I don't know why the Washington Post did this story: Ike and the Alien Ambassadors, but it is fun. Here's an excerpt:

"Fifty years ago tomorrow -- on Feb. 20, 1954 -- President Dwight Eisenhower interrupted his vacation in Palm Springs, Calif., to make a secret nocturnal trip to a nearby Air Force base to meet two extraterrestrial aliens.
"Or maybe not. Maybe Ike just went to the dentist. There's some dispute about this.
"The Ike-met-with-ETs theory is advanced by Michael Salla, a former American University professor who now runs the Peace Ambassador Program at AU's Center for Global Peace."

Salla says he peiced his theory together with research on the Internet. Because we all know information on the Internet is infallible.
One of the most interesting things in this article is that the Eisenhower Library has a UFO specialist because they got so many calls about this issue. I want that job.

Greg Costikyan, of game blog Games * Design * Art * Culture, is bringing back the Paranoia role playing game as "Paranoia XP." I never played the original, but it has a cult following and looked hilarious. Back in the days when I played Dungeons & Dragons, I would read "Dragon" magazine and they'd occasionally have supplements for "Paranoia." They were some of the funniest things I'd ever read.
In Paranoia, an insane computer controlled the world. Each character had to please the computer to stay alive while trying to get ahead by killing other characters. It was really twisted.
It's games like this that make me want to role-play again.

According to Monster Zero News, Toy Vault is going to release two new Godzilla-related plush toys: Smog Monster and Angilas.
The smog monster looks way too furry. Whatever, it's still cool. And I still haven't picked up the Godzilla and Mothra plush dolls. I gotta get on that!

McSweeney's is running The August Van Zorn Prize for the Weird Short Story. Here's a sample:
"McSweeney's is pleased to announce that a prize of $3,000 will be awarded to the short story that most faithfully and disturbingly embodies the tradition of the weird short story as practiced by Edgar Allan Poe and his literary descendants, among them August Van Zorn. "
Now, I had never heard of August Van Zorn. Luckily, Michael Chabon fills us in at his Web site. But now, with a search on the Internet, I find that Van Zorn is a pseudonym that Chabon uses for some short stories. Apparently, Van Zorn was also a character in "Wonder Boys."
I hope this doesn't mean the contest is some kind of joke. The McSweeney's link also mentions a follow up to the Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales.
(Link found thanks to Maud Newton.)

la gringa's L E F T . C O A S T . D E M E N T I A posted about Star Wars vs. Star Trek fans. It also has some interesting things to say about the 501st Legion of Stormtroopers (that links to the New England chapter, but la gringa was talking about the 501st in general.) I know certain people who would be interested in hearing what's been said.

The original link I got to Mortal Kombat Online says you can play the game online, but that doesn't seem possible. Nevertheless, the site does seem to have all the latest Mortal Kombat news.

A model is allowing herself to be plastered naked on a motorcycle. She'll do this so that an artist can create a sculpture of her body that men can use to prop up their bikes when they're not riding them.

This post about the end of Cerebus makes me happy that I stopped reading it when I did, just after the screed against women in "Reads." Dave Sim is brilliant sometimes, (and it will certainly be an accomplishment to have written 300 issues of Cerebus) but no matter who he is, I'm not interested in reading long boring screeds against women, feminism and whatever else is pissing him off. I'm looking for good stories. For a long time, Sim wrote those. Maybe he'll get back to that when Cerebus is over.

At 16bit.com, a Web site about toy news, they included this interesting tidbit: "While touring Toy Biz' room on Monday, we heard and read an interesting detail. In 2005, there will be new DVDs of all the Lord of the Rings flicks with additional footage and what have you. I asked if these were just repackaged extended editions, and was told that these are like 'extended extended editions.' You might be saying 'wait a minute, Adam, I didn't hear this anywhere else!' Well, neither did we."
If this is true, it's going to piss me off. How much money do they want to soak off Lord of the Rings fans? I enjoyed the movies and waited to buy the extended editions (and I'll buy the extended edition of "Return of the King") but if they think I'll be buying yet another edition of the movies, they've got another thing coming. Why can't movie companies just make one definitive edition of a movie and leave it at that? Why hold back on footage? Must it all be about the money? Silly question, I know.

Caitlin Kiernan is trying to start a cultural revolution: Wear more T-shirts celebrating your favorite authors and books. Everybody wears their favorite band's T-shirt, why not your favorite author? Makes sense to me. How cool would it be to have a "Great Gatsby" T-shirt or an Edgar Allan Poe T-shirt? Or go more obscure and have the R.A. Lafferty T-shirt. If I wore T-shirts more often, I'd be jumping on this bandwagon.
(The fact that Kiernan is selling T-shirts at Species of One shop has nothing to do with this.)

My god, this sounds like a joke: Seven dead at kite-flying festival. But it's not: "More than 100 people had been reported injured since last night in various kite-related accidents, medical workers said."

The latest murder in Kentucky: "On Friday, Hutchinson, 45, said he killed his wife because she, like billions of other Earthlings, had been taken over by alien clones. He also rambled about cobras, 'panther-lions,' 'the tribe of the stick,' Armageddon and UFOs." (He has quite an awful looking mugshot too.)

Here are two articles on a family that lived away from humanity in South Africa for 20 years. The mother is apparently retarded. The children speak their own language. The father says it probably happened because they didn't have a "family snake" to look after them. The son has lived outside most of his life.

Doctors have removed the bullets from the head of the wandering sea lion. Now he's being treated for infection. No suspects have been found yet.

Here's a more web ready version of that squid page. Apparently it was taken recently.

I don't know how old this photograph is, but it's very cool. It's a photo of a squid. The squid took the picture itself by grabbing on to a probe being sent into deep southern waters.

According to a rumor posted at Monster Zero news, Toho is spending twice as much money and using US special effects studios for the next Godzilla film, which will be the 50th anniversary film. They are also "strongly aiming this one for the international market."
I would love to see Toho put more money into the film and get it released over here. I just wish they would also give these films more time. Do you realize they put out a Godzilla film a year? Directors are really pressured to get these things done for the winter movie season. The '90s Gamera films were given as much time as they needed, and they really are the best giant monster movies in ages. Why can't Toho do the same for its star?

Neil Gaiman writes about how the government is protecting the deaf from witches and cartoons by not close captioning shows like "Sabrina," "Justice League" and "Malcolm in the Middle." He's right that it's outrageous. Why should the government decide what deaf people watch?

Well, I hate to breaking this news to some of my friends, but Angel is being cancelled. There are only 9 episodes left. Here's part of theWB.com press release: "Like some of the great series that are leaving the air this year, including Frasier and Friends, the cast, crew, writers and producers of Angel deserve to be able to wrap up the series in a way befitting a classic television series and that is why we went to Joss to let him know that this would be the last year of the series on The WB. "

Scientist find evidence of a sun that has crystallised into a 10 billion trillion trillion carat diamond.