Grading Batman’s Gear

Hey, it’s a two-parter!

Chimera

I’m going to go ahead and link to Bad Gods material instead of posting it here, in order to avoid URL collision and also because it feels like the correct thing to do in the portion of my brain that thinks about such things.

Documentaries Decoded for Half-Dressed Movie Fans

Comedy aside, we do have a Roku Netflix player, and we’re definitely getting our money’s worth out of it. I pretty much agree with the bulk of the reviews: it’s a really nice device, the main problem with it is that the selection is limited, but it’s still worth the money if you already have a Netflix subscription. The other downside is that if Colette’s watching a movie, I can’t get decent ping on Warcraft, but I’m assuming that’s a limitation of our bandwidth.

This is actually the video version of last week’s column, as the prophecy foretold.

Well, Gary Tyrrell — he of Fleen fame — informed me that I was on All Things Considered today. Figures it’s the one Saturday I was listing to “109.5 The Goat, Home of Rock’s Hardest Rock” instead of NPR. Luckily you, and I can listen to it even now over at the All Things Considered web page.

(Photo courtesy Thomas Rockstar)

Con Men Lose Their Cool in the E-Mail Era

The video is going to be on the same topic, so you may or may not want to wait until that’s out, depending on your preferred method for absorbing Alt Text into your system.

There are a number of good books on classic cons, one of my favorites being Rip-Off: A Writer’s Guide to Crimes of Deception.

(Also available at Wired Video.)

And text format: Earth to Aliens — We’re a Bunch of Dorks

As trusty reader RobJ pointed out, I’m behind in linking to this week’s video. I blame the heat. I’m not clear on the connection, but I feel safe blaming the heat for everything. As always, you can also check it out over at Wired.

Here are a few paragraphs I took out of the original RPG Cooking essay because of space considerations:

Can you believe that this cookbook includes information on how to use a meat thermometer? I’m so tired of cookbooks that try to make things easy for people! Every time some newbie buys this book, it’s a slap in the face to those of us who have been timing our meat by eye and smell since 1977! How do they expect cooking to gain any respect or popularity if they keep trying to lure in new people?

Do they even test these recipes? Lentil soup and lentil casserole have almost all the same ingredients, but lentil soup takes half as long to cook! Why would anyone ever make the casserole? They need to reduce the cooking time of the casserole and add more ingredients to balance it.

Oh, my God, the Better Joy Cookbook contains recipes for sushi and edamame! Can’t I look anywhere without seeing this Iron Chef crap? Now I can’t even buy the cookbook, because if my guests see it on my shelf they’ll start bugging me to make them rice ball fish paste soup whatever.

The recipe for cobb salad tells you to slice an egg. See the problem here? It never tells you to cook the egg! You can’t slice a raw egg! This recipe is completely useless! Why would anyone buy a cookbook that contains a recipe you can’t cook?