As usual, just some interesting stuff I’ve seen on the internets lately:
- It Happened to Me: A Serial Killer Wrote Me a Letter – Julieanne Smolinski humorously relates the story of how she came to be pen pals with Richard Ramirez (the Night Stalker!). As it turns out, “Evil uses floral stationery.” (I was going to do a pull quote from her first letter to Ramirez, but I decided that the whole article is too good and you should really read the whole thing.)
- Jefferson changed ‘subjects’ to ‘citizens’ in Declaration of Independence – This is from a while ago, but it’s an interesting look at how technology is helping us make new discoveries in history.
- Tree Fort by an Awesome Person – I want one.
- Can I Stream It? – A pretty useful service, except for the fact that for most movies the answer is “no”. Still, if you ever find youself itching to watch Tango & Cash, this will tell you that yes, it’s available on Amazon Prime Instant Viewing. Yay?
- A Conspiracy of Hogs: The McRib as Arbitrage – A little melodramatic, but an interesting look at the way McDonalds uses the McRib and the scale at which an entity the size of McDonalds operates.
- Kevin Smith’s Army – Sam Adams (not the beer guy) takes the gloves off and badmouths Kevin Smith pretty hard here. To my mind, Smith stopped being amazingly funny when he started smoking pot a lot. I’m not a smoker myself, but I don’t normally have a problem with stoner comedians (indeed, I quite enjoy bad stoner comedies from time to time). Now he’s just occasionally funny, and he certainly seems to have a lot of issues with people criticizing his work. On the other hand, this article comes off as somewhat childish. And Red State, Smith’s latest movie, isn’t a comedy. Of course, it’s not that insightful either (and other movies have tread the same ground better), but it was an interesting exercise for Smith. While I don’t think he’s had a tremendous career, he’s also only put out one legitimately bad movie (Cop Out), and he’s got an excuse there: he didn’t write the script. I’m actually somewhat interested in his next (and purportedly final) movie (the one about hockey or something).
- The Same Picture of Dave Coulier Every Day – The greatest, most innovative niche blog ever.
That’s all for now…