Everyone knows there’s only one proper way to display dinosaurs, so I whipped up a primeval swamp diorama.  This is why it’s critical to always have construction paper in the house.

This one is obviously a sauropod.  It’s also one of the smallest dinosaurs in the set, so I’ll call it diplodocus.  A sad diplodocus.  Look at that face.

Not a triceratops, but a styracosaurus.  This website describes styracosaurus as “a rotten dinosaur. very strong and imposant.”  Don’t you believe it.

Wait, dimetrodon isn’t a dinosaur.  It’s a Permian reptile, and everyone knows dinosaurs didn’t evolve until the Triassic.  This particular dimetrodon is probably more concerned about its giant misshapen tongue, though.

The pterodactyl is also not a dinosaur, but at least it coexisted with dinosaurs.  This one seems to have feathers; perhaps it’s a pterodactyl-archeopteryx hybrid?  Oddly, it’s one of the largest dinosaurs in the set.

A duck-billed dinosaur, surely.  I decided it’s a maiasaura, but I have no idea what’s wrong with its weirdly bent hands.

This one isn’t even a reptile.  I think it’s some kind of mutant megacerops, even though it’s got tusks and at least two extra sets of horns.

Here’s the first one I couldn’t identify, even tentatively.  Is it some kind of tapirsaurus?  Really, really long-necked giant elephant shrew?

This one, on the other hand, is easy to identify.  It’s a Godzilla monster.  It looks like it wants to give you a hug.

Let’s see.  We’ve got a long pointy nose, an armadillo/pineapple-looking body, and a big handle on the back.  Yeah, I got nothing.

Aside from the alien head and the broken wrist, this could be a pretty normal theropod, maybe an allosaurus or…AAAGH WHAT IS WRONG WITH ITS FOOT

All right, that’s it.  There’s no way around it: That’s a dragon.  It has friggin’ wings.  Nobody on Earth could possibly think that was a dinosaur, not even Jack Chick.

Group shot!  And a bonus: the original background that came with the set.  I like their sunset background, but otherwise, mine is clearly superior.

What I haven’t decided yet is whether any of these monstrosities should be inflicted on children.

IMPORTANT NOTICE

This is a “New Orthophonic” High Fidelity recording, designed for the phonograph of today or tomorrow.  Played on your present machine, it gives you the finest quality of reproduction.  Played on a “Stereophonic” machine, it gives even more brilliant true-to-life fidelity.  You can buy today, without fear of obsolescence in the future.

The whole pick-up artist subculture is, in addition to being creepy and unethical, profoundly disconnected with human reality.  Nothing exemplifies this as much as their alpha/beta/omega “Greek system” of ranking people.  The terminology is copied from the popular conception of wolf pack hierarchy–itself discredited, as we now know that the “alpha” male and female of a wolf pack are in fact the mother and father, and the “lower-ranking” wolves are their offspring who don’t interbreed because their pack mates are their siblings and parents.

When applied to humans, the concept makes even less sense.  Generally it refers to how successful one is supposed to be at dating, but whiny wannabe pick-up artists use “alpha” (or alpha alpha, alpha alpha alpha prime, facial alpha, and so on, creating new terms as needed) to refer to anyone who is more successful than them at anything–up to and including Austin Powers.  It’s a useful system for lazy narcissists; one can classify oneself as a beta and thereafter blame your lack of success on your beta status (ascribing other people’s successes as due to their alpha status and therefore unattainable by you) while simultaneously being able to look down on anyone you don’t like as an omega.

But, even if you limit the terms to the “dating market,” the silliest part remains: The attempt to rank the entire population of the world from most desirable to least.  Every pick-up artist and hanger-on believes that there are a small class of people that everyone of the opposite gender (same-sex attraction doesn’t exist in their world, and neither do people outside the gender binary) wants to date, and that anyone who dates anyone outside that group is settling and would switch in an instant, abandoning their girlfriend, boyfriend, or even husband or wife, if they had the opportunity.

As I said, silly.  You can’t pinpoint a person that everyone in the world wants to date any more than you can create an ice cream flavor that everyone in the world wants to eat.  Even among your group of close friends, people who share common interests and attitudes, odds are you’ll find at least one or two significant others who you would never want to date, but your friend seems to like quite well.  And that’s before you account for obvious factors like age: Hopefully a 40-year-old’s ideal girlfriend or boyfriend isn’t an 18-year-old (and hopefully no one over 18 is aspiring to date a 17-year-old, but that’s another kind of creepy).

So Roissy’s tests are simple self-obsession.  He’s taking the sort of person he would want to date and makes a blanket declaration that these people are dateable and everyone else undateable; for men, people like him are dateable and other people (you know, the normal kind who don’t kiss people who obviously don’t want to be kissed) are undateable.  A lot of unintentional subtext surfaces in the question choice and scoring. Notice his resentful tone towards “alpha” women: You’re doing well now, but someday you’ll get what’s coming to you!  Perhaps Roissy realizes that most “alpha” women (and women, period) wouldn’t want to date him.  Also observe the lack of questions about men’s physical attractiveness.  Because that would be gay.

For a closer analysis from someone who actually had the fortitude to take Roissy’s tests and tally up her scores, check out the female and male tests at The Pervocracy.

So half of my test is simply my version of Roissy’s test, taken to absurd extremes.  I like Doctor Who and don’t like coffee drinkers, so obviously tea-drinking Whovians are objectively desirable.  Of course it doesn’t even work that far; even individuals rarely have tastes as rigid as the Greek system requires.  Blue-eyed redheads with ambitions of being desired by me, take heart: It all depends.  Or, you know, don’t take heart, since I’m married.

The other half is simple nonsense.  Roissy’s test is so disconnected from reality that you might as well ask random questions and assign them random point values.  Explanations of specific points of obtuseness are below the cut. Clothing: I have nothing against Goths, but neither will I miss an opportunity to mock them.  Hipsters may award themselves +0.

IQ: It really is a meaningless concept.

Cars:  I drive a Mazda, so non-Miata Mazdas can also award themselves +1.  However, my mother rented a Miata for her 40th birthday, and since then I’ve associated them with womens’ midlife crises and found them profoundly unsexy.  If you need an explanation of why the Nissan Cube is ugly, you may really be undateable.

Books: I’m a classicist.  What can I say.

Kitties: Kitties!

Party behavior: This is standard PUA nonsense, carefully choreographing their behavior in social situations as though people were actually judging you based on how quickly you approach or from which direction, and indeed, as though people actually noticed these things at all.

The Doctor: One of those ones where, except for the last option, I’d like to make everything worth positive points, but as something ought to be worth less, Christopher Eccleston loses out.  I’ve never met an Eccleston fanboy or girl, anyway.  (If you haven’t heard of Doctor Who, this may not be the blog for you.)

Manikins: I saw this on The Daily WTF.  Apparently it’s a real thing.

Nyan Cat: The regular version, the 10-hour version, and the 100-hour version.

The Who: Another one that hopefully requires no explanation.

What are the odds: A classic brain teaser.  I didn’t assign point values because I’m not sure which answer is correct (although giving +1 to the first option and -1 to the third did cross my mind).

Ponies: By far the most divisive question on the quiz.  Again, I’d like to give them all positive points.  Rest assured that I respect all pony preferences.

Zeta: The pick-up artist community is not a hotbed of intellect, thus some of them don’t actually know the Greek alphabet that well.  I’m only aware of one person, however, who thinks that Russian uses the Spanish alphabet.

Betta: A Siamese fighting fish.

Alpha: From Dollhouse, naturally.

Facial Alpha: Here we get into the silly PUA categories created when presented with evidence that people don’t exist in a hierarchy of best to worst.  How do you account for attractive people with repellent personalities?  They’re facial alphas, of course.

Alpha alpha: The short guy with the eye problem is another interesting character who rather resents anyone with dating success.

Alpha alpha alpha prime: The silliest category I’ve heard of so far.

To fill this void, I am proud to present this fully-accurate, updated, and objective gender-neutral market value test.

1. How old are you?

• 15-17 [-10. Go do your homework, kid.]
• 18-23 [+0]
• 24-29 [+1]
• 30-35 [+0]
• 36-40 [-1]
• 41-50 [-2]
• 51+ [-3]

2. What color is your hair?

• Blond [-1]
• Brown [+0]
• Black [+0]
• Red [-2]
• White/gray [-1]
• Dyed something unusual [+1]

3. What color are your eyes?

• Brown [+0]
• Blue/gray [-1]
• Green [+1]
• Heterochromia! [+2]

4. How wide is the distance between your eyes?

• Not sure [+0]
• Normal [+0]
• I actually went and measured the space between my eyes because you asked this question [-1]

5. Do you wear makeup?

• Yes, a lot [-1]
• Yes, a little [+0]
• No [+1]

6. Do you have a birthmark in the shape of an identifiable country?

• No [-1]
• It looks sort of like Belarus if you squint [+0]
• Yes [+1]

7. How strongly gender-identifiable are you?

• I am very masculine or very feminine [-1]
• About average, I guess? [+0]
• I’m super androgynous [+1]

8. What is your clothing style?

• Practical [+0]
• Super trendy [-1]
• Very professional and well-dressed [+1]
• Fun and creative [+1]
• Goth [-1]

9. Do you wear glasses?

• Yes [+1]
• No [+0]
• I wear sunglasses all the time [-1. Do you pop your collars too?]

10. What is your IQ?

• Under 100 [+0]
• 100-120 [+0]
• Over 120 [+0]
• IQ is a meaningless concept [+5]

11. What is the register of your voice?

• Tenor or soprano [-1]
• Baritone or mezzo soprano [+0]
• Bass or alto [+1]

12. Do you have a car?

• No [-1]
• Yes, it’s a beater [-2]
• Yes, it’s a Corolla [+0]
• Yes, it’s an SUV [-1]
• Yes, it’s a pickup [-1, but +1 if you help me move]
• Yes, it’s a Miata [-1. Show a little originality.]
• Yes, it’s a classic [+1]
• Yes, it’s a Lotus [+5]
• Yes, it’s a Nissan Cube [-5]

13. What is your favorite book out of this list?

• Harry Potter [+0]
• The Lord of the Rings [+1]
• A bestseller (Stephen King, John Grisham, etc) [-1]
• Bodice rippers! [+0. Whatever floats your boat.]
• Any Shakespeare [+2]
• The Divine Comedy.  Shakespeare is too mainstream. [+3]
• Twilight [-5]
• Atlas Shrugged [-A million]

14. What is your favorite hot drink?

• Starbucks [-5]
• Other coffee [-1]
• Cocoa [+1]
• Tea [+1]

15. How many friends do you have?

• None [-1]
• A few close friends [+0]
• A lot of friends [+1]
• I’m pretty much made of friends [+0. Potentially divided loyalties.]

16. Kitties?

• Kitties! [+1]
• What? [-1]

17. You are at a party. Some interesting people you don’t know are talking on the other side of the room. You…

• Mope in the corner and hope they come to you [+0]
• Carefully approach them, constantly scanning the room and calculating your optimum position relative to them [-1. Seriously?]
• Act normal [+1]

18. Which doctor is the best?

• Four. I’m traditional. [+1]
• Five. I respect anyone who wears a decorative vegetable. [+0]
• Nine. He brought it back. [-1]
• Ten. He’s got the hair, the coat, and the best sense of humor. [+1]
• Eleven. I’m getting in touch with my inner child. [+1]
• One of the others. I’m totally obscure. [+0]
• My general practitioner? [-5]

19. What best describes your sense of humor?

• None [-1]
• Practical joker [-1. Too risky.]
• Silly punster [+0]
• Witty and clever [+1]
• Cutting and sardonic [+0]

20. Which of these manikins do you identify with?

• I am wired with explosives [+0]
• I am being eaten by an amoeba [+1]
• There’s a fried egg on my stomach [+0]
• My belly button is walking away [+1]
• I’m asleep [-1]

21. How many times have you watched Nyan Cat?

• Never [-1]
• 0-5 [+0]
• 6-50 [+1]
• I’ve watched the 10-hour version [-1. There are limits, people.]

22. The Who is…

• A good band [+0]
• The best band [+1]
• Who? [-1, but hopefully you won't get fooled again]

23. What are the odds that you will answer this question correctly?

• 25% [+0]
• 50% [+0]
• 25% [+0]
• 0% [+0]

24. What is your favorite pony?

• Rainbow Dash [+1]
• Pinkie Pie [+1]
• Rarity [+0]
• Fluttershy [+0]
• Twilight Sparkle [-1]
• Applejack [-1]

25.  I’m going to assume that you’re lying and that your real score is 10 points lower than whatever you post.  How does this make you feel?

• Terrible.  My soul is crushed forever. [-1, and go see a counselor]
• Ha, just as I predicted!  It’s all part of my plan! [-2.  Suuuure.]
• What?  Why would you do that? [+0]
• Who gives a crap, it’s an internet quiz [+2]

Scoring

-1,000,045 to -45: Below omega. They have to make up new letters to account for you.

-44 to -25: Zeta. You aren’t sure how the Latin alphabet works. If only we were using the Spanish alphabet, like the Russians do!

-24 to -15: Omega. Your life sucks, and now an internet test has confirmed it.

-14 to -5: Lesser beta. You are pretty much average, but you should feel bad about yourself anyway.

-4 to 4: Betta. You show immediate aggression towards everyone, so you should be housed individually in a small container.

5 to 9: Classic beta. You may increase in value if kept in mint condition.

10 to 14: Alpha. You are a psychopath with as many as 50 conflicting personalities in you at once.

15 to 24: Facial alpha. You’re some sort of spa treatment, as near as I can figure.

25 to 34: Alpha alpha. You are awesome, and yet everyone seems to hate you, especially short guys with eye problems.

35: Alpha alpha alpha prime. Everyone has to order you, even if they don’t like alpha.

© Lee Miller Archives, England 2011. All rights reserved. www.leemiller.co.uk

I’m happy to announce the release of my newest interactive fiction, The House of Fear.  This surrealist historical fiction–there’s a combination you don’t see every day–is an alchemical journey based on the lives of artists Leonora Carrington and Max Ernst during World War II.  It’s a fascinating story–love found and lost, escapes from Nazi-occupied France, an abusive mental hospital, and of course some really excellent art.  (I was unable to get permissions to use Carrington’s and Ernst’s artwork in the game, but it does include pictures of them by surrealist photographer Lee Miller.)

You can download the game from its page here.  You will need an interpreter to play it; get one (along with instructions) here.  It’s worth the download, I promise.

Play, enjoy, and don’t forget to rate it.

Can you name one person in this image?

I really am proceeding through the entire Disney canon, aren’t I?  But kids’ movies are so rarely considered in depth.  (Actually, I’ve only reviewed two other Disney films, and there’s only one other that seems worth discussing: Lilo and Stitch.)  Anyway, The Black Cauldron deserves a mention because…what’s that?  You’ve never seen it?  Well, neither had I until now.

For the benefit of the probably-large proportion of the populace who have never even heard of it, The Black Cauldron came out in 1985, right when audiences who had been subjected to Disney’s previous animated film, The Fox and the Hound (1981), were wondering whether Disney would ever recover from the death of its founder twenty years before…and it did absolutely nothing to alleviate these fears.  It was a box-office flop and its heroine, Princess Eilonwy, enjoys the dubious distinction of being the only princess excluded from Disney’s official cast of princesses (a list that includes Pocahontas and Mulan, neither of whom was in fact a princess).

And yet, historically, it’s an interesting film.  It stands at the crossroads of Disney history.  Don Bluth’s The Secret of NIMH (1982)* had already rattled Disney’s throne, and the next year his box-office hit An American Tail would threaten the viability of Disney’s whole animation studio.  As you know, the story ended happily for Disney, who struck back in 1989 with The Little Mermaid (competing against Bluth’s lackluster All Dogs Go to Heaven), beginning the string of fantastic modern classics now referred to as the Disney Renaissance.

And where does The Black Cauldron fall in all of this?  Smack at the low point.  It was Disney’s first PG-rated film, showing that Disney was already experimenting with its formulas–a failed experiment that would not be resurrected until a decade and a half later with the more preteen-oriented adventure films Treasure Planet and Atlantis: The Lost Empire (which didn’t perform so well either, but merit their own discussion).  Still, there’s a certain cache to being Disney’s most desperate attempt.

Have I mentioned how hard it is to find screen caps?

But technically is where the movie is really interesting.  While the unforgettable gears of Big Ben in The Great Mouse Detective (1989) are usually thought of as Disney’s first use of CGI, that credit actually goes to The Black Cauldron.  It’s inked with an analogue of xerography, the cel-printing method that lent the distinctive sketchy look to middle-era Disney films beginning with 101 Dalmations (1961), and it makes extensive use of the multiplane camera that lent the distinctive depth of field to Golden Age films dating all the way back to Snow White (1937).  It’s a showcase of virtually every important cel-animation technique.

The Secret of Kells

So why isn’t this regarded as the quintessential archetype of the Disney film?  Well, it’s not very good. It’s based on Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Pyrdain, which are themselves based on Welsh mythology, but unlike previous and subsequent Disney films (Sleeping Beauty, Mulan), it makes no attempt to capture the look-and-feel of that culture, falling back on a generic fantasy setting and nondescript art style and thereby missing a fantastic opportunity to dive into gorgeous Celtic art (this opportunity, missed forever by Disney, was embraced in 2009 in the magnificent European film The Secret of Kells).

The hero and heroine seem to be generic composites of every other Disney hero and heroine, and even for Disney characters, everyone comes out of nowhere with no explanation.  Princess Eilonwy is princess of nothing in particular and has poorly-defined magical powers; Taran has no family for no reason; Dallben, an apparently-random peasant in the woods, has a pig with unexplained oracular abilities; the Horned King doesn’t seem to have any reason to be so evil–not even being snubbed at a baby shower.  Fflam never presents any compelling reason for his own existence.

Straight from the generic-character factory

Lacking any characters with motivations, the plot (which was nothing but a macguffin hunt anyway) is forced along with contrivances.  Taran happens to stumble upon the Horned King’s castle (yes, the pig gets caught by wyverns, but they are inexplicably close to the castle).  Eilonwy is inside, for reasons never really explained.  They accidentally get caught by fairies, who happen to have also caught the pig (at this point, the new goal being the cauldron, Taran abruptly stops watching over the pig that had been so important for the first half of the movie; macguffin hierarchy, apparently), and after they find the cauldron, the Horned King inexplicably catches them–how he did so, since they teleported there and he doesn’t have the pig, is a mystery.  The movie soldiers on through a mercifully short progression of things that have to happen without providing any grounding for why they should happen.

Even excluding direct-to-video sequels, there are some other strong contenders for “worst animated Disney movie.”  The Fox and the Hound?  Robin Hood (1973), which handily wins “least original animation” (a problem that, oddly, The Black Cauldron doesn’t suffer from)?  The Tomatometer pegs Oliver and Company (1988) as the worst reviewed.  I refuse to put The Aristocats (1970) on the list; recycled animation and xerography be damned, I like that movie.  But The Black Cauldron may well be the least memorable.  I am probably not alone in thinking of it as a Bluth or even third-party production, because it’s so forgotten.  But a film can’t sink or swim on an interesting historical position alone, and that’s all this one has to offer.

—-

*Which I happen to hate, but that’s fodder for another review.

We named 18.

• Maru the cat who needs boxhab
• Winston the cat
• Fatty the keyboard cat
• Sparta the mean kitty
• Oolong the object-balancing rabbit
• Cinnamon the disapproving rabbit
• Lucy (all five counted as one) the hamster
• A-Bao the sleeping hamster
• Billy the house mouse
• Ziko the hero rat (and friends)
• Caplin Rous the capybara
• Booger, Kitty, and Mousey (counted as one)
• Mishka the talking husky
• Paul the octopus
• Heidi the cross-eyed opossum
• Knut the eisbär
• Alex the smart parrot
• Christian the lion

Additionally, we thought of a few who had names that we couldn’t remember:

• Sharky the pitbull
• Tillman the skateboarding dog
• Boo the Pomeranian
• Gracie the dog
• Minazo the lolrus
• Einstein the tiny horse

Can you think of anyone we left out?  Remember, you have to know it off the top of your head.

Why, they’ve been hosting a conference about ambition, for men only, of course!

Things I’ve learned from this event:

• Women are not wired for glory.  Rosalind Franklin and Ada Lovelace get their work attributed to Watson/Crick and Babbage because they just couldn’t handle the fame.
• 14-year-old males are men.

At some point, you just have to come out and admit that you’re sexist.  Quit hiding behind goofy “complementarian” terminology and own it.  Embrace it.  It’s who you are, and who, I can only assume, you were wired to be.

UPDATE: Sugar has been adopted!  I hope she is having a wonderful time with her new loving family.

I try to avoid spamming this blog with these sorts of requests, but there’s a very special dog at the Pasadena Humane Society who is in need of a good home.

Sugar is a 10-month-old pit bull and an absolute angel.  She loves everyone and is super gentle with children.  Be prepared for a lot of kisses and wags.  She loves to play and chew on squeaky toys.  She’s graduated from the Shelter School program and knows sit, down, and stay, and is ready to learn more.

Sugar is a favorite of our mobile outreach team.  Here is a video of her at our fundraiser, the Wiggle Waggle Walk, where she won an honorable mention in the cutest dog competition.

Nevertheless, we’ve had trouble finding a home for her.  Pit bulls are just never in very high demand.  She has been at the shelter for two months so far.  If you know anyone in the LA area who has room in their life for an active medium-to-large dog (she is about 40 lbs and won’t get much bigger), please pass this along and point them to her PetHarbor page.