The Times They Have A-Changed

So the time change has already happened.
This is the first time in four years that it hasn’t really affected me. On my old Friday-Sunday shift, I would have had to go in to work Sunday morning with an hour less of sleep. Not so with the Thursday-Saturday shift.
Of course, one drawback to this shift is that my days off seem to fly past even faster than they did on the old schedule. I’m not entirely sure why that is.
I guess it’s just because I just don’t do anything on Sunday, so being a wasted day, it just slips past in a hurry, whereas on the old shift I did all of my shopping and whatnot on Monday when it was my first day off, rather than totally wasting it.
That’s my theory, anyway.
Speaking of wasting my Sunday, I was invited over to Jamie and Casey’s house tonight for “movie night” for the opportunity to watch X-Men on Blu-Ray.
I’ve seen the movie often enough that the prospect of seeing it in high def isn’t that enticing. Also, it would interfere with my Sunday night TV, which isn’t really that big of a deal, but the biggest problem was that it would have involved doing something on a Sunday, and for whatever reason, I have a really hard time bringing myself to do that.
Seriously, I don’t even shower or get properly dressed. I totally waste the day.
(Even when I don’t go anywhere on my other days off, I still at least take a shower. Not so Sunday.)
In yesterday’s mail I got a rather baffling letter from Sprint talking about how one of the great benefits of working for Stanley Steemer is the fact that employees get a significant discount on Sprint wireless services, but that an error had resulted in employees receiving a much larger discount than they were supposed to their last statement.
Given that I don’t actually work for Stanley Steemer (despite the fact that there is someone at work named Stanley whom I often refer to as being tough on dirt, gentle on carpets), I wasn’t sure what any of this had to do with me, especially considering that my last statement had been normal, reflecting the discount I do get as an employee of the company I actually work for, so I gave them a call to make sure that, I wouldn’t be getting double-billed in April the way the poor schmucks at Stanley Steemer will be.
Turns out I wasn’t the only non-Steemer to get the letter, as apparently the errors didn’t stop at just not billing them enough this month.

Even Though No One Cares Department:
I know that most of my five or so regular readers don’t given one shit about comics, let alone two, but I still feel the need to talk about them here, so I’m going to briefly mention my feelings about the fact that in last week’s issue of his series Captain America died after being shot by a sniper.
Having just read the actual issue, my feelings are now, after the initial shock, the same as they were after I learned that it had happened: mixed.
The cardinal rule with the death of a comic book character is that it will never last. Death in comics is almost never permanent.
So am I worried that we’ll never see Steve Rogers again? Not really. Even if the actual intention of everyone involved is that he’s dead and will remain dead, that can, and no doubt will, change.
However, I am upset that it happened not simply because it happened, but because it was pretty much the only logical outcome of the current state of affairs in the Marvel Universe, a state of affairs I’m not particularly fond of or pleased with.
The only thing that keeps my feelings about this from being squarely on the negative side of the fence is that the story is being handled by Ed Brubaker – who, ironically, I had just showered with praise here on Wednesday, the same day the issue hit newsstands, before learning about the death.
As I said, Cap’s death fits squarely with the current status quo of the Marvel Universe, and that, more than anything, is the problem. Nothing about the current state of the MU seems conducive to producing good stories unless those stories come from supremely talented creators like Brubaker, and, quite frankly, Marvel just doesn’t have that kind of talent pool.
The whole idea behind bringing the MU to its current state is to try to make it more like “the real world,” which I think is, quite frankly, silly, and will ultimately lead to the problem known as the uncanny valley. The notion first came up in the field of robotics, but can be applied to any endeavor that tries, in some fashion, to imitate life.
Basically, as you get and closer to creating an approximation of life eventually you reach a point, called the uncanny valley, at which what had seemed previously seemed relatable becomes alien and repulsive.
So in many ways the MU seems like the real world, but there is something about it that just doesn’t feel right, in a way that wouldn’t be a problem if it were just slightly more removed from the real world.
(Honestly, I think that the uncanny valley effect is what kept me from ever really getting into Seinfeld. The people on the show sort of looked, acted, and talked like real people, kind of, but there was something just not right about them. Something alien and repulsive.)
Ultimately, though, my real problem with the death of Cap and the current state of the MU is that the MU has become a place in which someone like Cap can only be viewed as “quaint” or a “relic,” and has to be gotten rid of because he just no longer has a place.
A world in which someone who believes in things like freedom, a government for the people and by the people, and standing up for what’s right in the face of tyranny is an amusing throwback and an embarrassment that needs to be gotten rid of is one that I have a hard enough time living in, and certainly isn’t a world that I want to read about and imaginatively escape to.
So there’s my take on it.
On other comic-related fronts, there’s an article here about the casting of a Watchmen movie that asks for people to contribute their thoughts on who should be in the cast (it also includes a link to a publicity still of Rorschach created by the director to try to drum up studio interest in the project).
Here’s who I think should be in the cast: no one.
As tantalizing s that image of Rorschach is, I just don’t think a movie should be made (particularly given some of the really scary rumors about casting mentioned in the article). I think that even the best-intentioned creative team would not be able to put together a movie that is anything other than a pale imitation of the source material or that does anything other than insult its fans. It’s just too big and too complex to be translated to another medium.
So there’s my take on that, too.

I suppose that’s enough rambling on about stuff that only Scott is likely to care about (and which he already knows because we talk about this crap all the time anyway), and since I have nothing else to talk about, that makes this a good point at which to just shut the hell up entirely.