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COTTON THISTLE CLEARANCE
Random musings from the noggin' of Knolltrey
(Best viewed on a monitor running Mozilla Firefox, with a brain running on a case of Grolsh...)
Friday, 6 July 2007
Next Stop: The Planet that Never Was
Mood:
 energetic
Topic: Pseudoscientific Musings
Art is now officially imitating life: we're going to Ceres! I've had a soft spot for that little 'king of the pebbles' for a long time now. The poor baby would've been a mighty terrestrial planet if it wasn't for Jupiter's mean ol' gravitational influence keeping all the pieces apart (so go the theories, anyway...) Unlike the frosty ol' Kuiper Belt Objects and the lonely Scattered Disc Objects, Ceres stood a damn good chance of growing up big and healthy, but instead it is what it is... Also of Note: Some Chenine-y decentness born of boredom:  And a backgrounded version that probably needs lighting fix and contrast tone-down (But luckily I don't care). The background here is a hue-altered picture of Mandel's Angel Nebula: 
Posted by shanekentknolltrey
at 12:05 PM ADT
Updated: Friday, 6 July 2007 4:12 PM ADT
Thursday, 5 July 2007
Random Signs of the Apocalypse
Mood:
 quizzical
Topic: A Hello to Arms
-- Here he comes: box-office disaster! It's a flop upon wheels!-- This is a bad, bad, BAD idea... Look, it should go without saying that adapting animated programs into live-action shows is a no-go; it's almost as bad as the trash we get from Video Game Adaptations (but this is coming from a guy who's writing a novel series based on a shoot 'em up, so whatever...) It's bad enough that they're going down this path with Neon Genesis Evangelion, but SPEED RACER? C'mon. And the androgynous, creepy Wachowski boys are helming it!?? You remember them, right? They made that one really good movie, and then phoned in those other two extremely bad ones? If American producers are short on ideas (and they are) why don't they stick to ripping off British TV shows and leave the god-damned anime alone; there are REASONS these stories are told in animated format in the first place, knuckleheads. The day American film studios finally 'get' the fact that animation IS a valid art form the Earth'll probably be a dead wasteland void of any intelligent life (just like Hollywood, except much hotter. Haha...) *Sigh* I just wonder how long it'll be before we see this preview: "AND STARRING HALEY JOEL OSMENT as Shinji Ikari!"...
Posted by shanekentknolltrey
at 1:38 PM ADT
Updated: Thursday, 5 July 2007 1:45 PM ADT
Tuesday, 3 July 2007
Your favorite planet sucks...
Mood:
 mischievious
Topic: Pseudoscientific Musings
More proof that Pluto sucks... Honestly, I've never understood all those 'Keep Pluto a Planet' wankers that wanna lump this rogue potato into the lofty family of proper planets. It can't even compare to normal-sized MOONS, for god's sake. Here's a to-scale image, along with Pluto's thoughts on the matter: 
And don't you tell me 'oh, but Pluto has moons, too!' Charon is about as big around as your fist, if you happen to be a three-fingered midgit... Now that that's settled, let's hear some more about this 'Eris' planetoid; it sounds like THAT might be more of a candidate for planet. In short: Pluto Sucks.
Posted by shanekentknolltrey
at 5:04 PM ADT
Monday, 2 July 2007
Thank you! Come again!
Mood:
 a-ok
Topic: General
Now we can all enjoy a little slice of Springfield. I bet they got the idea to do this when they discovered that over half of all 7-Eleven store clerks were already named 'Apu'... Kidding! kidding...
Posted by shanekentknolltrey
at 6:32 PM ADT
Updated: Monday, 2 July 2007 6:33 PM ADT
Sunday, 1 July 2007
That 'Antithesis' is one bad mother-- shut yo mouth!
Mood:
 caffeinated
Topic: General
How much mileage can I get out of the same decent rendering of my main villain? A bit, as it turns out. In my next chapter he's gonna be caught on candid camera during a bit of a horrific slaughter on a dwarf planet called 'Ceres'... Contrary to popular thought, the BYDO don't have an actual 'taste' for human blood. That's just Antithesis's thing...
Posted by shanekentknolltrey
at 10:40 PM ADT
Updated: Sunday, 1 July 2007 10:45 PM ADT
Saturday, 30 June 2007
FUCK YOU, ISLAMI-FASCIST SHITHEADS
Mood:
 on fire
Topic: A Hello to Arms
Looks like the sand-eating, 4th-century-old shitfaced towelheads are at it again. This time they've hit Scotland. (Okay, yes: it's Glasgow, but that's STILL technically Scotland...) Let's say this again, you 'religion of peace' practitioners: Fuck you. You want Sharia law worldwide? FUCK YOU. We will NOT live in the 4th century, like you all do, and I SORELY regret that 20th century devices like machinery, electricity, and technology ever managed to trickle into your back-ass-water countries. (DISCLAIMER: Shane knows a few American Muslim practitioners, they're friends, and they're spot-on okay, but about 90-percent of 'em worldwide are really NOT...) Fuck you: Arab street. You are not the future: you are the distant past, and the best you can ever hope for is annihilation in a full-scale West-vs-Middle East conflict (in 'Typers' I call that the "ARAB WAR", and if you're wondering, it does NOT end well for you...) May Allah have mercy on you all.
Posted by shanekentknolltrey
at 2:46 PM ADT
Friday, 29 June 2007
High-brow literature at its finest.
Mood:
 happy
Topic: General
I've had a couple small 'Little Nemo' books lying around for awhile now (that's LITTLE NEMO, not the guy who built the Nautilus...) and my new one came in the mail just the other day: 
This baby's got it all: fairly high-quality reprints and TONS of 'em. It's not nearly as gigantic or detail-oriented as the stunning 'So Many Splendid Sundays' edition, but it doesn't cost 100+ dollars, either... ...affordability is a spicy aphrodisiac, after all...
I guess my attitute towards this dated little comic strip are clear: 'Best... Comic... Ever..' (with 'Calvin and Hobbes' a close second....) Oh, and just while we're on the subject: BEST... VIDEO GAME... EVER! Ironically, as a kid, I wasn't too thrilled about the movie adaptation from which the game sprang. Eh, to each his own... Shazama Pajama.
Posted by shanekentknolltrey
at 12:01 AM ADT
Updated: Saturday, 30 June 2007 2:47 PM ADT
Thursday, 28 June 2007
What's good for the goose-steppers ain't good for the ganders...
Mood:
 irritated
Topic: Random Political Diatribe
More 'fishines' from one of Uncle Sam's leading exporters. I rather loathe Communist China. Yes, I'm an American, and yes, I LOOOVE Capitalism and yes, I'm somewhat tainted by patriotic zeal, but look: China is a country that absolutely HATES open discourse, and a country that still calls the Tiananmen Square Massacre a 'non-issue'. Try finding ANY dissatisfaction with the Jackboot thugs of the Communist Party on the 'People's' Daily. Now these shoddy goosesteppers are literally poisoning the planet, both with carbon emissions (of which they have easily outstripped the US) and their blatantly toxic and dangerous products, from deadly dog food to Toxic 'Thomas the Toy Trains' and antifreeze-addled toothpastes. And though I may loathe Red China, I reserve my REAL hatred for North Korea. If the Chinese government is a brutal thug, then North Korea's leaders are a bunch of genocidal psychopaths who literally leave their people in the 'dark'. Those wackos in the North are also China's 'little brothers', too: so the very existence of a North Korea is another reason to hate the Chinese leadership. In my book I include the 'Sino-Confederacy' as a somewhat outcast branch of the greater 'Allied Military'. They're kind of like the creepy kid in the back of the classroom that spends all his time drawing decapitated bunny rabbits and eating paste: no one dares approach 'em, and no one really wants to. By the time of 'Typers' I have South Korea overrun by the North (seeing's how North America was wiped off the map by a fallen 'Bydo Mass'. Without those 'evil' Americans to protect 'em, I've no doubt that the Southies will fall to their 'friendly' Northern neighbor. Anyway: I envision 'Unified Korea' as being opposed by a tiny island nation of free-living Koreans (think Taiwan, if you like) that I call the 'Airen'. None of this has come up in my story much, but I expect to dedicate a good-sized story-arc to the Tears' Shower Squadron's unpleasant run-in and dealings with such an expanded nightmare state. The kind of evils embodied in North Korea's setup, as well as China's business practices, are far more vile than anything I could image the Bydo Empire perpetrating. And now I'll just step off this soapbox before I fall...
Posted by shanekentknolltrey
at 4:35 PM ADT
Wednesday, 27 June 2007
Ways to skin/not-skin a cat
Mood:
 sharp
Topic: Pseudoscientific Musings
So I have a new favorite t-shirt (this one replaces a heavily faded and coffee-stained faux-vintage Rolling Stones '75 North American tour shirt): 
This is a present from someone, actually, and I think it's bloody fantastic. It's actually renewed my interest in the original thought-experiment. I'm kinda an amateur science-nerd (not smart enough to be the real thing) and I like to work scientific theories and principles into my writing. By comparing and contrasting them with observations on human nature I at least get writing that SOUNDS smart, whatever the truth may be. In a previous chapter of TYPERS I used the concept of magnetic/electrical dipoles to illustrate how people who are very alike or very different can both attract and repel each other (just like electricity-versus-magnetism). In the case of 'Schrodinger's Cat' I like to think there's literary gold to be mined as well. For example: a kitty-kat can't be both alive AND dead at the same time, so isn't it true that a person can't both love and hate another person, experiencing both emotions equally and at the same time? The answer would be 'yes', they can: emotional ambivalance is more than common, isn't it? Human emotions suffer from the same 'quantum indeterminacy' that the decaying nuclear isotope in Schrodinger's Box suffers from. Our attitudes and feelings are nebulous- like the nature of a nuclear particle, and not tangible and fully-explainable- like the vital stats of a tiny kitty-kat. That's part of being human. Well, that settles that: one of my future chapters is almost sure to be themed along those lines (I doubt that the title ITSELF would be 'Schrodinger's Cat', but the thought experiment will certainly make an appearance, somewhere...) ...maybe I could have one of my female characters dress-up in a catsuit? Okay: I need to stop now...
Posted by shanekentknolltrey
at 2:41 PM ADT
Updated: Wednesday, 27 June 2007 2:42 PM ADT
Monday, 25 June 2007
Intelligent Design?
Mood:
 incredulous
Topic: Scientific Progress...
Look at how much iPhone is iPreparing to iChange your iLife!!!
There's alot of reasons NOT to get wet over the prospect of Apple's iPhone, including the ridiculous price, dubious service abilities of the 'New AT&T' (I had their merger partner 'Cingular' for years and always wanted to develop psychokinetic powers just so I could f**king strangle the 'customer care' reps over the phone...) and there's also the questionable durability/reliability of the new technology in play. This glorified cell-phone itself has only one selling point:
Apple's gettin' arrogant, aren't they?  ...*sigh*: that's good enough, anyway: all I know is that I want three of them for myself (but I will say that if they have the same 'issues' with their batteries as all those iPods then there may be a riots a few months down the road, with hoards of rich people assaulting Apple headquarters with their shiny, powerless, $500 bricks...) Scientific Progress goes 'iBoink'...
Posted by shanekentknolltrey
at 8:54 PM ADT
Updated: Monday, 25 June 2007 8:58 PM ADT
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