Where Went Monday?
While I'm generally not opposed to seeing a Monday disappear, I'd prefer it to do so differently.
I had a reaction to something Sunday into Monday and awoke with my skin flared and the area surrounding my eyes looking as if I was either a burn victim or someone who had been crying for 48 hours non-stop, occasionally stopping to wipe my face with a rag soaked in a fairly strong acid. It's a situation that feels uncomfortable and is made worse by the thought of having to deal with people in person. I should keep a potato sack with an eyehole torn in it so I could deal with days like this the way John Merrick did. Well, or at least the way John Hurt did while portraying the tragic, historical figure. (Invoking Merrick does help put all of this in perspective, though. My problems are nothing compared to that .) Regardless, I had to go into work for a few hours to start the day to could clear out some reports and so the rest of the workday, a...
Posts
On The Day
I’ve been avoiding the big international topic dujour, the Iraqi elections, here. It’s largely because it’s little more than a public relations stunt for the Bush administration. Aside from that I will restate what I’ve been saying every time the topic arose: There is no possible outcome to the situation in Iraq that will justify the unprovoked, unnecessary invasion and occupation. I will point out that Mark Gibson , among others, has been bringing up some points that have crossed my mind along the way surrounding today's vote.
Giant-Sized Fun With Death
It's a fashion trend in Ghana, and as Mr. Blackwell and the CDC doctors have often noted over black ties and cocktails, as goes Ghana so goes the world. Why, it's theme coffins , kids! Here we have two examples. A shoe and a shiny, pink uterus! Doesn't it make you want to go out and design some for co-workers and certain public officials? I can feel the love from here.
If Married With Children were still in production the former would be a must-have episode prop. Al Bundy in a premature burial dream sequence -- the scene writes itself! Or they could have ended the series that way. It's all good. I suppose they'd have to make it a woman's shoe, though, or else the gag falls a little short. Ashes, it all turns to ashes in my mouth...
Was the latter coffin an attempt to rewrite "womb to tomb" into circularity? Who knows, but when you're a Jet you're a Jet all the way, pal. I wonder if they can just start ...
$1200 The post on Not One Damn Dime Day (and didn’t that sink below the waves quickly?) nudged me down a path we all at least look down from time to time, concerning leaky points in our budgets. The point of focus, as it’s common, repetitive and something we should have considerable control over, is the workday lunch . As distasteful as such considerations can be (like a blow to the groin, as Homer noted, that works on so many levels), it has to be better to raise them with ourselves rather than wait for a parent, spouse or some other busybody to offer Helpful Hints. Then it becomes an imposition. Something to be resented. This could lead to spiteful, resentment-driven eating, weekend-long D&D sessions and frequent trips to comics and gaming conventions. A sad end, with flabby fingers clutching at a pudgy chest precariously bound by a Thundercats t-shirt that’s easily two sizes too small. Final thoughts of what you should have said in that discus...
Christmas, at the end of January!
Just a public note of thanks to H for being so kind as to make a belated Christmas gift of two of the uniques he pulled as extras from his case of Unleashed. They arrived in today's mail. Fortunately these two powerhouses are hardy enough to survive the cold.
To the left is M a gog , and to the right is Metallo . (Or, if you're at a much lower resolution, Magog will be high and Metallo low -- which sounds about right.) Click on the images for more info on each piece, or go here and scroll down to find some basic info on each of these characters as comics characters.
This could lead to a new stanza for his "No No" song...
(...though I just found out that Hoyt Axton wrote that song...)
Stan Lee & Ringo Starr are getting together to turn Ringo into an animated, reluctant superperhero .
As much as anything else I was surprised to find out that Pow! Entertainment was still in business, having thought it sunk beneath the fiscal waves several years ago. A quick search, though, found that just before Christmas he was touting another reality-to-fiction comics property .
Of course, if the judge's ruling last week stating that Marvel owes a huge sum of film profit money to Stan due to an earlier contract holds up under appeal, it won't be as if Stan or his heirs will need to worry about any of these other things turning a profit. POW! Shareholders, however, may have reason for some concern. ( Tammy spotted the central link for this one, too, so it was waiting for me in my mailbox when I'd finished posting it.)
A lousy day for the nation
Is it any wonder I've been steering clear of the news? Just look at today:
Another 37 US servicemen died in Iraq today, part of a wholly unnecessary action. I remain convinced that there is no possible end result to the situation in Iraq that will justify what's been done.
Bush held the first "press conference" of his second term (that phrase alone is more depressing than I can convey) where the media in general continued to toss softball questions and even put on the kneepads to pleasure him with a rigged questions concerning Hillary Clinton, the state of Social Security, and framing his political opponents as "out of touch with reality." Along with claiming success for the awful policies of his first administration came the promise to do more of the same, and the continued press towards destroying Social Security and replacing it with an increasingly privatized system that the United Kindgom adopted years ago, much to ...
Heroclix: Legacy Update
(Set due March 2 -- Five weeks from today)
I try to cut myself off from more info only to find it being sent to me now. Well, if I'm going to know then I'm going to pass it along.
Pictured here is one of the upcoming Feat cards, Armor Piercing . With this 10 pt card attached to a character even someone with a low Damage can get a click of damage through abilities that reduce damage, and a character with Poison can now poison anyone they're adjacent to, since that's automatic damage dealt, not even requiring a roll of the dice. Slap this on your Man-Thing and do damage to anyone. (Just don't use that example if you 'splain it to your mom.) Cloak , Diablo , Firestar , Viper , Arcane , Clayface , Poison Ivy , Joker and others, with and without Poison, will benefit from this. So will those with Energy Explosion . (Hey, H! Clobberin' Time's vet Hawkeye just got another boost! And that vet Boomerang you recen...
Caninjas? Saskurai?
What's going on up in Canada? Last week it was a sword-wielder in Winnipeg , this time it's in Saskatoon .
Samurai sword used to rob gas stations Last Updated Jan 25 2005 10:42 AM CST
CBC News SASKATOON – Robbers held up two Saskatoon gas stations early Tuesday morning using what has been described as a samurai-type of sword. Police said at around 2:45 a.m., two males with scarves on their faces entered a Mohawk service station at 205 Central Ave. and brandished the sword. They escaped with cash and cigarettes. Two hours later, ...
Another game I won't be playing along with at home
I see that the Academy has anounced the Oscar nominations for the 77th Academy Awards to be held February 27th, which will mean that everywhere people will begin making their personal choices. Once more there are very few items on the list I've bothered to see, and little of that's likely to change in the near future. Still, I'm sure that Oscar picks -- ranging from the "this is who should win" to "this is who will win, because...(insert socio-political reason here)" -- will be on blogs and messageboards everywhere by this evening. For me, any list of 5 top films for 2004 would include Shaun of the Dead , so I'm well outside the Hollywood loop as I'm primarily interested in entertainment value.
Perhaps I should just stick to The Razzies ?
8.125 mph
I live 6.5 miles from work.
Despite the landscape to each side of the road being blanketed in snow, the roads are clear save for a little gray-brown, heavily salinated slush, with fairly well-cleared shoulders. The speed limit for nearly all of that is 35 mph.
It took me 48 minutes to get to work this morning.
There were no breakdowns nor accidents along the route. Merely enough incompetent drivers - from the ludicrously timid to the would-be mental giants who should personally define "multitasking" as driving competently and maintaining life functions, because they aren't capable of doing both those things and operating a cell phone, checking their hair in the mirror, or paying attention to the radio - to make everyone else's lives miserable. Of course, if they just gave up the "maintaining life functions" part that would work for me, too.
We need a plague.
Lost Children of Fickle Fox
After some delay I see that the complete 13-episode run of Wonderfalls is to be released February 1st . I've never warmed to Joan of Arcadia , but unfortunately that show thrived while this one, which I did enjoy, was quickly abandoned by Fox when legions of fans didn't spontaneously manifest. They ran 4 episodes, not even keeping the scheduled times in the same place for that long, then dumped it. So, we have a boxed set coming for a series where the majority of the episodes - 9 of them - were never aired. I'm looking forward to this one, especially since the 13-part arc was written as such, so that if the show didn't get a second season it would be able to stand on its own.
Meanwhile:
Gail Berman, president of entertainment at Fox, confirmed to reporters that the supernatural series Tru Calling won't be coming back—but she added that six as-yet-unaired second-season episodes will eventually see the light of day. ...
Well, they'll be happy at work tomorrow...
(No, I didn't watch, but it's easy to keep an ESPN window open for updates on these Internets. Hey, I didn't know I owned a lumber company...)
... and I'm sure the prices just went up on all those Eagles items in half the stores in this corner of the state. Damn, I knew I should have picked up that big blue and gray, foam "Eagles #1" giant hand glove earlier today for a buck, so I could send it down to Handsome . He's such an Eagles fan, after all. I can almost hear his happy dance of joy from here.
On the left, we see the stain in the foreground where Falcons' coach Jim Mora lost control of his bowels early in the fourth quarter. Down to the right, you see the Eagles support squad rolling the traditional post-game joint, prepared pre-game, which fo r the first time since the early 80's will actually be smoked as part of a victory celebration rather than to dull the painful memories.
Th...
Theeeeere goes Johnny
In a move that should make all former stars who have moved out of the spotlight wary of a sudden media mention, Johnny Carson has died. (I know it seems insensitive to say it, but this is the most over the top, obsequious obit I believe I've ever read. Michael Ventre must watch old Tonight Show tapes as a sexual aid.)
This is just a few days after a friend of Carson's mentioned to reporters that Johnny regularly sent topical humor to Dave Letterman for his monologue, mentioning Johnny's emphysema (which is what ultimately killed him) as an almost passing thing.
If you just stay completely out of the spotlight when you retire you'll live into your 90's and when you die everyone will say "I thought he died years ago." People need cosmic instruction in Fate's generally ironic and cruel sense of humor and its need to listen to what people say and go "Oh, really? Are you sure about that?"
Okay, just one more football note
(after which I'll attempt to go back to ignoring it.)
We had channel 29 news on ("we" being my wife, who put it on and then promptly fell back asleep with the remote over near her -- I'd seldom intentionally put on FOX news) but while I was generally ignoring it some of it was creepin in in the periphery. One of the news-- whatever the hell the propaganda jockeys are on a Fox newscast are called -- was offering tips for people coming to the Big Game tomorrow, and he wandered into advice from some psychologist.
Part of the advice was to avoid letting memories of the countless times the Eagles have choked on the way to or during the championships by being aware of its influence and working against it. In the rush to warn against allowing some reversals in the game tap into those bad memories and start a downward spiral for both the fans and the players, a peculiar suggestion was made: Cheer more loudly when things go wrong.
...
Saturday Snowday
The snow began sometime between 10 and 10:30 this morning, while I was weeding through papers and writing checks for a stack of bills due near or just after the end of the month. I looked out before and there was nothing, looked out next and everything was covered.
I took a walk up the hill to the nearest post office - the snow making a loud scrunching sound with each step - sent my money away, then came back. Now I have a roast, seasoned and surrounded by potatoes and onions, covered and slowly cooking in the oven. That'll be for dinner, of course. I'll make us something lighter for lunch.
There's some work to do around here (there's an enormous amount, but there's only some of it I'm targeting) , along with some writing I have to get to, including some email. Nothing exciting, which is just fine with me. (post #460)
Snow way
Though the forecast altered within the past 24 hours -- they dropped thoughts of a secondary low pressure zone forming just off the coast -- here in Eagleville we're expecting between 10 and 15 inches of snow between midday tomorrow and sometime Sunday morning. People in some parts of the country (especially the mid-West, not to mention the i ntense cold that's been going on farther North ) will just laugh at that -- all the moreso when I mention that save for the two inches we pulled a day and a half ago this will be the first snow of the season for us. Still, I've been looking forward to it in some respects. I'll admit some disappointment in learning that that secondary system, that would have extended the storm through Sunday and into some undetermined amount of Monday, has apparently failed. I was hoping for a legitimate stretch into a three day weekend.
Locally, with Eagles fever burning among the faithful, the forecasts have been quickly followed w...
Slightly encouraged
Sure, Johnny looks much too old, Reed looks much too young, and a mutated Victor Von Doom strikes me as wrong, but the trailer for the Fantastic Four movie looks better than I'd expected. Yes, I know it's mostly an increasingly jump-cut series of action shots set to a percussive, not quite musical track, but Michael Chiklis looks good in that very early Kirby-inspired form of the Thing, and the effects at least look competent. Also, at least it's not being pitched as the action comedy that had been implied for so long. If it hangs together as a movie, internally consistent, that could be almost enough. Well, we'll see the weekend of July 1. (And, yes, I know the trailer's been showing before Elektra since this past weekend, but I haven't wanted to see the trailer that badly.)
Strange Portals
(The first two might not be as practical for dial-up connections, but give it a try.)
Here's a bizarre bit of home music video from somewhere. Probably best not to know exactly where unless this guy looks like a neighbor. (Thanks to Tony Miello for pointing that one out.)
And while I rediscovered this one today while backtracking that nazi doll piece below, as soon as I saw it I remembered that I'd gotten a link to it last year over on Brad Ingle's Mysterious Glow . That'll teach me to take the time to transfer all my bookmarks the next time I switch computers.
For a more static experience, take a look at an online museum of Toddlerpedes .
Finally, spurned any women along the way? Perhaps you've made The Dick List!
Now.... what.... what shall we talk about?
Sometimes there are sites where one doesn't know whether they're intended seriously or are a put-on. One such site I was told about today is a little something called "My little nazi dolls" . (You can ask -- well, hey, I don't want to use names gratuiously. I'm not sure I want to ask what s/he was searching for.)
Legacy -- Rudely Unveiled!
Okay. Wizard has released the list of figures for the set, which you'll find here . It notes the point cost, and team abilities for each, along with whether or not it's a unique of an REV in the set. Below are some hasty shots taken by an HCRealms member that include photos of each of the clix along with their opening stat slot; some shots are fairly blurry, but he deserves credit for having taken the time to do it. He had a digital camera but no scanner. The magazine they're a part of is the Wizard Superhero Gaming Special , which will be officially available tomorrow. For me, this is good enough. On the one hand I was interested enough to pull this together for here. On the other, with the set not due out until March this is too much info too soon.
The presentation below will likely be rough on those without fast connections -- worse still if you're simply not interested. If your screen resolution is set very low, it might be squeeze...
Not to be forgotten or buried ...
With what more than a few of us, I'm sure, consider to be a sham re-installment process coming up in two days, it's important to remember that matters are not as settled as the opposition wants us to believe they are.
One was something I'd caught yesterday, as a spin-off of the MLK Day events, when John Kerry made a point of the disenfranchisement of thousands of voters . ( Tammy sent me the specific link.) Being delivered in an almost passive-aggressive way (deciding not to challenge the election results but saying that there was something wrong) is hardly as forceful an approach as I'd wish, but it does still keep the issue in the periphery of the public eye. The election board system in Ohio is far too incestuous and potentially corrupt for the "official" certification there - and so any official certification by Congress using that information - to be considered a final word. You could do worse than to p...
Enlightening Recoveries & Greedy Losses
Two items concerning film today. I'll handle this Good News/Bad News style. Happily, the two aren't directly related, though they are linked by the medium. Unhappily, the bad news is huge, widespread and worsening.
A film discovery in England of films made of daily life during the Edwardian era has led to some restorations due to be released to the public this year.
"From 1900 to 1913, filmmakers Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon, commissioned by touring showmen, roamed the North of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales filming the everyday lives of people at work and play. For around 70 years, 800 rolls of their early nitrate film sat in sealed barrels in the basement of a local shop in Blackburn. Miraculously discovered by a local businessman and painstakingly restored by the British Film Institute, this ranks as the most exciting film discovery of recent times." I dearly love rediscoveries such as this. Certainly...