Cash On the Bullet Head Anne brought up a piece on private security/law enforcement/military forces as an example of an ongoing, potentially troubling trend. To be honest, it crept up on me so gradually I hardly noticed it. It's such a part of the post Reagan-era privatization/ federal abandonment of the citizens push -- you know, everything from the rise of a bottled water/ home purification system industry as the government gradually eased itself out of the potable water supply biz to the ongoing abandomnent of healthcare for citizens -- that, as I said, I hardly noticed it. What I did notice I simply wasn't pausing to examine. Is this what we want? A growing army of domestic mercs to fill in whenever a rogue regime decides to send our National Guardsmen to places they never should have been sent?
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Heroclix Sneak Peek Wednesdays continue This week it's seven changes to the Powers and Abilities . Also, today starts the one week of voting for the next one or two Collector's Sets . If in the next day or so, as the info sinks in, I have a revised take on them I'll add a Second Pass note. Taking the simpler, second item first, the choices are: Dark Horse HeroClix: B.P.R.D. Dark Horse HeroClix: Grendel Wildstorm HeroClix: Astro City DC HeroClix: Metal Men Marvel HeroClix: 2099 If you don't happen to know who some or all of these groups represent, then here are some very brief descriptions . I've already voted. My choices? 1 Dark Horse HeroClix: B.P.R.D. In terms of characters of interest and variety this would be an easy sale for me. The B.P.R.D. was one of the two major selling points of Indyclix for me at the time. (Unfortunately for me, being here in the U.S., the other was the 2000 AD line.) A cool addition, this also strikes me as an another interesting, un...
I wonder if the transmission has been filled with Excelsior ? Yeah, Stan Lee's auctioning off his Mercedes . ( Updated 3/29 ) Well, what more am I supposed to say? Note for those on the outside that Stan's the guy who - working with comics industry giants such as Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Gene Colan, Don Heck, etc. created and told the early tales of the Fantastic Four, Spider-man, the Hulk, Avengers, Daredevil, X-Men, etc.? If I have to explain the two levels of the excelsior gag then I'm too old and you're too young for us to be talking, and we probably each need a nap anyway. Oh, I do like the first potential bidder's question at the bottom: Q: does the old guy come with the car? I could really use a butler The auction ends Wednesday. ...and so it has , but without a sale! The bidding went to $5,800.77, which didn't cross the undisclosed reserve price. If I notice them running it a second time I'll make a note of it.
Tethers, Counterweights and the Masque of Life I was starting to give a summary response to many of the much-appreciated comments in the previous thread, as I try to put it all in perspective for myself. The capping comment started to grow a little long, so I thought it best just to make a post of it. Apologies in advance if it reads in a stilted, awkward way, but this is a Monday morning just before the start of a new and unwelcome work week and there's simply not the time. Part of me just expects me to roll with it, and in the end that's almost certain to happen. I can't do anything about what has happened, so it'll retreat into personal and local history and fade from my immediate consciousness. Still, I'm trying to extract something good or at least useful from the experience. There are the obvious lessons -- realizing this didn't come about overnight and that Mike Deeds, whatever his motivations, was likely on a long slide towards Saturday morning's t...
Homegrown Saturday morning tragedy A less-than-blissful domestic situation in one of our neighbors' homes apparently led to a shooting here in Montgomery County, PA. Consequently there's much activity around here this morning . (Though they have the name of the street misspelled.) Man shoots wife, barricades himself in home... and it's ongoing , so I'll update this as matters progress. It's quiet for now. Update: While the local news has yet to update, word is that the man may have killed himself. Holding the crime scene intact while waiting for the coroner to show up would fit what we're seeing. Update II: While the local news services haven't updated, once we were able to get out and about people were able to talk with the police and we found out that it was, unfortunately, one of the people my wife regularly spoke with. Update III & likely final: I've included a local newspaper's coverage of the tragedy. We don't yet know why, but it ap...
But Uncle Ben 's still dead, right? [I'm going to plant a spoiler warning here in case someone other than held off until now with the intent of catching up on the current run of Captain America . If that's the case, then leave this entry for another day.] Is it safe? Well... okay then. Characters seemingly coming back to life is a staple of comics going back to its earliest days. In nearly all cases it turns out that scenes of certain death were a matter of perspective, often purely a ruse, and some avenue of escape was at hand. Generally it's a villain's prerogative, but the grave's hold on almost anyone in comics is tenuous, subject to the whims of editorial mandate and the latest hot talent taking over a character's life and wanting to "take him back to his roots." By the late 1970s many of us noted with respect to the Marvel comics universe that there were only two characters we could count on staying dead: Peter Parker's Uncle Ben and Cap...
Shh. I had to pass along this shot someone recently took of Black Bolt from June's Sinister set, and to note that the release date for this set and for the Danger Room starter set is currently June 28th , so we have a very solid three months between us and the on-sale date. Given the timing I'm expecting this will mean that those of us going to Wizard World East in Philadelphia, June 2-4, won't have a shot at these aside from getting to see them up close in a display case. Three and a half weeks before a set's release is likely too far these days. No sweat, though. The end of June will be here soon enough. The confirmed list for the set has expanded in the past week to include a Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker (though it's been shortened over the years to simply "Baron Strucker") unique, complete with upraised Satan's Claw (I couldn't quickly come up with a pic of the claw itself.) Here's a character stretching back decades. While not authenti...
Harvest basket full of Monsanto shares? Hardly a new issue, but a timely one and one requiring broader public awareness: Terminator seeds . This is one of those topics I've meant to touch on for a long time, but kept forgetting to. (The issue has been on the table since 1998 , when it was used in connection with cotton.) In short, the people behind bioengineered crops have taken a step in a direction that, well, strikes me as so blatantly base and immoral that if there is a God then the folks behind this scheme are damned. Bioengineering of crops, while an area that must be approached with caution as it involves making changes in living, growing things and then introducing them to the environment, is a potentially wonderful thing. Whether it's to produce new strains that either produce more or better grain or to allow plants to grow under a wider range of environmental conditions, bioegineering offers an avenue of improving not only this planet but potentially of helping to ter...
Another Wednesday (A little more discussion on Jean Grey was added Thursday) Compulsory plug: The Legends APA benefit auctions are approaching their final 24 hours . Some activity so far, but - understandably - I'm hoping for quite a bit more by the time these wrap late Thursday. Okay then... Can't we take a quick & binding vote to declare this Thursday night instead of Wednesday, so when we get up tomorrow morning it'll be Friday? We've suffered through dirty trick votes and recess appointments in the past five years, can't we bend the rules in our favor once? A bits and pieces post: First , channel all good thoughts and feelings to Tammy as she's in the midst of a great deal at the moment, any specifics of which are for her to elaborate on or not. Here's looking towards a good report upon her return on Friday. (See? Another reason to vote to skip Thursday this week.) Tonight we get the kick-off of the new season of South Park with a "Re...
"War" or ratings play? When I first saw this article (which my wife had sent me a link to) about South Park continuing to butt heads with Scientology I thought it was looking ahead to this upcoming Wednesday and new episode. As it turns out the episode under dispute from this past November, and the new episodes begin this Wednesday (22nd) with one featuring "the return of Chef", which is a fun approach to Chef's voice, Isaaac Hayes, recently announcing he would leave the show. (Something reported by Tony Collett at the start of last week.) I would be very happy to find out in the end that the Isaac Hayes/South Park scientology riff was nothing but a ratings-grabbing publicity stunt -- which would make sense since this blow-up only happened within two weeks of a new season launching and was in reaction to an episode run last November. When this first hit the press I was mainly surprised to find Hayes reported as a Scientologist, though I can't say exactly...
Superhero ™-ic Exclusionism? It doesn't seem very heroic (of course, I'm not a shareholder), but it's obviously all about trying to corral the cash as Marvel and DC apparently continue to press or at least establish their claim of co-ownership of the term superhero - a claim they've been making for at least two years , and judging by Marvel's continued push during a "science of superheroes" exhibition is being maintained. IMHO Cory (unless he's operating with additional evidence that DC has formally bowed out of this and has publicly conceded " superhero " to the public domain) is betraying his own negative take on Marvel by calling for fan press action against Marvel which comes to a head in the following: Here's a proposal: from now on, let's never use the term "super-hero" to describe a Marvel character. Let's call them "underwear perverts" -- as Warren Ellis is wont to -- or vigilantes, or mutants. Let...
I came home a short time ago from seeing V for Vendetta , a film based on a 1980s story written and illustrated by Alan Moore and David Lloyd . Set in a bleak, relatively near-future where a totalitarian Great Britain has come about due to a governmentally-created and sustained climate of fear. The government's darkest secrets from the dark days when it took power and purged the nation of "undesirables" have been personified and come back to take it down, and he's wearing a Guy Fawkes mask. I expect that critics will largely pan or dismiss the film, be it out of their own sense of self-importance, the connection to the Wachowski brothers pushing their Matrix buttons, their politics being too Conservative to give the film's message any positive nod or their thin blood leaving them too weak to risk being accused of supporting or allowing any justification for terrorism. The "with us or against us", Right vs Wrong, "our enemies are madmen" atti...