The word "nikhedonia" is defined as the pleasure of the anticipation of victory. Now that the Miami Dolphins have extended their season losing streak to 7 games, the worst start in franchise history (>sigh<), my pleasure at watching the Fins play decreases as I anticipate very few victories. Next week we will be traveling very far from home to play the New York Giants in London. Where we, currently tied for the title of Worst Team in the NFL, will no doubt shock and awe the Brits into never watching American football again. Sorry, gov.

In case you're wondering, I discovered the word "nikhedonia" while reading the book There's a Word For It, in which I discovered that the particular disorder of my friend, who I will call Jason in the interest of maintaining his anonymity (he knows who he is), is called "haptodysphoria." Essentially, that means that Jason can't touch raw cotton because it feels icky to him. Other than that, Jason happens to be a pretty normal guy. For a haptodysphoriac, that is. You the man, Jason!

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I have now seen Transformers, and it sucks. I mean really, really sucks. For many, many reasons. For example, in all promotional advertising Dreamworks presents Optimus Prime's head with a mask over the mouth just as his movie-inspiring toy version has traditionally appeared. However, in the film, Prime has a visible mouth at all times. Why would Dreamworks promote the film showcasing a design that doesn't appear within the film? Answer: because they know that the masked toy-design is much, much better than the design that they actually used. I only mention this because this proves that the in-house marketing department at Dreamworks knows that their film actually sucks. As I previously posted on May 30, even director Michael Bay publicly stated that he thought the movie sucked. So who the hell paid to see this thing in the theater enough times to make it the 3rd highest grossing movie of 2007 to date? That person is the reason that we have capital punishment in America.

But since I think that so many of my recent posts have been so negative as late, instead of a long post about the abundant things about Transformers that make it very, very horrible, instead may I present two things worth watching instead:

1. Bleach on Cartoon Network. Sure, it's animated anime fantasy about super powers and dead samurai sword fights, but isn't that exactly the genre of thing that you'd go to see Transformers for? Great characterization always produces great entertainment. And this show's got it (whether the pronoun "it" here refers to either "characterization" or "entertainment") AND super powered sword fights set to Japanese pop-music. Sweet.

2. Pushing Daisies on ABC. This is the wonderfully narrated fairy tale of one man who has the power to return the dead to life. Naturally, he uses this power to solve murders and complicate his own love life. This show looks like nothing else I've ever seen on TV. It's getting great reviews, but must have a truly staggering production budget (and rumors circulate that director/producer Barry Sonnenfield has gone waaaay over-budget and angered studio execs), so I suspect that it will get the axe as soon as ratings slip even a little. See it while you can.

It suddenly occurs to me that both of those shows circulate around the concept of death. But then, so do CSI (and most other crime dramas), House (and most other medical dramas), and Law & Order (and most other detective shows). So let's not get carried away with calling me a goth, okay?

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Two years ago, my father decided that he wanted to start keeping bees. So he invested in a hive, a suit, and a starter swarm. This week, he finally collected his first honey, which he put into those familiar little bear-shaped squeeze bottles.

He gave me a bottle and let me sample it. The locally produced honey does indeed taste fantastic. Then he revealed that after dividing the cost of the enterprise by the number of bottles that he was able to produce, he figures that each bottle was worth about $85.

It doesn't taste that fantastic.

Maybe I'll be able to afford a bottle when costs come down. In about 5 years.

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I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but somewhere in time the Nobel Peace Prize lost its way. How, exactly, have Al Gore and the IPCC "done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses"?

Sure, maybe Global Warming, the boogeyman-under-the-bed of the 21st century, is a potentially dangerous thing threatening the world, but what has Al Gore done to foster peace and prevent future war over it? Thrown a concert? Started a cable television channel? Made a very profitable movie? Invented the Internet?

If Global Warming existed before Gore championed it's opponents, then he is more similar to AIDS activist Ryan White than Polio vaccinator Jonas Salk. Should you give someone an award for suffering from a medical condition? Especially a condition that that someone is profiting heavily from?

Seems to me that the much-lauded Peace Prize has become about as relevant as Britney Spears' panties (or lack thereof) when all it does is promote the current cause celebrite. What's next? Awarding terrorists?

Oh, wait. Nevermind.

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Last night, in the game between the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers, it was challenged whether there were too many men on the field for Chicago. After several minutes, referee Larry Nemmers came back to say that there weren't. Of course, by that time, John Madden had twice proven that there were 12 men visibly on the field, not 11. Why did it take the officials so long to count TO THE WRONG NUMBER?

Later, when packers coach Mike McCarthy challenged the spot of the ball on an apparent Bears' first down, after several minutes of staring at tape, Nemmers placed the ball about a foot backwards. This is not at all the full yard or more difference in the spot of the ball that the replay had shown. Though spotting the ball has always been a largely arbitrary action, why, when you have ample time to look at it, do you get it so wrong? To add insult to injury, the Packers lost a timeout over the "failed" challenge of the spot of the ball (because the re-spot following the replay review resulted in a first down anyway) despite the fact that the replay proved that the coach was correct in challenging and should not have resulted in a Bears first down.

Note, please, that when Nemmers placed the ball about a foot backwards, he was well aware that the Bears would still have the necessary yardage for a first down. He had just brought out the chains to measure the gain before the challenge. After moving the ball, he ordered the chains on the field and measured again. Since he had just measured, knowing full well the location of the first down marker, this second measurement was only for dramatic purposes as he revealed that the Bears still had a first down.

Two failed instant replay calls in favor of the Bears while playing a game in Green Bay? Unheard of!

After several years of provisional implementation, so-called "instant" replay was made a permanent part of the NFL game earlier this year. That's a travesty. It's one thing to get a call wrong on the field. Officials are human and prone to making mistakes. It's another thing altogether to stop a game and extend its length by minutes in order to get a call wrong while staring at a recording of a play. That's just inhumane and inexcusable.

Maybe Larry Nemmers, who has been an official in the NFL since 1985 and a referee since 1991 has just gotten so old that he can't see well anymore. But I suspect that it's more than that. Every year, the NFL delegates that their best (i.e. "fewest blown calls") officiating staff be on the field for the Super Bowl. Despite being a referee for 16 years, Nemmers has never been on the field at the end of January. By the way, before joining the NFL's part-time officiating staff, Nemmers was a high school principal in Elgin, Illinois, a suburb of -- guess where? -- Chicago! (The Chicago Bears, loser of last year's Super Bowl, came into the game with a 1-4 record, desperately needing a win to stay alive in the divisional rankings. They got it, thanks in no small part to you, Larry!)

Bah!

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Another Batman and Football month draws to a close with another Georgia Bulldogs victory. This win was a little odd because it seemed that we were able to draw together and defeat Mississippi 45-17 only because of Knowshon Moreno's dancing to a calypso beat during one of those forever long official time outs. After Knowshon got the stadium crowd worked up, Thomas Brown became Superman, tearing through defenders as he ran downfield at will for the following quarter. Why couldn't we beat an inferior team like Old Miss without a couple of players providing motivation very late in the game? (Dancing with the stars, indeed.) That's UGA for you.

We won't have another home game until November. We've got to play Tennessee and Florida on the road first. I'll decide if I'm going to the Troy State game based on our performance in October.

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As I said earlier this month, I was re-reading A Lonely Place of Dying, which essentially launched the third Robin, Tim Drake. Drake's first appearance as Robin was in Batman #465. Norm Breyfogle's cover of Batman and the new Robin caught in a spotlight pays homage to a long standing tradition of images of Batman (and occasionally Robin) caught in a spotlight.

Now, by "homage," I mean "lazy rip-off of." It's much easier for an artist to duplicate something he's looking at than to create something on his own. Especially in the break-neck paced comic book artist's demanding schedule. I mean, Alex Ross must put out a work a day; he doesn't have time for original composition. And who can blame him when he can simply spit out a "re-imagining" of a previously-composed image for reproduction on a limited edition collector's plate, pick up his check, and add another Shazam! Mego to his personal Captain Marvel collection.

Not that I'm knocking Ross' work, mind you. Comic artists, even the talented ones like Breyfogle and Ross, have been recycling poses and covers since they learned to draw. Heck, that is exactly how they learned to draw. Take a look at the following 2 covers. On the left, the original inspiration for spotlight images to follow, Batman #9. On the right, a book published one year later, Batman #16, recycles the original art, merely flipping it horizontally. (Note the failure to colorize Robin's cape underneath the flashlight. I suppose we should be thankful that they re-drew the "R" on Robin's chest.) You simply don't get lazier than that.

All these covers make me wonder why Batman and Robin always seem so afraid of the light. Seems symbolic, somehow, doesn't it? Granted, if in the middle of the night I was hanging around with a minor while we were wearing capes and underwear, I probably wouldn't want to be seen either.

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It was just brought to my attention that the Miami Dolphins, the NFL team with the best overall record since the 1970 NFL-AFL merger, is on pace to lose that distinction by the end of this year. After being barely .500 since the loss of Marino (the Greatest Quarterback to Ever Live), the Dolphins will be supplanted in the record books by the Pittsburgh Steelers should they win 9 games more than us from this point forward. Though that seems unlikely, with the Steelers sitting at 3-0, and the Dolphins starting an abysmal 0-3, it could happen in week 12, when the two teams play one another.

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Batman or Football. Your choice.

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I've just returned from the Newnan High School homecoming football game against Lithonia High School. We left at halftime, as the NHS Cougars were beating the LHS Bulldogs 35-0 and I simply didn't care to see any more, especially if I was going to have to sit through the halftime Homecoming Court presentation. (I'd've stayed if the LHS band was going to take the field. Their drum corps was much, much better than their football team.)

As we left the stadium, I realized that I did not have my wallet on me, and I was convinced that it had fallen out of my pocket in the stadium. My brother patiently explained that my wallet must still be on my bed. Since my slightly-paranoid neurotic nature would have alerted me to the wallet's absence during the game if it had been present and then disappeared, he explained, my realizing it only after my departure was because enough time (and football) had passed for me to forget that I hadn't brought it in the first place. Therefore, I was fretting only because I had forgotten that I had not brought it to the game.

He was, it turns out, quite right. My wallet was right where I had left it, on my bed. I dropped it there before we left the game because I was excited upon putting on a pair of pants and finding $6 in the pocket. (Yes, I am so broke that $6 is a huge find.)

So now I'm the worst of both worlds: a paranoid with a memory short enough to be suspicious of my own behavior and motivations. And finding $6 is enough to get me too excited to pay attention to anything for about an hour. Great. What's that they say that's the first thing to go, again? Cause I'm sure that's already gone.

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