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zwolanerd

“I guess I just like liking things”

January 13, 2014 Road To Nowhere

Sometimes after a long break it’s hard to start back up again.  Nothing sounds right and not doing something becomes the norm – bloggers at rest tend to remain at rest, after all. So I’m posting this song as a kickstart.  It is one of my favorites, but it’s meant more as a way for me to get back into the swing of things. As a happy coincidence, though, some of the lyrics could stand in as a theme song of sorts for what we do around here.  I’m sure I have some sort of fundamental misunderstanding of the song and it’s actually about cat taxidermy or something, but I’m choosing to understand it how I understand it.

Welcome back!

We’re on a ride to nowhere
Come on inside
Takin’ that ride to nowhere
We’ll take that ride

 

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December 26, 2013 Holiday Hiatus

I meant to tell you this a couple of days ago, but my not being able to get to it until now should tell you why I’m telling you this:

zwolanerd is on hiatus until the new year!  Most likely January 6!

Consider this our gift to you for the season. No longer do you need to tell your family, “No, I cannot do that thing with you! I must constantly check to see if zwolanerd has updated!” Now you must make up some other excuse.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the zwolanerd family to you and yours! Thanks for reading!

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December 23, 2013 Work Grinch

Britney has released one Christmas song, but she hasn’t ever released a full Christmas album. Give her time, as I expect it will happen eventually. In the meantime, she has given us a song that uses a word you can’t sing on the radio, causing it to be retitled “Work Work,” as silly a renaming as has ever been. We here at zwolanerd aren’t ones to let a potentially great thing go to waste, and after a bit of prompting by me, our friend Daniel over at Post Post Modern Dad has put together this reworking of the song into what should have become a fully animated and sung video, only I lack the abilities to a) make videos and b) sing like Britney.

So fire this video up in the background while you read this (disclaimer: that video has Britney’s original title and a picture of Britney’s outfit) and sing along yourself.

You wanna
You wanna
You want to steal presents?
You harbor a lot of resentment?
You want to wreck Christmas? You better work, Grinch!

You want to make Whos cry?
Steal all their pie?
Start setting up your alibi.
You better work, Grinch!

You got your big sled?
Suit all in red?
Are them Whos in bed?

Then get to work, Grinch
You better work, Grinch
You better work, Grinch
You better work, Grinch

[Verse 1]
Tie that horn on Max’s head
Stack your sacks on your empty sled
Those Whos will wake and be filled with dread
Mount up
Here he comes
He’s comin’ at ya
dressed up as Santa
He’s on your roof top
disappointment about to drop
Not gonna quit now
got work to do now
Get stuck in a chimney for a moment or two
Ain’t no thang because he has work to do

[Chorus]
[Verse 2]

Take those stockings from west to east
Everything in the fridge including the roast beast
Get the presents from under the tree
then even stuff that thing up the chimney

No time to gloat or to relax
Every house you need to attack
Got to take it all, up the chimney it goes
You are the big bad Grinch, gonna keep the Whos on their toes

[Bridge]

Cindy Lou Who, coming after you
asking about her string of lights and what you’re doin’ in the night
Gotta move quick and think quicker
Gotta move quick and think quicker
Cindy Lou Who, coming after you
asking about her string of lights and what you’re doin’ in the night
Gotta move quick and think quicker
Gotta move quick and think quicker

[Outro]

Work, work, work, work
Work, work, work, work
Work, work, work, work
Work, work, work, work
Work it out, work it out, work it out, work it out
Work it out, work it out, work it out, work it out
Work it out, work it out, work it out, work it out
Work it out, work it out
You better work Grinch
You better work Grinch

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December 19, 2013 Good Things in Bad Stuff: Star Wars Holiday Special

Welcome to the thing where I try to find good things in one of the worst things ever put to film (allegedly). I’ve always kind of wanted to see this so I figured this was the year to do it.  I invited a bunch of people to watch it with me, but only two others are braving it with me.

Let’s see how it goes!

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December 19, 2013 Super Graphic

Pac-Man graphs are the best graphs

Pac-Man graphs are the best graphs

Yesterday the Media Specialist where I work brought a book to me and said, “I think you’ll enjoy this.” She was right! It’s Super Graphic: A Visual Guide to the Comic Book Universe, and I’ve never seen anything quite like it. It’s 190 pages of graphs, the sort you’d see in year-end reports and PowerPoints all over the business world, only these graphs are about comic book characters: Batman, Superman, the Ninja Turtles, anime, Persepolis – all kinds of comics and all kinds of graphs. Seriously, there were types of graphs I’d never seen before and many I didn’t even understand.

Here’s just a smattering of the types of things graphed in the book:

  • Real vs. Fictional Metropolis
  • The Many Affiliations in the Marvel Universe
  • The Pizzas of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (a lot of really disgusting ones, as it turns out!)
  • How DC Characters Rank in HeroClix
  • Character Weigh-In (How heavy is Juggernaut? Read and find out!)
  • The History of Comic Book Movies
  • Scrooge McDuck’s Family Tree
  • And on and on.

Again, there are many graphs in it I just plain don’t understand because I don’t know what that type of graph is supposed to demonstrate. However, even those pages were so visually interesting I couldn’t help but marvel (no pun intended) at them.

The amount of research that went into this book is astounding! The thought of how much information he had to gather, keep track of, and graph makes me as uncomfortable as watching behind-the-scenes videos of people making stop-motion movies. I like to think I’m detail-oriented, but in the face of these kinds of projects I have to admit that there’s “likes to make sure things are in order” and “Detail Oriented.”

If you’ve any interest in comics and the movies and games surrounding them, I’d recommend taking a look at this book. I’d never heard of it before but am I glad I was introduced to it.

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