While I love the deep sarcastic mediations on relationships in xkcd, I think my all-time favorite comics are, like today’s, the pop song flow charts.

Since it’s cookie time, this piece about overbearing cookie moms and the potential harm they might do is particularly apropos, and entertainingly written.

Oh, and thanks to Doug for pointing out this piece about an interesting policy decision from the toddler years of the American experiment (1798), which puts a big hole in a lot of those arguments about “Founding Fathers’ intent.”

Spent a little time playing Red Dead Redemption, aka “Grand Theft Equine” this weekend. Given my relatively short experience with it thus far, I’d say that all the “Best of 2010” accolades are mostly worth it. For me, though, the fun level ramps up significantly once you get the lasso; breaking wild horses is great fun, and the ability to hogtie bad guys instead of gunning them down fits better with the whole ‘outlaw seeking redemption’ arc the plot’s setting up. As always, your mileage may vary.

Thanks to a couple of redbox promo codes, I watched a few movies this weekend. Besides the annoyance of dealing with “rental market” discs for the first time in forever, I offer a few more specific thoughts:

–Inception: Good flick (probably better than good, actually), though not as totally mind-blowing as so many people said it would be. And that bit of what I guess you’d call abiguity at the end felt a little cheap. Definitely a Nolan film – I kept expecting Bale to come in and start growling in his Batman voice.

–Jonah Hex: Not high art by any means, but better than I expected. Editing was, as reviewers said, agressive, but didn’t, as those same reviewers suggested, make the film unintelligible. Feeling generous, I’d say the jarring scene changes felt not unlike those of a silver age comic book, when the writers had to wedge an entire “epic” storyline within 22 pages, not counting ads for X-Ray Specs and the great stuff you could earn by selling the Grit.

–Nanny McPhee Returns: This was the kid’s idea. I haven’t seen Nanny McPhee, but I didn’t really need to. Wish it would have edged closer to the demonic Mary Poppins film in there waiting to break out; that would have been more fun that what they ended up with. Mostly, though, it made me feel old, what with Emma Thomspon being portrayed as sexless and grandmotherly, and Maggie Gyllenhaal having transitioned into the doting mom role.