That could be the tagline for this site, actually, since all I really do is babble semi-coherently on topics no one really cares about. And as I don’t have much anything to babble about today, here’s another heaping helping of videos, because I know all you Normalinauts love them so much…

April March
Scarlett Bliss

The Happy Bullets
Drinking on the Job

The Eames Era
When You Were a Millionaire

The Real McKenzies
Mainland

The Coral
In the Morning

The Ting Tings
Great DJ and Fruit Machine

Seeing as how we haven’t had a comic around here in quite a while, I was planning on leaving the last post at the top o’ the page for a bit, but this is just too damn good not to post…

An internet petition was started to stop Uwe Boll from making any more video game films.

Uwe Boll is, of course, the mastermind behind such films as House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, and BloodRayne, among others.

Originally, Boll had said that if the petition gets 1,000,000 signatures then he would stop. Now that over 150,000 signatures have been collected, however, Boll has decided to speak out…

I, for one, hope that Boll does not stop making films.

Boll isn’t just the worst director working today. He may very well be the worst director ever. Obviously, Boll has some work to do to catch, Ed Wood, but such a singularly terrible maker of feature films only comes along once every other generation. In some ways, he should be as cherished as Steven Spielberg, if only for how rare a director of Boll’s “quality” really is. He may still sink to even further depths…and that’s something I want to see. Honestly!

And I don’t know if he believes the shit he’s spouting (that he’s the only genius in the business, for instance), or if he’s built a perfectly crafted “persona” (say Andy Kaufman wrestling style) that has allowed him to continue to make such terrible films. But I don’t really care either way. After watching that video clip for the fifth time, Uwe Boll is quickly becoming one of my heroes.

Dear John, Steve, JK, and WB,

How are you guys?

I hope you’re all feeling well.

I understand that there are currently some tensions between Ms. Rowling and Mr. Vander Ark and Mr. Buechler and Warner Brothers, and I was hoping that I might lend a word or two in the hopes that everyone can reach some sort of compromise.
Now Ms. Rowling, in the declaration that was filed in District court against Mr. Vander Ark you said that you were “very frustrated that a former fan has tried to co-opt my work for financial gain.”

My response to this is fourfold:

1. Take your head out of your ass.

2. I doubt, given the time and effort it would take to compile the HP Lexicon, that the man you are suing would call himself a “former fan.”

3. Exactly how much money do you have? No, that wasn’t a rhetorical question, I really want to know how much you have because I am willing to bet that even if the HP Lexicon were published and sold a million copies, Mr. Vander Ark (the Lexicon’s author) still wouldn’t have 1 tenth of the money you have, so let’s just all admit that he isn’t really taking money out of your already very deep pockets.

4. And finally, please try and understand that what Mr. Vander Ark (and others, who write fan-fiction, for instance) is doing will only help to continue the life of the books/universe you created and, in the long run, will mean that more of your books will sell (to future generations), which will, I’m sure you are aware, equate to you making even more money so…please take your head out of your ass.

My assumption is that this whole lawsuit was really just a way for you and your publishers to force Mr. Vander Ark to cut you in on the profits of the HP Lexicon…which brings me to John Buechler and Warner Brothers.

So Mr. Buechler co-wrote and directed a film called Troll which was released in 1986. An interesting bit of trivia about this movie, the main character is named Harry Potter Jr. Now I’m willing to admit that maybe Ms. Rowling never saw the movie. I mean, it isn’t like Harry and Potter are ridiculously obscure names in the English language, but…there are more similarities between Mr. Buechler’s film and Ms. Rowling’s books.

So you, Warner Brothers, have threatened Mr. Buechler with a lawsuit if he moves along with production on a remake of the film, claiming that you will “protect your rights” or something. Now I’m no legal scholar here, but I don’t exactly understand how you can “protect” the name of a character when that same name occurred in someone’s work a decade before is showed up in the work you now distribute. Unless you have a time machine tucked in the corner of a lot somewhere and you plan to go back to 1985 and stop Buechler from writing his script, I’m not sure exactly how else you can “protect your rights.”

Seriously WB, where the hell are you getting off?

Look, the history of the written word is a history of theft and plagiarism. Shakespeare…fucking Shakespeare…”borrowed” from mythological and historical sources for nearly every one of his plays. Now I’m not calling you a plagiarist, Ms. Rowling, but what I am saying is that you can’t try and pass yourself off as having never read, seen, or heard anything ever. It’s pretty well documented that you “came up with the idea while on a train from Manchester to London” or whatever. But you didn’t live in a vacuum, no one does. So for WB to threaten legal action against Buechler for possibly using a character he wrote 10 years before you wrote a character with the same name just seems to be the most ironic thing I’ve ever heard.

And, of course, you, Ms. Rowling, and WB, have had a fairly large amount of court dates over the years. I totally understand the need to protect a piece of intellectual property like HP. I get it. People want to take a bite out of that shiny apple any way they can. But at a certain point, one stops becoming the victim and starts becoming the victimizer.

So please, Ms. Rowling, for the sake of what’s left of your already money-tainted soul, drop the suit. Warner Brothers, I know it’s hard, being as your a movie studio and all, but try and realize that you are not god, did not invent sliced bread, and stop being such a big pile of dick wagging douche bags. Mr. Buechler, I hope you produce your remake and I hope that the main character is named Harry Potter Jr. And Mr. Vander Ark, I hope you get to release the book that you’ve poured your time and work into.

Love,
Kilian

Yesterday saw a spike in our traffic that usually only occurs when Gilgrim shows up to post a comic. The spike was the direct result of my letter addressed to JK Rowling, et al. But, oh the many and varied denizens of the interwebz have spoken out against what I had to say…

I suppose that proper internetz protocol would dictate that I respond to those comments on the site that they appeared, much as Holly Won’t once did here on NR. But if I wanted to comment all over the place I wouldn’t have my own website, so…

To rowsdower: My point was that, much like the HP books, Troll centers on a young man being told that he is part of a secret world of wizards and witches…and maybe a giant pickle thing would have been cool at Hogwarts, I’m just saying.

To frequentmouse: Well, I don’t know what to say, I mean, I like white text on a black background. It just seems easier to read…

So, probably, neither of those two will read this. I don’t actually care that much, but I did feel the need to reply because I like having the last word.

Another thought occurred to me last night though, and after reading this recap of her testimony, I have to say I’m becoming increasingly sick of Ms. Rowling’s gaping maw of shit she calls a mouth.

Toward the end of direct, Cendali asked whether publication of the H.P. Lexicon in book form would discourage Rowling in her own creative work. Rowling replied that if, when she’d been “choosing between food and a typewriter ribbon,” she’d known that anyone could take her words, she’d have been discouraged. Moreover, said Rowling, if the market is flooded with inferior Harry Potter encyclopedias, readers will be “sick to the back of the teeth” with such books. “It’s the reading experience that stands to be endangered here,” she said.

I wonder if Ms. Rowling had an opportunity, at any point during the first half of last year, to visit any bookstore in the US. I can’t speak for places outside my own country, but I know for a fact that over here, before HP 7 came out, there were a shitload of books out in stores about what would and wouldn’t happen in #7. Don’t believe me?

So my question is, why didn’t Rowling have the same concerns about the “reading experience being endangered” with all these other books that came out before HP 7? Could it be, maybe, that all these works added to the general feeling of anticipation and excitement (read: probable sales) surrounding the final installment of the Potter saga? But now, all that’s really left for Rowling to do with the Potter world (unless she writes the eighth book she’s hinted at…which if her first non-Potter book bites it, she will) is do a reference book herself. Personally, I think she needs to take the George Lucas stance and realize that she’s created a universe much too large for her to be the only one to “play in.”

And look, I like the HP books, I really do. I’ve read them all more than once, and I’ve listened to the audio books each several times (because, if we can agree on nothing else, I think everyone can admit that Jim Dale rocks out with his cock out!). But, come on Ms. Rowling! Is a trial in a US District Court really fucking necessary?