Chris Braak's Blog, page 21

Zombie Apocalypse Armaments

So, it turns out that some guy thinks that maybe there’s a super-potent form of LSD that turns you into a naked cannibal maniac.  Maybe that guy is just a NARC, trying to blame everything on drugs, but really, there definitely are naked cannibal maniacs out there, so I want to take a brief moment [...]

Geek Pride Day

This is a thing on the internet that people are talking about, and I admit that I kind of don’t really understand it, so I am appealing to you — NERDS — for help.  What the shit is Geek Pride? Like, people act like it’s a thing like, “I am proud to be a Geek.” [...]

Chris Versus The Movies: Is Battleship the Worst? (Yes.)

Man, you guys.  I wasn’t even going to write about this, until Charlie Jane Anders posted up this article from The Wrap, which is about how The Hunger Games and The Avengers are doing so well that there’s no money left for Battleship, and it contains a quote from Universal’s domestic distribution chief Nikki Rocco in [...]

Genre Fiction, Literary Fiction, The Revolution of Brains

I was going to write a long piece about this thing here, by Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians, which is a book of which I liked about 60%.  The piece is about how genre fiction is more than just escapism, there’s psychological merit to fantasy fiction et cetera and so forth. But the more [...]

5 Questions I Have RE: The Philly Comic Con Lineup

Do you think if I pay a little extra, I could get a picture where I’m hugging Stan Lee? That’s sort of been a goal of mine for a while.

Can Superman Comics Be Used to Predict Elections?

It’s taken for granted that the artifacts of our culture are barometers for the zeitgeist, but just how true is it?  Are Superman’s portrayals in the comics indicative of changing national attitudes towards power, criminality, and patriotism?  Is Superman’s popularity as a character directly correspondent with social conservatism, or a liberal foreign policy? Superman, as [...]

On that whole “Mitt Romney terrorized a gay classmate” thing

(I…I don’t know how to make memes that have two pictures.) Filed under: Threat Quality

We Need Gruffer iPhone Commercials

Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Edward James Olmos and Nick Nolte do not suffer Siri lightly.

NEW RULE, NERDS:

HERE IS THE RULE: You cannot justify the existence of a thing in a story by arguing that it is a necessary consequence of other elements in that same story. Why not? BECAUSE IT IS ALL MADE UP, MOTHERFUCKERS. Here, I am going to give some examples that will help to flesh this out.  Let’s [...]

So You Want to Read an Avengers Comic

But this is Zemo’s grand scheme: They wait until there are only Cap and a couple other Avengers (all non-powered guys) and their butler, Jarvis, in the Avengers Mansion, tie ‘em up, and beat the shit out of the butler.