Friday anti-buzzkill?

Game developers: I want a Wii cycling game that I could play while actually riding my bike trainer. I could attach one of the remotes to my back spokes and the other to my handlebars (or something) and ride all day. Please? It would be so much better than just watching TV; it could almost be as good as really riding.…

@ damn: In light of your defendable explanation for why that strip was funny, I apologize for implying that you "turn your brain off."

@ damn: Ok, you're right. There are some that are funnier on the first page. I chose that one because of its especial suckiness (although that especial suckiness doesn't make it an outlier; it fits in quite well with the suckiness of all the rest). Although I can believe that these were much funnier a while ago (viz.…

@ Rex: That's about as funny as its going to get. I followed the link above to Rees' blog and looked at some of his stuff.

@WTF: I was wondering about that too. I used to work in a soils lab and I cleaned a lot of the equipment in an acid bath. I think that if you put a copy of "Little Women" in an acid bath, it would quickly turn to a glob of pulpy goo. So maybe "The Real World" reads like a glob of pulpy goo.

Real guarana soda, on the other hand, is delicious. That's partly because Brazilian soda is better than American soda in general. It's also partly because sometimes it actually has little fruit floaties in it.

Hey, AV Club: a guarana soda taste test would be cool. (Guarana's not icky, though, so it might disappoint you).

No, I know how to say it right, I promise! I even know that the "c" is supposed to have a cedilla and the "i" has an acute accent!

Acai isn't that good
Try guarana. It's much better.

@ Drew Barrymore's Girlfriend:

On the other hand, "to absolutely not have cellulite" is one of those nasty constructions that probably inspired the no-split-infinitives-ever rule. "To not spend their money on gimmicks" is ok, except that she's talking about "every woman" and so the pronoun should be "her."

@Smearbritches:

Lick made sense to me. Remember that most of the Lick's early description comes from Oly's attempt to figure Lick out; that leads to ambiguities and false reads. Also, Lick is very guarded about what's really going on in her head. Even after she lets Oly into her apartment, and even after she admits that she pays…

That quote was one of the major "dark/challenging" moments in the book that gave me the feeling Dunn was trying shake up my mores. It's a challenge of the way we often like to think of childhood as come "trailing clouds of glory." This is rhetorically interesting because of the value we place on primality. Primality…

Omnipotence in itself is not a plot-killer. The writer just has to handle it right. Doc Manhattan, for example, serves as Alan Moore's take on Yahweh. He makes Watchmen more interesting by giving Moore a chance to explore how normal people would feel if Superman/God walked among us (even if Moore's depiction of his…

It really bugged me, though, when Dunn would break out of the first person limited view and have Oly say something off character. For example, keeping Chick's specialty hidden (with Oly saying things like: "Only later would we realize how different Chick really was" or something, alluding that there's something…

Do you think Dunn was trying to do the same thing with Arturism that she succeeded in doing with Al's freak-by-design program? Santos said "the tone of the book isn't any 'darker' than your average bestseller," but it seemed far darker to me.

I think Arturism seemed so slippery because it's two things in one: a charismatic leader's bizarre demand of his follows, and an indictment of the lazy semi-suicidal desire to be free of all responsibilities.

Al giving up his leadership of the show was quite a stretch. Although Dunn tried to show Arty's takeover as a natural process, something like a boulder gathering speed as it rolls down a hill, I had trouble imagining a kid (even one who reads a lot) being so universally charismatic. I wonder how accurate Dunn's…