Fractal Undies

I know we said not to expect any postings for a while. But then we saw this awesome chest of drawers on boingboing.

What does this piece of furniture have going for it that it's brought us out of our self-imposed sabbatical?

A couple of things. For one, it's based on fractal geometry. Second, it's got the number 23 it it's name, a number we believe to hold great power. If you believe in that sort of numerology nonsense... which we don't.

Loss Clunky

Hello,

If you are reading this, then you must truly be a considerate and obliging reader. How do we know this? Because you have endeavored to find new a posting here at clunkyrobot.com. However, as you might have come to realize, your endeavoring mostly returns disappointment.

Where this website was once a consistently and faithfully updated collection of doings and don'tings, it has recently become a shadow of it's former glory. I would even go so far as to say it's a shadow of a shadow. Like a projection or prediction of what this website's shadow WOULD be like, if it even had a shadow, which it does not.

We've got a few big things looming on the horizon here at clunkyrobot. Sadly, most of them have nothing to do with this website. Like the play that RP and I are writing that we will also be preforming in. Or the new show for Adult Swim we're writing that is crushing our soul... in a good way.

As soon as either of these big projects get up and running we'll be back. And we'll actually have projects to talk about, instead of pre-projects that are still in the nerve wracking development stage that can't be talked about because they are constantly changing.

Fair enough?
Oh, not specific enough?

Ok, check back here in a few weeks if you please, we'll probably have something worth saying about something worth talking about.

How's that for specific?

Expunged

This past weekend we went to see the new Pro-Intelligent Design (a re-dressing of Creation Science) film from pop culture icon Ben Stein called: Expelled.

The documentary attempts to uncover a conspiracy in the world of Science. Ben Steins says that if you are a proponent of Intelligent Design, the idea that all life in the Universe was designed by a Creator, and you work in the scientific field then you will be ostracized.

He says that this is an issue of free speech. That all ideas should be given equal weight in the eyes of the scientific method. But the scientific method is not democratic, and it shouldn't be. Certain ideas are given more weight because the evidence supports them, others are considered foolish because they LACK EVIDENCE.

But he doesn't stop at promoting ID, he also goes after old Darwin himself.

Ben Stein tries to denounce Evolution by showing that the theory itself doesn't have all the answers. He says that Evolution falls short because it fails to explain how life on Earth began... This drives us absolutely crazy.

Evolution is not a theory on the origin of life. Evolution is a theory that attempts to explain how life changes over time.

Nobody knows how life began. Because.. you know, that's like the GREATEST MYSTERY IN THE UNIVERSE. To say that evolution is flawed because it doesn't solve one of the biggest questions in existence, even though it was never intended to, is like saying that Robocop is flawed because he's not good at pottery. Robocop's job isn't to make a clay bowl, it's to shoot jacked-up bad guys, and survive gas station explosions. Besides, his giant robot hands lack the subtle movement needed to be a great potter.

The shoddy workmanship in this film doesn't end there. A couple of our favorite Scientists and a few prominent Atheists were duped into being interviewed for a movie called "Crossroads: Where Religion and Science meet." That movie was sold as a open minded discussion about the compatibility of Science and Religion. The movie we got in it's place seems a little one sided.

The website Expelled Exposed goes a long way to show that the film wasn't a documentary at all, but rather an attempt to create a controversy where there was only rational science-minded thought.

Here is the story of a Science Teacher who really was fired from a Texas school for failing to remain neutral on the subject of Creationism. Fired, by a school! For trying to teach science!

igrowbot

On the windowsill @ 70-30 Productions.
A Christmas gift from my wife. Just planted it a couple of weeks ago. We already gave him one cutting.

Obey Orwell

Obey the Giant's own Shepard Fairey designs the covers for Penguin Books re-issue of Orwell's classics "Animal Farm" and "1984."

[via metafilter]

J.J. Fucking Abrams and the Lost script style

Or more to the point maybe: Damon Fucking Lindelof.

Friend and collaborator C.A. Childers sent us this post from the Defective Yeti weblog about how the writers for our beloved Lost television series write their famously awesome scripts.

J. J. Abrams (the series creator) established this style in the pilot with phrases like "HE SCREAMS BLOODYFUCKINGMURDER" and "this guy is a Class-A prickfuck" (wha-?!). Since then it appears to have become part of the show's template. Most LOST scripts read as if the writer has just hit his thumb with a hammer.

You see the writers of Lost like to pepper their scripts with a lot of "fucks." Because it's for television, they're not in the dialogue, the fucks are in the stage directions. The thing is, it seems to really work well for them. The Defective Yeti agrees, he posted this example from a set of stage directions featured in the script for Season One - Episode Nine:

And we're LOOKING UP at Ethan. SOAKING WET but seemingly oblivious to the rain. And his EYES. His FUCKING EYES.

The Defective Yeti spoke to the screenwriting weblogger Alex Epstien, who calls this style "Subtitles for the nuance-impaired." He finds this style annoying. Epstien says you should use your words like bullets, not like birdshot. That's worth repeating.

"Use words like bullets, not like a spray of birdshot."

We love Lost. We wish that me, and everyone we've ever met wrote and talked like an episode of Lost. But that would be a terrible place to live.

We write 11 minute comedy scripts. It's a terrible idea for us to adopt a technique like this. We imagine that when somebody gets a Lost script, they are wringing their hands like an old Disney villain. They can't wait to pour over every word, ready to decipher any clue or subtext. That's what great writing gets you we think, the luxury of people actually reading your words.

You'd be surprised how many times, even in an 11 minute script you'd encounter a situation like this:

Somebody'd be all:
"I don't understand where this character got that shovel from"

and I'd say:
"That's explained right here, in the stage directions, where it says: He grabs a shovel."

and then they're all like:
"oh, I didn't read that."

People gloss over stage directions. We don't have the luxury of assuming people will read our words. We need to keep things simple. Although, the idea of having stylized stage directions is an awesome one, and one we can exploit.