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I’m amazed we can see this deep into space, let alone explain the gorgeous sight:

via io9:

1,500 light-years away from Earth and around the Orion Nebula, the Herbig-Haro 34 young object is in its protostar stage. Herbig-Haro 34 is ejecting two large jets that propel a massive miasma of dense gas toward its cosmic neighbors. As for the massive cosmic waterfall in the lefthand corner of this three-color composite, it’s gorgeous, but it’s also unclear what exactly this formation is.

Oh shit, only 1,500 light years away? Nice!

[legend has it that Ernest Hemingway wrote a six-word story to win a bar bet — For sale: baby shoes, never worn. leading to the author’s birthday, I’m going to offer a daily post of my own six-word story. readers are encouraged to respond with their own]

The health inspector only smoked Newports.

[photo]

I worry about the death of physical books. I do, because I like beating them to a pulp, carrying them around with me, writing in the marginalia. My worrying today was exacerbated:

via boingboing:

Amazon today released an announcement boasting that sales of the Kindle device have tripled since the unit price dropped from $259 to $189. And with that, a related piece of news. Founder Jeff Bezos: “While our hardcover sales continue to grow, the Kindle format has now overtaken the hardcover format. Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover books–astonishing when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months.”

Sweet Jesus Christ. I simultaneously embrace and fear the forthcoming Intangible Apocalypse. I love the idea of collecting an entire library in a slab of plastic. But I also love physically flipping through books. I love the idea of electronically searching for a term at lightning speed. But I also love the smell of books, and writing in them. Actively engaging the text.

I’m torn.

In the end, I don’t think the decision is going to be left up to me.

My final project for my summer course is finished. It’s been attached to an email. It’s been fired, an electronic missive, scattering across the digi-webs towards my professor’s inbox. And as soon it is received, it shall begin crushing the university’s bandwidth, daring to be downloaded. Enormous. Blathering. Finished.

A week’s worth of work. Thousands of words, a couple dozen pages. Diet Mountain Dew cans consumed into the infinity-range. Spent veins, spent cells, smiles abound.

Hey, it’s like, summer or something?

I’ll be bored and ready for class in two weeks.

Monday Morning Commute. Every Monday I’m going to detail the various things I’m either currently or will be watching, reading, playing, and listening to in the next seven days. It’s Monday. You’ve got a long week of school, work, or compulsive masturbation to get through. Tell me the arts that you’re indulging in, to stave off suicide.

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Zap! And Laser Hands Sookie returned this week to smite all sorts of dumb ass werewolves and mynads and other people who be acting the fool! The mystery surrounding Sookie continues to grow, and I’m wondering just what the hell is up with Ms. Stackhouse. They’ve been hinting at her being special for a while now, and with the implication that Billy No Pulse was hunting her down far before he fell in love with her continuing to come to light, I’m intrigued.

Are you ready for the forthcoming bullshit that will spill from Bill’s lips, something like “Sookie, I was sent to procure you, but then however, you procured my heart!” Barf. Watch for it.

Meanwhile, Franklin is the best dude on the show. Being insane is awesome. Being an insane vampire is even better. How do I know he’s insane? He’s fallen in love with the most loathsome character on the entire show. Fuck Tara. God, what a waste of time she is on the screen. All she does is make that same stupid concerned face over and over again, which amounts to her pinching her mouth and vibrating as she gets teary-eyed. Yawn, yo! Yawn.

Tara’s like a bunch of other characters on the show: getting too much fucking screen time. There’s no center to the show this season. I mean, there’s a theoretical center which is Sookie, looking for Bill, but she’s not always on the screen, and when she is, she’s with Alcide, who is hunting that King Guy, who is with Bill, who is being chased by Eric who is…who is…Do you see my point?

Fug.

Jason Stackhouse, shirtless, in aviator sunglasses. Bullseye. I wish I could just watch Jason Stackhouse hang out all day with Andy. Jason Stackhouse, blathering bullshit near a pond in the middle of some awkwardly shot scene? What’s the opposite of bullseye?I know this show is just Hot Dudes and Chicks Punching and Fucking Supernatural Entities, but I mean, c’mon. Keep Jason as the comedic relief, or at least keep him away from romantic interludes in the middle of an episode.

Please?

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Holy crap, this shit is dope as fuck. Lucky nerds are going to get these Star Wars cereal boxes at the upcoming Star Wars Orgy of Nerdiness, Celebration V:

via comics alliance:

Sixteen mini-boxes will be given away at Collectors Panels during Celebration V in Orlando from August 12-14, according to StarWars.com. The parodies of classic grocery store varieties include Hothsted Flakes, Raisin Han, Troop Loops and Vlix, which only the most hardcore of Star Wars fans and “Droids” cartoon series followers will likely understand.

Artists Jeff Correll, Mattias Rendahl, Grant Gould, Bill Cable, Chris Reiff, Jeff Carlisle, Scott D.M. Simmons, and Chris Trevas contributed imagery to these freebees, whose production runs will be capped at 400 boxes each. Count Dookula actually looks mighty tasty. If there’s a cereal manufacturer taking notes out there, there are plenty of lightsaber spoons out there ready to dig into this deliciousness if given the chance.

This is ridiculously win. Hit the jump to check out all the other boxes that belong to this line.

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[legend has it that Ernest Hemingway wrote a six-word story to win a bar bet — For sale: baby shoes, never worn. leading to the author’s birthday, I’m going to offer a daily post of my own six-word story. readers are encouraged to respond with their own]

You don’t want to see midnight.

13 minutes of prog-metal mayhem. Filmed for Japanese television. Apparently for a show called Party-Dude!

There are worse ways to start your week.

[via slashfilm | click to enlarge]

Hello true believers! How do you feel about more awkward, well-lit pictures from the Thor movie set?! Designed to simultaneously excite you, but make you worry, because something about them doesn’t look quite right? This shit looks like it was taken with a disposable camera from a hot air balloon.

via slashfilm:

A new photo from Marvel Studio’s big screen adaptation of Thor was released in today’s print edition of the Los Angeles Times. The new photo reveals a wide angle view of the epic set of the Hall of Asgard, featuring a kneeling Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Asgardians Fandral the Dashing (Josh Dallas), Hogun the Grim (Tadanobu Asano) and Frigga (Rene Russo); and Odin (Anthony Hopkins) and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) both sporting ceremonial helmets

The set looks dope though, I’ll give them that. Here’s hoping it all translates well to film. If not? Forsooth, and shit!

When is $100 million in development costs fucking chump change? When it’s invested in something that could rake in a billi! One billion fucking ducats, yo!

via kotaku:

The Wall Street Journal puts StarCraft II’s development costs above the $100 million mark, but Activision Blizzard boss Bobby Kotick says the investment will eventually bring in between $500 million and a billion dollars for the publisher. In profit. Yes, building a new StarCraft game and an all-new Battle.net service takes money to make money, but with international subscription fees, a $60 retail price in the States and two more expansions in the works, a billion starts to sound conservative.

I actually don’t know how much the average blockbuster costs to make, but I’m still impressed at the price of the game and the amount that they’re projecting this son of a bitch is going to rake in. I mean, why the fuck not? Starcraft and Diablo II are still being played religiously, why won’t this shit be around in a decade? I mean, aside from the obvious forthcoming zombie apocalypse, or the robot apocalypse, or the foreseeable Arachnid Uprising of 2012. But say zombies or arachnids or robots love playing Starcraft II?

That’s fucking cheddar, yo.