The New York Times uncovered evidence of serious detainee abuse at Guantanamo Bay:

How do you break a suicidal terrorist? Find something worse than death.

As if the nipples on the Batsuit weren’t bad enough.  To be fair, though, it was the 1950s (Detective Comics #241).

Just because something has happened doesn’t necessarily make it believable.  Here are some examples.

John Quincy Adams kept a pet alligator in the White House.  (Not surprisingly, he faced no assassination attempts).

Unwacky: Brett Favre’s first completed pass was to himself.
Barely wacky: Austria’s World Cup team threw a key match to West Germany to screw Algeria.  The game got so bad the announcer asked viewers to change the channel.
Wackier: “You were like 50 feet away.  How could you be so sure that the ball crossed into the German goal?”  “Stalingrad.”
Outlandish: “The Band Is On the Field!”

Continue Reading »

PIXAR VS. DREAMWORKS

INDEPENDENCE DAY RAP
This is ridiculously crass, but pretty hilarious.

P. Mac coded this random plot generator:

Did you like this? Submit us to Stumble!

If you’re into ridiculously petty literary squabbles, you might get a kick out of this amusing list of reader stereotypes based on favorite authors.  Just don’t take it seriously. I thought these two were funny. 

James Patterson fans: Men who bomb the LSAT.

Stephenie Meyer fans: “People who type like this: OMG. Mah fAvvv <3 <3.”  [But they'll still complain when you misspell Stephenie!]

Here are some of my own. 

Aldous Huxley fans: People that have FAR too much fun to survive to 40. From his masterpiece’s Wikipedia entry: ”…They turn on each other, in a frenzy of beating and chanting that devolves into a mass orgy of [drugs] and sex.”  Make that 35. 

Tom Clancy fans: Guys that like guns but have never actually carried one. 

James Joyce fans: Guys that like James Joyce books but have never actually read one. 

Franz Kafka fans: I think they’re the people that run airports.  It’s the only possible explanation. 

H.G. Wells fans: If they ever had a time machine, their first act would be erasing George Lucas from history.  (Could you wait until Return of the Jedi? Thanks). 

Charles Dickens fans: Readers that think a book is twice as enjoyable if it’s twice as long.

Lorraine Hansberry fans: Jeopardy writers.  I’ll take 1970s Tony-Winning Adaptations for $2000, Alex! 

Step 1: Randomly pick an inciting event, an antagonist, a protagonist and a goal.

INCITING EVENT

• cheated on
• kidnapped
• impaled on a national landmark
• thrown out of a window
• mentally mutilated
• disowned
• fired
• hired
• drafted
• mugged
• kicked down the stairs
• put in the poor house
• brutally murdered
• psychically ravaged
• drop-kicked in Times Square
• publically serenaded
• mistaken for a felon
• exiled
• sent on a one-way trip to Djibouti
• interrogated
• sold a [adjective] pet
• implicated
• sold into slavery
• deceived
• misidentified
• sued
• infected
• ruined
• mistakenly tackled
• swindled
• blacklisted
• judo-chopped through a wall
• poisoned
• framed
• drunk under the table
• thrown into a pit of carnivorous gophers
• beaten in the World Series of Poker
• outed as a superhero
• humiliated
• betrayed
• forced to read Twilight
• thrown into a wood-chipper
• blackmailed
• tricked
• nearly decapitated
• rear-ended
• magically turned into a man-eating llama

Continue Reading »

Mike Lacher has a pretty funny list on McSweeny’s Internet Tendency. I especially liked “Seven Awesome Ways Barnyard Animals Are Like Communism.”  Here are some reworked titles of my own.

• A Wannabe Philosopher Goes Ax-Crazy on a Pawnbroker
• They Turn on Each Other, in a Frenzy of Beating and Chanting that Devolves into a Mass Orgy of Drugs and Sex (I can’t phrase it any better than Wikipedia)
• Everybody Dies
• America, F*** Yeah!–nonfiction, obviously
• It’s Like an Acid Trip but Legal
• I Get Paid by the Word, and You Can Too!
• Even Air Italy Isn’t This Bad (well, except that it actually is).
• British Schoolchildren Gone Wild!

I came across this in the Wikipedia article of Kevin Conroy, the long-time voice actor for Batman.

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Conroy helped out in the relief efforts by volunteering to do cooking duties for officers and firefighters.  On the Batman: Gotham Knight DVD’s commentary, he said that another cook found out he was the voice of Batman. The cook asked if he could tell everyone, and Conroy agreed, though he thought no one would even know who he was. At the other cook’s urging, Conroy yelled in the voice of Batman, “I am vengeance! I am the night! I… am… Batman!” (a line he delivered in Batman: The Animated Series), eliciting cheers from the first responders eating at the relief center. They began telling him what their favorite episodes were, and how they had watched the show with their kids. He said it was the first time he had seen any of them smile or laugh since the attacks a week earlier.

Batman never ceases to amaze me.  Err, unless Joel “Batman and Robin” Schumacher is involved.  I should amend that to “Batman never ceases to astound me.”  Good God, movie audiences haven’t been that astounded since Sean Connery killed a bunch of henchmen in bear suits or a bear-suited Nicholas Cage punched a woman in Wicker Man.

Overheard yesterday: “It was like a romance co-authored by Caligula and H.P. Lovecraft.  Thank God I escaped!”

I tried working on The Taxman Must Die today but got distracted by an NBA idiot getting fined $100,000 for speculating about whether a player would leave his team and join the idiot’s.  Here are some other things (related to taxmen and the untimely demises thereof) you can get for $100,000.

• 15.6 issues’ worth of labor on The Taxman Must Die (best guess: $200 per page)
• 25,000 copies of The Taxman Must Die (best guess: $4 per issue)
• 694.4 hours of therapy (for coping with mutant alligator partners) – $144/hour
• 20,040 jars of gator repellent (so that you don’t need the therapy) – $4.99 each
• 2532 cases of heavy-duty gator repellent (in case the mayo fails) — $39.49 each
• 2.6 Stinger surface-to-air missiles (in case you aren’t taken seriously as an officer of the law) – $38,000 each
• 840 water coolers (in case you need something to prop the Stingers up against) — $119 each
• 3.3 class A felonies (such as murdering a taxman) — a maximum criminal fine of ~$30,000
• 158.7 refrigerators (for hiding the bodies) — $629 each
• 2.08 Basic Employee Death Benefit packages (for taxmen that do die) — $49,000 each?

NOTRE DAME SECURITY GUARD, to a wandering B. Mac: Hey, you, stay with the tour group.

B. MAC:  These seventh-graders?  Umm, I’m twice as old as them.

[The security guard grunts skeptically]

SEVENTH GRADER, to security guard: R u srs?

EIGHTH GRADER: Hes oldr thn mah grndma.  Eww.

[B. Mac shows the guard his staff ID].

SECURITY GUARD:  Damn.  You’re short.

B. MAC:  I’m wearing penny loafers.  Penny loafers!

SEVENTH GRADER:  Pwnd.

EIGHTH GRADER:  Lulz!

Umm, yeah.  I was carded for PG-13 movies as a college student.

Birdemic!

Kindergarten would have been a lot more kickass if I had had these when I was learning the alphabet. Most of these are pretty amusing, but I highly recommend  D and X.  Here’s Z.

Image is trying to promote its upcoming Invincible spinoff, Guardians of the Globe, and it hasn’t announced the team membership yet.  However, it has released some teasers, which are pretty funny… especially if you’re familiar with Wolverine Publicity.

Continue Reading »

I have a checkered relationship with the Academy Awards…

If you’d like to do your own, please go here.

I’ve linked this before, but it’s worth seeing again.

According to Lulu’s Titlescorer, “Superhero Nation” has a 35.9% chance of being a bestselling title.  Here are some titles that beat “Superhero Nation.”

• The Romance of Vampires (69%)
• The Vampire of Darkness (69%)
• The Magical Elf (69%)
• The the of of (41.4%)–what, you don’t like it?
• Dark Vampire (41.4%)

Darn it.  Next time, I’m writing fantasy.

It’s not quite a superhero comic book, but

please check it out anyway.

Since this is a website mainly about superhero writing, I should probably tie this comedy video into superhero writing to make it relevant for you. Well, this video might help you write a superhero who’s really a journalist in The Matrix cutting off lighthouse operators’ heads with laser beams.  Relevant enough?  (Caution: the language is a bit rough).

READ THE SUBMISSION GUIDELINES.

Courtesy of Miss Snark.

Dammit.  Lady-friends roped me into Twilight tonight.  At least something good will come out of this: a drinking game. 

1. Take a sip every time someone broods.  (Small sip– save some room for #4 and #5). 
2. Take a drink every time there’s a product placement.  (I counted 7).  
3. Take a drink every time someone uses the word “understand.”  Take two drinks every time someone uses the phrase “you don’t understand” or “you can’t understand.” 
4. Take a drink every time someone compliments Bella or declares his devotion for her. 
5. Take two drinks every time the audience cheers at a shirtless male or an expression of love.
6. Take a drink everytime the audience laughs at something so bad it’s funny.  Take two drinks when a sparkly Edward and a sparkly Bella take a romp through a Disney-like forest. 
7. Take a drink every time the audience laughs at something that’s actually meant to be funny.  Take two drinks during the Face Punch scene.

“I hate reality television. If I wanted to see conmen humiliate themselves, I’d watch C-SPAN.”

Overheard at a college tutoring center…   

No, the Underground Railroad was not the world’s first subway system…   I don’t care what Wikipedia told you. 

The author behind My Writer’s Block got off lucky with this one– it definitely wasn’t that easy for me to get rid of Vista. 

This reminds me of my freshman year, when Dell computers suddenly started melting (and at least once bursting into flames) across campus.  I signed on as a marketer for a team of computer guys who were selling homemade computers that were suddenly desirable.  Our motto was “one melted computer is a tragedy; a hundred melted computers are an opportunity.”