Oops. I completely forgot that on this past Saturday, I meant to post about Batman Day 2023. Sorry. That was my bad. If I didn't mention it, how would you know you were supposed to celebrate by buying something with Batman's face on it?

What better way for a corporation worth nearly $30 billion to commemorate their own for-profit intellectual property (that they acquired in a 1967 buy-out of National Periodical Publications) than via an annual event (created and promoted by Warner Bros) in which you give them more money? Billionaire Bruce Wayne would indubitably agree. That's how Christmas started, too.

If you missed out on Saturday, it's not too late. Your Local Comic Shop may still have copies of the three "Batman Day" branded reprint comic books DC sold to retailers to give away as door-busting loss leaders for their event. Or, if you prefer, you could go online, where the "free" comics are currently selling for... checks ebay.com... $8. Seems fair. Even scalpers have to put bread on their table.

But let's face it, you're not going to a comic shop. Batman may be DC's best selling comic book, but that's still only a few million dollars a year. The real money comes from the Batman television and movie fans who haven't touched a comic book in decades. That's why Warner Bros has curated a selection of DVDs, t-shirts, coffee mugs, action figures, posters, LEGOs, bedsheets, party supplies, cocktail guides, car seats, toasters, and much, much more on their officially licensed "Long Live The Bat" store at Amazon.com. Huh. I didn't know I needed a toaster that burnt the bat signal into slices of bread, but I guess, yeah, maybe I do.

Show off your love of Batman; make rich corporations richer. It's a win-win. I'm just sorry I didn't mention it sooner.

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This counts as news only to me, but I fixed my bedside lamp. The switch had worn out.

It's no antique, though it's no spring chicken, either. I "inherited" it when my college roommate graduated and moved to the west coast. (Hi, Jason!) That was only... fifteen years ago. I don't know how old it was then. (Can you shed any light on that subject, Jason?) If I've yanked that chain twice a day ever since, that's somewhere in the neighborhood of approximately 11,000 pulls. Maybe I should have been counting.

Anyway, thanks to a replacement switch found on eBay, I can now read in bed again. Sweet dreams, everyone.

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Damn. It appears that Batman's dick (now selling for $80 on eBay) killed Norm Breyfogle, who died on Monday.

Breyfogle was THE Batman artist of the early 90s, and as you might expect, is therefore one of the artists I most associate with the character. I especially enjoyed the way he made the villains both colorful and psychologically threatening.

That was some good stuff. So long, Norm.

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If anyone is interested in such a thing, know that I've just listed a used Misfit Shine 2 Fitness + Sleep Tracker on eBay.

I tried using it for 2 months. It's not for me. I prefer to be ignorant about how fat and lazy I am.

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In 2003, my grandfather gifted me a backlit 1975 Ingress-Plastene Coca-Cola clock (Model G017) that he had been storing in his garage. The light still worked, but the timekeeping didn't. I took it apart and tinkered with it a bit, but for reasons I couldn't recall, I never got around to finishing the repair and the clock was put, in pieces, into storage in my garage. Like grandfather, like grandson.

In April, looking for something to do between programming jobs, I finally decided to finish my decade-old clock restoration project. Having forgotten why it wasn't working, I started over at the beginning. I spent $20 on assorted parts to replace the missing winding mechanism before I re-discovered that the original motorized movement was worn out. Then I remembered why I didn't fix it 10 years ago: the company that made the electric motor stopped making clock parts in the 90s.

Unwilling to give up a second time, I took to the Internet. Replacement Lux series 2350 movements are available periodically on eBay for prices as low as $25. In fact, the whole clock is common enough enough that I could buy a replacement between $50 and $250, depending on condition. But I didn't really want a replacement; I wanted the clock that my grandfather once owned to tick once again. Besides, I couldn't really trust 40-year-old parts to keep working any longer than they had in my clock.

So I went ahead and spent $40 on a new electric movement — Made in the USAâ„¢ — with a set of hands that mimicked what I had. (The original had a sweeping second hand and the replacement steps, but beggers cannot be choosers.) It took a bit of tinkering with a drill and a vice to make the new, shallower movement fit with the original florescent lamp interior, but it worked out well enough in the end.

After nearly 15 years, I finally have a working grandfather clock. Now my mud room looks like a little league snack bar, and that's just the way I like it.

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Ten years ago, tickets to the season-opening Monday Night Football game between the Philadelphia Eagles vs the Atlanta Falcons, went on sale in the wee hours of the morning on TicketMaster.com. My brother, an avid Eagles fan, wanted tickets desperately, so despite being awake for nearly 24 hours, I sat at my computer and tried to get him some.

For hours, I tried. TicketMaster has never been very good at anything, and that morning they were particularly bad. Time out after time out — until finally! The tickets it offered me were expensive, $150 seats, but they would be worth it. Only after I put in my credit card info and committed to buy did I realize that the tickets TicketMaster had offered weren't to the Monday Night Falcons/Eagles. Somehow, in my sleep-deprived state, I had purchased tickets to the preseason Falcons/Ravens game instead.

Of course TicketMaster refused to offer a refund. And by then, they insisted they were sold out of Eagles tickets. So I was stuck with tickets to a watching a team I don't like in seats I couldn't afford at a glorified practice scrimmage. Fan-fucking-tastic.

I tried selling my Ravens tickets on eBay at a loss, but there were no takers. I ended up giving them away to a friend who didn't even go.

Fast forward a decade, and the Eagles were back in town for a Monday Night Football season opener. I had't planned on attending, but while watching games on Sunday, I figured what the hell. I went online to StubHub.com — I never buy anything on TicketMaster anymore — and bought two tickets for $50 each. Since my brother no longer speaks to me, I gave a ticket to friend Brian. We met at the Georgia Dome and had a great time.

Philadelphia Eagles 24, Atlanta Falcons 26. I'm really going to miss the Georgia Dome when they tear it down next year.

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Easter is all about a man who came back from the dead, so naturally we must be talking about Superman. That description applies doubly to the statue now sitting beside my television.

It was a gift from a friend. He had ordered it for himself from eBay, but when it arrived in a shoebox of broken parts, I got an unexpected gift. Years ago he gave me a cracked copy of the Jan & Dean Meet Batman record album. "Give it to Walter; he'll glue anything!" (This is probably why I can't have nice things.)

Fortunately for Superman, I could rebuild him. I had the technology. Don't tell Steve Austin, but a new tube of 2-part epoxy costs considerably less than 6 million dollars. After a week of wire, tape, glue, and touch-up paint, Superman may not be good as new, but he's much better than he was.

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I hear some peanut-butter filled chocolate eggs calling my name.

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Also to the Batman/football crossover, Under Armour has licensed DC Comics properties to make superhero undershirts. Under Armour markets these products as their "Alter Ego" line. You may have seen the Superman t-shirts at athletic stores or sidelines. But have you seen these gloves?

These "MEN'S UNDER ARMOUR® ALTER EGO BATMAN HIGHLIGHT FOOTBALL GLOVES" are currently sold out at underarmour.com, but are selling for up to $200 on eBay.

The market has spoken. Batman + football = awesome.

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After Coach Mike Smith's Atlanta Falcons finally won a playoff game last week, the city has gone nuts for the Falcons. Literally. Falcons apparel has sold out throughout the region. Pep rallies have been held at city government buildings. Everyone, it seems, is suddenly an Atlanta Falcons fan. All this excitement points to one thing: the Falcons are going to lose in the NFC Championship tomorrow.

Atlanta has earned its "Loserville" reputation. Our sports teams rarely make it to the big games, and when they do, they lose. Because we know that our teams aren't going anywhere, we don't get easily excited about their performance. It takes something rare, like an NFC Championship Game, to get the masses motivated. Unfortunately, once our "fans" get involved, we turn the pressure on the athletes from 1 ("nonexistent") to 11 ("debilitating"). It's a vicious cycle.

I don't know if the Atlanta players have been listening to the hype this week, but I don't know how they could avoid it. Shunning newspapers, radio, and television is one thing, but now there are banners, billboards, and bumper stickers everywhere! If the Georgia Dome wasn't already red and black, I'd expect to see painting crews hard at work right now.

Despite having the better record, the Falcons are underdogs against the visiting 49ers, who lost last year's Championship thanks to a single bad punt return in overtime. Underdogs should have less pressure to perform, not more. How can the players handle the sudden weight of new fan expectations? Are they to believe that they are suddenly as great as the new fans say? Hopefully the players remember that the only place to prove that is on the field on Sunday.

Maybe the Falcons will find a way to win. Even if they do, we'll just double down on the pressure over the next two weeks as the Super Bowl nears. I'd like to see the team win out, but I expect that there are going to be a lot of barely-worn Tony Gonzales jerseys on eBay next month. We're not known as Loserville for nothing.

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I think I'll NOT be selling my Super Bowl tickets.

You wouldn't think selling Super Bowl tickets would be such a big deal, would you?Well, you'd be wrong.

First I investigated the few thousand responses I got from Google for selling tickets. Then, narrowing down the sites, I tried to list my tickets, only to find that they either A) wanted to charge me some ridiculous fee (15% or more off the top!) to list my tickets on their site or B) told me that it was too close to the event to list my tickets. I suppose if you're going to sell Super Bowl tickets on those sites, you have to decide to so so more than a month before you know who's going to be in it.

So I turned to eBay. Only eBay won't let you list anything these days without allowing PayPal as a payment. (Funny. They own PayPal. So they are essentially requiring you to pay fees to them twice for every listing that is paid for through PayPal. And they wonder why their business is declining.) Since I know from personal experience that using PayPal to sell anything worth more than $100 is a mistake (goodbye, Masters of the Universe figures), eBay was no longer an option.

With the entire internet eliminated as a possibility for selling my tickets, I'm left with the outdated 20th-century methods of newspaper, co-workers, and friends. However, no one reads the newspaper anymore (unless they love government-mandated foreclosure notices), I don't have any co-workers, and none of my friends like football (which I suspect should make me wonder why they are my friends). On a lark, I even tried consulting a pawn-broker, who not surprisingly offered less than face value.

I guess I'm stuck with my tickets. That's right: I'm stuck with Super Bowl tickets. Life is really a bitch sometimes, you know.

Somehow this is your fault, Kurt Warner.

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