This actually isn't good! Phones only show you horrors when they're VERY DEPRESSED, or at any other time

#1582; Limit Your Scream Time

  — February 12th, 2026

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The Intergalactic Nemesis: a live-action graphic novel

If I were in Austin this weekend, I’d check out the live premiere of The Intergalactic Nemesis, which might be described as a mashup of theater, radio drama, silent film and animation. This video will give you an idea:

The stage version of The Intergalactic Nemesis projects the comic book artwork panel-by-panel while three actors perform the voices, one foley artist creates the sound effects, and one keyboardist plays the score, all live.

This looks like a really neat thing to sit in a theater and enjoy! I’m a big fan of taking the trouble to seek out unique experiences like this. I saw something similar once here in L.A.: a touring, contemporary silent film called Brand Upon the Brain!, which had been shot as a pastiche of 1920s silent films and which was shown in the theater with a live orchestra, sound-effects crew, and narrator (in my show, Daniel Handler). It was a terminally weird movie — about sucking people’s brains out, and so on; sort of bizarre-for-the-sake-of-bizarre which is a very hard thing to make enjoyable for a paying audience — but the spectacle and the craft of the music and the sound-effects and the whole bit was enthralling in itself. I didn’t even like the movie and I didn’t regret seeing it.

So I definitely recommend checking out The Intergalactic Nemesis if you’re in Austin this weekend! The show comes highly recommended by some of my Austinite friends who’ve seen these folks perform before. Performances are this Friday and Saturday, Sept. 3 & 4, at the Long Center. Tickets are here!

If you can’t make it to the live show, the full-length radio drama is also available as free downloadable MP3s!

Webcomics Weekend tickets now on sale!

Tickets have just gone on sale for the second annual New England Webcomics Weekend comics festival in Easthampton, Massachusetts! Organized by my friend and colleague Meredith Gran and her army of trusty flying monkeys, NEWW is a one-of-a-kind gathering of people who make online comics and other people who would like to hang out with those first people. And vice versa! This year it’s being held November 6-7, taking advantage of the lovely New England autumn.

Tickets are limited and are expected to sell out before the show, so if you’re in the New England area (or within teleportation distance) and a fan of webcomics, this is a great event — it’s social, friendly, a great space for conversation without the high stress of a massive convention, and Kris Straub and I will be doing a live Tweet Me Harder comedy show. What could be better?

Earlier this year, it was a bit weird mentioning my trips to ROFLCon and San Diego, because tickets for those events were long sold out by the time I brought them up. I’m attempting to rectify that this time!

Oh yeah and here is the amazing old factory building where NEWW is held — there is a stained brick room deep in its bowels called the Quarantine Area. What could be better, I maintain?

Attention all ENGINEERS, BEARS, and GRUMPY FUTURISTS!

Have I got some fun new things for you:

Engineering: it’s like math, BUT LOUDER. Based on “Accomplishment Measured in Decibels.” I got a lot of emails about this one, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do it, but then I really enjoyed playing around with the design so now here it is!

Are you a member of the secret order of the International Fraternal Corps of Bears in Ill-Fitting Hats? If you are, perfect! Here is a shirt for you. And, well, you don’t have to be a member of a professional sports team to wear the jersey, you know what I mean?

Unlike most of my other shirts, which are printed on the American Apparel brand, the guys’ shirts here are Gildan — they’re a bit thicker and more roomy than AA. I made that choice because some folks have asked me for a workout shirt, and this provides an option!

I also made a new bumper sticker! It’s not really based on anything except real life. In fact, I am personally very interested in flying cars, and can discuss the question of “where’s the flying cars???” in a fair amount of detail. Interested parties can check out my two favorite contemporary answers to the question: the Terrafugia Transition, basically an airplane that’s also street legal (marketed quite cleverly to pilots and the existing aeronautical community, who are used to both the challenges and the price tag of general aviation) and the Parajet SkyCar, a dune buggy that operates on a parasailing principle which quite handily avoids all the tricky questions of fixed-wing aerodynamics. In other words, one’s a plane that drives, and the other’s a car that flies. Two interesting principles, and I hope we soon live in a world with room for both!

The sticker is available as a 3-pack, or in a combo pack along with 1 each of my other two bumper stickers:

Here is where you click for these things and many more!

True Stuff: Shaving as Barbarous

As reported in the New Hampshire Sentinel, June 20, 1855:

The Albany Argus has espoused the beard movement. This is its argument: – “We have come to the conclusion that the practice of shaving is alike ridiculous and absurd, and that it violates one of the laws of nature. Now, our beard was not given us for no purpose – that is evident. It was created for some wise purpose, and that was to keep the face and throat warm, and thus be conducive to health. Let us look at a few facts. It has been calculated that if one shaves three times a week, it grows twenty times as fast as if he did not shave. Allowing two inches as the annual growth of the beard, it will be seen that a man cuts off forty inches, or more than a yard of hair a year, and the nutriment which supports this, and is thus wasted, might have gone to nourish other parts of the body, and render him a healthy and handsome man! Again, allowing twenty minutes to each shaving operation, three times a week, amounts to one hour a week, – fifty-two hours a year. Supposing a man to shave forty years, we find he has consumed about three months in the simple act of shaving ; and calculating the expense of each operation at the small sum of six cents, we find it has cost him three hundred and sixty dollars. In view of these facts, we cannot but regard the practice of shaving as a decidedly barbarous one, and which ought to be discountenanced by the progressive civilization of the age.”

For more on the Beard Movement of the 1850s, see my interview with the world’s foremost beard expert.

p.s. do you think “shaving / barbarous” was pun-intended because I DO


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