Meeting Of The So-Called Minds

So last night after work I went to the homeowner’s meeting in which we discussed the buy-back offer.
Everything was proceeding nicely. We were presented with a recap, got a little more information about the condo developer’s situation, learned that of the 58 owners there had, at that point, been a confirmed 42 who had accepted the offer, and we learned a little more about what the consequences of not accepting the offer could be.
We then found out that area real estate developers are, naturally, very interested in the fact that there may soon be 58 potential home buyers on the market, and so there’s a lot of opportunity for us to get some great deals, particularly if we were to purchase en masse.
For example, a nearby development is prepared to hold an open house just for us and is offering 6% off the purchase price along with a variety of incentives.
A friend of the woman who’s been doing all the legwork for us, including brokering the offer, was given the floor to speak about some of the opportunities, as he was a realtor and could provide us with a good perspective on the situation.
That’s when things fell apart.
This old German crank started bitching about being “solicited,” and how he came to hear about the buy-back and didn’t want to hear about anything else.
He seemed to think that the realtor was actually representing area developers and/or our condo developer, and thought that this was some sort of attempt to pressure us into taking the deal. That he was concerned about this seemed odd, given that he stated that he actually had accepted the deal and was all for us accepting it.
No amount of talk could convince him that he was an idiot that he had misinterpreted what was happening, and refused to shut up and let the realtor talk even though the rest of us were interested in hearing what the realtor had to say.
He also went off on some rambling rant about mediators and lawyers, but finally shut up after it was stated – and restated – that it’s too late in the game and that if we try to push any harder the developer will just rescind the offer and we’ll be hosed.
Basically he was just a jackass who liked the sound of his own voice. It kind of went like this:

Us: What do you want?
Him: I want to have my say!
Us: Okay, what do you have to say?
Him: That I want to be heard!
Us: Heard saying what?
Him: That I want to have my say!

You get the idea.
The only other thing we learned is that the one old biddy hold-out is doing so because she recently invested $5,000 in putting in new floors and doesn’t want to lose that investment.
We have to hope that she’ll come to understand that she’ll lose even more if she doesn’t agree.
Of course, she didn’t bother to attend either meeting, so that doesn’t bode well.
The cute music teacher was there and she smelled really nice. At one point she leaned forward in her chair and I got a glimpse of her underwear. They were teal and didn’t appear to be very sexy, being along the lines of 100% cotton granny panties.
Just thought I’d mention that.
After the meeting I went home and watched Earl and The Office, then it was off to bed, where I slept for about two hours, woke up for over two hours, then slept for just under four before getting up and coming in to work, where I ended up spending $442, $140 of that inadvertently.
The $342 was spent on a new graphics tablet.
I went with the 6x11 even though, at $60 more, the 9x12 would have been a bargain. I just don’t have the desktop real estate for the 9x12, though, and the 6x11 has the advantage of sharing my monitor’s aspect ratio, and it’s still much bigger than my current 4x5. And being newer it has all the bells and whistles.
The other $140 was spent when Scott accidentally ordered a copy of Adobe Studio 8 when attempting to see if his student discount allows him to purchase more than one copy of it. Since he was investigating that possibility on my behalf, I figured I might as well just buy it from him.
On the topic of buying things, yesterday the back issues I’d ordered came in the mail, which was cool.
As for the bags and boards I ordered a while back, I’d gotten an e-mail from them saying that they were on backorder for 2-3 weeks. That was a month ago, so I sent them an e-mail canceling my order.
Now I need to find another supplier to order from.
Hopefully whatever company I order from will actually have a supply of what they’re selling in stock.
It’s going to be a long day, as is evidenced by the fact that it’s already been a long day and I still have over 8 hours to go.

Calling It A Miss

I decided early on to just call today a miss.
I didn’t go anywhere, never got properly dressed, ate an entire frozen pizza in one sitting, and just generally sat around doing not much of anything.
I’m not even going to venture out to get the mail. I’m not waiting on anything important and it’ll still be there when I get home from work tomorrow, so why bother?
The one thing that I did do was finish up a picture I’d started yesterday.
Someone at work on the weekend overnight shift requested a Heroic Portrait, so last night and today I obliged.
I’m waiting for him to see it and give his go-ahead before I post it.
One of these days I need to totally overhaul the design of the Heroic Portraits site, perhaps making use of my newly-gained knowledge of Flash.
Of course, there hardly seems to be much point; nobody goes there.
I mean, it’s not like people go but don’t stick around the way they do here; they just plain don’t go.
The site gets maybe 10 hits a month (and that’s a big maybe).
So yeah, the time and effort involved in redesigning it seem really worthwhile.
Anyway, I think I might do some work on a picture before my day winds to a close, a picture that doesn’t involve a bare-chested guy flexing his guns, so I guess that will do it for this quarter-assed entry.

Drugs Are Bad, Anti-Drug Comics Are Worse

In the early 1980s there were a couple of comics featuring The New Teen Titans (sort of) that were distributed for free in schools across the country to promote drug education of the Nancy Reagan “Just Say No” variety.
Throughout the years there were a lot of comics like that, such as a Captain America comic promoting energy conservation, Supergirl helping to illustrate the effectiveness of a wearing a seat belt, and, for whatever reason, Superman teaming up with the Nestle Quik Bunny.
There were also the Radio Shack comics that featured Superman defeating Luthor with the aid of a couple of kids and their TRS-80 computer.
In any case, my school never got the first Titans anti-drug comic, but we did get the second.
The comic, which was published by DC in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Customs Service, and, for reasons that are utterly beyond me, the Keebler company.
Yes, that would be the Keeebler Elves people, though thankfully Ernie and the rest of the gang did not make an appearance in the main narrative.
The book did not feature the regular Titans line-up, as at that time Dick Grayson had retired from his role as Robin and had not yet picked up the mantle of Nightwing, and so was replaced in the comic by last-minute invention Protector, a sort of off-brand version of Robin.
Kid Flash also bowed out in favor of former Green Arrow sidekick and reserve Titan Speedy, himself a recovering drug addict.
Those weren’t the only, or even most significant, ways in which this book varied from the regular series, though.
As everyone knows, not only are drugs bad, boobs are also bad, so Starfire’s bosom was made considerably less ample, and her costume was modified so as to cover up whatever cleavage might have remained.
Despite these changes, the artwork of New Teen Titans co-creator George Perez was, as always, phenomenal, though the story, by necessity, was heavy-handed and preachy and always cycled back to the point, which was that drugs are bad.
I remember being excited when I heard about this book and had seen an image from it on the news. Why? Well, as I’ve mentioned many times, I was a huge Titans fan, and the idea of getting a free copy (though given that my parents bought them for me, all of my comics were free) of a Titans comic was exciting in and of itself.
However, what pushed it over the top was the glimpse of the never before seen by my eyes character of Protector.
You see, as mentioned, Dick Grayson had given up on being Robin and had stepped down as leader of the Titans, and someone else – a kid named Jason Todd – had become the new Robin.
However, it was made clear from the start that Dick, despite turning in his hot pants and pixie boots, had no intention of giving up on costumed crime fighting for good, so the question was, once he finally finds himself, what will his new identity be?
This question, to give you an idea of how much of a nerd I am (as if you didn’t know), literally kept me awake at night.
So when I saw Protector, I thought, “Is this it? Is this the new identity?”
Of course it wasn’t, and eventually (a year later), Dick finally took on his new name and put on his new costume, a costume that was…incredibly gay.
That’s my view of the costume now. At the time, I thought it was cool as hell.
(Since that time his costume has been modified and updated and it actually is cool as hell.)
In any case, I was disappointed to discover that this comic did not contain the reveal, and was even more disappointed in the actual content of the story. I mean, okay, I get it, drugs are bad and they’ll kill you if you use them even if you don’t think that will (or perhaps especially if you don’t think they will).
And if I thought it was bad then, let me just say that it hasn’t improved after 24 years.
After the main story, the comic had a few pages of activities (which did feature Ernie Keebler) designed to help to reinforce the ideas presented in the comic.
I decided to scan in and complete one of the activity pages and post it here.
I hope I put down the right answers, because I don’t want to end up being addicted to drugs.
(Hey, booze is legal, so that addiction doesn’t count.)



I would suggest that those of you reading this post your own Choices in the Comments, but that’s pretty pointless because as almost no one but Scott posts comments unless it’s to insult me or to accuse me of not liking Rachel Weisz.
(I like Rachel Weisz. I like her a lot. Okay?)

Now You Don't Have To Spit On Your Rubik's Cube To Keep It Moving Smoothly: You Can Just Spit On It Because It's Scum!

I found this ad in an old comic and had to share it. There's nothing I need to say about it; it speaks for itself.

The Semi-Slutty Emo Sundress

I got up this morning and prepared to venture out into the world to go grocery shopping, but soon realized that it’s been a while since I’d last done the laundry, and so I had no clean socks.
Having no other options – apart from wearing dress socks, which I didn’t want to do on such a warm day because they get really sweaty, sticky, and generally nasty when it’s hot out – I decided to delay the journey out a little more than usual and first do a load of laundry.
In addition to picking up groceries I had to go to the post office to pick up a certified letter. It’s the official buy-back offer from the condo developer. Naturally they tried to deliver it while I was at work. Three out of five weekdays I’m at home; they had to try to deliver it on one of the two that I’m not?
Anyway, there was, naturally, a substantial line at the post office, longer even than the one at Subway yesterday, though this one, surprisingly, moved much more quickly.
I don’t really know how things stand on the buy-back front. The other owners had a meeting on Saturday, which I obviously didn’t go to, and they haven’t given those of us who were absent any real info, as they’re planning to have a weeknight meeting for anyone who missed it.
After I left the post office it was off to the grocery store.
While there I saw a kind of interesting chick whom I wanted to get a closer look at to see if she was actually cute, but I never saw her again after the initial glimpse.
She seemed like this sort of “alternative” art-school type who, now that she’s in the real world, is trying to go a little more mainstream, but not quite hitting the mark, and because it was a very warm day she was also dressing for comfort, so the end result was an outfit that can only be described as a semi-slutty emo sundress.
Basically it was a black dress that was almost baby-doll nightie short and showed off as lot of leg (she had a tattoo on her ankle), paired with some business-casual high-heeled patent leather black sandals.
Like I said, she looked interesting, so I wanted to get another, closer look at her, but she had cleared out before I could nonchalantly cross paths with her.
I did get a closer look at someone else who seemed kind of cute at first, but upon closer inspection was not so cute as I’d thought (or quite so young as she evidently thought she was based on how she was dressed).
Throughout it all I was followed by the persistent sound of some kid who was testing out his ability to go “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH” for extended periods of time and at as high a pitch as possible.
He was pretty good at it.
After that it was home again where I killed some time stuffing more boards into more bags and then stuffing some comics into them.
And now this.

If Wishes Were Horses I’d Probably Fall Off And Shatter My Coccyx Department:
Yesterday I was talking about how I really don’t ask for much out of life (mostly just because I know better than to bother), and yet even the small things that I do ask for seem to be too much.
Still, I thought it would make for an interesting segment to try to imagine what the world might be like if some of my petty wishes were to come true.
So let’s just imagine that I’ve gotten hold of a magic lamp containing a genie (most likely a male one, because, you know, a cute female one would be too much to ask for) who has the power to grant simple and practical wishes.

First of all, I’d be able to find pants that are the right length and that don’t curl under the heels of my shoes, causing me to constantly step on them and make them all ragged and frayed.
In general, the world would be less sticky to the touch.
Hangnails: nothing but a distant and fading memory.
Better reaction times for anyone and everyone ahead of me when the light turns green.
I would be a lot less gassy.
Everyone would have minty fresh breath, and would, across the board, understand the importance of showering and the proper application of deodorant.
TV stations would not pre-empt or intterupt The Simpsons for anything short of the Apocalypse, and even then they would just put a little ticker on the bottom of the screen.
Someone would post really ultra-high quality and resolution captures of that movie scene in which Scarlett Johansson scrambles to cover herself with a towel when someone walks in on her after she’s just finished bathing so that I would have sufficient detail to work with when attempting to draw it.
Or conversely, my meager talents would be up to the challenge of drawing it using the captures I have.
As a final alternative, I would not want to draw it.
Someone would be able to explain, so that I could understand, why Martin Lawrence and Jamie Kennedy have successful movie careers.
I’d be a little less itchy all the time.
I’d see that pretty girl who smiles at me that I sometimes see again.
Bread wouldn’t go moldy so quickly.
I would remember that I need things like butter, or that my bread has probably gone moldy, while I’m at the store before I get home and try to make grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch.
On a related note, I would actually make a shopping list before going to the store, remember to take said list with me to the store, and actually bother to look at it while I’m shopping at the store.

And that pretty much covers it, I think. It doesn’t seem too unreasonable (Except for the never pre-empting The Simpsons thing, I guess. Still, at the very least, they could do a better job of reporting on whatever it is they’re reporting on when they do pre-empt or interrupt the show.), or too earth-shattering. Some of it you would think that I should be able to just manage on my own without a wish-granting genie, but apparently such is not the case.

In any event, that pretty much wraps up this entry, proving that, at least for some of you out there, wishes can come true.

GAH!

This (foreign) ad for eating disorder awareness packs a pretty strong punch.



The Hole - video powered by Metacafe

Jon: The Triumphant Return...No, Wait. Not "Triumphant." Let's Just Call It The Return.

So it’s been a few days since I posted anything, and I can’t help but wonder how you managed to get by without reading about how boring my life is and how I don’t like people and I’d rather not go anywhere and I read comic books and etc., but somehow I’m sure you did.
What’s happened in the interim? I finished my Flash training...without calling the instructor rude names or telling her where she could shove various and sundry items.
God she was annoying.
Basically, any time she said something she would need us to tell her that we heard and understood what she said. She would not proceed until she got feedback.
And it had to be universal. It wasn’t enough for Scott and I to tell her we heard/understood, she would also need the people on the other side of the room to acknowledge her.
I can’t imagine how anyone could go through life being so needy.
While I avoided lashing out at her, I did make my feelings pretty clear.
Whenever she would ask something, like, “Guys, you with me?” I would respond in as annoyed a tone as possible with something like, “Yes, we’re with you.”
Scott found my unbridled annoyance amusing, though I think it went right over her head.
Beyond her neediness, she also didn’t seem to be very bright, and a lot of the Flash-based sites that she showed us as examples and referred to as being “tight” were perfect examples of all the things that are wrong with so many Flash-based sites, though in fairness some of them were pretty cool.
There was one chick in the class who was pretty hot, though much of her hotness stemmed from the fact that she had a really nice ass, which sort of balanced out some her shortcomings, though even with a lesser ass she still would have been cute.
At one point in the class I leaned over to Scott and told him, “I would totally bang her. I just wanted you to know that about me.” He said that he pretty much already knew that about me.
On Thursday Scott and I stopped at the comic book store on the way home from work. I dropped another $60 bucks, but that was largely because I bought the hardcover collection of issues 1-6 of All Star Superman.
Once I get into the groove of buying only the regular series I intend to buy, it should start getting a little cheaper.
I hope.
On Saturday we made another dash there because we thought we’d forgotten something, or rather, I thought we had, but it turns out it’s not coming out until this week.
(The book in question was Amazons Attack, which we figure we should read because we’ve started picking up the latest Wonder Woman series based on the rumor that Gail Simone is going to be taking over the writing chores. I hope it’s true and that she does it soon, because so far, New York Times best-seller or not, the current writer, Jodi Picoult, is not impressing me. In fact, she’s doing the exact opposite of impressing me. She’s kind of like the Anti-Gail, and Gail can’t come riding down from heaven to defeat her soon enough. The current penciller, whose name escapes me, is okay, but is not as good as the husband and wife team of Terry and Rachel Dodson, who had been handling the art on the book.)
While I was there, as I still haven’t been shipped the bags and boards I ordered almost a month ago, I picked up some bags and boards, figuring I could at least bag my latest purchases and some of the older stuff that’s precious to me.
Speaking of books that are precious to me, I also spent $50 on Friday ordering some back issues to replace lost and/or damaged comics from year’s past.
This picking back up an old habit thing is pricey. It’d probably be cheaper to start smoking again, and about as worthwhile.
Being able to sleep past 7 AM on a Sunday morning really doesn’t seem like that much to ask for, but, based on the barking dog, sirens, and helicopters that made doing so impossible this morning, it seems that the Universe just doesn’t see it that way.
I did eventually get back to sleep and make it all the way to 9 AM, but I had to put so much energy into making myself sleep despite the cacophony that I woke up exhausted.
I’m the only person I know who can wear himself out by sleeping.
Honestly, though, I think the reason I’m so angry all the time is that I really don’t ask for much out of life – a little peace and quiet here and there, a decent night’s sleep, etc. – and yet I don’t even manage to get that.
Oh sure, I’m doing okay as far as material things go, but when it comes to the little things…well, every once in a while I’d just like to have a day on which I don’t have to listen to barking dogs, I don’t bang my head against something, stub my toe, cut myself in some mysterious and bewildering fashion, or choke on food/water/my own spit.
Oh well. At least there are some things in life that are good, like The Venture Bros. Season Two on DVD, which came out on Tuesday.
On the way to the comic shop yesterday we stopped at Target so I could pick up a copy, though I actually ended up watching Scott’s copy while I was at work (very slow day).
I watched the entire season, except for one episode that, while great, I’ve seen a lot.
That’s twelve half-hour episodes of the show. And that’s on top of having read all the comics (except the All Star Superman HC) I’d bought on Thursday and several comics online, filling 100 comic book bags with backer boards and bagging all the comics I had with me. Add on some Web surfing, the aforementioned trip to Target and the comic shop, and some actual work, and you begin to get an idea of just how long a twelve and a half hour workday is when your job is almost entirely reactive and there’s nothing going on for you to react to.
(It’s worse when there is something to react to because it doesn’t make the time go faster it just makes it more irritating.)
Today, after talking to my mother and spending some time doing not much of anything, I decided, because it’s gorgeous out, to walk down to Subway to pick up lunch and dinner.
There were about eight people ahead of me in line, and out of all of the people there I was the only one who was ordering something only for himself. Everyone else was placing family orders.
So it took a while.
After getting home and eating half my sub I went to work on writing some Web site copy for Kathleen’s company. Her boss had called me on Wednesday when I’d forgotten to turn my cell phone off in class and asked me if I was up to maybe taking on some writing projects, which, of course, I was.
And all of that, brought me here, though not entirely in that order.
And now you have your fix of random complaints, observations, and pointless Jon minutiae.
Happy?

Too Lazy

Too lazy to post a real entry.
I had Intro to Flash today. Interesting subject, but the teacher leaves much to be desired.
Scott and I had lunch over at the buffet at the grocery store across the street.
When I got home I watched a romantic comedy I'd recorded the other night.
(I recorded it ecause it was a romantic comedy with lesbians. Hot, movie-style lipstick lesbians, not the stocky, ditch-digging, flannel-wearing, be-mulleted variety of lesbians I've known in real life. Having lesbians in it is pretty much the only way to get me to watch a romantic comedy.)
It was cute, though not terribly steamy in the lesbian department.
(Though they were both hot, and, as mentioned, not even remotely like any lesbians I've known in real life, but to be fair they were also very much unlike any straight women I've known in real life.)
The movie was Imagine Me and You, for those of you wondering. I found it interesting in that it had Lena Headey (from 300) in it, as well as Anthony Head, who played Giles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
(He had several great lines, including this one in answer to the quesion of how long he'd been married: Thirty years. If I'd killed her when I first thought about it, I'd be out already. A free man.)
And that was my day.
And that was my half-assed blog entry about it.

I'd Much Rather We Get Them To Abstain From Killing Each Other

So I just read this article about a report that shows that kids who have had abstinence only sex education are just as likely to do the wild thing as kids who haven’t.
There was a certain irony in that while I was reading it the music I was listening to shuffled to the song Children in Heat by The Misfits.
In any case, while reading the article I was reminded of that other article I read about kids who make that whole “golden promise” or whatever it’s called, vowing to God that they’ll keep in their pants until they get married.
Turns out that not only do they fail to keep their promises, they’re also more likely to engage in acts such as anal sex, operating on the “ass”umption that sodomy is kosher, since, in a bit of Clinton-esque reasoning, it all depends on what your definition of sex is. Technically if you take it up the other chute you’re still a virgin, these golden promisers conclude.
When I read about that, I thought, “Hmm, if I had know this when I was in high, I would have made my girlfriend promise to remain a virgin, know what I’m sayin’?”
(I also wonder if a golden shower is okay when you make the golden promise?)
Ugh, okay, I’ll change the subject.
I went out to do my shopping this morning, stopping first at the bank to deposit the birthday check from my mom. Normally I would have just used the ATM, but we were being assailed by a positively murderous wind today, so I opted to go inside.
While filling out the deposit ticket, I was getting extremely suspicious glances from this guy who looked kind of like a mixture of Matt Damon and the guy who played the roommate they were trying to get to kill himself in that shitty movie Dead Man on Campus.
I mean, they were just these totally paranoid looks as though he feared I was getting ready to attack him.
I got the same treatment from some guy at another pump when I was getting gas after that.
I mean, WTF? Okay, I can kind of see it from the guy in the bank; he was depositing a shitload of cash. (Though it was still stupid to be paranoid, I mean, the money was on the other side of the window being counted by the cashier, and he was like twice my size.)
But at the gas pump? Was he worried that I was going to steal his gas?
I was too damned busy trying not to be lofted into the next county by the wind to steal anything.
Yesterday someone went around and gave the buy-back offer letters to all of the owners. She mentioned to me that we had one holdout at the time (there have, apparently, been more since that time). Want to hear a shocker? It’s an old lady.
I guarantee you that the reason she doesn’t want to accept the offer is because she wants to screw over all of us young whippersnappers.
After hearing that I was thinking about how if life were like an episode of Law & Order someone would end up bumping the old biddy off. All of the owners who wanted to accept the offer would be questioned, one of us would be charged and brought to trial, then, in a shocking twist, it would be revealed that someone else murdered her for reasons totally unrelated to the buy-back.
And of course I’m not suggesting that she should be killed or anything retarded like that, I was just thinking about how well it would (and has) fit the L&O pattern.
(I know there’s been at least one murder case on the show that occurred under similar circumstances, which means that there probably has been at least one in real life, given their “ripped from the headlines” approach.)
Speaking of murder and headlines, I’m sure you’ve seen the news about what’s happened out here in VA at the Virginia Tech campus.
It’s pretty horrific and sucks most of the humor out of the above comments.
I just wish more people would take my advice: if you’re planning a murder-suicide, reverse the order.
After all, if you really absolutely feel the need to kill someone, why not just try yourself? There’s no need to take anyone with you.
Yes, I know that sounds heartless, but I’m not actually advocating suicide, I’m just making the point that while there’s no need to kill yourself, there’s even less need to go out and kill other people, especially innocent people who are just trying to go about living their lives. And while I’d like the total to be 0, a total of 1 dead person is a hell of a lot better than 21.
In addition to being the birthday of my bother Brad (and of Sharon, loyal reader and friend of Threshold), yesterday marked the six month mark since my dad died. I think about how hard losing him was (and is) on me, and then I think about what the family members of the people killed today are going to have to go through because of some sick fuck who couldn’t see fit to just blow his own brains out.
It’s bad enough to lose someone you love to some impersonal event like a heart attack, but to have to lose someone because some asshole had to make himself feel powerful or had something to prove…I can’t even imagine what that’s like.
*Sigh* Okay, enough about that, I guess.
Tomorrow and Wednesday I’ll be in a Flash training class with Scott. I’ve used Flash a little, but it’ll be interesting to get some actual training.
At least I hope it’ll be interesting.

Too Little Sleep And Too Many Comics

There are few things in life that are better than freshly cleaned sheets.
Okay, there are few things in my life that are better than freshly cleaned sheets.
Normally when I have them – as I did last night, as I’d washed the sheets as part of the whole cleaning thing – I get a very good night’s sleep.
Unfortunately, at diner Stacy ordered a Coke and, with my more relaxed attitude about caffeine, I thought, “That sounds good,” and ordered one for myself.
Of course, we were there for quite some time, so one became several, al of which meant that, clean sheets or not, I didn’t get to sleep until well after 3 am.
I woke up sometime before 10 and found myself over on the opposite side of the bed sleeping in a diagonally position, the very top of my just barely resting on my pillow.
After getting up, talking to my mother, and doing a bunch of nothing in particular, I decided to try to take a nap around noon, but recently a new dog has arrived in the building and he, like the dog upstairs, likes to keep his loneliness at bay through barking.
The new dog’s bark is much more shrill and yippy than the other dog, and he also seems to have more energy and determination, continuing to bark well past the point at which the old dog is willing to settle for emitting the occasional whine.
So the yipping pretty much killed the nap idea.
I spent the rest of the afternoon watching some show about prehistoric animals that existed before dinosaurs that I’d watched before, and entering some of my comics into the database software.
I was basically working from memory, selecting the issues that I know that I have.
This isn’t really that phenomenal a feat; I was mostly putting in limited series that I know I have every issue of.
I was also doing the Superman titles, which is made fairly easy based on the fact that I have, with a handful of exceptions, every issue of Superman, Adventures of Superman, Action (excepting the year or so when it was a weekly book), and Superman: The Man of Steel published between late 1986 and mid 1995.
So basically it was a matter of going into the list, finding the range and checking them all off, then skimming through to uncheck the issues (I’d say fewer than five) that I’m missing from that period.
Even with just working from memory and entering in a small percentage of the total, I already have 573 comics in the database.
After that I did some work on the comics themselves, de-bagging them in preparation for the day when I will re-bag them.
I actually learned something while de-bagging them: a person my age shouldn’t spend a significant amount of time sitting on the floor hunched over.
And later I learned that those force flex garbage bags are no match for a pile of old comic book backer boards. I learned this on the stairs on my way to the dumpster.
And that was my ever so exciting Sunday. I’ll bet you’re glad I decided to write an entry to tell you all about it.

The Melting Pot: It's Like Eating America!

So I just got back a bit ago from my birthday dinner with Scott and Stacy.
We went to The Melting Pot, a place I’ve heard them talk about for pretty much as long as I’ve known them.
For the uninitiated, such as I had been, eating there is a rather involved affair.
First of all, you have an appetizer course, during which you dip bread and vegetables into a fondue pot full of cheeses of your choosing. You then have a salad course. Next up is the entrée during which you are brought pieces of various kinds of uncooked meat and seafood which cook yourself in a fondue pot full of a broth of your choosing.
Finally, you have your desert course during which you dip fruits and pound cake and assorted other things into, you guessed it, a fondue pot full of melted chocolate.
The whole process takes a while – we were there for almost two and a half hours – and you end up eating a lot of food.
It’s pretty damned pricy, though, so I’m glad I wasn’t paying for it.
In addition to the meal they bought me a little gift basket that came with a balloon, some coupons, and two kinds of chocolate ideal for melting and dipping (and, Scott assures me, just plain eating).
While it was good, I don’t imagine it’s a place I’ll go to very often, if ever, as it’s too much of an investment of time and money, and, like most of the world, it’s not really designed for a single person.
I imagine that it would be a good place to go on…one of those…things. A dart? A duck? A debutante?
You know, those things that I’ve heard about where people go out to eat or to see a movie when they either are having or are at least possibly considering having sex with each other. A whatchmacallit.
Those things that pretty much account for Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock actually having careers.
It’s like the fruit, or the days on a calendar.
A date. Yeah, that’s it.
I seem to vaguely recall having gone on those sometime in the dimly-remembered past, and it seems to me that this place would be good for one of them because you would get a lot of time to sit and talk, and given the ungodly cost of it all you could impress a chick with your seeming affluence.
So yeah, clearly there’s not going to be any good reason for me to go there again anytime soon.
Beyond dinner, Scott bought me a copy of that comic book database software I mentioned here before…mentioned with the intention of getting Scott to buy it for me for my birthday.
He was worried that I might end up buying it for myself and was glad that I hadn’t, but there was no danger of that happening, as I was waiting until after my birthday to give him the chance to buy it for me.
If he were a trained seal, I would have tossed him a nice fish when he gave it to me.
Good job Scott!
(And thanks.)
On my way out of the parking lot I was treated to a nice sight: short skirt, sexy boots, great legs. As I was making the turn, my headlights were at the perfect level to bring them into focus. Didn’t get a chance to see the face, but they were the kind of legs that authors of noir detective books come up with all kinds of colorful metaphors to describe, and that probably ought to be insured by Lloyd’s of London, the kind of legs that, if life were a Tex Avery cartoon, would have made me transform into a wolf and howl while my eyes bugged out and made an A-OOGAH!!! sound.
So yeah. Great legs.
I was out of milk, but didn’t want to stop at an actual store to pick any up, so since I was in that neighborhood I went to the convenience store that I frequent on workdays before heading home.
And that was my night, and that brings my birthday saga fully to a close.

Springtime For Hitler?

The humor drops off quickly after the initial shock, but that first laugh is a doozy.

Time Isn't On Anyone's Side

One of the other irritating things about eating at Fridays yesterday was that the whole time I was there 80s music was playing. Early 80s music.
It was as if the Universe was saying over and over again, “Yes, this is exactly how old you are. That young couple with the kid in the booth next to you? Probably weren’t even born yet when this song came out.”
Later on in the evening while flipping through the channels I landed on an episode of Sex in the City, and, momentarily distracted by the cuteness of Kristin Davis, the only attractive member of the cast, I wasn’t able to change the channel before Horseface McGinty (Sarah Jessica Parker) started loudly lamenting the fact that she was 35.
That was greeted with a “Screw you, Mr. Ed,” and a quick channel change.
(For the record, there was a brief window during which SJP was kind of attractive. I’d say she peaked somewhere around LA Story, and even at her best she was only ever okay. Still, the horse face comments are kind of cruel and unnecessary – which is why they’re so funny.)
Anyway, that got me to thinking something about birthdays: they shouldn’t be permanent.
I mean, they should only last as long as the day itself. You know, it’s 35 years to the day since you were born, so you’re 35 – for the day. After the day is over you go back to being 24 or whatever.
I mean, why do I have to get older. Deep down inside, I really don’t feel any different than I did when I was like 13. That seemed to be the age when all of the basic elements that make up Jon came together, and not much has really changed since then in that essential core. Sure, I’ve had a lot of experiences and learned a few things since then, but that core has remained essentially unchanged.
(And yes, that does mean that I was kind of a cranky old curmudgeon even as a kid.)
So why does the rest of me have to get older? The thought that I am 35 years old is absolutely ridiculous. I still read comic books and spend all of my time thinking about girls, for Christ’s sake.
And speaking of comic books, why can’t time work like that?
In the Marvel Universe time operates on this sort of sliding scale so that no matter what happens it’s never more than 15 years since the creation of the Fantastic Four. Everything just stays in its same place and the creation of the FF moves from 1962 to 1992 and everyone just moves with it.
I often cite Kitty Pryde as the perfect example of how time in the MU works.
In 1979 when Kitty was introduced she was 13 and a half years old. I was 7.
Kitty is now 21 while I’m 35.
(In Kitty’s case, time did move a little oddly, though. It took nearly 10 years for her to age a year and a half, but in the next decade she managed to age about 6 years, and she is now static once more.)
On the DC side of things, time is a little trickier and often has to be totally restarted to account for things, but in general, if you’re a major character, you can look forward to having your 20s last for decades.
Then, of course, there’s The Simpsons where Bart has been 10 for almost 20 years.
*Sigh* Stupid real life.
On the non-gerontological front, I took advantage of my day off to pretend like it matters what this place looks like even though I never have company and gave it a thorough cleaning.
After that I IMed with Scott for a bit.
He advised me to bring an appetite with me to tonight’s birthday dinner.
That much I can manage. It was fortunate that he didn’t ask me to bring a sparkling wit or debonair charm, because those I would have had a little more trouble with.

Birthday Excitement Winding To A Close

So after returning home and IMing with Scott and Brian for a bit, I decided to head out and get a late lunch/early dinner.
I went to the nearby Fridays, as I’ve been wanting to try those fried green beans (they were pretty good), and there was some small, retarded part of me that was thinking that maybe – just maybe – I would get a cute waitress who would flirt with me and take pity on me because I was alone on my birthday.
I knew better, of course, because I never get a cute waitress, or even an uncute waitress. I always get a guy.
Still, hope springs etc., so I went inside and tried to make a funny comment to the very cute (and very underage) hostess, but it was a misfire.
(She said, “Smoking preference?” I said, “Non-smoking.” I then added, “Of course, my actual preference would be to still smoke, but since I did quit I might as well stick with it.” Blank look and then, “So…non-smoking?” I sighed and said, “Yes, non-smoking.”)
After that she brought me to the most hidden and out of the way booth so that the other customers wouldn’t have to see the lonely pathetic guy (Birthday Bonus: There was a couple with a screaming toddler in the booth next to me.).
I sat down and waited for the inevitable greasy teenage dork waiter that I knew I would get, but was surprised instead by a balding hipster.
See? This time it was different.
Oh, wait, it was still a guy, so it really wasn’t all that different.
He kept calling me “man,” but had some sort of speech issues, so it almost sounded like he was saying “ma’am.”
In any case, I ordered the green beans, which, as mentioned, were pretty good, and a chicken Caesar salad that wasn’t so good (it was grilled chicken and the chicken was a little too charred).
I thought about ordering some kind of desert, but the couple had set their toddler to toddling, and he had toddled right over by me and proceeded to let out random brain-piercingly loud animalistic bleats of some kind, so that killed that idea.
I mean it literally killed it. The sound stabbing into my brain skewered the idea right through the hear and it bled out right there in my brain pan. And with a wife and three kids at home. Poor idea, never hurt anyone in its life.
So that was fun. In fact, it was so much fun that I rushed home, locked the door and decided that I’m never ever dining out alone again.
(Until the next time.)
Oh yeah, the moving thing.
So sometime shortly after I bought my condo, because that’s how the Universe works, the developer stopped all work on converting the apartments over to condos, began extending renters’ leases, and eventually stopped even trying to sell any more units and went back to strictly renting and tried to sell the whole shooting match to some other developer – as an apartment complex, not as condos.
Obviously this was not a good thing, particularly considering that out of 318 units they only managed to sell 58.
So we owners decided to do something about it and selected a representative to talk to the developer. The result, as I found out today, is that they’ve offered to buy all 58 units back at the original purchase price.
It would be nice if we could get them to pay more, but to do so would most likely mean involving a lawyer and suing and who knows how long that would take.
So far it seems that everyone realizes this, and we will most likely accept the offer.
That means moving (unless I wanted to stay here and rent my place, which I don’t).
I don’t want to go back to renting – though conceivably I could actually get my old apartment back because they did the whole apartments to condos and back to apartments thing as well, and given that eventually my job is moving from Reston to Dulles (and hopefully not to India), that would put me much closer to work – so I’m going to have to go house-hunting again.
Fortunately this time around I’ll be armed with much better credit, a higher income, and money in the bank, so I should be able to find something bigger and better.
I’d like to get a small townhome – the higher cost would be offset by the lower cost of HOA fees compared to condo fees – but at the very least if I go into another condo I’ll be sure to go into an established development.
The other thing I’ll be doing? Hiring movers, because I am never carrying that goddamn couch up any stairs ever again.
Anyway, a bit ago my sister Kim called to wish me a happy birthday, and we chatted for a while.
I didn’t get – or expect – any cards in the mail, though I did get some back issue comics that I’d ordered from Mile High Comics. Still waiting on my bags and boards to get shipped.
And that’s been my Big! Exciting! 35th Birthday Extravaganza Extraordinaire!
Join us next year for the rebroadcast.

Happy Birthday, Jack!

First and foremost, happy birthday to the one and only Jack T. Chick, creator of those ubiquitous pieces of evangelical Christian fire and brimstone sermons condensed into sequential art, the world famous Chick Tract.
A Chick Tract is like an old-fashioned tent revival that you can carry in your pocket and pass on to some disgusting hobo or misguided liberal and set him on the path to righteousness.
Jack is 83 years young today and has been spreading intolerance and bigotry in the guise of “old-fashioned values” via his tracts for more than 40 years.
So here’s hoping you have a good one, Jack, and I hope that as you blow out the candles on your cake you’ll remember that there’s no amount of wishing or a breeze strong enough that can but out the flames of the Lake of Fire where Catholics, Mormons, Masons, Wiccans, Homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, fans of Harry Potter, D&D enthusiast, rock musicians, and just about everyone who doesn’t adhere to your narrow, retarded view of how life should be lived will be spending their respective eternities.
After all, isn’t that vision the best birthday present of all?
Short of the Rapture, I mean.
Oh, and Jack? You say it’s your birthday? It’s my birthday, too!
Yes, that’s right, today, as most of you know, is my birthday.
What? No, you flatter me! I’m not 20, I’m 35, though I could see how you could easily make the mistake.
…
Okay, screw you; my hair started going gray when I was 21, all right?
So far to celebrate the anniversary of my birth I’ve had breakfast with Kathleen (still trying to figure out if the 20 minutes I spent in the parking lot waiting for her to arrive were meant to be my present), talking to my mother, and taking in a matinee of Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters.
Apparently school is out today, because, you know, why wouldn’t it be, so I had a bunch of noisy teens to keep me company. Fortunately they weren’t too disruptive.
Not that it mattered because it’s not like the movie had any sort of plot to follow. I mean, it was Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Who expects a plot?
Still, the opening “homage” to the whole “Let’s go out to the lobby” thing was easily worth the price of admission.
From there I headed towards home trying to decide whether I wanted to stop somewhere for lunch or just go home. I picked the latter, and the Universe decide to make up for yesterday’s largesse with the green arrow by trapping me behind a dump truck for much of the drive. And not just any dump truck, a dump truck that was behind a cement truck.
It is my birthday, after all, so just an ordinary old dump truck would never do.
Thanks, Universe!
In any case, there are some things I should attend to, but I thought I’d just extend my birthday wishes to Jack, and let you know that so far I’ve spent the first day of my 35th year having a platonic breakfast with someone else’s wife and watching a cartoon with a bunch of teenagers.
Oh, and finding out that I’m probably going to be moving, but I’ll talk more about that later.

Umm...No I Can't

When I saw this I couldn't help but be reminded of that joke about the guy who asks the doctor, in reference to his recovery from an illness/injury, "Will I be able to play the piano?"
The doctor says, "Of course!"
The man responds, "Well I couldn't before."

The Adventures Of Jon And The Very Long Day

So I put in my one day of work today.
And what a day.
First off, Scott was out because he’s taking a Perl training class this week. He’d thought it was only Tuesday and Wednesday, so he was surprised on Tuesday when he found out that it was Tuesday-Friday.
(The Tuesday-Wednesday class is next week, and he and I are taking it together. It’s an intro to Flash.)
Simon showed up – and as close to on-time as seems to be possible for him – but he brought with him a case of Pink Eye, which, in an environment of shared resources (keyboards, phones, stripper poles, etc.) is not a welcome guest, so our boss sent him home.
That would have left just me to man every station, but fortunately we have a system that automatically e-mails people to let them know about OT slots when someone is going to be off (assuming the manager enters it into the calendar correctly, which our boss did), to which someone had responded, so I had some help.
He’ll also be in tomorrow, which is good, because if Simon is still out that means that no one from our shift will actually be there.
Of course, I’m letting the fact that this isn’t my problem be one of my birthday presents and am not worrying about it.
(As an aside, Brian called to ask if Scott is going to be in tomorrow. I said no, and as it dawned on him that he might very well be the one who has to help fill in for us, he said a lot of swear words that I won’t repeat, although I will say that one of them rhymed with gun of a witch and sounded exactly like son of a bitch.)
Even so, it proved to be an irritating day full of minor annoyances and various weird shit that made things even more annoying.
And it was long.
It didn’t help matters any that I didn’t get to eat lunch until almost 2.
Still, once it was over I drove out of there like a bat out of hell, and when I got to the last major intersection I got an early birthday present from the Universe in the form of actually hitting it when the arrow was green. In over a year of taking that route home that’s only happened one other time. Pretty much every other time I get there just after the arrow turned off and have to sit through a full cycle of those long-ass lights.
And then I was home where I eventually settled in to watch – and laugh at – new episodes of My Name is Earl and The Office.
Kathleen called (immediately after which Brian called to have the aforementioned conversation) to plan for a “birthday breakfast” tomorrow, as it would be too much of a hassle for her to go to work, come back to Leesburg for lunch, and then drive back to work.
So as a birthday present I get to wake up early on my day off! Hooray!
Honestly, though, it will be nice to see Kathleen, as I haven’t since back in December when she burst in to my place in a flurry of activity, leaving behind a living thing (the fish) in her wake.
On Saturday Scott and Stacy are taking me out for dinner because, as Stacy said, I’m a “good guy.” When I grunted, she said, “Well, we like you,” to which I responded, “Well, I suppose there’s no accounting for taste.”
Stacy had IMed me at work today to apologize for not de-hairing the couch on Sunday. I told her that it wasn’t a big deal, but she insisted it was, so I told her that I forgave her.
Joke’s on her; I didn’t forgive shit!
(Mostly because I didn’t feel there was anything to be forgiven, to paraphrase Andy – I mean Drew – from tonight’s Office.)
Anyway, now I’m here writing this.
And you’re there, reading it.

Alternative Uses For The "Citizen Kane Of Comic Books"

A bit ago I mentioned that I got my Absolute Edition of Watchmen, and I also mentioned that it's big.
How big? Well, you could easily squish rodents or small dogs with it, as well as putting it to a host of other non-literary uses that big, heavy objects are good for.
Such as bludgeoning children...



...or little people*




*Nothing against children or little people, it's just that the book is heavy, so it would take a lot more effort to lift it up high enough to bludgeon an adult of even average height, so if you have to bludgeon someone with it you might as well go with someone close to the ground.

Now, I need to make it clear that I'm "not" advocating any of these uses (you wouldn't want to damage it or get blood on it, after all, though real blood might be a nice touch to accompany the blood spatter illustration that is the seminal image from the book), I'm just attempting to illustrate a point about the book's size.
What I do advocate is actually reading it, because if you did, you would see that in addition to being oversized, Absolute Watchmen has been printed on much better stock than any previous collection, the color has been redone digitally, making it much more crisp and vibrant and just helps make it look more polished (though there is such a thing as gilding the lily), and it includes script samples and the original proposal written up by Alan Moore (back when he was still hoping to use the then recently-acquired Charlton characters such as Captain Atom and Blue Beetle), and some original character designs by Dave Gibbons.
So yeah, big and heavy enough to use for pest disposal or to discipline your children and/or recalcitrant little people, but also good to read.

I Don't Care What Other People Think

...unless they agree with me.
Recently, Popoholic had a poll asking who should play the part of Ava Lord, the titular (in more ways than one) dame in the movie adaptation of the Sin City story A Dame To Kill For.
It was originally rumored that Angelina Jolie was going to fill the role. I thought it was perfect casting, but then she was rumored to have moved on to other projects, such as the adaptation of another comic book property, Wanted, which she is currently filming.
(BTW, Wanted was a great comic. I have my problems with Mark Millar *cough*CivilWar*cough* excuse me *cough*Ultimatesisneveron-time *cough* but Wanted was one of the best, most bad-ass stories I've encountered in a long, long time. The movie, based on what I've read about it, promises to be not so much in the way of good. On a side note, Angelina plays a character who was black in the comic. When people complained about white characters being played by black actors in the movie versions, they were accused of being racist. Will the same apply to anyone who complains about the color change here?)
Anyway, with Angelina possibly out of the picture, a replacement Ava had to be found, and the next actress rumored to be up for the part was Rachel Weisz.
A fine and lovely actress, but as I contended in another post, not quite right for the part.
I suggested that, in lieu of Angelina, Scarlett Johansson would be ideal for the part.
And people argued with me.
But lo and behold, the results of the Popoholic poll, which placed Angelina as the frontrunner, as she should be, were thus:

Scarlett Johansson came in second with twenty-eight percent of the voters thinking a raven-haired Johansson should get the role. Rose McGowan came in third place, and Rachel Weisz, who was recently rumoured to be the front-runner for the role, came in fourth with the fewest number of votes. Personally, I don’t see her in the role at all.

So in your face, people who disagreed with me!
I would put Ms. Weisz ahead of Rose McGowan, though, but now that McGowan is allegedly sleeping with director Robert Rodriguez, that might improve her odds.
Of course, if the poll had gone differently, that wouldn't have proven anything, but since it (mostly) went the way I thought it should, it proves that I was right.
You can see the full results of the poll here.
Oh, and for the record, I want to reiterate that in movie adaptations of Sin City stories featuring the character of Delia, the part should be played by Monica Keena (whose cup size, impressive though it may be, I don't know).

Giving In To The Worse Angel Of My Nature

Okay, so I guess I’ve been away a while.
Fortunately you haven’t missed much.
For Easter I was offered (and accepted) an invitation to dinner from Scott and Stacy.
As I said to Scott, “Well, Jesus came out of His tomb, so I suppose the least I can do is come out of my condo.”
I ended up staying quite a bit longer than was comfortable, as their dog’s hair had started to get to me right away, mostly irritating my eyes, but eventually leading me to itch and sneeze, and when I got home I took some Benadryl, which managed to overpower all of the caffeine I’d had (not sure why I drank so many Cokes), and caused me to turn in early, even though I’d gone to bed relatively early on Saturday night and had slept in until nearly 10 that morning.
Of course, I woke up several times throughout the night after having weird and oddly disturbing dreams that seemed to be related in some fashion to the movie Grindhouse. Not sure what that was about, but I do know that I was kind of creeped out whenever I woke up, and I was starting to expect some deformed girl to show up and kill me with a “nife.”
Monday I woke up and had to decide whether or not I was going to go shopping, and ultimately opted for “not.”
Of course, I had to go out later in the day, as there was a training session at work at 3.
I wasn’t sure what route I was going to take on the way home, and didn’t know what I was going to do for dinner, but then, in a moment of inspiration, I had the answer to both questions.
Which brings me to this.
You know you’ve thought about doing it.
Everyone has, just admit it.
You’ve always wanted to do it but you’ve been afraid to try – what if you got caught? What would your parents say? Or the neighbors?
Still, the thought is always there, nagging at you like a little devil on your shoulder telling you to do it, while that ineffectual angel cautions you not to.
So yeah, I did it, but don’t you dare judge me. You’re no different; you just don’t have the courage to even admit that you want to do it, let alone actually do it.
Not like me. I had the courage to say, “By god, I’m going to do it! I’m going to order an entire family-sized bucket of KFC chicken for myself.”
And I did.
I drove up through Ashburn, stopped at the Taco Bell/KFC, ordered a 10-piece bucket of chicken (with 4 biscuits and two family-sized sides), and made my way home where I proceeded to stuff my face.
Obviously I didn’t eat it all in one sitting (I still have several pieces of chicken left, as well as some coleslaw), but even so, I did end up eating a lot of food.
Today I went out and did a bit of grocery shopping, though not much. I figure I don’t really need much, as I’m only working one day, so I don’t have to worry about cooking so that I have leftovers for lunch at work (though I haven’t been doing much of that in recent weeks anyway), and on Friday Scott and Stacy want to take me out for dinner for my birthday.
When they mentioned that to me on Sunday my response was underwhelming, and led to a “well, we’re not going to twist your arm “ comment, but it’s not the being take out part that’s sapping my enthusiasm, it’s the birthday part.
I never really look forward to my birthday, but somehow it seems worse this year.
Maybe it’s the fact that it’s kind of a “milestone” age, or maybe it’s just hat I miss my dad, and Betts, or maybe all of the above plus all of the usual nonsense and some other random crap that I’m not even consciously aware of.
So yeah, I’m not likely to build up a lot of enthusiasm for “celebrating” my birthday this year, but I do appreciate the fact that there are people who care enough to want to do something to acknowledge it, so I apologize for seeming to be an unappreciative ass than usual.
Anyway, aren’t you glad that I’m finally filling you in on what’s been going on since the last time I posted?