A Mean Right Halfback

Does anyone have 14,500 pounds to spend on the “good vs. evil” foosball table?

Deathly

These Blood Puddle Pillows are awfully fun:

How Helpful!

Now available from Google Maps:

Directions from Stanford, California to Stockholm, Sweden.

Watch out for number 33 — it’s a doozy!

The Originals

The title of the Backwards City post where I discovered these sites is called Nerd Crack — I think that’s about right.

What you see below are pieces of conceptual art designed by Ralph McQuarrie before and during the creation of the original trilogy. There are dozens of these!

Could Something This Awesome Actually Be Happening?

More pictures of these limited edition USPS mailboxes that will soon be appearing, in honor of the 30th anniversary of A New Hope.

Attack of the Microsoft Lackeys

On xkcd:

This may be a little high context for some readers of this blog, but it threw me into hysterics. All three of the dudes mentioned are free software / open source heroes.

New on Flickr

From goopymart, “quik dog tan” –

I am highly amused.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

From The Guardian:

Christmas came early for fans of the Harry Potter series this year, with the revelation of the title of the long-awaited seventh book. The final instalment of the adventures of the boy wizard who, has captured the imagination of children (and adults) the world over, will be called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Well, this is exciting news. A nice splash page at Bloomsbury confirms it.

The publication date for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is still unknown, but is expected to be set in early 2007.

Scrap of sassafras, eh Sisyphus?

This afternoon I combined two of my newest loves, Wordie and Joanna Newsom, by forging this labor of love:

charming words sung by Joanna Newsom

What’s left of Spiderman 3?

This weekend, a new Spiderman 3 trailer went live. It’s best to watch it on iFilm (even in HD!) but here’s a YouTube video that should work for a day or two:

A lot happens in the trailer, to the point where I’m beginning to wonder: either they’ve given the game away, or more is going to happen in this movie than in the other two combined.

Here’s a list of things we already know about Spiderman 3 from watching this trailer:

• Spiderman is wildly popular with the people of New York
• Peter is going to ask MJ to marry him
• Kirsten Dunst still looks best as a redhead
• Flint Marko killed Peter’s Uncle Ben
• Flint Marko becomes Sandman after escaping from the police and finding himself in a “Particle Physics Test Facility”
• Everybody needs help sometimes, even Spiderman
• Revenge is like a poison that can take you over, and before you know it, it can turn you into something ugly
• The symbiote “takes over” Peter, apparently while he is sleeping (he doesn’t know where the suit came from)
• The power feels good
• Tobey Maguire sounds even nerdier when talking about super-cool stuff like symbiote suits
• Eddie Brock (Topher Grace) takes pictures of Spiderman, presumably for the Daily Mail, and he “loves the new outfit”
• Sandman totally pwns the police after they feebly try to shoot him
• Harry Osborn, as suspected, adapts and adopts his father’s Goblin suit (in black), and attempts to get even with Spiderman
• Harry — out of his league, apparently — is then defeated, with one of his own bombs, by a black-clad Spiderman
• We have to forgive each other, or everything we ever were will mean nothing
• Peter, after asking MJ’s help, hoping to stop the symbiote, which is apparently turning him into someone MJ cannot recognize, tries to rip the suit off
• Sandman appears to be in some serious trouble, seeing that he is trapped against a floodgate and is made of sand
• This could be the end of Spider-Man

Quite a bit, yes? Many of the questions I would have had coming into the movie have already been answered by this trailer. All that’s left is what role Venom plays in all this.

Oh, but wait! Here’s this (rough) promo trailer [UPDATED link -- it was removed from Google, as I feared] that premiered at this year’s Comic-Con. It’s similar, but the ending is crucial.

Here’s what else we’ve learned:

• Peter is aware of the fact that he is only just a nerdy kid from Queens
• From now on, Eddie Brock is going to be taking pictures of Spiderman for the Bugle
• After pushing MJ onto the ground, Peter grabs his suit, blaming it for his violence
• Eddie Brock, praying in church, asks God for one thing: to kill Peter Parker — after this, as a church bell rings and Brock looks up (seeing Peter?) the black symbiote drips from the roof down to Brock, overwhelming him. He turns into the Venom we know and love: teeth and everything

So there’s Venom.

My guess is that at this point in the film, Venom starts the wreckage, and Peter has to find a way to defeat him, etc.

I sound cynical, but really I’m as excited as can be…