And so it begins...

So a factory worker in Sweden got injured during a run-in with some bit of automated machinery yesterday. Seems innocent enough, I guess. The article is available here. Blah, blah, blah. Industrial accident.

One sentence in the report did, however, catch my eye.

"But the robot suddenly came to life and grabbed a tight hold of the victim's head."

Just so everyone is clear on what happened... A ROBOT CAME TO LIFE AND ATTACKED A MAN. A human man, not some audioanimatronic factory worker that shared a kind of perverse kinship with the malfunctioning (allegedly) assemblage. An actual man. Given that this is in clear violation of every human/robot precept, why is every newspaper not printing full page reports on this, or at least putting out special "Well, we're dead for sure" editions?

These editions/ads wouldn't even need an accompanying article, just a black and white spread (with a quick splash of dark fluid...is it blood, or oil...who can tell) and the words A ROBOT CAME TO LIFE AND ATTACKED A MAN. If I were appointed head of the worldwide media cabal, I would use every drop of ink at my disposal and a font of my own devising, Times New Holy Shit Bold, because this seems like that kind of emergency.

Full Disclosure: I originally designed Times New Holy Shit Bold for use with the potential future headline "Infinite Hamburgers!" It saddens me to think that due to impending robot massacre of the human race, we will never see a day that knows no limit on hamburgers.

Book Review: Seagalogy, by Vern.

If my mind had a wrist, this book would have broken it and thrown me through a window.

I normally don't feel like shadow boxing or meditating on the finite nature of man before reading a book. But this book, this awesome and terrifying book, leaves me more than a little worried that its subject, the likewise awesome and terrifying Steven Seagal, is somehow out to get me (or at least knows I am reading about him). The author applies his “Badass Auteur Theory,” or “the idea that in some types of action or badass pictures, it is the badass (or star) who carries through themes from one picture to the next” to the whole of the seagal's oevre, including musical efforts.

If you doubt the strength of the author's theory, ask yourself how any episode of any show would be transformed by even the most fleeting glimpse of Steven Seagal.

The most effective support for B.A.T., though, is the existence of the book itself. Since Seagal appears in it, it becomes a "Steven Seagal Book" rather than just an extremely readable and entertaining journey through all things Seagal. How about a "dizzying look through the seagalian lens, whose refractory power transforms governments into criminal agencies, submarines into helicopters, ponytails into widow's peaks, and of course, arms into pretzels."