October 12

Better Than News

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  The Night Captain Marvel Came Out of the Grave is a 1971 Italian giallo superhero film about a wealthy aristocrat who lures superheroes and prostitutes to his home to torture and kill them.

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  Close Encounters of the Jaws Kind is an American science fiction thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Richard Dreyfuss, Terri Garr, Roy Scheider, and Robert Shaw.

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  Erotic Maps of the Second World War is a collected volume of erotic maps, mostly of Europe, set during the Second World War, by author and military historian Anaïs Nin.

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  Steely Kubrick is a American rock band and film production company comprising Steely Dan and film director Stanley Kubrick.

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  Grateful Droid is a Grateful Dead cover band starring C3P0, R2D2, and a varying cast of supporting droids.

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  Staffed is a 1971 American crime action film series about John Staffed, a martial arts master who uses quarterstaves to defend Harlem from white criminals, vampires, and other undesirables. Shown here: Staffed versus Blacula.

Beyond Plausible

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  Moby-Vamp is a novel by Herman Melville about the maniacal quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, for vengeance against Moby Dick, a giant vampire whale.

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  Indiana Jones and the Wrath of God is a revisionist docudrama film about Indiana Jones' supposed participation in Operation Wrath of God, the Israeli government's secret retaliation against the Palestine Liberation Organization after the Munich massacre at the 1972 Summer Olympics.

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  Chain Reaction 2: Light the Wick is an American science fiction action crime thriller film starring Keanu Reeves as a retired assassin who invents a new non-contaminating power source.

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  The Chromo-Pee Olympics is an international sporting event in which participants attempt to urinate in five contrasting colors.

In Other Words

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  John Wick: The Mario Job is a video game action film in the John Wick franchise in which John Wick must take down Mario and the entire Mushroom kingdom royal family.

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  John Wick: The Mario Job (Mighty Cawl review).

Are You Sure

Aleister Crowley during K2 expedition (1902).

• ... that Aleister Crowley wrote to the British Naval Intelligence Division during the Second World War, offering his services, but they declined; and that Crowley associated with a variety of figures in Britain's intelligence community at the time, including Dennis Wheatley, Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming, and Maxwell Knight; and that Crowley claimed to have been behind the "V for Victory" sign first used by the BBC, although this has never been proven?

• ... that the Shakespeare-Magellan Expedition (also known as the Shakespeare-Magellan high-energy literature experiment) is a proposed joint transdimensional corporation; that both William Shakespeare and Ferdinand Magellan have endorsed the project; that the Expedition is sponsored by Extract of Radium, the Downloadable Soft Drink®; and that past attempts to convert Magellan's voyage into a transdimensional corporation have caused major outbreaks of scrimshaw abuse?

Topic of the Day

Thomas Pynchon

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  Gravity's Expendables is a 1973 novel by American writer Thomas Pynchon about a team of elite mercenaries tasked with stealing a Nazi secret weapon. It was adapted for a 2010 film starring Sylvester Stallone.

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  Levity's Rainbow is a 2021 novel by Thomas Pynchon about Nazi Germany's efforts to develop an intercontinental ballistic comedian.

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  The Dark Writer is a 2008 superhero film starring Heather Ledger as Captain Blicero, an anarchistic mastermind who seeks to test how far Thomas Pynchon will go to save his readers from chaos.

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  The Crying of Lot 45.