…yeah, but what else is new?

Mad linkage:

How to be a retronaut!

Superman is no longer an American citizen. Deal with it.

The uncensored version of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture Of Dorian Gray to finally be published.

How to build a religion.

They might actually release Joss Whedon’s Cabin In The Woods.

Lars Von Trier and the apocalyptic whimper.

Unlike with Natalie Portman, don’t expect a post here called “Who’s January Jones fucking these days?”

Budget cuts curtail the search for alien life out there.

Also, Natalie Portman’s dad self-publishes a novel about severed heads, stolen presidential embryos, and mysterious clones.

May Day, 1871: The day “Science Fiction” was invented.

Emma Watson leaves Brown.

Speaking of which, the new Harry Potter trailer is kind of epic.

Ayn Rand’s first love and mentor was a sadistic serial killer who dismembered little girls.

Charlie Sheen and Chuck Lorre: Honestly, who gives a fuck anymore?

Mitt Romney’s bullshit is back and it’s not off to such a great start.

RIP Joanna Russ.

Bessel beams are cool, but don’t actually exist.

FYI: It’s Walpurgisnacht!

Before he retires Steven Soderbergh will make Channing Tatum’s male stripper movie.

I don’t know where you are but summer’s here.

Is Netflix helping to reduce movie piracy in the United States?

Giant black holes discovered in the nuclei of merging galaxies.

An interview with Chuck Klosterman.

Big Boi and Modest Mouse are finally working together.

How bacteria could generate radio waves.

Iggy Pop was considered for a judge slot on American Idol and Fugazi may actually reunite some day.

Scientists create stable, self-renewing neural stem cells.

The 10 greatest apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic music videos.

All living humans are more closely related than you might think.

Vigilantes band together to protect NYC sex workers.

What can we learn by comparing the old and the new covers for the Left Behind series?

Unemployed ninja for hire.

from here.

Last night I had the strangest dream…

In the dream, it was the end of the world, or, well, it was the last night on Earth, and the following morning it was all going to end. In fire and flame, buried and suffocated in ash, or via instantaneous evaporation into total nothingness… the how I didn’t know. Things are vague in dreams. They change moment to moment and you just feel things, just know them. And I felt like it wasn’t this year, not 2011, but maybe it was next year, or maybe it wasn’t.

In the dream, some people had known that the end of was coming for a long time. The crazy people, we called them and always had, but they were the ones who had been having the dreams for years now. That’s how we all knew, every living thing on the planet, I mean, that’s how we knew that it was expiring the following morning: we had dreams. Most of us started having them about six months before that final night. In the dreams we were told that our time was finite and we woke up with the certainty of it. The sad, cold certainty of it.

We knew from the dreams and from intuition that most wouldn’t accept this, that there would be fights and attempts to stop it and plans concocted to spirit away or just generally save the human race, and that every effort must be made. But from the dreams we knew that all those plans would come up with nothing, all those efforts would be ultimately fruitless, and in the end… it would come down to the simple question of how would you want to spend your last night alive?

In the dream I had last night, I had tried to get in touch with my friends, but they were all on the other side of the world from me. Whoever they were and wherever I was, they were somewhere else. They had lives to finish living and people to wrap their existence up with. It was just me, me by myself, just as it had always been. And I was thirsty with nothing to drink in the house, so I went to a bar. There were strangers there living like there was no tomorrow, which was fitting because there would be no tomorrow, and everyone was laughing and talking and loud and very, very drunk. A band was playing. It felt like a celebration. The band wasn’t that great, but for the occasion, they were amazing. The music was so loud, so perfect. It felt like it wasn’t just coming from their instruments and their speakers and souls, but that it was coming from inside me. And they were playing this song:

This morning I woke up and the sun was shining. Dogs were barking down the street, my neighbor was mowing his yard, and car alarms were going off somewhere. And I had to pee really, really, really bad. For the briefest of moments, beyond anything else that could possibly be going on, it just felt good to be alive.