December 31, 2015

Happy 2016

Here's the obligatory monkey-girl celebrating. 




Legless, mostly hairless, ape-woman eating pizza is by Weee

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:33 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 16 words, total size 1 kb.

Even Those On The Side Of The Angels

who take too many shortcuts in pursuit of their goals often end up in a different place than they intended serving different ends than they hoped and may find that they have merely replaced the monsters they sought to vanquish.



Fallen Angel by Saburo


Yeah...it's political, so below the fold it goes...
more...

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 06:58 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
Post contains 1704 words, total size 13 kb.

December 30, 2015

SQUIIIID!

One of The Brickmuppet's Crack team of Science Babes reacts to what ambled into Toyama Harbor on Christmas Eve.



"MAN THE HARPOONS!"

Excessive perhaps, but this seems like a more reasonable response than that of Akinobu Kimura, a local dive shop owner (and apparently an epic badass) who jumped into the water and took the best pictures ever of a Giant Squid. 


Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 06:45 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 63 words, total size 1 kb.

Suddenly, I Find I Have a Hankering for Tacos

This is brilliant.
The music is sublime.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 04:55 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 17 words, total size 1 kb.

December 28, 2015

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

OK.

Well.
How best to put this?

Someday, I will ruefully look back on this post and realize that this is the day I became "The Other".

This was a serviceable summer blockbuster and was a decent, if uneven J.J.Abrams flick. I say uneven in part because while the first hour or so was sublimely paced and and at times as tight as a Swiss watch, the last seven and a half hours seemed to drag a bit. 

To be fair, this was a vastly better film than any of the prequels and I suspect that this alone accounts for some of the gushing over this movie. The film has some wonderful moments and introduced a genuinely interesting character,

There is much to like in the early part of the film but it still fell short.

 All in all, it was better than the prequels (but so was Battle Beyond the Stars) and in the same league as Return of the Jedi...which I confess I did not care for, and frankly despite some awesome early moments and glorious effects, this film ultimately ended up disappointing due to the draggy inchoate ending and what came off as the writer's laziness towards the end.

There. 
I said it.
Now flame away.

UPDATE: Ubu Roi has  a particularly good disquisition on the film including a focus on a speciffic characterization problem that I strongly suggest you read in full. I also note that I'm not the only person that the name "Darth Emo" occurred to...which probably means something.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 11:33 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
Post contains 261 words, total size 5 kb.

One Giant Leap

One of The Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes is all suited up and ready to go after observing the successful landing of the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket. 



'Science Babe' is actually ZZGundam's Elle Vianno as rendered by by Monocoque.

The stage will be reused and that will go a long way towards reducing launch costs moving forward. This is a big step towards the fully reusable multistage rockets that have been dreamed of since Von Braun's time.


Space-X did a lot of similar operations earlier. Jeff Bezos's company which has a much lower performance rocket for suborbital space tourism achieved a similar feat a few weeks ago and several similar landings were done by the DC-X in the early 90s. However, this is the first time this has been successfully done as part of an actual satellite launch. 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 02:39 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 145 words, total size 2 kb.

So. Their Cover Story is...Salt.

Two of The Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes bring us news from two different planetoids. 



Art by Six

First up, we have what is actually a tad more than week old news from the Main Belt. It seems that scientists going over the data from the Dawn Probe have reached a consensus for their cover story regarding the glowy bits on Ceres. They claim is that it not an alien city nor a steadily charging space laser preparing to wreak havoc upon the Earth, but rather a really big salt lick


Image via

The effect is enhanced by thin clouds of water vapor outgassing in the salty areas that give a refractory effect that one would not normally get on a nigh airless body. It could be that Ceres has cometary properties and is orbiting right on the cusp of its critical distance from the sun. 


Farther afield (quite a bit farther actually) another of our proficient and pulchritudinous planetologists brings us these spectacular videos from the New Horizons flyby of Pluto. These were only recently processed due to the combination of a necessarily slow data transmission rate and the vast amounts of information that New Horizons gathered on its brief pass. 






Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 01:33 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 208 words, total size 3 kb.

I Have Been Remiss in My Blogitude

Rooster Teeth has been remiss in getting the next episode of RWBY out after that gut wrenching cliffhanger they foisted on us two weeks ago.


To partially address both issues, here is Ruby Rose doing a dramatic  reading for your enjoyment.


I swear. It sounds like Random House has figured out how to print cooties.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 11:53 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 62 words, total size 1 kb.

December 25, 2015

Few Have Managed to Capture

...just what making it to this day means to those of us employed in the North American transportation network quite as well as Onsoku Tassha.




It's over.


Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 04:05 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 32 words, total size 1 kb.

December 19, 2015

So Exhausted

...that I can't even spell occoured, ocour....that word for "happened" correctly. 


So rather than post anything substantive, I'll rely on the fallback of a cute girl in seasonal attire swearing like a sailor at you.



Full Disclosure: I don't...strictly speaking...know what she's actually saying, but I can make some problematic assumptions based on her background and the fact that she obviously suffers from turrets syndrome.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:07 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 71 words, total size 1 kb.

The Times: They Are Interesting

Brick and mortar stores are suffering mightily from online competition and manufacturing jobs are increasingly moving overseas. Now it appears that satire is on the ropes due to sensitive palates.


General Tso’s chicken was made with steamed chicken instead of fried — which is not authentically Chinese, and simply "weird,” one student bellyached in the Oberlin Review.

Others were up in arms over banh mi Vietnamese sandwiches served with coleslaw instead of pickled vegetables, and on ciabatta bread, rather than the traditional French baguette.

"It was ridiculous,” gripes Diep Nguyen, a freshman who is a Vietnam native.

Worse, the sushi rice was undercooked in a way that was, according to one student, "disrespectful” of her culture.



Even if this IS a joke,  and I'm still holding out a desperate hope that it is, the fact that it does not seem at all beyond the pale is just not a good sign. 

UPDATE: It gets worse.

UPDATE AGAIN: Not a retraction as I'd hoped, but an observation that in an age where politics is indistinguishable from satire, some people are adapting surprisingly well...


This is running during Saturday Night Live tonight... let's see if the audience notices.

UPDATE ANON: Oh dear.


Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 06:04 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 205 words, total size 3 kb.

December 17, 2015

And Then, A Miracle Did Occur

Earlier this morning, a series of work related calamities prompted a moment of introspection during which I asked "Dear GOD...What the HELL else can go wrong?"

Now, as I sit here, covered head to toe in cricket poop, it belatedly occurs to me that my prayer was answered. 

But enough about me. Here is someone, who, while embracing the season's accouterments with great verve and fastidiousness, nevertheless seems unclear on the concept of carols.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 11:47 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 80 words, total size 1 kb.

December 15, 2015

Placeholder

I've been up since 10:45 last night; and I have to get up tonight at a similar time...to facilitate activities broadly comparable to this...


 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 04:37 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 25 words, total size 1 kb.

He's Back!

Or at least his blog is. We (and others) had reported earlier on the disappearance of Ubu Roi's blog, but Mahou Meido Meganekko (bridgebunnies.com) is back up and running.



"Yay!"

There is still no word from Ubu directly but effort needed to be expended to get the site up again so this is a good sign...though it probably involved a major annoyance for him. 

At least we can put the Alligator theory to rest.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 03:50 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 76 words, total size 1 kb.

December 14, 2015

It's Dangerous to Shop Alone. Take This.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 06:15 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 11 words, total size 1 kb.

December 13, 2015

And That Was My Reaction Too



From episode 3-6 of RWBY which is entitled Fall...a title that can be taken a number of different ways. 

This answered several important questions and put a couple of characters in really bad situations for utterly different reasons.


Boy. 
Howdy.

The next 166 hours are going to be like forever. 

RWBY's been uneven but on balance quite enjoyable. This season they have REALLY hit their stride though. 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 04:26 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 74 words, total size 2 kb.

December 12, 2015

Have There Been Any Ubu Sightings ?

Bridgebunnies.com has been offline for a week now. 

I'd figured it was a temporary thing as there has been a good bit of net wonkieness of late. However it was still down Thursday and is down as I type this. 

Has anyone heard anything about Ubu Roi?


An actual picture of Ubu Roi 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 01:15 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 60 words, total size 1 kb.

December 10, 2015

15 More Days

...till, posting returns to normal. Here is a compensatory Yuletide dreadnought.


Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 06:42 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 19 words, total size 1 kb.

A Non-Comprehensive List of Contemporary Happenings

Moe Lane brings our attention to an intriguing development. It seems that the head of the ruthless Sinola drug cartel in Mexico has sent a letter to the head of ISIS. Here's an excerpt.



Moe Lane takes the understandable "Pass the popcorn!" position on this development. We here at Brickmuppet Blog however, have seen the video in the previous post and thus are bitter old cranks. What jumps out at us is the fact that the band of bastards having trouble with ISIS is....in Mexico
UPDATE: Nope.
HT-WD


Speaking of ISIS, via RFERL here is an overview of where their oil is going. 





 U.S. officials tell me they are seeing significant numbers of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps troops retreat from the Syrian combat zone in recent weeks, following the deaths and wounding of some of top officers in a campaign to retake Idlib Province and other areas lost this year to opposition forces supported by the West and Gulf Arab States. As a result, the Russian-initiated offensive that was launched in September seems to be losing an important ally. 

Russia, however, seems to be doubling down. If it means peeling Syria away from Iran, it would seem an acceptable trade-off to let Russia retain their base and make Syria a fully Russian client, rather than a Mediterranean staging area for Iran and Hezbollah. Russia, after all , is not trying to bring about the apocalypse.


The implications for this are troubling to say the least. A nation of aristocrats and paupers is not likely to be stable or free. 

The most dangerous muslim extremists are the most educated.  This may seem counter-intuitive, but it shouldn't be. 

The DRPK sub that fired a ballistic missile the other day suffered extensive damage in the process. Note that while this is a setback, it does mean they are actually doing live fire tests from actual submarines rather than a test rig. 


Someone tampered with a Boston commuter train and it ran wild through 4 stations (with 50 people on board) before authorities cut the power. 



In some good news, India and Pakistan are resuming, comprehensive multi lateral peace talks. This is particularly welcome since the two nuclear powers have been to war multiple times and in 1999 Pakistan came astonishingly close to nuking India.  

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 06:08 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 433 words, total size 6 kb.

There is a School of Thought

...that we, as a society, are on a cultural death-spiral, spinning faster and faster as we are swept by a maelstrom of decadence, ever closer to a civilizational event horizon that will deposit those it does not drown in the cesspit of a dark age. 


There is another school of though that holds that the aforementioned premise is a load of bollocks and only believed by bitter old cranks. This other school's adherents consist mainly of people who have not seen this....


[INSERT BRONY JOKE HERE]

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:40 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 88 words, total size 1 kb.

<< Page 1 of 2 >>
116kb generated in CPU 0.0808, elapsed 0.7557 seconds.
84 queries taking 0.7336 seconds, 453 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.