Harmless fun. Nice to see some slick CGI use from Peter Berg, who’s directing Dune in 2010.

I’m serious this time, Kotaku. We’ve been here before, and I know, I know, I’ve always come crawling back. But this time I mean it. There’s no blame here. We’re just in different places right now.

Look at your front page. Look at it. Four stories about GTA IV sales in places where I don’t live (Australia, Europe, Japan and…Australia …

Sometimes I get to see movies early. The movie studios all have New York offices, and in those offices they have little plush screening rooms — baby movie theaters with nice sound and no popcorn — and sometimes they invite the press to come in and see movies early, partly in the hopes that we’ll write something about said movies, …

EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s Nerd World post, entitled “Wikipedia Brown And The Case Of The Unreliable Swear-filled Encyclopedia,” will not be seen today. Before the author had a chance to write it, he mentioned the idea to someone at work, who told him B.J. Novak from The Office already did a much better version of the idea than the author …

In the Simpsons rewrite room, the biggest compliment you can give to a joke is to call it “Swartzweldian.” Meaning, in the style of legendary Simpsons writer John Swartzwelder. Meaning (to me) uniquely dumb and smart at the same time. Meaning, great.

John Swartzwelder wrote fifty-nine episodes of The Simpsons, including such …

INT. LUCAS RANCH – SCREENING ROOM – DAY (1998)

As John Williams’ classic closing credits theme plays, the lights go up in George Lucas’ private screening room. Our heroes have done it. The fanboys have seen “The Phantom Menace.”

FANBOY #1: What the hell was that?

FANBOY #2: Midi-chlorians? Midi-chlorians!? What — the force is …

I am once again on leave from Time for a few weeks to finish up a book I’m working on. (Do not ever sell a book. A bunch of maniacs will come after you, tear a Word file off your hard drive, and print out like thousands of copies. They claim they can do this because I “deposited” their “check.” Whatever.)

So I will be fobbing off a lot …

An e-mail containing the most astounding news just surfaced in my inbox, still dripping wet from the great oceanic Interweb. Neal Stephenson, author of Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, etc., you know who he is, has a new novel out this September. It’s called Anathem. Below, lovingly hand-transcribed, is the catalog copy:

Since childhood, Raz

…

Puny Norton,

Please do not make Hulk’s new movie suck. Hulk want new movie to smash box office records, not smash nothing.

Hulk stuff always sucked. Starting with Hulk cartoon, when lady flapper sings “Aint he unglamorous!” in old-time voice. What the Hulk is that?

Then Hulk TV show. Too much puny Bixby, not enough Hulk. Yes, …

I could have split these up and given them their own posts, but that would have required extra effort, and that’s not how we roll at the NW.

Thing 1: You’ve probably already seen this cardboard animation of the light cycle sequence in Tron, but you haven’t seen it here! Now you have. A testament to the power of unshaven French …

I have been to the opera on two occasions this spring. Once to Prokofiev’s War and Peace and once to Wagner’s Die Walkure. This brings to two the total number of times, lifetime, that I have ever been to the opera. Though I have occasionally dabbled in classical music, the opera house is not my natural habitat. But it is possible for a …