. Gordon, with an able assist from the director, should be commended for turning out an outstandingly tight script. It even has the requisite one-liners, several of which are right out of Herodotus. When the Persian field commander yelled, “Spartans, throw down your weapons and surrender.” and King Leonidas retorted, “Persians, come and get them.” The whole theater cheered. Of course, with source material this good, it’s hard to go wrong.

Larry Fong turns out a feast for the eyes, bringing his cinematography skills honed on several seasons of the TV show Lost. The combat is period specific, so there’s lots of spraying blood and flying heads, but Fong shoots it all so well, that it hardly matters. Every scene is altered to look like it came right out of the 300 graphic novel, so it has the effect of making the gore more tolerable.

300 is a violent story, so it’s not for younger kids. There’s a lot of on screen gore, but again, it’s stylized so the effect is muted, and I would have no problem taking a teen to see this. Just make sure you’re a good parent and you watch this with them in case you have to explain things. This movie earned its R rating so go see it with that in mind and you’ll be fine. It’s a terrific, grandiose spectacle of a movie, based on one of the most enduring stories ever told. It’s destined to become classic fare, and it’ll definitely be a must own when it finally comes out on DVD.

101 Things I Love About My Wife

Posted by Dan as Actual Blogging, Favorites List, Love Letter

So the other day my wife Courtney and I were driving in the car before work, coming back from getting an early dinner, breakfast for me because I work night shift. I was carping like I always do about what I was going to write about that night on my down time. Jokingly, she said something to the effect of “Write about how awesome your wife is.” A few days later, here’s what I wrote over two nights. All in all, it was one of the easier things I’ve ever written. I could have done 1000.

1. I love the way she smiles.

2. I love her sardonic, dry wit.

3. I love her black sense of humor.

4. I love the little noise she makes when she’s exasperated with me. I can’t really describe it but our bird mimics it perfectly.

5. I love the fact that I can’t take her to the animal shelter without an hour long discussion about why we can’t have just one more.

6. I love the fact that she loves animals.

7. I love the fact that she wants to go to college.

8. I love the fact that she has no idea what she wants to be when she grows up.

9. I love her sense of style.

10. I love her sense of color, design, and placement.

11. I love the color of her eyes.

12. I love the fact that she’s not afraid to dye her hair, or get a tattoo, or get pierced in odd places.

13. I love the fact that she can never decide what she wants to eat…

14. …and I love that every so often she knows exactly what she wants to eat.

15. I love the fact that she gets so frustrated with video games that she will throw the controller.

16. I love that she likes music…

17. …and that she likes different music than I do.

18. I also love the fact that she likes electronica, but doesn’t like Moby.

19. I love the fact that she seems genuinely interested in what I’m rambling on about, even when she’s not.

20. I love the fact that she’s patient with me.

21. I love the fact that she steals the covers…

22. …and cocoons herself in them so tightly that the only way to get them back is to wake her up.

23. I love that she’ll stay up all night with me watching re-runs of Roseanne.

24. I love the fact that she’s an obsessive compulsive collector.

25. I love the fact that she collects naughty nic-naks.

26. I love the fact that she’ll snuggle with me even though she’s not a “snuggler”.

27. …except with the cats, but everybody snuggles them.

28. I love the fact that she’ll trade movie quotes with me.

29. I love the fact that she’s a wizard with the computer.

30. I love the fact that she’s an impressive researcher.

31. I love the fact that she reads.

32. …and that her reading list is as large and as backlogged as mine.

33. I love the fact that she prefers to wear slip on tennis shoes with no backs and no laces.

34. I love the fact that she won’t make me give her long foot rubs when she knows my hands are sore and tired.

35. I love that she loves McDonald’s breakfasts.

36. I love that she has a favorite kind of pen.

37. I love that she’s a talented artist, but doesn’t think so.

38. I love that she’s stunningly beautiful but doesn’t think so.

39. I love that she will fall asleep with the TV on, but the computer monitor must be off.

40. I love the fact that she has Courtneyisms.

41. I love the fact that she always wants to drive over the river on the back road.

42. I love that she has pen pals.

43. I love that she tolerates my quirks, moods, and foibles well.

44. I love that it’s easy to tell when she’s upset…

45. …and easy to tell when she’s happy.

46. I love that I can talk to her about anything…

47. …and that she’ll even talk about stuff she doesn’t want to talk about given enough time.

48. I love the fact that she likes movies…

49. …and that she’s willing to try any movie I throw at her.

50. I love the fact that she’s found several comics she likes, even though she’s not particularly interested in comics in general.

51. I love that she hates Star Trek.

52. I love that she loves Dr. Who.

53. I love that she’s tiny but mighty.

54. I love that she can sleep through almost anything.

55. I love that she’ll game with my friends and I even though she’s not particularly interested in it.

56. I love the fact that she has a great butt, however she insists that some of her jeans make it look better than others.

57. I love the fact that she loves the ocean and marine life of all kinds.

58. I love the fact that she knows how to properly set up and maintain fishtanks of all kinds.

59. I love that she loves to take pictures of everything.

60. …and that she’s really good at it.

61. I love the fact that she loves a good horror movie.

62. I love that she’s generous, and loving, and kind.

63. I love the fact that she loves insects of all kinds.

64. I love the fact that she drinks Dr. Pepper like water.

65. I love the fact that she’s constantly tinkering with her blog.

66. I love the fact that she’s an atheist.

67. I love that sometimes I can introduce her to new music.

68. I love the fact that she can listen to a song twenty times in a row without blinking.

69. I love the fact that she’s a Libertarian.

70. …and that she calls me a Communist because I’m a bleeding heartliberal.

71. I love that she has no fear of offending anybody, ever.

72. I love the fact that I always learn something new about her every day I’m with her.

73. I love the fact that she’s extremely polite.

74. I love the fact that she can out belch any man…

75. …and that she says, “Excuse me.” after every one.

76. I love the fact that she can curse fluently in several languages, but usually doesn’t.

77. I love the fact that her sneezes almost always come in twos.

78. I love the fact that she almost always needs help to stop the hiccups.

79. I love that she’ll hit the snooze button twenty times before getting up, even when I have the clock across the room.

80. I love that she thinks that the bed must be made every day.

81. I love that she likes 80’s music.

82. …and cheezy 80’s cartoons.

83. I love the fact that she’s loyal.

84. I love that she will never answer the door when I’m there, not even for the pizza guy.

85. I love that she can spend twenty hours straight web surfing, then tell me that there’s nothing good on the internet.

86. I love that she loves to watch boxing.

87. I love that she’s a creative and talented cook.

88. I love the fact that her foods must never touch, unless they’re supposed to.

89. I love the fact that her favorite jet fighter is the SR71 Blackbird, even though she can never remember what it’s called.

90. I love the fact that plastic wrap is okay to seal refrigerated containers with, but aluminum foil is not.

91. I love that Beethoven’s Fur Elise will make her purr like a kitten.

92. I love that she ranks the cats in order of preference, and tells them this often.

93. I love that she’s an outstanding gardener.

94. I love that she stays in touch with current news.

95. I love that she’s addicted to Jeopardy.

96. …and that she hates Wheel of Fortune.

97. I love the fact that she reviles Microsoft.

98. I love that she’s the first person I want to see when I wake up…

99. …and the last person I want to talk to when I go to sleep.

100. I love the fact that she lets me spoil her rotten.

101. Most of all, I love the fact that she picked me to share her life with.

Five Finger Exercises For The Damned

Posted by Dan as Actual Blogging, Essay, Overview

When you do enough online reviewing (assuming you have something nice to say) you’ll eventually start seeing snippets of your reviews crop up on various printed works. While it’s a good feeling to know that the subject of one of your essays liked what you wrote enough to use it, it’s a kind of dubious honor at best. After all, we all know that a critic doesn’t really create anything right?

There’s a certain kind of poetry in a well crafted essay, and the best critical essayists from Michele de Montaigne to Hunter S. Thompson, to Lester Bangs, to Harlan Ellison can make what is basically just an essay that says, “I liked it.” or “I didn’t like it and here’s why.” nearly as entertaining as the work that was reviewed.

One of the fun things I do when I’m writing a critical essay is to include the literary equivalent of a DVD easter egg. These are sentences that I’ve specifically written, that I think would make great cover copy. The trick is to work these in well enough so that they don’t really jump out at you unless you’re specifically looking for something cool to put on the back cover of your new graphic novel.

There’s an art to writing good cover copy that transcends even the art of the critical essay. It’s much harder to tell people how cool something is in just a few sentences than it is to use an entire essay. I’ve gotten good enough at it that at this point, that when someone picks out a few lines from one of my reviews for cover copy, it’s almost always exactly the lines I wanted. So I thought I’d share with you all some of the practice runs I do on a regular basis, just to flex those specific writing muscles. Some of these are better than others, but they were all good practice, and they at least give you all a rare peek at my non comics related reading list. These are five finger exercises for those of us poor souls, damned to that special hell reserved for the most despised of all writers, the critic.

Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite
Bar none, the best vampire novel since Bram Stoker’s original, and Ms. Brite can write circles around the old bard. Lost Souls is hip, relevant, and more than a little responsible for most modern teen-agers wanting to dress in pale and black.

The Store by Bentley Little
Have you ever got the feeling while walking through Wal Mart that there was something…wrong? The feeling that just under the surface was something seething and evil. Bentley Little captures the true horror of the big box store in this masterpiece of genre fiction.

Collected Fictions by Jorge Louis Borges
Andrew Hurley does a stellar job of translating the finest short fiction of this master storyteller. This volume is a treasure mound of stories, and a must have for anyone who loves to read.

Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
Mrs. Madrigal is the landlord you always wanted but never got, and the stories are told through the eyes of her renters at 28 Barbary Lane. Classic coming of age fiction by an astounding writer. Maupin is a national treasure and his work should not be missed.

Stranger Than Fiction by Chuck Palahniuk
Palahniuk had the unfortunate luck of having his first novel Fight Club stick firmly into the heart of the pop culture zeitgeist, guaranteeing his succeeding work would be ignored. This is a collection of some of his best short fiction. Smashing reads all around.

Men and Cartoons by Jonathan Lethem
Lethem is the best living short story writer who isn’t Ray Bradbury or Harlan Ellison. Although the three are a fair comparison, Lethem shines brightly enough all on his own. This is his most recent collection of short fiction, and it’s absolutely excellent.

Wicked by Gregory Maguire
A brilliant updating of L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz, told from the point of view of the Wicked Witch of the West. Turns out she was a lot deeper than we ever gave her credit for, and her side of the story makes for an excellent read.

Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins
All the mysteries, myths and magics of life on planet Earth are revealed through the parable of a love story that takes place in a pack of Camel cigarettes. Still Life With Woodpecker is a work of pure genius by one of the best modern writers.

Slippage by Harlan Ellison
Often mis-classified as a science fiction writer, Harlan Ellison consistently transcends the limitations of genre. Slippage is a masterpiece of collected short stories by the most amazing writer on the planet!

Angry Candy by Harlan Ellison
Required reading for anyone who has ever lost someone they care about. Ellison brings forth all the pain of lost loved ones and channels it into an amazing collection of scalpel sharp short fiction.

Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
Read the book before you go see the new Richard Linkletter movie. This book will make you think twice before going out to eat at any restauraunt that labels itself fast food.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss
Even though the pandas come across as jerks, this is still the best English lesson of the new millennium. Truss makes the mind-numbingly boring subjects of grammar and punctuation fun by injecting them with wit and humor.

Classic Feynman by Richard Feynman
A collection of hilarious essays by the amazing physicist who’s tragic death shortly after his investigation of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, keeps the conspiracy theory nuts in business to this day. Feynman makes Carl Sagan look like a piker when it comes to making advanced physics potable for the masses.

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
Meet the amazing people who make and serve food in some of the world’s best eateries. Master chef and gonzo journalist Anthony Bourdain takes us on a tour of back kitchens and dark alleyways around the world.

The not so secret reason why Cap #25 means nothing to your average comics fan.

Posted by Dan as Actual Blogging, Comics, Link Blogging, Video Clips

Captain America is strictly bush league!

This is also the reason that when John Byrne left The Uncanny X-Men so did I. Okay except for the stellar run by Paul Smith, but I can assure you I didn’t read them, just looked at the pretty pictures. Okay…okay, I did pick up the Grant Morrison issues too, and I did enjoy the Jim Lee stuff as well. Sigh! I need help.

The Re-emergence of Paul Riddell and Why the Art of Writing is Not The Same As a Bad Crack Habit

Posted by Dan as Essay, Love Letter, Overview, Promoting

Many many years ago in those halcyon days of early 2002, I happened across this great web site called, The Healing Power of Obnoxiousness, or HPOO for short. It was an online archive for the critical essays of Paul T. Riddell, who’s work I knew well from his days as a freelancer for Sci-Fi Universe and Film Threat magazines. Unfortunately, a few months after I found it, the web site went away. The archives were closed, and I wasn’t even left with a signpost saying, “Move along. Nothing to see here.” I felt like that little kid at the end of Shane, watching what was left of his hero ride off into the sunset. “Come back Paul, come back!” I never even got the chance to subscribe to his newsletter, the oh-so-marvelously named Hell’s Half-acre Herald.

With the scuttling of his web site, Paul T. Riddell was gone, leaving a gaping wound in the field of genre criticism. The man who introduced me to the works of John Shirley, and the absolute genius who coined the term Cat Piss Man, had disappeared into the luminiferous aether. There were remnants though, like the image that still clings tremulously to life when you shut off one of those old tube driven television sets. If you search for them, you can still find some of his comics related work at Popimage, and at The SAVANT graveyard. His science fiction related essays and some of his movie reviews can still be found at: The Spark, and over at Dark Echo (-Edit point- Paul pointed out to me that his John Shirley review that’s currently posted at Dark Echo is unauthorized. He has asked that the “editor” Paula Guran take it down, but she has so far ignored him. Should any of you desire to e-mail her and let her know what you think of this situation, she can currently be reached at: editor@juno-books.com ), and you can read a lot of the stuff he wrote as Edgar Z. Harris at this nifty archive site.

Then, about a year ago, just on a whim, I threw Paul Riddell through a Google search. I do that from time to time, checking up on former SAVANTeurs, and a host of other favorite Internet writers who don’t bother to keep their own blogs. This particular day, the stars were properly aligned, and Google came up with a Livejournal blog called Sclerotic Rings. It was written by none other than the aforementioned prodigal son himself. Paul had changed up his writing style a bit to favor a more chatty, conversational atmosphere, but you could still see some of the old snark, as well as gleaming edges of that black sense of humor, especially in his responses to readers’ comments. It quickly became one of my favorite places to frequent within this cacophony of electronically driven noise we call the world wide web.

Paul’s been sick lately with a serious bout of bronchitis that really seems to want to morph into pneumonia, but in spite of all that he keeps updating. I have, however, noticed a disturbing trend in his posts lately. It seems to be bothering him that he’s still writing, still sharing his black wit and razor keen insights with an audience. It really pisses me off when writers who actually know their craft and practice it well start referring to what they do as an addiction. Writing certainly seems like something you should be able to “quit anytime,” like smoking crack or watching re-runs of Matlock, but it isn’t. Writing is a state of being, and while an addiction may certainly seem that way, it is in fact something extraneous to your core. Simply put, you either are or are not a writer. To deny the fact that you write is to deny your own existence, and a true writer (and Paul is one in every good and noble way imaginable) will write, regardless of whether he ever gets anything published, or even if nobody other than long suffering friends and family ever sees it. Writers have no choice but to set pen to paper (so to speak.)

Paul and I share a mutual teacher in the great essayist and short story writer, Harlan Ellison. I’ve met Harlan on many occasions, and have even had several opportunities to chat with him. He once told me that, “a true writer will write, no matter what. They have no choice but to serve their muse. It is an incurable affliction of the soul.” Confirming for me what I’ve always known. Writing isn’t an addiction, it’s an incurable genetic disease, like Tay-Sachs or neurofibromatosis. Criticism is the worst of these because, not only must you understand your own unconsciousness, but you’ve also got to understand the back brains of other writers as well, and what’s worse, is that you have to be able to pull everything apart, put it back together, then be clear enough to demonstrate your work to the rest of the class.

The best critics make all this seem effortless. They can juggle four running chainsaws, pull the tablecloth without spilling the wine glasses, and steal your wristwatch all at the same time, without even blinking. Paul Riddell is definitely someone I count as one of the best of us, and he doesn’t even work much with the critical essay anymore. There’s hope for the future though. If you go here, you’ll see why.

For now Paul is still writing, and hopefully it’s just the bronchitis talking, and not a lead-up to another disappearance. In the meantime, if you have a yen for some of the most fun you can have while surfing the Internet, check out Sclerotic Rings. It’s been re-named The Esoteric Science Resource Center, which is a little less obscure than sclerotic rings, as well as a little more appropriate. The site is a carnival, chock full of scientific weirdness, cool science related facts, useful information about reptiles, insects, carnivorous plants, dinosaurs, and the like. It contains pretty much every interesting morsel that falls across Paul’s wide ranging information gathering tentacles.

Paul is what the folks back home call, “good people.” His blog is fun, open, honest, and even though he’s posting mostly science related McNuggets, he still writes with passion, fire and humor. You should stop by and say hi, and if you like what you read, throw the guy some money courtesy of his PayPal tip jar. If I’m not mistaken, all proceeds are currently going towards the construction of his dream greenhouse, which I believe he plans to fill with carnivorous plants. How he plans on feeding the little bastards is a place I don’t want to go, at least until he suckers my wife into wanting one too.