The Edge

District 9: Rewind

Great sci-fi isn’t built upon the bluster of battlecrusiers exchanging laser fire while orbiting far-flung planets, nor is it initially constructed with an ornate, complex back-story with confounding names and outlandish technological advancements. Great sci-fi hinges upon changing just a few major elements in the universe the visionary is creating, and then observing and analyzing natural human responses to these strange and wondrous alterations.

Back to the Present

Many apologies to any and all readers...lengthy vacations tend to put a damper on blogging content. But now we're back in action!

Pedro’s comeback overshadows Samardzija’s first career start

Pam Richter Right now, I'm sitting and watching my hometown Phillies take on the Chicago Cubs on Wednesday night baseball.

Weekly Mixup

Tracklist: 1.

An ugly golden goose

"If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish, we will eat for a lifetime." So goes the oft-repeated proverb, but it unfortunately ignores the matter of whether or not the man is question is the least bit fond of fish.

Sticks and stones and Nazis

Everybody loves Nazis. Well, not exactly the Nazis themselves, nor the ideas that they extol, but instead, politicians and the media simply love to have Nazis to fall back on.

Freedom of the press (to charge you)

Rupert Murdoch did it. He pushed the big, red button. After months, maybe years of holding his trembling, anxious hand over it (the button's pretty darn big) he shooed his butler out of the room, wiped his furrowed brow of the pooling sweat and pressed downward.

Those who repeat the past repeat the past repeat the past repeat the past repeat the past repeat the past repeat the past

Everyone complains about Hollywood's reticence to create something new. The film industry has essential been a broken record for the past five years, with nearly every blockbuster having been based in intellectual properties that have already been established for decades.

Weekly Mixup

Have gun, will travel

He holds a counter productively-large gun, eyes in a wrinkled, taut squint with a mouth distracted by a cigarette, a toothpick or just the undeniable urge to contort into an ever-shrinking sneer.

Queens of the Last Arctic Monkeys

As one of the people who first found out about the Arctic Monkeys through Myspace (remember that?) I found their debut album, "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not," to be entirely enjoyable for some time, though they'll forever be lumped with the exuberance that everyone approaches new music with when they're just starting to build up their rotation. They were British!

This is probably old, but...

You know how in Family Guy, the brilliant writers will land on one single thing, usually "awkward stare" or "irritating noise" or just maybe "Hey, it's a gay baby.

Back in my day, things were (better/worse)

It turns out that things have actually been worse than you thought they were, after they were apparently slightly better than you remember at an earlier time.

Weekly Mixup

Comedians dying of cancer is funny...right?

Let's talk about Funny People. Note the capitalization, so we're not actually talking about humorous things, of jokes and quips that we find hilarious via our own thought processes.

There's no such thing as mistakes

Every kid, whether it be when they ride their bike right into a shrub, fail to hit a baseball off of a tee or decide that bagel bites belong in the DVD player, is told by their parents that they need to learn from their mistakes.

Only naturally-born U.S. citizens can read this post

Are they gone? Did every single foreign computer user abandon their post and run off to tip over old ladies, or whatever it is non-Americans do?

Who will still be the division leaders in September?

Pam Richter With the MLB midway point past us now, it is time to take a quick glance at the standings and make some predictions in each division.

Spend weeks in your basement playing video games gearing up for this one. I know I will be.

For a while there I really thought there was a betterment in the standards of the movie industry. Obviously there were always exceptions, but the last couple years I've been an advocate for the path Hollywood was taking, producing some pretty good movies on high budgets with big name actors.

One nation, under whoever or whatever the majority in the board of education decides

Kids are often compared to sponges, absorbing everything they see and experience then presumably, scrubbed against the backs of the geriatric or on a crusty plate.