Allow me, my dear queer diarists, to set the scene: institutional carpeting, crepe paper décor, and large bowls of Skittles on white plastic folding tables. “When You Say Nothing At All,” by Alison Krauss, plays from rented speakers as 150 slightly sweaty thirteen and fourteen-year-olds sway back and forth like exceptionally awkward algae in a gentle ocean current.
The nominees for the Eisner Awards were announced last week. The Eisners (named after legendary comic creator Will Eisner) are kind of like the Oscars of the comic book world, except that instead of an exclusive Academy voting on them, any comics professional can go and vote. As you can see by the list of nominees, it’s not that common that women get nominated for Eisners. Out of the 30 categories and more than 160 nominees, only 35 belong to women. Since that’s the case, I wanted to make sure I did what I could to draw attention to these super talented artists, writers and creators who brought us amazing comics this year.
As I mentioned last week, this will be my last Star Trek N00b recap!
That’s right, pour out a bottle of yer fave cheap booze. I am no longer a Star Trek N00b. In an attempt to jump rank, I am currently at Ensign tryouts.
Don’t worry, I’ll still be around writing for the Geekery section and working on all sorts of nerd culture and gaming posts!
With that said, let’s get onto the TIME TRAVEL.
1960′s Space Race
Hmmm, just to get some context, here’s some of the big Real Life space happenings in 1969:
The Soviet Union sends the Venera 5 probe to Venus, followed by Venera 6.
The Soviet Union transferred crew members between two docked spacecraft, the first time this has ever been done.
NASA sends the Mariner 6 probe to Mars.
After extensive test runs, NASA’s Apollo program successfully lands men on the Moon twice in this year.
Gallup, Inc. was founded by George Gallup in 1935. Gallup was basically the Nate Silver of his time — he came up with a more accurate way to gauge public opinion, and used it to get a nationally representative slice of answers to nationally important questions. After Gallup, Inc. called FDR’s 1936 victory over Alf Landon (a victory that surprised everyone else, including the reputable pollsters at Literary Digest), the company gained wide recognition. Since then, they’ve been completing 1000 interviews per day to keep up with their two main surveys — one on health and well-being, and the second on politics and the economy.
“An excellent way to begin manual stimulation is to stick one, and later two or more, finger(s) inside her, with your palm cupped over the mons area. We’re talking about that fleshy ‘mound’ over her pubic bone. Your finger should have freedom to move in and out freely while the palm of your hand can add pressure against her vulva and clitoris. Once you get better, you can start moving your palm to add more stimulation.”
I am a gadget person. I love cool technology. And Project Ara is definitely cool technology. Project Ara refers to a set of instructions for building a modular smartphone—meaning that the hacker/DIY ethos of open operating systems like Android could very well be coming to hardware near you. We already know you love the idea of making your own computer — what if you could select your ideal components from all sorts of different manufacturers and slot them onto a board and have them all talk to each other? If you use a lot of storage, great—slot that block on. If everything you have is in the cloud, maybe boot off that extra storage for a bigger, better battery or a really kickass speaker from your very favorite audio company. Google ATAP (Advanced Technologies and Projects, basically teams of mad scientists making the future happen) is bringing together many companies and developers to put together a product that will (hopefully) have a recognizable presence by 2015 because everyone at ATAP has a self-imposed deadline of two years to create real products to sell to real people.
Welcome to Saturday Morning Cartoons, a segment where four artists take turns delighting you with their whimsy, facts and punchlines on Saturday mornings! Our four esteemed cartoon critters are Cameron Glavin, Anna Bongiovanni, Megan Prazenica and Sarah Rosenblatt. Today’s cartoon is by Anna!
“Precision prevents disaster. It makes up for variability. They say that the same bread recipe followed to the letter in two different kitchens produces two different loaves, and it’s true. (“Why are your cookies prettier?” my mother wants to know.) The wording is meticulous and the instructions exhaustive because of all the things that cannot be perfectly controlled, like the humidity of your oven or the enthusiasm of the yeast. The gram measurements and demands to sift not scoop are a defense against the world’s chaos, and a paltry one, but without them the bread may never materialize, risen and pale goldish, as desired. It may fall irretrievably in the baking.
Back in my college days, I used to evaluate potential romantic partners on the basis of their texting abilities. The perfect flirtext (not to be confused with the far more scandalous sext) involved 1. a pun, 2. the kind of language most frequently found in a Jane Austen novel and 3. perfect punctuation.
Thing Makers! Oh, how I have missed you so much these long winter days. I have taken to hermiting away and not crafting much, but now I feel like we can finally get back into the swing of Making Things.
Senior Editor Rachel recently sent me this adorable tutorial about making a two-liter bottle into a cat-shaped pot planter, and ever since, I’ve been hoarding two-liters in order to make a few. However, when I went to the nursery to buy myself a little succulent, I fell right in love with these textured pot planters:
This gave me the idea on making my new little succulent pot planter textured with hot glue. Initially, I was so worried that my lack of being able to use hot glue like an adult (whoa there shaky hands) but it turned out adorable! I’m super happy with it and now I’m going to make a million of them.
Sara Benincasa is an award-winning comedian and author. Her memoir, “Agorafabulous!: Dispatches From My Bedroom”, recount her battles with agoraphobia and depression. In “Great“, her modern retelling of “The Great Gatsby“, Naomi Rye finds herself drawn to her next-door neighbor and becomes entangled in the romance and drama of a Hamptons social circle. To cut to the chase, it’s a gender swapped, queered out version of “Gatsby.” When Benincasa isn’t churning out jokes, books or one-woman shows, she travels to colleges to talk to students about mental health awareness. If you wanna get the vibe of her stylings before you get your hands on the book, her piece “High School is Forever” is over on Medium now.
Ever since I first heard that our very own Intern Grace, along with the group of other super talented comic creators Noelle Stevenson, Shannon Waters and Brooke Allen, I have been pacing back and forth waiting for comic to actually come out. When I finally got my hands on a copy of it last week, I was not let down. Lumberjanes#1 is easily my favorite debut issue of any comic in at least two years. So often I’m worried that a lot of my friends won’t like the comics that I’m into, whether it’s because they’re too full of sci-fi weirdness, you have to know too much about the world, they have too much fighting or they’re too niche. This comic is completely without that problem.
Before we launch into this recap, I have to let you folks know something: I’ll be wrapping up Star Trek N00b next week with episode 20.
Don’t draw your phasers just yet! I’m not really a complete N00b to Star Trek anymore. After analyzing the minute details of each episode, I’m able to hold my own in Star Trek conversations, laugh at in-jokes, and appreciate the historical impacts of this amazing series.
Friends, I’ve gained new geek skills, kinda like a Pokemon in its intermediate stage of evolution.
“Madison Young, sexpert, feminist, pornographer, and author of ‘Daddy: A Memoir’ notes that that there’s little point in subscribing to ‘societal expectations of how someone else thinks I should be having sex.’ Which is a good point. Certainly the realm of the erotic would be far more limited and boring if we all adhered to a prescribed set of sexual guidelines.
Welcome to Saturday Morning Cartoons, a segment where four artists take turns delighting you with their whimsy, facts and punchlines on Saturday mornings!
