“My ass is the origin of all spare time.”
–Our own Barbara Hallock, from the following conversation
Barb: (suggests topic to cover)
Troy: Great, Barb; you should do that.
Barb: Sure, I’ll just pull some spare time out of my ass.
Troy: Isn’t that where we all get it? Not your ass in particular, but I’m saying . . .
Barb: “My ass is the origin of all spare time.”
Brought to you by me browsing around facebook.
Best-selling author Terry Pratchett was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in December of last year. Recently, it was announced that Pratchett donated 500,000 pounds to Alzheimer’s research.
Enterprising internet activists have decided to attempt to “match” Pratchett’s donation by having 500,000 users donate just one pound - or about two bucks, US - each.
Go here for more info.
I’m making my donation now!
From the desk of Rebecca E. Mollenhauer, professor of art at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College:
The Saint Mary of the Woods College Art Gallery’s next exhibition opens this evening with an artists’ reception from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. The work of seniors Lynn Payne and Barb Hallock, both digital media majors, will be featured. This senior thesis exhibition, which is the culmination of the artists’ work as students at SMWC, will be on display from February 13th to 21st.
The art gallery is located in Hulman Hall, room 132. Admission is free and open to the public. Regular gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. If you have any questions, please contact Rebecca Mollenhauer, Gallery Director, at ext. 5265, email rmollenhauer@smwc.edu, or stop by the gallery during gallery hours.
Congratulations, Barb!
This has been a really strange campaign. First Ann Coulter said she’d campaign for Hillary if McCain got the Republican nomination. From what I’ve heard, this is akin to a fundie Christian saying that she is MORE EVIL THAN SATAN.
Now, that aside, I just discovered this little piece of news:
THE GREATFUL DEAD ARE REUNITING.
FOR OBAMA.
That. is. amazing.
Barb just gave me this:
Ann Coulter just said that she would campaign for Hillary Clinton if John McCain becomes the Republican Nominee. It’s right there in the video.
My head is exploding. In fact, I probably look like Toht from Raiders of the Lost Ark as we speak.
Maybe this is all some diabolical plan to completely screw up the Clinton campaign.
Then again, maybe no matter how it goes, we’re still screwed.
As a child, my favorite superhero was Batman. As an adult, my favorite superhero is Batman. Batman has a quality that many of the other heroes lack: he is just an ordinary human. None of the things Batman does are things an average Joe could learn to do if said average Joe stuck with it and persevered.
As a Bat-fan and also a girl, there were many women I could have chosen to look up to. In the end, for a silly reason, I chose Barbara Gordon as Batgirl (hey, we have the same name, and she’s awesome). Now, my fangirlism has lain dormant for awhile, given that I have tried to put every Batman between 1989 and 2005 out of mind, but Barbara Gordon has remained in the back of my mind.
I was doing some Wikipedia searching on characters in the DC universe recently and I decided to see what the Standard Repository of All Knowledge had to say about my old friend. I discovered a character I knew nothing about, Oracle, who was the crippled ace computer hacker to the Justice League. AWESOME. She is also the only woman represented in BusinessWeek’s top ten list of most intelligent superheroes.
According to the same Wiki page, however, at one point it was suggested that Babs use the Lazarus pit to de-cripple herself and come back as Batgirl wearing a variant of the cape and cowl with red accents instead of yellow. This idea was ultimately turned down, but I think it has some merit.
I mean, imagine this: Babs remains undercover as Oracle, despite her newfound ability to walk again. She maintains not one, but TWO secret identities, the second of which would be THE COOLEST BATGIRL EVER. I mean, come on. She’d be batshit insane, smarter than most of the supervillains out there, and she’d be able to show Batman a thing or two about a thing or two with regards to vigilante justice.
Not only this, but girls get a comic book character they can identify with, whose costume doesn’t consist of a thong and a corset, and who isn’t a complete bimbo.
Now there’s something I could get behind.
Best. Song. Ever.
Behind the jump so as not to bork the main page.
The video is rather irrelevant, but I ADORE this song. For more info, please don’t hesitate to visit the artist’s web page.
(more…)
Hellooooo Shotgun Readers!
Blogathon is less than two days away now - I’ve purchased massive amounts of (fair-trade, in the interest of staying true to the principle of the thing) coffee, and we’ve basically got our schedule settled.
There is STILL time to get your pledges in. Having finally settled on what it is our highest pledge will get, I have decided to share it with you, the readers - it’s a pretty fabulous prize.
Yep. $25 amazon gift certificate. If there’s a tie for highest pledge, I will draw a name from a hat.
So get those pledges in! We promise it’ll be fun. To sponsor us directly from here, click this link. Remember, we never see a penny of it, it’s completely tax-deductible, AND you’re helping to do a good thing.
And don’t forget to join us, Saturday morning beginning at 9 AM EST (6 AM PST) for the festivities, at http://shotgunreviews.com/blogathon
Below, in this post, is a little more information about me, specifically (that’s Barb), and the Shotgun team’s plans for our Blogathon blog. Of course, all of this is tentative right now and probably won’t be finalized until sometime on Friday, but I want to personally implore each and EVERY one of you - please, pledge something. Even if it’s only a dollar, you can really do some good here. This is all about communities coming together to do good, and the CBLDF could use your help. No amount is too low, and remember, we here at Shotgun NEVER see a penny of the money. We’re doing this to help out, not to profit (which is why, you’ll notice, there isn’t a single ad anywhere on the Blogathon section of the site).
Please, please. Even if you’re thinking you can’t really spare the cash right away, you don’t have to worry about making a payment to the CBLDF until AFTER the event is over - that’s this Saturday, July 28th, by the way. So won’t you help us do a good thing, by clicking this link and agreeing to make a donation if we succeed?
Our information is below:
Name: Shotgun Reviews
Blogathon blog: For Great Justice!
Blogging for: Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
About me: I (Barb) am a fourth-year thon veteran and a third-year event volunteer. So, naturally, when I got the chance to do something as a project with one of the websites I do work on, Shotgun Reviews, I was all about it. Shotgun’s Editor in Chief is one of my professors at a small midwestern college, and I suggested the idea to him. He thought it would be a great idea. We’re going to have a team of the Shotgun contributors writing stuff throughout the event. The rest of the team - as of now, that’s Vince Scalabrino, Kevin Huxford, and Lucas Siegel - are all first-year thonners, and I want to make this as wonderful an experience for them as I can. I hope I’ll do them credit as a team leader.
Why I chose my charity: Because Shotgun is so entwined in the comics culture - Troy, and a number of the other Shotgun writers as well, also write for Newsarama.com, and Shotgun Reviews recently announced the start of its very own geek culture podcast - we felt that the CBLDF would be a cause close to the heart of Shotgun’s readers. And, given that the CBLDF fights to protect first amendment rights (something most of us feel needs a little protecting these days), we felt it was a worthwhile cause.
My plans for blogathon: There will be all sorts of ridiculous good times. For my post, I’m going to be drawing little short, three-pane silly comic strips featuring terrible art and nonsensical captions. Lucas may create some short podcasts to post on his times, and I hear tell that one of our bloggers has some vacation stories in mind for filler. All in all, it ought to be a crazy day. Plus, we’re going to give some sort of awesome schwag to our highest-amount sponsor.
Sponsor us: by clicking here!
…That’s right. YOU folks can help us do something….
Something good. Something that will help protect the rights of those people who bring you all the comics you enjoy so much. It’s simple, it’s easy, it’s quick, and it isn’t even expensive.
We’re asking you to pledge your sponsorship for our Blogathon team. You can pledge in one of two ways: a flat amount for the entire event, or a per-post pledge. Pledging $.50 per post results in roughly $24.
All it takes is clicking this link, registering, and putting down the amount you’d like to sponsor us for.
As an added bonus, the sponsor who donates the most will get some kind of cool prize. We’re not sure what it will be yet, but you’ll like it. We promise.
Your donations, in the US, are one hundred per cent tax deductable, and you’ll be helping us here at Shotgun Reviews give a little bit back to the people who have provided us with so much entertainment for so many years. Please, won’t you do it for the comics?
This July, Shotgun Reviews will be taking part in a 24-hour charity blogging event known as the Blog-a-thon. The site, which specializes in coverage relating to all aspects of culture – music, film, comic books, anime and manga, and wrestling (to name a few) – will be blogging to raise funds for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.
Each blog collects pledges from sponsors – much like the (insert verb here)-a-thon format used by charity groups everywhere – to raise funds for an organization of their choosing. Sponsors, at the conclusion of the event, donate directly to the organization, which means that their bloggers never handle a single penny of the money.
The event takes place on Saturday, July 28, beginning at 9 AM EST (6 AM PST), and lasts through the next 24 hours. The Shotgun team, who have dubbed their blog “For Great Justice!” will post once each half-hour for the duration.
Shotgun Reviews’ junior Webmistress Barbara Hallock first came up with the idea in early 2007, when she began working on Shotgun’s recent site update. “I’ve been a Blog-a-thon participant and event volunteer for several years,” Hallock says. “It’s really a great event and it gives bloggers an opportunity to be such a force for positive change.”
Shotgun Reviews has a wide readership, and Hallock feels that the site’s readership could really be organized to do some good for the CBLDF. “Since the update, [the site’s] numbers have shot up drastically, and I think we have a social obligation to do what we can to further [the CBLDF’s] cause,” Hallock stated.
For more info, visit this link. The site has several relevant links, including information on how to sponsor the blog, and more information about the event as well. Those wishing to sign up for their own Blog-a-thon site can also find a link to the Blog-a-thon main page, where registration is open now.
From the comments of Write Paris, a Blogger site set up to allow people to write letters to She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named during her second stint in the slammer:
Dear Paris,
You will be like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill after this. Ugly.
Some of the other comments are pretty hilarious as well, such as this gem, a little further down:
the_entire_human_population said…
Pwned!
Yes, I can fully accept the fact that I’m sad and pathetic, but YOU try working a customer service job on a slow Saturday.
Allow me to tell you, dear readers, of a little something that happened while I was on a trip to New York for the College Media Advisers Conference this year. It was a Thursday, still warm, but cold weather was looming. A friend and I were headed toward Times Square to meet with another member of our group when I looked up and stopped dead. I’d never been so thankful for being a tourist as I was at that moment: I saw “THE COMMITMENTS” in red on the marquee over BB King’s.
As a former member of Mr. Troy Brownfield’s Irish Culture class at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College (it’s a good one!), I was familiar with the film, featuring such musical talents as Andrew Strong, the entire membership of the Corrs, and a bunch of crazy men who claimed that Elvis was a Cajun.
There’s a longer review coming later, but for now, a three-line review of the Saviors of Soul’s recent show:
Awesome: Getting a last-minute ticket to a sold-out show in the middle of Manhattan on the weekend of St. Patrick’s Day.
Ironic: There was only one band member playing that was in the original film.
Awesome AND Ironic: It was the drummer.
More later.