On this date in 1999, NASA intentionally crashed the Lunar Prospector spacecraft into the Moon, thus ending its mission to detect frozen water on the moon’s surface. (via Wikipedia)

On this date in 2005, astronomers announced their discovery of a possible 10th planet. Now what should they call it? I vote for a female deity from ancient long-dead civilizations, instead of a male one, for a change. (via Wikipedia)

Mermaid hoaxes were perhaps popularized by P.T. Barnum and his famous circus. He advertised having the remains of a FeeJee Mermaid. FeeJee is the sucker spelling of Fiji I believe. Rotten.com describes these supposed remains as looking like a Hollywood pitch gone wrong: “It’s like Gremlins meets Piranha meets Ebirah!” PT Barnum went ahead and used drawings of traditionally attractive mermaids in order to lure crowds. It’s the damn patriarchy keeping abominations down. The three ring huckster need not have bothered apparently, as the attraction continued to appear before sell out crowds even after Barnum publicly confessed that the mermaid was a hodge podge of glued-together parts from totally unrelated critters. (via rotten.com)

Medical students in New Jersey sure know how to treat a girl. Linda Kay is apparently one uber-goth goth stripper. Police came to her house because they got a report that someone there was suicidal. Very gothic even if the suicidal person was apparently out running errands or something and not actually there. While the fuzz checked things out, they discovered a number of skulls and a sloppily dismembered body portion, specifically a severed arm nicknamed Freddy and given to the exotic dancer in question by the sort of med student who comes courting at a strip club. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that. I’ve always preferred the more offbeat ie spelling Freddie when used as a diminutive. Whichever spelling Ms. Kay applies to her mad scientist body parts, her mom is supportive and family is always important in these situations. (via Blue Blood via NJ Star Ledger)

An object purported to be somewhere between a mermaid and a sea monster just sold on eBay for $1,550. The seller calls the find a golden mermaid and refers to it as female. He explains his assumption that the mermaid is a she by pointing out the lack of a protruding sex organ. Really, though, what self-respecting heterosexual fanboy would bid on a male sea creature? That would be totally gay. So it just makes sense to describe the mermaid as her. I feel I can paraphrase the Q&A portion, but you really have to read the auction description verbatim to do it justice:

“While exploring desolate areas of Fort Desoto Beach at the southern end of St. Petersburg, here in Florida, I came upon a rather startling discovery. Before me lay what at first appeared to be a very large strange fish. Shocked and amazed, I realized I had found another mermaid or sea monster. I went back to my car to get my camera. My hands were shaking as I tried to calm down to take these photos. This Mermaid or Sea monster, you be the judge, is a few inches shy of being 5 feet long. Laying on a fresh natural bed of seaweed, this creature of the sea looks out as if still alive. What killed this mystery from the depths? Recently in the news there was talk of another outbreak of Red Tide. Had this mermaid fallen ill from this mysterious dreaded disease from the sea? Looking over her gracefull body, I realized what a special creature she must had been in life. Was she the missing link between primates and fish? In time, what would evolution had shaped this creature to be? I sat there thinking for awhile and realized I must get this mermaid back home. I could always ponder later. The winner to this auction will recieve the sea creature shown in the photos below. The photos have not been altered or retouched nor are they result of photo shop. The entire body has been determined to be covered in once living fish skin with scales. I have drilled a small hole in the back of the head so that it can be hung up on a wall for display.”

The seller was quite adamant about the fish scales being real, although he later changed his story on having drilled a hole in her head for display. As the description uses the word “another” to describe the discovery on this lonely Florida beach, presumably the seller has experience in customer service to buyers of curios.

IGN, now, just like MySpace, owned by the very savvy folks at FOX has its Comic Con galleries posted now. They have them broken down into convenient categories like The Babes of Tokyopop and Final Fantasy Figures.

Galleries of pictures taken at the record-smashing Comic Con 2006 are already starting to post. ComingSoon.net has more than a hundred photos although most are not of people, but more importantly the booth babe galleries are starting to post, such as this Flickr gallery by Greg O’Connell, as reported by Comic Book Conventions.

I’m apparently going to a dinner at The Omni and then getting some sleep tonight. However, everyone else appears to be going to the X-Sanguin V ball. Blue Blood has posted some photos from X-Sanguin IV.

According to their site: We were the kids that lived down the street that at the age of 8 were putting on haunted houses for our friends. We were the ones that started setting up stuff in our yards in August for Halloween, and the ones that spent more time thinking up how to make realistic eyeballs in the candy bowl than doing our home work (by the way, peeled grapes work really well). We were also the ones who were so sad we could almost cry when November 1st rolled around and all of the pumpkins came down, and we had to put everything away until next year.

Well, it’s 20 years later, and we are still doing the same thing. On just a slightly different scale.

The original name of the group was “The Brotherhood of the Forbidden Grape.” That was before we were of legal age, and the single largest goals we had were acquiring booze and meeting girls. Usually the beer was much easier to find than the girls, thus we pursued the attainable goal instead of what we figured was a quest that would bear no fruit.

Sometime around 1990, the first ever Brotherhood party took place. We decided that costume parties were where it’s at, and our likelihood of getting girls to show up was much greater if we did something really cool. So we built Dante’s Inferno Room, the whorehouse from Beetlejuice. Much to our surprise we really did get some girls to show up, and we even have some photographic proof somewhere.

It took about 4 weeks of arguing, 5 cases of beer, and one long-ass night to put it all up. We messed with it for another week or so, but the bulk of it went up in someone’s backyard in one night. It was by far the biggest pain the ass thing I have ever built. Its a miracle that it didn’t fall down on top of everyone, and kill them all in a single blow.

However it was bad-ass looking and managed to stay up for the 7 hours of the event. Plus, it was the coolest thing we had ever done. From there, every year, it has gotten bigger, harder, more fun, and much more cool. As we got older, our disposable income grew, and our imagination grew with it. Every year since 1990 we have started the planning earlier and thrown a larger shindig. Sometimes in the past we would take a year off and do something mellow since we were burned out from all the work of the year before, but for the post part we would do some type of large shindig every year. Recently we started moving to more than one event a year even though it drastically cuts into our drinking time on the weekends. (via freaksnightout.com)

Biotech Hobbyist magazine already offers online instructions for growing human skin, but now they are gearing up to help you figure out what to do with your vat of flesh. From the Biotech Hobbyist web site: “What to do? There are endless things to do with skin-do you want to make it glow in the dark? Do you want it to talk directly to your computer by interfacing it with silicon? Of course you do! The next project installments will explain how to splice in an amplified Great Star coral gene that will make your tissue glow cyan under UV light.” Yes, how can I make blob-like clones of my parts glow in the dark and post personals ads to the web? (via Mars Dust)

Anzen Senshi supposedly translates from Japanese to English as “Safety Warrior.” No idea if this is accurate, but I noticed these robot-themed condoms on Slashdong and I could not rest until I found where to buy them. Now that my primary prophylactic mission is accomplished, I may address my secondary goal of making sure as many people as possible are aware of their options for robot penis wear. Amen to the thought that clearly anyone who thinks otaku get no play are mistaken. Apparently they just don’t use birth control, unless a mecha robot transformer monster tells them to.

Weightless Flight (also known as Parabolic Flight) is achieved aboard ZERO-G’s Boeing 727 aircraft named G-FORCE ONE. Weightlessness is achieved by flying G-FORCE ONE through a parabolic flight maneuver. Specially trained pilots fly these maneuvers between approximately 24,000 and 34,000 feet altitude. Each parabola takes 10 miles of airspace to perform and lasts approximately one minute from start to finish.

The maneuver is somewhat like a roller coaster in that the plane is initially pulled up to approximately 45 degrees ‘nose high’. Next the plane is ‘pushed over’ the top to reach the zero-gravity segment of the parabolas. For the next 25 - 30 seconds everything in the plane is weightless. At approximately 30 degrees ‘nose low’ a gentle pull-out is started which allows the Flyers to stabilize on the aircraft floor. Finally, the g-force is increased smoothly to about 1.8 g’s until the aircraft reaches a flight altitude of 24,000 feet. The maneuver is then repeated.

The weightlessness experienced by everyone inside the airplane is actually equivalent to the type of “free fall” you experience when sky diving. In this case however, the body of the aircraft surrounds you and protects you from the on-rushing wind. At the end of the free fall period, the aircraft also scoops you up and carries you back up to the top of the arc to begin the free fall process again.

In addition to achieving zero-g or weightlessness, G-FORCE ONE can also fly a parabola designed to offer Lunar (1/6th) or Martian (1/3rd) gravity. These reduced gravity environments are also created with a modified parabola that is not quite as steep as zero gravity parabola. (via gozerog.com)

With Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest breaking all box office records, you would think it would be easier to find naked pictures of Johnny Depp online. I’m 99% sure that nude photos of the swashbucking pirate exist, so I’d appreciate it if someone would email me a link already. I’d also like to take this opportunity to thumb my nose at those who say that genre work is doomed to be smaller than “general interest” media. With $132 million smackeroos, Pirates beat the previous record-holder for opening weekend gross, which was of course another fandom movie, Spider-Man. With $55.5 million doubloons on opening Friday, Pirates also beat the previous one day gross record, which was held by Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. The top grossing flick the weekend before Pirates opened was Superman Returns. So I think this fandom thing might just catch on. Subliminal message: hire more screenwriters to create and massage fandom scripts or just send me nekkid pics of Johnny Depp. Either one is good.

I have heard that you don’t count as rich until you own your own jet. Well real estate tycoon Robert Bigelow is raising the bar. He has committed five hundred million dollars towards attempting to make my dream of zero gee sex come true. Technically, the owner of the Budget Suites hotel chain has so far only funded the launch of a space-faring Russky balloon, but it is a scientifically important balloon in the journey towards creating the first commercial space station, which is the ultimate goal of Bigelow Aerospace. (via AP on Yahoo)

The thing that Hollywood people always say about Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves, when speaking of the movie Speed, is that “oh, they had such amazing chemistry.” That thought certainly never crossed my mind watching Speed. I think Keanu Reeves is a fine actor and Sandra Bullock managed to reach for his level in Speed, but sometimes actors can seem like they are in love because they, you know, can act. This is why you should never ever ever date an actor. One night stands with actors are okay but not relationships. At any rate, I’ve never been sure whether this chemistry comment was code for “they had a steamy fling during shooting” but now it seems that every journalist who covers The Lake House is contractually obligated to imply that maybe someone’s driving their bus in the tunnel, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, maybe putting their boat in the ocean, get it, ha, ha. Bullock is recently wed and Reeves is famously private and, kids, it is just a movie, not real life, so this line of questioning is totally insufferable to me just as a reader. Plus it distracts from the average person remotely comprehending what this paranormal romance is about.

Sci Fi has an interview with the faux couple which includes the following exchange: Why has it taken so long for you two to work together again, and will it be another decade or so before you have a romantic destiny again?

Reeves: I’d like to have a “romantic destiny.” Please give me a “romantic destiny”! Wow, a “romantic destiny,” what does that mean? Romantic destiny.

Bullock: Maybe. Does it matter? Let go of time. Have you seen this film? Let go of time and your preconceived notions of time and just be. If you write that literally, and don’t say that I said that sarcastically, I’ll be the first to come to your home and destroy your landscaping. [Laughs.]

Oh yeah, The Lake House is about some chick and some guy who fall in love via some sort of time travel conceit. Not clear on it because I haven’t seen the movie. Reports tell me that Bullock and Reeves held hands at the premiere, but, like, only as friends, so at least I’m clear on that.

A forthcoming movie called Goya’s Ghosts chronicles the life and times and painter Francisco Goya. It particularly focuses on a muse of his, played by Natalie Portman. Said muse gets accused of heresy by a monk. Supposedly nude torture scenes ensue. Yes, fanboys, Padme Amidala only gets naked if torture is involved. (Those of you who wish to bone up on electrodes to the vulva can head on over to Wired Pussy for an education.) Natalie Portman has an entry on Mr. Skin which still contains only sexy, bikini, and the coveted underwear rating. No nudity. Apparently, Darth Vader’s lover made the director of Closer leave nudies of her on the cutting room floor. So it remains to be seen whether torture is really enough of a motivator or whether Goya really has a ghost of a chance of a naked Nat.

This week, The Independent published an article, by their Washington Correspondent Rupert Cornwell, which asked whether human space exploration is really such a good idea. Arguments against manned space exploration were that it was more expensive and unwieldy than robotics and that there would be an inevitable loss of life from time to time. Arguments in favor of using humans, rather than machines, were that people can sometimes do better research and make proper repairs in ways machines can’t. Also, “The drama of watching men and women explore new worlds appeals to something basic in human nature.” They left out “Molly Case has always wanted to have sex in zero gee in front of a window on the stars.”

On this day in 1456, Joan of Arc was acquitted of heresy. Unfortunately for Joan, she was executed twenty-five years prior. Being a strong woman can be rough. I’ve been sitting around trying to think how this date would be celebrated if Joan of Arc’s acquittal was a holiday.

There seems to be much debate on what the word chode means and why it is funny that the captain on Tripping the Rift answers to Chode. The Urban Dictionary has a raging debate of 333 definitions for the term. Most people, meaning those who do not spend all their time engaged in flame wars on UrbanDictionary.com, agree that chode refers literally to the perineum, the location between a gentleman’s scrotum and testicles. In colloquial use, calling someone a chode tends to mean you think they are an unsmooth idiot or at least acting like one. Some men find it comfortable to use various commercially available powders in the chode region in order to prevent chafing. That is all you all need to know about what Stephen Root meant about what a chode is. You can all stop emailing now. Future debate on the definition should be directed to UrbanDictionary. Thank you. (via Urban Dictionary)

The Museum of Hoaxes has a listing of the top 100 April Fools Day pranks. Included are the BBC convincing people that spaghetti grows on trees in Switzerland or Discover Magazine describing the new hotheaded naked ice borer species in Antarctica which could bore through ice using the heat of the blood vessels near the bony plate in its head.

It is pretty common for people to forget it is April first and believe various peculiar stories printed by their favorite, usually accurate publications. So I’m only amused and not disturbed that so many of you believed that Sexy Fandom was acquired by The Science Fiction Channel. I’m a little disappointed, however, by how many people wrote and told me essentially to stay strong against any sell-out criticisms because, no matter how much the blog got sucky, the important thing was that I was making a lot of money.

While I’m touched by your concern for my finances, I already make a lot of money. I do this blog for fun. I’m a TV writer, so obviously I’m for sale on some level, but it would take a whole lot of money for me to sell. This is supposed to be my venue to explore things I couldn’t normally. So, while I’m not wholly closed to being showered with cash, I would hope my readers would care if the character of SexyFandom.com changed. Money is nice, but it is not an excuse for bad behavior. If it were, then we wouldn’t have laws to put bank robbers in prison.

Once the sale of Sexy Fandom to the Science Fiction Channel goes through, I’ll be doing a lot more coverage of stuff like what I’d like to put through a Stargate and how Rose McGowan has matured as an actress on Charmed and a lot less coverage of where to find robot sex slaves and holiday-themed photos of freaky girls. I think the move in a less mature audiences direction will be fine. I never showed nudity on this site anyway. It will still be me writing the blog, just for a whole lot more money.

Happy birthday to actor Vince Vaughn, best known in science fiction circles for his turn as the White Rabbit in Sex and the Matrix. Okay, not really. Really happy birthday, but not really best known for that particular MTV spoof of The Matrix and Sex and the City.

Marcus Severus Didius Julianus (133 or 137–193) was emperor of the Roman Empire from 28 March until 1 June 193. He ascended the throne after buying it from the Praetorian Guard, who had assassinated his predecessor Pertinax. This incited the Roman Civil War of 193–197. Julianus was ousted and sentenced to death by his successor, Septimius Severus.

Julianus was born to Quintus Petronius Didius Julianus and Aemilia Clara, a noble family from Milan. His date of birth is given as January 30, 133 by Cassius Dio and February 2, 137 by the Historia Augusta. Didius Julianus was raised by Domitia Lucilla, the mother of Marcus Aurelius. He was consul in 175.

After the murder of his predecessor, Pertinax, the throne was sold by auction by the Praetorian Guard. Didius Julianus offered every soldier 25,000 sestertii, outbidding City Prefect Titus Flavius Sulpicianus. Threatened by the military, the Senate declared him emperor. His wife, Manlia Scantilla, and his daughter, Didia Clara, both received the title Augusta.

The auction proved highly unpopular, and three generals in different parts of the empire (Pescennius Niger in Syria, Clodius Albinus in Britain, and Septimius Severus in Pannonia) wasted no time in taking advantage of the situation by rising in rebellion. Septimius Severus marched on Rome, ousted Didius Julianus and had him decapitated. He dismissed the Praetorian Guard and executed the soldiers who had killed Pertinax.

(via Wikipedia and CNGCoins)

The modern waffle has its origins in the late middle ages. Waffle irons consisted of two metal plates connected by a hinge, each plate was connected to a wooden arm. Some plates had imprinted designs such as a coat-of-arms or landscape, while some had the now-familiar honeycomb/gridiron pattern. The iron was placed over a fire and would need to be flipped manually to cook both sides of the waffle. These irons were used to produce a variety of different flat, unleavened cakes (usually from a mixture of barley and oats, not the white flour used today). Some were rolled into a horn or tube, others were left flat. In many cities, waffles were sold off carts by street vendors. Judging from extant illustrations, these vendors gave people their money’s worth, as the waffles in question were about the size of a small pizza, although there was a hidden cost: because of stone grinding methods, there was so much grit in flour that teeth were often worn to the gum-line by middle age.

In medieval French, the term for this pastry was “oublie” (from Latin “oblata”), sold by “oubloyeurs” in the streets of Paris and other major cities. (via Wikipedia)

International Waffle Day was started in Sweden where it is known as Våffeldagen. It is annually held on March 25.

The Annunciation of the Virgin Mary was once called “Vårfrudagen” (Our Lady’s Day) in Swedish. In certain dialects, the word “Vårfrudagen” was pronounced as “Våfferdagen” [1], Over time the word became “Våffeldagen” (Waffle Day), giving rise to the tradition of eating waffles on this day. (via Wikipedia)

On this day in 1909, Clyde Barrow was born. He would become famous, or at least notorious, for his bank robberies and romantic luring of young Bonnie Parker to a life of crime. Contrary to what one might assume, he was not much of a cocksman.

Alienware’s new leader is Austin’s favorite college dropout, Michael Dell. According to a press release on the Dell site yesterday, Dell has confirmed their intent to acquire Alienware, the computer gaming system company which brought us all the nifty Star Wars pimped out boxes. The plan is for Alienware to continue to operate as a somewhat independent entity, while enjoying the advantages of Dell’s economies of scale. Dell claims to sell more computer systems than any other company in the world and is number twenty-eight on the Fortune 500. Those cyberpunk day traders among you will find that the NASDAQ symbol for Alienware’s new daddy is pleasingly predictably DELL.

Ethnorotica waxed most eloquent on the topic of drawing manga females.

“I have to come clean here. You see, in junior high I fell in with a bad crowd, a group of multi-racial misfits who studied martial arts, collected manga and anime, went to comic-cons and traded duffel bags full of illicit hentai. Luckily for me I eventually discovered girls and thus spared myself a lifetime of collecting little figurines and living in my parents’ basement. Others weren’t so lucky.

It amuses me that years later the fodder for my adolescent fixations has suddenly acquired coolhunting cachet. We in America like to poke fun at the Japanese for their use of Engrish and their appropriation of the most ridiculous bits of American culture, but I’m quite certain they feel the same way regarding our fetishizing of “deviant” Japanese sexuality and otaku culture.” (via Ethnorotica)

The queer horror site is a free resource for people who identify as both part of the GLBT community and as horror fans. The site’s web design is a bit out of date, but I think this site’s mission makes that unimportant. The basic concept is that anyone with a marginalized sexuality has experienced some form of horror in his or her real life, yet a lot of horror further marginalizes and demonizes homosexuals and trans people. I would tend to agree with this assessment. It puts the lotion on its skin, anybody? Yet there are also appealing queer characters in horror literature and being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered does not mean you cannot enjoy the genre. The point of QueerHorror.com is essentially to tell others they are not alone. Which is pretty much the best thing any web site can do.

If you must have CFIDS, it probably is not a terrifically good idea to drink a lot. That will be all. Yes, I did have a nice time ringing in the New Year. Thank you for asking.

I was hoping to be snuggling my husband for midnight, but it looks like I will be attending a gathering instead. It should be fairly small and chill and a nice way to start 2006. Before I go, I thought I would share this photo where Miss Bunny and BlueBlood.com wish everyone a Happy New Year.