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My backup system makes my computer unusably slow if I have too many Safari windows open that contain videos, even if the videos aren't playing. Odd.

Anyway, in the interests of being able to use my computer, here's an assortment of unrelated videos:

• The Mercury Men site provides a trailer for a forthcoming new web series, featuring an office worker and a "daring aerospace engineer" attempting to stave off an invasion. I love the retro look and feel; looking forward to the series.
• The Iron Sky site features a couple of trailers for a forthcoming new feature-length film. Here's the tagline: "In 1945 the Nazis fled to the moon. In 2018 they are coming back." I love the look and feel of the trailers here, too—production values for online video are getting pretty high. Oddly, the trailers look to me like they're for a serious retro-adventurey kind of movie (except for the jokey title sequence at the end of the main trailer), but the site describes the film as a science fiction comedy. Also of interest: "The script is written by award-winning science fiction writer Johanna Sinisalo"—a Finnish writer who won the Tiptree a few years ago. The production is being put together by the same Finnish group that did a Star Trek/Babylon 5 parody movie called Star Wreck.
• Jon Stewart on Obama and torture and Don't Ask, Don't Tell. I don't always love the Daily Show, but this is a great segment—funny and sharp.
• Auto-Tune the News #3. Mad geniuses the Gregory Brothers use Auto-Tune to turn a set of TV snippets into song. (I had never heard of Auto-Tune before; turns out that a bunch of musicians use it to stay on pitch when they sing, both recorded and live.) Funny and neat, and my description doesn't nearly do it justice. If you have a have a hard time understanding the lyrics, click the "more info" link in the little grey sidebar to the right of the video.
• Obama's speech at the 2009 White House Correspondents' Dinner is very entertaining, though perhaps less so if you haven't been following the news lately. It's 17 minutes long; around 13:00, he changes to a serious tone, praising journalists, so if you're just watching for the jokes, you can stop there. Or if you don't have time to watch the video, you can read some of the best jokes in various news articles.

I have bunches of other links to post, but none of them are videos, so the open windows won't slow down my computer use, so I can hold off on those. Tonight, I have to do a bunch of magazine work and a bunch of packing, which is why I'm sadly not attending any of the various events and social activities that are going on.