I had to put an exclamation point in there, because who can say “crisis on infinite earths” without being, well, exclamatory? This week, my column is named after the moment in the DC comics universe (somewhere in the mid-1980s) when all the infinite earths with their multiple alternate versions of your favorite heroes went boom. The series that chronicled this mega-disaster was called “crisis on infinite earths.”

Mostly, however, the column is about why I’ve suddenly become deeply obsessed with comic books. Partly it was a result of exposure to series like Grant Morrison’s harrowing “We3,” which is like a cross between Cute Overload and Apocalypse Now. But it’s also because comic books, like videogames, are a medium that lends itself well to multiple, alternate storylines. New writers, artists, and spinoffs are constantly mutating your favorite narratives, suggesting that every story has several possible endings — not to mention a zillion middles and prequels.

At a time in history when politicians and corporate execs insist that things could never be any other way — when war is justified with tautology and environmental degredation dismissed with “what else can we do?” — comic books are subversive. They remind us that every crisis happens in multiple ways, and can have multiple outcomes. There no inevitable futures, and no present has to be the way it is.

Of course, that doesn’t help me justify why I keep buying “Spike vs. Dracula” comics.

As some of you may recall, I raised a ruckus a few weeks ago because one of my articles was Slashdotted, and about half the comments on it were about my looks. Today, my article about RFID hacking in Wired was Slashdotted, and not ONE SINGLE COMMENT is about me or my looks! They’re all just discussions of the technical issues raised by the article, and the many grumpy potshots are aimed at my ideas rather than my rack. W00t! The cockles of my heart are duly warmed.

My column this week is about why people aren’t outraged by recent revelations that the NSA has been tapping and logging every phone call made in the US over the past several years. It just boggles my mind that more people aren’t up in arms over this unambiguously totalitarian move.

I just got a sneak peek at the cover of my book about monsters, designed by the excellent Amy Ruth Buchanan. It’s coming out in late July from Duke University Press and the art looks awesome! Pretend We’re Dead is based on my doctoral research back in ye olde 1990s, and it combines my love of Marxist cultural criticism with my lust for cheesy monster movies. In a nutshell, the book is about how monster stories express our hidden fears about what the US economy does to us — and the world. Expect lots of vampires, zombies, serial killers, cyber-creatures, and mad doctors! Plus, long discussions of alienated labor and commodification! (Yes, I do have a section about The Matrix Trilogy.)

This Saturday, 5/27, I’m speaking at Stanford’s Human Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights Conference. The panel I’m on is at 4:30, so even geeks with late-night schedules should be able to drag themselves out of bed for the event. I’m particularly excited because I’m speaking on a topic I feel very passionately about: using new technologies to liberate women from traditional forms of reproduction. It’s sure to be controversial, and I’m joined by two other panelists who are speaking on equally-fascinating topics. Here’s the lineup:

Panel Title: Feminism, Germinal Choice, and Procreative Liberty

Nanette Elster, “Barriers to Procreative Liberty: Legal, Ethical and Racial Issues”

Annalee Newitz, “Feminists for Genetic Engineering”

Kerry Lynn Macintosh, “Illegal Beings: Human Clones and the Law” 

Hope to see some folks there! Should make for an interesting late afternoon.

This week on Geek Entertainment TV (GET), you can see me and Nerd Salon co-host Jennifer Granick giggling our way through an interview with Violet Blue about our semi-bi-monthly geek brawl known as Nerd Salon.

This week in my column, I’ve gotten everybody’s knickers in a bunch by writing about how the Web has changed the practice of making pornography forever. As evidence, I venture into the incredibly clean, professional offices of Kink, a major adult Web site production house and film studio in downtown San Francisco. With its college-educated staff, feminist-queer sensibility, and cheery shop floor full of Macs, the place feels more like a hip magazine than a place where porn is made. At Kink, I go on the set during a photoshoot for one of the most creative and geeky porn sites out there today, Fuckingmachines. A friendly, genderqueer director named Tomcat offers Satine, the model, some Luna bars and water while making sure she’s comfortable with the lube they’ve chosen. Eventually, Satine has a real orgasm (yes, you can tell the difference). This alone marks a profound shift in porn making, for female orgasms were hardly the goal (or the outcome) of most pre-Web, traditional pornography.

Sure, pornography isn’t for everybody — and certainly Fuckingmachines.com isn’t for everybody. In fact, I’ve preferred text-based porn my whole life because I don’t have to worry that real, live people were bored or upset by making it. But it’s hard to deny that the practice of making porn has become more professional, above-board, and woman-friendly in the age of the Web. Certainly the setting in San Francisco, rather than L.A.’s “porn valley,” contributes to the feminist, hipster feel of this environment. Nevertheless, I came away from the 4-hour shoot feeling that making porn, when done right, can be a fun job.

On Thursday, I was a guest pundit on John Dvorak’s nerdoriffic ZDTV show Cranky Geeks. I’ve always liked John’s blog and writing, so it was cool to meet him in person. We talked about why everybody loves naked ladies at E3, what’s lame about the new Origami (which I called a “butt-top”), what Warner’s thinks it’s doing cutting deals with BitTorrent, and whether Slashdot is a hotbed of sexism. The show was really fun, and it didn’t hurt that one of the camera crew smiled at me when I made Doctor Who jokes. If you want to see the geeking, check out the show.

Network neutrality is one of those wonky regulatory topics that gets me all fired up. Should companies who own the cables that form the internet be allowed to make people pay to put their wares up on the Web? Or should the wires remain “neutral,” so that all internet content is delivered equally? Find out whether the future will be full of predjudiced pipes or network neutrality in my column this week.

Wired magazine has put the full text of my article about RFID hackers online — it’s in the current issue of the magazine, the one with the strangely hypnotic picture of Al Gore on the cover. For this article, I zoomed all over the country meeting with people who can use RFID read/write devices to circumvent anti-theft devices in cars, break into offices with cloned RFID-powered smartcards, and seriously mess with the “smart tag” inventory systems in stores like Wal-Mart. Plus, I got an RFID chip implanted in my arm, and hardcore hardware geek Jonathan Westhues cloned it.