Japanese Bug Fights

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Wow. What the heck do you say about this site? The name is pretty self explanatory I guess. I don’t know if this is creepy or gross or exploitative, or cool but it’s probably worth a look.

Japanese Bug Fights is a website that pits the most dangerous insects against each other to see who is the supreme fighting master. See wasps, scorpions, tarantulas, praying mantises (manti?), giant beetles, centipedes, etc. duke it out in the ring.

I think we miss out a little bit in not being able to understand the commentary but, after all, what is there really to be said about these creepy things duking it out?

Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus

/ Shane / 10 Comments

Okay people, have you seen this one? Check out the trailer for a movie with the unlikely name of Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.  Make sure you watch to the very last scene…I think you’ll know which one I mean when you see it:

Yeah, that’s right. The one where the mega shark jumps out of the water and eats an airplane. Oh, and the one where the mega shark bites the Golden Gate Bridge ain’t no slouch either.

There is a lot here that reminds me of Snakes on a Plane: the cheesy subject matter, the awesome title that leaves no doubt who this movie is intended for, the pre-movie Internet hype, etc. Just substitute The Renegade himself, Mr. Lorenzo Lamas, for Samuel L. Jackson and you have a movie. I’d guess that this was all intentional in an attempt to try to replicate what Snakes on a Plane had and try to get more money out of a cheaply made movie. But you know what? I don’t care! Intentional or not, cheesy or not, I can’t miss a movie with a title like that. In full disclosure, this is perfectly the type of movie I like to begin with, so it’s not like they had to do much convincing on my part.

According to the IMDB page, this movie is going to be released in 5 days, so they may have started their hype machine a little late, but I’m going to do my part to get the word out there!

Flash Fiction

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I never had much use for flash fiction. With the small amount of words you have to work with (usually < 1,000) you can’t really show more than a scene. As such, most of the stories I’ve read are either heavily cliched (to save space) or don’t really tell a story per say, just sort of describe a scene. I never found them very interesting.

So if that’s the case, how did I find myself writing a piece of flash fiction?

Well, I had an idea, and it wasn’t really the sort of idea that could carry an entire story. More like one scene really. You can see where this is going. So now I sort of understand the place of flash fiction because I have several little thoughts or scenes like this that I’ve written down. The only option is to either write them as flash, or hope that some day, some how they can fit into some other story. In some cases, that is pretty unlikely.

You scream, I scream, we all scream for iCream

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Over the weekend, we went to a new ice cream shop, or should I say iCream shop. We heard about this place because the person who started it is a University of Chicago grad and they did it as a senior project.

What they do is make the ice cream while you wait, instantly freezing it with liquid nitrogen. Aside from making some awesome science fiction fog, the advantage of this is that they don’t have to make every possible flavor ahead of time. So you can make any flavor, any color, any type of ice cream that they offer, which makes for a near infinite amount of possibilities.

For example, let’s say you are big fan of frozen yogurt. When you go to an ice cream place, they maybe only have one or two choices that are frozen yogurt because frozen yogurt is not that popular; so they don’t want to make a bunch of mint chocolate chip frozen yogurt, only to have to throw it out later. So you are sort of constrained to what they have, which may only be vanilla and chocolate. But this place doesn’t need to make it up ahead of time, which means you can get whatever flavor you want.

I went with almond flavored low-fat frozen yogurt with heath bar and nutella mixed in. It was delicious! I think Sara had almond organic ice cream with peanut butter and banana mixed in. Nobody was disappointed.

The downsides are that it was a little on the expensive side and also the service wasn’t super fast…they do have to make the ice cream. It wasn’t a problem on the cool-ish day we went, but in the height of summer with a huge line of people, I could see how it would be a problem.

But if you find yourself on the North Side, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend iCream!

I know funny people

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Last week a good friend of mine from back home, Zach Rody, did some stand up at a comedy club. First off, I have to say that anybody who has the gumption to actually get up on stage and do that is impressive to me. Comedy is one of those careers, like painting for example, that everybody thinks they can do but, as it turns out, the majority of people aren’t very good at. And even if you are one of the few that are good at it, it still takes a big leap of faith to get up and do it, so 90% of the people never bother. Therefore, if you actually get up and do it, you’re already ahead of 90% of the people, and if you are actually good at it, you are ahead of another 5% at least. Rarefied air.

So check out the video and see if you think Rody is in that top 5%. I think he is. The video is less than 5 minutes. And if you’d like, you can read an eye witness account here.