A hearty "Thank You" to my good friend Mike Foster who e-mailed me the identity of the Mystery Villain:

So I pulled out the Invasion series with all the tie-ins today. Didn't get far when I saw a cover of the series he premiered in. One quick search later: Strobe. Power of the Atom issue 3. (Wed 12/27/2006)

According to dcuguide.com ("The Unofficial Guide to the DC Universe"), Strobe first appeared in Power of the Atom #3 in October 1988, just a few months before the DC Universe-spanning Invasion event.

A villain wearing an advanced suit of armor that could throw concussion blasts and deliver blinding flashes of light. Strobe fought the Atom (II) [Ray Palmer], who turned him over to the authorities [PotA #3]. Breaking free from prison, Strobe took another identity as the samurai-inspired Edg the Destroyer [PotA #12], but was once again defeated by the Atom, subsequently returning to his Strobe identity [PotA #13].

Strobe certainly belongs to the same clique of loser villains as Rainbow Raider. In the issue, Strobe was angry that Atom's heroics were stealing headlines from his bank robberies, so he decided to throw down with a Justice Leaguer. (That's a bad idea. Villains with light-inspired gimmicks have a long history of bad luck with the JLA in particular and other DC Universe heroes in general.) I postulate that if Strobe is robbing banks for public attention, he probably is in the wrong line of work. Try robbing television studios next time, Strobe. Of course, Strobe loses his fight to Atom, and he practically disappears from the DC Universe.

Mike, you found a character who has only appeared in 4 books in the 80-year history of DC Comics. Congrats, man. Consider yourself the Indiana Jones of the comic book vault.

I need some help. I'm trying to identify the character in the bottom right of this panel from DC's Invasion Book 3, page 40, published in 1989. If you know, please tell me. Not knowing is slowly killing me.

Top left is Booster Gold, who is descending from the Blue Beetle's Bug ship alongside Beetle himself. At the bottom left is Two-Face, one of Batman's many villains. Next to Two-Face is the mystery character. I assume from his reaction to the arrival of two Justice Leaguers that he is a villain, but for all I know he's just surprised to see a flying bug. It is the only appearance of either Two-Face or the unknown mystery fellow in the entire Invasion event, and though it is not expressly stated, I believe that it is supposed to take place in New York City since in previous panels Oberon mentions that Blue & Gold are "battling villains" in NYC.

But who, oh who, is in the foreground bottom right? I've been pouring over issues of DC's Who's Who from 1985, but with little luck so far. (It would probably go faster if I could stop reading every single entry. I mean, I know that there is no way that this is the Legion of Substitute Super-Heroes Color Kid or the original Doom Patrol ally Mento, but I just can't stop myself from reading about them. It's yet another one of my character flaws.)

So this is Christmas? I must say that this Christmas was probably more enjoyable than recent years past. No one argued. No one threw punches or food. No one stormed out and drove home. (Though my father is sleeping in his car tonight. But it's just out of appreciation for tradition.)

The lack of friction around the table this year made me realize that I often hear people talk about their dysfunctional families' holidays, but I never hear anyone talk about their functional families' holidays. I think it's about time that the June Cleavers and Donna Reeds of the world speak up. Is Nixon's "silent majority" too busy enjoying the holiday season with their sweater vests and sober relatives to tell the rest of us that we're screwed up? Or are they just smart enough to lay low, lest they find themselves co-starring on a very special holiday edition of Cops with my father?

I even enjoyed a better than average gifting this year. The only thing I asked for was socks, but in addition to the socks, I also received 12 pairs of underwear and a fog machine. Wowee! I'd say it was "like Christmas," except for the fact that it actually was Christmas. In this case, my extensive mental inventory of useful sarcastic cliches has let me down, leaving me grasping for words with which to describe the event. (Sarcasm just can't be used to describe satisfaction.)

The 12 pairs of underwear made me wonder about why we call them "pairs" of underwear. A quick internet search reveals that back in the day, only nobility wore anything over the coverings of their genitals, so there was technically no such thing as "underwear" until the last few centuries. (Unless, of course, you were hanging out in a royal court wearing a codpiece or tunic.) Modern legged outerwear evolved from two, unattached leggings (a pair of hose, to be precise) to become the single garment that we now call "a pair of pants." As I understand it, the word "pants" evolved from the word "pantaloons," a type of legged, female underskirt garment designed to cover their highly coveted naughty bits. This would make "pairs of underwear" a vestigial etymological remnant of a bygone wardrobe in our lexicon.

Note that since "pants" originated as a type of underwear, modern outerwear "pants" should properly be referred to as "trousers" since "pants" is specifically derivative of a type of undergarment and "trousers" are outerwear for the legs. This appears to be yet another difference in American and British English languages. They get it right, whereas we American's don't care what you call it so long as you can't see our legs.

It turns out that "men's cotton briefs," such as I received for Christmas, weren't even invented until the 1930s in Chicago, Illinois. Named for the 20th century male undergarment called a "jockstrap," they were designed and sold by a company which would later adopt their brand name as the company name: Jockey.

Now, all this thinking of underwear has reminded me of an editorial that I once wrote to the University of Georgia's student newspaper, The Red and Black. I took the opportunity to satirize the University community's overreaction to an editorial cartoon by criticizing an editorial cartoon by my classmate Mack Williams (now an accomplished animator for Cartoon Network's Adult Swim program Frisky Dingo). What does this have to do with underwear, you ask? Simple: "culottes," a French underwear that appears to be a cross between a skirt and shorts. I quote from one of the many, many responses to my letter:

First we had someone decrying Williams' Feb. 26 cartoon as an insult to the soldiers who fought at Iwo Jima, when it should have been plainly obvious such an insult was not the cartoonist's intent. Now we've got someone with his culottes in a bunch over Williams' portrayal of poodles in a subsequent cartoon ("Poodles not often angry or mean dogs," Feb. 28). Poodles! Come down off the ledge, Stephens, and understand that the poodle in that cartoon was a symbol for something else -- the cartoon was not about poodles any more than it was about bulldogs or people with facial hair.

The full text can be read from the archives of The Red and Black online. The event played out in the editorial pages' "Mailbox" from February 28 through March 3, 2003. The highlight of the affair for me was this dialogue exchanged in the online feedback section:

I am stunned at how many people have been writing in about the initial poodle letter. I know Americans are supposed to be irony-free, but this is ridiculous. The letter was satirizing the Iwo Jima complaints. Come on, people, show that you deserve to be at college.

Which received the following response:

He wasn't satirizing anything, it was written by a mixed up old secretary who has his priorities all mixed up. Not everyone is as clever as you think they are.

Now THAT is satisfying journalism.

Hmm. I seem to be rambling. It must be the effects of too much cranberry sauce, Hershey's Christmas Kisses, sweet tea, pound cake, Coca-Cola, and Klondike Bars. I suppose the point of all of this rambling is that I associate 17th century women's underwear with poodles. (But I don't endorse putting poodles into women's underwear. That's just weird.)

I know that in some situations you have little choice but to turn to crime. For example, there's Jean Valjean from Les Misérables who is forced to steal bread or starve to death. But I'm pretty sure that color-blindness isn't a very good reason to go stealing from people.

This here is the Rainbow Raider. His birth name, as you can see, is Roy G. Bivolo. And yes, he's been colorblind since birth, so he has no idea how bad his costume looks. A reason to be bitter? Sure. A reason to dress like a gay flag and steal paintings? No, probably not.

Comic books have always supported the "nurture over nature" theory of psychological development. I mean, giving your colorblind child a name like Roy G. Bivolo, you have to know that he's going to end up in a nuthouse. (Why can't you name him Dave? You probably need to stay away from Robert, though, because Bobby Bivolo is not a huge improvement.) If villains were intrinsically genetically bad and couldn't be cured, then heroes would have to come up with a better solution than catching them and locking them in cages, now wouldn't they? Comic book heroes love to give villains second, third, even fourth or more chances in order to learn their lesson. I mean, I've lost count of the number of times that Harvey Dent has had plastic surgery and yet he ALWAYS returns to a life of split personalities and Evil with a capital "E." It's never really his fault, of course. He wants to be good. But comic book writers are just conspiring against him.

There are dozens of characters like poor old Roy who feel they got a short end of the stick. I think most of them are probably Flash villains. (Captain Cold, Gorilla Grodd, Mirror Master, Pied Piper, Weather Wizard... and those are just the ones with the alliterative names! For a man who claims to be the fastest man alive, he sure has a lot of crap hanging on to him.) And they all just want revenge on the world for having their ridiculous theories, names, physical appearance, or whatever laughed at. What they really need is a hug.

In hindsight, I suppose that makes comics much superior to the real world, where those same people climb clock towers with rifles or run for political office.

Why do I mention this now? I don't need a reason, that's why.

A friend of mine calls me and tells me that he's adding me to his cell phone favorites list. "Hey," he says, "do you want to be the skull-and-crossbones icon? It's the only thing in here that's even kind of Evil." Now THAT should be one of those sappy Peanuts "Friendship Is..." strips.

I went to a job interview today. I'd blog about it, but I suspect that they would notice it here, so I'm going to keep my fingers shut. (Not that I have anything negative to say, I just made the cardinal mistake during a job interview: I was absolutely honest. Really, I should've known better. Lying was the first lesson the Boy Scouts taught me. No, wait, that's a lie. The first thing the Boy Scouts taught me was purse snatching. Ah, the good old days.)

It did, however, make me realize that I have a haphazard way of displaying my work here on my site. Some of my web design is with my links page mixed in with pages that I didn't create, and some minor bit of it is mixed in with my media page. I'll have to correct that soon, because now that I am aware of it, it's causing the base of my skull to itch.

So, in addition to dog sitting, house sitting, attending weddings, applying for jobs and working on graphic and web design jobs, I've also been constructing a dollhouse. I like to stay busy.

The box proudly proclaims this kit to be from the "Mansions in Minutes" series. And sure enough, I completed it in minutes. Nearly 1,000 of them spread over three weeks of waiting for glue and paint to dry. Who says there's no truth in advertising?

Once upon a time I was told that more people died on Mondays than any other day of the week. I also have heard that more people die during the Christmas season than any other time of the year. Since Christmas falls on a Monday this year, does that mean that there will be an exceptional number of fatalities this December 25? (2006: The Christmas of Death!)

Today's blog entry was going to be about how much I hate those stupid inflatable yard holiday decorations, but then I realized that everything in the blog has been negative this month. So instead, let me mention something that I actually like: Heroes on NBC.

Heroes is up against Monday Night Football and is marketed to that group of television viewers that is disinterested in sports (you know, geeks and women). As much as I love comic books, I'm not going to bypass weekly football for a television show about, well, anything. I wouldn't have ever discovered this gem except for NBC's brilliant decision to also air it on their sister station SciFi Network on Fridays before Doctor Who, which I also love. And starting last week, NBC.com now streams old episodes so that I can catch up on the elements that I missed. (Heroes is as much an episodic serial as any other soap opera, so, believe me, there was a lot to catch up on.)

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: America loves super heroes. (I think it's part of the American Dream.) Despite the entertainment ghetto to which comic books have been traditionally relegated, they continue to inspire more popular entertainments such as movies and television shows. If this show was a comic, it would never reach the mass audience it deserves. And it's a blast to find a well-written television show that contains as much wonder, suspense, and excitement as an issue of Grant Morrison's JLA. If Superman Returns had been written half as well as this, it could have been among the greatest movies ever.

Yet despite being a television show designed for a mass audience, the show is very loyal to its comic book roots. (In one episode, a major character is revealed to be a member of the "Merry Marvel Marching Society." Sweet!) Heroes is an enjoyable mixture of X-Men meets X-Files with a hint of Smallville. Though this makes it a little predictable for longtime comic readers, it more than makes up for that with an enthusiastic and encouraging embrace of the super hero genre. In any given episode, you'll find such echos of such characters as DC's Phosphorus Man, Thorn, and Waverider, or Marvel's Cannonball, Rogue, and Shadowcat. Excelsior!

So there you go. Something I like. This blog will now resume its regularly scheduled bitching.

I've now seen Superman Returns, and it sucks, just like I expected it would. Though, to be fair, I expect most things to suck, so this indicates no special prediction on my part. However, most of my pre-viewing complaints were proven completely accurate.

Sure, Routh does a fine job of impersonating Christopher Reeve, and Spacey makes a passable Gene Hackman. Too bad they were playing Superman and Lex Luthor instead. The rest of the cast seemed almost carelessly chosen. Bosworth's Lois is way too young and entirely too emotional. (Note to all future actresses who want to portray Lois: see Jennifer Jason Leigh in The Hudsucker Proxy and emulate that. THAT's Lois Lane.) Langella's Perry White and Marsden's Richard White both lacked substance, but it could have just been poor scripting. Everything else was. And that's what tanked this baby.

The producers of the movie would have done well to follow the old entertainment maxim, "give 'em what they want." Superman is nearly 70 years old and has profitably appeared on popular radio, television, and movie programs for decades. Why now did they decide to modify the costume and give him a child? They didn't update Jimmy (other than giving him a digital camera) or Perry, Smallville or Ma Kent. No, the one thing that they shouldn't have changed is the one thing that they messed up. Here's a hint for the next film, Singer: if it ain't broke, keep your damn hands off it.

Stop reading now if you don't want spoilers to the movie.

The universal gripe with the movie is Lois' child. Just as every real human being can tell that Clark Kent and Superman are the same person, every real audience goer can tell that the child is Clark's long before the "big reveal" when the child KILLS SOMEONE. The mere presence of this child completely ruins the story of the film, presenting an insurmountable obstacle to the necessary suspension of disbelief required to enjoy any fictional film, especially one with flying men.

First of all, I refuse to believe that Clark Kent would leave the planet Earth after having unprotected sex with Lois Lane before confirming that she was not pregnant. I don't know one American male who has had unprotected sex who hasn't at least briefly worried about the possibility of unwanted pregnancy. (It's the American Protestant upbringing, I suspect.) Even though he's an alien, I don't think Superman is that different from other Americans in that respect. I know that church-going Pa Kent gave young Clark the Birds-and-the-Bees story at least once, so I'm pretty sure that Clark knew the consequences of a wild night out with Little Superman in the driver's seat.

Since this film is built on the stories of Superman and Superman II, it is perfectly reasonable to suppose that Superman could have knocked up Lois during the hours when he was powerless during Superman II. And under post-Crisis on Infinite Earths continuity, Superman didn't gain his powers until adolescence, saving Lois from any mortal wounds while carrying the super-sired child. This certainly bypasses the potential difficulty of super-sperm as related in Larry Niven's infamous essay. But I still say the Superman that I was weaned on would have checked in on the action in Lois' womb once his powers returned before departing for the remains of Krypton. It would have been the right thing to do. He would simultaneously be easing his own guilty mind while confirming his beloved Lois' state of health before abandoning her on his search for his roots. Anything else would have been cowardly, an adjective that should never be applied to Superman.

Secondly, during the course of the story, Superboy reveals that he has super-powers by killing a man with a piano. Though this action is in defense of his mother, the child should never have had to perform this action. One of the moral tenets that has served Superman well over the years has been the belief in the sacred right to life. Though Superman has had to deal with many crooks, thugs, miscreants, gangsters, criminals, and murderers, he has never killed any of them, thanks to the rigid moral upbringing that he received from his parents. He would be horrified if his progeny used his powers in such a way as to result in someone's death. The manslaughter of the criminal cannot be justified as self-defense for the child or the mother because if the child does have super-human power such as Superman, he had the means to prevent the death though other applications of super-strength. The child's choice to use strength kill was inevitably a failure by the parents, since the child could never be expected to make such a rational use of his power with his limited understanding of the world. He is, after all, a child. Lois' refusal to admit that the child was Superman's and Superman's refusal to live up to his responsibility resulted in the child receiving poor moral guidance for such inevitable situations. (Any child of Lois Lane is going to end up in life-threatening danger. It's in the genes.)

Worse yet, during the movie, Clark Kent is shown in a bar drinking a Budweiser with Jimmy Olsen. Ignoring the question of whether bow-tied Jimmy Olsen is old enough to drink beer, what is this scene supposed to show other than a promotion of an Anheuser-Busch product? Superman doesn't drink beer! Though he's presumably immune to the effects of alcohol (as well as any additional poisons), Clark would never drink booze, especially in front of his impressionable pal, Jimmy.

Superman is paranoid that he might lose control of his powers and harm someone. The theme of irresponsible use of power has been part of Superman's mythos since his radio days. There's a television episode ("Superman in Exile") where he chastises scientists for not knowing what powers they are unleashing from the atom. The Superman I grew up with wouldn't even risk imbibing and damaging his own judgment. He also wouldn't encourage Jimmy to drink by setting a bad example himself. Though it may be acceptable for Jimmy to kick one back and relax after work, Clark shouldn't and wouldn't encourage him. However, if Jimmy wanted to drink chocolate milk, that's a Quik Bunny of a different color. Superman has pitched everything from Kellogg's Frosted Flakes to Radio Shack Computers to American Express Credit Cards. But so far as I'm aware, he's never pitched for anything quite so dangerous or controversial as alcohol before. What's next? Superman handguns? After this movie, it ought to be condoms. Tsk, tsk, Warner Brothers, for handling a product placement in such an irresponsible manner.

It's clear that Singer and company simply don't understand what makes Superman super. More accurately, they probably don't care, preferring to make their fame and fortune by putting their stamp on an American icon. Singer and pals decided to simply tweak a formula established by a previous director in order to jumpstart a cash cow franchise. Nevermind that the 70s movies have a few plot problems and Christopher Reeve is dead. Nevermind that Superman is among the most well-known and cherished of American icons. They figured that they would just push on, changing all of the wrong things, and audiences would love it. It's exactly that sort of arrogance that caused the film to lose $70 million on its domestic release. According to Box Office Mojo, the film cost an estimated $270 million to make. If accurate, that makes it among the most expensive movies in history. But a flop by any other name....

America knows what it likes, and it doesn't much like Superman Returns. And I agree with them.

This weekend I learned how to put snow chains on my car tires. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I had to pay someone else to put them on my rental car. I'm so cheap, I avoid valet parking because I don't want to tip the valets a dollar, so paying thirty bucks for someone to put chains on my tires was like willingly participating in state-enforced highway robbery. But I watched the guy like a hawk, and should the ridiculously unlikely events of The Day After Tomorrow ever come to pass, I'll be ready!

The drive into Tahoe was easily accomplished. There wasn't any snow on the ground then. No, California likes to make sure it has you in its mitts before it tries to screw you over. The whole reason that I was in South Lake Tahoe in the first place was for the wedding of one of my oldest friends. I once swore that I would never again A) return to California or B) drive in the snow, both of which I violated for the wedding. If I've never mentioned it before, let me stress my disapproval of snow here now: it sucks. It's cold, it's wet, and it makes travel impossible. Sure, it looks pretty, but like most pretty things, it's just not worth the hassle. Some way, some how, I'll get Jason back for this.

Despite eating my own words (which, unfortunately, I've done more times than I can count), it was an otherwise eventful weekend for me. I gambled in a casino for the first time (and lost my seed money, all 50¢). I had a Coca-Cola Slurpee made from fresh, real snow (better than you can imagine). I attended an informal bachelor party with a table full of lawyers and teachers (but no strippers. It was commented that no stripper was hired because one couldn't be found who knew how to play chess). And, of course, I got to play in the deep, powdery snow with Chere. (Who goes to a wedding without a date?)

That's two weddings I've attended in three months on opposite sides of the country (Panama City, Florida and Lake Tahoe, Nevada), with another one coming up in May in New York City. Even though I don't care for the outdated and unnecessary concept of marriage, I do like free food and road trips. So it all works out in the end. Also I'm pretty sure it won't be snowing come May.

I would like to go on record as saying that Vonage has the worst television advertisements in the history of recorded man. Essentially, their commercials boil down to the simple phrase, "idiots and criminals use our product!" Now, I'm all for the peer-pressure approach to mass marketing, but I really think that Vonage has done something wrong here.

Vonage's previous marketing campaign, something that can only be called the "Hey, look! Things are happening in the world that are much more interesting than our sales pitch" sales pitch, was bad enough. But now, their ads feature an orange cross between the Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine and B. A. Baracas' A-Team van driving by and hitting people in the heads with pizza boxes like some twisted Grand Theft Auto side-mission. (I'm sure that the references are intentional, as Vonage is trying desperately to reach people like me who are computer literate and have a, shall we say, invested interest in popular culture.) While this would seem to be a step in the right direction, rising from "please ignore our product" to "assault and battery," the recipients of the products are always the lowest common denominators of society: the stupid, clueless, or criminally stupid or clueless.

Some people will tell you that the purpose of television advertisement is to simply get the name of your product stuck in the heads of potential buyers so that when the time comes, they think of your product. And, granted, most people don't think about the commercials on tv, their eyes simply glaze over as they wait for bumper music to tell them that Wife Swap is coming back in seconds. (I had a roommate once who had the uncanny ability to perfectly time all commercial breaks in his head. We'd be watching something and he'd channel surf during commercial breaks. I'd always get nervous about returning from commercial breaks and missing the cliffhanger resolution, but he'd always click back exactly as the show was coming back. Really, I think it qualified as a super-power. I'm sure that he'd make a fascinating case study for some up-and-coming Raleigh St. Clair. As a result of this ability, however, he NEVER watched tv commercials and had no memory of any ads.) However, I think that this approach to television marketing is too simplified. What you don't want your customers to do is to think about how they don't like the message that your sending.

Take, for example, the recent Visa ad where a well-oiled machine of holiday shoppers wanders in lock-step through a cafeteria line until some well meaning but unenlightened individual pays with cash instead of his Visa card and the entire operation is halted in its tracks as the cashier fumbles with change. Visa, while everyone does wish for smooth transactions, telling them that they are robots when they use your card isn't going to endear yourself to anyone's use. While people may be mindless automatons, people hate to be reminded that they are mindless automatons.

Vonage is trying to hit that same market that Quiznos tried to tap with those two talking rat-toejam things a few years ago. (I once heard them described as Mr. Potato Rats, but I think they are officially called spongmonkeys.) As Quiznos soon learned, having unidentifiable rodents pitch for your sandwiches is a bad idea, even if it does get people to recognize your product. I haven't eaten at Quiznos since, and for the same reason, I won't even consider using Vonage. I just don't want to be among the people who respond positively to your advertising, people. (On a related note, Quiznos recently ran ads calling prime rib the "king of steaks," which so angered my father, I got an hour long lecture on cuts of meat. Needless to say, he's not eating a Quiznos, either. With all this bad marketing, it may come as no surprise that an Executive Vice-President of Marketing for Quiznos was recently arrested for soliciting an underaged girl for sex. Clearly Quiznos marketing department has a hard time figuring out what their target demographics should be.)

Why do I mention all of this? No reason, really. I just hate those Vonage ads.

When I watched A Charlie Brown Christmas as a child, the cartoon was already 20 years old, but the primary sponsor was usually McDonalds pushing Happy Meals to children. Now, 20 years later, most commercials that aired on ABC's seasonal broadcast were pitching cars to adults. I'm not sure what exactly that means or how significant it is, but I don't think I like it. (That's the safe position for me, because I don't like much of anything.)

Yesterday ESPN.com ran the following headline:

Couples takes six holes in Skins Game

Now that's a sporting event that I'd like to see!

Over on CNN.com today, they are running one story about how poorly people manage risk assessment in the modern world and another story on the fate of a missing woman who was found dead, trapped behind a bookshelf in her own house. Personally, I was amused by the irony. I think it's particularly comical that CNN, which like every other television news show thrives on fear mongering, would promote an argument from sister publication Time Magazine about how fearing the wrong things is a pointless endeavor that steals people's happiness and longevity. I guess we can only fear things so long as CNN (or it's parent, Time Warner) tells us it's ok.

Just yesterday I was reading a story about the death of a girl in a Porsche on a California highway. That story was accompanied by pictures of the crash. You might think that to make the decision to try to swerve past another car while traveling at over 100 mph through a tollbooth that the girl must have lost their head. Turns out that she did. (Though it's hard to tell if that happened before or after the crash.) One of the posters on the message board pointed out that at the age of 18, the driver of the Porsche was unable to ascertain that her actions behind the wheel were likely to result in her demise. Isn't that what why we were shown Red Asphalt in high school?

Meanwhile, while the net is abuzz about the Russian spy who died from rare Polonium-210 radiation poisoning in London, traditional American news media (tv and newsprint) seem much more concerned about the fate of celebrity Michael Richards in the wake of his tirade against hecklers. I mean, who cares what happens to a spy (unless, of course, it's the latest James Bond)? Now that the hecklers are demanding an apology live on CNN talk shows (which were on at Moe's the other night while I was trying to eat "The Full Monty"), I think that everything has going a little bit far. Especially when every news service seems willing to reproduce the cell phone video of the rant, but only after editing out the offending words. When mainstream America decides that it is much more dangerous to say the word "Nigger" to a heckler than to be concerned about, well, anything else, that's probably indicative of our poor choice of acceptable risks.

And that's not to mention the war in Iraq (with potentially a new impending draft), federal budget deficits (with no social security guarantees), or Wal-Mart's report of it's first sales decline in a decade (with other signs that America's retail giant may be floundering).

All in all, I probably shouldn't be too surprised about this failure to recognize and respond to risk in America. When the highest rated show on television is Dancing with the Stars while two-thirds of Americans are obese, it pretty much proves that no one is tuning in to watch the dancing.

Georgia beat Georgia Tech for the 6th year in a row today. My father, a Tech graduate, was very irritable in the stands after Georgia scored the go-ahead points in the final 2 minutes. But even he still had a good time. I suspect that we'll be playing in the Dec. 30 Chick-Fil-A Bowl, but I'll be damned if I know what ACC team we'll play against.

It's been a long, puzzling season for the Bulldogs. Frankly, I'm a little surprised that we finished with a respectable 8-4 record. After the Homecoming loss to Vanderbilt, I figured we had no chance against Auburn or Georgia Tech. I guess that goes to show what I know.

Looking back at the season, I remember the hecklers during the Tennessee game, the buffalo on the sideline at the Colorado game, and the UGA tailgaters offering the Vanderbilt faithful barbecue after their victory. Yes, it's been a pretty good year, all things considered. And there are only 280 days to go until our September 1, 2007 kickoff against Oklahoma State. Go Dawgs!

Today was Thanksgiving, one of the few secular "holy days" on the American calendar during the so-called "holiday season." I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my family and friends (and anyone else who visits wriphe.com, for that matter) for the enjoyment and support that you provide throughout the year. Though I am naturally an argumentative, curmudgeonly fellow, I do recognize and appreciate your contribution to my life. Thank you.

Back on October 24, I blogged about my affinity for Atlanta radio station 96 Rock, which has been on the air in the Atlanta area for my entire life. Apparently, Clear Channel Communications was listening. And 96 Rock is no more, out with not quite so much as a whimper.

As of November 17, 96 Rock has been replaced with Project 9-6-1, moving their focus from "classic rock" to "active rock." Frankly, I don't know what's so active about their rock, since their website advertises that they play songs from "Metallica, AC/DC, Pearl Jam, RHCP, Led Zeppelin, Soundgarden, Pink Floyd, Green Day, Ozzy, Nirvana, and Korn," 11 bands who have combined to release 4 albums in the past 3 years. Four of these bands haven't released an album in a decade!

Rodney Ho of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote an article on the changeover that was published this weekend. It includes the following great quote:

John Dickey, an executive vice president for Atlanta-based Cumulus Media, said he hopes this move will benefit his station, the struggling alternative rock station 99X. "I'm surprised they dropped the name 96rock," Dickey said. "It's like blowing up the Varsity and renaming it Project Fast Food."

I suppose that there is a lesson to be learned here. Since I usually learn the wrong lesson so far as Aesop is concerned, I don't think I'll dwell on this one for too long.

So long, 96 Rock. Thanks for the good times.

For the past few weeks, I've been working off-and-on (more "off" than "on," really) on some minor repairs to my mother's house. The goal was to complete some painting & cleaning before winter set in. Note below the new casing around her front door that I built and painted. On the surrounding brick, you can still see the paint outline of the old, rotten door casing that I removed. (Lest you think I'm a one-trick pony, I also repaired and painted the door and polished the brass door fixtures. Oh, yeah.)

So you see, I'm like a super-hero: by day, I'm an average handy-man and carpenter. By night, I'm a computer web designer and artist. Of course, I generally try to keep my dual identity a secret to protect my friends and loved-ones, but try as I might, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep my two roles separate. Don't tell anyone, but I'm slightly concerned that I'm becoming Schneider from One Day At A Time.

I've been trying to determine if I want to spend the cash to get my hands on Justice League Heroes for the PS2. One of my real questions has been, "is Batman any fun to play?"

IGN.com says, "Sadly, the most popular DC character, Batman, is easily the most useless and joyless character you can select. Even Aquaman is more fun to play." Aquaman is more fun than Batman? I think that answers my question. Aquaman is like the guy who stands alone in the corner at the party while everyone else is wondering who invited that loser. Though I'd hesitate to call Batman the life of the party, Aquaman shouldn't even have been on the guest list.

Apparently the game forces you to play certain characters in certain levels. What's the point of having Batman as an available character if you're going to spend a bunch of time in space? What good is Batman in space? I don't think you can jam enough equipment into a utility belt to really make a difference against the vacuum of freezing, airless space. (Which makes me wonder: is there an underwater level where I'll be forced to play Aquaman? Ugh.)

Now, I'm sure that Guy Gardner & Captain Marvel can survive in space. I'm also sure that they'd be really cool characters in a video game. I'm also, also sure that I'm going to be very, very old before that ever happens.

Sometimes posting to a blog is like being in a food fight: throw enough pie and someone's GOT to get hit in the face. (This column is going Larry King style, baby!)

• Bravo Channel is showing both The Princess Bride and Back to the Future today. Could those be two of the best movies ever made? I say yes!
• Huge underdog University of Georgia today beat (nay, CRUSHED!) the mighty Auburn Tigers, destroying any hopes Auburn had of running for the national title. Go Dawgs!
• Television advertising execs just don't understand: the current Bellsouth adds use the song "Stuck In The Middle With You" to promote that product. The song was written about sitting between recording executives. Can telecom execs be that different?
• Of all the cars I've ever owned/driven, the one I miss most is a 1985 Ford Crown Victoria LTD Country Squire Station Wagon.
• Recent studies say that happy people are sick less often than people who are optimistic or active. That means that a cynical asshole like me will likely outlive the rest of you bastards so long as I'm happy being a cynical asshole. Hooray for science!
• Julia Roberts' single sexiest film role was as Tinkerbell in Hook. Does that say worse things about her or me?
• The National Football League has a patent on confusion; it is simply impossible to tell who is any good from week to week. Some may call this parity or equality, but I call it exciting. Chicago: undefeated. Dolphins: incompetent. Final score: Dolphins 31, Chicago 13. I say this, I sure look forward to December 31, when the Dolphins play the currently undefeated Colts.

I just watched Schwarzenegger's movie Commando straight through for the first time. (I'd only caught the very end before.) I found it very amusing. I should have watched it before now. I had no idea that it had such a robust cast: In addition to the obvious Schwarzenegger, Rae Dawn Chong, and Alyssa Milano, the film featured Dan Hedaya (who looked afraid of the gun he was firing at the film's climax), Bill Duke (the world's blackest man), David Patrick Kelley ("Warriors, come out and play!"), Branscome Richmond (who is in almost every non-speaking role in the past 30 years where a Portuguese/Spanish/Mexican/Indian is getting his ass kicked and the director needs a good reaction shot but we all know him from Renegade), and Bill Paxton (as Bill Paxton; is there any other role for him?). I mean, damn.

Speaking of casting, when it comes time for Schwarzenegger's Col. John Matrix to kill everyone in sight, it's pretty clear that they weren't filming on location in Latin America. (Wait, is John Matrix even a real name? His daughter's name was Jenny Matrix? Could I just make a movie and call someone something really stupid like Ford Taurus and get away with it? At least "Action" Jackson and "Desolation" WIlliams were nicknames.) I think every extra was a white guy wearing a really bad Groucho mustache and fake sideburns made of felt. Perhaps the grooming habits enforced by Dan Hedaya's deposed dictator were the reason that he was overthrown in the first place. It can't be easy to fight a coup d'etat when you have to make sure that you aren't sweating off your spirit gum.

It would have been a MUCH better film if any attempt had been made to make Matrix's antagonist Bennett look a) strong, b) fearsome, or c) less like a butch fag. (Clearly, this is the character that South Park's Mr. Slave is based on.) Bennett's mustache is the worst looking thing in the movie after his leather pants and sleeveless chainmail shirt. As Matrix taunts him into a hand-to-hand knife duel, his face goes through some orgasmic contortions that I think are just a little bit uncomfortable to watch on a man dressed in fetish gear before a bodybuilder who has been oiled-up for a "straight" action scene. Then I'm suddenly supposed to believe that this flabby gay man has equal strength to manly-man Matrix, who I've watched break steel chains in his bare hands, lift a phone booth over his head, remove a bolted down car seat, and kill Bill Duke? Um, no.

It's also completely worth noting that this film was penned by Jeph Loeb, a comic book writer that I once respected. That is, until he teamed up with Jim Lee to produce one of the worst stories in the history of Batman only to wash it down with some of the worst stories in the history of Superman/Batman. >sigh<. Credits for the film bill Loeb as "Joseph Loeb III," the same writer who wrote Teen Wolf and Teen Wolf 2, which really means that I shouldn't have ever respected him as a comic book writer in the first place. Teen Wolf was the only movie that I was ever embarrassed for having watched. My skin still crawls thinking about it. Curse you, Michael J. Fox, for following up Back to the Future with that, that... thing!

Today is the big day in America when approximately half of the voting population (which is only about half of the registered voters in America, which is in turn only about half of the population of America) will stand in lines to cast ballots for, well, someone. Personally, I believe that exactly whom doesn't much matter.

I think my main problem with the system is that politicians keep squabbling over the same inane trivialities (gay marriage, giant border fences) that are designed to deflect our attention from the countries bigger problems, namely corrupt politicians.

I'm not saying I'll never vote again; I just need something worthwhile to get me off my ass. For example, if I was given the option of voting to kill Judd Winick, I'd be right there.

What with an election coming up in a few days, I'm being bombarded by advertisements telling me how lousy all of my leaders are. Is this sort of negative, petty message, condoned by our collective social passive acceptance, really indicative of how Americans wish to interpret the world around us? My innate cynical response is, "yes, and we deserve it."

On a related note, I found the following panel in the Fantastic Four story "The Skrull Takes A Slave," originally published in issue #90 in 1969 while a "police action" was ongoing in Southeast Asia. I think it sums up a lot of what you see debated on CNN these days. (See? Comics can be topical, even prescient.)

How can you argue with a guy named Mr. Fantastic? If you like your messages well mixed, please note that the "savage"-ly interrogated Mole Man makes his escape just 3 pages later in that same issue once the powerful Thing stops paying attention. (Stan Lee always loved his morality in shades of gray.)

Mark Richt, head coach of the Georgia Bulldogs, recalls Halloweens past when he dressed as Batman. So does NBA great and UGA alum Dominique Wilkins. So does current NBA superstar LeBron James. I guess I'm in pretty good company.

This morning on The Price is Right, the bidders on Contestants' Row were given the opportunity to bid on a "computer" with keyboard and mouse. The Price is Right has been on the air for a continuous 35 years, and I think it's really showing its age when it is a "computer" up for bid. If it were a dishwasher or chest of drawers, the manufacturer of the product would be displayed in big letters and would be announced at the top of Rich Fields' voice when the product is revealed. But when the product up for bid is a high-tech device such as a "computer," the make and model are information that is useless to the common TPiR viewer and is therefore conveniently ignored. To no one's surprise, a young man in a rock band from California won with a bid of $1650. Everyone else went over. Actual retail price? $1699.

The computer happened to be an Apple Mac Mini with JBL Creature II red speakers, a 20" flat-panel monitor, and wireless mouse and keyboard. I'd tell you what the available memory and hard drive size were, but it's hard to tell when the only information that you get is a picture of the case.

$1699? On apple.com, the build that gets me closest to the TPiR "computer" includes a 1.66 MHz processor, only 512MB of RAM, and an 80GB hard drive. From scratch, I can build a much faster PC for the same price. Dell can provide a better PC for even cheaper than I can from parts. Of course, my PC wouldn't come in a cute little white plastic shoe box and my mouse will have more buttons and will therefore be useful, but I think I'm willing to sacrifice aesthetics for actual functionability. Then again, I'm actually interested in doing good work with my computer, not just having a pretty, expensive paperweight on my desk.

Oh, yeah: Macs suck.

I've watched entirely too much television this week. I'm ostensibly supposed to be painting the exterior of my mother's house, but what with uncommonly cold temperatures and sporadic rain, I've spent more time polishing heavily tarnished brass fixtures in front of the idiot box than I have with a paintbrush in my hand. A brief sampling of what I've seen:

• Oprah. I hate her: she panders and preaches to the lowest common denominator, the same strata of American society that needs to be led but doesn't much care who does the leading.
  
• Fox News. I swear that they said that the U.S. Forestry Service was dropping retards on the California forest fire. What a great idea, I thought; that takes care of two problems at once! Unfortunately, they corrected themselves quickly to say that they were dropping retard-ant. I think they're missing an opportunity.
• Leave it to Beaver. Why is it that Wally always seems to know more than the Beaver? How did the older brother grow up to know everything and pass none of it down to his slightly younger brother? And how is Ward right about everything? It's like the man is omniscient.
• Without a Trace. There is a trend among televised cop/law shows in which the culprit is only caught at the last minute when he gives himself up under interrogation. I suppose I should blame Perry Mason for this. It makes for some very boring drama when you know that the cops aren't smart enough to get evidence (despite their fictional high-tech forensics), and they have to rely on the crooks' egos or consciences to break the case.

It sure makes me wish that there had been a Kolchak: The Night Stalker marathon this week. Or even Galactica 1980. Or even >ick< The Six Million Dollar Man.

Gooooold!

I may have mentioned the TV show Gold Fever on my blog before. If not, shame on me. It's broadcast on the Outdoor Channel, the same channel as the sublime Ted Nugent's Spirit of the Wild, and features prospecting enthusiast Tom Massie crawling through caves and tundra in search of that most alluring of elements: goooooold! (Which is, I swear, how Tom pronounces the word every time he says it.)

The show is unintentionally one of the funniest on TV. Tom's earnest, endless pursuit of gold is just about as amusing as watching Yosemite Sam chasing Bugs Bunny. I've seen Tom get lost in a cave, slip and split his pants, and fall into a creek, all the while talking 100 words per minute about gold and pitching $80 annual memberships in the Gold Prospectors Association of America (GPAA). In short, I've always pegged this guy as the good-natured, hyperactive fellow in high school who was a lot of fun to hang out with for a few hours, but a few ounces short of a pound, so to speak.

Turns out, Tom Massie is the Executive Vice President of the Outdoor Channel itself, a $40 million company. Tom and his comparatively surprisingly suave brother Perry - think of redneck versions of Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger from Twins - have owned and managed the company since the death of their father, Buzzard (no joke), in 1993, developing it into a minor media titan on the back of such shows as Shooting Gallery, Inside Paintball, and Turkey Country. So not only is Tom Massie a cornball, gold hunting machine, he's also a successful television executive in the dog-eat-dog world of cable television.

What is the moral to this story? Don't judge a GPAA book by it's cover? Scratch the surface of a ridiculous goofball and you may find gooooold? Do what you love and the gooooold will follow? I'll let you decide.

This weekend I was thinking about how pleased I am that baseball season is over because it means that after several months of self-imposed exile, I can listen to Atlanta's 96 Rock radio station again. During the season, 96 Rock - Atlanta's oldest FM station, number 96.1 on your analog radio dial - forgoes classic rock 'n roll for Atlanta Braves coverage. It sucks to tune the radio in hoping for AC/DC or Tom Petty and hearing Skip Caray lamenting weak batting instead.

I suppose it's a trade-off for the Clear Voice >shudder< owned radio station: losing the listening audience like me that tunes out because we're not hearing music versus the increase in listeners due to the broadcast of a baseball game. But who even pays attention to baseball anymore?

Television ratings for baseball games have been gradually declining for decades. Major League Baseball frequently points out that revenue is up and allowing for inflation, ticket prices have remained relatively consistent over the past half-century. This really means that revenues aren't so much up, they're just much larger numbers thanks to that same inflation. So baseball revenue has been largely stagnant for years, indicating an overall decrease in interest among a growing American population. America's Pastime? More like America's Past Time.

I'm pretty sure that radio ratings are falling across the board as people are given more options in the home, office, and car. (I looked at the internet in an attempt to verify this, but all I could find were sites maintained by radio advertisers such as the Radio Advertising Bureau, and they are the last group of people who would willingly confirm this.) I'm not surprised that broadcasting baseball games may provide a shot in the arm for declining ratings in an industry besieged by the variety of popular entertainment. However, I would think that weakening your listening base by bisecting your listenership into summer sports fans and winter rockers would only damage your all-too-important brand loyalty.

So give it up, 96 Rock, and give me America's other dying amusement: rock and roll.

I don't think I've ever been in a stadium of 80,000 people who expected their team to lose before. After the last two weeks, the so-called UGA faithful Bulldog Nation held their breath on every play. The stadium was so quiet, I could hear the electronic buzz from the stadium PA system.

And we were almost not disappointed. Down only 3 points with no timeouts remaining, Mississippi State had the ball near our 20 yard line with 18 seconds left to play. Their quarterback didn't seem to understand the necessity of not taking a sack under any circumstances. When we hit him, he lost the ball. Though we recovered, it wouldn't have mattered, since no time remained on the clock and no other plays were run in the game.

So we won the game, no thanks to our own players. I heard "fans" in the crowd compare Matthew Stafford (3 picks) with Quincy Carter and Mohamed Massaquoi (3 drops and a fumble) with Terrence Edwards. One guy was verbally flaying OT Daniel Inman alive for his 3 false starts. After time expired, most of the crowd left with their head down as though we had lost. It's been a long season already.

Next week: Florida. Ick.

In the movie Robocop, when post-resurrection Alex Murphy is having a flashback to his previous life in the now-abandoned house, his son is sitting in front of the tv (watching the show T.J. Lazer - thank you, Shatner!) with a bunch of comic books in front of him. Those are Marvel ROM, Spaceknight comic books. Clearly the design for ROM, a toy turned into a comic, was one of many that influenced the Robocop costume. But I think it's odd that a movie that takes place in the future would depict a boy reading comic books that were canceled before the movie was ever released.

It's perhaps a little more odd that the director of Robocop, Paul Verhoeven (also director of Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Showgirls, Starship Troopers, and Hollow Man) believed that Robocop was the story of Jesus Christ in the future. Like Jesus, Murphy rose from the dead and saved his people - police, not Christians - from persecution. It should be pointed out that Verhoeven was the director, NOT the writer of Robocop, who got the idea from Blade Runner. I think the fact that Robocop was driven largely by vengeance sort of puts the whole thing outside the realm of comparison. If Paul wanted to make a point, I think he should have made a film where Jesus crawls out of his cave and goes all biblical on the Romans' ass.

As I read back on what I just wrote, I realize that I'm talking about a movie that was released in 1987. That was 19 years ago. It's those sorts of realizations that start to make you feel old. My parents wouldn't let me see Robocop because it was rated R. Yet I was allowed to see Good Morning, Vietnam, even though it was rated R. It's those sorts of realizations that start to make you understand why you're fucked up.

I have a friend who is absolutely in love with Oscar Goldman, the eternally inappropriately sunglassed chief of the U.S. government's Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) and boss of United States Air Force Colonel Steve Austin, the world's only Six Million Dollar Man. Because of this man-crush, I'm frequently subjected to long marathons of Six Million Dollar Man episodes, one of the most boring shows known to mankind. As an unwilling participant in the misadventures of Steve Austin, I've learned quite a few things about how poorly the United States handles its scientific secrets and how world-famous NASA moon astronauts spend their free time.

For those of you who may not know, Col. Austin was chosen for bionic implants after he crashed a NASA test plane. Sure, we may have the technology, and technically we can rebuild him, but why would we want to? It's an expensive procedure to waste on a fellow who can't even properly land a plane. (By the way, $6,000,000 - six million with an "M" - in 1973 translates into nearly $30,000,000,000 - thirty billion with a "B" - in 2006 when adjusted for inflation using NASA's own inflation calculator. That's approximately how much money the world's second richest man, Warren Buffet, recently gave the world's richest man, Bill Gates, to spend on eradicating pandemic diseases. I suppose that no one told him that he could have purchased bionic limbs for the same cost.)

Presumably, Austin's particular disfigurement was perfectly compatible with the potential bionic replacement surgery that the OSI had already planned for a future accident victim, but I'm really not sure why they chose Steve Austin. Austin is demonstrated, even in the pilot episode, to be a laid-back, sunrise-watching, skirt-chasing, self-indulgent pacifist. Hardly a prime candidate for the job of "patriotic super-spy." In fact, Austin will even lament the implementation of his bionics, calling himself "less than human." Steve, last time I checked, being faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive does not lower you to "less-than-human" status; laying in bed and complaining about how good you now have it does.

The good Col. Austin had both of his legs replaced with bionic limbs that could propel him at speeds up to 60 miles per hour. His new bionic right arm could lift several hundred pounds effortlessly. His destroyed left eye was replaced with a camera that could provide a 20x magnification. And all of these modifications were made without reinforcing his hips for the jostling of the extreme vibrations while running, his spine from the torque created while lifting cars, or his skull from the frequent "karate chop" knockout blows to the head that every thug, hitman, and Soviet spy would employ to incapacitate him. That's good medicine.

Most disturbing (and far-fetched) is the premise that these bionic enhancements are powered by self-contained atomic generators in the arm and legs. That alone should be a far more spectacular accomplishment than the bionics these generators power, but it is frequently played down during the shows. In a typical nuclear reactor, radioactive decay is harnessed to heat water for energy generating steam-powered turbines. This makes Steve either radioactive or full of hot air, maybe both. It's possible that since you never saw Steve water his legs, his generators were a new kind of atomic power unfit for anything other than making metal legs move really fast. In fact, I don't recall anything else during the run of the show using the power of these generators in any other way. Nuclear power was instead frequently shown to be a dangerous tool demonstrated by way of several near reactor meltdowns, missing atomic devices, and the destruction of the Bahamas via a nuclear warhead (detonated by Steve himself). Were we supposed to be subtly fooled into believing that Col. Austin was extra-dangerous because of his nuclear powered limbs?

Once fully healed, Steve Austin was put to work as a super spy in order to pay the government back for his new Top Secret "Security Clearance Level 5" super powers. (On a USAF Colonel's O-6 salary, which I estimate was probably slightly less than $20,000 in 1973, including his NASA and super spy bonuses, paying back those $6,000,000 would probably have taken a mere 600 years.) He refused the job at first and has to be tricked into dueling with the Russians for the location of a stolen American warhead. (I know it doesn't sound like something that someone can be tricked into, but Col. Austin does not list "Mensa Membership" anywhere on his bizarre resume.) Reluctantly, Steve agrees to be OSI's poodle, and soon found himself battling Russians, foreign terrorists, mobsters, assassins, robots, moonshiners, rogue archeologists, other bionic men, crooked cops, rockstar groupies, imposter Steve Austins, telepaths, mountain lions, earthquakes, aliens, sharks, and John Saxon.

As a secret agent, Steve reflected James Bond's frequent misunderstanding of stealth and low profiles. Col. Steve Austin, astronaut and college football star quarterback, was widely recognized throughout the world, destroying most chances for subtlety. I suppose that super speed and strength don't naturally lend themselves to guileful subterfuge, but then neither did Steve's fashion sense. (Button up that shirt, Steve!)

What little camouflage Steve did possess was often lost when Steve would capriciously reveal his enhancements to anyone within earshot. He simply couldn't resist the opportunity to jump over a 10-feet tall fence or race an automobile. Steve, here's a super-spy tip: using the line "I eat a lot of carrots," to explain away how you were able to read a car's licence plate several hundred yards away in the dark isn't going to stand up to any real scrutiny. Steve's indiscretion became so widespread, even Monday Night Football host Frank Gifford who supposedly played college ball against Steve Austin in the early 1950s was therefore naturally entrusted with knowledge of Steve's top secret enhancements. (Guest stars always found out about Steve's abilities. William Shatner, Farah Fawcett, and Gary Collins among others all were entrusted with some of the nation's most classified information. They were a trustworthy bunch, I'm sure.)

So Steve Austin was a lousy pilot and an incompetent spy. Based on the fact that the only female interest that he could keep was a fellow American bionic slave/spy, I'm guessing he was probably a poor lover, as well. In one episode, Steve even admits to a crippled boy that he fumbled a lot as a football player. It should be no surprise that Oscar sends Steve to the ends of the earth (which generally looked suspiciously like southern California) on pointless suicide missions; he has to be hoping that one day, Steve won't come back. I sure do.

On October 2, Emerson Electronics sued GE because NBC showed a person's hand being chopped up from being thrust inside a running InSinkErator brand garbage disposal on the show Heroes. Emerson manufactures the InSinkErator and claims that NBC's parent GE, also a manufacturer of garbage disposals, was trying to sully the InSinkErator brand name by showing the damage it could cause to a human. Money.CNN reports the lawsuit, including the plaintiff's argument that "according to data from the government's Consumer Products Safety Commission, you are actually ten times more likely to get injured by your dishwasher than your garbage disposal."

First of all, I should think that InSinkErator would be pleased to demonstrate what it can do to a human hand. If it can destroy bone, it damn well should be able to take care of a few apple cores and potato rinds. Secondly, why does the government track and study how likely you are to get injured by a dishwasher? Are we in imminent danger of invasion from insurgent dishwashers? (Well, I guess possibly so if you count Mexicans.)

So the lesson here, NBC, is that next time you should show a person's hand being chopped up from being thrust inside a running GE brand dishwasher. You'll save yourself money in the long run.

I said before today's game that the worst part of a potential loss to Vanderbilt would be being exposed to the world as a bad football team. And then we lost to the Commodores.

The picture above was taken just after the Dores kicked the game winning field goal (leaving 2 seconds on the clock: don't get me started on how poorly refs in the NCAA have handled clock management this season). That's Vandy celebrating on the right. They hadn't beaten us in 11 years.

The worst part? After the game, I realized that we have very little chance of beating Florida, Auburn, or Georgia Tech this year. That will give us, at best, a 7-5 record. Ouch.

Hell, it's my blog I can bitch if I want to. And it's Friday the 13th, so I'll kill someone with a machete while wearing a hockey mask if I want to, too.

PayPal really knows how to get my goat. One month ago tomorrow, I shipped a 24 pound package via USPS Economy Parcel Post to Argentina. (The contents were some Masters of the Universe figures I sold for a friend on eBay.) The buyer has grown impatient after a mere 3 weeks of waiting for an international Economy Parcel Post (read as "slow boat") package and has earlier this week opened a dispute with PayPal for the cost of the item. Of course, this means that PayPal has put a "temporary hold" on my account in the amount of the payment. If this were a $29.50 item, that's be no big deal. But it's not. It's a $295.00 item.

So now, my Paypal account is essentially useless to me until PayPal realizes that I did ship the item, the buyer is just being incredibly impatient, and I'm in the clear. My past experience with Paypal tells me that this will take about 90 days. Meanwhile, PayPal will be hassling me to pay them what I "owe" them (HA!) and I will be unable to take eBay payments through PayPal. As anyone who sells on eBay knows, this means that it is pointless to try to sell anything on eBay. Therefore, no income for me for 3 months.

Once again, let me say to you people out there: PayPal sucks. If you use it, learn to enjoy the sensation of someone grabbing you by the balls and squeezing while ramming a Louisville Slugger up your ass. Fuck you, PayPal.

(Granted, I am well aware that the problem in this case is not actually PayPal, but the dipshit who decided that economy international postage should arrive on his doorstep within 3 weeks of shipping. But since I'm not currently in the mood to travel to Argentina to avenge this disruption in my life, I'm attacking the messenger. PayPal doesn't care.)

On a completely unrelated note, why do MLB and the NFL have Breast Cancer Awareness Months? Exactly how many players in either of those leagues are female? In 2002, only 3,000 more women in the U.S. were killed by accidents than died from killer breasts. (That's less than 10 a day in a country with 300 million people.) When was the last time you heard of an Accident Awareness Campaign? Breast cancer isn't even the largest killer of women in America. It doesn't even make the top 5. Alzheimer's Disease is credited with killing more women than breast cancer. (However, a Alzheimer's Awareness Month wouldn't make much of an impression, as everyone who cared to promote it would forget about it by the time it arrived.) I suggest that breast cancer is so widely championed these days simply because it is the only one of the top ten killers of women that doesn't also kill large numbers of men.

Everything that I've thought about posting to the blog in the past few days has essentially amounted to little more than me whining about nothing important. (Not football or comic books; those ARE important.)

But I didn't want to do that. I don't want this blog to be nothing but me bitching about the same old things. (My brother has already chastized me for that once. I'm not giving him a second opportunity, that bastard.) So instead of a pointless blog entry about how much I hate something, I present to you, my adoring public, the most enjoyable game I've ever found on the internet: Whizzball.

Sure, it's at Discovery Kids, but that doesn't make it any less amusing. And just because it's been there for years doesn't mean that it's any less enjoyable. It's a good, simple time-waster; the sort of game that consoles used to provide but have abandoned in search of the next over-produced, under-developed, button-mashing, blockbuster movie-length presentation of T&A and boring-ass gameplay. >shakes fist at sky, yelling "Khaaan!"<

And for those of you who like your games a little deeper, I'll give you a bonus: The Battle for Wesnoth. This open-source, turn-based strategy fantasy game. You can't go wrong with that. It's fund to play, and it's a real challenge as well.

Look, up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's the Sun!

I think that if I were a religious person, I'd probably worship the Sun. Sure, the Sun provides the light energy that makes life possible on Earth, and it has been worshipped by humans for as long as we've been standing upright. Links between the Sun and Christianity (the religion of the "Son") are as well established as the date for Christmas. (Interestingly, the name of the Islamic god, "Allah," may have been derived for a pagan Arabic god of the Moon, the anti-Sun. But that's not today's point.) Despite all of this, the Sun's unique relationship to modern culture goes largely ignored. The Sun gave us superheroes.

The archetype of the modern costumed hero, Superman is powered directly by the Sun. The rays of the Earth's yellow sun charge Superman's amazing Kryptonian physique, allowing him the powers of flight, super sense, and invulnerability. Without the Sun, there's no Man of Steel. That makes the Sun directly responsible for Earth's greatest champion.

The anti-Superman, Batman, is also controlled by the Sun. Unlike Superman, Bruce Wayne has no alien physiology, and must limit his crime-fighting to survivable situations. He chose to adopt a demonic costume and fight in the dark, knowing that his training, combined with mankind's inherent fear of the unknown ("Things That Go Bump in the Dark") will give him an edge against the criminal element. The fictitious construct that is "The Batman" could not function in daylight, and only inspires fear in situations where the Sun is absent. (You can't have a Dark Knight without the dark night.) Again, the abilities and character of one of the archetypical heroes of modern culture, The Batman, is determined directly by the Sun.

As if those two weren't great enough examples of the Sun's influence on American popular culture in general and the superhero in specific, the modern archetype for the superheroic family/team, the Fantastic Four, gained their powers from Cosmic Rays, which by their very nature are generated by the Sun. The Sun's natural radiation must also be responsible for some of the X-Men's bizarre super-human mutations, such as those possessed by Sunspot and Dazzler.

If the Sun has provided all of these powerful and admirable superheroes with their reason for being, I can't think of anything better to devote to worshiping. It certainly makes more sense than Catholicism.

Damn, that sucked. The Tennessee band played Rocky Top 20 times between kickoff and final clock expiration. Of those 20, only 2 were in the first half. I hate Rocky Top.

Our highly-rated defense gave up 51 points. That's 17 more points than we had given up to our first 5 opponents combined. Ugh.

Note for next year that for 4 consecutive years, the away team has won the UGA vs. Tennessee game.

The changeover has been made. Please update your bookmarks for the blog to blog.wriphe.com. Old blogs entries are now archived at blog.wriphe.com/archives.

The primary motivating reason for this was to separate the pictures that I put in the blog from the pictures that I put elsewhere on the site. The blog pics grow like a virus, and I didn't orignally account for how many pictures I would be posting. (I think all but one of my posts in September had a picture.) Despite my consistant record keeping, it was getting to be a problem sorting through the art pictures for a particular .jpg of Batman.

Coincidentally, this also restructures the blog so that it will be noticable to search engines. I'm tired of typing '"Adam West" + "Neil Armstrong"' in Google and not finding my entry for April 24, 2006 returned. I'm much too clever to be ignored like that! Look at me! Look! Here! Me!

There are some changes coming to the layout of this site. Nothing major, really, just a simple relocation of the blog. I need to do some housekeeping to separate out the blog photos from those of the rest of the site, so I'm going to take the opportunity to update a little. You probably won't even notice, all 5 of you who ever read this. The address may change in your address bar, so be ready to update your bookmarks. I promise not to make it harder to find me, because that would discourage at least 2 of you from ever coming back.

Maybe it's because I'm a dog person, but I've always really loved Ace, the Bat-Hound. I think he's a better sidekick than Robin.

The original Ace was a farmer's German Sheppard that helped Batman solve a 1955 counterfeiting case in the caper appropriately named "Ace, the Bat-Hound!" (Bruce Wayne has a remarkable detective mind, but he lacks for creativity. I mean, he does carry the Bat theme a little far, you've gotta admit: Batmobile, Bat Plane, Bat Cave, Bat Computer, Bat-Hound, Bat Shark Repellent... the list goes on.)

Bruce gave the dog a mask to prevent anyone recognizing him and linking the Batman and the Bat-Hound back to Bruce Wayne and Ace. Trust me, while it may seem that a mask on a dog isn't really going to disguise much of anything, in the world of comic books, that's some very sound reasoning indeed.

If this were an online sex story, it would have to be coded "MMb, s/m, cosplay."

Even though this is probably the stupidest death trap that the Joker has ever conceived, that's clearly not the real story in this image. The real question should be, "why does Robin look so happy about what's about to happen?"

Whoa, Nellie! Lookout, Dawgs! It's a stampede!

Please note that no Dawgs were hurt during the making of this picture. Colorado brought their 900 pound buffalo mascot, Ralphie IV, to Athens to lead the team onto the field. (Ralphie IV, by the way, was donated to Colorado by Ted Turner.) Earlier this week UGA athletic marketing director John Bateman told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "It's David and Goliath. But what's that old saying, 'It's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog'?"

Bulldogs, by the way, were originally bred for -- what else? -- fighting bulls. Ralphie IV, however, is not a bull but a female buffalo. That should have been our first clue that we were in trouble.

We played like we didn't understand the game for 3 quarters, only to pull it together in the final 10 minutes of play for the victory. The entire game was a demonstration in coaching: be Dan Hawkins' play selection and execution in the 1st half, be Mark Richt's strategic determination in the 4th quarter. (Just plain be somewhere else for the third quarter.)

Colorado's excellent ball fakes kept our undisciplined defense confused. Meanwhile our offense decided to go pass-happy with our true freshman quarterback, ignoring the 3 talented runners that have won us the last 3 games. (I call this Tommy Tuberville Syndome after Auburn's similar bizarre and losing strategy with Cadillac Williams and Ronnie Brown three years ago.)

I should have taken a picture of the guy who sits next to me. He looked like he was going to have a stroke for the final hour of the game.

In the end, we won. And it was exciting. But I don't exactly want to go through this every week.

It wouldn't really be Batman and Football month without a reference to that 1990 -- has it really been that long? -- Snickers commercial which combined Batman and football, now would it? Take a look at the video replay here as an .asf file.

I was at the post office today, and they sold me this:

Awesome. Now that's Bat-Tastic. We truly do live in a glorious age.

Dawgs win again, beating a helpless UAB team without really trying. And as happy as that makes me, I'm kept grounded by the Dolphins' considerably less exceptional second loss. It's going to be a long, long NFL season at this rate.

[The Batman Coloring Page blog entry for September 15, 2006, has been relocated here.]

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Don't let anyone tell you that watching 5 football games over the course of 1 day isn't tiring. Maybe it's not exercise to sit on the couch and watch large men hit each other on the television, but it sure is an exhausting workout. I really think that the reason for televised pre-season is to get me in game watching shape for the regular season.

Whew, I need a nap. And there are still 2 Monday Night Football games to be played tonight!

In the infamous Seduction of the Innocent, Dr. Wertham describes the relationship between Batman and Robin as "the wish dream of two homosexuals living together."

I think it is most interesting that the character of Robin, created purely for the purpose of encouraging children readers to more closely relate to the adventures of the Batman, has served his purpose so well as to result in the enduring cultural subtext of the gay Batman. Even Dr. Wertham's studies indicate that Robin, not Batman, is the character that most people with homosexual desires project themselves into. No one wants to sleep with Robin; they want to be ravashed by the Batman. Robin is freqently shown pining for Batman, yet rarely, if ever, is Batman shown doing anything demonstrably homoerotic in nature. That makes Robin, not Batman, the homosexual partner in the Dynamic Duo.

See what I mean? Damn, boy, can't you even keep your legs together!

In honor of Batman and Football month, may I present to you the first Batman comic book that I remember reading: The Brave and the Bold #182.

Now, by 1982 I thought that I was already well familiar with Batman, both from Adam West's portrayal on the 1966 live-action show (which I knew from reruns, though I admit that I didn't catch onto the adult undertones for years to come) as well as Batman's adventures with the Superfriends. So when I was given this comic book, I was woefully unprepared for what it contained.

This story takes place on Earth-2, where the golden-age Batman had lived and died. Yes, Batman is dead in this story. And he is also alive, as the Earth-1 Batman was paying a visit to the Earth-2 Robin and Earth-2 Batman's daughter, Helena. Even more confusing is the presence of Earth-2's Batwoman, whose Earth-1 counterpart has apparently been long deceased. Confused yet? I was. Now, as much as some say that the multiple earths made for great stories, they also made it darn difficult for newcomers to grasp the complicated histories of duplicated characters. As the cover blurb says, "What's going on here?" indeed.

Anyway, I loved and hated this story at the same time. While the comic had action and adventure galore, I just plain didn't understand what the hell was going on. In addition to there being two nearly identical universes and multiple versions of each character, the primary antagonist was the ghost of Hugo Strange (represented by his giant floating head) who was using, among other things, the retired classic Batmobile to attack Batman and friends. Um, okay. Sure, why not? Yes, this comic had it all! Alternate universes, skin-tight costumes, supernatural powers, impossible machines, ghosts, evil geniuses, giant heads... it's everything that you think of when you think "comic book."

In hindsight, this book clearly prepared me for decades of alternate Batman mythologies to come. It also established my affinity for the classic 40s Batmobile and giant-headed, misanthropic geniuses. I could have done a lot worse for a first-timer.

Recently I was asked if I was forced to choose between Batman and football, which would I choose to eliminate from the world. In honor of such a stupid question, I declare September "Batman and Football month." Batman and football for all!

Dawgs 41, Western Kentucky 12. In the first quarter, UGA's Micky Henderson returned a punt the length of the field and then fumbled during his celebration just before he reached the goalline. On the next WKU punt, Henderson returned the ball the length of the field again, this time remembering to hold onto the ball. It was a very exciting way to open the game.

More proof that Batman isn't gay:

Robin is.

I recently read that Pope Benedict XVI's chief exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth believes that Hitler was possessed by the Devil. First of all, I would like to point out that this, taken literally, would make a GREAT movie. Secondly, why does the Pope have a chief exorcist?

To quote Father Amorth from a Vatican Radio broadcast:

One of the key requirements for an exorcism is to be present in front of the possessed person and that person also has to be consenting and willing. Therefore trying to carry out an exorcism on someone who is not present, or consenting and willing would prove very difficult.

If the possessee has to be present, consenting and willing, isn't an exorcism more like an intervention? The language used in the above quote seems very... less than supernatural. Couldn't any behavior that is clearly contrary to the tenants of the Roman Catholic Church be considered satanic in nature? Therefore do Catholics see exorcists instead of psychologists? Exorcisms don't seem nearly as exciting as Dr. Strange would have had me believe.

Note, please, that Father Amorth is also the founder of the International Association of Exorcists, an elite band of professional, church appointed exorcists. (Priests can now take exorcism classes at the Vatican's Pontifical Academy. I hear that the exorcism classes fill up fast, behind only "Why You Can't Put Holes In Holy Water And Other Confusing Catechisms Explained," and "Holy Eucharist, Altar-Boy!".) He has said that "behind Harry Potter hides the signature of the king of the darkness, the devil." And who would know better than Vatican City's official exorcist?

By the way, Father Amorth considers The Exorcist his favorite movie. Go figure.

Pluto is not a planet. So sayeth the International Astronomical Union. ("International Astronomical"? Are they inclusive enough with their title? "Can everybody find a seat?")

As of yesterday, the World Scientists, in a very 1984 scenario, voted to re-define the term "planet." Because of the new definition, Pluto got the cold shoulder. Feeling sorry for the old bean, they created a new category of "dwarf planet" for Pluto and it's solar-system neighbors. I think most people will agree that the tag "dwarf" is not much of a consolation prize.

I'm not really against this decision. Pluto has never quite gotten along with the gang. (Think of the dweeb that used to hang around with your clique in high school just so that you & your friends would have someone to stuff into trashcans: that's Pluto to the other planets.) I suppose it's more surprising that it took scientists several thousand years to define the word "planet," a word with a vestigial tail lingering from ancient Greek and a concept strongly tied to ancient pagan polytheistic deity worship. Confusion of the nature of planets has lingered for years; in the past, even large asteroids have been considered planets, if only temporarily. It's nice to finally have some closure on the issue, at least for a few hundred years or so, when they'll no doubt redefine it again.

On the other hand, this redefinition of Pluto may have long lasting and drastic implications on modern culture. Disney will have to put down Mickey's dog. Whole planetariums will have to be razed and rebuilt from scratch. On my Solarquest game board, Pluto property values will plummet. Galactus, the Eater of Planets, will have to tighten his belt. Millions of textbooks will have to have stickers added that say, "See? Scientists are fickle and can't decide on anything so evolution must be bullshit." The last four generations of humans will begin to question everything that they've ever been taught by The Man. (Wisely, the prescient Gustav Holst refused to compose an amended Pluto movement for his masterpiece suite The Planets, saving his artistic legacy from scientific destruction.) In short, this nearsighted redefinition has the potential to DESTROY THE WORLD.

And then again, when was the last time that you really thought about Pluto, anyway? Maybe this is just a PR move on the part of a washed-up attention-hound long discarded. Perhaps Pluto, which could really never make up its mind if it was the 8th or 9th planet, simply decided it was time for a new crowd and finally moved out of it's parents' basement. Good for you, Pluto! Go be somebody! This is the 21st century; if a dwarf can't make it here, there's always next century.

Football season approaches rapidly. One of the best parts of the NFL season (and there are many, many highlights of the NFL season every season) is the Tuesday Morning Quarterback (TMQ for short) column written by Gregg Easterbrook. I was caught by surprise this week when I discovered that TMQ was returning to Page 2 on ESPN.com this year after several years at NFL.com. Apparently this switch was announced way back in April and I didn't notice it. The season hasn't even started yet and I've already almost fumbled the ball!

I don't normally talk about my dreams, but the last week of visions has produced such an odd assortment of images, I'm documenting them here for future reference.

Tuesday: I was leaving dinner in a small Mediterranean cafe (think Rick's from Casablanca) decorated in earth tones, especially tints of green. A Jeep CJ pulls up to the door as I am leaving; it's roll-bar mounted lights practically blinding me in the doorway of the cafe. To my surprise, behind the wheel of the dusty vehicle is an ex-girlfriend of mine. She casually (and gracefully) leaps from the vehicle, her shoulder-length hair streaming behind her in the sudden breeze. She is wearing a loose white blouse, tan jodhpurs, and brown riding boots. (Of course, she doesn't look quite so... equestrian in real life. And she's not so tall or well-endowed as she was in the dream. You know how dreams are.) As she enters the cafe, throwing suggestive glances at me, I notice that she is accompanied by a friend of mine from high school. (I barely notice him, focusing my attention on her instead.) The three of us sit and enjoy a long conversation about "the good old days."

Wednesday: Shawn Spencer from USA Network's Psyche and two other popular television detectives (I can't for the life of me remember who they were now. One was male and one a female; I should have written it down when I woke up) are meeting for a cocktail party at my anti-bellum mansion. Shawn decides that there has been a murder in my living room and sets out to solve it. The other detectives refuse to believe that a crime has been committed (there is no body and no clear evidence of a crime) and set about insulting Shawn while he investigates. The dream cut to a commercial break, and I don't remember how the episode ended.

Thursday: I've returned to high school. (This is a recurring dream of mine. I usually return to high school for no reason: even in my dreams I've already graduated from college.) Because I've already gotten my degree, I'm a total jerk to the faculty and students whenever they try to make me do anything. The teacher of my literature class is a grandmotherly lady made entirely out of silver. As she lectures me, I begin to fall asleep in class. I fight to stay awake, but to no avail. When I finally pass out in my dream, I woke up in real life.

Friday: I was working as a secretary in a small college. I'm a total jerk to everyone, and I complain about the small size of my office. I usually have to take elevators to other buildings, including the gigantic parking garage. The elevators frequently break down or force me to switch elevator cars in dangerous positions: narrow outdoor ledges at high elevation, etc. The head office of the school is in the center of a glass building. Since the elevator is the primary means of travel, I usually take my office chair with me on trips around campus. One day I notice that there is no one else around the building. When I investigate, I find that all of the classrooms have been taken over by Orcs, who have burrowed into the school and turned it into their underground headquarters. I decide to fight them with a broomstick. I don't remember anything about the dream after I head into the Orc caves with a broomstick.

Whatever I'm doing before bed, I clearly need to stop doing it.

School's back in session here in Athens. That brings with it the associated snarled traffic, confused freshmen, and late-night drunken pedestrians. Really, you get used to most of it after awhile. (This is my, what? 7th year in Athens?) It's always the little things that really start to get on my nerves.

This year the annual "get to know Athens and buy our paper" supplement the Banner-Herald published actually encouraged students to wear flip-flops in class. I consider this the most telling sign of the decay of western civilization. Long time reader of my blog (Keith) may remember that I've ranted about this particular fashion trend before. Strapping cheap rubber to your filthy, corn encrusted feet is hardly a fashion statement worth making. And now it's being encouraged by the establishment. Great.

It's not exactly that I lament the passing of hoop skirts or bobby socks, but I think that some things are just too informal to be worn in society. Soon fashion trends will have to involve shirtless people wearing nothing but underwear and belly-button rings. I think it's time to dress it up a bit more, people. Dressing for success does not include any footwear with the word "flop" in its name.

My brother and I have a debate raging about whether it is possible to sell just about anything on eBay. Check out my listing for a human arm!

I present, for you viewing pleasure, poodle:

This is an old picture from fall 2004, I think. Last week I gave her a jacket and pants clip (her normal summer attire these days), but she'll be back to her puppy clip in a few months when the temerature drops a few dozen degrees. I've tried giving her quite a few different style clips over the years, but in the Georgia heat, she prefers it short most of the year. (Only in the rare case where there is snow on the ground does she ever thank me for leaving her winter coat on.)

I'm really, really looking forward to the release of the movie Pulse this weekend. I'm hoping that once the movie is actually released, I won't have to see so damn many commercials for it.

Cartoon Network's Adult Swim has recently begun replaying the entire 26 episode anime series Big O at 5 AM EDT. I'd seen a few episodes the last time around, but never from the beginning. And let me tell you, you cannot jump into season 2 halfway through and expect to have any idea what's happening.

Essentially the show is about Roger Smith, an independently wealthy professional negotiator who protects the amnestic futuristic Paradigm City and it's inhabitants. (Though he does frequently destroy more of the city than most protectors would ever dream of. Every time he comes to the rescue in his alter-ego titular giant robot, Big O, he destroys the street and usually several nearby buildings. I guess sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make a Big Omelette.) I really enjoy the show, and I think that it is an exceptionally deep story of the sort rarely tried outside of literature (or Alan Moore's graphic novels).

Roger's two sidekicks are his mustachioed butler, Alfred -- no, wait, Roger's butler is named Norman -- and his android R. Dorothy Wayneright. (Wayneright. I love that. So much about the show, from characters to setting to animation style, is reminiscent of Batman mythology.) To be accurate, Dorothy is not his property but his willing servant. Unlike so many other futuristic stories, in Big O sentient androids are usually treated as free willed, independent beings with rights equal to those of humans.

I'm quite smitten by Dorothy. I find her sensibility, her dry wit, her relative lack of emotion, even her hairstyle very attractive. It figures, I guess, that when I find a girl I like, she's an animated android.

I've opened a second account on eBay. The user ID is sonofwriphe. I'm going to be using this account to sell, well, everything. I've decided to devote my existing eBay account, wriphe, to selling only my artwork.

I have my fingers crossed that I will do well selling art on eBay. (And it's making typing this very difficult.)

Late night television is NOT a cure for insomnia. On nearly 100 channels all I can ever find are commercials for Too-Fun-To-Be-Work work-out machines or May-Cause-Intestinal-Bleeding pills to improve my love life. (Unless there are "instant girl" pills -- Just add water! -- I don't think they'll help that much.) On the remaining channels are advertisements for exhibitionist teenaged girls and special interest diet plans. Of the few channels that actually show programming, most only show the really crappy syndicated shows such as Elimidate and Three's Company or low-budget news. I think that some network could really improve its ratings by simply broadcasting a few hours of sheep jumping over a fence accompanied by some soothing classical sonatas.

Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis first performed as a comedy duo on this date in 1946. On the same day the year previous, in 1945, President Truman gave the order to use the atom bomb against Japan. I'm not saying that they are related, I just think that they make an interesting juxtaposition.

Today I finally listed on eBay those coin paintings I've been working on. We'll see what comes of it. My friend Chris recently completed a great Mego head Batman painting and listed it on eBay and (as of this posting) has received no bids. It's hard to be a starving artists, I tell you.

Beer only tastes good after you've had a few beers. That's why they sell them in 6-packs.

Ostriches have the largest eyes of all land animals. So as to better see under a pile of sand?

Riding in a boat causes me to feel like I'm still in the water after I go to bed. Why?

E is the most common English letter, but is not the most common letter in this sentence.

Deer whistles have never been proven to work as no one has ever devised an accurate test.

Octopodes and squids have 3 hearts. (And giant squids have the largest eyes of all animals!)

Most Americans have had their first divorce before they reach my age (30.5).

Alright, folks, the latest D&D campaign is now online. You can read it over in the RPG Vault.

eBay isn't worth the trouble, people. If you have never bought or sold on eBay, don't start now. If you have, I have to recommend that you stop.

As most of you know, I've been selling off my possessions for the past year. It's not really paying the bills, but it does provide some spending cash. At least it has until the last 2 months. I'm getting about tired of having buyers not pay or scam me. And I've noticed a distinct downward trend in the amount of feedback I've been getting.

But what has me really mad is that twice in the past 2 weeks I've tried to sell my PSP (I've got a power bill to pay), and twice the auction has closed: the first time to a Nigeria scammer and the second time to a phished account. (The second time, eBay destroyed everything associated with the listing, so if I want to go through the trouble again, I have to start entirely over from scratch.)

Clearly, it's not worth the effort to sell some things on eBay. And I'm beginning to wonder if it's worth the effort to sell ANYTHING on eBay.

I just realized that I've wasted my entire afternoon (the last few hours, anyway) looking at pics of abandoned amusement parks on the internet. I can't help it. I know I've mentioned it before, but I'm just fascinated by scenes of manmade structures overcome by nature. Best of all are the fallen amusement parks: titans of technology devoted to staving off mankind's worst enemy -- boredom -- left fallow and destroyed by sun, wind, water, and time. If these haunted steel and concrete skeletons are discovered by future archaeologists, what conclusions will they draw about their ancestors?

See the ruins of Chippewa Lake Park in Ohio. Wander through abandoned Dogpatch USA in Arkansas. Or, if you're feeling adventurous, visit the orient to see the remains of "waste recreational area T" or "Nominal Koka family land" in Japan, the home of the decaying theme park.

>sigh< It's like poetry for the eye.

Ok, I've been busy. I have a new swf up on my bio page. And last night, just before I drifted off to sleep, i had another idea about a new intro for the site. If I get started now, and it takes me as long to finish the new intro as it took to finish the old one from conception to completion, by this time in 2008, I'll have a new intro, too!

There's a brief bit of dialogue in the movie Clerks that goes something like this:

Dante: You hate people!
Randal: But I love gatherings. Isn't it ironic?

I feel that way about the Independence Day holiday. It's my favorite holiday of the year but I hate parades and fireworks. What I love is watching people gather to watch parades and fireworks. (Of course, I hate to actually be in the gathering crowds. I prefer strictly hands-off voyeurism, exactly the sort of thing for which cars, tall buildings, and television sets were made.) I'm reminded of the stories of the crowds of sightseers that gathered to watch the first battle of Manassas. Apparently, people will gather anywhere at the prospect of witnessing goose stepping and explosions.

On a related note, I've always wondered why we celebrate Independence Day on July 4. The Continental Congress approved independence from Britain on July 2 (it was this date that John Adams expected to be the one eternally celebrated), and the document itself wasn't actually signed until a month later. What we celebrate on July 4 is merely the voted approval of the document itself. Wouldn't that be a bit like deciding to remember Pearl Harbor Day on December 8, the day that the U.S. declared war with Japan, instead of on December 7, the day of the actual attack?

But never mind me. I got my panties in a bind when we celebrated the "new millennium" on New Year's Eve in 1999. (I "celebrated" with dinner in a now-defunct Shoney's Restaurant. Alas, poor Big Boy.)

A new month means new content. Professor Gradey, my comic book grading Flash animation, is now online. You can reach him through my media page, or you can just follow this link.

Apparently I'm not paying enough attention to pornography. I just found out that Hustler released a movie last month called the Da Vinci Load. Promotional material for the film describes it thus:

The truth cums out! Operatives of the Priory of Semen discover that Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa using his own sperm.

That sounds waaay better than any film starring Tom Hanks. (Don't let the titles fool you, Bosom Buddies was actually much tamer than Bachelor Party, though neither one is really all that good. The closest that Hanks has ever gotten to being in a porn film is when he portrayed the character Woody in the movie Toy Story.)

Also of note is that the Da Vinci Load is a High-Defintion porno (which says nothing about the quality of the film itself). I had a debate with a friend a few weeks back about whether HD porn was a good idea. My argument was that I didn't really want to be able to easily count the ingrown hairs on a coked-out pornstar's butt. My friend said that everything looks better in HD, including ass pimples. He's right, of course: everything on HDTV is actually much better looking than anything in real life. (But I'm still not sure that the world is ready for HD pustules.)

This past weekend I was on I-20 eastbound, returning from a trip to visit my grandfather in Huntsville, AL, when my brother and I got stuck in traffic. As we passed the on-ramp from Oxford, AL, several cars decided to exit the stop-and-stop traffic by travelling the wrong way up the on-ramp. The ramp was unused and vacant; it was clear from the overpass that the traffic jam extended for the foreseeable distance, so no one was even trying to get onto the highway here anymore. Although I have no problem with exiting the highway along an empty on-ramp in theory, these idiots decided that instead of pulling a U-turn and driving up the ramp to freedom, they would pull into the merge lane and then back-up the ramp with the car in reverse. I worry about Americans when they think that driving a car against the flow of traffic on a high-speed one-way street is best accomplished with the car in reverse. (Forty thousand automobile deaths per year can't be wrong!)

Why wasn't Mr. T ever asked to join the Justice League? He's stronger than Superman, wittier than Aquaman, dresses better than Hawkman, and has more wealth around his neck than Batman has secured in the batcave. And he really, really cared about saving the children.

Not to mention the fact that T had experience in the field of super-heroics. He had his own cartoon and his own group of super gymnasts who fought crime. (Come to think of it, everyone on children's TV of the late 70s/early 80s seemed to have their own crime solving group. It sure seems like TV is telling me that I should be part of a crime solving posse. Or I should be committing crimes for a crime solving posse to solve?)

Clearly the Super Friends could have used the diversity. They let Black Vulcan in just because he had the word "black" in his name. (Apparently, space monkeys didn't qualify as an ethnic minority in the eyes of Uncle Sam's anti-discrimination laws.) Seems to me that Mister T was much more qualified than Black Vulcan.

My mother always said that if you don't have anything to say, you can always talk about poodles.

(Actually, mom said that about Scottish Terriers. She turned her car around in the middle of the street once because she thought she saw someone walking a Scotty. Turned out that it was. In fact, the dog's owner went to school with mom and recognized her. He had asumed that she had turned her car around to say hello to him. Mom was so embarrased that she hadn't recognized him and was only interested in meeting his dog. I was amused.)

Coca-Cola sent me an email 15 minutes ago warning me that they were "running low" on the t-shirts that I had on my wish list in their Coke Rewards program. So I logged on to try to redeem my stored points for a t-shirt. But alas, I was too late. Coke now says that they are all out. It must have been a very busy 15 minutes. At 2AM. On a Tuesday morning.

First they ran out of the glasses that I wanted before I could get enough points for them. Then they ran out of t-shirts. They're even out of coupons for 2-liter Cokes. (What a bullshit promotion, Coke. You can't even stock enough coupons for discount Cokes?) Sure, they still have crap like the 40000 points Kyle Petty racing costume and the 56000 points American Idol couch. However, the promotion only lasts 335 days and since you can only enter a maximum of 100 points per day, the most points that you can have by the end of the "redemption period" is 33500. That makes it kind of hard to get the tope end rewards, Coke.

When this Coke Rewards loyalty program started up a few months back, I told my mother and brother that I wasn't planning on participating because of the way that Coke had screwed me out of anything in previous rewards promotions. After a few weeks, I finally broke down and started collecting, figuring, "what the hell, I do drink a lot of Coke." What the hell, indeed.

All right, Coke, you got me again. I bought into your dumb-ass promotion and again I got nothing for it. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fuck you, Coca-Cola.

At long last, the intro animation should finally be up and running. (I say "should" because I haven't extensivly tested it yet. I'm sure that there are horrible flaws and it's broken somewhere. Everything I post for the first time is broken somehow.) If you didn't access the blog through the front page, go back and give it a try.

Another update today, though this one is minor. I uploaded the Star Trek Communicator Happy Meal toy with sound. (The previous version had no sound.) There are still a few things to fix for the site intro, but I'll get around to that later.

-----Original Message-----
From: Trey Stephens
Sent: Tuesday, June 06, 2006 11:52 PM
To: wriphe
Subject: Uninspired

Walt,
I think your ramblings are becoming cliché in themselves. Yes, TV sucks. Yes, Movies suck. Yes, everything sucks. We get it. Tell us something new.
---Trey

Trey, you want something new? Alright, fine: you suck.

I just remembered that the world was supposed to end today. Maybe it did and I just wasn't paying attention.

The remake of Richard Donner's film The Omen was released today. I really liked the original and find it completely unnecessary to remake the film. (In fact, I'm opposed to remakes on general principle, though I can see the validity if the remake were to improve on an overlooked or poorly funded original. No one needs to remake Citizen Kane, but maybe we could do with a new Quatermass Xperiment (a precursor to the fundamentally similar John Carpenter's The Thing which was itself a remake) or Kingdom of the Spiders (though I would insist that this remake must feature Shatner in a prominent role, maybe even a reprisal of his role as the charming Dr. Rack Hansen).

On a related note, about this time of year, my friends begin demanding my presence at the movie theater for the blockbuster summer releases. As a loud-mouth sour-puss, they like to bring me along as the honorary Mikey of Life cereal fame. Since I hate everything, if I enjoy a movie, it's got to be good. (And if I don't like a movie, at least they get an entertaining ear-full of why it stunk.)

Since everyone loves lists, at least so far as VH1, E, and Bravo are apparently concerned, may I present my chronological 15 Worst Films of the Past 15 Years list. Please note that these films are not bad in the pedestrian I-don't-know-how-to-make-a-film way. (This, therefore, disqualifies all Roger Corman and Ed Wood films from the list.) I'm also disqualifying sequels, because they are intrinsically bad: they are unimaginative, restrained remakes of earlier films made purely to capitalize on previous films' characters and premises. The following films are bad in the I-know-better-than-to-make-this-movie-but-I-did-it-anyway category. (In other words, they are were big-budget, major studio, national release movies that sucked.)

• Oscar (1991) - Sylvester Stallone as a comic gangster. Most people will tell you that Stallone's Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot is worse. It's not. Estelle Getty has some funny lines in that one.

• Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) - What a bit of inspired casting! Alan Rickman plays a bad guy. Morgan Freeman plays a sidekick. And Kevin Costner plays a long-winded American pretending to be English nobility turned hero of the common man. Couldn't Kevin Costner just hire a hooker to give him a hand-job so that we don't have to watch his films anymore?

• The Good Son (1993) - I knew when I saw this film that one day Elijah Wood would be a star. I also knew that Macaulay Culkin wouldn't be one for much longer. Theoretically, this film would be a stirring psychological thriller, but I find that the really plodding pace and horrible acting makes it a good cure for insomnia.

• The Firm (1993) - What do you get when you take a script based on a best selling novel, add box office gold with Tom Cruise, Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, Holly Hunter, and Gary Busey and let Sydney Pollack direct them? You get a cliched legal drama that lasts for 2 and a half painful hours and a cop-out ending. Thanks!

• Greedy (1994) - This is a movie that proves that an ensemble cast of talented actors (yes, it includes Ed Bagley, Jr. -- I said it was an ensemble cast, didn't I?) aren't necessarily greater than the sum of its parts. Though filmed before Kirk Douglas's stroke and Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's Disease, you'll never be able to tell the difference.

• Pocahontas (1995) - This film is mind-blowing in its mediocrity. That's saying something for a Disney "Masterpiece" film. This film won an Oscar for best song, but you probably can't tell what that song was anymore, can you? Nothing about this film is memorable. Fiction dressed as history, this sleep-inducing bore-fest marked the end of the second renaissance of Disney animation. Can you believe that someone wasted their time to make this crap one painting at a time? (And now Disney is reduced to Bambi II.)

• Independence Day (1996) - There is nothing that this movie does that many other better movies before it didn't do better. (Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers had saucers blowing up Washington D.C., Alien had scary aliens, and Spaceballs had Bill Pullman.) In fact, this movie can definitively be said to be the end of Randy Quaid's career as a film actor. He now exclusively plays parodies of his character in this film: a stupid, fat slob.

• Air Force One (1997) - I'm often accused of failing to suspend my disbelief during a movie. Sure, I can accept Harrison Ford as the president of the United States. Sure, I can accept that Air Force One is like an office building in the sky. Sure, I can even accept mid-air rescue from a flying 747. But I totally have to draw the line at a female Vice President. "Get off my plane!"

• Titanic (1997) - "Wait, that's a good movie," you say? No, it's not. If you don't immediately fall for the overly-sappy love story between a bratty street punk and the spoiled bitch, you're left with a very, very long wait to see a large, animated boat sink. This movie is about James Cameron's love affair with a sunken wreck, nothing more.

• Godzilla (1998) - Americans love foreign films. Wait, no we don't. We love remaking foreign films, replacing the inspired bits with tried and true cliches. Which is exactly what Godzilla is. Gone is the classic and beloved man in a rubber suit terrorizing a model town. Now we get ugly CGI that makes the monster look more like a constipated t-rex than an electrified monitor lizard. Have I mentioned the really horrible casting on this film, yet? Really, this is just an excuse to destroy New York City on film, again. We americans are also a bit masochistic.

• Armageddon (1998) - While this movie might suck, at least it should get credit for being appropriately named. Who says that there is no truth in advertising? Another ensemble picture that totally blows. It's movies like this that make Michael Bay a running joke. (Note that J.J. Abrams, brainchild of Lost, wrote the screenplay for this trash. And now I'm supposed to be excited that he's attached to the new Star Trek movie?) Though I'm ranking these movies in chronological order, this film should get a special commendation, as I do believe that it is the absolute worst film ever made.

• Planet of the Apes (2001) - Not really a remake as much as it is a pile of crap. I used to like Tim Burton (Pee-Wee's Big Adventure is a spectacular film), but based on this film, I refuse to watch anything Burton does anymore. Sorry, Tim, this is too bad for words. The action merely crawls along without any real suspense or plot since we all saw the much superior Heston film years ago. And the deus ex machina twist at the climax only adds insult to injury. Remember, kids, nuclear power is forever.

• Minority Report (2002) - Once upon a time, Steven Speilberg could do no wrong: Jaws, Close Encounters, Raiders of the Lost Arc, Jurassic Park, The Color Purple, Schindler's List... damn, that's an impressive list. But then, sometime around Saving Private Ryan, Mr. Spielberg lost touch with the rest of the human race. His movies became a series of incredibly unnecessary visceral moments that no longer have any cohesive narrative use. And then he gave us AI. Just like AI, this film poses as insightful and thought-provoking in the same way that Fox News poses as fair and balanced. There is a lost eyeball sequence in this film that would make Vincent Price proud. Plus, this movie features Tom Cruise as a holier-than-thou super-cop with fatherhood issues and an addiction to fantasy. Quite the stretch for you, eh, Tom?

• The Core (2003) - I almost didn't include this movie here, because so far as I'm concerned, it's really just a spiritual sequel to Armageddon. But it is bad. Very, very bad. In yet another masculine role, Hillary Swank tries to drive a phallus-like drill into the "core" of the world in order to trigger an explosion that will make the world move. (Lets see, she's been the next Karate Kid, a teenaged boy, a police detective, an attorney, a space shuttle pilot, a boxer.... Is no man's role safe from the manly grip of Ms. Swank?)

• The Day After Tomorrow (2004) - From Roland Emmerich, the director who brought you Godzilla and Independence Day (see above), comes a(nother) tale of the destruction of New York City! With Ice! I think that the FBI should be investigating Mr. Emmerich for terrorist activity based on the number of times that the has destroyed New York on film. There oughta be a law against Roland Emmerich.

Two things on the agenda today:

1) No, I have not yet moved the character sheet to an easy to find location, Jeff. Sorry. (I'll get around to it sooner or later.)

2) A link to my brother's website can now be found on my links page. (Or, for you really lazy surfers, you can just click here.)

I was complaining the other day about the preponderance of Crime Investigation shows on television. It seems that every other primetime TV show is about how to solve a crime or how to get into the mind of a killer. CSI (pick a city), Law and Order (pick a subject), Criminal Minds, Navy NCIS, Bones, Numb3rs, Without a Trace... Clearly, America really craves this sort of show.

Despite my irritation, the "police drama" is nothing new to television. Dragnet is the grandfather of the genre on TV and deserves its accolades. However, Jack Webb was obsessed with realism and truth at the expense of entertainment value. Webb's Dragnet has more in common with today's "reality television" Cops than with any of the shows that I listed above.

Today's police dramas are more T. J. Hooker than Joe Friday. They play fast and loose with technology and procedure in order to craft a more dramatic storyline. Computers can run DNA tests in just under an hour, digital images can be focused to provide a crystal clear magnification, and putting yourself in the figurative shoes of a deranged killer, while stressful, always achieves a tidy solution. (So, turning our police into a group of coordinated, sadistic serial killers is a good thing, then?)

Granted, television is now and always has been about formula. People watch TV to relax and be entertained. Television shows with successful formulas are always predictable and therefore lucrative. (In time, even the innovative, creative shows like Hill Street Blues or NYPD Blue, both very similar to begin with, probably because they had the same creators, develop predictable plot patterns.) And police cases are very formulaic by nature: a crime is committed, the police investigate, suspects are identified then culled, and the guilty party is finally determined based on evidence gathered. Anyone who can't turn that process into an hour long drama doesn't even need to be writing for USA Today.

My concern is not so much with the fact that modern TV has turned to so many make believe crime dramas. (TV has always been rife with fantasy police detectives on shows ranging from Burke's Law to Miami Vice.) What bothers me is that there are now so many of them on the air at once. Every night of the week there are hours of television devoted purely to police stories. In recent years, a police drama -- CSI: Crime Scene Investigation -- has ranked in Nielson as the #1 rated show of the year, something that a police drama has never done before in television history. Why does America suddenly want to see so much crime get solved? Is this another, prolonged reaction to 9/11? If we can't win the war in Iraq, at least we get to see some schlub go to jail on TV based on pubic hair evidence? >Ick.< Or is it something closer to home? As a generation grows up addicted to the internet and traditional socital mores are failing to take root in an impersonal environment, could our neighbors in fact be the very beasts that we see on the evening news raping our children and killing our grandparents? Quick, everyone, grab a pirchfork and bolt your doors! Save us, TV!

America, I propose a change. If it's escapism that you want, I say it is escapism that you should get. Let's abandon all of this pretend crime and turn back to the absurdist fiction of Fantasy Island of The Gong Show. Wait, I see that you're ahead of me. Thank you, television, for giving us Lost and American Idol (which actually suplanted CSI as the number one rated show last year). Now we can forget about all that crime and turn back to the things that are really important: celebrity couples.

It's been a busy week. I'm painting Dad's house, repairing Mom's front landscaping, and replacing brother's PS2. It only complicated things when I got stuck in the middle of a four-car chain reaction pile-up at the tail end of rush-hour a thundershower this afternoon. I was car #3. Car number 1, the one that started it all, is pictured below. It was driven by an hispanic 17-year old female. I was shocked into silence: I didn't know if I should complain about female drivers, minority drivers, or young drivers. (She took it much better than her father did: he looked like he was trying hard to choose between thanking God that she was alive or beating the life out of her.)

My Jeep suffered only the destruction of it's bumperettes (yes, that's a technical term: it's those small D-shaped steel loops on the rear bumper) and the driver's seat now won't maintain an upright position. Worst of all? My Batman tire cover now has a tear in it. It will have to be replaced.

Last month I was complaining about mandatory seat-belt laws. It just so happens that I was wearing one when I got rear-ended. Go figure. You may have won this round, "The Man," but this war isn't over yet!

I just read on CNN.com that there are Catholics in India who have started a hunger strike to protest the release of Sony Pictures' The Da Vinci Code. Apparently, they think that if they kill themselves, Sony will pull the picture from wide release. Good luck with your strike, guys. I'm pulling for you.

Several friends of mine have theorized in the past that Tom Hanks sold his soul to the Devil in the late 1980s. (Some say that it was just before Big in '88, but I suspect that it was more likely not until after Bonfire of the Vanities went up in flames in '90. Sure, Hanks was nominated for Oscar for Big, but who sells their soul to get parts in Turner and Hooch, The 'Burbs, and Joe vs. the Volcano, the films Hanks 'starred' in between Big and Bonfire?) Could it be that there may be some truth in this rumor? Could The Da Vinci Code really be Hank's latest step in repaying his Dark Master by corrupting the Faithful? Hmmmm... could be, could be.

This whole brew-ha-ha is amusing to me. The last time I remember anyone reacting this strongly to a movie release was over The Passion of the Christ two years ago. Funny how the sides have been switched from then to now; then it was the Church urging people to see the movie to further their understanding of the Faith. I look forward to seeing how well this film does. (Christ grossed over ten times its budget in America alone. For Da Vinci to do the same, it would have to pull in over one billion dollars domestically, the equivalent of the GDP of Greenland.)

Good: pressure washers, Spider-Man vitamins, and Smackdown vs Raw 2006 for the PS2.

Bad: female Jeep owners, Coca-Cola Blak, and Cargo magazine.

Don't ask me why. They just are.

DC Comics new 52 week series (cleverly titled 52) hit shelves today. Though I had said that I wasn't going to spend cash on a book that ran continuously for 52 weeks (could I really get $130.00 worth of entertainment out of it?), I did buy the first issue. And I was very pleasantly surprised. If DC can keep the focus on the world's second greatest super hero, Booster Gold (as pictured below from the pages of said book), I might be in for the long haul.

Go ahead, DC. Keep impressing me.

An hour ago I opened Photoshop to do a little touch up to some pictures I was using for the intro animation here at wriphe.com. (It's still only about 1/2 way done and I'm not sure I like it so far, so I might start over. Again.) Somehow I got distracted and instead made this:

There just aren't enough poodle pictures around this site yet. I'll soon fix that!

If you believe in conspiracy theories, think about why you believe in conspiracy theories. (That ought to keep you busy for awhile.)

Today's entry is brought to you by the letter "R" and the number "10." (And the Burger King, who sold me this Super Powers Meal Pack in 1987.)

You know, being the Riddler can't be all bad. Sure, he's got a psychopathic need for attention that always causes him to get caught, but the guy otherwise lives a pretty good life: he's clever, he's dapper (not so much in the green-footed jammies he's wearing above, but his suit and question mark cane are really quite stylish), and he has a lot of fun. The guy laughs a lot! He gets a lot of healthy exercise, so he's in pretty good shape. And he gets to spend a lot of money on creature comforts (when he's not in Arkham Asylum, which is frequently the case). Come to think of it, he lives pretty good in Arkham, too, as one of the less violent offenders in the joint he must get the run of the place.

Look at him up there, stretched out on a beach waiting for Superman to bring him to justice. That's the life. Pretty flowers, good music, tranquil waves, Pat the Bunny... maybe crime does pay.

What, exactly, is going on in the picture above? I wonder, just who is Batman's "pal"? Is Batman coming to Superman's aid or the Riddler's? Or for that matter, maybe the Dark Knight is rowing in to help that poor roller skating android who seems to have been caught completely unawares by Superman's left hook. Clearly, that is not Metallo, The Man with the Kryptonie Heart, out there. That ferrous fellow doesn't stand a chance against the Man of Steel. It doesn't even know any better than to wear roller skates on a sandy beach. Silly robot, roller skates are for kids.

For the record, the 10 things beginning with the letter "R" are rabbit, radio, robot, rock, rocking chair, roller skates, rope, roses, and rowboat. Hmmm.. I'm missing one... what could it be?

May Day! May Day! May Day!

This afternoon I unraveled one of the great conspiracies of the 20th century: The Faked Moon Landings. For years I've heard the rumors that the Apollo missions were filmed in a hidden studio somewhere: the lunar landscapes simply sets, the spaceships merely props, and the astronauts just actors. But this afternoon, while reading about NASA's gift of a moon rock to Neil Armstrong, I was able to finally pierce the veil: Neil Armstrong is really Adam West.

Think about it. First, they look a lot alike. Coincidence? Science says no. Clearly, they could never appear together since they are the same man. ("Clark Kent, meet Superman.") Neil Armstrong and Adam West have never publicly appeared together. (Go ahead and type both of their names into Google. You'll see.) Armstrong claims to have long guarded his privacy and is rarely seen outside of publicity events. West, on the other hand, has been in the public eye as a star of stage and screen for years. He is an accomplished actor who would have little difficiulty in donning the character of "Neil Armstrong" for the right paycheck and the promise of a global audience.

I must say that I do believe that Adam West was a great choice to portray an astronaut. He was handsome, strong, and athletic. His earlier portrayal of an astronaut (a Colonel, no less!) in Robinson Crusoe on Mars, billed as "scientifically authentic," proves that he had what it took to be the first man to walk on the moon. Adam's portrayal of Batman in the years immediately prior to the landing demonstrated that he could be the man who lives with a secret identity. Bravo, I say, to the man who entranced the world.

No doubt NASA, the United States Government, and Adam West will all deny this as the truth. But this does answer a lot of lingering questions. Personally, I think that knowing the truth makes the world a little bit better place to live in, even if we haven't landed on the moon yet.

I'm posting a whole lot of minor updates to the site tonight. Look around. You might find things you didn't notice before. (Please tell me if you find anything broken. There's always something broken, and I'm never the one who finds it.)

I'm sitting here, working on preparing eBay listings of Happy Meal boxes and toys that my mother has collected from various restaurants over the past 30 years. I'm also listening to BBC News on NPR cover the growing crisis with the Italian presidency. These two separate and completely different activities have led to this:

Perhaps Sir Shakes-A-Lot should be the new president of Italy, the country whose Supreme Court recently declared that it's ok to rape women if they aren't virgins. He may be spastic, but at least he understands the Chivalric Code.

This past week my brother chastised me for failing to update the site sooner than this. He told me that I was failing to do my established duty to entertain the half dozen people who visit the site regularly.

In my defense, I've been kind of busy. I've been trying really hard to complete the PS2 game Mercenaries. Determined to collect all of the bounties, I had a great deal of trouble with the 10 of Spades. I accidentally killed number 10 and couldn't recover the body that had fallen halfway down a cliff. That was irritating.

Also, I've been working on a script for a new The Movies movie about time travel. I've just about finished writing dialogue. I'll keep you posted regarding release dates.

And that's all in addition to the fact that I've been trying to finish Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged which I started reading casually on August 2 last year. I've finished two other books in the meanwhile that I've read only while on the toilet. I really love Rand's Objectivist philosophy, but she really takes her time redundantly driving a point home again and again.

Anyway, it's updated now. Are you happy yet, Trey?

Driving home from my father's house today, I was pulled over at the intersection of Atlanta Highway and Bethlehem Road by Sgt. Hinson of the Statham, Georgia police department. I think it is the very first time that I have ever peen pulled over that I wasn't nervous. I knew exactly what he pulled me over for: I wasn't wearing a seatbelt.

This marks the second time that I've ever been pulled over for a "Seat Belt" violation and the third time that I've been pulled over in Statham GA. The other 2 times I've been stopped in Statham (pronounced STATE-um by the locals for reasons that I don't understand) were for speeding. Neither resulted in a ticket, just a verbal chiding. (I was told that I could exceed the speed limit by as much as 14 mph and get away with it by decree of the Statham mayor.) Amusingly enough, neither of the times that I was pulled over for speeding was I wearing a seat belt.

In the state of Georgia, the fine for not wearing a seat belt (GA State Law code violation 40.8.76.1) is $15.00. I don't yet know if the city of Atlanta charges more, as they haven't much seemed to care if I'm endangering myself on the few times that I have encountered them. Sgt. Hinson was very kind to remind me that the violation doesn't count points off of my driver's license, so clearly I can repeat this violation as many times as I wish without putting my ability to drive in question.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the lawmakers who drafted and passed the law that encourages police officers to ticket otherwise compliant and safe drivers on lazy Sunday afternoons for a violation that threatened no one's life but my own. (Certainly, Superman never stopped traffic to make sure that Jimmy buckled up.) I'm pleased to start April off with a bang, dashing Statham's hope of achieving a 100% rating for seat belt use for the month.

Today I was flipping channels and caught the very end of G4's Electric Playground (a show I really don't much care for usually). They were discussing The Movies and it's Chrysler Competition. As Victor Lucas wrapped up the show, they showed the competition website onscreen. I was stoked to find my submission, A Dog's Tale, very visible on the television. It was sweet.

All this week, the national media has been abuzz about the spat between South Park and Scientology. Apparently, Scientologists are crazy. (Thetans. There, I've said it.) But is that really news?

I'm no expert in the matter, but it is my understanding that Mormons wear special underwear. (Underwear is next to godliness.) I've read that Catholics consume the actual body and blood of the son of their god. (And we give them a hard time about their preference for young boys!) I've seen Southern Baptists prohibit the use of playing cards while allowing dominos. (A rose is a rose, unless you're a Southern Baptist.) I've witnessed Jews celebrate oil that burned much longer than it was advertised to burn. ("Tightwad" was originally a Yiddish word.) And I've even heard that Muslims receive 100 virgins in heaven. (I hope those virgins aren't going to stay virginal for eternity? As my friend Chris said: "Dude, virgin pussy sucks.")

So every religion has it's share of wacky ideas. And now we're going to fight over whose ideas are the stupidest? That's like entering siamese twins in a beauty contest and then arguing over who looks better in the swimsuit competition. Grow some thicker skin, people. Or better yet, a sense of humor about yourselves. Now quit throwing stones at each other so I can go back to watching news that really matters: is Britney is pregnant again?

This weekend, while searching for spouts for an absinth bottle, a friend of mine told me that I was each day growing closer to the textbook definition of a sociopath. I told him that I didn't care what he and his books had to say!

Alright, try as I might, I seem incapable of getting either a 5-star studio or a 5-star movie star in The Movies. How very, very irritating.

On a very related note, I have a new movie online here.

I think I might enjoy making these silly little fake movie posters more than I enjoy making the movies, though that may just be the sour grapes talking.

They Might Be Giants is the best band since... well, a long time ago.

I just heard that Miss Deaf Texas was struck and killed by a train in Austin yesterday. Initial reports claimed that she was crossing the tracks, ignoring the train's warning horns. There is a valuable lesson buried in this story, I just know it.

In a seemingly unrelated story, national networks recently broadcast the story that a blind teen in Chicago must take and pass Driver's Education classes before she can graduate high school. In Chicago the tracks are probably safer than the roads; blind drivers aren't so good with stoplights.

Even more bizarre is the story of an eighteen year old who became a quadriplegic in a Lubbock juvenile detention center after an employee dared him to attempt a back flip off a picnic table in December. (Yes, everything is stranger in Texas.) Of course, the teen is suing the state, because he didn't know better than to try to flip backwards off a table. Please note that he was in juvie because he assaulted a teacher, yet he's willing to blame another authority figure for his debilitating spinal injury. Go figure. At least we don't have to worry about this fellow hitting the road anytime soon. (Unless, of course, he falls out of his wheelchair.)

This past weekend, my brother and I were attacked by a spontaneously exploding tempered glass bathroom door that we were planning to install. (I blame witchcraft, I do!) My mother insisted that my brother go to the hospital to get stiches for his sliced hand. To cheer him up, I bought us Clue!, one of the very few "classic" board games that we didn't already own.

I had only played Clue! a few times, and I had certainly never won. Ever. So I was determined to win at least once. My mother, my brother, and my brother's girlfriend agreed to play with me. They were pretty good sports about it, too.

In the end, I made them play game after game for over 5 straight hours, until at last I won a game. I'm pretty sure that they let me win, especially since at one point my mother accused Col. Mustard of committing the murder in the Study with the Revolver when she was later revealed to have the Study in her own hand. But who cares how I won? I won! That's the important part. And everyone else was a loser! Ha! Take that, losers!

All right, I admit it, I didn't watch the Oscars. I didn't watch any of the 80 straight hours of hype on E! before the show. I didn't watch Jon Stewart's scything remarks against Scientology. I didn't watch anyone thank God or The Academy in their acceptance speach. More importantly, I didn't watch any of the films that were nominated for, well, anything this year.

Hollywood, you've stopped trying to talk to me. I don't know when, exactly, that I fell from the demographic that Hollywood was trying to reach. I'm still young (enough) to buy shoes, cars, and cigarettes. However, I don't live in L.A., I don't LOVE history or morality tales, and I'm not a gay cowboy in Wyoming. (In fact, I can't stand Wyoming, but that's a different story.)

The only 3 films that I saw that were released in theaters in 2005 were Sin City, Batman Begins, and Fantastic Four. (Anyone see the theme there?) I'm not demanding that Hollywood make nothing but comic book inspired movies (oh, that would be awful, wouldn't it?). However, I would like for Hollywood to give me something to justify the $12.00 expense of a movie ticket in 2006 that didn't have men in tights -- or the silver screen equivalent: molded black vinyl -- in it.

Hollywood, you're now specializing only in biopics (Ray, Capote, Walk The Line), interpretive history (Munich, Good Night And Good Luck, Alexander) or or the always unimpressive sequel (Big Momma's House 2, Cheaper By The Dozen 2, Miss Congeniality 2, Son of Mask, Star Wars Episode 3). And if I don't care for those, I can always pay full price to go watch a film that I've seen before (War Of The Worlds, The Pink Panther, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, King Kong, Amityville Horror, The Longest Yard).

If that's the best that you have to offer me, Tinseltown, stop bitching that you just had the worst year ever and try to make something worth watching for a change.

Last month I ran a series of cartoons depicting an incident with my dear, dear friend Brian Cooper when he "accidently" tossed a full glass of Coke on my notes during a gaming session. Well, last week I got him back. His character, Balgren, was consumed by a Bag of Devouring. (He dove in to try to recover a companion. Sure, Balgren tried to take a Bottle of Air into the Devourer's maw, but that didn't help him much.) Needless to say, we all had a good laugh at Brian's expense.

Turns out Brian had a birthday this week. As a present, a mutual friend of ours (Ken Harrison) drew a birthday card for him:

From now on, all of my Bags of Devouring will be called Bob.

True story: I'm walking around my apartment preparing to take a few photos for eBay with my digital camera. I'm also absent-mindedly munching on a handfull of Nabisco Wheat Thins. (That's product placement, by the way.)

I'm a little surprised when I pop a cracker into my mouth and bite down. Unlike your average Wheat Thin, this tastes like plastic. And it's smooth. My first instinct is that I must be chewing on a wrapped prize like you find in cereal boxes and Cracker Jack boxes.

I take it out of my mouth and find that I have just bitten through my camera's memory card. D'oh!

In the past few days I've spent many hours learning to solve a Rubik's Cube. (Don't have your own? Play with a virtual cube online. Thank you internet!) I'm not interested in solving for speed, but I would like to be able to pick a scrambled Cube up and solve it. I'm not quite there yet.

Will this make me any money? No. Will this make me a better person? No. Will this impress the ladies? Hell no. But it has certainly been more entertaining than watching the Olympics.

Among the truely great books ever published is The Super Dictionary. A learning dictionary for children published in the 70s, it features the great lineup of DC super heroes: Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, etc. I often tell people that I learned to read from comic books, but that's not quite true. I learned to read from The Super Dictionary.

Wonder Woman illustrates the entries for "blow" and "bush." I love this book.

As most of you who visit this site know by now, I've been consumed by the Lionhead/Activision game The Movies. They've graciously granted web space to my studio, Wriphe Jr. Pictures, where I'm listing my moving picture endeavors for everyone to see (and belittle).

In a desperate gamble to increase my studio's visibility, I've decided to start entering every contest that I can. First up is a contest for a new Chrysler. Though I'm very happy with my Jeep (a pre-DaimlerChrysler product), I could always use another car. If you get a chance, check out my film (shameless plug). I think my promo poster below about sums this film up.

Now I'm off to Do Lunch. You're Beautiful. Have Your People Call My People. Ciao.

McDonald's is out to brainwash America (and then the world -- Bwah-Ha-Ha-HA!) to eat their crapp