60 Beautiful Minimalist Desktop Wallpapers

I love good minimalism in design, and I love just about every one of these wallpapers. I’m using Elegance right now, and it is making me very happy.

Simon Pegg on Fast Zombies

Have I linked this before? I feel like I have, but I can’t find it in the archives. Anyway, I also prefer the slow zombies. I find the idea of being overwhelmed by the sheer number of zombie casualties more terrifying than being chased down by one particularly agile one.

In other news, I went and got myself employed with a real job this week. I haven’t quite decided how I feel about that yet.

Alternate Universe (retro) Posters. I would go see pretty much every single one of these.

An officer took Animal Control property home and ate it, and that’s not appropriate.

– Bay County Animal Control Director Resigns Following Pig Slaughter

Apparently KFC’s mother never taught it the difference between good attention and bad attention, because they seem to have decided that their grody Double Down chicken-as-bun sandwich is in fact a pillar upon which they can base new menu items. Enter the Skinwich. Yes, that’s right. Skinwich. I don’t know what the KFC marketing team is paid, but it’s too much.

According to the poor sucker who tried it, a Skinwich is “5 layers of fried chicken skin, lumped on a bun and topped with white American cheese and bacon”. And I mean, yes, it’ll get the company some publicity assuming anyone who casts their gaze upon it does not immediately drop dead from arterial failure, but who would actually go to a KFC and eat the infernal thing?!

“Frances Bean Cobain, daughter of late grunge-god Kurt, is 18 today. Meaning: you are old.”

– Gawker

Punishments meted out to sinners in Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, via Lapham’s Quarterly.

Traitors to their country are doomed to an eternity of cannibalism, whereas Gluttons get rain. Hello, I live in Vancouver! Pass me another beer, Dante.

So I had the occasion to go to a picnic this weekend, the first one I’ve been to in years. My intrepid co-conspirator — the master of animal fats — announced that he was going to conduct an exploratory trek into the world of making fried chicken, and the obvious complimentary side dish was potato salad. The problem was, to my mind, that potato salad is frequently boring. I mean, nothing against it, but boiled potatoes with mayonnaise … meh.

(Why are hot weather foods really hot to make? Frying chicken and boiling a giant pot of potatoes are not very refreshing at 90°F.)

I thought about it and read some recipes, and decided that it was time stop hypothesizing and make a big bowl of Asian Potato Salad. And here is, roughly, what I did:

Step One: Potatoes

Unsurprisingly, potatoes are a key part of.. potato salad. I used eight fist-sized red potatoes, scrubbed with the skins on. I only cut them in half before boiling, because on MasterChef Australia they said that cooking pre-cut bites of potatoes can cause them to absorb a lot of water and have a weird texture. Anyway:

1) Boil potatoes in salted water for about 20 minutes or until soft.
2) Drain and put in the fridge to cool.

Step Two: Peanuts

One of my requirements for this salad was that it be vegetarian. While lots of recipes called for bacon, I wanted some little crunchy salty flavor nuggets without the meat. Enter peanuts! I used Vietnamese chili sauce for spice — it has chilies, vinegar, and garlic as the main flavors and oh MAN do I love that stuff.

1) Put a little bit of sesame oil and some vegetable oil in a pan to heat up.
2) When it’s warm, toss in some cocktail peanuts, salt, a bit of green onion, a bit of minced cilantro, and the chili sauce.
3) Keep the peanuts moving in the pan!
4) In about three minutes they will have some browning and look delicious, so you can take them off the heat.

Step Three: Not Potatoes!

1) Chop up about a cup of bok choy. I kind of cut up the stems like they were celery, and then added ribbons of the actual leaves.
2) Chop up about one red pepper. I like my red pepper in very small pieces, for what that’s worth.
3) Chop up a bunch of green onion.
4) Mince some cilantro.
5) Get the potatoes out of the fridge, and chop those into bite-sized pieces. (Okay, there are SOME potatoes in this section.)
6) Mix all of the above in a big bowl.

Step Four: Dressing

This is where taste comes into play. I don’t like gloopy dressings, and despite my penchant for spicy stuff I didn’t want to terrify any picnic goers. I think after eating a serving the consumer was left with a pleasant tingle in their mouth, which is just about right in my opinion.

1) Put about a cup of mayo in a bowl. This is the base.
2) Add some of this stuff: sesame oil, soy sauce, hot mustard (just a bit, this isn’t your heat source), sugar, and salt.
3) Add some vinegar to loosen up the mayo and cut the fat. Lemon juice would also work, and might be more thematic.
4) Got it close to what you want? Now it’s time for the spice: wasabi powder! Add it a little bit at a time for obvious reasons (unless you hate your fellow picnickers!)

Step Five: Nomming

1) Add the dressing to the chopped veggies and mix it all together. Taste and re-season as necessary.
2) Sprinkle the peanut mix on top at the last minute (to avoid soggy peanuts).

This turned out pretty dang well, even if it didn’t have bacon.

Billy Mitchell Regains Donkey Kong Record

If you’ve watched King of Kong, the excellent documentary about the fight to be the world’s top Donkey Kong arcade player, then you know who Billy Mitchell is. Ooooooh, he’s irritating.

Lady Gaga devouring a unicorn carcass, via Regretsy

Okay, pardon my french, but what the hell is this shit. I mean, I know what it is technically — an ad for the new Julia Roberts movie Eat Pray Love — but it’s so wrong. I need a champion? Bring me a white knight who will fight my battles and avenge my honor and tell me my hair looks pretty at regular intervals! I like men fine, but I’ll be my own champion thanks.

And what’s the opposite of this sign — what do men need then? They don’t need a woman, they need a damsel? Healthy!

I realize this movie is supposed to be all “look at me, I’m of a certain age and I’m livin’ all crazy and eatin’ carbs!” but this ad campaign is bollocks.

(photo via Daily Billboard)

Behold, the trailer for the upcoming American made-for-tv movie: Sharktopus!! It’s a shark and an octopus combined, see, and it can walk on its tentacles and stab people and oh my god is that ERIC ROBERTS? Dude.

So for no good reason, what follows is a list of my top ten horror movies of the last decade. It was actually pretty tough to make a list — I ended up with 15 good movies and had to winnow out the weakest entries. My final standard of recognition was how long the movie sat with me after I finished watching it. Did it haunt me that night? Was I still chewing over the ending at lunch the following week? Do I still to this day worry about finding… well, just wait and read the list.

The most influential horror movie of the last 10 years has to be Saw. It spawned a million sequels, revitalized indy horror, and really gave a name to the torture porn genre (link is safe and informative!). That being said, I generally loathe torture porn movies and you won’t find Saw or any of its ilk on this list. Instead we have an unsurprising 5 zombie movies, 3 generally supernatural titles, and 2 plain ol’ human killers.

And so, in alphabetical order:

… or how I learned to stop worrying and love the fast zombies. This had everything you could ask for from a serious zombie movie: “who is the real monster?” philosophizing, a solid origin story, devastating urban wasteland, and a true crushing sense of being alone. I walked out of this movie with the sense that I had just watched the most realistic portrayal of a zombie apocalypse since Dawn of the Dead classic. A link: The 28 Days Later Urban Exploration page for abandoned asylums. Why is the group named that? I don’t know, but these photos are creeeeeeeepy.

Frailty talks a lot about god, has a twist ending, and stars Matthew McConaughey, and yet it improbably all comes together in a very satisfying way. I almost can’t say anything about the movie without giving away a bit of the magic. Let’s just call it an interesting take on the line between religious fervor and insanity.

Okay, let’s get this out of the way up front: I hated the end of this movie. The twist? At the end? Arrrrgh. Crappy crappity crap crap. But up until that point, High Tension lived up every bit to its name. The movie oozes terror from every pore. Plus it’s French, so if you watch it with subtitles it also counts as a cultural experience. A link: 50 Must-See French Horror Movies

I debated internally for a while about whether this is actually even a horror movie. And really, that says a lot about the quality of this film: it has a vampire and more than one horrible bloody death, but at the end you are left with a sense of poetry and perverse whimsy that transcends the genre. Hollywood is working on an American remake of this, of course, those buzzards. It’s titled “Let Me In”, which makes me think right off the bat that someone doesn’t understand the true message of the original.

Of all the movies on my list, I predict this one will cause the most groans. (Stuff it, Max!) I stand by my decision, though. Rodriguez (and I suspect a bit of Tarantino) smooshed up all of the greatest genre cliches into one rollicking ride of a movie. It has hot babes, dastardly men, military intrigue, cheesy over-the-top special effects, and a LEG GUN. I’m not saying it’s a pinnacle of art, but much like another movie that almost made it on this list, Zombieland, Planet Terror is two hours of good fun American movie-making. A link: How to make a Cherry Darling cosplay gun (no amputation required).

From a raucous American movie to reserved Canadian content! This is a small, subtle movie with approximately 3 sets, 5 actors, and one giant idea. What if a deadly disease isn’t spread through biting or airborne molecules? What if instead it is spread.. through speech? A linguistic virus — it’s a fascinating concept. In a press interview at the time the director (Bruce McDonald, famous Canadian!) said that his movie doesn’t have zombies but instead “conversationalists”. Conversationalists. Love it. Love it! Love love lovelovelololololooooooooooooooo……

So there I am, sitting in my dark apartment by myself, watching a cinéma-vérité-style movie about zombies in a dark apartment building. It was TERRIFYING. And you don’t have to be in an apartment to find [REC] scary — this Spanish flick excels at being terrifying without showing its hand. The characters are confused, they’re scared, they’re in the dark, and things want to eat them. Plus: subtitles, so again you can feel all cultured.

Interestingly enough, despite having seen many of them, the only Asian horror movie on my list is.. an American remake. And don’t get me wrong: most J- or K-horror remakes are abominable, but The Ring somehow manages to keep the heart of a good atmospheric ghost story with just a dash of North American dazzle. Plus, it has that scene. You know the one, with the TV? Possibly the most horrifying 10 seconds EVER. (I also spent way too long thinking about who I would pass my Evil Video Tape to if I got Ring’ed in real life.) A link: Watching the cursed video on YouTube won’t haunt me, right? Hang on, my phone is ringing….

David Caruso is frequently scary in a oh-god-why-am-I-watching-CSI-Miami way, but he delivers a subtle little performance in Session 9. This movie is definitely a psychological horror, with an abandoned asylum, mysterious patient tapes, and ambiguous flashbacks. Probably the best flick on this whole list for the squeamish.

Well duh.

Always a bridesmaid: Cloverfield, The Decent, Pulse (yes, Pulse), Tale of Two Sisters, Zombieland.