• The Sneeze: “Adam Savage Interview – Part 1″

Much to the chagrin of Beth, I love Mythbusters. She thinks it’s a geeky boys show. (Yeah, well, duh. Does she know who she married?) But hey, I figure if I can steel myself to watch Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood with, if not a complete absence of mockery, at least a minimum of mockery, she should be able to handle watching two guys blowing stuff up and dropping stuff off of tall buildings and wrecking cars and shooting pennies at their butts (good episode!) all to prove or disprove urban myths. This is what marriage is all about.

Where was I? Oh yeah. I like me some Mythbusters. And if you do too, you might enjoy this interview with Adam Savage, one of the two hosts. (The one that gets hurt the most.)

I have a compulsion.

I do not flick a lightswitch four times before entering a room.

I have yet to feel the urge to wash my hand repeatedly or with a new bar of soap upon each washing.

I am not compelled to spread the jam on my toast 54 times before allow myself to take a bite.

But I do have a compulsion.

If I get a book, and it is a book in a trilogy or series, no matter how recently I have read the early books in the series, I have to re-read the entire series up to that point. Everyone. Everytime. I just cannot read a book without having all of the back-story and characters fresh in my mind.

This is all right some of the time. Say… when I’ve picked up a copy of Dennis Lehane’s Darkness Take My Hand and it means that I have to re-read his A Drink before the War to get myself properly prepared to read the new one. That’s okay. The first book is 400 pages. It’s a quick read. I can handle that.

However, it just a little more difficult when I get the last novel in Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, The System of the World. The first two books in that trilogy are Quicksilver and The Confusion, each weighing in at 944 and 816 weighty pages. These ain’t no lying-on-the-beach light summer reading books. (Well.. they are to me, but I like Neal Stephenson.) And I have to read them. Again.

And then there is Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series.

Crap. That sucker is at 11 back-breaking books now. And the series ain’t over yet. (People are starting to wonder if it ever will.) And, I regret to say, the quality of the story has been declining with each book. I know that a lot of people have given up on the series.

But the problem is, I can’t. I’ve put too much into it now to get out! I’ve read the first book NINE FREAKING TIMES!. Eight times for the second! And so on! I have invested far too much of my life to back out now!

Now, if you do the math, you’ll have noticed that I seem to be off by two books. Well, the newest one is actually out this October and I haven’t actually bought the second most recent installment.

You see, the only way I can fight this compulsion is… to… wait.

It was hard work, buying each book when it came out… and then sitting it on the shelf while I went and pulled the first book out again and started right from the beginning. So, I’ve decided that while I can’t avoid re-reading each and every book in the series again (I feel dirty just thinking about it), I will at least be a little kinder to myself and wait until I have at least several unread ones before diving back in. Make it worth my effort. It was easier when I only had two or three books to re-read. I read fast. But having to read around 9000 pages for only 600 to 800 new pages is gonna take a toll on anyone. So. I’m going to wait. For at least a few books.

I have yet to find anyone else that has this problem. My wife can just pick up books at random and read them. Blithely. And without a backward glance. We just got the new Harry Potter book and she just took it and started to read it. Without even a glance at the first 5 books.

This is just madness.

• The Museum of Modern Robocop Art (via Screenhead)

Someone took a whole whack of time at ArtPad making up a lot of paintings. Through the magic of Flash, you can view the art as it was created.

Oh. Every picture has Robocop in it.

Robocop on vacation in France. Robocop dogfighting in a WWI biplane. Robocop as Santa Claus. And more!

I’m thinking Robocop is the new Jimmy Stewart.

Robocop is everyman.

In this site’s continuing efforts to fight for strenuous religious teaching of the “right” kind, in order that our society’s children are not completely indoctrinated with the scientific cabal’s community’s half-cocked “theory” of “evolution”, we have added an image to our sidebar. This image is linked to a site which presents a view that we consider important– nay… necessary for all peoples to read.

Please. We implore you.

Support the rights of Pastafarians everywhere.

UPDATE: In related news, here’s some easy cash for any one that can prove “that Jesus is not the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster”.

UPDATE THE SECOND: My Dad wants me to point out that the image is at the bottom of the sidebar. I didn’t want to insult your intelligence and picture-finding prowess, but he thought less of you.

• Zombie College! (Flash)

Sorry for the lack of effort this morning. Got ourselves a brand new fridge being delivered. This fridge is replacing the fridge that has no light. And freezes everything. And leaks an unfortunate colour. It leaks that unfortunate colour a lot.

I’m really scared to see what’s underneath the fridge. So much so, that the thought of zombies just doesn’t do it for me today.

Unless they’re… fridge zombies!

No… no. Not even fridge zombies do it for me today.

Oh well. Time to empty the fridge.