Day: August 7, 2014

Compared with Iron Man, Captain America and the other earthbound heroes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the maniacally entertaining Guardians of the Galaxy is definitely a wild child.

Director James Gunn (Slither, Super) tosses together a dizzying blend of superhero bravado, outer-space adventure and off-the-wall comedy that introduces the strangest and most enjoyable bunch of rogues ever to inhabit the same spaceship.

And you know what? Guardians of the Galaxy is SO. DAMN. GOOD. It might be one of the most fun movies I’ve seen in a long time. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’

Many a person, as a child, read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or saw Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. How awesome would it have been to live there?! There’s nothing but all the edible chocolate that you can dream of! It would be the best thing ever!

Well, living in a chocolate factory can now be done! And not just no-name, but the Hershey’s brand!

Except the chocolate factory has been abandoned. For years. And, while a developer that now owns the chocolate factories has proposed to possibly build condos on highers floors of the factories (which can be done, as the lower floors were designed to hold tons of cocoa beans), there’s not a cocoa, nor a bean left. Alas.

If the goal of all progress is efficiency, then researchers from Ohio State University have managed to improve narcissism diagnosis rates by 1000 percent without getting up from your matching Barcalounger/fainting couch combo.

To reach a diagnosis of narcissism, apparently all you have to do now is ask a narcissist is if they’re a narcissist. And, if you’re a narcissist, then you’ll answer affirmatively because, well, why wouldn’t you be?

There are only two flaws to this theory. One, if a narcissist associates narcissism with being a self-absorbed douche and, because they’re so nice and awesome, would never call themselves that. And two, if someone is worried about thinking they’re too vain and self-obsessed because they were raised to believe that mirrors are just ocular masturbation, then they might shame/WebMD-diagnose themselves as narcissistic.

But the better question to ask is why even ask in the first place if narcissism is so obvious?

For a few hours on Tuesday, no one was listening.

California is suffering a serious drought and forest fires all throughout its territory, or as they call it out there, “summer.” Today, it doesn’t seem outside the realm of possibility that at least one of those fires was set by an alien race. The SETI Institute had to shut down its Allen Telescope Array for a matter of hours because a wildfire was sweeping ever closer. In case you’re wondering, yes, SETI is that weird group that listens for communications from outer space.

Did aliens accidentally send us a nude photo and then cover it up by forcing us to turn off our equipment when the signal reached us? If you watch the History Channel on Friday nights, you know that sounds completely plausible and believe there’s enough evidence to draw such a conclusion.