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Banksy rocked out in Detroit recently. Apparently he hit up the abandoned Packard auto plant, and in a great twist of irony, the work was dug up and brought to a local gallery. Aversion to subversion! To something.

Amazing Spider-Man #638
Alright, fuck every other comic that is coming out this week, I want to talk about Peter Parker. This week, the Spider-Man event One Moment In Time is kicking off. The event is in response to the other Spidey event that took place in 2007. That shiz was called Brand New Day. In this wonderful arc, Spider-Man was faced with a choice presented by Mephisto. Mephisto was all like, “Yo, I can save your dying Aunt May. But in return, you will never have married Mary Jane.”

Somehow, and for some reason, Peter Parker decided that this was a solid deal. What a dumb bastard. He chose his rickety old fucking Aunt May, over his gorgeous, accepting supermodel wife? This shit has irked me for some time now. Dude Pete, she ain’t even your Mom, yo. I know, I know, same thing, close enough, blah blah blah. So poof! With a wink and a nod, and probably some magical smoke that makes people disappear and stuff, Mary Jane and Peter Parker were never married.

Somehow.

Why’d it happen?

Well, it happened because Mephisto wanted Parker’s love. Or something. But we know why it really happened: because Marvel had no idea what the fuck to do with Peter Parker anymore. Parker was the character that apparently everybody related to growing up. I didn’t, I was a total X-Men dude. I was more comfortable running around with a pack of mutants, watching Wolverine gut dudes and totally talk smack to Scotty Summers and secretly hitting on Jean Grey.

[As a brief aside, did you ever consider Wolverine’s enhanced senses? Like, what’d they be like in the bedroom? I imagine sniffing a pair of panties with his leet skills is either the greatest thing ever, or he passes out and goes semi-catatonic.]

But anyways, people related to him. Why? Because he was dorky, and disaffected. Because he didn’t fit in, and he had typical teenage angst, and he had a rough go of things. His parents were dead, he kept waking up with webbing in his pants thinking about watching Mary Jane cheerleading at the pep rally.

Peter Parker married to Mary Jane?

That shit changes everything! Parker wasn’t angsty anymore, he wasn’t unfulfilled. He was a middle-class teacher, married to a gorgeous supermodel who accepted him for all his quirks and the fact that he dresses up in tights and fights giant reptiles. Acceptance. Evolution. Before Brand New Day, Parker wasn’t the character that people had grown up to love, who was eminently relatable. He was normal. And apparently that was boring enough, and scary enough, and far enough away from his “roots” as Joe Quesada put it, that they had to use one of the most contrived storyline mechanics I can recall to pull it off.

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We know it was coming. We had heard the rumblings that Microsoft’s retarded Kinect was going to cost $150. That’s one-hundred and fifty Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers, but now it’s official.

via kotaku:

Microsoft’s Kinect add-on for the Xbox 360 will be $150 and come with a copy of Kinect Adventures when the motion controller hits stores in November, the company said today. Kinect games will sell for $50 each.

Oh goody! The Kinect games – which are tantamount to pantomiming like an asshole, will be ten bucks less than regular 360 games. That’s still fifty Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers to look like a tool.*

*Yes, I’ll still probably be buying this piece of shit. As always, I am part of the problem.

This dude is my new hero, a benchmark for modern culture, and an athlete of epic proportions.

via destructoid:

There’s a new gold standard for heroism in the world. A man was able to nab not one, but two Xbox 360s from a Beavercreek, Ohio Best Buy while carrying a diaper bag and a real live baby! I’m sorry, but that kind of brazen feat deserves a golf clap.

The mystery man, described as 6ft, 250 pounds and balding, grabbed two consoles and lefts with them under his arm while carrying the child. He then got into his Kia Spectre and sped off, allegedly without even securing the baby in its seat. Although on the surface this looks like bad parenting, we can’t rule out the fact that the baby was in on the scam, and possibly the brains of the operations.

Good damn damn and a golf clap to this man! The economy sucks! He’s probably unemployed, dismissed by The Man from wherever he works. How the fuck else is he going to be able to co-op on Xbox Live with his buddy from the same room when Halo: Reach drops? Tell me fucking how! It’s bad enough his old Xbox 360 fucking RROD’d and he couldn’t afford to ship it out for repairs.

This man is simply a product of our system. And I like him.

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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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