Twitter suggests I unfollow David Cope. Guess what, Twitter? I DON'T LIKE BEING TOLD WHAT TO DO!

Raymond Chandler's Sci Fi Parody

Excerpt from a letter to his agent:

Did you ever read what they call Science Fiction? It's a scream. It is written like this: "I checked out with K19 on Aldabaran III, and stepped out through the crummalite hatch on my 22 Model Sirus Hardtop. I cocked the timejector in secondary and waded through the bright blue manda grass. My breath froze into pink pretzels. I flicked on the heat bars and the Brylls ran swiftly on five legs using their other two to send out crylon vibrations. The pressure was almost unbearable, but I caught the range on my wrist computer through the transparent cysicites. I pressed the trigger. The thin violet glow was icecold against the rust-colored mountains. The Brylls shrank to half an inch long and I worked fast stepping on them with the poltex. But it wasn't enough. The sudden brightness swung me around and the Fourth Moon had already risen. I had exactly four seconds to hot up the disintegrator and Google had told me it wasn't enough. He was right."

via Letters of Note

The Adventures of Pete and Pete

Stuff from the Adventures of Pete and Pete drawn by Maris Wicks.

the Rainbow Connection

I thought this song would be a good counterpoint to Tim Wilson's Booty Man. This is a great song, but more than that, this was the very first scene of the Muppet Movie, which I think is a pretty ballsy way to start a movie.

Booty Man, by Tim Wilson. Stick with it. The best part is his devotion to the concept. It's 3 minutes, but you feel like he actually kept singing for 20 minutes and they just cut the mic on him.

"Dead men are heavier than broken hearts."
–Raymond Chandler, the Big Sleep
via

Apple Garamond

I never realized that the font Apple used for almost twenty years, starting in 1984, was a custom-condensed version of Garamond, halfway between Garamond and Garamond Condensed.

From Wikipedia:

Upon the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984, Apple adopted a new corporate font called Apple Garamond. It was a variation of the classic Garamond typeface, both narrower and having a taller x-height. Specifically, ITCGaramond (created by Tony Stan in 1977) was condensed to 80% of its normal width. Presumably, Apple felt that the existing ITC Garamond Condensed, at 64%, was too narrow. Bitstream condensed the font and subtly adjusted the stroke widths and performed the hinting required to create a font that was then delivered to Apple as Postscript font apgaram.

Photo of H.R. Giger's surreal landscape on the set of Alien. Anyone excited about Prometheus? I am. I hope it doesn't suck.

Lucian Freud, Dark Coat II

Why Incompetents Think They're Awesome
Examining the Dunning-Kruger study, ten years later.