• Overlord Miller’s plans to attend GenCon were ultimately foiled, possibly by rampaging mega-nanobots.
• Overlord Miller recently finished reading Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies).
• Overlord Miller’s beard currently resembles a Recognizer from TRON.
• Overlord Miller also read The Book of Lies by Brad Meltzer.
• Overlord Miller is researching the history of Medina County.
• Overlord Johnson accidentally learned about William Stinchcomb, founder of the Cleveland Metroparks.
• Who even knew Billy Squier had a castle? Oh, Squire’s Castle. Well, that’s different.
• Overlord Miller has been re-watching The X-Files. That Charles Nelson Reilly episode? It’s called “José Chung’s From Outer Space” and it is made of win and bleeping dead aliens.”
• Nuketown’s Monster Week.
• Overlord Johnson recently listened to A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin.
• Overlord Johnson is reading Boneshaker by Cherie Priest.
• …and On a Pale Horse (Book 1 of the Incarnations of Immortality) by Piers Anthony.
• Overlord Miller recently listened to The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. [Link goes to YouTube trailer.]
• Overlord Johnson stumbled across an unaired trailer for Power Pack.
• Overlord Johnson recently watched the first (and thus far only) season of Gravity, an original series from Starz.
• Both overlords have seen Inception, which is not a documentary about how babby is formed.
• Overlord Johnson really enjoyed Between the Folds, a documentary about origami and paper-folding.
• Not to mention Helvetica, a documentary about a font.

Discussion: Kids’ Movies That Appeal to Adults vs. Movies for Little Boys Who Never Grew Up

• Show notes coming soon. Honest!

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It’s a good thing the Bad Doctor always has a stock pile of kaiju sized tranquilizers.

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• No one, not even SyFy, has made a creature feature spotlighting a havoc-wreaking shetland-bonobo hybrid, but the Overlords may be willing to option them for the screen.
• Overlord Miller reveals the shocking true origin of St. Patrick’s Day.
• Technically, it’s DOCTOR Mega John Cmar.
• “ant fungus exploding head” can be simplified to Cordyceps.
• Cat sharks and chipmunk spiders. You’re welcome.
  
  
• Did we miss any Monster Classifications?
  • Mythical Monsters (hydra, minotaur)
  • Natural Monsters (Jaws, Lake Placid)
  • Science (Man-Made) Monsters (Godzilla, Sharktopus, Them!)
  • Extraterrestrial Monsters (The Thing, Critters, Predator)
• Perhaps we shall do a monster contest. Nominate your favorite monster in the comments.

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Now, as Mr. Newquist rightly points out, there is a scientist in Jaws. Richard Dreyfuss portrays one Matt Hooper, an ichthyologist whose expert knowledge of Carcharadon carcharias and its ilk is…well, downright dull. Hooper is strictly a small-s scientist, not at all interested in turning sharks into more efficient killing machines or creating bipedal man-shark hybrids. You know: Science! Instead, Hooper is all about bite radius and feeding habits. Boring!

Nor is the shark any more exciting. Sure, it’s big—maybe even bigger than any great white man has ever encountered—but in the end it’s just a shark, and we can do better. Just ask Dr. Preston King (Jeffrey Combs), who fused human and shark DNA in Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy (2005), or perhaps Dr. Susan McCallister (Saffron Burrows), who genetically enlarged shark brains in Deep Blue Sea (1999); while their motives differed, both doctors used capital-s Science to create deadlier, more dangerous sharks. King’s hybrid shark is bipedal and amphibious, allowing it to kill on land as well as in the water, while McCallister’s sharks can swim backwards and are intelligent enough to kill even Samuel L. Jackson.²

As impressive as these genetically-modified sharks may be, they pale in comparison to the shark-cephalopod hybrid killing machine created by Blue Water Core for the U.S. Navy in Sharktopus (2010). Crossing a shark with an octopus? That’s capital-S Science at its finest.

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1. You might be more inclined to call it “Mad Science,” but that’s just the sort of judgmental shortsightedness we’ve come to expect from you.
2. Spoiler alert!

Pros:

• It has open format support, specifically EPUB. It will also accept PDF format.
• The display is an e-ink display. I really like this as my eyes tend to freak out easily.
• It has an SD card slot which is also a bonus. No one likes running out of space. I imagine you could also use this device as a thumb-drive as well as that’s how it shows up when plugging it in via standard USB.
• Simple, intuitive navigation makes finding what you want relatively painless. There are three buttons on the side (home, menu, display, and back) in addition to a direction pad. Home takes you to a list of what your currently reading (or have looked at recently). Menu displays a bunch of options depending if you are home or in a book. This is where you can configure the Kobo, or if you are in a book, change chapters. Display lets you choose between five different font sizes, and two different font types. There is also a decent library function where all your loaded books are listed in alphabetical order by title.
• Slip resistant back is a nice little after thought sort of feature. It does a decent job on keeping the device stationary when it’s set down.
• The battery life claims to be two weeks or 8,000 page turns. I haven’t had mine long enough to require a recharge, so I can’t really confirm these claims. So far the battery seems to be doing really well (from what I can tell from the indicator).
• The screen is a nice size. It’s just about as large as a standard softcover book.
• It’s very thin and light, but it doesn’t feel fragile or cheap. It has some mass to it despite its size, while still being quite comfortable to hold.
• It also has bluetooth capability. From what I’ve read, the purpose of this is to sync with a data phone in order to purchase books on the fly. I don’t have a data plan on my phone, so, again, I’ll just have to take their word for it. It’s still nice to know it has this ability (not as cool as the Kindle 3G access, but still nice).
• It comes preloaded with approximately a butt-ton⁴ of public domain books. So if you were meaning to catch up on all the classics, Kobo has saved you the effort of hunting down everything and loading it yourself.
• Lastly, the price is fairly reasonable (at $149.99) considering the competition. Also, as of this writing, Borders is giving folks a $20 gift card with each Kobo purchase, so, yay!

Cons:

• It’s not the speediest of devices. The boot up is a little sluggish (about 30 seconds). The loading of a new book can by quite slow. For instance, it took about two minutes to load On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, while it only took a few seconds for The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I’ve heard a few complaints about the speed of page turning (about a second), but it hasn’t bothered me. So, while not a fast device, I’m generally not in a hurry when reading. It might bother the more impatient among us.
• The Borders ebook software is a bit lacking. I was a little bit disappointed to see that most of the books that came pre-loaded don’t show up in the library list. Also, there doesn’t seem to be a way to add existing, non-DRMed titles that you may already have (which were not purchased through Borders) to the Kobo via this software. Granted, you can just copy the files over to the device itself, totally bypassing the software. For library management, I would recommend Calibre over the included software. It will convert pretty much any document you have into either epub or pdf format and load it onto your Kobo for you. It also has a nice library organizer.
• No light for night time reading.
• Rumor has it the bluetooth is only supported with Blackberry devices. Alas, my phone isn’t cool enough to test this out.⁵
• Directional pad placement may be awkward for lefties.

Conclusion:

Despite the slowness, so far I really like this little device. It does exactly what it was meant to do which is store books and allow me to read them easily. In this task I feel it does a very good job. I am using Calibre for my library management, so any issues I had with the included software is null. I’m able to load files and manage them without any issue using this method which is perfect for me.⁶ All in all a pretty nice little device for the money. I would recommend this for anyone looking for a simple eReader that allows for a lot of flexibility of content without a lot of bells and whistles.

Rating: 4 out of 5 robots⁷

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1. Yes, all you technical technicality technicians, it’s technically not purely an eReader. Whatever. It’s still full of magical pixels.
2. They’re the crackpottiest!
3. In a purely scientific fashion, of course.
4. That’s Imperial butt-ton units.
5. What? Really? Ah well. It’s not like I was going to use that feature anyway.
6. And the fact that I can use 3rd party software with this device is another bonus.
7. If the loading was a smidgen faster and there was a light of some sort, in my opinion, it would be perfect.

In celebration of this fine occasion, the Overlords proclaim that there should be cake. Cake that must be eaten.⁴

Without further ado, we present The Secret Lair Let Them Eat Cake Cake.⁵

The Secret Lair Let Them Eat Cake Cake Recipe⁶

Ingredients:

• 3-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 packages or yeast (3/4 oz)
• 1/3 cup milk
• 5 large eggs
• 12-1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips (the darker the better)
• 1 package cream cheese frosting, divided into three batches
• red and blue food coloring

Instructions:

1. Combine the flour, sugar, salt, and yeast in a bowl⁷.
2. Add the milk and eggs, mixing until all the flour is incorporated.⁸
3. Knead the dough until it’s uniformly mixed and smooth and sides o f the bowl become clean (5- 10 minutes).
4. Cut the butter into small pieces. Add the butter to the dough slowly, only a few pieces at a time, mixing the dough until everything is incorporated.
5. Knead the dough until there are no more chunks of butter, and the sides of the bowl become clean. The dough will become very smooth. This may take up to 15 minutes. You may need to add a little bit more flour, one tablespoon at a time to achieve this.
6. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and place it in a warm place (room temp.) for 2-3 hours or until the dough doubles in size.
7. Gently punch down the dough to deflate. Sprinkle a little bit of flour on the surface and place a piece of plastic wrap against the surface.
8. Cover the bowl well with plastic wrap again and place in the fridge until the dough doubles again (another 2-3 hours).
9. Deflate the dough again, extract it from the bowl, form it into a ball an d wrap with plastic wrap. Leave in the fridge for at least 6 hours or overnight.
10. Hooray! The dough is ready to be formed!
11. Butter a 9″ x 5″ loaf pan.Roll out the dough into a large rectangle that is about 7-8″ on its shortest side and 1/2″-1″ thick.
12. Sprinkle the chocolate chips over the surface of the rectangle, leaving some free space at one of the short ends. Roll the dough in on itself (like you’re rolling a rug⁹ ), covering the chocolate chips with the dough. Once you reach the end, pinch the dough to seal the ends.
13. Place the loaf in the pan. Cover with plastic wrap and place in a warm spot until it doubles in size (again 2-3 hours).
14. Preheat the oven to 375°F.
15. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until dark golden. Turn out onto a rack. Thump the bottom – if it sounds hollow, the loaf is done. If not, put back in pan and cook for another 5 minutes.
16. Cool to room temp. on a rack.
17. Add blue food coloring to 1/3 of the frosting and mix until the color is uniform. Add red food coloring to 1/3 of the frosting mix until the color is uniform. Leave the last 1/3 white.
18. When the loaf is cool to the touch, frost the top of the loaf with one stripe of blue, white, and red like the French flag.
19. Et voila! C’est magnifique! Qu’ils mangent de la brioche!

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1. Or at least those of you with an ounce or two of French-ish heritage. Or at least those of you that wished to had some sort of French-ish heritage. Or at least those of you who enjoy a croissant now and then.
2. As opposed to underthrowing. Although I hear those are fun too, but not as noisy.
3. Our scientists tell us they almost have all the bugs worked out of the Pogo Time Ball
4. OK. So for all you technical technicality technicians, the historical quote was actually “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche“. We know and we don’t care. I mean, brioche is sort of cake like anyway.
5. Or TSLLTECC for all you acronym junkies out there.
6. Technically brioche. You win this time, technical technicality technicians! Also, our scientists haven’t actually tested out this recipe yet, so, good luck. We’re fairly certain it’s non-explosive.
7. If you have a mixer with a dough hook, that will save you a lot of time and avoid cook’s cramp.
8. If using a mixer, you may need to stop it and scrape down the sides to get everything mixed in.
9. or a toilet paper roll

The Calorie Companies want in and the Environment Ministry wants to keep them out. Making matters difficult is the Ministry of Trade, which is doing all it can to loosen border restrictions and open up trade with the rest of the world—in direct conflict with the goal of the Environment Ministry.

In the middle of the mess, and soon to become a far more important part of it than she would ever imagine, is Emiko, a windup girl (genetically engineered “New Person”) whose very presence in Bangkok is illegal. Emiko works in a brothel, a toy for those with more exotic (and perverse) tastes than are easily satisfied by the real girls. She is a prisoner of fear, knowing that the Environment Ministry White Shirts enforcers are kept at bay only by the bribes her patron pays. Should the bribes stop, Emiko would surely be mulched, processed and turned into the methane that provides so much of Bangkok’s energy.

This was, simply put, a fantastic book. The post-petroleum world Bacigalupi created is complex and compelling (a great exploration of what the world might look like after the petroplague in Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason’s Ill Wind or simply the depletion of the world’s oil reserves) and the idea of genehacked grain and a food supply that is largely controlled by companies in Des Moines is fascinating (especially after reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan). Then there are the characters: Emiko the windup girl; the White Shirts, Captain Jaidee “The Tiger” Rojjanasukchai and his Lieutenant, Kanya; Anderson Lake, the Calorie Man looking for a way to undermine the Environment Ministry; and Hock Seng, the Yellow Card refugee from a China torn apart by religious conflict. Bacigalupi winds their separate stories together expertly, creating distinct voices for each and making them all sympathetic, even though their motivations often counter one another.

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Discussion: Iron Man 2 and Sherlock Holmes

• Iron Man is Overlord Johnson’s OMG Best Superhero Movie EVAR, so the sequel had a lot to live up to.
• Holy analogy, Iron Man! Iron Man 2 : Iron Man :: The Dark Knight : Batman Begins
• Hey, Black Widow: Vere is your aksent, comrade?
• Overlord Miller would have preferred Nick Fury: Agent of M.E.N.A.C.E.
• Justin Hammer was a good California millionaire.
• Overlord Miller felt that Whiplash was a little shoe-horned into the story.
• Overlord Johnson thought Whiplash was pretty cool, but his demise was weak.
• Gwyneth Paltrow, Jon Favreau and new-Rhodey (Don Cheadle) had a lot more to do this time around.
• Howard Stark is Walt Disney.
• Overlord Miller seems to think that Robert Downey Jr. will be relegated to a cameo in the upcoming Avengers movie; Overlord Johnson disagrees.
• War Machine was pretty darn cool.
• The new Iron Man armor was pretty cool, too. Let’s avoid the West Coast Avengers version (AKA Silver Centurion), though, okay?
  
• How about that Iron Baby?
• We take a slight tangent to discuss:
  • Chris Hemsworth as Thor.
  • Chris Evans as Captain America.
  • Jake Wyler is another Chris Evans role (Not Another Teen Movie).
  • Do not do this with Captain America’s shield. Ever again.
    
  • Overlord Miller is looking forward to the Green Lantern movie, but we have some concerns about how the power of the ring will be realized on-screen.
• And finally we get to Sherlock Holmes, which Overlord Johnson felt was a bit reminiscent of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
• Overlord Miller was relieved, as it could have been much, much worse.
• Holmes’ fighting strategy brought to mind Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns.
• Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) appears in the very first of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, “A Scandal in Bohemia.”
• Was the movie too “steampunk-y”? What have we got against steampunk, anyway?
• Madam Overlord Johnson felt the plot lacked any sort of mystery.
• Who will portray Moriarty in the sequel? Perhaps one of Overlord Miller’s man-crushes.
  • And now we’re on a Doctor Who tangent. That’s the royal “we”, where Overlord Miller is the royalty and Overlord Johnson is a bloody peasant.
  • Are we really talking about a porn parody of the old Batman television series? Apparently so, but we say “cultural touchstone,” so it’s okay. There’s a fully-clothed trailer for Batman XXX: A Porn Parody on YouTube, of all places.
  • Finally, Overlord Johnson isn’t quite ready to declare steampunk a complete failure as a genre of fiction just yet; he very much enjoyed Gail Carriger’s Soulless, a review of which can be found on this very site.

Lairkeeping

• The podcast will be on hiatus for the next six weeks or so, but we’ll be updating the blog between now and then.
• Our theme music is “Skullcrusher Mountain” by Jonathan Coulton.
• Visit us on the web at trip-dubs dot thesecretlair dot com.
• Try StatusNet for those short updates. This service is invite-only, so send us a note if you’d like to join.
• Got something to say that 140 characters just won’t cover? Say it on our community site.
• Coming up on The Secret Library, The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell. Really. Any day now.
• The Secret Lair blog is powered by WordPress.

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Let us remind you. Here are some of the best performances, remixes, and re-imaginings of the classic we could find on the interwebs.

A bit of commentary from Rob Parovian:

An arrangement by the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet:

A song and dance(?!) from “Le plus grand cabaret du Monde” via TVFrance 2:

Now, as Ms. Jackson said, gimme a beat:

And finally, some talented hands:

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The angel held up a finger. “One second,” he said, his eyes fixed on the television. “This guy is going to blend an iPod.”

“What are you doing in my house?” Marc asked.

“I’m eating Doritos,” the angel replied. “And drinking Cherry Vanilla Diet Dr. Pepper. And watching infomercials…aaaand the iPod will blend! Of course it will!”

“Look,” Marc said. “I don’t know who the hell you are or what you want, but the cops are on their way and—”

“No they’re not,” the angel said.

“What?”

“The police, the cops, the fuzz; they’re not on their way…well, not here, anyway.” The angel still hadn’t taken his eyes off the television.

“Of course they are,” Marc insisted. “I called 9-1-1.”

The angel took a swig of Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper and set the can back on the end table about two inches from the stack of coasters. “Lying to a messenger from the Almighty isn’t just bad form, it’s impossible,” he said. “You heard the television, assumed Norah had left it on when she came to bed—again—and came down to turn it off. You didn’t wake your wife, you didn’t call the boys in blue, you didn’t even bother to grab the Louisville Slugger you keep behind the bedroom door.”

“How the fu-” Mark started.

“Ah, ah, ah,” the angel interrupted, waving an admonishing finger in Marc’s direction but still watching the television. “Language, please.” On the screen, a man in a lab coat was pouring golf balls into a kitchen blender.

Marc closed his eyes tight, then opened them again. The television was still on, the angel was still sitting on the couch—on his side of the couch. “What—” Mark began, then closed his mouth.

The angel finally looked up, staring at Marc for a moment, his head cocked to one side. He pointed to the bag of chips in his lap. “Doritoes.” He picked up the can of soda—Norah’s soda; Marc never drank diet. “Dr. Pepper.” He picked up the remote with the other hand, waggling it as if it were a bone and Marc a dog, then gestured toward the television. “Infomercials.”

“I don’t understand,” Marc said.

The angel sighed. “You never do. Oh, not ‘you’ you, but…you know, you in the general ‘all of humanity’ sense.” He pressed a button on the remote and darkness was upon the face of the living room.

Marc panicked, reaching for the light switch at the bottom of the stairs, but his hand met cloth instead. “Let’s have a little talk,” the angel said. “How about we go into the kitchen? Maybe get something to drink.”

The kitchen light was on; Marc could see it off to his right. It definitely hadn’t been on before. The angel guided him to the breakfast nook and Marc sat.

“This isn’t a twist-top,” the angel said, standing at the open fridge with a Coke in his hand, “do you have an—ah, never mind, there it is.” He plucked the magnetic bottle opener off the freezer door and a second later there was a soft hiss as he popped the top off the bottle.

Now that the angel wasn’t sitting in the dark living room, Marc could better see the massive, feathered wings and the long, white robes. “You don’t have a halo,” he said.

“What? Oh, no,” the angel said. “Well, sometimes. But never that gold ring or diadem or whatever that you like to put on your little ceramic collectibles. You, as in—”

“Yeah,” Marc interrupted. “‘All of humanity’. I got that.”

“Good,” the angel said, sliding easily into the seat across from Marc. The breakfast nook was small—when Marc and Norah looked at the house four years ago the real estate agent called it “cozy”; Marc just thought it was cramped—but the angel somehow managed to sit without his wings getting in the way.

“Why are you here?” Marc asked. “I mean, I’m an atheist, for crying out loud.”

The angel narrowed his eyes. “Are you? Really?”

Marc nodded. “I am.”

The angel shook his head. “Actually, you’re an agnostic. Or rather, you were.”

Marc opened his mouth to object, but wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. He was talking to an angel, after all. An angel who had just brought him a Coke.

Marc looked at the slender bottle and saw a drop of condensation trickle down the side, carving a path through all the other little droplets that clung to the clear glass. Did cold soda bottles sweat in dreams? He picked up the bottle and took a sip. It was definitely Coca Cola.

Marc took another sip, which turned into a long swallow, and when he put the bottle back on the table half the Coke was gone. He looked at the angel. “You haven’t answered my question: why are you here?”

Were angels supposed to smirk? This one sure did. “Not going to argue the whole atheist/agnostic bit?”

Marc just shook his head.

“Well, that’s another bet lost,” said the angel, “but to answer your question: this is an intervention.”

“A what?”

“You know, an intervention. An orchestrated attempt by one, or often many, people—or angels, in this instance—to get someone to seek professional help.”

“You’re joking,” Marc scoffed.

Now it was the angel’s turn to shake his head.

“You want me to seek ‘professional help’? From whom? For what?”

The angel cast his eyes toward the ceiling.

“Oh, come on,” Marc said. “You’re telling me I’m supposed to seek help from…from God? That’s what you’re—” He paused. “This…this is a divine intervention? Literally?”

“Literally,” said the angel.

“I don’t believe this.”

The angel rose to his feet, his wings unfurling behind him, the great, alabaster-feathered expanse stretching across the entire length of the kitchen. There was light everywhere, a brilliance that seemed to have no single point of origin but washed over everything like a flood, dispelling every last shadow.

“Yes you do,” the angel said, stepping out of the light. Marc saw the blow coming too late to dodge; a right cross that caught him square in the jaw and sent him sprawling across the table. He was acutely aware of the Coke bottle falling, clattering to the floor, the remaining soda spilling out onto the tile, and then the angel’s voice, seeming to emanate from all around him in Dolby ∞.1 Surround Sound: “You don’t have the luxury of not believing anymore.”

The light was gone. Marc heard Norah descending the stairs, felt the cold Coke pooling against his bare foot, saw a single drop of blood from his split lip spatter onto the table next to the ring of condensation where the bottle had stood.

“Marc?” It was Norah’s voice, from the living room. “What are you doing? Why are the lights off?”

A pause, then a wash of incandescence and Norah’s voice again. “Have you been drinking my Dr. Pepper?”

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