Where we went wrong A friend's son celebrated his birthday today, and a late-day report from his dad tells of how part of the late-day festivities involved watching some Johnny Quest cartoons ('64 vintage, of course) from a DVD set, which his wife noted had to be the "ultimate boy's cartoon." Along the way he also mentioned how the kids don't seem to have the stomach these days for much birthday cake. When we were kids a birthday cake would easily be half-gone after just the first wave of attack, but these days and these kids they barely make a dent. During a quick reply I noted: I think this is where we lost the battle for the future we were supposed to have. We grew up in the '60s, when the year 2000 held Moon cities and rocket packs. The '60s, when man started the decade aiming for the Moon and ended it reaching there. We had cartoons like Johnny Quest , and there was sugar in everything. Even the astronauts were supercharged with a Ta...
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"I always wondered why there weren't any Arabs leaping off buildings." Aside from us not flying an airliner into a highrise, I'm stumped, too. Okay, a terrible cheap shot, that. The above, terribly out of context line, is from a piece on a line of Arabic superheroes . AK Comics , which I admit I'd never heard of prior to this, claims to have been operating for a year --- and could very well have been, with current distribution only in Egypt but branching into Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states --- is obviously making a bid for global attention. They should have gotten their website set up a little better first, but it's a potentially interesting set of projects. Depending upon how much they charge and how easy they make electronic payments I could see giving them a try just for curiosity's sake. From the looks of it they'll be dealing with many a flaming hoop when it comes to censorship; I'm wondering if what will come out the other side ...
Zombie Terror This one's out of Kentucky, where a high school junior was arrested this past Tuesday because of a story he wrote in his private journal concerning zombies overrunning a high school . Apparently this constitutes a "second degree terrorist threatening charge" Even so, police say the nature of the story makes it a felony. "Anytime you make any threat or possess matter involving a school or function it's a felony in the state of Kentucky," said Winchester Police detective Steven Caudill. The above statement is incredible. Well, rather, my mind rebels at accepting it, especially the section I emphasized. Never mind the rest of the story, including that this kid's grandparents decided to read his journal and turn it over to the authorities. I wonder if the kid would have been taken down as strongly if he'd finished the story and submitted it in his English class; at that point, I suppose, it would have been at the discretion of his tea...
Getting some appetites back A rough week, dragging myself into work to deal with what needed to be dealt each day, then heading back home early, I made it through with improvements, and by the latter part of the week was able to get comfortable enough to sleep for a few hours at a time. Friday I overdid it by staying nearly a full day, and paid the price for it Friday night and today; I once more feel somewhat mugged of what's now half my weekend. I'm doing much, much better, but have been sticking to reading so as to strike the best combination of holiday and recovery. The reading material's ranged from the latest Legends (arriving Tuesday as expected) , a stack of comics and trades I've been catching up on, a few magazines, and a collection of John Brunner short stories (appropriately enough The Best of John Brunner - apparently currently out of print) & Heller's Catch-22 (though I couldn't easily find my annotated copy, which was the one I was looking ...
I hate being sick on my own time I could feel it creeping up on me Sunday afternoon, and by the time I tossed up the Constantine post the sore throat, headaches and the first signs of the long, long night of sweats and chills was upon me. Consequently I've been even more useless today than normal, which given my record for Mondays is saying something. Of course, this had to be part of the mix when I pull a three-day weekend. If I just stayed away from people none of this would happen. I haven't found the right combination of over the counter meds to overdose myself with yet, but in honor of Hunter S. Thompson (the final fate of whom I only just found out about 20 minutes ago) I should give it at least one more good try. I'm not getting anything useful done today, so I may as well try for something more resembling comfort. Of course, even television has sucked royally today, and that level of passive entertainment is about as much as I'm capable of at the ...
Hell To Pay No long review, but I did want to mention that they did a fairly good job with Constantine . Those going looking for the Alan Moore character or the characters and plot from the "Dangerous Habits" storyline that acted as a seed for the central arc of this movie will be disappointed. Aside from that, though, the most damning thing I can say about the transition from the British rogue mystic from the comics and the American damned soul is that while they give him the trappings of roguishness Keanu Reeves ' Constantine too quickly becomes a sympathetic character. In the comics, Constantine isn't someone one wants to have to deal with, being only preferable to the truly nasty things one might need his help in escaping. As for the movie itself, there's not much in the way of real surprises, and you'll almost certainly see the ending coming... and I'm not even sure I completely understand why the Lord of Hell made the decision he did near the end un...
Saturday's rolling on through I'm getting some writing done this weekend, but it's not email -- at least not so far. So long as I keep myself busy with something and not tumble into cable TV limbo, I'm not going to lament the items I'm not getting to. My original plans for this three-day weekend included a new batch of comics from Westfield and the latest issue of Legends (#109) to dig into, but the evil gods of delivery have conspired to keep both pacakages away from me until at least Tuesday - the same Monday holiday that gives me the day off will keep the mail away. I know the comics are coming then, as I have a FedEx tracking number for that, and since the Legends issue made it to at least one of the members a couple days ago I'm expecting that to be here by then. Various extra expenses and my wife still being home and recovering (doing well, though, thanks for those who've been asking/sending good wishes along) from a job where is she's not work...
Zappa reminds us how little some things have changed A piece I'm a Crypt Leak mentioned in a comment on a previous post (along with having mentioned it to me last week) is an interview with Frank Zappa . Zappa died late in 1993, but isn't the following even more apt today than it was then: Democracy is one of those things that looks good on paper, but we've come to a crossroads in contemporary America where we really ought to decide, Do we *want* it? When you have a preponderance of people in this country who will willingly accept censorship- in fact, *ask* for it, *demand* it in the case of the Gulf War- you've got a problem. Asked random questions about the First Amendment and how they would like to have it applied, if you believe in polls at all, the average American wants no part of it. But if you ask, "What if we threw the Constitution away tomorrow?" the answer is "No, that would be bad!" But living under the Constitution is another sto...
So... With respect to longevity, men and women are better off married and fighting ? This is reminding me of Dunbar from Catch-22 , who cultivated boredom and hung out with people he didn't like because since it made the time feel as if it was passing so slowly he believed it was lengthening his life. Good Lord, now we're supposed to feel guilty about falling asleep "afterwards" ? The middle section of the article momentarily had me imagining something happening on the dining room table, with the 1812 Overture booming on the stereo. Well, it has to be a better choice than Elvis Presley or Britney Spears, and Barry White would just make me laugh. Did Barry's music ever "work" for anyone over the age of 16? Oh, who brought all this unsavory stuff up? Okay, on a completely different subject, how about an inflatable pub ? Looking at some of the pictures I already feel as if I've had a few. (This last link came in from Tammy.)
Don't Panic The trailer for The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is available online . Amazon's set it up with their own player. The movie premiers April 29th and looks to be a good time. I'm sure it'll have some thing to upset the most ardent purist, but as it's primarily schtick and social parody/commentary anyway, I suspect this will survive the translation to screen far better than the average novel.
Being buried, bit by bit.. . Most of you are familiar with the general "stop loss" tactics employed by the military to delay the departure of personnel from military service. It's the invocation of a contractual clause that's forcing members of the military to stay in the service months and more past their release date. Maybe you weren't familiar with all of the details, among them the 40,000 troops in Iraq who have been informed that their enlistment has been extended until December 24th, 2031 . Meanwhile, over on Tony Collett 's blog he's made a point of two important bits of maneuvering going on in the US. One involves a special, until recently secret deal between Wal-Mart and the Department of Labor to essentially turn over employee complaints made to the DOL to Wal-Mart's corporate offices . The other involves a threat to cut PBS funding if they don't get more in line with the president's political ideology. Finally, a couple...
Why I don't do Valentine's Day No, it's not that it's a Hallmark Holiday (though it arguably has become that, but its roots go back to Roman times , though the incidents that led to the naming came later ) nor that I'm not particularly romantic (though I'm not), it's just that the anniversary of my wife and my first date falls on February 2nd - Groundhog's Day. Consequently, within the first few years we shifted the Valentines theme to a point 12 days ahead of the rest of you. No, we're not furries . We hit our 26th such anniversary this year, btw. (High school date, that. I'm old, but not that old.) Our 20th wedding anniversary's coming up this June. I would have held off the wedding longer but that shotgun steel was feeling mighty cold at the base of my skull.
100 Great Things About Comics Checking around the web a little I saw the “100 Great Things About Comics” challenge over on Tony Collett’s blog , started (though not as a challenge) by Fred Hembeck , and decided I’d take my stab at it. I made a point of not going beyond a quick look at Tony’s list and not checking on the others he noted until afterwards. I wasn’t trying for a “100 Greatest ” list, just 100 people and things in, involving or connected to comics that I found worth noting an appreciation for. So, here’s my list, in no order whatsoever. In fact, to avoid any confusion that this list is in any way a hierarchy, I’ve refused to number it! Some names come up multipole times, attached to specific projects and all by themselves. If I handled it that way I obviously think the person deserves a sort of lifetime achievement award in addition to my pointing out some specific projects. From the whimsical to the serious, here are 100 of the things I th...
Get Rock Hard Wood Now & Preparing the New Place (Two from the science desk -- though mostly one about Mars) While requiring a few days of special treatment, a 1400 degree C furnace and an argon-filled (though likely any of the noble gases would do the trick) cooling vessel somewhat limit the widespread application, DOE scientists have replicated "petrified" wood in the lab . The natural process involves millions of years of gradual replacement of organic structures with infiltrating, dissolved and redeposited minerals. The artificial process involves alternating baths in acid and a silica solution and then an intense bake. Being able to replicate fine organic structures in mineral form is one of those pure sciene applications that may have significant, practical applicaitions, ranging from special filters to high strength materials due in both cases to the dense arrangements of fibers. Other applications are always possible. Then, while the notion of introducing more gr...
Revealed and Seen Nick (son) and I got out to see a movie late this afternoon, something we hadn't gotten to do in a while. My wife was getting some rest and Trav (other son) was over a friend's house, so it was Cinema Nick and I again. There had been such a dearth of films we were interested in seeing through most of December and January, but two weeks ago we had gone out to try to see De Niro's latest vehicle, Hide and Seek , but the theatre was mobbed and we let it slide. Last weekend was the first post-surgical one, so we didn't want to stray from home for that long. Today was more relaxed, though, and more successful. The film concerns itself with a New York City father and daughter who, following the suicide of wife/mother, move to a new home in the country. The daughter makes an imaginary friend at the new locale, "Charlie", and then increasingly bad and threatening things happen. That much (well, perhaps aside from the suicide) is what anyone who...
Bits & Pieces Friday night I came home, made dinner, did a little reading, some writing and a lot of sleeping. I needed the rest. Now I'm playing catch-up on some projects. A busy day ahead. A quick follow-up to the Monk post last Sunday: I see that as of this week's episode (which I just had on as background tv a few minutes ago) they may be trying to turn things a little by laying the crime (another incompetent murder) by allowing the audience to see it all happen, after the style of Columbo . They still need to hire writers who know how to write a mystery even if the audience isn't asked to solve it. Also, it's clear that they're going to continue to flirt with the Natalie and Adrian as romantic interests. From the look of things we'll be seeing at least once every few episodes Adrian momentarily overcoming one or more of his phobias to help Natalaie or her daughter. Ah, well... Speaking of less than inspired criminals (and derivative ones, at that) we ...
Well, it does appear they're going to make a Watchmen movie after all, though it's now slated for 2006 , not the 2005 referenced at imdb. Attempting to squeeze that story into less than two hours (into less that ten , even) isn't advisable. It will have to be very much its own story, be only the loosest of conceptual adaptations, and will have to be judged on its own merits as a completely separate work. To do otherwise is to declare it doomed from the start. (There are still copies of Sam Hamm's script , now some 16 years old, kicking around on the web if you're interested in one attempt at such a screenplay. Key elements from the original comics are changed, but many of the scenes are reasonably intact.)
I see the screenplay is currently credited to David Hayter , who has gotten the assignment (I'm supposing) largely on the strengths of his screenplay work on the two X-Men movies.
He's also one of the screenwriters on two other 2006 comics-t...
Not Dead Yet (Just occasionally bordering on being envious of them.) Nah... it's probably not that bad. But there's still a couple workdays left for it to go from frantic, through frenzied and into Stroke City. I really, really have to find something I want to do with my life before it's over one way or another. I want to face my day with eagerness, not dread. I'm sick of dread, folks. It's been dread du jour for most of the past 13 years, and I need a salubrious change or I'm going to have to get up and walk out of this whole "life" joke. Okay, I probably won't go that far, but then again maybe restraint's been my mistake all along. On other fronts, Wednesday came to mark the official turnover of all things Central Mailer to new Legends CM Tim Tjarks . (Either revising that Legends site or setting up a new one is something on my To Do list for... somewhere in the next week to 10 days. That's two years out of date and showing it.) To a...
Thick as a Brick A man in North Carolina sees Jesus, seeks profit . Click on the holy icon above to check the auction's progress. ( Update: Something odd's happening with this on eBay. It's been there and then pulled... and then back again... then gone. The first time or two when I re-affirmed the link it worked, but upon the latest check it wouldn't. It seems that linking to it from offsite won't work, but if you go to eBay and search either for "Jesus, brick" or item number 5557213882 you should see it.) Am I the only one who thinks Jesus looks as if he's been beaten unconscious, his mouth agape and his eyes swollen & purple? Maybe he was one of the victims of the annual kite-flying festival in Basant . (Thanks to Tammy for sharing that annual Pakistani tradition with me.) ( Update 2/11: The auction was temporarily halted by eBay and then restarted, so it has most of a week to go again. Another person (well, a different registered user n...
Mr. Monk & the Ghosts In the Machine
When one publishes an item online it's always a possibility someone will come across it years after one posted it and send an email if there's a mail link available. It can be a little disorienting when it happens, especially if one's all but forgotten about it. The worldwide web is littered with such artifacts. This has happened to me several times, as when an economics student putting together his master's thesis came across a piece I'd written on comic book production numbers - a little back-calculation I was able to indulge in because a friendly acquaintance gave me the order number Diamond had given him for the first issue of their comic, which I could use as a reference number against Diamond's ranking system... it's no less boring now than it was then. Still, it caught this graduate student's data-hungry attention and before I knew it I was answering various question and became one of the citations in h...
Hey, I could have just put one of these up in the oak tree out back and never left my mom's yard!
Yeah, that's the dream...
I'm a Crypt Leak sent me this link (click on the images for more info and images) earlier in the weekend to a "suspended spherical housing module" designed to be suspended from a tree. A cool concept, but I can't imagine how quickly the lawyers would appear if someone tried selling these here in the U.S.
Dead Birds, Moribund Weekend
Well, they gave it a good try and almost made up the lost ground. Personally, I think I'll blame those replays of John Ashcroft singing "Let the Eagle Soar" for the team's loss this year. Yes, I like that. Spread it around.
I'll be interested to see if all the Eagles flags will still be on the cars tomorrow, including those who had themselves set up like oddly-colored Nazi staff cars with a flag on each side of the car -- well, come to think of it, it's almost always an SUV.
I've made up my lunch for tomorrow, and will be pressing in to wrap up items I'm working on in the next few hours so I can catch a few hours sleep before getting an early start on the day. I'll probably take a few moments to toss up some posts here first, though, as I could use a break.
A quick (halftime-coincidental) break
I snuck a peak at the Superbowl score and saw the 7:7 tie as they reached halftime. My only real interest in the outcome remains the local mood, especially in the workplace. I'd much prefer being surrounded by happy hangovers than unhappy ones. During the past week in particular I've been seeing people in Eagles jerseys and hats, and I don't relish the thought of all those people finding themselves wrapped in the cloth of defeat.
I'm still kicking myself for throwing time earlier today into one of those comment thread situations which one knows ahead of time will not have a good outcome for anyone, where there will be no end save for calling one one's self, a move made all the worse because I did it on a day when I have so much to get done. Sleep might not work itself into my schedule until Monday night. I have no one to blame but myself.
Putting another perspective on the Superbowl, though, is an email f...
Pinned Down
An uncharacteristic silence. It's been rare in recent weeks for me to let this slide for a few days, but I know that blog entries - much as email - is narcotic writing that can devour chunks of time. Chunks of time I don't have this very busy weekend.
A word of thanks for all the well-wishing notes concerning my wife's health. She doesn't like me mentioning details, so I avoid them, but I can mention that Friday's surgery went well and so far everything's looking good. We lost 8 months due to an earlier surgical fix proving to be the wrong path, but so far we're hopeful that 8 months from now she'll be well on the way towards recovering a degree of health and life she hasn't had in a dozen years.
For now, though, I'm diving back into some projects that must be accomplished this weekend. Once those are done and I'm staring down another work week I'll likely be back into all this with a mofo powerful vengeance... unles...
Political Points
(As quickly as I can)
Seeing as how the mere phrase "of President Bush's second term" gives me angina, and the partisan cacophany of applause that accompanies any State of the Union address makes listening to them for actual substance worse than listening to a person with a desperate stutter read an article from a golfing magazine in front of golf fanatics who've been swilling hi balls in the clubhouse all afternoon -- I will not be listening to el Presidente' yammer on tonight. The transcripts will be up soon afterwards and the hashing and rehashing will be relentless tomorrow. This is all bombast and window dressing anyway, with the real battles on the issues raised yet to come. Honestly, I may very well avoid it until the weekend.
The gutting of Social Security and the spilling of its entrails onto the wheel of fortune is one item sure to be presented tonight as a timely rescue mission. The sham election in Iraq (also noted here and ...
Going Sullenly Where Only One Other Trek Has Gone Before
UPN has cancelled Star Trek: Enterprise . The final episode will air May 13th, ending the series in its fifth season. Even Voyager managed to make it through a seventh season, so Enterprise becomes the first of the Trek spin-offs, and the first Trek series since the original one (which only lasted three seasons) to go down before completing a seventh season. I feel sorry for the fans of the show, and for many of the people involved on the other side of the camera, though I tend to think that Berman and Braga may have simply gotten a deathgrip on this cash cow of the spaceways and refused to let it go to fresh hands before it was too late.
I have little doubt that petitions are already being circulated, targeting UPN for a reprieve and probably Sci Fi to see if they'd pick it up, but I'm not going to look around for them.
Welcome to Puppet Hell!
The souls of the damned, trapped in puppet form! If they threatened us with things like this while we were in grade school, rather than scarred, superstitious agnostics we might all still be good, scarred, superstitious Catholics.
Listen close to the wind, and you can almost hear the ghastly, wheezing screams of Andy Devine ! Worse than the screams themselves are the reedy, harmonica-like sounds as he fills up his lungs for a good bellow.
Death by murder or the official verdict of suicide, only George Reeves (and his killer, I'd suppose) would know for sure. There don't seem to be any clues forthcoming from this puppet, though, unless... his "Ayyyyy!" pose is meant to finger the Fonz . Hey, come to think of it, it all did happen back in the fifties. Exactly when did Fonzie roll into town?
Here's an odd time-twist. Here we have what's supposed to be a puppet of 1960's -era Morticia Adams as ...
Twilight of the Kings of Comfort I was responding to a post over on Handsome’s blog (scroll down to “COMFORT ZONE”) when it struck me that noting his post and making a post in turn about it would be the best approach. Whether one sees this as an expanding juggling act of reciprosity or an ouroborous of incestuous circularity or a huge, flaming mound of manure is, as always, up to you. H found himself mulling over something I’d written a while back about how comfort figures into the political scene, and his ruminations led me to the following: It's not clear what it will take to get people to vote for change.
Sure, if things get bad enough, more will be moved to vote for change, but if things get that bad there'll be enough arguments against doing much of it as there is for it because the economic conditions will be all the more dire. It's always the same, with even those who believe in a better world for the most people it never seems to be quite The Right Ti...