"No longer like a toad in these foul cellars will I secret the venom of hatred -- for you shall bring me love!" - Erik
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« June 2006 | Main | August 2006 » July 31, 2006Chicago vs. Wal-Mart NYTimes (found on Digby): My favorite quote: "It's sad - this puts politics ahead of working men and women," John Simley, a Wal-Mart spokesman, said in a telephone interview. "It means that Chicago is closed to business." Yeah, they voted 35-14 to put politics ahead of working men and women by giving working men and women a raise. How do you say stuff like that for a living and still sleep at night (I know, i know: on a big bed surrounded by beautiful women. It's times like these i wish i was religious so i could be content in knowing these people would go to Hell.). And another vindication for those of you with the Costco memberships: In arguing that Wal-Mart and other companies can easily afford to meet the new standards, proponents of the measure pointed to Costco, which says it already pays at least $10 an hour plus benefits to starting workers around the country. By fnord12 | July 31, 2006, 5:15 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (1) | Link Good comics week: Ronan, Avengers, ASM Would be great if it weren't for Ronan dragging things down, but even that wasn't as bad as i thought it would be... Ronan The Accuser #4 It started off pretty strongly in the Prologue, with Ronan being falsely accused of treason to the Kree empire, and him having to go off and defend his name (it had nothing to do with the Annihilation wave, but it was a good enough concept that i was willing to go with it). But when Ronan arrives on a planet that has basically been taken over by all of Marvel's "space" women, working for Gamora, who last i read was A) dead and B) a good guy, things got a little weird. Nebula, major bad-ass who has taken on the Avengers multiple times and claims to be the grand-daughter of Thanos, working as a goon for Gamora was really odd. But instead of really going into an explanation of what they were all doing there, we switch over to Glorian, of all people (unless the explanation is that everyone was mind-controlled by Glorian That's what i'm going with, but that's not a very good story). So who is Glorian? Glorain is gold-skinned rainbow boy. He makes your dreams come true. He's sort of the herald of the Shaper of Worlds, who is a pasty white skrull stuck in a box (Amazingly, that's the best picture of the Shaper I could find on the internets. I'll have to scan one in later.) Glorian is tired of being the herald and wants to Shape his own Worlds. So he gathers the necessary energy by, umm, mind controlling people to fight each other. That's cheesey. That's, like, Contest of Champions "let's think of a reason to have fight scenes" cheesey. And it doesn't really go anywhere. Whatever Glorian was up to gets interrupted by the Annihilation wave, rushing in at the end of issue #3 to drag Ronan back into the main plot. Glorian sacrifices his newly created world to defeat the Annihilation wave. Ronan... fights some bugs, and finally hunts down the person who falsely accused him, who of course dies before she can tell him anything. Useless. Ronan decides he needs to warn the Kree about the bugs, which means the point of this mini-series was basically "here's what's been happening with Ronan before he finds out about the bugs". The only way this plot could somehow be relevant to Annihilation is if Annihilus himself arranged for Ronan to be falsely accused, and we don't find out about it until the main story. That's way too much subtlety for the big bugger so i don't see that happening. Which means this story was both bad and pointless. So why do i say that this issue wasn't all that bad? Well, it was basically a big fight scene, with all the various factions fighting the bugs until Glorian's big deus ex moment, and as it turns out, the art is by Jorge Lucas (i did that joke already), who is quite good and detailed in a Future Imperfect George Perez sort of way. Additionally, the coloring is interesting. So from a visual perspective, i liked it a lot, and for a big battle scene, that makes up for a lot, even if the plot isn't very strong. Avengers #22 Anyway, this issue did a lot to make me see it from the other side, and also to make the law look alot more like an MRA than an SRA. Luke Cage, doing nothing but sitting in his home, was to be arrested because he had not registered, simply because he has powers. Which means the law is wrong. Even regardless of that, it was a great issue. Good characterization of Luke, and the relationship between Luke and Jessica. And i like the approach of the New Avengers during Civil War - i don't know if it will continue but it seems like each issue will focus on one of the team members and their reaction to the law. That's a really good way to deal with a crossover, and it lets focus on one of Bendis' strengths - characterization - while the main action takes place elsewhere. Amazing Spider-Man #534 By fnord12 | July 31, 2006, 1:13 PM | Comics | Comments (4) | Link
$12,000 for Tom Defalco to sit around and think up Speedball Jim Shooter (from the Comic Urban Legends series on Comics Should Be Good!): By fnord12 | July 28, 2006, 4:00 PM | Comics| Link As I Lay Dying Review Just finished Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. It's a crappy book. Not in the sense that it was badly written. It's well-written, the characters are portrayed well. It's crappy in the sense that every single person in the book is cracked in the head, and as you read it, you wish someone would just beat them all to death with a stick. Man's wife dies. He insists on taking her to some other town to bury her, claiming it was her wish. Well, they've only got a rickety wagon and all the bridges have washed out in a storm, so they have to go the long way. In July. Can you imagine the condition the corpse had to be in after 9 days on the back of a wagon in July? Not to mention the coffin got submerged in the river at one point. All the while, the husband just keeps going on and on about how hard life is to him but he doesn't begrudge anybody anything and blah blah blah. I hate martyrs. I share the sentiment of the doctor at the end of the book. "Of course he'd have to borrow a spade to bury his wife with. Unless he could borrow a hole in the ground. Too bad you all didn't put him in it too..." [emphasis mine] He clearly deserves to be beat to death. The reason the everyone else deserves a good beating is because they all see he's a good for nothing whiner but they go along with all his bullshit. Sure, living with him has driven all of his kids insane, so you can't blame them too much, but the neighbors are more than willing to go along with his seriously bad judgment and his "poor me" attitude. If i could, i'd have jumped into the book and wrung his neck about 2 chapters in. Other than that, it was a good piece of literature. By min | July 28, 2006, 1:26 PM | Boooooks | Comments (2) | Link
Diaspora Review Fnord12 won't read it. He says if it takes me 3 tries and a website to get thru a book, he doesn't want to have anything to do with it. I don't think that's fair to poor Greg Egan. And anyway, you don't have to actually understand the math to understand the story. Despite my website reference, i think i only understood 1% of it all. So sad for me. Stoopid brain. So, the plot. As provided by Amazon: "By the end of the second millennium, the human race has evolved into three distinct groups: conscious software programs known as citizens, sentient robots called gleisners, and unaltered humans or fleshers." Actually, the fleshers are mostly genetically mutated/enhanced, but some remained unaltered. The book mainly follows the life of a citizen named Yatima. In the first half of the book, you see how Yatima starts as a sentient with no self-awareness - like a baby looking into a mirror for the first time - and evolves thru its experiences. The innocence/ignorance Yatima exhibits in the first few chapters are the best part, i think. Others' lives are often touched upon and later linked with Yatima's story. The second half of the book deals with the discovery that the universe will soon be destroyed in a second Big Bang that nothing will survive. Yatima and others work towards finding a way to escape the outcome and this is where the math comes in. Hyperspheres. Five, six, nine dimensions. Oy. I liked this book. I especially liked the math, but would definitely appreciate it if someone could sit down and draw me pictures to explain it. I also liked the interactions between the characters - how different must your frame of mind be when you can clone yourself and live completely separately from your clone for thousands of years, only to merge back into one identity in the future? I think i liked it less than his other books, though. I think it was the ending. Sort of anti-climactic considering the whole "the end of the Universe" thing. I don't want to give away too much in case some of you want to read it (you know, the ones who aren't big weenies like FNORD). Let's just say that the ending is a quiet and calm affair. It fit. I wanted something more conclusive, mebbe, but it fit. By min | July 27, 2006, 1:21 PM | Boooooks | Comments (2) | Link The Elusive Black Holes Scientists have been looking for black holes in space. For the last 2 years. They can't find them. The only explanation is that the blackholes are hiding from us and they're very good at it. They are clever like that. By min | July 27, 2006, 1:03 PM | Science| Link Why Should We Buy Solar Power? We can make our own. China has built a nuclear fusion device that they call the "artificial sun". If the test is successful, it will be a new source of energy. The plasma discharge will draw international attention since some scientists are concerned with risks involved in such a process. But Chinese researchers involved in the project say any radiation will cease once the test is completed. Let's hope they're right about that radiation thing. By min | July 27, 2006, 11:58 AM | Science| Link More toys to kill you with. I was originally against pre-painted plastic miniatures as a matter of principal, plus the original ones i saw (by the people who went on to make HeroClix) were pretty crappy, so when Wizards of the Coast started putting out theirs, i just sort of ignored it. But recently, in my quest for a female halfling cleric (which i still haven't found - i think the people who make minis assume all girls want to be Elven princesses), i started looking at the WOTC site and saw all the wonderful creatures they've been making. When i saw that they made Tiamat, i was hooked. Got myself a bunch of other classic D&D monsters too: you can see the Purple Worm in the back there, and there's some Xorn, and some Grell, and Thri-Kreen. Also got some bizarre stuff like those Celestial Dire Badgers and Giant Frogs, and a good smattering of generic skeletons and wights and other monsters. They actually look pretty good. Some of their spears are a little flacid, if you know what i mean, but the paint jobs are much better than the earlier ones that i saw (and look at least as good as the crappy job i've done painting the metal ones). In fact, i like 'em so much i'm gonna get some more. The site i ordered from didn't have any Bulettes, but i've found another site that does. I wonder if i can get some Rust Monsters... By fnord12 | July 27, 2006, 8:57 AM | D&D | Comments (11) | Link Stars and Stripes of Corruption by the Dead Kennedys Finally got to Washington in the middle of the night I looked up at that Capitol Building Walked up the hill to touch it Like a great eternal Klansman The symbols of our heritage So this is where it happens Makes me feel so ashamed No wonder others hate us The drug we're fed People we know who should know better Are the Soviets our worst enemy? The blind Me-Generation so easily used, so proud to enforce The stars and stripes of corruption Tell me who's the real patriots Rednecks and bombs don't make us strong Real freedom scares you So you chicken out and threaten me Saying, "Love it or leave it" But what can just one of us do? We can't destroy society in a day We can start by not lying so much And you know I'm thankful I live in a place Let kids learn communication People will always do drugs No one will do it for us Thank you for the toilet paper Our land, I love it too Let's bring it all down! By fnord12 | July 27, 2006, 8:54 AM | Music| Link
Bottled Water Go read why bottled water is bad for you. Intro paragraph: By fnord12 | July 26, 2006, 12:58 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link What the--? Link: "Your failure to condemn Hezbollah's aggression and recognize Israel's right to defend itself raises serious questions about whether Iraq under your leadership can play a constructive role in resolving the current crisis and bringing stability to the Middle East," said the letter obtained by The Associated Press. It was signed by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Sens. Richard Durbin of Illinois and Charles Schumer of New York. OK. I'm happy to condemn Hezollah (although remember they thought they were just starting up another routine round of prisoner swapping by kidnapping those soldiers), but i don't recognize any country's right to defend itself by bombing civilian targets in other countries, so i guess i'm not qualified to run Iraq. And where do we get off telling the PMs of other (supposedly) independent countries what they should or shouldn't say or do? By fnord12 | July 26, 2006, 12:11 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (5) | Link
Whose Space? Their Space! Wayne lent me Spin magazine's August 2006 issue so that i could read an article about MySpace. It doesn't seem to be available online yet, but it's all about me being a chump: All those verbs mean that if you put your material on the site, it can now be used by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., the company that owns MySpace. With such open-ended phrasing, MySpace could argue that it has the power to license music and art for, say, movies or MySpace advertisements without paying you. Just as an aside, is anything not a part of Rupert Murdoch's evil empire? The article then talks a little about protest rock singer Billy Bragg, who has taken his songs off MySpace because of this. Jane Ginsburg, a Columbia University law professor who specializes in intellectual property issues, suggests that Bragg's concerns may be justified. "I can understand why an author would be reluctant to sing on to this," she says. "I think the interpretation that [MySpace] could use [content] in any way that they want without getting permission, and without compensating the owner, is correct." Oh yeah. It's all those naughty lawyers' fault, for actually reading the contract. Nevermind that it was MySpace's lawyers who wrote the contract. So what does this mean for me? I have no delusions that the four songs i've put up on MySpace are fantastic and are going to make anyone gobs of money, so i'll probably just leave them up there out of inertia, but it's still pretty annoying and it ruins the myth of the internet being a magical place where people can share their music without record labels. By fnord12 | July 25, 2006, 5:21 PM | Music | Comments (6) | Link Rice in Beirut How sweet. She brought blankets. That proves she cares. By min | July 25, 2006, 1:57 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link Ninjas Are Sweet! I don't care how old this is. Call it a classic. Ninjas are sweet! 1. Ninjas are mammals. 2. Ninjas fight ALL the time. 3. The purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill people. Ninjas can kill anyone they want! Ninjas cut off heads ALL the time and don't even think twice about it. These guys are so crazy and awesome that they flip out ALL the time. I heard that there was this ninja who was eating at a diner. And when some dude dropped a spoon the ninja killed the whole town. My friend Mark said that he saw a ninja totally uppercut some kid just because the kid opened a window. By min | July 25, 2006, 12:19 PM | Ummm... Other? | Comments (2) | Link
Aren't you guys getting ahead of yourself? By fnord12 | July 24, 2006, 5:26 PM | Comics| Link Anyone out there not depressed yet? More James Wolcott, who used to be a snarky, kind of light and funny sort of blogger. I would go to his site when the other blogs were too depressing. You should go read the whole thing, but here are By fnord12 | July 24, 2006, 5:07 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link Did he graduate from the Weston A. Price school of writing? From James Wolcott: *"It was in 1989 that Taheri was first exposed as a journalistic felon," wrote Larry Cohler-Esses in The Nation. "The book he published the year before, Nest of Spies, examined the rule and fall of the Shah of Iran. Taheri received many respectful reviews, but in The New Republic Shaul Bakhash, a reigning doyen of Persian studies, checked Taheri's footnotes. Suddenly a book review became an investigative expose. Bakhash, a history professor at George Mason University and a former fellow at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, detailed case after case in which Taheri cited nonexistent sources, concocted nonexistent substance in cases where the sources existed and distorted the substance beyond recognition when it was present. Taheri 'repeatedly refers us to books where the information he cites simply does not exist,' Bakhash wrote. 'Often the documents cannot be found in the volumes to which he attributes them.... [He] repeatedly reads things into the documents that are simply not there.' In one case, noted Bakhash, Taheri cited an earlier article of his own--but offered content he himself never wrote in that article. Bakhash concluded that Nest of Spies was 'the sort of book that gives contemporary history a bad name.' In a response published two months later, Taheri failed to rebut Bakhash's charges." By fnord12 | July 24, 2006, 4:54 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (1) | Link The Silence of the Blogs(?) I never heard of The Forward, but they're apparently finding some sort of irony in the fact that "liberal" bloggers aren't saying much about Israel's war. To support their point, they quote a bunch of centrist and center-left bloggers (like Kos and TPM) who've basically said that there's not much to say because our government is not directly involved so there's nothing we can do about it or because they don't want to attract a bunch of anti-semite "supporters". That's all fine and maybe they should be beaten up a little for not taking a stand, but why make it seem like it's a trend when you've got Billmon, Digby, Juan Cole, and James Wolcott, all prominent liberal bloggers, doing fairly detailed and ongoing analysis of what's happening there. This is the best part, though: "Why would you expect complexity from bloggers, left, right, or Martian?" Wieseltier wrote in an email to the Forward. "They are not in the complexity business on any issue. Maybe the problem is not complexity but complication - the way in which sympathy with Israel's campaign against Hezbollah, and therefore with the use of force, might complicate their lives in progressiveland, where they live." Waaaaah!!! Why won't anyone read our magazine??? You know, why is the guy from The New Republic sending emails complaing about bloggers to The Forward anyway? How do you think that went down: Hey, we're doing sort of a half-assed article on how liberal bloggers aren't talking about Israel as much as maybe we thought they would be. Care to comment? Or do you think Mr. General Critic of Bloggers has been emailing his critique to everyone in his Contact List, and only The Forward took the bait and wrote the article? By fnord12 | July 24, 2006, 4:11 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (1) | Link Godzilla: Final Wars Not to be outdone by Spored, we have our own Godzilla review. I warn you. There will be spoilers. The movie was touted as a return to "old-school" Godzilla, as it is yet another "final" episode in the Godzilla franchise. It is definitely the best of the "new" Godzilla movies, but hardly on par with 1960s-1970s Godzilla, imo. So, the movie starts off with Godzilla falling into the ocean in the South Pole and getting frozen there. Some years later, the UN has formed a force of super-humans (also referred to as mutants) whose purpose is to fight monsters. Suddenly, monsters are everywhere. Australia, China, Japan. Mutants are sent out to engage them. Enter the requisite aliens. They're actually controlling the monsters. Their goal is to enslave the Earth and use the people as a food source. And guess what? The same thing that lets them control the monsters also let's them control the mutants! That pretty much takes care of the entire mutant force in the first 30 min. All except one, that is. He's special. Who didn't see that one coming? What follows next is lots of dialogue between the main characters. Lots of time spent on discovering the aliens who claimed to be friendly weren't really. Lots of really poor acting on the part of one Don Frye, former mixed martial arts champion who speaks English the entire movie while everyone around him is speaking Japanese and a worse actor than Hulk Hogan (despite what Spored would have you believe). One not so thrilling motorcycle fight scene. And still no Godzilla. No Godzilla for at least the first hour of the movie. More humans running around and dialoguing. Meanwhile, Godzilla is presumably fighting a space robot monster the aliens sent in. But you wouldn't know it cause they don't bother to show you the fight. They were too busy showing you people. Jerks. They can go to hell. At some point, it becomes pretty obvious that the people making this movie are either big fans of Star Wars and the Matrix or weren't able to come up with their own ideas so had to steal them from someone else's movies. There's a scene reminiscent of the Death Star run in the first Star Wars movie. Also, lots of Matrix-esque camera work on the fight scenes with the slow motion and the flying in the air and such. Mothra makes a two-second appearance, but the little twins don't do their little Mothra song, so there's another point deducted. Jerks. The space monster robot turns out to be King Ghidorah in disguise. Ofc. He kicks the crap out of Godzilla. Alot. Godzilla triumphs at the end and then tries to eat the humans, but Manilla steps in. Godzilla, thus thwarted, decides to go back to monster island and have a beer. The humans are happy. They're saved. Except, pretty much all of Japan has been destroyed what with all the monster fighting going on. And realistically, I'd say all the people were dead, too. But, hey, who cares? They beat the aliens! By min | July 24, 2006, 1:00 PM | Godzilla & Movies | Comments (8) | Link Good Comic Book Week: Nova, Eternals, Civil War, and Cable & Deadpool This week's comic review: Nova #4 Eternals #2 Civil War #3 Cable & Deadpool #30 By fnord12 | July 24, 2006, 10:17 AM | Comics | Comments (1) | Link
Always the last to know How come no one tells me these things: The move out of the retail store business will enable a deeper focus on Wizards' core business of game design, unnamed company officials said in the release. Wizards' trading card games and role-playing games -- including Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons -- are among the biggest brands in the hobby game industry. Monday December 29, 2003 [!!!!!] Compound that with the fact that The Game Room seems to no longer be interested in stocking Wizards of the Coast related products, and we've got a little problem finding D&D minis. By fnord12 | July 23, 2006, 11:09 AM | D&D| Link Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you: Is this the face of a killer? The Elektra film gets a solid "almost OK" rating from me. More ninjas totally flipping out and killing people definitely would have helped things along, but it had reasonably true-to-the-comics versions of Stick and Typhoid Mary, so it gets credit for that. I probably would have liked it less if we hadn't fast forwarded through most of the "plot". Now, i have to be careful here, but Fantastic Four may have actually been "pretty good". I caution you, i had just sat through Man-Thing and Elektra, so it's possible that even Nothing But Trouble would have seemed like a good movie by comparison*, but i actually enjoyed FF. Sure, the Dr. Doom character was terrible, sure the Thing looked absolutely awful, sure the plot made very little sense... wait, was i saying this movie was good? Well, it was a fun dumb action movie, let's just leave it at that. By fnord12 | July 23, 2006, 10:22 AM | Comics & Movies | Comments (2) | Link
Goram Gruenwald If you followed through the links in my previous post, you read about Vibro (if you didn't, you missed some funny stuff), but you may not have read this in the comments: I just read through a huge stack of Denny O'Neil Iron Mans, and they definitely read like that -- here's some interesting and serious stuff about Stark's alcoholism, here's some interesting stuff about Rhodey learning to be Iron Man, and oh, i guess we'd better throw in some lame villain, too. I thought it was just O'Neil bowing to comic book convention. Now that i know it was Mark Gruenweld, king of cheese, forcing those characters on O'Neil it makes even more sense. The saddest part you can tell from the previous issue's teaser and that blurb on the cover that he was really excited about this new character he'd come up, like he'd created the next Magneto or something. By fnord12 | July 20, 2006, 9:13 PM | Comics| Link Lame-Ass Villains Bored at work? (i know you are) Go check out Dave's Long Box's Lame-Ass Villian Compendium. And don't worry, they're mostly all Marvel characters. By fnord12 | July 20, 2006, 4:30 PM | Comics | Comments (4) | Link X-Poll Your opinion solicited: Should the X-Men comics focus primarily on themes like prejudice using the mutant concept as a metaphor, or should they be primarily super-hero comics like, say, the Avengers, that occasionally deal with the mutant theme as an extra layer? By fnord12 | July 20, 2006, 11:57 AM | Comics | Comments (47) | Link And I Thought You Guys Were Crappy Drivers This poor kid. But I have to say, I'm totally on board with him never driving - ever. It's bad enough with my dad out there driving with one eye sporting a cataract and the other with double vision (God help us - his eye doctor said it was fine for him to drive). By min | July 20, 2006, 10:48 AM | Ummm... Other? | Comments (4) | Link Brought To You By The Letter 'R' Rod sometimes mentions a comic he read where Doctor Octopus stole the Letter H. To illustrate the severity of this, all the Hs in the comic were missing. In the end, Spider-Man stopped him. It would appear that there is one other person in the entire world who has also read that comic. "We've lost our Rs. And we want them back," said Randall Jones, president of Headley Hardware. It wouldn't be so hard for a thief with 4 octopus-like robotic arms, now, would it? By min | July 20, 2006, 10:35 AM | Comics & Ummm... Other? | Comments (19) | Link Hoppy in Ireland Oh, sure. Wait til after we leave before something exciting like this happens. "This kangaroo broke loose just before the show while they were bringing him from the cages to the arena. He decided to take a walk," said local farmer John Walsh on whose land the 2-year-old male, named Sydney, made his break for freedom. I'd also like to point out another example of Global Climate Change there with Ireland having "plenty of sunshine". It's just their luck. The Irish finally get to enjoy some decent weather for a change, except they're all so short on melanin that they'll end up getting skin cancer because of it. By min | July 20, 2006, 10:17 AM | Ummm... Other?| Link All I need is some inspiration Nobody comes to see me They told me to get healthy Drinkin' lemonade shanty I wrote a thousand letters I call my baby on the telephone I can't fall in love with a wheatfield Blue skies and swimming pools Reminds me of our trip to Ireland. By fnord12 | July 20, 2006, 8:47 AM | Music | Comments (1) | Link *sniff* I wish you people would stop mowing your.. *achoo* ... your lawns. By fnord12 | July 20, 2006, 8:41 AM | My stupid life| Link
When you are surrounded by madmen, keep your mouth shut A Peter David story found on an old message board: Well, before THAT rumor gets out of control, let me clarify that that came out of a discussion I was having with Tom DeFalco while in Jim Owsley's office, and it wasn't serious. Tom--who, by the way, is a good friend and I adore the guy--was illustrating the importance of not writing stories that make it impossible for subsequent writers to continue the series in the same spirit. And he said, "I could write this fantastic story in which we kill off JJJ, and have this heartbreaking death scene with him and Peter in which they finally come to terms, and then JJJ is dead. But what do you do then?" And I instantly said, "Well, I'd have the Kingpin buy the Daily Bugle." And I started rattling off this whole storyline with growing excitement. Poor Tom's standing there going, "No, no, Peter, you're missing the point" and I'm jumping up and down and saying, "Owz! Owz! This could be great! Let's do it! Let's kill off JJJ!" But I was never really serious and it didn't go beyond that. The karmic revenge came some years later when I was at an X-writers' retreat (doing X-Factor at the time) and we were discussing Magneto's imminent return and him facing off against Wolverine. And I said, "Y'know, I don't know why Magneto even bothers with Wolverine. Why doesn't he just rip out Wolverine's metal skeleton and be done with him." And Bob Harras and the guys all looked at each other and said, "What a GREAT IDEA!" And I immediately said, "No, guys, no, I was kidding, it's a terrible idea. Wolverine can't survive that." And they're going, "No, it could work, 'cause he's got a healing factor." And I'm screaming, "Healing factor?!? He'd HAVE NO BONES! He'd be a healed puddle of flesh!!! Are you all INSANE?!?" And they went and did it. My major contribution to X-mythos, and it stemmed from one dumb remark that I tried to recant and couldn't. PAD By fnord12 | July 19, 2006, 3:54 PM | Comics | Comments (1) | Link Poppycock Democrats seem about to put themselves through this agony. Pundits and politicians tell Democrats that they have a "values" problem -- that people of faith vote against them in large numbers because the Democratic party is seen as secular, or as anti-Christian, or as straying from mainstream values. Poppycock. Democrats didn't lose Florida in 2000 and the 2000 election because of the lack of a high faith profile. Al Gore won the popular vote nationally and the popular vote of the majority who cast ballots in Florida on Election Day. He lost Florida because the fix was in, because the Voting Rights Act was not enforced -- and because Republicans turned the recount into an alley fight while Gore played by rules. Then a transparently partisan majority in the Supreme Court violated its own principles and shamed itself by ordering an end to a fair count, worried Bush might lose. This wasn't about faith; it was about will. Similarly, Democrats didn't lose Ohio in 2004 and the 2004 election because of the lack of a high faith profile. They lost because the fix was in, and because once again, Republicans had a partisan zealot -- Ken Blackwell -- as secretary of state. Once again he abused the powers of his office in choosing voting machines and election schemes. Once again, a majority of people set out to vote for Bush's opponent. Having identified the wrong tooth, Democrats are now hearing the wrong prescription. They're urged to embrace the symbols of faith, to go to church, to speak from the Gospel, to advertise their faith. By fnord12 | July 19, 2006, 12:51 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (1) | Link How a purely capitalist government works Americans trying to flee the Israeli bombing of Lebannon have "been told they can't board a ship unless they've signed a contract agreeing to repay the U.S. government for the price of their evacuation." By fnord12 | July 19, 2006, 12:36 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (4) | Link
Godzilla vs. Giant Mushrooms Spored To Death reviews Godzilla 2000. By fnord12 | July 18, 2006, 3:34 PM | Godzilla| Link The Four Most Overpaid White House Staffers Heh. From Thinkprogress: By fnord12 | July 18, 2006, 1:40 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link Feeling safe? Thought i'd help promote a little fear-mongering from Billmon: The bottom line is that like any fading rock group, Al Qaeda badly needs a hit to avoid being permanently supplanted in the public eye by its Shi'a rival, which is setting the charts ablaze, so to speak. If the original band or its various spin offs have any ambitious projects on the drawing boards, now might be the opportune time to put them into production. By fnord12 | July 18, 2006, 1:27 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link
Bad comic book week: Super-Skrull, Silver Surfer, and X-Men This week's comic review: Super-Skrull #4 So how to address the "loser villain" issue? One option is to let the bad guys actually win every once in a while. The problem with this is it can distrupt the comic book's status quo in a big way, killing off heroes or conquering a planet or whatever. Unless you're prepared for the villain's win to be a major event, instead of the "villain of the month" story, you can't do that too often. Another option is to let the villain be successful elsewhere - just not when the heroes are around. There's been some evidence that for low level earthbound villains, they generally make a good life for themselves robbing banks and whatnot in the parts of the US where the heroes don't congregate. With a character like the Super-Skrull, who acts mainly off planet, this could have been even easier. He could be a prominent general of the Skrull army who just can't handle Earth's super-heroes (which is no shame - even Galactus, Thanos, etc., get beaten by Earth's heroes). But the writer of the Super-Skrull mini (Javier Grillo-Marxuach, the writer of the TV show Lost, which, for some unfathomable reason, isn't a sequel to The Land of the Lost) decided to not go this route, i guess because he wanted to explore the idea of a loser super-villain who has to now prove himself a hero. It's an ok theme to explore, i guess, and it starts off ok, except for being very, very slow. The problem is, after establishing the Super-Skrull as a ruthless and efficient strategist, it turned things around with a really cliched betrayal plot twist. The betrayal doesn't even make sense from a character perspective - when you have a character speaking to the audience in the first person in issue #2, you can't turn it around and pretend it was all a ruse in issue #4. This issue, showing Super-Skrull developing feelings for the pawns he's been using and then trying to sacrifice himself to save them (i think? I got bored and stopped reading so closely and the art was annoyingly unclear), was just sappy and out of place in a story about one of Marvel's great villains. All in all, some decent moments but ultimately not worth it. As far as advancing the overall Annihilation plot, Annihilus doesn't even appear in this story. The Silver-Skrull managed to destroy the Harvester of Sorrow weapon, but we don't even get Annihilus' reaction to that, so it doesn't feel like it was that important. Silver Surfer #4 X-Men #188 As far as the story goes, the idea is that this team is going to be the "rapid response team," and it's going to be lead by Rogue. Isn't every super hero team a rapid response team? I mean, the idea is that they sit around their headquarters and when they're trouble they quickly mobilize and respond. The other option is the pro-active team that hunts down the bad guys before they do anything, which is a concept i love in theory but which has never really been executed well. I guess you also have super-heroes who patrol, actively looking for bad guys doing bad things, like Spider-Man, and explorers like the Fantastic Four who go to bizarre places and run into trouble with the locals, but i think "rapid response team" is actually the norm. But i think the idea is that this team might be the ones to do the dirty sort of black-ops work that the regular X-Teams might not want to get their hands dirty with. Which is a good way to distinguish them from the other X-Books, and could be a good idea. And it's an interesting group of team members: Rogue, Cannonball, Iceman, and Mystique so far. The little corner box (yay! the return of the corner box!) also shows Cable and Sabertooth. The cover art also shows Aurora (from Alpha Flight) and Lady Mastermind (who i think is a character Claremont created because they killed off the original Mastermind with the Legacy virus). So there should be some interesting dynamics between Cable and former pupil Cannonball, and Mystique and foster daughter Rogue. Also interesting that on a team of 3 former team leaders (Cable, Mystique, Cannonball), Rogue, typically a loner, will be leading the group. Yep, it all could be quite interesting, if only the art wouldn't suck. As it is, i'll pass on this series, unless the artist changes. By fnord12 | July 17, 2006, 1:08 PM | Comics| Link I thought you were going to ask me about the pig. I will provide no context: "I haven't seen the pig yet," said Bush, sidestepping the question about insights gained from his two-day visit to this rural seaside region that once rested behind the Iron Curtain in a Germany divided between East and West. And when an American reporter asked Bush whether he is concerned about the Israeli bombing of the Beirut airport and about Iran's failure to respond to an offer for negotiations that the U.S. and European allies have made, Bush replied with more boar jokes before delving into the substance of the questions. "I thought you were going to ask about the pig," said the president, promising a full report from the barbecue. "I'll tell you about the pig tomorrow." By fnord12 | July 17, 2006, 12:13 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (1) | Link
Sicker Still There are Christians who can't wait for the end of the world because they think Jesus will come and take them to heaven. They call it the Rapture. They are excited and happy about things like Israel bombing Lebanon because it means the time of the Rapture is approaching. All the lives lost are a good thing, as far as they're concerned. The only thing they're sad about is they didn't convert enough people. It's sick and demented to cheer for the suffering of others because you think some mythical savior is going to come and take you away. Well, guess what? Even if Jesus did come, he wouldn't take you because to have joy over war and death makes you an evil person, and the Christian faith has a completely different place for your kind. If you can stomach it, here's a message board with some Rapture enthusiasts. If not, here are a few of the posts on the site: If He tarries, I will just have time to get my hair and nails done (you know let all I come into contact with know of my Bridegroom and what He has/will do). So i am all spiffied up for Him when He does arrive to take me home. No disappointment, just a few last minute details to take care of to be more pleasing to look at. Days like today it's all I want. Other days because of others I want one more. But what a privilege to be apart of the rapture. I can hardly wait!! They're all so excited by the prospect of being taken away from this "harsh" life to some wonderful place that they don't give a damn about how they get there. So what if it takes the deaths of millions to bring it about? By min | July 14, 2006, 11:36 AM | Ummm... Other? | Comments (1) | Link Sick If your response to the kidnapping a couple of your soldiers is to massively bomb civilian targets, resulting in the death of some 60 people so far, you are massively fucked up in the head. Everything else, like the fact that the Lebanese government is new and very fragile right now and has absolutely no control over Hezbollah, is obvious. You want to pressure Lebanese government to get off their asses and shut down Hezbollah? Fine. You want to create a special forces strike force to sneak across the border and get your people back and kill some terrorists? No problem. You want to go to the UN and ask them to send in the smurfs to put the country under control? OK. You want to massively bomb another country in violation of international law, killing civilians? You're a psychopath. Chomsky made an analogy when the US attacked Afghanistan. It was along the lines of, 'if someone comes into your house and murders your family, the correct response is not to firebomb the entire neighborhood the murderer is hiding in'. That analogy is even more apt here. Update: Billmon is, of course, more eloquent than me. By fnord12 | July 14, 2006, 9:22 AM | Liberal Outrage| Link
Homeland Security - Keeping Bean Festivals Safe For You So, good ol' Department of Homeland Security has been putting together a database (cause that's pretty much all they do - data mine) of all the national monuments and chemical plants and other places that are likely terrorist targets. This database is supposed to be used to assess how much funding each state gets. Well, by now, you've all heard that security grants to NY and Washington were cut by 40%. And you've all heard the uproar this has caused. If I were the idiot who signed the paper designating the allocations, i would hide in fear and shame. Luckily, i'm not that idiot, so we carry on. Here's the AP story Spored to Death sent me. But the report, which was released Tuesday, affirmed the fury of those two cities - the two targets of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks - which claimed the department did not accurately assess their risks. Instead, the department's database of vulnerable critical infrastructure and key resources included the Old MacDonald's Petting Zoo near Huntsville, Ala., a bourbon festival, a bean festival and the Kangaroo Conservation Center in Dawsonville, Ga. [emphasis mine] Well, I think it's pretty obvious to everyone that the Kangaroo Conservation Center is a key resource and a very likely target. The terrorists, afterall, hate our freedom and what better way to strike at that freedom than to take away our ability to conserve kangaroos, the best-known symbol of the Wild West? Spored was particularly concerned for when he read this article, he cried out, "Oh god! They's after our bourbon!". We've seen what made the list. Now let's take a look at what didn't make the cut. The report noted that Indiana has 8,591 assets listed in the database - more than any other state and 50 percent more than New York. New York had 5,687 listed. Uh hmm....... A Homeland Security spokesman did not return a call or e-mail for comment Tuesday night. Because they were smart and decided to stay home. They sure as hell weren't going to take the fall for this one. The data "have been and are currently being utilized to support allocation decision making processes for the department," wrote Foresman, who oversees the database and the grant funds. Let's see. The towers (in NYC, mind you - it's not nearly as vulnerable as Indiana, but the terrorists are sneaky that way), got blown up in 2001. It's now 2006. That's 5 years. 5 years. And his best answer is the process "continues to mature and improve"? 5 years and they still can't figure out that just mebbe Times Square might be just a little bit more vulnerable than Sherry Lewis' petting zoo in Alabama?? I suppose on the other hand, i should be glad that they're so incompetant at data mining.....ugh. Someone pass me the bourbon. By min | July 13, 2006, 11:16 AM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (3) | Link Xorn and Magneto The same person who provided the Civil War scripts also gave me an explanation on the whole Xorn/Magento mess. First thing it is important to know is that the Scarlet Witch has been super-powered by Loki since the beginning of the Disassembled arc, which is how she got her reality alterning powers. Loki was responsible for creating the Avengers and he needed to destroy them for closure as his part of his ultimate plan with Surtur and the forge of Mjolnir was reaching fruition (in addition to keep them from aiding Thor). So he powered up the Scarlet Witch, and tormented her with her father Magneto's death, driving her crazy and causing her to destroy the Avengers. At the end of Disassembled, Scarlet Witch used her new reality altering powers to effectively recreate her father, bringing him back from the dead in his most rational state, and later depowering him to preserve his sanity (since it's known that Magneto's use of his powers affect his mental state). In order to restore his repuation, she also created another Xorn entity, separate from Magneto, thus alleviating Magneto from any guilt over his recent attack on Manhattan. Doom, now attuned to Asgardian energies due to his recent escape from Hell, has been tapping into Scarlet Witch's powers as part of his Project 42 scheme, the result of which is causing some of her creations to become unstable, leading to the recent merging of her House of M energies and Xorn, and Xorn's seeking out and attacking Magneto. One result of Civil War will be Doom's restoration of the Scarlet Witch's sanity and normal power levels as Doom does will not allow such a power to exist on his planet (prior to making a few big changes using her powers that will serve as a red herring that the heroes will fight to reverse while Doom preserves a few smaller changes. But i don't want to give too much away!). By fnord12 | July 13, 2006, 10:12 AM | Comics| Link Civil War Spoilers Last night i was provided with the script for the last few pages of Civil War #5 and the first few of Civil War #6: Suddenly a squadron of SHIELD agents emerge from the pipe. They open fire with machine guns and a flame thrower. The homeless people fall to the ground, apparently dead. The GIANT emerges from the carnage, his rags in flames. He tears them off, revealing himself as the ABOMINATION. He looks at the homeless people, screams in horror, and attacks the SHIELD agents, scattering them. Filled with rage, he is about the kill an agent when MS. MARVEL appears, looking arrogant, with a second SHIELD squad, armed with gamma cannons. The shot moves back, revealing the overall battlefield. In the top left corner of the panel, a shooting star is moving towards the earth. In the next several panels, as MS. MARVEL approaches the ABOMINATION, the comet approaches the earth, and in the last panel there is an EXPLOSION. SCENE: END Book 5. BEGINING Book 6. I guess it takes away some of the moral dilemma by making the pro-registration side bad guys in disguise, and turns the whole Civil War into a typical superhero story, but i can't say i'm disappointed. By fnord12 | July 13, 2006, 10:04 AM | Comics | Comments (1) | Link 3.5 is for suckers Armor class should be low! Long live THAC0! By fnord12 | July 13, 2006, 9:10 AM | D&D | Comments (12) | Link
Covers - not worth the effort Ok, that's not quite what Tom B. says, but it's pretty close: It used to be, back when comic books were sold exclusively on the newsstand, that the cover was what sold the magazine. That's why so much attention and effort was spent on the cover image. There was no advertising, no promotion, no Wizard magazine or Previews catalogue or Newsarama to let people know what was coming out months in advance. In fact, other than if it might have been mentioned on the Bullpen Bulletins page, or shown in a house ad, you didn't have any idea that a new book was coming until it arrived. So the cover was a crucial component in making your title sell. We still put crazy amounts of effort into our covers--but one of the unspoken truths of the industry at this point is that the cover is no longer responsible for selling the magazine, and may in fact have a negligible effect on the total sales. Sure, a really good cover may be able to hook a few extra people into picking up the book off the racks, assuming it's there for them to find, but the whole mechanism of our distribution and retail system makes the cover close to superfluous. Retailers order their books months in advance from the Previews catalogue, as do a great deal of the customer base through pull lists. And once you get outside the big coastal cities especially, the amount of display space a given shop has is relatively miniscule. I don't know what proportion of the average shop's books are sold off the rack as opposed to through pull list subscriptions and advance orders, but I'd hazard a conservative guess that it's probably half. There was a time not so long ago when it was Marvel policy that every cover should have a single iconic figure, and no direct relevance to the story in that given issue. And fans far and wide screamed about it--yet it did nothing to hurt sales overall. And now that we've returned to mixing up the cover approach, it hasn't materially affected sales either. I regularly hear from a small group of people who don't like the mostly-iconic covers we've been running on NEW AVENGERS, but those covers clearly have not been hurting the sales on that book--and the more story-driven covers on, say, THING didn't materially increase the sales on that book. The place where cover art can help or hurt your book's sales these days is really the Previews catalogue, the tool that retailers and readers use to advance order their books. So it's not like the cover art is irrelevant or anything. But even within that venue, just having a strong image isn't enough in most cases to sell the magazine--other factors such as story content, creative team, relevance to the larger Marvel Universe, and the amount of coverage given seem to be more important elements in making a decision for most retailers and fans. I'd hazard a guess that, were we to solicit a new ULTIMATE project with, let's say, Brian Bendis writing and Greg Land penciling, but we didn't show any image at all, it would still be ordered quite well--retailers would be very upset with us, because they hate having to take a position on any title without the maximum amount of information they can get, but I expect that most of them would weigh the factors they did have--especially if the story content promised important elements for the ULTIMATE line--and would order acordingly. So, does the cover matter anymore? Well, everything matters. It's just a question of degree. And at this point, the cover no longer has to shoulder the promotional weight that it once did--so it matters perhaps a little less than it once did. Covers have always upset people. Most of them depicted things that never actually happened in the comic. Often they were drawn by a better artist than the one responsible for the interior, which is misleading. Many had word balloons, which Wayne says is an absolute no-no. And lately they've been doing what Tom calls the 'iconic' covers - covers that are just generic pictures of characters that have nothing to do with the plot of the comic. Obviously even the iconic covers take a lot of work - it's just that they can stock them up in advance and use them as needed. I like the iconic covers the least. Every once in a while is ok, but 12 months in a row of "Punisher stands in front of a wall" is too much, and those early New Avengers comics featured characters that weren't even on the team yet (and they weren't drawn by the interior artist, so that matches 3 of the above negatives). But if the thinking is that the cover doesn't affect the sale anymore, then i don't see them changing their policies any. Although for what it is worth, the house ad for Annihilation, showing the four (iconic) covers of the four miniseries, was probably the main reason i decided to get that event. By fnord12 | July 12, 2006, 3:33 PM | Comics| Link "New" Discovery I'm sorry, but they're just discovering this now? I mean, they thought that all the references to funny mushrooms was what? Hip slang? By min | July 12, 2006, 1:48 PM | Science | Comments (1) | Link Dessert...mmmm.... We had ice cream cake and cupcakes.  
And, yes. Those are whole oreos in the middle. By min | July 12, 2006, 11:05 AM | My stupid life | Comments (1) | Link Satire's Lost on Them Wanyas was kind enough to provide this link to us from a blogger named Pete who read an Onion article and thought it was real. "I am totally psyched for this abortion!" Sorry ma'am, if you hadn't had sex you wouldn't have gotten pregnant, it's not the HMO's fault for not supporting your promiscuity while not married. He goes on like this for a bit. The best part, however, is reading the comments. They pretty much tear him apart for the next 800+ entries. I'm pro life, but sweet Jesus you're an idiot. For your next post, how about a passionate speech on the need to immediately free Prince Albert from the can? Sufficient Scruples awarded Pete the Stegosaurus of the Week award (Because You Have More Brains In Your Ass Than In Your Head). Not satisfied with this, however, Pete posted an update. He still refers to the subject of the Onion article (Miss Weber) as if she was a real person. And justifies his initial assumption that the article was real because that's just how "pro-abortionists" talk. Needless to say, a few people wanted to let me know that I was a dolt for thinking that her article was real. As a matter of fact, call me a dolt, because in the beginning I really did think it was real. Why? because I meet women like her in the field all the time. Anyway, I wrote the blog in a way that was meant to point out how psychotic the pro-abortion movement is. He then goes on to recount an absurd conversation he supposedly had with a woman in the park after he put up some Genocidal Awareness Project posters (i think you've all seen these. The dead fetus pictures.) to prove how "psychotic" pro-choicers are. The conversation basically goes "do you think it's ok for a mother to strangle her child to death?" and the response was "maybe." Now, as pointed out in the comments (he received another 600+scathing comments about his intelligence for this post) the chick was more than likely messing with him, trying to get him to go away. Then, the jerk quotes the HMO comment again so that he can say how wrong it is to have sex for the second time! If you make an embarassing mistake and everybody notices, just run with it. That way you'll still come out on top! This comment might be my favorite so far: Don't listen to these heathens Pete, you know in your heart of hearts that Caroline Weber is just as real as I am. Keep believing child. Jesus Christ Pete finishes up with "Either way, I think I did a good job of turning the "satire" right back at them, don't you?" which shows that once again, he's got no clue what satire means. And now, due to all the backlash he received from these 2 posts, Pete moved his entire site to a new location. Registration is required before comments can be left. Unfortunately for him, it wasn't enough. I'm not sure packing up your blog and moving it to a new address is an effective way to escape the embarassment you've brought down upon yourself. You might want to look into witness relocation programs. He even got a wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_Together_For_Life but it's being considered for deletion, so if you want to check it out, better do it quick. By min | July 12, 2006, 10:47 AM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (2) | Link
Ignorance Keeps Me Safe Just going to go ahead and steal this one from King of Zembla: Several days after Sept. 11, 2001, the FAA grounded the Red Team, apparently because it didn't want to be embarrassed by the team's findings. Dzakovic disagreed with this cowardly attempt to bury the truth. And so he took the bold step of filing a whistle-blower disclosure in October 2001 with the Office of Special Counsel, an independent government agency. That document -- the first of its kind by an FAA Security Division employee -- set in motion a lengthy and costly investigation by the inspector general. One finding of that inquiry, according to Dzakovic, was that FAA security operated in a way that created a "substantial and specific danger to public safety." But instead of rewarding Dzakovic, the newly formed Transportation Security Administration, which had swallowed the FAA, punished him by reassigning him to an entry-level clerical position behind a desk. He spent months punching holes in paper and putting training binders together for new TSA employees. The counter-terrorism expertise of this valuable 14-year FAA veteran was stupidly wasted. He wanted to spend the rest of his career fighting bad guys, but his government bosses thought that wasn't such a good idea after he became a whistle-blower . . . . By min | July 10, 2006, 1:54 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link
Foreign Accent Syndrome The woman from the north of England, who had a very distinctive "Geordie" accent, now speaks with what some hear as an Eastern European accent and others hear as Jamaican. She is one of only 50 people to have suffered from foreign-accent syndrome, which was first recorded in Norway during the Second World War. Linda Walker said: "I was devastated. I don't sound like me. It is so strange because you don't feel the same person. Not only did I have a stroke but I got lumbered with this foreign accent syndrome as well. "I want my own voice back. It's like losing a big part of your identity. You don't feel like the same person any more." Foreign-accent syndrome occurs after substantial brain injury and is not always correctable through speech therapy. By min | July 7, 2006, 9:52 AM | Science | Comments (1) | Link
I Did It! I got passed the point in Diaspora where i stopped reading it the last 2 times. Whooooo!!!! Take that, you giant, desert turtle! Unfortunately, Egan's site doesn't go much into Kozuch's Theory and n-spheres. So i'm a bit stuck. I just don't know how to visualize a 6-sphere (sphere with 6 dimensions). And don't give me a link to the wikipedia entry. I've read that already, in addition to a bunch of sites i found on google. All i want is some sort of visual representation of what a 6-sphere might look like. And mebbe some text explanation. Ofc, you couldn't really visualize a 6-sphere due to us only having 3 dimensions, but there must be some sort of representation out there. Which reminds me. I like fractals. By min | July 6, 2006, 2:46 PM | My stupid life| Link Sheesh Can you believe that asshole Kenneth Lay died of a heart attack? And why is it that rich people who are convicted of crimes get to go on vacation while they're awaiting sentencing? Sure, mebbe he's not a violent criminal who needs to be held in some maximum security facility, but c'mon. He gets to spend time at his vacation home in Aspen?? WTF is that? He should be sitting somewhere much less comfortable. Mebbe a Motel 6 or something, at least. Gawd. Anybody seen Wag the Dog? Have we got any conspiracy theorists out there? By min | July 6, 2006, 2:31 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link Lost Dimension There is a color that loses a dimension when the temperature is cool enough. A DIMENSION. It goes from 3-D to 2-D. That's crazy. Remember, no matter how thinly you slice something, there's still 3 dimensions. It might be microscopic, but it still has height, width, and length. Now they've discovered a color that can shed an entire dimension just like that. The magnetic waves in the pigment exist in a unique state of matter called a Bose Einstein condensate (BEC), so named for its theoretical postulation by Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein. I don't get the part about quantum computers. I'm still stuck on the whole 2-D thing. What i want to know is how would this affect the Hulk's pants? Would it keep them from getting shredded all the time? Which also brings to mind a second question. If Banner and Reed Richards know each other, how come Richards never gave the poor guy some unstable molecules? He's buying new purple pants every week, ferchrissakes. C'mon, Reed. Help a guy out. By min | July 6, 2006, 12:24 PM | Science | Comments (3) | Link This Just Reinforces... ...my rule about no landlocked states and never south of Maryland. There is a group of (for now, let's just call them) people calling themselves the Stop the ACLU Coalition who has started publishing the names, address, and phone numbers of ACLU plaintiffs on their website. As some of you may recall some months ago Michelle Malkin published the personal contact info of some college students which resulted in them getting death threats. This coalition is posting plaintiff info for the very same reason. Threats and intimidation techniques to frighten people enough to flee or to become silent. They say the ACLU and the people they represent are anti-American. I suppose if your idea of American is burning crosses on lawns, then i guess you're right. However, i was given to understand the term meant freedom of ideas and expression, separation of church and state, equal rights for all, not just the powerful. Granted, we need lots of work in some of these areas, but we're doing better than, say, Nazi Germany. And how these people can hide behind their bibles, claiming to be Christian while persecuting others and calling for blood is beyond me. Real Christians should be denouncing them for the imposters they are. Shame on you if you're not. In their latest "triumph", the Stop the ACLU Coalition ran a Jewish family out of town. Where is this town, you ask? Perhaps in Arkansas? Or Kansas. Or Utah. Alas, no. It's in friggin Delaware! I'm going to have to revise my rule to be "no landlocked states and never south of Jersey". ...A former board member suggested that Mona Dobrich might "disappear" like Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the atheist whose Supreme Court case resulted in ending organized school prayer. She disappeared in 1995 and her dismembered body was found six years later. The crowd booed an ACLU speaker and told her to "go back up north." Um....i'm totally not geography girl or anything, but since when did Delaware consider itself south? I mean, as far as i'm concerned, the south can have them, but really. Go back up north? The General wrote them a nice letter. Please allow me to be the first to thank you and the staff of Stop The ACLU for all you did to make the Indian River Pogrom such a resounding success. It isn't easy to run a Jewish family out of town in these politically correct times. Usually, they just hunker down, hiding behind antiquated interpretations of the Constitution and the good will of those who wrongly believe that non-Christians are entitled to all of the benefits of citizenship. He's got that and their reply posted. You really need to read both. I'm not sure what's worse. The fact that these racists were allowed to threaten a family or that they're so twisted in their brains that they couldn't figure out that the General was not on their side. I reiterate my earlier statement. I'm never leaving my house again. By min | July 6, 2006, 10:06 AM | Liberal Outrage| Link
Holmes, Vampire Hunter Vampires were on the ship, as passengers. But if i stuck with Sherlock Holmes, i would be safe. He had the uncanny ability to move among them undetected. We just sort of blended in with everyone else. There were a couple of close calls, though. They had herded us into stalls, and we were told to fill out and sign some card. He managed to avoid being put into a stall. I could see his head over the stall. He reached out his hand and gave a tug. I was able to vault over the stall, passed the female vamp in charge. Another time, for some reason, we almost got caught, but i managed to pull the cross necklace out of my shirt in time. It bought us a few moments to escape. The human passengers were oblivious to the danger they were in. By min | July 5, 2006, 7:08 AM | My Dreams| Link
Internet Tubes Senator Ted Stevens, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, heading decisions made on, among other things, net neutrality, demonstrates his complete and utter lack of understanding anything at all. But this service isn't going to go through the interent and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free. Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet? I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially. They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes. [emphasis mine] If you're feeling guilty and need to punish yourself, you can read the rest of it here. Often when i send an internet, it gets held up in the tubes. If only i could pay more money so that i could get access to bigger tubes that wouldn't get filled up so quickly. Just to add a visual to this so that you realize how net neutrality would bog the system down, a photo of an actual internet (that i lifted from Kos):  By min | July 3, 2006, 10:46 AM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (5) | Link |
I mean, i like the Young Avengers and all, but, ummm, where's my Power Pack box set? Where's my Masters of Evil / Thunderbolts double-box set? Where's my Ego The Living Planet? How did these whippersnappers get to the front of the line? I found this picture on 
When in doubt, throw in a robot. - Although just about every monster Godzilla has ever fought makes an appearance in this film, there was a definite shortage of monster-ful scenes. How could this be? Why on earth would any director bother with scenes not involving men in monster suits? These are very valid questions. You won't like the answer, but I'll tell you what they did. They filled the huge chunks of time with people doing "dramatic" things. Sure, there was one kewl fight scene. And who doesn't love super-powered humans in uniform (the director didn't really make use of them, either. i'll get into that a bit later). But i'm in it for the monsters. And if you can't provide me with monsters, you'd better have something damn good to replace it with. Like a robot that communicates using semaphore. Now that's kewl.
When they finally do free Godzilla and bring him back to Japan, that's when the fun starts. Godzilla comes out victorious with every monster he encounters. Mostly, because he's totally pissed off. If you've seen Godzilla vs. Mothra, i think you'll notice Godzilla is not good when he first wakes up. In fact, if there is no breakfast sandwich ready and waiting, he pretty much kicks everyone's ass until there's no one left and then he goes home and goes back to bed. At one point, King Caesar, Rodan, and Anguirus attack Godzilla all at once. Needless to say, the fight ends with all three of them laying pathetically in a pile. Let's face it, King Ghidorah, these guys are not.
They even trot out Manilla for this one. He is definitely my least favorite Godzilla baby, but his antics are still cute. The requisite little boy shows up and teams up with Manilla, dragging his grandfather into it all. Only in a Godzilla movie will you find family members more than happy to transport you and your lizard friend in their vehicles. The only problem i had was the little boy's shorts were clearly not short enough. As you all know, children in Japanese movies are always dressed in shorts that would make even Magnum P.I. blush to wear. I'm pretty sure it's part of the child labor laws in Japan.
The Man-Thing movie wasn't very good. OK, it was awful. But you probably didn't need me to tell you that. I guess 
