To kick this series of oddities I find interesting off, Alex Varanese went on a serious reverse anachronism kick and took tech back to the 70s with his ALT/1977 series of false ads for electronics cool enough for both Steve Jobs and Burt Reynolds. Here’s a sample:

Comic book writer Matt Fraction had a great presentation at Comic-Con this year titled The Batman Dreams of Hieronymus Machines, where he talked about comics, his mother’s medical struggle and how that affected him, why Stilt-Man sucks so much, and how it all fits together in the grand scheme of things. It sounds like a rambling mess, I know, but trust Fraction, his work on Invincible Iron Man and Casanova are really top-notch.

Shaenon K. Garrity  has made a pretty humorous interpretation of Edward Gorey’s recorded love for Star Trek by drawing the famous “Trouble With Tribbles” episode in his style:

i09 dropped a pretty good list of advice taken  from sci-fi and fantasy books. There’s some pretty good ones from people in the comments section too, check that out.

Some of you might have seen this already, but for all the mashup/Palahniuk/Pride & Prejudice fans out there, I present to you: Jane Austen’s Fight Club:

Morgan Meis’ article on video games and the book Extra Lives is actually pretty refreshing and intelligently written. At one point the article reminded me of a line from “Little Weapon”, from Lupe Fiasco’s The Cool:

Imagine if I had to console
The families of those slain and slayed on game consoles

And I’m going to have to end it with a bit of bad news: the great character actor Maury Chaykin passed away yesterday at the age of 61. In honor of him I’m putting down a clip from A Nero Wolfe Mystery, which was a mystery program on A&E from 2001-02 taking Rex Stout’s stories and putting them on TV. Chaykin is the one playing the eponymous character sitting down: