| My Robot Brain Needs Beer | A line often spoken by Aaron Stack, the Machine Man, in Warren Ellis' excellent Nextwave comic book. |
| My Silmarils. Let Me Show You Them | The long-awaited fusion of lolcats and Tolkien. |
| SPACE... MADNESS!!! | My favorite episode of Ren & Stimpy. |
| Murdered by Pirates Is Good | If you don't know that this is from The Princess Bride, than you need to see that movie another hundred times or so. |
| Jesus of Squares | An odd alternate name for Lord of the Rings devised by my boss' boss when the movies were coming out; it may have been at least in part a reference to my nickname, Jesus. |
| Moratorium on Time Travel | This was the title of an old blog post of mine; I believe it's just a phrase I came up with and liked, and not actually from anything else, but I could be wrong. |
| Incidents and Accidents | A title of a previous blog post. For the longest time I thought I was also referencing Elvis Costello lyrics, but I just realized I was actually referencing Paul Simon lyrics. |
| Intimations of Apocalypse | A title of a previous blog post that I enjoyed, and that I probably got from somewhere, but I couldn't tell you where. |
| Love and Geekery | A title of a previous blog post that I thought summed the blog up pretty nicely. |
| Tentacles of the Submerged Beast-God | A title of a previous blog post that I enjoyed. It is, of course, a reference to H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. |
| Best Read in the Original Klingon | In Star Trek VI, one of the Klingon's says this of Shakespeare, and I always enjoyed that line. Sadly, I cannot speak or write in Klingon, but if you can and you feel like translating my blog into that language, I'd be deeply flattered. As well as slightly afraid. |
| Stuff and Nonsense | A title of a previous blog post that I thought summed the blog up pretty nicely. |
| Ravings and Gibberings | A title of a previous blog post that I thought summed the blog up pretty nicely. Also a bit of a reference to H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. |
| Shame and Cheeseburgers | Another previous blog post title that I thought summed the blog up pretty nicely. I believe the Comic Book Guy's quote from that one Simpsons episode is "Lonelines and cheeseburgers are a dangerous mix," but I went with this combination instead. |
| The antidote to the poison you just drank | Please do not actually try to use this blog to save you from the effects of any poison. This is just a paraphrase of a line from the opening scene of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Yes, admittedly, Temple of Doom is probably the weakest of the Indiana Jones films, but that opening scene is very possibly one of the great opening action sequences in any movie ever. And the Indy series is possibly the greatest series of action movies ever. |
| Monkeys in a Parenthetical Jungle | A title of a previous blog post that I enjoyed. I think I even considered making it the title of my blog back when I first conceived of it. Because I love monkeys and parenthetical statements. But then again, who doesn't? |
| Deep Hurting | This is a reference to one of the in-between comedy skits on a particular episode of the late, great comedy TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000. This was the show where a guy and some puppet robots made fun of bad movies; this episode was during the Joel years on Comedy Central. (A quick Google reveals it was the one where they watched Hercules Against the Moonmen. Thanks, Google!). This particular line referred to a new technique that the mad scientist was trying out on his poor assistant, TV's Frank. |
| The Smell of the Banana Is Potent Indeed | A title of a previous blog post that I enjoyed. It's not a reference to anything; I was actually observing that bananas have a very strong smell that can infect your other food if you're not too careful. |
| Contemplate This on the Tree of Woe | That's a line spoken (with typical gravity and power) by James Earl Jones in his part as the villain in a particularly great scene from the incredibly awesome film Conan the Barbarian. |
| Adding Pointless Commentary to Your Internets Since 2004 | This one's pretty self-explanatory. My first blog post was in 2004, and my commentary has been pretty pointless since then. |
| I Kind of Want to Slay the Dragon | The last line of the last episode of Joss Whedon's great Buffy spin-off TV show, Angel. This was one of my favorite last episodes of any TV show ever; the episode as a whole and more particularly the conclusion of the episode, and even more particularly this line, really summed up the entire show for me. Plus, it's just a totally bad-ass thing to say. |
| We Hates the Yellow Face | That's Gollum from The Lord of the Rings talking, of course. It's also something I've said on occasion. After all, I'm a programmer and a gamer, so the sun is my natural enemy. |
| Warning - Lark`s Vomit | This is from that true masterpiece of Monty Python's Flying Circus, the crunchy frog sketch. If you don't know what that is, you need to go watch every episode of Monty Python immediately. |
| Ask Me About My Subtitles! | You can if you want to. I'm always open to ideas for more. |
| Baconated | I love bacon. There's a Wendy's burger called the Baconator. I ate one once. That's pretty much it. |
| Rated R for strong bloody ninja violence | The actual MPAA rating explanation for the film The Hunted (1997). I've never seen the movie, but I love the phrase. See this and other amusing rating explanations here. |
| Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you | An old saying which I first came across in the Coen brothers' masterpiece, The Big Lebowski. Truer words were never spoke. |
| All out of bubblegum | This is, of course, a reference to John Carpenter's extremely odd sci-fi film They Live. In the film, the main character - played by professional wrestler "Rowdy" Roddy Piper - enters a room and declares, "I have come to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubble gum." It's the most ridiculous bad-ass threat I've ever heard, and I love it. |
| Fortune and Glory | The second of two subtitles on this list that reference Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. This is a phrase that is repeated throughout the film. At the beginning it summarizes Indy's motives, but by the end he has more important reasons for doing what he does. |
| A blog of the serially obsessive | I often describe myself as being serially obsessive, which means I'll latch on to some hobby or subject and become absolutely consumed by it for a short period. Then inevitably something else will grab me and I'll move on and become equally obsessed with that. My blog usually ends up being all about these obsessions, so there you go. |
| One of a Series of Tubes | Senator Ted Stevens once famously described the internet as a series of tubes. So obviously, being on the internet, this blog must be one of them! |
| Dogs don't know it's not bacon | This is the tag line from a commercial for the dog snack product called Beggin' Strips, and I made it one of my subtitles because I like dogs, and bacon, and this commercial. Also, I think it's just a funny phrase to apply to a blog. |
| A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy | If you were wondering where all the Star Wars quotes were, here's one! This is how Obi-Wan refers to the city of Mos Eisley in Episode IV, and it's also how I often refer to my blog. |
| If there's a bright center to the internet you're on the blog that it's farthest from. | In Star Wars: Episode IV, when Luke is asked by C-3PO to elaborate about the planet where he finds himself - Luke's home planet of Tatooine - he responds: "If there's a bright center to the universe, you're on the planet that it's farthest from." |
| Diary of a Guitar Hero | I can't actually play guitar. But I can play Guitar Hero quite well. |
| Built proudly with PHP and MySQL | If you ever wondered about the blog's back-end, you filthy-minded bastard, there's your answer. |
| You've found the secret subtitle that reveals all my secrets | The subtitle that got you here, of course. |
| Dispatches from the 616 | Earth-616, to quote Wikipedia, "is the name used to identify the primary continuity in which most Marvel Comics titles take place." |
| Now Serving the Worst Pies in London | This one's a reference to the best musical ever in the history of the world, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. (My website does not actually have pies for sale, I'm afraid.) |
| In Yr Middel Urth, Burnin Yr Shipps | My man Fëanor, of Silmarillion fame famously burned some ships to keep his people from turning back on their quest to reacquire the Silmarils. The phrasing and spelling is, of course, a reference to lolcats. |
| Chewbacca Is My Co-Pilot | If you don't know what this is referring to, I don't even know how to help you. |
| Waiting for the Raven King | A reference to Susanna Clarke's wonderful novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. |
| But What If We Could? | A quote from the truly horrible film The Core which pretty much summed up the whole movie for me. |
| A PhD in Horribleness | This is a line from Joss Whedon's wonderful internet video project, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. |
| The Red Queen's Race | In Through the Looking Glass, the Red Queen explains to Alice that in her world it's necessary to run very, very fast just to stay in the same place. To actually get anywhere you have to run twice as fast as that. |
| I think it has something to do with free will | One of many excellent lines from the 1981 Terry Gilliam film Time Bandits. |
| Real Artifacts from Fictional Universes | A T-shirt identifying you as a crewmember of the Nostromo. A book written by Hermione Granger. I love these things, and the fascinating concept they represent. There are also items on my blog that fit this description. |
| Monsters from the Id | A quote from Forbidden Planet that seems appropriate. |
| Staving off existential dread | Yep. Pretty much. |
| The First Element in the Array Is Zero | Truth. |
| A Compendium of Bad Ideas, All Personally Tested and Guaranteed | Yep. |