Cool Shit 9/10

Here are five materials made by man that I believe you'll probably take for granted in the next ten years.  It's like a really boring science fiction novel, but real, so still boring, but informative. Like that European History class you took as a junior and went to 3-4 times.

Hey, we all know Google is great for searching for porn - and I guess other stuff. But I'm willing to bet very few of us use google to its fullest potential. Here are five services you may not have known Google offered.

So there may be a Wizard of the Oz (sequel? spinoff?) something coming to television soon, and it's plot is kind of crazy. Like the characters-you-all-loved-from-the-original-movie-have-become-fascist-dictators crazy.

Trailer for the new HBO show True Detective. I believe this series will follow one case for an entire season, and then start with a whole new case at the beginning of the next. And I thought I read somewhere that the cases were real, but I can't find mention of that anywhere now.



The X-Files is 20 years old. It premiered in September of 1993. This story, which is definitely worth reading, tangentially talks about the show, before going off into the author's memories about growing up. Just as I am about to...

I remember sitting in my dorm room on a Friday night (because that's what all the cool kids did, right?) with my roommate when it first came on. I hadn't heard of it (this being the time of Internet infancy) and had already missed the first few episodes. We watched "Space," not a particularly great episode, but I could see the potential of the series...better yet the concept of the show spoke to my paranoia-conspiratorial mind. Growing up I loved to believe in the unknown, had desperately wanted to see a UFO (from afar of course; I'm no Roy Neary), wanted to travel into the Pacific Northwest in search of Bigfoot, to travel to Scotland and once and for all get to the bottom of Loch Ness, be visited by Men in Black (this was before Wil Smith and Tommy Lee Jones made them cool; to me references to Men in Black - or MiBs as my friends and I called them) were mysterious and dangerous...and scary.

As I was older skepticism, cynicism and rationalization settled into my head, but I never gave up on the fantasticical mysteries that could still be out there. And Mulder's mantra, "I want to believe" hit me at my core. I mean, I even recreated that poster and have it hanging in a room in my basement right now. Yes, The X-Files thinned itself out like a runny italian dressing at an Old Country Buffet salad bar near the end, but it's identity latched on to audiences everywhere and made us not only think monsters could be real, but that the real monster was the government. And look where we are now.

Ok, we need something lighter. How about some ridiculous Gwyneth Paltrow quotes? Quotes that fully show that her reality is somewhere not on this planet. If that big spaceship, living thing from Elysium ever became a potential reality, I'm 90% certain not only would Ms. Gwyneth be the first to sign up to get up there, she would definitely be helping fund the militaristic defense system to keep the ugly "middle class heathens" down here on Earth.