dedleg.com

Today, I have a very serious question for all of you to comb your noodles over.

WHO WOULD WIN?

Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley in Aliens

Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor in Terminator 2

Dedleg’s Friday Night Title Fight: Ellen Ripley vs. Sarah Connor

Considering each of their track records, putting an ordinary human being down should be a pretty easy undertaking. However, Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor are no ordinary human beings. They are warrior women, okay? And this is a fight to the death of gladiatorial proportions. Only one thing is for certain — according to the best sci-fi films of our time, the future runs red… with blood, in case that wasn’t clear.

You used to be able to buy this in stores. You know, pick some up at the CVS down the street while you’re grabbing a bag of Combos and a Diet Coke.

In the late 1800s, Bayer was attempting to derive codeine from morphine in order to market a less potent and less addictive painkiller. However, in a happy accident, they actually produced heroin, which instead of being weaker, is nearly twice as potent as normal morphine. Nonetheless, Bayer sold heroin as a non-addictive morphine substitute and cough suppressant from 1898 to 1910, even going so far as to call it a cure for morphine addiction. In fact, the name “Heroin” was actually a Bayer trademark until World War 1. However, once it was discovered that heroin metabolizes into morphine incredibly quickly, the fun was over, especially for Bayer.

Look at that menu though! They were slangin’ piperazenes too! And aspirin? I mean, damn, that shit will fuck you up. Basically, Bayer was the trench-coat-clad guy covered in scabs, walking up and down 3^rd avenue mumbling “Ex, weed, coke, dope…” of the day. Totally keeping the party raging in the hospice, 24-7, 365, my doggs.

The critics could never appreciate the greatness of Eight Legged Freaks, but that’s fine. They’ll be the first to die in the Arac Attack.

I’m calling from Prosperity, Arizona. My name is Chris McCormick. I know how this is gonna sound, but you have to believe me, I swear it’s the truth! Our town is being attacked by giant spiders. 

Monstrous spiders and dirt bikes? Totally rad!!! Immediately before this scene, Brad (the blond x-treme dude with the weird mannequin mouth) tried to steal a young Scarlett Johansson’s virginity and in doing so, earned himself a tasing in the crotch, which caused him to fall out of his truck, piss himself and then get chased by mutated jumping spiders. I mean, seriously, this movie never lets up.

And speaking of jumping spiders, look who I found sneaking around…

Hey, I’ll take these creepy little fuckers over roaches any day.

Had my mind blown a couple days ago.

Vince Vaughn’s face for five frames in Wedding Crashers and The Mayor from The Nightmare Before Christmas… fucking uncanny.

I just discovered the Ghostbusters 2 DVD contains two episodes of the groundbreaking animated series based on the films. Things are looking up.

The animated series was actually called The Real Ghostbusters, due to another cartoon called Ghostbusters, launched after the success of Ivan Reitman’s 1984 film of the same name. The show ran for a pathetic year and featured a gorilla in its cast. Totally unrealistic.

Conversely, The Real Ghostbusters ran from 1986 to 1991, providing me with a constant and faithful ally during some very important developmental years. And people wonder why I’m so obsessed with imagery portraying skeletons, monsters, and creepy crawlies of all kinds. I just chalk it up to a major slime-related psychokinetic event that caused a violent prolonged transformative psychic episode in my youth.

If TMNT was my cartoon breakfast as a child, then Ghostbusters was my dinner. I’m not sure what lunch would have been. Maybe a grilled cheese, I really loved those when I was a kid. Still do, in fact.

Everybody loves a child without a limb! — my girlfriend 

Speaking of children, I realized today that a woman could have gotten pregnant and taken that little fetus of joy to term in the time I’ve been running dedleg. Let’s hear it for the very first generation of dedleg babies! My heart is filled with fear at the very thought of them growing up into future sociopaths, running around setting cats’ tails on fire, born into a world stained with my evil influence.

Just kidding, of course. Personally, I can’t think of a better way to raise a child than by sitting them down in front of this website. But then again, I’d probably be a terrible father.

Hey kids, check it out — an educational exhibit brought to you by the Philadelphia Zoo, which starts off by lying to you. Welcome to the education system.

A gazillion? Excuse me, but… that isn’t even a real number.

Photos via myphl17.com

The new show, featuring the work of New York-based LEGO-freakdaddy Sean Kenney, actually required a total of 259,450 LEGO bricks. Which is a fucking lot of LEGOs, don’t get me wrong, but it sounds pretty fucking lame compared to a gazillion. So thanks, for the lesson in disappointment.

Photo via myphl17.com

“Creatures of Habit: A Gazillion-Piece Animal Adventure” (groan) aims to educate its visitors about the importance of preservation in a clever way — with an exhibit made entirely out of plastic blocks, which take hundreds of years to decompose.

Sometimes, even banana peels don’t decompose once they reach the landfill. For sanitary reasons, modern landfills are lined on the bottom with clay and plastic to keep waste from escaping into the soil and are covered daily with a layer of earth to reduce odor. The landfill, then, acts like a trash tomb—the garbage within receives little air, water, or sunlight. This means that even readily degradable waste objects, including paper and food scraps, are more likely to mummify than decompose. 

Yum!

Anyway, the real point of this post is that I think LEGO sculptures kind of appeal to the nerd in all of us, no matter how shriveled and frail. And Sean Kenney is some kind of LEGO-Saruman.

Photo via myphl17.com

Photo via myphl17.com

One time, long ago, I was in the car with my Dad and he accidentally ran over a large tortoise in the road. Now, that’s not very environmentally friendly — although it really did look like a plastic trash can lid to me, too. Anyway, it’s not such a sad story because the tortoise was completely unscathed! Maybe a little psychologically scarred, but that’ll only add to his mystery.

I’m in no fit state. I’m in no fit shape. — Hot Chip 

Hey, at least it’s a Saturday! That means I’ve got two whole days before I remember why I hate the other five days of the week so much!

Because even my considerable powers of cynicism can’t completely disregard this pointless holiday, as it were.

Carl Sagan - photo via nasa.gov

The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world. — Carl Sagan 

And if you can’t trust Carl Sagan, well… you must not have watched as many documentaries about space as I did in school.

Instead of wasting time talking about how awesome it is to smoke weed today, how about talking about why it’s awesome to smoke weed everyday. Here’s one easy reason — it helps me forget about offensively stupid shit like this:

By the by, guns are neither hot nor cool. You know, just in case people were still wondering about that.

Fucking “celebrate diversity”… why? So you can shoot at it when it steps on your lawn?

Just because something should be legal, doesn’t mean it should be worn on your chest. You might as well rock something like this, it’ll really bring out the color of your dumb fucking ass:

The sad thing is, I’d probably make a fortune off of those.

Bringing a hammer into a fight is always going to be trouble. Tools in general have a way of elevating a fight into something beyond your typical frat boy push-fests. Crowbars? Bolt cutters? Electric sanders? These are weapons best left at home, far away from drunken bar room scuffles. After all, one should never operate machinery while under the influence.

Anyway, when it comes to hammer fights, there is but one master:

If you’ve never seen Oldboy, do yourself a favor and settle in for a night of psychological scarring sometime soon. The film is full of jaw-dropping moments, in fact, much of this movie makes the above scene look fairly tame in comparison.

Naturally, for this reason the rumors of a Spielberg remake were causing me more pain than a mallet to the forehead. An American version would never be able to hold a candle to the horrors contained in the original — Oldboy makes the Saw series look like Fear Factor reruns. Western cinema simply has not mastered — and indeed, lacks the interest in mastering — “fucked up” in quite the same special way Asian film-making has.

A remake could never fully grasp the dark themes of the original material, and any attempt to recreate the film while losing some of its more stomach-churning elements would leave the impact of the movie, let alone the core plot, in tatters. Especially considering this fact — Will Smith was attached to play the lead role. Hearing that, I could suddenly relate to the alien pilot getting its head punched in by Captain Steven Hiller in Independence Day.

Thankfully, we can all breathe a sigh of relief as the rumors were squashed late last year — the project is dead. If there is anything beautiful left in the world (and a viewing of Oldboy may very well demolish that notion in your mind), Spielberg merely bought the rights to it so nobody else would be able to drag the source material through the mud.