For reasons I'm not going to go into (use your imagination), I was recently trying to think of a superhero name for a painter. And it occurred to me that painters simply aren't super heroes.

Frustrated painters can become super villains (such as Crazy Quilt and Rainbow Raider), but never super heroes. (Sure, some become comic book illustrators -- Captain America and Green Lantern come to mind -- but that's hardly the same thing. Anyone can tell you that comic book illustrators aren't real artists.) Is this because the act of painting, a cathartic translation of thought, beautiful or otherwise, from ephemera to tangible is innately opposed to the destructive violence generally employed for subduing criminals? Or perhaps because painters have to spend so much time in a studio honing their craft that they don't have the opportunity to master gymnastics and Karate, necessary super hero skills? Maybe it's because painters spend all their time looking at things, unable to rouse themselves from marveling at the beautiful shapes formed by stark blue and red police lights to answer the sound of a bank's alarm siren.

Seems to me that the world is ready for a slew of super powered painters, charging forward with their brushes primed to cover man's inhumanity to man with a new veneer of peace and order. Painters would gain their super powers by accidentally coming into contact with experimental radioactive pigments, unusual combinations of toxic turpentine fumes, or still life compositions of creatively arranged alien meteor fragments. Heroes named Action Painter, Cadmium Kid, Color Crusader, Maul Stick, or the White Brush would band together on teams such as the Complementary Colors, Palette of Order, or (my favorite) The New Masters.

But then again, maybe not. Most of the painters I've met are pretentious dicks who I'd never want to see in tights. So maybe the lack of painter heroes is all for the best. Nevermind.

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We're playing with IP address changes today here at Wriphe.com that may will cause some connection problems, at least temporarily. Should be solved soon. Thank you for your patience.

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With football season fast approaching, it's time to address a serious question: advertising on jerseys. Is it acceptable to turn players into living billboards, or is it the final sign of the apocalypse for which we've been waiting? As you'd expect, I'm completely against it, though I can certainly understand the argument for it. However, I think the line needs to be drawn somewhere, especially in college, which is ironically where the most advertising currently takes place. (I'm looking at you Nike.)

The NBA and NHL recently announced that they were considering it, and the NFL allows it on practice jerseys. (Translation: it's coming.) This isn't a surprise, as the NBA will sell anything not nailed down in order to generate enough revenue to sign their latest thug-of-the-month. The Reebok wordmark on modern NHL jerseys already eclipses some team names. MLB uniforms already have patches everywhere, and it's only a matter of time before the designs of those patches transmute from "World Series Champion: 2009" to "World's Best Wings: Just $1.99." (I'm looking at you, CITI Field.)

Perhaps we are conditioned to accept advertising on jerseys after years of seeing "Chico's Bail Bonds" on Little League jerseys. But that doesn't mean that the professional leagues, which are already charging us an arm and a leg for the honor of attending their games, should be selling ad space on their players' bodies to supplement their already over-inflated incomes. (I'm looking at you, Yankee Stadium.)

With stadium seats priced higher than a HD television and television contract revenue exceeding the price of government automobile bailouts, why should I be stuck with the eyesore of Miami Dolphins wearing Landshark Lager ads on their helmets? Is there no pride anymore? Wait, nevermind. I'm pretty sure I'm not ready for the answer.

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For the first time in 2 years (more or less), I missed a day blogging yesterday. And I don't really have a good excuse.

I woke up and immediately found myself on an unexpected trip to Fry's Electronics to purchase a new television. Fry's , like the cosmos itself, is way too big to wrap your head around. I swear that place is bigger than the Hartsfield airport hangers. People just wander around lost in a sea of unending electronic goodies. Truly, it's the American Dream at it's finest/worst (depending on your point of view).

Finally finding the television we wanted (after consulting an aging roadmap, wandering for hours, and and finally gathering directions some friendly Bedouins), we left Fry's only to end up on an unplanned trip to my father's house. "If you're so close, you could at least drop by and visit your lonely old man," I think is a direct quote. Next thing I know, I'm helping dad with his livestock. Whoopee.

Four hours later, we returned home, only to be summoned to my mother's aid. Like my father, she was lonely. However, she didn't request our company, she demanded it, which was probably wise on her part. Mom came over and had dinner with us, and shortly thereafter fell asleep on my bed, right next to my computer. I certainly couldn't compose a blog entry with my mother sleeping, see? (I might be heartless, but I'm not cruel.)

So I was forced to spend the next several hours playing Half-Life 2 on our new HD TV before passing out on the sofa. I didn't mean to not post anything here, but you can see that events conspired against me. Please forgive me, I'll try harder next time.

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My computer's hard drive is failing. It's 7 years old and holds a maximum of 75 GB of information. When I bought it, 75 GB was a lot of space. Now, not so much. I suspect that Hello Kitty toy laptops for little girls are more powerful than my aging PC.

When I put it together, it was pretty good. Not top of the line, but ahead of the curve, and that was good enough for me. However, the world is beginning to pass my computer by. Once the dashing Tron, my computer now more closely resembles the aged Dumont. It sleeps in, wakes up when it's good and ready, and ambles around, scratching it's ass and grumbling until it feels sufficiently aware enough to get down to business. (Computer and I have that bit in common.)

Now my computer is showing the signs of early onset Alzheimer's. It randomly forgets things, unexpectedly ignores me, makes funny noises at the oddest moments, and absentmindedly stops working on a whim. I need to start saving up the money for the inevitable end; I don't care what the President says, socialized health care simply won't help combat old age.

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It was 40 years ago today that man first landed on the moon. Now the generation that supported that amazing scientific achievement is more concerned with universal health care than they are with exploring the universe.

I suspect that I will not see a man on the moon in my lifetime. Even though it was essentially accomplished in a decade the first time around, it took a drive that seems to be completely lacking in the post-Cold War era. Say what you will about competition, but it gets things done. (Yes, I'm talking to you, socialists!)

I suppose I'll have to content myself with cheering for machines that are designed to do a man's job, such as the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, each of which continues to do a stellar job of investigating an alien environment over 5 years after their original mission was scheduled to end. Certainly no human would be willing to do that.

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Despite the study having been published months ago in Social Science Quarterly, it has just been brought to my attention that my name marks me as someone "more likely to engage in criminal activity" than the average boy. At least if I were a juvenile native to Pennsylvania, where the study was conducted by Shippensburg University faculty.

What this means is that the ratio between the number of juveniles in the state who share my name and the number of those juveniles who are officially considered "delinquents" is abnormally high. The study's conclusion is not that certain names make for inherently bad people, but that families predisposed to certain socioeconomic conditions are more likely to name their children certain names. In other words, I'm not bad, my family is.

Throw in the fact that the maternal half of my family which is partial to the name "Walter" is also fond of "Alec," another of the study's 10 worst names, and you can begin to get a sense of where my family may be headed. My mother's sister recently nicknamed a dog "Luke," yet another of the 10 worst names, but I'm not sure that this really counts because it's a nickname for "Lucifer," which definitely was not on the list.

For the record, the names are Alec, Ernest, Garland, Ivan (my favorite: I always knew Ivan was trouble),  Kareem, Luke, Malcolm,  Preston, Tyrell and Walter. That's alphabetical order, not most troublesome.

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After yet another long day behind a keyboard, coding to solve an apparently insolvable problem for an apparently endless contract that will never, ever pay me back what I've put into it (around the house, we call this project "Tar Baby"), I was at the end of my rope. I had passed through frustrated to embittered, and was now firmly entrenched in seething hatred. As the darkness wrapped my soul in a smothering blanket of searing fury, I contemplated doing something rash, something terrible. I was finally ready to turn to a life of remorseless super-villainy!

The world would fear my name as it trembled under my iron fist! I would crush my opposition and take what rightfully belonged to me! The huddled masses would cower before my very name!

In a rage, I flung myself up from my disconsolate sulking and reached for something tasty to fuel the sour flame roiling deep in my belly. Seizing at some leftover chinese food, I snapped open a fortune cookie, savagely crunching into the stale, cement-textured dough, and forcing myself to choke down the desiccated, partially masticated bolus. Only once I was half-way through the masochistic exercise of eating this "cookie" did I glance at the small worm-like paper that had fallen to the counter. It read:

So the next time you are wondering why someone did something completely insane like climbing the outside of a skyscraper with no safety wires, wrestling naked with a dozen starving pit bulls, initializing a new round of ethnic cleansing, or running for public office, just remember: a fortune cookie probably told them to do it.

Meanwhile, realizing that a unusually Emersonian fortune cookie was actually encouraging me to devote my remaining life to hurting other people as revenge against intransigent css and insolvent destitution, I shelved my plans for world domination.

For now.

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What's the best way to beat the heat on a hot summer day? If you said read The Adventures of Kool-Aid Man™ comic book, you're right!

Archie comics published a half dozen issues of this thing back in the 80s, and boy, is it a product of it's time. I count 2 "rad"s,3 "awesome"s, and13 "wacky"s, the 1980s equivalent of the 1990s "extreme."

"Oh Yeah!" is said 12 times, all by Kool-Aid Man, making Kool-Aid Man the comic book equivalent of J.J. Evans or Arnold Drummond.

And this is a typical Archie style comic book: light reading about a bunch of kids and an oversized animate pitcher of sugar water who just want to have fun. Standing in their way is a slit glasses-wearing living flame named Scorch, who like all anthropomorphized flames, just wants to ruin everybody's good time, but not in a way that really causes anyone lasting pain or anguish. (He's an imp, not a terrorist. The only American who cared about terrorists in the 1980s was Chuck Norris, who spent hundreds of hours at the theater keeping america's shores safe in such classics as Lone Wolf McQuade, Delta Force, and my personal favorite, Invasion, U.S.A.) The book is even drawn by Dan Decarlo, THE Archie artist.

My only gripe is the manner in which it attempts to promote the (at the time) latest Kool-Aid flavor, Berry Blue. Knowing that there wasn't any real relationship between fruit and their licensed product of water-additive, the manufacturers instead decided to have Kool-Aid Man work a little "blue." Reading "The Wacky And Wild Dance Party" in this issue, it doesn't seem like the marketing department really gave their plan enough thought:

Wait, what did she just say? Is it just me, or doesn't that sound like slang for something that does NOT need to be in an Archie comic book, which is ostensibly , you know, for kids?

Nope, it's not just me. Of course they're out of step, Beth, you've led Kool-Aid Man into the Blue Ball Room! (That's not cool or refreshing, Kool-Aid Man!) With dialogue like "I can't meet the beat," someone else had to be in on this joke as well. If you ask me, I think this story gives a new and terrible meaning to the phrase "drinking the Kool-Aid."

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Back on March 26, I was willing to give Burger King the benefit of the doubt for using the porn slang term "Burger Shots" to market their new mini-hamburgers. But now loyal reader and good friend of the blog Ken Harrison points out something that's obliterates my good faith presumptions by being a bit too obvious to misunderstand:

While I'm sure that the King is very proud to have a Super Seven Incher (as he should be: the average American male's "sandwich" is more aptly named an Average Five-And-A-Half Incher), I'm not so sure that this is the best way to sell a sandwich. Or anything else. Assuming half of the population wants to put something like that in their mouth, it's a pretty safe bet that the other half will go out of their way to avoid it. So right off the bat, Burger King is cutting its potential advertising audience in half unless they are hanging these promotions up in prisons.

On the plus side, as far as names go, that's waaay better than The King's Weiner.

Seriously, Burger King, you're starting to freak me out. When I think of sex, I don't want to think of flame-broiled meat. I don't think that coitus should have the lingering musty smell of old Whopper. And I don't think I want to put your meat anywhere near my mouth. Keep this up, and I just might have to become a vegetarian so that your stiff french fires and sultry milk shakes won't be molesting me in my dreams. (If only cucumbers didn't look so much like large penises. <shudder>)

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