Goodbye, Kitty
A year ago to the day, we had Sammy poisoned to death as an act of mercy. I love you, Sam.

Samuel Bubbles Sink Cat Wilson
August 1986 - March 31, 2005

Please do not leave any comments.

A pride of lions.
A crash of rhinoceroses.
A skulk of foxes.
A pack of wolves.
A murder of crows.
A gaggle of geese.
A school of fish.
A pod of whales.

A narpod of narwhals?

O Israel
If the present exit polls are correct, Likud will be replaced as the largest right-wing opposition party by Yisrael Beitenu... a somewhat crazier party dominated by people born, like me, in Soviet Russia. Obviously, Ariel Sharon's creation last year of the Kadima Party as a center-right party took away much of the reason behind Likud's existence, but still, I'm surprised. (Of course, I say that as a Gentile outsider who views Israeli politics as cacophonous and bellicose absurdity.) If I had to explain Likud's pathetic performance in one word it would be Bibi. Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu was prime minister in the late '90s, succeeding Shimon Peres who had taken over for the assassinated Itzhak Rabin, may he rest in peace. Bibi's a loon, and Likud was crazy to contest a general election with him as their standard-bearer.

Let us hope that Ehud Olmert is worthy of the faith Ariel Sharon, a complicated man who is both rightly loved and rightly detested, had in him.

Peril
My mom and dad are looking to buy a new car to replace my mom's '95 Lumina. This afternoon (Monday), the Goldbricker told me that he's probably not going to trade-in the Lumina as previously discussed, but will instead get rid of the Mousemobile and let me drive the fucking Lumina. Mom has wanted to get rid of the Mousemobile for years; so, talking to her was useless. I'm not sure I've ever been more lonely than I am tonight.

For years, my dad has spoken of the first car he ever owned, a '63 Super-Chevy that started its life as a police cruiser. How can he have spoken wistfully of Super-Chevy for all these years and then sell/scrap the Mousemobile for purely pragmatic reasons? Bog, where in the hell am I going to get the money to buy the Mousemobile from him? I have to try. I'd never be able to live with myself if I didn't at least try. I can't afford a car. Oh, God, they're going to get rid of the Mousemobile.

What does it say about me as a person that I didn't cry when Grandma Wilson died two years ago, but I'm bawling now? All the monstrous things my father has said in his life that I'll either forgive or forget, but I'll never be able to forgive him for this.

Club That Seal!
Homo sapiens sapiens is the most devastating predator the earth has ever seen. Our habitat covers a more diverse range of conditions than that of any other species. We have no claws, only laughable teeth, and are, pound for pound, one of the weakest members of the class Mammalia; yet, so deadly are we as a group that we must legislatively restrict our hunting activities lest we easily drive to extinction any species we wish (witness international prohibitions against whaling and national prohibitions against killing wolves). It is a testament to our lethality, and potentially to our ruthlessness, that we are the only surviving example of the genus Homo. By contrast, there are hundreds of species of sharks (organized across eight different orders), three extant species of elephants (and many more extinct species), and even two different species of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes and Pan paniscus). I say the following in the biological sense, not as any kind of political imperative: we are conquerors, born and bred. Killing is a central tenet of what it means to be human. And so, the time has once again come for one of my favorite annual events: Hyperlink! Club that seal!

The Magic of Shazam!
I am considering titling the Scion of Shazam's attempt to establish an empire in Central Asia neither "The Great Khan" nor "The Wrath of Khan," but "The Golden Horde." Historically, the Golden Horde was the name of the Tartar state (quasi-Mongolian) that ruled large swaths of European Russia and Central Asia for a few centuries following the Mongol conquests of the 13th century.. Now, the Golden Horde's dominion was substantially weakened by Tamerlane's depredations, among others; so, "The Golden Horde" doesn't really make sense as a title in that the Scion's name is Xia Timur, after Tamerlane, a dread foe of the real Golden Horde. On the other hand, an argument could be made that in a work of fiction historical accuracy is less important than producing a work that is both true to the creator's vision and entertaining to the audience. On the gripping hand, I would never make that argument, believing historical truth to be nearly sacred. And yet, I am still tempted by "The Golden Horde."

Quite the conundrum... surrounding the title of a fictional story in a comic book that is completely theoretical.

The Greatest Hyperlink in the World
My sincerest thanks to The Watergirl. In Soviet Russia... Here in America, bag buys me!

Superman/Action Comics
Should I ever have the opportunity to write Superman, currently supporting two monthly solo books, Action Comics and Superman*, I will of course make a mockery of the priceless opportunity by using only titles featuring words with the prefix "super-." Current ideas:

"Superstar" - Starro the Conqueror is spreading his mind-controlling drones through the crowds at large events. I haven't yet figured out if the events will be the huge arena concerts of some pop idol or the giant self-help seminars of a Dr. Phil stand-in. I know Starro is a villain of the Justice League of America, not specifically Superman, but I love the very idea of a giant starfish being an interstellar despot so much that I'll use it anytime I can. If I'm not allowed to use Starro, I'll just make the pop singer/Dr. Phil guru the brainwashing villain instead of just another dupe.

"Superconductor" - I love that Livewire, a villain from Superman: The Animated Series, has been introduced into the DC Universe, but I found her appearance in a recent issue of Action Comics disappointing. As a sidenote, John Byrne doesn't draw as good a Superman as he used to; his art on 1986's The Man of Steel and the subsequent launch of the new Superman series was vastly superior to his recent work on Action, including the lackluster Livewire issue. Anyway, electrically powered villains abound; so, Livewire might even recruit some superpowered henchmen. Hmmm, maybe a new Revenge Squad...?

"Superficial" - Either Superman versus Bizarro, a flawed clone of the Man of Steel, or Superman versus Ultraman, his evil twin from the antimatter universe. Lots of fighting, and an exploration of the much more than superficial differences between Clark Kent and the many pretenders to his throne.

"Superego" - A journey into the psyche of the Last Son of Krypton (not so "last" anymore since the reintroduction of Supergirl, but whatever) courtesy of an evil, probably alien, psychoanalyst named either The Alienist or Egotripper. Probably The Alienist.

"Supertown" - The story to accompany this title would have to depend on the oft-changed status of New Genesis and the whole Fourth World gang at the time it was written, but I like the idea of establishing a new Supertown hovering above India. I realize "India," isn't a very specific location, but to my mind the New Gods would fit in harmoniously with the polytheism enshrined in Hinduism and the ethnic, economic, religious, and social diversity of the Subcontinent.

"Superstition" - Superman hates magic; so, I just need to decide which magical villain I would most like to use. Also in the same vein: "Supernatural."

"Supercilious" - As I've sought out/thought up villains to augment Superman's great-but-not-numerous-enough rogues gallery, my favorite creation is Phantom Tom. Tom Cardy is a fucking bastard, a plagarizing, fabricating reporter for the Daily Star (if the Daily Planet is The New York Times, the Daily Star is the New York Post) and a batterer of women. Asshole. While Cardy and Clark Kent are covering an experiment at S.T.A.R. Labs for their respective newspapers, an accident obliterates Tom's body. Being comics, Tom doesn't actually die, instead waking up in the Phantom Zone. Thing is, he's not just in the Phantom Zone, he kind of is the Phantom Zone. He doesn't have a body, but he can appear in our world and communicate with the people therein and can also access all the detritus that has been dumped in the Zone over the years, as well as the individuals imprisoned there.

Tom Cardy was a genuinely bad guy to begin with; so, my hope is that Phantom Tom will outlast my particular tenure as a Superman writer and go on to be a recurring menace. The Phantom Zone was first discovered by Jor-El, Superman's genetic father, and a lot of Kryptonian jetsam and affiliated flotsam has been ditched in the Zone. Tom develops a pretty serious hatred for all things Kryptonian, namely Superman, Superboy, Supergirl, the Eradicator, and Krypto the Superdog. Eventually, he forms an organization called Black Zero, dedicated to the extermination of all things Krypton, starting with the Supers but extending to all the known pieces of Kryptonite, including the newly-created Kryptonite Man. (A Kryptonian terrorist group named Black Zero was responsible for the planet's destruction; so, Phantom Tom describes his Black Zero's activities as merely finishing the job they started.)

Anyway, before I fixated on the super- prefixes, I was going to call Phantom Tom's grand assault "Krypton Must Die," but "Supercilious" comes pretty close to how Tom the wife-beater regarded goody-goody Clark Kent even before Tom knew he was Superman.

Other possibilities include "Superfluous," "Superimpose," "Supercollider," "Supernova," "Superlative," "Supervision" (not to be confused with Superman's power of telescopic and microscopic "super-vision") and, if I get desperate, "Superb" and "Superior." Oh, and "Supercycle," another tale of Superman and the New Gods, presumably the Supercycle-riding Forever People.

*Originally titled Superman, the book was retitled The Adventures of Superman (starting with No. 424) after Crisis on Infinite Earths and a new Superman was launched with issue No. 1. In the aftermath of Infinite Crisis, the interregnum Superman has been cancelled (last issue No. 226) and Adventures has returned to its original title, Superman (No. 650).

1996
Action Comics
The Adventures of Superman
Superman
Superman: The Man of Steel
Superman: The Man of Tomorrow

2006
Action Comics
Superman

Missed
I missed opining on the third anniversary of the Anglo-Australian-American invasion of Iraq. Saddam Hussein's rule was monstrous. The stable, pluralistic democracy Iraq is on the road to becoming will be the best answer to both Iran's Shia radicalism and Saudi Arabia's Sunni jihadism. If you were against the war from the start, I disagree with you, but such are the joys of a free society; if you supported the war at first but soured as soon as the first IEDs were detonated, I suggest you a) grow a backbone and b) stop reading this blog now, you waffling piece of shit.

I missed opining on the first day of spring. I'm actually glad spring has sprung, because the recently concluded winter was a disgrace to the very word. Worst. Winter. Ever. Good riddance.

I missed opining on the 250th anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's birth... back in late Janurary. The Marriage of Figaro is offensively moronic, but the music is sensational. Don Giovanni is growing on me. The kid was good.

I missed opining on the 300th anniversary of Benjamin Franklin's birthday around the same time. He invented the public library, for crying out loud, a solid for the whole human race.

Accuracy and Precision
Here, then, is the proper quotation of a line I recently paraphrased from Jhonen Vasquez's incomprable Invader ZIM:

Dib: "Your stupid plan won't work, ZIM. You'll never pull this off."
ZIM: "You speak craziness, Earth boy. More organs means more human. It wiiiill work."

St. Paddy's Day
Today is the feast day of Saint Patrick, venerated in Roman Catholicism as the Patron Saint of Ireland (the whole island, not just Eire a.k.a. the Republic of Ireland and not just Northern Ireland, the whole kit'n'kaboodle). Can someone please explain to me what dyed-green Budsweiser and cheap plastic hats have to do with an Irish nationalistic/religious festival? By Lucifer's beard, I hate St. Patrick's Day!... as it is celebrated in America.

If you wore green today, you can go to hell. And I say this knowing full well that my sweet mother, whose heritage is 50% Irish, wore a green sweater today. I love my mother dearly, but in so many very ways I will never understand her or the way she thinks.

The Magic of Shazam!
During the year-long story of "The Red and the Black," "The Revenge of Theo Adam," and "From Here to the Rock of Eternity," I will be introducing a character named Xia Timur. A direct descendant of an ancient coupling between the Wizard Shazam (long before he took that name) and a sorceress named Xia Wei, Timur will style himself as the Scion of Shazam, the rightful heir to the Wizard's power. First, he tries to destroy Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel, and Kid Marvel, and evict the Wizard from the Rock of Eternity, obviously meeting with defeat (Billy, Mary, and Freddy are the stars, after all). Later, the Scion returns to the secluded monastery where he was raised and sets out to create an "empire of justice" in Central Asia, based around the city of Samarkand, capital of the medieval quasi-Mongolian Timuric Empire and home to Tamerlane's tomb (Tamerlane a.k.a. Timur the Lame). My dilemma is this: both "Tamerlane" and "The Great Khan" are good names for the story, but a part of me really really wants to call it "The Wrath of Khan."

The Never-Ending Scopes Monkey Trial
The President* of China, Hu Jintao, has promulgated a list of eight virtues he would like all Chinese to incorporate into the conduct of their lives. Among them is "Uphold science; don't be ignorant and unenlightened." We should mass-produce large bronze plaques emblazened with that motto and hang them next to every copy of the Ten Commandments displayed in any school, courthouse, and public building.

*I am uncomfortable with the application of the title of president to non-democratically elected leaders. The President of Germany's job is purely ceremonial, but it is still an elective office. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, is an anti-Semitic asshole of the highest order, but he's a more or less democratically elected antim-Semitic asshole. No one outside of the Chinese Communist Party** voted for Hu Jintao; so, I am irked that he is described as the President of China.

**China is no longer an economically Communist state, but no one should doubt the absolute power of the CCP over the Middle Kingdom.

Today is the Ides of March. 2,050 years ago Gaius Julius Caesar, dictator-for-life of Rome, was assassinated on the floor of the Senate by men claiming to represent Rome's anti-monarchical instincts. Say what you will about Caesar's life, two thousand fifty years after your death, will people remember the day on which you died? That, my friends, is immortality.

Vote For Kodos
Hyperlink! It is bitterly ironic that after being denounced as a unilateralist monster throughout his entire first term, President Bush is now one of the few voices in American politics speaking out against the rising tide of xenophobia in our great republic.

Death Spiral of the Blogosphere
The internet is a stupid, stupid place. People talk about the democratic nature of the internet compared to "old media" outlets like the newspapers and book publishers, but they fail to mention that it's the bad kind of democracy. Not the enlightening mass Socratic dialogue of our idyllic daydreams, but the inane prattling of the mob. The internet embodies the democracy of the lowest common denominator. For instance, I posted that for the first time in my life I was ashamed of being an American and was greeted by the silence of a tomb. I opined about the etymology of the word "burrito" and people just couldn't wait to chime in. Don't get me wrong, I like talking about etymology more than anyone else I know and I'm a fan of almost any excuse to mention burritos. Still, I felt compelled to take a moment to reflect upon the fact that no matter how technologically sophisticated our devices become, we're still just drooling, hairless apes.

And yes, when They Might Be Giants divided the crowd into "Humans" and "Apes" for their musical ruminations on The Planet of the Apes, I was one of the Apes. "Apes! Apes! Apes! Apes! Apes! Apes! Apes! Apes!"

Putting the Angry in The Last Angry Man
You know what? Fuck Bryan Singer. I hope that piece of shit chokes to death on a really delicious burrito. Superman Returns is going to suck hind tit.

Also, what the fuck is with the word burrito? The Spanish word for "dog" is "perro," meaning "perrito" is the word for a puppy or little dog. "Burro" is the word for "donkey." So, does "burrito" mean little donkey? Were the earliest burritos made from jackass?

If I ever get a chance to write the Justice League of America, I know I'd want to pit the world's greatest superheroes against everyone's favorite starfish-shaped interstellar despot from beyond the Moon, Starro the Conqueror. And now I ever have a neato mosquito title for such an adventure, "All-Starro Comics." It's so horrible that I have no choice but to love it.

With The Newsletter finally back on schedule, I feel like a particularly obnoxious monkey has been persuaded to vacate my back. Since being freed from this monkey, I've been on an unexpected tear. I thought I'd enjoy taking a week off, not thinking about The Newsletter nor doing any writing, but instead in the last two days I have written three "Less Artsy, More Fartsy" submissions, a "Hollywoodland" film review, an "Autobahn" automotive tale, and an "I Ate the Whole Thing" eatery review. Woot, I guess.

Slobodan Milosevic, the Butcher of Belgrade, is dead. It's a good day for the human race. Now, if only we can find Karadzic and Mladic; I'd hate for those two monsters to die as free men.

Vote For Kodos
This week on This American Life... so what if the Geneva Conventions stipulate that in order to be categorized as prisoners of war combatants have to be uniformed soldiers in a state-sponsored army with a definite command structure, the Bush Administration was wrong not to extend Gevena protections to al Qaeda operatives and Taliban troops, despite their lack of uniforms, their stateless allegiance, and the amorphous nature of their command structure.

I hate it when Ira Glass stoops to Bill O'Reilly's level, distorting the truth to serve his own agenda. I expect that from O'Reilly and his ilk, they're villains and snake oil salesmen. But Glass? I don't think I'm wrong for expecting more from him.

Dubai Ports World
I have been ashamed of my country before, most notably I was ashamed of our inaction in the face of ongoing genocide in Rwanda and Darfur, but today is the first time I've ever been ashamed of being an American. I just want to cry.

"You'll never get away with this, ZIM!"
"More organs means more human. It wiiiill work."

The English language is a fickle mistress. Remember, Samaria and Sumeria were entirely separate places and Thebes (Egypt) and Thebes (Greece) had nothing in particular to do with each other, but Nanking and Nanjing are two different names for the same town (ditto with Peking and Beijing).

Fun fact: people from Sumeria were Sumerians, but people from Samaria were Samaritans, not Samarians. Fickle.

L.A. Story: The Sequel
Life is more fun with a fake Russian accent. Go ahead, try it out. Also, for extra bonus fun, trying randomly transposing letters in words; thus, the staid Sylvester Stallone become the always festive "Slyvester Stallone." And it drives the Mountain of Love nuts; he fucking hates it, which is always hilarious.

Do you believe in antidisestablishmentarianism? As a "papist" (the word used in the applicable laws), I am barred from sitting on the British throne. If the disestablishmentarians had succeeded and the Queen had given up her power as the head of the Church of England, Catholics would no longer be discriminated against as a matter of British law. Odd, isn't it, that there has been so much talk about Blair's legislation outlawing "the incitment of religous hatred," yet the British still celebrate Guy Fawkes Day and we papists are still barred from the throne. Do you believe in antidisestablishmentarian? I don't.

Lenten Shenanigans
So far, I'm having just an awful, terrible Lent. My sense of timing was distorted by my sojourn in southern California; as a result, on Friday I ate a delicious ham and cheese sandwich. Only hours later did I realize I'd eaten meat on a Lenten Friday! Curses! My Lenten sacrifice (no eating outside of meals) failed abyssmally as I spent all of yesterday on my arse either reading for pleasure (The New Teen Titans: The Terror of Trigon) or watching TV (MythBusters and Law & Order, both SVU and CI). Last but certainly not least, I'm bloggy blogging instead of attending noon Mass; both Mom and I felt like skipping today.

The Christ spent forty days in the desert before Pilate nailed Him to the cross, but I can't keep my greasy mitts out of the Goldfish box? My favorite part of the song "Amazing Grace" has always been the words, "a wretch like me."

The Iron Curtain's 60th Anniversary
Churchill! I am a great admirer of the late Sir Winston Churchill and his ability to see the inevitability of Hitler's aggression and Stalin's repression when most of his contemporaries were convinced those two monsters could be easily intimidated.

That said, Churchill was a man and like all men prone to making mistakes; for those of you who know your history of the Great War (or have seen the movie starring a young Mel Gibson), Churchill was the chief proponent of the disastous Gallipoli campaign. The debacle cost him his post as First Lord of the Admiralty. The Goldbricker has tried to sway me to his bigoted view of Islam by quoting some remarks of Churchill's that betray a less than flattering view of "Mohammedanism." As a counterpoint, I have mentioned that though I admire Churchill, he was in favor of keeping hundreds of millions of Indians under Bitain's imperium without giving them a single vote in Whitehall. I am something of an Anglophile, and I appreciate the grandeur of Rudyard Kipling's poetry, but the British Raj was morally indefensible.

History proved Churchill right about both Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. Likewise, it has proved him wrong about the Raj specifically and the British Empire in general. Perhaps he was wrong about the "nature" of Islam and Muslims. On this sixtieth anniversary of the "Iron Curtain" speech, let us remember that Winston Churchill was a great man, one of the greatest men of all time, but not a perfect man.

L.A. Story: The Sequel
With five Blue Tree Whackers gathered at BTWest, a truly great time was had by all. That said, when the Mountain of Love and I stepped out into the bitter cold of last night, fresh off the aeroplane from Los Angeles via Denver, I was so moved by the chill I declared, "God, it's good to be home." The Mousemobile was completely covered in a thin but nigh-inpenetrable coat of ice from an ice storm on Wednesday night. We had one day of rain out in California, but otherwise it was all blue skies and sunshine. Horrible, horrible sunshine. There's a chance of snow on Monday, and highs are going to be inthe mid-30s. It's good to be home.

Everytime I begin to forget just what a great band The Mighty Mighty Bosstones were, all I have to do is listen to Live From the Middle East.

"In his favorite pub, in his favorite seat,
I saw the Devil, wingtip shoes on his feat,
Porkpie hat on his head, he was digging the beat,
And the band ripped like demons when he said
'Turn up the heat!'"
--The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, "Devil's Night Out" from Devil's Night Out

Of Death and Dying
I have a lingering fondness for the codename The Suicider, even though I know it's not very cool. Thus, the new two finalists for the creepy suicide murderer are Hemlock and The Suicide King. At present, I'm leaning toward The Suicide King, though care must be taken to avoid comparions to goofball villains like the Clock King and the playing card-themed Royal Flush Gang.

And now to devote some thought to another enemy more suited to The Question than to Captain Marvel, Propaganda, a Marxist (not to be confused with Marxist-Leninist), anti-globalization terrorist/supervillain.

Happy Birthday
Oh, and because I'm a terrible friend, happy birthday to Daddy Dylweed, who celebrated his birthday on Thursday, February 16. Happy birthday, buddy!

Justice League International
Maxwell Lord, Proprietor

Justice League America
Martian Manhunter - field leader
Green Lantern (Guy Gardner)
Blue Beetle
Booster Gold
Fire
Ice
Mr. Miracle
Batman (part-time member)
Black Canary (quit early)
Captain Marvel (quit early)
Dr. Fate (quit early)
Dr. Light (quit early)
* * *
Oberon
L-Ron

Justice League Europe
Captain Atom - field leader
The Flash
Elongated Man
Power Girl
Metamorpho
Rocket Red
Crimson Fox
Animal Man (quit early)
* * *
Sue Dibny
Catherine Cobert

Justice League Antarctica
Major Disaster - field leader
Clock King
Cluemaster
Multi-Man
Big Sir
Green Lantern (G'Nort)
Scarlet Skier
The Mighty Bruce

Opinion Poll!
Garfield Logan is a superhero with the power to shapeshift into any kind of animal (excluding humans; to my knowledge, he can't shapeshift to look like a girl or a basketball player). Gar has been a member of both the original Doom Patrol and several incarnations of the Teen Titans. (You may have seen him as one of the mains on Cartoon Network's Teen Titans.) He has green skin and hair in both his human and animal forms. Where does the mass go when he changes his volume from that of a rhinocerus to that of a hummingbird? No one knows. (Aren't comics great?) In his career of derring-do, Gar has been known by two different codenames. Which of them is goofier and which of them is, even if goofier, better: Beast Boy or Changeling?

Goldbrickin' in '06
He's at it again. In the name of all that's dark and profane, why won't he just admit that he's lazy and wants to take a few days off work? He's worked for AC/Delphi for over thirty years and has earned the right to his five weeks of paid vacation per annum. It's fine to take a day off work just for the hell of it! Why pretend that you're sick when you're clearly as healthy as ever? I can't believe my beloved brother and magnificent sister were sired by that wretch.

Be My Anti-Valentine
The title is borrowed from a news article I read this morning about the relatively booming traffic in anti-Valentine's Day merchandise directed at single folk. The celebration of the feast day of Saint Valentine as a celebration of corporately-sponsored love strieks me as being as vapid as ever, but on this day of scorn let us not forget that love in indeed a many splendored thing. I hope that each of you finds your one true love sooner rather than later.

And for those of you who, like me, are lifetime members of Team Bachelor, hey, fuck love. Love can't hold a candle to a frozen pizza, a cold can of Dr Pepper, and back-to-back episodes of MythBusters.

I saw Brokeback Mountain this weekend and I have to say the guiltless marital infidelity really bothered me. I understand the society of fear Ennis and Jack lived in, but if you are going to be unfaithful to your wife, even if she is just a smokescreen, at least be man enough to get a divorce first.

Of Death and Dying
There have been at least two Law & Order episodes, one each of Special Victims Unit and Criminal Intent, about suicide advice/discussion websites and murders associated with the sites in question. Additionally, I am a fan of Robert Louis Stevenson's multi-chaptered short story "The Suicide Club" (so-called short story, since it is as long as the novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). Inspired by these sources, I'm developing a villain, a murderer who prowls the suicide subculture looking for suicidal individuals on the verge of committing the act and killing them before they can go through with it. His justification is probably rooted in Catholicism, proceeding from the assumption that he is saving the souls of his victims by murdering them before they can commit the mortal sin of suicide. I'm thinking of him as an enemy of The Question, whom I desperately want to return to his Objectivist beginnings, but really my suicide murderer could be tailored to suit any mystery man.

Anyway, I've made up a whole list of names and I was wondering which of them best strikes the fancy of you, the loyal audience. I've narrowed it down to two, though I would have happy to entertain any suggestions left in the comment box:

Hemlock the Confessor
The Suicider

The Rock Show
It doesn't matter if you are a ska fan or not (though if you aren't, what is wrong with you?), go see Less Than Jake in concert. They are the most relentless band in rock 'n' roll, interrupting the perpetual tour otherwise known as their lives only long enough to record new, incredibly awesome albums. You've never felt anything like the energy at an LTJ show; it is palpable as soon as they take the stage. I have attended scores of rock shows in my life, but I have never seen aany other crowd erupt like last night's did when they started playing "Jen Doesn't Like Me Anymore." Astounding, amazing, awe inspiring, all are apt adjectives.

Less Than Jake: coming relatively soon to a venue near you. It's just a matter of time. Go to the show.

Sooper Bowl XL
Having seen their slipshod play last night, it is hard to believe that the Pittsburgh Steelers are the best team in the NFL, but hey, to the victor go the spoils. And who doesn't love Bill Cowher's glower power?

Hail to the Losers
Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, Terry Malone won't be Michigan's offensive offensive coordinator next season. Woot! Admittedly, he was hired away by the New Orleans Saints of San Antonio, not summarily fired by Coach Carr as he should have been, but of paramount importance is Malone's departure. Great day in the morning, that's fan-fucking-tastic! Homer Simpson's oft-lauded co-worker, the inanimate carbon rod, would have been a better offensive coordinator than Malone was. Wow, he was bad. Now, all is not yet well and we're still saddled with Henne at quarterback, but we found a way to win with Navarre as QB; so, overcoming the Henne handicap should be comparatively easy. It's far too early to predict next season's win-loss record, but already things are looking up. Go Blue!

With the Super-duper Bowl now past, there is no more football until September. I'd say that now is the winter of our discontent, except that if you actually read Richard III, Shakespeare intended the phrase to be intensely positive. If now is the winter of our discontent, spring must be just around the corner; when Richard speaks of the winter, he means England's fortune are on the cusp of substantial improvement. Still, seven months until the return of football... oy. Thank Bog we have the NHL this year.

Opinion Poll!
Which is the goofer superhero/supervillain codename: Marvel's U.S.Agent (a hero) or DC's K.G.Beast (a villain)? Comment, true believers, I'm genuinely curious.

The Magic of Shazam!
An argument can be made that a hero is defined by the villainy he thwarts. Below is a list of villains I hope to use in The Magic of Shazam! The first catagory are those villains created by others and presently galavanting about the DC Universe making mischief; the second is composed of foes used in the Golden Age Fawcett Comics adventures of the Marvel Family whom I intend to modify/modernize and introduce into the DCU; the third group are T.L.A.M. originals. My only hope for this last group is that they don't suck.

Existing Evil
Dr. Thaddeus Sivana
Black Adam (Teth-Adam/Theo Adam)
Mr. Mind
Captain Nazi (Katrina Krueger; previously: Madame Libertine)
Mr. Atom
Ibac ("Stinky" Printwhistle)
Arson Fiend (George Tweedle)
Chain Lightning (Amy, surname unknown)
Binary (Patty and Patty, surnames unknown; previously: Patty-Patty-Bang-Bang)
Vandal Savage (Vandar Adg)
Sabbac (Ishmael Gregor)*

Waiting in the Wings
Ivan Derook
Crocodile Mob (Herkimer, Sylvester, Casimir, Balthezar, Jorrk, Conrad, Ambrose, & Theodore; previously: the Crocodile-Men)
The Ghoul (Grelf; previously: the Space Ghoul)
King Kull
The Mummy (some variation of Nefertiti; previously: The Mad Mummy [male])
Levram Niatpac
Samurai Spy (Tsutomu Hirota; previously: Nippo)
Dr. Phoul - ODESSA
Baron Blitzkrieg (name pending, not the original Baron Blitzkrieg) - ODESSA

My Malcontents
Xenophon (Costas Papadelias)
Red Oni (Junichiro Hirota)
Erlkonig (name pending)
The Perfect (Percival Pringle)
Scion of Shazam (Xia Timur)
The Aryan Racer (name pending) - ODESSA
Kriegmaschine - ODESSA
V.5 (name pending) - ODESSA
The Clockwork Gang (Fielding Field; Marshall Field; Penny Penney; "Monty" Ward; Trevor Roebuck [female]; Sears, given name pending)
The Dread Pirate (Petra, surname pending)
The May Queen (name pending)
Lightning Rod (Rodney Ampere)
The Maze (Daedalus Broadstreet)
Spring Heeled Jack (name pending)
Diamondhead (name pending)

The previously discussed codenames Hotspur, Asunder, Dandelion, and Vexillum, as well as newcomers Propaganda, Vox Populi, and The Trojan, are still in play, but aren't yet ready to be listed. Why list Diamondhead but not Asunder? I don't yet know Diamondhead's real name, but I have a good idea what he looks like, what his powers are, and the broad strokes of his origin/motivation; so, he's actually much farther along than Asunder, who right now is basically just a visually and aurally pleasing word.

I've got a couple ideas for independent enemies of Spy Smasher (Aleph and the Zealots, The Amalekite) and Mr. Scarlet (Green Mamba, the Red Death), but for no adequately explored reason I've elected to keep them off the list. Go figure.

*Sabbac is a current adversary of Captain Marvel Jr. (Kid Marvel in MOS!) and the Outsiders in Judd Winick's Outsiders. I am not a fan of Winick's work; so, I cannot imagine the circumstances in which I would ever choose to use one of his characters.

Lousy Smarch Weather
Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle, the world beyond my windows is blanketed in snowy goodness. I love being wrong about these things. Woot!

Idiocy and Islam
The current protests in the Muslim world are completely nonsensical and massively hypocritical. They would be funny were not the threat of violence so great.

{a} The Danish paper that ran the two offending political cartoons did so five months ago. If these images are so inherently disrespectful to the Prophet Mohammed, why did the protests and boycotts only begin this week?

{b} While not defending the cartoons, which are at best insensitive, much worse images run in Muslim newspapers, specifically in the Arab countries, every single day of the week. Cartoons portraying Jews as drinking the blood of Muslim children are a common sight in Arabic-language periodicals. You shouldn't dish it out if you can't take it.

{c} In a London protest of the images, one man held up a sign labelling Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the U.N., as an international terrorist. Was the sign-wielder not aware that Annan has denounced the Anglo-American-Australian invasion of Iraq as "illegal"? And even if not, what the hell does a Ghanan career diplomat have to do with editorial cartoons published in a Danish newspaper?

I feel so sorry for the rational, peaceful Muslim masses. As if it wasn't bad enough that the name of Islam has been hyjacked by genocidal murderers, now it has been hyjacked to serve the twin causes of idiocy and ignorance, as well. How did the once great Islamic civilization ever sink to this?

Superbowl XL and Lousy Smarch Weather
Detroit is supposed to be buried in five to eight inches of snow overnight and we here in Genesee County to the north are supposed to get our fair share, too. Yeah, we were supposed to get two to four inches last night, as well, yet when I woke up this morning the lawn was as green as an April morn. Snow? During the worst winter ever? I'll believe it when I see it. We haven't had a snowfall leading to accumulation since before Christmas. There are not words in the English language to accurately describe how disappointing this "winter" has been.

This winter has been the Matt Millen of the seasons: a huge stinking pile of bullshit.

Number 25 in a Series
Hellboy: Seed of Destruction No.1
Hellboy: Seed of Destruction No.2
Hellboy: Seed of Destruction No.3
Hellboy: Seed of Destruction No.4
Hellboy: The Wolves of Saint August
Hellboy: Wake the Devil No.1
Hellboy: Wake the Devil No.2
Hellboy: Wake the Devil No.3
Hellboy: Wake the Devil No.4
Hellboy: Wake the Devil No.5
Hellboy: The Corpse and the Iron Shoes
Hellboy: Almost Colossus No.1
Hellboy: Almost Colossus No.2
Hellboy: Box Full of Evil No.1
Hellboy: Box Full of Evil No.2
Hellboy: Conqueror Worm No.1
Hellboy: Conqueror Worm No.2
Hellboy: Conqueror Worm No.3
Hellboy: Conqueror Worm No.4
Hellboy: Conqueror Worm No.5
Hellboy: The Third Wish No.1
Hellboy: The Third Wish No.2
Hellboy: The Island No.1
Hellboy: The Island No.2
Hellboy: Makoma or, A Tale Told By a Mummy in the New York Explorers' Club on August 16, 1993 No.1 (of 2)

I have everything through the end of Conqueror Worm in trade paperback collections and the individual issues of The Island and Makoma. The individual issues of The Third Wish have thus far eluded my grasp; so, I think I'll just have to duplicate the material I already own from The Island when it and The Third Wish are collected in the soon-to-be published trade Hellboy: Strange Places. All of these issues were written and drawn by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, except Makoma, which features art by both Mignola and Richard Corben. The twenty-five issue numbering does not include the eight-issues anthology series Hellboy: Weird Tales (I have Nos.1-4 in trade form and the individual issues Nos.5-8), written and drawn exclusively by non-Mignolas.

Next up after the second issue of Makoma is a new six-issue miniseries Hellboy: Darkness Calls, written by Mignola with art by Duncan Fegredo.

Number 23 in a Series
B.P.R.D.: Hollow Earth No.1
B.P.R.D.: Hollow Earth No.2
B.P.R.D.: Hollow Earth No.3
B.P.R.D.: The Soul of Venice
B.P.R.D.: Dark Waters
B.P.R.D.: There's Something Under My Bed
B.P.R.D.: Night Train
B.P.R.D.: Plague of Frogs No.1
B.P.R.D.: Plague of Frogs No.2
B.P.R.D.: Plague of Frogs No.3
B.P.R.D.: Plague of Frogs No.4
B.P.R.D.: Plague of Frogs No.5
B.P.R.D.: The Dead No.1
B.P.R.D.: The Dead No.2
B.P.R.D.: The Dead No.3
B.P.R.D.: The Dead No.4
B.P.R.D.: The Dead No.5
B.P.R.D.: The Black Flame No.1
B.P.R.D.: The Black Flame No.2
B.P.R.D.: The Black Flame No.3
B.P.R.D.: The Black Flame No.4
B.P.R.D.: The Black Flame No.5
B.P.R.D.: The Black Flame No.6

All of the B.P.R.D. miniseries have been co-authored by Mignola, though he has done none of the interior art (he did the covers for both the issues of both Hollow Earth and The Black Flame). Interestingly, and unlike the Hellboy numbering's exclusion of Weird Tales, the one-shots are included in the B.P.R.D. numbering, even though Mignola neither wrote nor drew those issues. I have all the individual isses except for Hollow Earth and The Soul of Venice, both of which I have in trade form. Included along with Hollow Earth is the uncounted one-shot Abe Sapien: Drums of the Dead.

Plague of Frogs, The Dead, and the just-concluded The Black Flame are all chapters of the same massive story, soon to be continued in B.P.R.D.: The Universal Machine, by the usual suspects of co-writers Mike Mignola and John Arcudi and artist Guy Davis.

Consistency is All I Ask
In the interest of full disclosure, I must mention that I really fucking hate the Olympics. HATE. And not just because former IOC president Juan Antonio Samarach said the Olympic "movement" (whatever the hell that is) is, "bigger than the Catholic Church," though that asinine remark certainly didn't help. I like to see Americans win gold medals the same way I would like to see the Detroit Tigers win the World Series: I want both athletic contests fade into the the mists of history, but as long as they are around I like to see "my" guys do well. I hate the Olympic Games.

My beef here, though, is with the many, many advertisements I have been seeing for the upcoming XXth Winter Games in "Torino, Italy." Torino is the Italian word for an Italian town, rendered as Turin in English (as in, Shroud of). Italy is the English word for a country in Europe, rendered as Italia in Italian. Why use the Italian word for Turin and the English word for Italy? This is, in short, fucking bullshit. If you want to seem worldly by calling Turin "Torino," please feel free to do so. But don't betray yourself as a parochial hick the very next word by using "Italy" instead of Italia. Torino, Italia or Turin, Italy. Not Torino, Italy or Turin, Italia. Jumpin Jehosaphat!

As is repeated ad nauseum in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, consistency is all I ask.

Vote For Kodos: State o' the Union
My favorite quote from last night was, "hindsight is not wisdom and second-guessing is not a strategy." Hee hee hee. Also, the use of the word "defeatist." I like President Bush best when he's got that swagger in his step.

"And, of course, we ought to ask ourselves just what, without form or guidance enforced by some battle-ax of a teacher or authoritarian school board, are these little wretches going to pray for during moments of silence or voluntary prayer? Inline skates? An 'A' on an exam they haven't studied for? To score with the homecoming queen or football captain? That the school will burn down?"

Article III
Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr. (R, G.W. Bush)
Associate Justice John Paul Stevens (R, Ford)
Associate Justice Antonin Scalia* (R, Reagan)
Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy (R, Reagan)
Associate Justice David Souter (R, G. Bush)
Associate Justice Clarence Thomas (R, G. Bush)
Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg (D, Clinton)
Associate Justice Stephen Breyer (D, Clinton)
Associate Justice Samuel Alito (R, G.W. Bush)

Remind me to ask the "mainstream" senators from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Sen. Kennedy and Sen. Kerry, how the Alito filibuster is going.

*Contrary to published reports, Justice Scalia does, in fact, breathe fire.

From the World of Tennis
Despite my longstanding hostility towards the lousy, rotten Swiss, I've always had a little crush on Martina Hingis; so, I was pleased to see her back in action during the Australian Open.

O Canada
Hey, whatever you think of last week's elections in Canada and regardless of your opinion of the incoming Conservative minority government, there's no denying that Jean Chretien was a crook and Paul Martin was a douchebag. Also, notice that Stephen Harper is going to form a minorty government (Hyperlink!), one of the many perils of having more than two major political parties. Had the left been unified the Liberal Party's 103 seats and the New Democratic Party's 29 seats, for a grand total of 132, would have easily outnumbered the Conservative Party's 124 MPs. Bwa ha ha ha ha!

In a similar vein, Nader in '08!

My His Time Among the Vampires
I have done so in person already, but now I would like to do so publicly so as to potentially pressure some of you into emulating his actions: my congratulations to The Guy for demonstrating that he is an outstanding human being by donating blood to the American Red Cross. The Guy, you see, was for years terrified by the prospect of having a needle shoved into his arm, a needle that would then suck out his blood, the very juice of life. He wished to aid his fellow man, but was daunted by the needle. No more. Last week, The Guy cowboyed up and gave blood, possibly saving several lives as a result. Awesome.

Go be more like The Guy. Give blood.

Honolulu Blue Forever
I know very little about the new head coach of the Detroit Lions, Rod Marinelli, but I do know one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt: he is not the right man for the job. How can I say this if I barely know anything about him? Marinelli was hired by Matt Millen, ergo his tenure will be disastrous. I feel sorry for Mr. Marinelli and his family, but not as sorry as I feel for my fellow Lions fans who wish so desperately for a return to the glorious mediocrity of the Wayne Fontes years.

Simply put, Rod Marinelli is Matt Millen's man and Millen's five-year, 21-59 record proves his incompetence to run an NFL franchise. As long as the Fords own the team, but especially as long as Millen is drawing a salary, we are completely, utterly, and hopelessly doomed.

I hope there is a "Fire Millen" rally outside Ford Field on Super Bowl Sunday.

Hitler's Victory
Hyperlink. Of course the Europeans are going to keep funding the "Palestinian Authority" now that Hamas holds a majority of the parliamentary seats. Hamas is dedicated to killing Jews and the Europeans, well, they just aren't that fond of Jews themselves. Sometimes I wish the United States hadn't stood up to Stalin by conducting the Berlin Airlift. We should have let the Red Army march all the way across Europe to the English Channel. We shoudl never have implemented the Marshall Plan, we should have left those pompous motherfuckers to starve to death.

Germany, France, and Great Britain are going to give monetary support to an organization dedicated to wiping Israel off the face of the earth. The Fuhrer must be so pleased.

I have not condemned the Palestinians themselves because, well, why wouldn't they vote for a terrorist organization like Hamas? Despite his Nobel Peace Prize, Yassir Arafat was a terrorist. Mahmoud Abbas is a terrorist. The Palestinians are the most contemptable people on Earth. They are a nation of terrorists. You can't blame a lion for eating a gazelle; so, you can't blame a nation of terrorists for electing terrorist leaders. The one upside of Hamas's victory in the PA parliamentary elections is that it may finally instigate a Palestinian civil war between Fatah and Hamas. And if they start killing each other they will probably be too busy to kill Israelis, and the last terrorist group left standing will be no match for the IDF. And that, my friends, is how you find the silver lining around even the darkest cloud.

The Week of Awesome Solitude
There are things I have been meaning to bloggy blog about, but I haven't wanted to squander my blessed solitude sitting in front of my HAL. So far, I am greatly enjoying the W.A.S. I made a casarole on Sunday night, and it was delicious, but having the same meal for dinner two nights in a row was a bit of a drag; so, tonight I broiled some hot dogs.I think I'll finish the casarole tomorrow and then make pepper steak on Thursday. I can't cook many dishes, but those I can cook I cook quite well, if I do say so myself.

I miss Laundry Cat, but I am very relieved not to be cleaning up her poos (more on this later). Fox News has not appeared on any of our TVs since Friday, a glorious change of pace. Until this evening, I hadn't watched the news since last Friday; I shan't be doing that again until the return of the parentals. (Not quite The Return of the Rentals, but close.) I've been neglecting my studies, but on the plus side I'm making real headway in my recently acquired pile of Blue Beetle backissues. And, if all goes as scheduled, but this time tomorrow I shall have watched Joss Whedon's Serenity and we will know whether I shall have to punch The Guy in the stomach.

I miss you, my friends, but this is after all the Week of Awesome Solitude. Interrupt the W.A.S. at your peril. Kisses.

The Magic of Shazam!
I am fond, perhaps overly fond, of pairing Roman given names with modern surnames, the prime examples being Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Winter and his entire family from In Search of the Perfect Lesbian. So, I am rethinking the name Cincinnatus Butler for Mr. Scarlet. I haven't firmly declared it jetsam, but I am having an open casting call for names. I tend to think that all the names I create sound the same; so, I would appreciate being granted access to your creativity, gang.

As the name implies, Mr. Scarlet is a male, black (I'm just not fond of the term African-American), 30 to 35 years old, and from the Midwest. Brian Butler, the original Mr. Scarlet, was a district attorney who moonlighted as a mystery man. The new one is probably a college graduate and quite possibly an attorney, though right now virtually everything about him is up for grabs. Be creative!

Lies, Damned Lies, and the News
The Goldbricker watches all the Sunday morning network news interview shows (the broadcast times overlap, apparently; so, he tapes the first half of one while watching another in real time); thus, though I don't watch them I overhear them during breakfast and while washing the brunch dishes. This past weekend, on ABC's This Week, hosted by the reptilian George Stephanopoulos, a reporter was featured in the "In Memoriam" segment, which covers the previous week's notable deaths. David Rosenbaum had been a reporter for The New York Times for thirty-five years, though he was retired at the time of his death. Mr. Rosenbaum did not die while covering a story, he was not killed for being a journalist, he appears to have died a victim of ordinary, though monstrous, street crime.

I intend no disrespect toward Mr. Rosenbaum or any offense to his family, but how many 63-year-olds die in New York City every year as victims of crime? And how many of those lamentable deaths merit mention on This Week? Mr. Rosenbaum's is the first I have ever heard of, which strikes me as being quite offensive. I would understand This Week's attention if Mr. Rosenbaum had been killed covering a story for the Times, or if he'd been kidnapped by jihadists and murdered like Daniel Pearl. And I would understand the media frenzy surrounding the death of an aristocrat of the Fourth Estate, for example Dan Rather's eventual death, hopefully of natural causes. But David Rosenbaum was not famous. He did not die, as it were, in the line for duty. He was an unfortunate victim of the too-common violence that plagues our streets. So, what exactly made him worth of a tribute on This Week when so many other victims of violent crime, both young and old, are completely and utterly ignored by Mr. Stephanopoulos and his masters? David Rosenbaum was a reporter; so, in the eyes of certainly ABC and perhaps the rest of the media, too, his life was worth more than yours or mine.

Journalists claim to do what they do in the service of the Republic, to further the common good, to champion the little guy against the powers-that-be. Of course, that;s not actually true. If it were, David Rosenbaum's murder would have received no more coverage that any other random street crime, and he certainly would not have been featured in "In Memoriam." I am not generally fan of populist rhetoric, but it happens to fit this gcase like a glove: the media see themselves as an elite, that is why the death of one of their own is news while the death of your grandfather is not. They think they're better than you.

Who Watches the Watchman?
Last week or the week before the ombudsman of National Public Radio, Jeffrey Dvorkin, said in an interview on the program Day to Day that, and here I am forced to paraphrse as I do not have a transcript in front of me, there may be ways for NPR's reporters to arrive at the truth without having to be objective. Sweet. Merciful. Crap. I guess this in an admission that NPR's reporters don't need to base their stories on objective facts, those terribly inconvenient things, because "the truth" is made up of more than just "the facts." In the absense of objectivity, by definition subjectivity reigns. Mr. Dvorkin also said that "balance," in context he was referrign to balance between the two poles of the political spectrum, was not necessary for good journalism. A tactless way of summarizing Mr. Dvorkin's statements is that NPR's reporters don't need to report the facts and they don't need to pretend to not favor one political part over the other.

I am ashamed to have ever donated money to help support my local NPR station. I am ashamed that a portion of my federal taxes goes to pay the contempable Mr. Dvorkin's salary. NPR is a monstrosity, one that Congress must starve of funds. If it is the last thing I do, I will see that NPR is shut down permanently. Damn them all.

Monkeys! To quote the august Philip J. Fry, "That's the best thing I ever saw!" Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha!

The Magic of Shazam!
I'm thinking I want to introduce a new Mr. Scarlet and I think his alter ego is going to be Cincinnatus Butler, no relation to Brian Butler, the original Mr. Scarlet. (Someone stop me.*) Mr. Scarlet's sidekick will also be updated from the unfortunately named Pinky, the Whiz Kid, to Cardinal. I wanted to keep the red theme going and I like Cardinal better than either Crimson or Vermilion. Plus, as Cardinal can fly the name works on two different levels.

*To my shame, I actually thought up and wrote down the name Butler O'Brien. To my credit, I immediately punched myself in the stomach and denounced the idea as moronic.

Science!
Hyperlink! There was a story yesterday about a pitiful little band of hippies who planned to picket the launch of the New Horizons probe (awful name, by the way) in protest of its nuclear power source. Those damned, dirty hippies are against science! And if you're against science, I'm against you. Science!

Also of note is this item: second hyperlink! I never knew the story of the naming of Pluto. We're taking science back to the people! Anyway, actually being responsible for naming a planet - a planet, for Bog's sake - is just about the coolest thing I can imagine.

Good Riddance, Kitty
I hope no one is interpreting the "Good Riddance, Kitty" topic title as a gesture of ill will toward Laundry Cat. Posts about Sam appeared under the titles "Hello, Kitty" and "Goodbye, Kitty," and as fond as I have become of Laundry Cat over the past three weeks, my affection for her in no way approaches the love I felt for Sammy; so, I felt it inappropriate to use his headings as I chronicled our difficulties with her. I will be very sad to see Laundry Cat go, even though that now seems to be a virtual certainty. She didn't poo outside of her box at all on Sunday, but she pooed in the bathtub this morning and in her favorite corner of the dining room just a few minutes ago. Of course, that seems to be the way her time here has gone: just when I was getting my hopes up that she'd turned the corner and could stay, she poos all over those hopes. I mean, maybe maybe maybe we can keep her if she is perfect from this moment forward, but nothing I have seen since Boxing Day leads me to believe that will happen. So, I'm just going to try and enjoy what time we have left before I have to drive her back to Susan's family on Saturday.

I missed Sammy more than I can say when we had him poisoned in March, but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy not having to change his litter box every other day. I will miss Laundry Cat, but I won't miss the anxiety of wondering where and when she's going to poo next.

The Queue
There are times when I read more books and times when I read fewer books. For the past couple of months, I've been experiencing one of the latter periods. I never hate books, sometimes I just have little interest in reading them. That said, here is the present queue:

Natan Sharansky, The Case For Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror ***on hold***
Gerald Green, The Last Angry Man ***in progress***
Sarah Vowell, Radio On: A Listener's Diary
Jung Chang & Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story
Robert Soderstrom, The Big House: Fielding H. Yost and the Building of Michigan Stadium

The Goldbricker gave me two off-list books, Mao and The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire, as Christmas presents. I can only assume that my father thinks I am soft on Communism. Tell me, gang, am I soft on Communism?

After finishing this non-fiction heavy group, I am thinking of reading C.S. Lewis's entire The Chronicles of Narnia. I've never read all the books, and the ones I have read I read in fifth grade.

The Netflix Queue
And now on to less weighty matters, the next ten DVDs in my Netflix queue:

Smiley's People (Disc 2 of 3)
Smiley's People (Disc 3 of 3)
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
The Bedford Incident
Ice Station Zebra
One Day in September
Wimbledon
The Battle of Shaker Heights
Jersey Girl
Lady Jane

Vote For Kodos
Bog, the Alito hearings were hilarious last week. Senators Kennedy, Leahy, and Biden really should consider some sort of road show. I was honestly surprised that none of them just asked directly, "Judge Alito, why do you hate women and African-Americans?" Low politics, but high comedy.

Good Riddance, Kitty *sniff*
I'm hoping for a miracle, as Laundry Cat has one last week to prove she can be a good kitty and only poo in her box. I really, really don't think we'll be able to keep her, but I really, really want her to stay. Don't get me wrong, I am not in any way pleased with having to clean up after her (I think I hate moving the furniture more than I hate scopping up the actual poos), but she's just great the rest of the time. She's such an adorable little thing. I love how angry the Goldbricker gets about her illicit pooing, since he hasn't lifted a single finger to clean up after her once since she arrived last Boxing Day. Mom and I are pulling for Laundry Cat, but I just don't think she's going to make it. I'm going to miss you, sweetie.

My Time Among the Vampires
I received a free T-shirt today when I visited the Red Cross and and unloaded some spare blood I had sitting around. Sadly, the folks at the ARC passed up the obvious but perennially hilarious gag, "I gave blood to the American Red Cross and all I got was this lousy T-shirt," instead handing me a T-shirt bearing the likeness of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In quotation marks was written "I have a dream," and below it was the unquoted phrase, "We have a dream to save lives." The whole episode was not without levity, though, as the volunteer who handed me the T-shirt said, "They're all the same size. One size fits some." Ha ha!

Go give blood, you selfish bastards. Yes, I'm talking to you, Guy, you fucking coward.

Deus Ex Machina
The BTW Forums have once again disappeared with neither warning nor explanation (this is no way to run a railroad); so, I shall do my soapbox bitching here. This evening's installment of Battlestar Galactica set a new standard for lazy writing. The maniacal Admiral Cain needed to be gotten rid of, both President Roslyn and Commander Adama agreed, but assassination is such a morally messy business. How to kill her while keeping our "heroes" from getting blood on their hands? I know! Let's have the Pegasus's version of Number 6, a Cylon saboteur for whom we are supposed to feel sympathy because she was raped and tortured by Cain's evil crew, kill Cain! Deus ex machina, baby! Great day in the morning, this is what passes for "great science fiction" now that Star Trek has been murdered? Bog help us all.

In any event, I'm tired of complaining about Battlestar Galactica; so, I'm just never going to watch the show again. I'm sure someday I'll go back and rewatch the miniseries and the first two episodes, "33" and "Water," but I'll never watch another new episode. Like Lost, I'd put out my own eyes before watching Battlestar Galactica again. Fuck you, Ronald D. Moore.

"I want to wish you a Rosh Hashanah,
I want to wish you a Rosh Hashanah,
I want to wish you a Rosh Hashanah
From the bottom of my heart!

I want to wish you a Rosh Hashanah,
I want to wish you a Rosh Hashanah,
I want to wish you a Rosh Hashanah
From the bottom of my heart!"
--Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, "Hava Nagila (Christmas Arrangement)" set to the tune of "Feliz Navidad" from Ruin Jonny's Bar Mitzvah (live)

And now's as good a time as any to say:

"A short skirt,
A Gimmes shirt,
A Jones Soda,
Ain't life grand?"

The Magic of Shazam!
I've been crunching the numbers and there's just no way I can reintroduce King Kull or introduce The Perfect or the Gnomes of Zurich before "The Red and the Black" starts in The Magic of Shazam! No. 45. I've got all but one or two issues between No. 1 and No. 58 assigned, and a few one-shot ideas I can install in those slots. There's just no time to tell all the stories I want to tell. To create a little breathing room, I've made No. 75 the start of the five- or six-part "The Conqueror Worm" instead of the conclusion, but even so I know the issues between Nos. 59 and 74 are going to fill up fast. Holy moley.

Of course, one way to take some of the pressure off would be to add an eight-page back-up feature, "Fawcett City Follies." That would be the perfect forum for the lighthearted misadventures of Uncle Dudley and Mr. Tawny or independent Bulletwoman and Spy Smasher tales (though I also have a couple ideas for a Spy Smasher mini-series or two). The Crocodile Mob would be perfect for the "Follies." I've got a story called "The Pirates of Lake Michigan" that is strong enough to fill up a couple issues on its own, but I wouldn't be able to get to it until at least the mid-60s, more likely after the conclusion of "The Conqueror Worm" around No. 80. Ghost pirates attack Fawcett City, a perfect premise to be chopped up into bit-sized eight-page nuggets.

Of course, all this assumes a) I'd ever get the chance to write the blasted thing and b) it wouldn't get cancelled after forty-seven issues like Jerry Ordway's The Power of Shazam! Oy.

No. 1 "Giant Atomic Robots, Part 1 of 5"
No. 2 " " "
No. 3 " " "
No. 4 " " "
No. 5 "Giant Atomic Robots, Part 5 of 5"
No. 6 "Faerie Tale, Part 1 of 3"
No. 7 " "
No. 8 "Faerie Tale, Part 3 of 3"
No. 9 "The Mechanical Man of Mystery"
No. 10 "The Crocodile Mob in... 'A Piece of the Action'"
No. 11 "Kristallnacht, Part 1 of 2"
No. 12 "Kristallnacht, Part 2 of 2"
No. 13 "I, Robot Marvel"
No. 14 "Ibac's Back"
No. 15 "The ODESSA File, Part 1 of 3"
No. 16 " " "
No. 17 "The ODESSA File, Part 3 of 3"
No. 18 "Night of the Crazy Chicken"
No. 19 "The Red Oni, Part 1 of 3"
No. 20 " " "
No. 21 "The Red Oni, Part 3 of 3"
No. 22 "Man of Science, Part 1 of 4"
No. 23 " " "
No. 24 " " "
No. 25 "Man of Science, Part 4 of 4"
No. 26 "It Came From Outer Space, Part 1 of 2"
No. 27 "It Came From Outer Space, Part 2 of 2"
No. 28 "Heck in the Pacific"
No. 29 "The Faerie Queene, Part 1 of 3"
No. 30 " " "
No. 31 "The Faerie Queene, Part 3 of 3"
No. 32 "Fight Club"
No. 33 "Manhunters Are From Mars, Worms Are From Venus, Part 1 of 5"
No. 34 " " " " " " " "
No. 35 " " " " " " " "
No. 36 " " " " " " " "
No. 37 "Manhunters Are From Mars, Worms Are From Venus, Part 5 of 5"
No. 38 "V for Vengeance, Part 1 of 3"
No. 39 " " "
No. 40 "V for Vengeance, Part 3 of 3"
No. 41 "The Red Oni Strikes Again, Part 1 of 3"
No. 42 " " " " "
No. 43 "The Red Oni Strikes Again, Part 3 of 3"
No. 44 "Captain Marvel vs. Sadie Hawkins"
No. 45 "The Red and the Black, Part 1 of 6"
No. 46 " " " " "
No. 47 " " " " "
No. 48 " " " " "
No. 49 " " " " "
No. 50 "The Red and the Black, Part 6 of 6"
No. 51 "The Revenge of Theo Adam, Part 1 of 2"
No. 52 "The Revenge of Theo Adam, Part 2 of 2"
No. 53 "From Here to the Rock of Eternity, Part 1 of 6"
No. 54 " " " " " " "
No. 55 " " " " " " "
No. 56 " " " " " " "
No. 57 " " " " " " "
No. 58 "From Here to the Rock of Eternity, Part 6 of 6"

And then after No. 58 is the logical place for "A Man of Righteousness," Xia Timur's bid to claim the Wizard's power as the Scion of Shazam... yeah, and I can revive King Kull after the Scion's defeated and/or driven off. And because Vandal Savage was created by Alfred Bester, I have to use him in The Magic of Shazam!, and to me it makes sense to pair Savage with the savage King Kull. And then I can do "In the Hall of the Mountain King" and "The Gnomes of Zurich," finally introducing The Perfect. Ooo, but somewhere in there I have to fit "Radioland Murders," one of the very first ideas I had for MOS!, which has been pushed back from before "Man of Science" to Bog knows when. There's just no time! And then of course "The Conqueror Worm" kicks off with No. 75 and I still need to introduce the new Red Oni and do some more with the Monster Society of Evil... plus, I have to find space to make Billy (Captain Marvel), Mary (Mary Marvel), Freddy (Kid Marvel), Veronica, Uncle Dudley, Mr. Tawny, Whitey, T.M.I. "Timmy" (Robot Marvel), Deanna (Bulletwoman), Avi (Spy Smasher), Mr. Sterling, Beautia, Beatrix & Benedict, Cissie, Aditi, Nick & Nora, Detectives Darling & Barnes, Inspectors Woolfolk & Pax, Joan, "Headline" Harry, and the Wizard fully realized, multidimensional characters, the one thing that makes any work of literature (even "sequential literature") worthwhile. Again, oy.

And there's just no space for "The Metropolis Marvel" or the "Wonders and Marvels" team-up/crossover. *sigh*

Not N.O.W., Not Ever
Hyperlink! I'm not defending Paterno's comments, which were insensitve but which have also been misconstrued, I just want to ask once again, Where in Bog's name was N.O.W. when the President of the United States was accused of having a sexual affair with a twenty-one-year-old employee? If the fiftysomething CEO of a large corporation pressured an intern the same age as his daughter into an affair, don't you think N.O.W. would have cried "sexual harrassment" from every mountain top in the country? But N.O.W. has plenty of vigor to go after Joe Paterno, a man who is five minutes older than the universe itself? That's nice.

And while it may seem quaint to some, I think it important to mention that A.J. Nicholson hasn't actually been convicted of having committed any crime. Isn't a man supposed to be presumed innocent until he is proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law? I personally believe that all rapists should be subject to capital punishment, but that is neither here nor there until Nicholson has been proven to have actually broken the law.

Good Riddance, Kitty
It is important to understand that ninety percent of my anger at Laundry Cat comes from the fact that I love her and I am afraid of losing her. The remaining ten percent comes from the fact that I do not at all enjoy moving furniture so that I can clean mushy cat poo out of the carpet. The last Laundry Cat post was written while my ire was raised; at the time I meant every word, but my hatred for L.C. is fleeting and when it has passed love always resumes its proper place of primacy. The timeless wisdom of Yoda is useful here, "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate lead to suffering." I am afraid of losing Laundry Cat, I get angry at the behavior that is going to cause me to lose her, and I hate her for her for that behavior. And then I suffer thinking about how much I'm going to miss her once I've lost her. If watching Anakin-cum-Darth Vader burning alive in the lava fields of Mustafar didn't hammer the point home, the dark side sucks.

I love the fact that my hands are covered in small scratches. Laundry Cat is playful in a way that Sam never was, not even when he was a kitten. She chases toys that we dangle in front of her and bats at our hands, her little eyes wide in wonder. She is not yet a lap cat, but I believe that were she able to stay she would learn to be one in time. Of course, as I was walking from my room to the Mountain's room, site of the HAL from which I bloggy blog, I saw Laundry Cat walking out of the bathroom. She'd pooed in the bathtub again. She's not sick. I cleaned her box as soon as I got home this afternoon, a mere two days since it was last cleaned; so, I cannot imagine how that could be the problem. And our efforts to potty train her have thus far failed. We offer praise and affection when she goes in her box, condemnation and confinement when she... freelances; neither technique has altered her behavior one iota. I am at a loss and at the end of my rope, a combination that spells doom for Laundry Cat, doom being spelled O-H-I-O.

Fleet-footed anger aside, the predominant emotion Laundry raises in me is sadness. I love her. She is charmingly playful and sickeningly cute. Her nervousness and fear of everything (omniphobia?) is adorable. In my head, I had already begun to compose a Newsletter column about her, "Go, Laundry Cat! Kill! Kill!" I really thought she was going to be our new cat, an institution in my parents' house for the foreseeable future. Sure, she might not have lasted eighteen-and-a-half years like Sammy, but she was going to be ours, an integral part of what makes this house a home. But she just won't stop pooing and peeing outside her box. We're not selfish bastards, we just don't want to spend the rest of our lives cleaning the carpets and corners of the house several times each day. (We may be selfish bastards in the grand scheme of things, but not because of this.) After I cleaned up L.C.'s latest bathtub mishap and after Dad and I chased her down and caught her, I carried her back to her litter box, set her down on a pile of towels covered in kitty fur, and spent several minutes pettign her. She is such a sweet, pretty girl. She just can't stay here. Bog, I'm going to miss her.

Back Inaction*
The Goldbricker goldbricks again! On Friday, the Goldbricker stayed in bed until 4:00pm, claiming to have been struck by a double whammy, a chest cold and back troubles. Oh dear! Of course, when he got out of bed at 4 he discovered that we were low on coffee; so, without any apparent physical difficulty he set out for Meijer to purchase more of the demon beans. In an odd turn of events, he evidenced no back problems on Saturday when he and I carried the disassembled Christmas tree back to the shed or when we restored the rest of the Christmas decorations to their storage space over the garage door. And he was fit as a fiddle when he and I put a new alternator in the Mousemobile, perhaps unnecessarily, yesterday (watch for a forthcoming "Autobahn" in The Newsletter). This morning, like motherfucking clockwork, he told my mother he back hurt. Someone cue the world's smallest violin. Now, in seeing him move around the house since I returned home in the latter part of the afternoon, clearly some movements do cause him moments of not insignificant pain. But, more often than not he raises a hue and cry and yet there is no wolf; so, I have limited sympathy even when he is in genuine pain. At least he was healthy enough to help me with the Mousemobile yesterday, and to help me corral Laundry Cat this evening. Thanks, Goldbricker!

*Inspired by America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction.

Hello, Kitty? More Like Goodbye and Good Riddance, Kitty
At some point, I may recount the entire sage of Laundry Cat, the kitten we were gifted by the family of the Mountain's girlflesh, Susan. For now, all you need to know is that we "have" and/or are test-driving a kitten named Laundry Cat and that there is an eighty percent chance Laundry Cat will be returned to Susan's family in Ohio. I think it says a great deal about the difficulties we have been having that Laundry Cat arrived here at the Wilson household on Monday, December 26, nearly two weeks ago, and we still haven't decided to keep the misbegotten horror. Today was not a good day for Laundry Cat; in the last twenty-four hours, she pooed outside of her box on at least six separate occassions in four disparate locations. This situation is intolerable. Over the past week, Laundry Cat made real progress toward pooing only in her box, only to undo all the resultant goodwill with today's display. We have taken her to the veterinarian in case this dog-like pooing behavior was the result of illness and have now given her the full course of medication prescribed by the vet (for gas, or some such), without apparent effect.

I'll be completely honest: right now, I hate Laundry Cat. Earlier today, I was playing with her in the living room, waving a cloth bird on an elastic strong in front of her, when she turned and walked upstairs. A few moments later, she walked back downstairs. I went to investigate and found that she had fulfilled my fears: she had pooed in the bathtub. She had been downstairs and went upstairs to poo. Her litter box was in the downstairs bathroom just around the corner from where we were playing in the living room. She had to travel three or four times the distance to her litter box in order to defecate in the bathtub. She went literally out of her way to shit in the wrong place; she put forth extra effort to avoid her box, which I had just cleaned that very morning. I am going to take her to the vet's office again on Monday to explain that the previously prescribed treatment was spectacularly ineffectual and to determine whether her uncatlike pooing habits have at their root a medical or behavioral cause. If Laundry Cat has a prayer of staying in Michigan and ever being considered a Wilson, she had damn well better be sick. Otherwise, it'll be roadtrip time for the Mousemobile.

I do not want to draw inappropriate parallels between Laundry Cat and my late, beloved Sam, who in his long decline and pitious death became the apotheosis of feline virtue, but according to those old enough to remember clearly Sammy's first few weeks as a Wilson, he stopped pooing outside of his litter box by the end of the first week. Laundry Cat is approaching the end of her second week here at a perilous speed. Sammy did occasionally poo outside of his box in his declining years, but they were his declining years; his kidneys were failing and dragging the rest of his organs with them. If Laundry Cat is not suffering a similar infirmity, and her playfulness and vigor suggest she is not, then she is simply an ill-mannered jerk. Sweet fancy Moses, if I wanted a jerk of a pet that pooed wherever it damn well pleased I'd get a dog-monster like the Pug Uglies. Half the point of getting a cat is that they are self-cleaning: they pee and poo in a litter box and obsessively lick their fur clean. In order to teach Laundry Cat to poo in her box, we have been locking her in the downstairs bathroom at night (if we don't, we wake up to find her little presents scattered throughout the house). When I let her out of the bathroom yesterday, I'd found that she pooed on the floor directly in front of her box. She couldn't be troubled to move six inches before pooing? Jerk.

I loved Samuel Bubbles Sink Cat Wilson more than all but a handful of the people I've known in my life. I wouldn't sully his good name, Wilson, by applying it to that pathetic piece of filth Laundry Cat. If (when) we send Laundry back to Ohio, I will do a little celebratory jig. Good riddance, you monster.

Holy Mother Church
The latest words of wisdumb from Pat "God Hates Dover, PA" Robertson. Hyperlink. I take great comfort in the thought that there is a special place in Hell for those who preach idiocy and blind hatred in the name of the Almighty.

According to Protestant theology, salvation is by faith alone; thus, Robertson will go to Heaven. Catholicism teaches that though salvation is the result of Grace and not achieved through our own labors, faith alone is not enough to receive Grace. Good works, faith, and participation in the sacraments will get you into Heaven. When it comes to Pat Robertson, I find the Catholic version, which will result in the eternal damnation of his dark and twisted soul, to be much more comforting.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
I don't think I've ever enjoyed any Wisconsin or Ohio State victory as much as their dual wins in yesterday's bowl games (the Badgers bested Auburn 24-10 in the Capital One Bowl and the Buckeyes defeated hated Notre Dame 34-20 in the Fiesta Bowl). And Penn State's triple overtime victory over Florida State (26-23 in the Orange Bowl) was magnificent. Yes, the noble Big Ten finished a lamentable 3-4 for the bowl season, but the three best Big Ten teams all triumphed against quality opposition. No undue offense is meant to either The Professor, an alumnus of Florida State University, or Reed, an alumnus of the University of Notre Dame, but woo and hoo. Besides, as an alumnus of the oft-defeated University of Michigan, I know your pain all too well.

For those of you who are familiar with my implacable enmity for both the University of Wisconisn and THE Ohio State University and thus confused by my glee at their victories, all can be explained through three little words: Big Ten loyalty. Sure, I hate Wisconsin and Ohio State, but they're still family. We fight, but family always closes ranks when confronted with outsiders like Auburn (SEC), Notre Dame (independent), and Florida State (ACC). However, no mistake should be made, Big Ten loyalty does not extend to Michigan State, not that those losers will be going to a bowl game any time soon. I hate the Spartans under all circumstances.

And Now For Something Completely Different
Of late, I have been very intrigued by the name Millicent. How does Millicent Wilson sound? Millie Wilson. Yep, I definitely like it.

Brave New Year
I understand that "Sunday" and all related indica are registered trademarks of the National Football League, and I am a fan of the NFL, but today is New Year's Day and there is not wall-to-wall college football on my television screen. This is a farce.

Also, it is important to remember the distinction between the words "flout" and "flaunt."

Hail to the Losers: 7-5
The officiating was, to use Mike Tirico's word, "incompetent," but that does not excuse Rivas's missed field goal, Avant's fumble, Manningham's drop, Henne's overthrows, or the defense's fourth quarter collapse. My fear is that Lloyd will use the poor performance of the officials as cover for not making the changes that are so very, very necessary for the future of Michigan football.

Dear Bog, 7-5. Take away the two gimme wins against Northern Illinois and Eastern Michigan and we finished the season 5-5. This is an unimaginable disaster, a nightmare. We're better than this. We have to be, right? Right?

Star Wars: Episodes I-VI
December 27, 2005
8:05am-11:15pm
Wilson household
Grand Blanc, Michigan

Attendees: The Mountain of Love, his girlflesh Susan, K. Steeze, The Professor, Ki-El, and The Last Angry Man.

And remember, only two motherfuckers ever destroyed a Death Star, and one of them was Lando Calrissian.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

The Magic of Shazam!
Unless you can fly like Superman and Captain Marvel or run really fast like The Flash (though both Superman and Captain Marvel can run really fast, too), as a modern superhero on the go you'll probably need some sort of vehicle. The Batman has the many incarnations of the Batmobile; the late, lamented Blue Beetle flew around in his unmistakable Bug; and even a third-tier also-ran like the Spy Smasher (Alan Armstrong) got around in a rocket/submarine called the Gyrosub. Yes, of course, because there's nothing more inevitable than a hybrid rocketplane/mini-submarine... or something. Also, Gyrosub? Sounds like a fine name for an aspiring retauranteer looking to take a chunk out of Subway's business, but a superhero's "wheels"? Oy.

Now, my new Spy Smasher (Avi Ducret), being a contrarian but decidedly non-superpowered Israeli, will also need a stylish and suitably heroic way of getting around, especially if he is going to travel all the way to Fawcett City (firmly rooted in the American Midwest). My conundrum is this: should he traverse the world in a new Gyrosub (rocket/U-boat) or a slightly less ridiculous but still fanciful VTOL-capable plane, visually based on the P-61 Black Widow? (Either way, it has to be able to hover midair, because all flying superheroic conveyances hover. It's a rule.) The argument in favor of the plane is it is slightly more realistic and will help cement Spy Smasher's role as a normal human, in contrast with the godlike power of the Marvel Family. On the other hand, it is a fanciful vehicle either way; so, I might as well go all out and embrace the awesomely ludicrous Gyrosub (name and all, it's a package deal). So, new Gyrosub or 21st Century P-61?

Word Association
Once more, I'm working ass-backwards. Here are some interesting names for villains. Now I just need to work on powers and, more importantly, characterizations:

Spitfire
Hotspur
Vexillum
Sunder
Dandelion

Spitfire & Hotspur are quite possibly a package deal, too.

Superduperman
I think if I ever get the chance to write for Superman I'm going to pull out all the stops. That means all the stories will have to have "super" titles. I've already got partial ideas for "Superego," "Superconductor," and "Superlative," and I see definite potential in "Superstition," "Superficial," and "Superfluous." It's classic BTW reasoning: it's so bad that it's gone all the way around the horn to good.

Super-Goons:

Phantom Tom - actually, he's pretty far along and so far I really, really like him
Arcturus
Positron Boy
The Alienist

Foyle's War
For those of you who may not know, Foyle's War is a contemporary British television series chronicling the adventures of Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle (Michael Kitchen) in his role as the highest ranking police officer along the south coast of Great Britain during the Second World War. Look for an "Idiot Box" review in the upcoming Volume XI of The Newsletter. The show is extraordinary.

Series 1 - Late Spring/Summer 1940
"The German Woman"
"The White Feather"
"A Lesson in Murder"
"Eagle Day"

Series 2 - Fall 1940
"Fifty Ships"
"Among the Few"
"War Games"
"The Funk Hole"

Series 3 - Late Winter/Spring 1941
"The French Drop"
"Enemy Fire"
"They Fought in the Fields"
"A War of Nerves"

UNbelievable
Hyperlink! I never liked Kofi Annan, but before this I never thought he was a loon. A sleazebag, sure, but not a loon. If there's anyone he should be angry at over the Oil-for-Food fiasco, it is his son Kojo, not The Times. What a jerk. Also, James Bone is a really cool name.

The Mandate of Heaven
Hyperlink! This just isn't going to end well. In other news from China, a second river has become disastrously polluted due to an industrial accident, the second, it should be noted, in as many months. And for the first time in quite a long time (though not nearly long enough), lethal force was used to end a protest. None of these three items is really much of a surprise. Anyone in Hong Kong who actually expected Beijing to give the territory a truly democratic government is either a fool or an idiot, probably both. Every Communist country in the history of the world has been an environmental disaster area, and while China's economic policies have become more and more capitalistic over the last thirty years, there should be no doubt that the Chinese Communist Party still reigns supreme. The same remark applies to the murder of protestors. It's despicably monstrous, but entirely predictable.

The Newsletter Must Die
I would like to thank Neutral Man, the Mountain of Love, The Guy, his girlflesh Sarah, The Professor, K. Steeze, the Boy Wonder, and The Plate for their invaluable help in making the 2005 Annual a rousing success. I couldn't be more pleased with how it turned out unless I was being monetarily compensated. Man, I'd give your right arm to be monetarily compensated for editing-in-chief The Newsletter. In any event, the 2005 Annual kicks arse! Thanks, gang!

Bwa-Ha-Ha!!!
A little Christmas gift to myself, I now own Keith Giffen's entire run of Justice League Europe and all but three of his issues of Justice League-cum-Justice League International-cum-Justice League America. I must continue the search for the three missing issues of JLI, but in the meantime I must begin collecting the JLI Annuals, Justice League Quarterly, and other JLI-era sundries.

Honolulu Blue Forever
Obviously, there was no way in hell we were going to beat the Bengals, but just for the record I would like to point out that the Lions are 3-6 in games Joey Harrington started as quarterback and 1-4 in games started by Jeff Garcia. As the head of the ACLU said, "Kill Zoidberg!" Or rather, Millen.

Perchance to Dream
In television shows and motion pictures, real life stimuli often carry over into dreams in real time, for instance, a leaky bathtub will cause the dreamer to dream of having been cast adrift amid great Neptune's ocean. I experienced this previously fictional scenario this morning for, I believe, the first time.

Feel free to laugh, but I was in The Ultimates, the reimagination of the superteam the Avengers in Marvel's continuity-free Ultimate Universe, and found myself in a scene of havoc and chaos. I cannot name who it was the Ultimates were fighting. Suddenly, I was racked with pain! My left arm was asleep, but the sensation was far more intense than I had ever before endured. Confused as all get out, I woke up to find that my left arm was in fact asleep; I must have been laying on it in exactly the right way, because, brother, my sinister apendage was alive with needles of pain but dead in the water. I got out of bed and walked around for a couple minutes until circulation and normal feeling were restored. It was wild.

I Blame Dan DiDio and Paul Levitz
This is getting fucking ridiculous. Our story thus far: I ordered the second DVD boxset of Superman: The Animated Series from Amazon.com. Hooray, for DVDs, right? Wrong. I was progressing through the epidoes, happy as a clam to be watching the Man of Steel pummel the likes of Metallo and Luminus, when in the middle of "Brave New Metropolis" the disc malfunctioned. The image became pixelated and then froze, the audio track became distorted and then started repeating a single syllable before suting out entirely. Grrr. But, hey, into every life a little rain must fall and I have always viewed Amazon's return policy as being quite fair and reasonable. I reported the problem, they shipped me a replacement, I returned the defective item on their dime, and we all lived happy ever after.

Except the same damn thing happened with the new boxset. On the same disc (Disc 2 being one side of the same physical disc as Disc 3), though in a different episode. This time, "Brave New Metropolis" played without interruption, only to encounter an identity defect in "World's Finest, Part 1." FUCKING HELL! One defective product is an irritating inconvenience, two are a full-blown farce. Clearly, the problem lies with the manufacturer, may they bleed from their eyes every day for the rest of their rotten lives. Once is a cock up; twice is, as stated above, fucking ridiculous.

Okay, fine and good, but how exactly are Dan DiDio (VP-Executive Editor of DC Comics) and Paul Levitz (President & Publisher of same) to blame? Simple. The boxset carries the new DC logo, the so-called "DC spin," DiDio and Levitz's idea for carrying the company forward into the 21st Century. (These two geniuses couldn't give two shits about the comics DC puts out, but they figure an ugly new logo will prove a panacea. Fucking boobs.) The first volume of Superman, an identical three-disc set that I watched from start to finish, including all the bonus features, bore the venerable old "DC bullet" logo, and I never had a single problem. the discs performed magnificently. Old logo, quality product. New logo, shit on a stick. Now DiDio and Levitz, those are two motherfuckers who desperately need to be hit in the face with a brick.

I can see now that most of the Secret Base's reader are Canuck-coddling commies. You bastards probably wake up to the tune of "O Canada" on your alarm clocks! Lousy Maple Leaf-loving so-and-sos....

Funny Book Follies
In other news, an odd thing happened at the comic book shop this week: I bought as many Marvel books as I did DC books. That has to be the first time that has happened since, oh, probably sometime in 2001. You see, I first started reading comics following the release of the movie X-Men, which I enjoyed greatly, during the Summer of 2000. The first five books I read were Uncanny X-Men, X-Men, Fantastic Four, Daredevil, and Batman. I caught Batman at the very beginning of Ed Brubaker's excellent run, but what really hooked me was penciller Scott McDaniel's brilliant art; McDaniel was my gateway into the DC Universe and for that I will always be indebted to him. Whatever my problems with the current regime at DC, and the abyssmal direction things are moving in, the company is still my home. I am still loyal to DC's characters, even though the top people at DC aren't. I will never understand why Dan DiDio and Geoff Johns hate Superman, Batman, and the rest so intensely... but that's a topic for another day.

Yesterday, I bought Aquaman, Firestorm, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, Action Comics, and Fables from DC (Fables is part of the non-DCU Vertigo line) and Fantasic Four/Iron Man: Big in Japan, Son of M, X-Factor, Uncanny X-Men, and New X-Men from Marvel. The Marvel Universe is a weird, confusing place full of people about whom and places about which I could not care less even with concerted effort. Still, I am enjoying the vast post-House of M "Decimation" storyline, and it seems like a much better idea than DC's planned post-Infinite Crisis "One Year Later" shake-up. To be fair, it won't happen until March, but "One Year Later" reeks of a cheap publicity stunt, whereas the still-unfolding "Decimation" strikes me as being first and foremost a good story.

Spitting Into the Wind
And now, even though we are expecting more snow tonight, my mother would like me to shovel the driveway. Hooray for futility.

This means war. Canada's insolence requires a swift and sure answer: invasion! I say we march on Ottawa, wrecking a swath of destruction from the Ambassador Bridge to their poor man's Parliament in the finest tradition of Sherman's March to the Sea. We'll bring those toadying Canucks to their knees within the week. We'll install Wayne Gretzky as Prime Minister-for-Life, raze Ottawa according to the Carthage model, declare Toronto the new capital, move the Phoenix Coyotes back to Winnipeg, and have our boys home by Christmas. Death to Canada!

Honolulu Blue Forever
As Dr. Hee-Haw pointed out, the Lions actually finished 9-7 in 2000, not 7-9 as I'd mistakenly recalled. A winning fucking record under coaches Bobby Ross and Gary Moeller. Let's compare the five years before Matt Millen arrived to his first five years (since, inexplicably, he's been given a contract extension and will be around a while longer). In the spirit of charity, I'm going to project the Lions as finishing 5-11 this season, even though I believe they will finish 4-12.

1996-2000: 5-11, 9-7, 5-11, 8-8, 9-7. Total: 36-44.
2001-2005: 2-14, 3-13, 5-11, 6-10, 5-11. Total: 21-59.

Sweet merciful crap, what I'd give to be 36-44 again over an 80 game period. Wayne Fontes, where are you? Let's look even farther back, to ten years before the M&M debacle, in both it's incarnations (Millen & Mornhinweg and Millen & Mariucci).

1991-1995: 12-4, 5-11, 10-6, 9-7, 10-6. Total: 46-34.
2001-2005: 2-14, 3-13, 5-11, 6-10, 5-11. Total: 21-59.

In the ten seasons 1991-2000, the Lions actually posted a 82-78 record, a winning record. Certainly, those numbers are nothing to be particularly proud of, but they were a rousing success compared to the past five years in the abyss. To achieve a similar result for the period 2001-2010, the Lions will have to go 61-19 over the next five seasons, requiring four seasons with a 12-4 record and one at 13-3. Thanks, Matt Millen, you've done a hell of a job!

My favorite part of all this is when the jackboots came out during the last home game and seized any and all signs even remotely critical of Millen. Awesome, he's incompetent and megalomaniacal. Quite a winning combination.

I'm Dreaming of a Red Xmas
Oh, I forgot to mention, the Goldbricker actually came out with a Christmas list last Friday, December 9, a measly sixteen days before the Yuletide. I think that's actually more insulting than if he'd simply failed to produce a list at all. In any event, fuck him, as I said I finished my Christmas shopping the day before. He'll get whatever I feel like giving and like it, and if he doesn't maybe that'll teach the old horror to assemble a list in a timely fashion.

Oh, and just like his various denunciations of Muslims and liberals, his Christmas list is cholk-full of spelling errors. Before he became a hate-monger, my father could spell. He was a literate and reasonably erudite. He has a master's degree. Now, he's a living demonstration of the dulling effect hatred has on human intelligence. May death come swiftly for him.

Honolulu Blue Forever
Boy howdy, I enjoyed the hell out of yesterday's game. Is there anything better than football in December at Lambeau Field? (Actually, yes there is: football in January at Lambeau Field.) I wasn't rooting for the Lions since Dick Jauron continued his brilliant plan to be unceremoniously fired at the end of the season by starting that washed up hack Jeff Garcia. Plus, it's always nice to see the old Cajun warhorse get a victory, especially in this year of seemingly insurmountable difficulty for the Packers. Brett Favre has always reminded me of Lee Marvin, so tough as nails that he probably eats them for breakfast. And while it was annoying to hear ESPN's trained monkeys babbling on and on about Samkon Gabo being "one of the best stories in the NFL this season," I can't really deny that his is one of the best stories in the NFL this season. Plus, that 64-yard touchdown run was pretty sweet. If Gabo can lose that gut and do some serious conditioning in the offseason, he just might have a bright future in football.

Interesting numbers: the Lions are 4-9 this season with three games remaining. In games featuring Joey Harrington as the starting quarterback, the Lions are 3-6. In games featuring Jeff Garcia as the starting quarterback, the Lions are 1-3. In other words, the Lions have won one out of every three games with Harrington and only one out of every four games with the disgraced Steve Mariucci's chosen savior Garcia. And yet Jauron insists Garcia gives the Lions "the best chance to win." The numbers would seem to disagree.

The three remaining games are against the Cincinnati Bengals, the New Orleans Saints of San Antonio, and the Pittsburgh Steelers. There is no way on Bog's lime-green Earth that the hapless Lions are going to defeat the mighty Bengals or the vaunted Steelers. We are capable of beating New Orleans/San Antonio, but I am of the opinion that our boys will find a way to lose. So, with a little luck the Lions will finish the year 5-11, though I rather think 4-12 is much more likely. There is a certain poetry in going 4-12. Since 2001 the Lions have finished 2-14, 3-13, 5-11, and 6-10. They finished 7-9 in 2000, back in the halcyon days before Matt Millen's reign of idiocy. So, 4-12 would almost complete the set. 2-14, 3-13, 4-12, 5-11, 6-10, 7-9 in 2001, 2002, 2005, 2003, 2004, 2000.

Maybe next year we could even finish 1-15! Or better yet, 0-16, because if you're going to be bad you might as well be record-settingly bad.