"A Short Stay in Hell" May Take a Long-Term Residence in Your Mindhole

A good day for me is often just finding the perfect book. Not just a good book, but the perfect book. I used to be a librarian, so sometimes that perfect book wasn't for me, but was for other people. Sometimes a book comes along that is not only the perfect book, however, but is the perfect book about finding that perfect book because your eternity depends on it. Steven L. Peck's A Short Stay in Hell is very much that book - a book I found via Goodreads and received an advance copy of, and was simply blown away.

The premise is very simple - Hell is different for different people, there's only one true religion (and you probably don't subscribe to it), and the hero of our story, Soren, is in Hell and has been sent to a version of the Library of Babel, a library that contains every possible book that could ever possibly be written, and the only way out is to find your own story in a book somewhere on the seemingly limitless shelves.

The book is great on a number of levels - it has a really fun version of Hell as is, and the book really instills the right about of depth and despair inherent in the concept while leaving room for some humor and light-heartedness. While I don't know if I can go so far as to say that there's a deeper message here, there's plenty of thoughts and ideas that come about from reading this regardless, whether it be about the reality of humanity, the inanity of seemingly pointless tasks, or just the concept of what may very well be infinite or forever.

I really have no complaints about this book. Even the ending was as immensely satisfying as it was unexpected, and that is a rarity in a lot of fiction. At novella length, it makes me wish it went on longer in some respects, but also makes me very happy that there's absolutely no filler to have to deal with. I feel like this book is much better than it has any business being, and that's just a great find amongst the many shelves we have on earth. I cannot recommend this book enough, and the ebook version (which I will update this with a link once it is updated when the book comes out next week) is only $3, so you really have no excuse. The book may be here for eternity, for all we know, but I'm reasonably assured you will not be.

How Ric Flair WOOOOOOO-ed Me

As a child, I ate my vitamins and said my prayers, to be like Hulk Hogan. Now that I am a full-grown adult, I strut around and yell WOOOOOOO, to be like The Man.

Growing up, Ric Flair was a second thought. Hulkamania was still running wild, although scandal and mediocrity was creeping into the WWF universe. WCW, in my mind, was a second-tier outfit, and for all I knew, they had to change their name from NWA to prevent a lawsuit with Ice Cube and Eazy-E. Flair’s boatload of titles didn’t impress me, either; Joe Montana had four Super Bowl rings and I still hated him.

Years and years passed, and no matter how hard The Hulkster tried to soil his reputation as my favorite non-Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat wrestler, he was still The Real American. Hogan Knows Best, Mr. Nanny, Thunder In Paradise and his ill-fated spaghetti restaurant, “Pastamania”, did nothing but further endear myself to Mr. Terry Bollea. No messy divorce, steroid scandal, or “Fingerpoke of Doom” could push Hulk Hogan off my Mount Rushmore of Awesome.

No, in order for Hulk Hogan to cede his rightful position as The Coolest Professional Wrestler of All Time, a more flamboyant man would have to beat him.

Lonely Little Teacup

Quite the intimate animation short about a lonely teacup.

Is this NSFW??? I'm not sure. There's no nudity but it feels quite tea pornographic

What's Out? 14th of March 2012

What are we even doing? Looking at what comes out today, that's what:

The Great Battle of Skyrim

Here's a nicely staged and edited machinima battle made from Skyrim of 500 Draugr, 200 skeletons, 500 Dwarven Warriors and a dragon using mods and console commands

Definitely turn the vid up 720p to really appreciate the epic battle.

I wonder how powerful this guys computer rig must have been. I'm guessing it was something like this

(extra nerd points if you can guess where this is from)

Kickstart the High Seas - An Interview with the Designers of Fleet

If your a regular here, you know that we are smitten with games, nerd culture and the DIY mentality. Which is why Kickstarter tends to get a lot of love from us, both on the site as well as our bank accounts. Recently Fleet, a new board game project much akin to a euro card game in play and style, hit the scene and hit its funding goal of $6,000 in less than 12 hours. We reached out to Matt Riddle and Ben Pinchback and had an opportunity to talk with them about their current project, thoughts on Kickstarter as a platform, games and what the future holds.

Read our interview with them after the jump.

Celebrity Apprentice Recaps: Episode Four! The Unravelling!

If you have any sense of fair play then this episode will infuriate you.

We already knew the tasks were a farce with Team Trump trading business for buffoonery, but in Episode Four the entire show implodes as a limp, wrong-headed Trump (puppeteered by unseen producers) makes a pre-determined firing which has some unexpected consequences. A major player leaves as his bewildered team is unnecessarily punished.

I’ve honestly never seen an episode of the Apprentice quite like this before. Quite frankly, the once fierce Trump seems short-sighted and silly, when a smart, strong team rallies against his weak (and scripted?) assumptions and successfully manage to school him at every turn. By the time the credits roll it feels like he has lost the respect of everyone - except for his sycophantic children who bray like donkeys and congratulate him for enforcing the worst decision ever made.

This episode makes me want to shit a kitten into a bonfire in front of a bus filled with overly sensitive kids.

Want to know more? Join me after the jump and we’ll try to make sense of this mess!

Nerd History: A Roster of Dead Wrestlers

While looking for something thematic for this week, I ended up falling down the rabbit hole of the Deadspin feature Dead Wrestler of the Week. If you're unaware, it's a cornucopia of different critical biographies of (mostly) dead wrestlers, overwhelmingly from the late 1980s and early 1990s. You'll spend entirely too much time reading these, I promise.

It should be said as well that The Masked Man, David Shoemaker, does a semi-regular column about professional wrestling today over at Grantland. I don't watch pro wrestling at all anymore, but his articles still end up being a must-read for me.

The Donald Duck Darth Maul: Why Pop Culture Mash-Ups Can Truly Please No One

I just saw this at fantastic Star Wars collecting site Rebel Scum and thought it was worthy of a little rant. Although neither toy pictured is particularly pleasing, I'd like to especially draw your attention to the plush Donald Duck Darth Maul:

Now I'll ask the obvious question. Who is this for?

And the obvious answer? Fans of Donald Duck and Darth Maul.

Okay, that's your ideal audience, but it's pretty niche, right? Ridiculously so. It's more likely that this is a novelty item aimed at either rabid Disney collectors (of which there are many) or rabid Star Wars collectors (of which there are many) who will put pretty much add anything to their collection if it's something they don't have. 

But I can't help looking at this unlikely monstrosity and feeling that it's going to dissatisfy fans of Darth Maul, and alienate fans of Donald Duck. Once again, the forced pop culture mash-up scoops up some bucks but effectively pleases no one. 

I'm a Star Wars fan, and I like Donald Duck, as in I "respect" Donald Duck because he's an ill-tempered sailor who doesn't wear pants. But do I need a Donald Duck plush? No. And believe me, I've bought some pretty odd stuff. And trust me, regardless of whether you lean towards Lucas or Disney, if you buy this thing, you're going to be embarrassingly trying to explain just what the hell it is to everybody who comes to your house. "So... you know who Donald Duck is, right? Okay... well... Have you ever seen The Phantom Menace? Right... Look, just try to go with me here... Sigh..."

Good luck with that!

The Book Was Better Episode 13: Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium!

Number 13 is definitely bad luck for us as we explore the novelisation (AKA 'Magical Movie Novel') of the "charming" film Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium. Like Dustin Hoffman, we give the performance of our lives as we reveal exactly what the phrase "Oh, flapdoodle!" means.