You Get A Gold Star!

Am I Evil? Yes, I Am.

This morning when I woke up I quite literally could not open my eyes.
I actually had to pry them open with my fingers, and even then they wouldn’t stay open, and they definitely were not liking the light.
Given that they were watery and irritated, it seemed likely that this was some sort of allergy thing, and not just the result of being tired (though I was, and still am).
They got a little better after I took a shower, as I could at least keep them open, but putting my contacts in was clearly out of the question.
I didn’t want to take a Benadryl because they make me sleepy, so I had to shell out two bucks for one Claritin tablet at the convenience store I stop at before work. Once I took that my eyes got much better, and I was able to put in my contacts, which I had brought in to work with me.
The problems with my eyes, however, did not prevent me from enacting my evil scheme on this, the last Saturday morning in which I would be up at 5 AM to leave for work from my current residence. I have next weekend off, and the weekend after that I will be fully ensconced in my new home.
So naturally that meant that this was the ideal opportunity in which to get some small measure of revenge on the owners of the goddamn barking dogs above and below me.
I made a CD consisting of various dogs barking, including several brief interludes of silence (thanks to Type O Negative’s “song” The Misinterpretation of Silence and Its Disastrous Consequences, a track that consists of a little over a minute of silence), which are followed by more barking. I had the first few tracks be silence to allow me time to get away after setting the CD playing with the speakers at full blast at about 5:20 this morning.
Because I’m not a monster, I didn’t set it on Repeat, so they only got treated to about 45 minutes of barking, though it’s my sincere hope that it was sufficient to drive their dogs crazy.
And it's not like they can complain to me about it. I mean, I don't have a dog, so how could it have been my dog barking? They're the ones with the barking dogs.
Besides, I'll be gone in a few days anyway.
Evil? Sure, but clearly they were asking for it.

Is It Just Me...

Or does Jodie Foster, in this ad for her new movie....



...look an awful lot like the "Leave Britney Alone!" guy?



Coincidence? Yes, clearly.
(For the record, I saw Jodie Foster on The Daily Show the other night and she was looking very good for 1. her age and 2. Jodie Foster.)

Old MS-DOS 5 Ad...With Rapping

If you can make your way through this whole thing, you have a higher tolerance for cheesy stupidity than I do. I've said it many times before (or at least thought it): no rapping anything was ever a good idea for an ad.

Murder: A Matter Of Successful Time Management

Mark Evanier, who has done a lot of work in comics and TV, and who is widely regarded as something of an expert on Jack "King" Kirby (He’s even written a book about Kirby, as you can see here. Warning: Early Birthday Present Suggestion Alert), has a blog that is entertaining and full of interesting (to me, at least) “behind the scenes” tidbits about the history of comics.
In one of his most recent posts he discusses the Phil Spector trial. He’s stated that if Spector is found innocent he (Evanier) will go on a killing spree, as such a verdict would prove that anyone in show business can get away with murder.
He lists off the relatively small number of people he will target, elucidating his reasons for including them, and then goes on to complain about how long it’s taking the jury to reach a verdict:

But here's the problem. If there's no verdict today, there might be one tomorrow...which would mean the ideal time to start my killing spree would be Saturday. Trouble is, I have plans for the weekend. I can't spare the time to murder three people. I could maybe squeeze in one but what kind of killing spree is that? Wouldn't even make the tabloids. And then Monday and Tuesday, I have meetings all day so that won't work.

Ah yes, the eternal struggle to find the time to kill all of the people on your list.

Monster Out Of A Box II

While I was at work yesterday I decided to rummage through the junkyard of discarded computer components we have in search of a VGA cable. Tangled amongst the Ethernet cables and old keyboards, I found one, and was pleased.
However, upon closer inspection I found that one end was missing several pins, rendering it useless.
I did some more digging and found what might have been another one. I couldn't say for certain initially because it had never actually been used, and so both ends were wrapped in some packaging foam and there were plastic covers on them. Removing all of that, I found it to be a DVI cable.
Undaunted (well, maybe slightly daunted), I dove back in and kept digging until at last I found my treasure: an apparently never-used VGA cable!
(FYI, for anyone wondering, I had my manager's permission to take it.)
Once I got home I turned off the computer, hooked up the TV, turned it all on, set the input to "PC," and...nothing.
The TV said "No Input Detected."
I waited for everything to finish loading on the computer, then went to the Display properties and clicked on the properties for the second monitor.
Everything was grayed out, but I noticed that the resolution was set for 1920x1080. Simply ticking "Extend my Windows desktop to this monitory" brought the TV to life in glorious 1080p.
Success!
Now, I will say that using it for simple tasks like Web surfing is a little on the ridiculous side, at least when you're sitting up close, but it's only for a week, and it's still pretty cool.
And let me tell you, Carla Gugino looked even better in 1080p than I thought she would.
In any case, here are some pictures.


Here we see it freshly torn out of its packaging.


It positively dwarfs my 20.1" monitor, and a larger than life image of Scarlett Johansson's backside is always a plus.


Sitting at the desk and reading something at the top of a Web page can be a strain on the neck.

Unexpected Gift

A bit ago Brian came over and presented me with this:



Apparently he got it out of one of those "claw" machines, thinking, "Maki will like this."
And I do (despite the fact that it's the version of Batman featured on that crappy The Batman cartoon.)

Monster Out Of A Box

Yesterday I decided that I would swing by Best Buy to see if my TV was in, load it up in my car, and then, after meeting Scott at the comic shop, have him follow me home and help me haul it in.
And that’s what I did.
The TV had to be taken out of the box in order to fit in my backseat, but once it was out of the box it slid in pretty easily.
I toyed with the notion of just covering it up and leaving it in the car until I get moved into my house. If I hadn’t been 100% that doing so was just asking the Universe to have me get into a car accident I might have done that, but instead I decided to stick with my original idea.
Once we’d hauled it up to my place, I decided that I should get something to eat before doing anything else. I was also thinking about buying an HDTV antenna just to test it. I was thinking I’d go to the Best Buy in Leesburg (I bought the TV from the Best Buy in Sterling) to get the antenna, and then grab something from Arby’s.
However, I decided that Super Target would be less of a hassle and that I could grab something from the Pizza Hut Express in there.
So I went to Super Target and discovered that the only HDTV antenna they had was $50, which is considerably more than the $14 antennas they have at Best Buy. I decided to just call it a miss and, after having a cheese pizza that was incorrectly placed in the pepperoni slot, I went home.
At home I took the hutch off my desk, disconnected the monitor, and put the TV in its place.
My computer has DVI out, whereas the only PC connection on the TV is VGA. I’m not sure why so many TV manufacturers have moved away from using DVI, though I suppose it has to do with the fact that many newer computers have HDMI out, which is in compliance with all that anti-piracy HDCP crap. Once I get moved and settled in I’ll be buying a Media Center PC to hook up to the TV and it will have HDMI.
In any case, I wasn’t concerned, as I knew I had a DVI to VGA adapter lying around somewhere.
In retrospect, I should have been suspicious over the fact that I found the adapter as quickly as I did.
The adapter was built on the assumption that the monitor being connected to it had its own VGA cable (as had been the case with my old 19” CRT that I had connected to the DVI graphics card that the adapter came with), so it didn’t do me any good, as I didn’t have a VGA cable to run from the TV to the DVI to VGA adapter on the graphics card. Even if I had a VGA cable I wouldn’t need the adapter anyway, as my graphics card has a VGA out in addition to DVI.
So I decided to make one more trip out into the world to get a VGA cable. Once again I opted not to go to Best Buy, as Office Depot is closer.
Naturally they were sold out of the 6’ VGA cables. However, they did have a 10’ VGA cable, which, while excessively long, would do the trick, so I grabbed that and went back home.
At home I discovered that I’d actually bought a VGA extension cable, which meant that I still didn’t have what I needed, as the cable was male/female while I needed male/male.
Not wanting to go out again I opted to wait and get a VGA cable on the way home from work today.
In the meantime, I found that I did have a cable for one of the available input/output combinations: S Video.
To say that this was less than ideal would be an understatement. The max resolution available is incredibly low and it looks like crap on the TV.
For the most part, anyway. I will say that setting the mode to “Over-Scan,” which scales up the video to the higher native resolution, and then playing a high-resolution video file – such as the HD clip I have of Carla Gugino getting up out of bed in Sin City – makes for a pretty decent viewing experience, though it really just made me want to see what it’ll be like once I have an HDMI connection and a Blu-Ray or HDVD video source (the Media Center PC I’m going to buy will have the LG hybrid drive).
Right now I have the TV and my regular monitor connected in a dual-monitor set up, and I’ll probably leave it like that after I get the VGA cable. It’s only going to be for a week anyway.

I Like Those Odds

One in four women would bed another woman

Bad Movie Or Worst In-Flight Movie Ever? (Plus: Bouncing Boy!)

I seriously did jack today.
Every ounce of energy and ambition I had, I think, was used up in the struggle to force myself to get out of bed.
Once I did get up, I sat my ass down to watch a movie I’d recorded, and even that was a lot of effort.
The movie in question? Last year’s pop culture phenomenon, the oft-blogged about Snakes on a Plane.
I never bothered to see it when there was all the hype about it, and I never put forth an active effort to see it after that, but when I noticed that it was going to be on HBO2, I figured I might as well record it.
It was pretty much as bad and cheesy as I expected, though there were some elements whose badness and cheesiness I couldn’t really have anticipated.
Admittedly, I’ve never been a Red Eye flight from Honolulu to LA, but I think it’s safe to assume that such flights don’t really have such a porny ambience.
We won’t even bother getting into the viability of the titular method of attacking the witness for the prosecution of a vicious mobster who was on the flight to LA to give his testimony.
Overall it seemed like the sort of movie that was destined to air as a Sci Fi Channel original movie until Samuel L. Jackson got involved and urged the producers to add more R-rated elements to it.
Said elements felt really tacked-on, much like the hardcore sex scenes that Bob Guccione inserted (so to speak) into the movie Caligula.
In any case, the long and the short of it is that it was a shitty movie and I knew it was going to be a shitty movie and I watched it anyway only because of a mild interest in seeing what all of the fuss had been about.
That was the major event of the day, apart from finishing up The Great Darkness Saga, which, as I expected it would, managed to hold up to a re-reading (and was considerably more enjoyable than watching that stupid movie).
And that leads me to...

The Bouncing Boy Dilemma
Back when I learned that I was the IWon.com daily $10,000 winner, my initial response was, of course, excitement.
I remained excited about it (and am still glad of it), but eventually my enthusiasm was dampened a little by the thought, “If only I could have been the annual $25 million winner.”
It’s a natural human response, I think. No matter how good you have it, you’ll always wish that things could have worked out better.
Which brings me – inspired by my re-reading of a classic Legion of Super-Heroes storyline – to the subject of Bouncing Boy and his dilemma..
For those unfamiliar with the character, Chuck Taine, is a fat teen of the distant future who mistakes an experimental super-plastic formula for a soft drink and as a result of drinking it his body is changed, becoming much more elastic and allowing him to become, in essence, a human rubber ball.
(Yes, it’s a goofy origin and a goofy power, but that’s not the point, and the Legion is full of much goofier shit than that.)
Chuck takes on the name Bouncing Boy and joins the galaxy’s premier team of young heroes, the Legion of Super-Heroes.
At this point it’s clear that BB is a pretty lucky guy. A mishap that would likely have killed anyone else gives him super powers and allows him to become part of a group that’s respected and idolized by billions of sentient beings on countless worlds.
Further, he doesn’t have to feel self-conscious about his weight, because, basically, being a bit of a butterball is actually part of what makes him a hero.
So Chuck’s already doing pretty good, but he hits the jackpot when he meets fellow Legionnaire Luornu Durgo, or, as she’s also known, Duo Damsel.
Duo Damsel, a drop-dead gorgeous young woman, has the ability to split herself into two drop-dead gorgeous young women.
I reiterate: she can split herself into two identical bodies.
I’ll let that sink in, and then mention that, despite being surrounded by some of the most eligible, attractive young men in the galaxy, DD fell in love with and married Bouncing Boy.
So yeah, clearly at this point Bouncing Boy is one of the luckiest fat asses in the galaxy. Super powers, fame and adulation, the freedom to be as fat as he wants, and a hot wife who can make an exact duplicate of herself; Bouncing Boy has nothing to complain about.
But here’s the thing.
Prior to a tragic battle with an evil computer, Duo Damsel had been known as Triplicate Girl, owing to the fact that, before one of her selves was killed in said battle, she could actually split herself into three identical selves.
So you have to think that, lying in bed at night, sandwiched (and probably eating a sandwich) between those two perfect bodies, un-self-consciously nude, despite the fact that his big, rubbery gut prevents him from seeing his own penis (whose elastic nature undoubtedly provides him some advantages over the average guy), BB has to be wondering what things might have been like before that stupid evil computer came along.
And that, my friends, is the Bouncing Boy Dilemma.

Hello Darkness My Old Friend

Upon picking up my mail today I found that the last shipment of comics I'd ordered had arrived. Included in this order was the issue of Legion of Super-Heroes I needed to complete the multi-part classic Legion storyline known as The Great Darkness Saga:



Darkness ranks up there with other classic comic storylines of that era such as The Judas Contract in New Teen Titans and The Phoenix Saga in X-Men, and is definitely one of my all-time favorites.
I'm sure much of my fondness is based on nostalgia, but I'm equally sure that, as was the case with The Judas Contract, which I just recently re-read after more than 20 years, that I will find that there's a sound basis for that nostalgia.
Sure, there will be some elements that seem silly, and some dialogue that would never fly in a contemporary book, but that's only to be expected, and, in many ways, is part of the charm. I remain certain, however, that the underlying story, the art, and the action will hold up well.
Lots of Legion fans are thrilled by the recent announcement that legendary (and controversial) comics icon Jim Shooter will be returning to the Legion as the regular writer of the book's current incarnation.
Shooter's first run on the book happened in the 60s, when he was just a teenager. I've read a lot of those stories, and I have to say that, from an adult perspective, it's pretty obvious that it was being written by a kid, but it had been less obvious to then-editor Mort Weisinger who had no idea that it was a teenager that he was buying stories from.
(In fairness to Weisinger, most comics of the period read as though they were written by kids.)
Even so, I'm eager to see what an older (and presumably wiser) Shooter will do with a Legion that is very different from the one he last wrote three decades ago (he had a second run in the 70s).
That being said, for my money, no version of the Legion has (or likely ever will) been as good as the Levitz-Giffen era Legion, one that is best exemplified by The Great Darkness Saga.
(That's Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen.)
Anyway, that's my little moment of comic geekdom for today.

Not Much Going On

There hasn’t been much going on in my life during this calm before the storm that will be moving into my new house.
Last week my Realtor called to ask if I’d be willing to hold off on moving in for a couple of days after the closing. As it turns out, the lady I’m buying the house from will be closing on her new house that same day, so she probably won’t be able to get moved out fast enough for me to be able to move in.
It’s not a big deal, as I took that weekend off to be sure to have time to deal with the moving, and I don’t actually have to be out of here until the 30th.
Speaking of selling homes, it looks like my mom has managed to sell hers (via land contract). That’s the closing of a pretty big chapter.
Looks like my contribution to the Mona Lisa meme has generated a little bit of traffic, but none of the newcomers is bothering to stick around (or comment), which is pretty much the way it always goes whenever I have some new traffic generator. Oh well.
I haven’t gotten a call from Best Buy yet to let me know if my TV is in or not. It was supposed to be in on Thursday. I tried calling today, but there was no answer. I would just swing by to get it, but I want to have someone (Brian) go with me to pick it up so that I don’t have to try lugging it up the steps by myself. Honestly, I should just see if I can wait until I’m moved to pick it up. I’ll try calling them again at some point, I guess.
In addition to working on The Mona Latex, I spent much of yesterday working on another picture, which I finished today, but am reluctant to post because, well, it’s sort of bland and pointless.
Basically I was just doodling yesterday when I hit upon an effect that was too cool to not put to use, so I tried to build a picture around it. The result looks okay, but…well, I’ll think about it some more and decide whether or not I’m going to post it.
As for this entry, while I was working on the picture I spent too much time leaning on my left arm, so now it feels stiff and unresponsive, and my left hand doesn’t want to cooperate with my attempt to type, so I guess that’ll do it for now.

See What I Meme?

Drawn! The Illustration and Cartoon Blog has a Mona Lisa meme going, and I decided to join in.
So I present my first (and I'm sure there will be people who hope that it's my last) contribution to an Internet meme: The Mona Latex.



(Okay, it will be my first contribution once I'm able to click on the comments link on Drawn! without getting some sort of error. How do these things know to break exactly when I want to make use of them? Update: Done, though it took a lot more time and effort than it really should have.)