As much as I liked Roy Scheider (who, for those of you who never watch the news, died yesterday), I have to admit that his career has always puzzled me a bit. No matter what the film, it seemed he was always playing second fiddle to some bigger star, usually a fabricated bit of special effects such as a gigantic shark, a menacing helicopter, a homicidal computer, or a talking dolphin. Maybe he's just so likeable because his co-stars are always so robotic. I guess it's easy to be charismatic when you're playing opposite cardboard. (Just ask any of Andie McDowell's co-stars.)

On the upside, Scheider probably got out on the light side. At least he won't be forced to watch someone's inevitable remake of Jaws II. Really, if Scheider can't convince those politicians that a shark is to blame, no one can.

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Last month, I received a signed book from a friend's employer, one of the world's foremost authorities on Superhero Mego figures. This month, I'm working for another friend's employer, one of the world's foremost authorities on Coca-Cola bottles.

This week's moral is "learn more about something than anyone else, and someday maybe you, too, can meet me." (Sorry, no autographs.)

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As you may or may not know, I've begun selling paintings on eBay (under the clever eBay id "wriphe"). I started this last year off and on, but now that I've got a little more space around the house to work on several canvases at a time, I'm listing again a little more aggressively. I'll post here when I've got a new painting up for sale (like today, though the painting that I listed today is not the painting pictured below).

The above picture (Batmobiles are awesome) is about actual size on a 1024 x 768 monitor. Nifty, huh?

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While doing some work in front of the television, I watched Match Game 75 on the Game Show Network. A little old lady played for two rounds wherein she gave some of the worst answers ever. Originally, I had planned to just list them here. Instead, I've embedded them in the following game simulation. The contestant got zero correct in the episode. See if you can't do better. (My apologies to Joyce Bulifant. I gave her the answers that the idiot contestant gave to make the game more playable. In this episode, for a change, Joyce gave reasonable answers.)

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Today I celebrate the second annual Batman and Football Month with something that has nothing to do with Batman or Football! (It's exactly this sort of misdirection that both Batman and Football Offenses thrive on!)

I'll be unable to blog for the next week or so (busy, busy!), so let the following digital toy amuse you until I've had a chance to attend to the situation. Two notes:

1. The squares at the top, left, and bottom of the screen are buttons. Press them to turn them on/off. They do various things. For example, the one furthest down on the left is the reset button. You're smart; you can figure out the rest.
2. By holding the mouse down, you can drag the individual squares to new locations to change the design for your own pleasure.

Now go, play with yourself. I'm pretty sure you'll have fun.

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Have you ever played the Milton Bradley board game Aggravation? Fundamentally, it's the same "race around a track game" as Parcheesi, Sorry! or Trouble, but without any of the fun associated with those other games. (Granted, Trouble's fun stems entirely from it's addictive Pop-O-Matic Bubble and television jingle. The bubble itself would always bounce the dice without actually turning them over, but chanting "Trouble, Trouble" somehow made it entertaining.) I had once sworn never to play Aggravation again, but I had forgotten why. Well, I played it and I remembered.

Fortunately, the game doesn't quite live up to its name, producing very little actual aggravation. Really, the game fails to summon any emotion at all. After playing it again for the first time in over a decade, my brother and I agreed that it is the least exciting board game ever. The only thing aggravating about it was that it was still in our game closet after all of these years. So I threw it away. Now, thanks to me, there is one less Aggravation in the world.

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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.

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

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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.

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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?

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