Take A Telescopic Tour

Here's a nice little video featuring one of the radio telescopes it's my job to watch over:

Books On TV (Although Not Necessarily On Mine)

This trailer for American Gods looks amazing:



And the trailer for The Handmaid's Tale looks depressing and terrifying (so, probably pretty true to the source material):



Annoyingly, though, both of these are going to be showing on channels/services that I don't have, and which I am not going to run out and subscribe to. (Sigh. Perhaps it was inevitable that the new Golden Age of Television would also be the new Age of Not Being Able to Watch the Things You Want to Watch Unless You Subscribe to at Least Half A Dozen Separate Services. But that doesn't mean I have to be happy about it.) Anyway, I will look forward to seeing both of them if and when they're actually available to me.

I May Feel Less Self-Conscious About People Looking At What I'm Reading Now.

And today's random thing, just because it made me laugh way more than it probably should have: fake book covers on the subway. (Warning: some of these are pretty crude.)

Clearly This Is Just What I Needed For My Stress

(Seriously, what does it say about me that I actually did sort of feel more relaxed after watching that?)

Book People Problems

A video I thought I'd share, because I know at least one person out there will understand:

New Who Trailer

I WANT THIS. I WANT TO WATCH THIS RIGHT NOW.

Ooh!

Ooh! New Doctor Who trailer! Complete with a date for the start of he new season. (Sept. 19. Mark your calendar!) I'm getting all flaily-hands excited, now.

Time Machines And Teeth

My latest annoyance: last night I was happily munching on a piece of bread -- bread, mind you, and not even stale bread -- when I suddenly found myself thinking, "Huh, that bit of bread was unusually crunchy." Followed by, "Huh, I suddenly seem to have less chewing surface left to eat this bread with." Or something to that effect, but less coherent.

Yep, that's right. I broke a chunk off my tooth. Aaargh. Fortunately, they were able to fit me in at the dentist today, and I was able to get someone to cover for me at work. (Because, of course, this sort of thing never happens on my days off.) Even more fortunately, it turns out I didn't need a crown this time; they were able to rebuild the missing tooth chunk with a bit of metal and some filling. Still, that was not so much fun. They gave me so much novocaine my eye went numb, and now that it's finally wearing off, my mouth is starting to protest the manhandling. Stupid teeth.

Well, to cheer myself up, I'm going to watch my new favorite video a bunch of times.



Is that not amazing? Seriously, new favorite video ever.

Sigh.

After all that money to fix my roof, it is leaking. Again. Around the skylight. Again. Also, either the ants came back or never entirely went away, because there is a giant, crawly mass of them living in the wall behind my bathtub.

These things can be dealt with. I hope. But, man, I am tired of dealing with things. I am tired of adult responsibilities and long lists of things to do, and my inner child just wants to throw a whiny-brat tantrum about it. "I don't wanna! I don't wanna! My life is so haaaaaaaaard!" Shut up, inner child.

Well, at least I have this woman telling me I shouldn't feel guilty about having so many unread books:



Although I can't help thinking that maybe she really doesn't mean this many.

This Is Why I'm Not Leaving The House Today

A humorous fake movie trailer, apropos of the day:

Science Hilarity!

Still talking about Weird Al -- which, rather marvelously, everyone seems to be doing right now -- I thought I'd share this, too. Because it is currently my very favorite thing on the internet.

Only A Slightly Less Controversial Subject Than The Original

Weird Al has a new album out! I got my copy yesterday, and, as usual, it's great. He's also releasing videos for it. I think there are a couple of prescriptive grammarians of my acquaintance who are likely to appreciate this one:

Zzzzzz

Today has been sort of alternately boring and interesting. But now I am tired. So, relevant to my tiredness, have a video with some tips about how to sleep better, a subject that is always near and dear to a shiftworkers' heart:



Tip #2 startled me, rather. I thought I'd invented that one all by myself, back when I was a kid. Although at some point since then, it seems to have stopped working for me.

Still More Books, Yo!

Here I sit in my brief period of downtime between two 12-hour shifts, just trying to suck down enough coffee to stay awake through the night. So, not a lot to say today and not a lot of time to say it, but keeping up with the little book-related theme I seem to have going here, I thought I'd link to what has just become my new favorite YouTube channel, Thug Notes. Each video deals with a different classic book, giving a summary of the plot and some thematic analysis. All of which is delivered in gangsta speak. What really gets me is that this guy frankly does a better of teaching these books in five minutes than most of my English teachers ever managed. Here's a couple of samples:





It makes me weirdly happy to live in a world where this exists. (Just remember kids, there's no substitute for actually reading the book!)

A Little Holiday Cheer From Captain Picard

Man, I Never Noticed That Missing Colon.

All right, enough of me whining about my household problems for the moment. How about some humorous Trekkie snark instead? (Warning: spoilers for the latest Trek reboot movie. And some old classic series episodes, if anybody in the world still cares about that.)

Random Links: All-Video Edition

First, we have a trailer for Calvin and Hobbes: The Movie. So help me, I seriously wish this was a real thing. I would watch the hell out of this.





Still on the movie theme, and just in time for the sequel, it's the honest trailer for the 2009 Star Trek movie. With lots of spoilers. Funny, funny spoilers.





And then there's Catherine Tate on some kind of game show, desperately trying to remember what part her co-worker David Tennant played in Harry Potter. This is probably the single funniest thing I have seen in recent memory.





And finally, a promo for the upcoming TV series Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. Even if I weren't stupidly addicted to the show it's being spun off from, I would think this looked really, really cool.

I Am Still Living Long And Prospering. More Or Less.

It has come to my attention that my posting here has been, well, nearly nonexistent, and that people do notice this fact and seem to miss me. Awww! Unless, of course, they're secretly wondering if I'm dead and they can loot my DVD collection.

Anyway, nope, still not dead. Just... quiet. Or at least I am here. You know how it is. You don't seem to have anything much interesting to say, and the longer you go without saying anything, the more interesting it feels like you need to be to be worth breaking the silence, and... yeah. Well, never mind that. I'm going to try to post here a bit more regularly, and then all of you who encouraged me can ask yourselves, "My god, what have I done?" when I start going on about the boring details of my boring life.

But let's start with a video, instead. You know, I hate commercials. I honestly loathe them. And when somebody tells me there's this really cute, clever, well-made commercial I must see, that only makes me inclined to be even more hostile to it. Because commercials are an attempt to manipulate my brain for profit, and the only thing worse than doing that badly is doing it well. But, well, I had to make an exception for this one. Had to. So:





ETA: And literally as I was posting this, somebody sent me an e-mail with a link to this video, in case I hadn't seen it yet. Oh, my interests, they are so very, very predictable.

Albuturkey!

Apropos my current TV watching, since I'm now making my way through season 5:



Unlike the Doctor Who guys, the Breaking Bad cast can actually bowl. And are also hilarious.

And, man, now I really want to go bowling...

YouTube, Some Days I Love You.

The one major downside to finally having a decent, stable internet connection is that I find myself wasting way, way more time on YouTube than I used to. On the upside, though, that means I sometimes stumble across things like this awesome fan-made Doctor Who "50th anniversary trailer." It's like the pure distilled essence of 50 years of Who, concentrated down to seven minutes: