Maximum Guttenburg

Burr it's cold outside...

2009-01-14T09:31:00.008-05:00

It's been months since either of us has posted. Pathetic, I know. But let me assure you life has been busy and fun. November brings on a whole slew of family birthdays and Thanksgiving. Then we are into the Christmas season with all of the shopping, baking, wrapping, partying, etc. Not to mention that the Nov-Feb time frame is my absolute busiest at work, but anyway...

In the midst of all the craziness we managed to squeeze in a few little home projects. Husband's office has been begging for an update since we moved into the house. It was never a top priority so two and half years later I realize it's the only room in our house that we haven't repainted and on top of that it's filled with super cheap hand-me-down furniture. That means we must redecorate!

We started by clearing out the books and old furniture, much of which was retired to the basement (aka: the Man Cave) and some of which was taken to the curb.

Then began the arduous task of patching all of the holes and priming that ugly burgandy woodwork. Seriously? Who thought that was a good idea? The rest of the trim in the house is white!

Next I painted - A LOT! The woodwork took 1 coat of primer and 3 coats of white and it took 2 coats to get a nice even finish on the wall. Blah! By this point I was pretty sore.

Then came furniture - a wall unit/desk and two new bookcases. Husband actually helped with this part. See him assembling!

Here it is in place. Check out all of that storage!

It's not quite finished yet. We still have some organizing to complete, and I'm currently redoing the inside of the closet and adding doors to it. Again, seriously? Who takes the doors of a closet? Stay tuned for more pictures of the completed project.

Oh, and one project we have completely finished... No more ugly faux stained glass storm door! YAY for beautiful super-insulated, black framed, clear glass, nickel hardwared storm door! And yay for my pops for helping me install it in 18 degree weather! We are crazy, or stupid, your call.

In my Office...

2008-10-28T15:55:00.005-04:00

I'm tapped out today... You know, when you've been super diligent all day and then suddenly you just can't focus on anything anymore? That's where I'm at. I've been reading strategic plans and reports done by consultants who don't have a clue about business in D-town. Reports that use industry data based on industry/occupation definitions formed in the 50s are certainly not reflective of the emerging industries of 2008. Blah!

The good news is that it is really pretty outside...

Despite a chill in the air, it is all blue skies and white fluffy clouds over downtown. It makes sitting in my office reading painful reports a little more bearable.

seeing Liz Lemon and Floyd just makes me miss 30 Rock...

2008-10-06T15:40:00.000-04:00

"Wow! You're like the Karl Malone of mailmen!"

2008-09-25T22:29:00.003-04:00

I'm really getting shamed here, with the Wife making something like 5 of the last 7 posts. So I figure I better kick it into gear and throw up some content before we need to rename this 'The-Wife's-Girly-Blog-Of-Pictures-Of-Things-I-Need-To-Fix.'

The fantasy season's starting a little rough - I have Moss and Jones-Drew as my top 2 in two leagues, and neither has been what you'd call spectacular. A few later picks have turned out better than expected (Reggie Bush and Chris Chambers, for example), so I'm at least above .500 overall, going 2-1,2-1,and 1-2 in my three leagues.

In real life, I've been busier than usual. I'm teaching 2 extra classes at UD, and stressing out over next month's prelim exams. To top it off, the last few days I've had to run back and forth to get my schedule prepped for next semester - not only will I be teaching double the courseload of a full-time faculty member, but I'll be driving up to BG twice a week. On the plus side, I'll actually be teaching four different film courses, so I'll get to watch a lot of movies. (and then go sit through three straight hours of soul-sucking-modules twice a week).

Dogs 1.0 and 2.0 keep me busy most days, but I'll make a concerted effort to lessen the lag between posts.

I love my girls...

2008-09-22T10:15:00.007-04:00

I have returned from the most wonderful weekend with my girls in Michigan City... A relaxing time with great friends, good food, too much wine and too many margaritas (can you really have too much?) We laid on the beach, shopped, gossiped, caught up on each other's lives - it was the perfect weekend. I love my girls and really needed this weekend. I feel totally revived. I haven't felt this fulfilled since I was here a few months ago...

Mentally, physically, emotionally renewed - I am so lucky to have such wonderful friends. Thank you girls.

Wind, Power, Recycling

2008-09-18T10:54:00.006-04:00

So last Sunday Ohio got slammed by the 70 mph winds of Hurricane Ike. A hurricaine in Ohio? Yes, it's unfortunately true. I'm not sure how, but it is...

The wake of the storm uprooted trees, damaged homes, and took out power lines all over the state. Here in Dayton 300,000 customers were out of electric starting on Sunday and as of today (Thursday) there are still 90,000 customers in the dark. Luckily, Husband and I were restored a mere 26 hours after it went out in our neighborhood. Husband never really felt the effects of any of it though since he was in BG teaching and the power was back up before he returned home. Now he's complaining about the lack of cable and internet, but he's just being a brat. It could be much much worse!

We honestly came out relatively unscathed. The tree in our front yard that tends to drop branches if you so much as look at it surprisingly did not sustain any damage. We do have a few loose shingles that need to be repaired and the dormer widow in our bedroom has a piece of siding hanging...

This has got me thinking... Maybe we should put up new siding? The siding on the dormers are the original aluminum siding and are starting to look pretty dingy and dated. There are also several aluminum awnings still on our house and in storage in our garage. I'm thinking about taking it all down and turning it in to the recycling place for cash... Hmmmm.... Thinking... Does that tiny piece of loose siding justify all new siding? I guess I just have to convince Husband.

Excuse Me, But I'm From Ohio

2008-09-03T21:33:00.004-04:00

Over the weekend this article came out in the Washington Post...

Excuse Me, But I'm From Ohio

I have to say, I love it. I identify so strongly with this article. I had a roommate when I lived in D.C. who was the narrow-minded East Coast type. There were four of us - two from Ohio, one from Iowa, and my one roommate, lets call her K, was from New Hampshire. She thought she was being punished in some way by being assigned to an apartment with us. She couldn't believe she would have to live with people who would work for Republicans. K couldn't believe that we could possibly be half as intelligent as her or understand half as much about the world. She went to the amazing, accepting, open-minded Colby College. We could not compare to the amazing, accepting, open-minded people she knew from Colby College.

K made me sad. She was someone who thought she was so enlightened - so smart. Unfortunately she was so arrogant she couldn't even have a civil conversation with anyone who might disagree with her in any way.

It's people like that who make me happy that I did grow up in the Midwest. My parents taught me to respect people whether you agree with them or not. They showed me that good conversation and debate can help you learn about yourself and others. They taught me that hard work and an honest day's labor is something to be proud of whether it is in an office or in a field.

I am proud to have grown up in Ohio and when K one day, while eating a bowl of corn (of course she was a veg,) complained about they ignorance of middle-America and how the coasts should just swallow up the Midwest, I was equally proud of my Iowan roommate as she reminded her to enjoy her corn because without the Midwest K would be screwed.

Behind every smile hides another row of shiny teeth!

2008-08-28T22:30:00.002-04:00

I'm returning from the Summer's regular-job-schedule-imposed hiatus (this was the first place I had worked at since Krogers - back in the mid/late 90s, mind you - that didn't have interweb access in the office), so I'm just going to throw out some updates.

The first is this simply wonderful music video that's been floating around Cartoon Network. The show that this comes from, The Adventures of Flapjack, isn't one that I watch regularly, but the times I've caught bits and pieces seem pretty funny, plus I think it's made in Sweden and just dubbed into English:

I just love the "but your mom has poor eyesight" line - perfect!

In sadder news: As of Wednesday, August 27th, I have officially given up on Wes Anderson. I was a huge fan of Rushmore, and very much enjoyed Royal Tenenbaums. Life Aquatic was tough, but I watched it several times (and own a copy) for my Bill Murray research. Hell, I even liked Anderson's American Express advertisement. But I got around to watching The Darjeeling Limited yesterday, and it was just too much I can't deny that he's got a really distinctive cinematic style (and one hell of an eye for diegetic space), but I found Darjeeling just honestly difficult to watch. The characters and dialogue almost seemed like someone was parodying the stuff that had worked much better in Anderson's other films.

My mourning was short-lived, however, as I have found my new indie film favorite - the Campagna brothers, whose movie Six Reasons Why is just plain awesome. It's a Western (technically it's set in a post-apocalyptic Western frontier, but it does't really affect the film noticably), but the best way to describe it is as someone trying (and pretty much succeeding) to capture the spirit of Sergio Leone and other spaghetti western filmmakers. There's also a fairly gutsy narrative complication, which I think is also pulled off successfully. In a perfect world, Six Reasons Why would be opening in hundreds on theaters this weekend instead of Disaster Movie.

Death by Pictures...

2008-08-25T13:22:00.011-04:00

It's been many eventful weeks for us - all the best of summer, from the slightly mundane to the truly wonderful. Here's the rundown.

Hiking

We have been talking for a while about better utilizing our Metro Parks, so a few weeks ago Husband and I took the dogs on a little hike. What a beautiful way to spend a few hours. Good exercise for both us and the pups, and we got to enjoy the wooded landscape of Ohio. How refreshing! Here is a picture of the dogs. This was new dog's first experience off of pavement on the leash . He did pretty well.

Kimonos

The Nerds had a big nerd conference a few weeks ago. Apparently at these sorts of nerd fests people dress up in costumes like the characters they play in their games. Being the crafty wife I am, I got suckered into making a couple kimonos for some of the boys to wear. The kimono featured below was worn by one of the Nerds whose character is a young girl who is akin to the water??? Hmmm, a 220lb Nerd pretending to be a young girl via a costume in the colors of coral and water? I try not to figure these things out. It makes my head hurt. Besides, they pay me to do this and I can force husband to come to the fabric store with me to pick out the colors. I totally win in this case. Watching Husband wander uncomfortably through the fabric store is almost payment enough! I just wish I had pictures of the Nerds actually wearing the kimonos.

Vacation

We recently returned from our annual trek to the lake. What a great week! It was so relaxing - spending the days on water and chilling out to watch the Olympics in the evenings. The best part was spending so much time with my niece and nephews. They are a total trip! My oldest nephew has an odd sense of what is fun. For example, when asked whether he would like to wash dishes or go to the pool he pondered for a moment and said, "BOTH!" The boy loves to do the dishes...

He also likes to drive the boat with Pawpaw, but that makes a lot more sense to me.

My niece prefers doing anything that makes Husband say or do something funny. Sooner or later this usually involves thumb war. Husband is a super cheater at thumb war which the kids think is hilarious!

The water was really low this year which meant that a lot more of the banks were visible. From the boat my dad and I spied what looked like a foundation and possibly a fireplace on the banks of a cove. We decided to investigate. We went up on land and explored the area... There was definitely a house there at one point, probably before the valley was flooded by the damning of the river. The foundation and the rubble around it are all that's left. It was cool to see all of the bricks and stones and the distinct outline of the foundations of the house and the outbuildings. We also discovered what we thought was a fireplace was actually a cistern. Part of it had collapsed but if you looked down into it, it had rounded walls and the top had bolts in it where there had once been a lid. It was kind of cool to see the remains of some one's home like that. I wonder who lived there?

As usual, vacation went too quickly. I was not ready to come home. Neither was Husband...

Friends

This past weekend we got to see lots of friends! Some from high school, some from college - it was great to catch up with so many people. Some of the guys were in for the fantasy football draft which was hosted for the boys at our house. By 7:00 last night the pups were completely wiped-out and so were we!

Well, fantasy football means its almost fall again. This summer has gone way too fast, but I have to say it's been a really great one!

Oh, and a big CONGRATS to Tom! Not just for graduating, but for graduating at the head of his class! Just like the good Dr. Paul... Our friends are such super-overachievers!

He's made of Dolemite - that sweet black element that won't melt under heat!!!

2008-08-04T20:10:00.003-04:00

Minor updates on Dog v2.0:

-After a morning at the groomers (which just a little more expensive when I'm paying double...), Dog 2.0 looks much better, and much, much skinnier. They were able to take care of all of the matted fur and get rid of the semi-ridiculous-mohawk that Dog 2.0 had going on there. Plus I learned that some dogs get so excited after going to the groomer/vet/etc that they can't help but pee all over my back seat....

-Dog and Dog 2.0 are getting along pretty well. The only real issue is when Dog intentionally torments Dog 2.0. She'll pick up a chew stick in her mouth, walk over to Dog 2.0 and drop the chew stick about 6 inches in front of him, then starts barking and growling as soon as Dog 2.0 so much as looks at it.

-Most of the time, Dog 2.0 finds the nearest leg/foot/arm and just plops down, going from 60 to Zero in seconds. Dog 2.0 also has a much more amusing manner of sleeping, where he'll just lay on his back with all four legs akimbo - he particularly likes airing his junk out in front of my fan in front of the TV (I have no idea where he got that idea)

-It should be noted that so far all 4 of the children (3 nephews/niece and Kronic III) like Dog 2.0 much better (probably becuase he doesn't immediately tackle them like Dog is wont to do)

That's about it for now; I'm sure there will be some non-Dog(s)-related posting in the near future, especially when the Fantasy Draft comes around.

Family Expansion

2008-08-04T09:39:00.007-04:00

No... not a baby! A dog!

Husband and I have been debating getting Dog a playmate for about six months now. Poor Dog is always looking for someone to run in circles with and despite our best efforts at exercising her we can't possibly keep up with her energy level. So on Friday night after work we went to the Humane Society to see the dogs available. Lo and behold, there were two little scruffy dogs who looked surprisingly like Dog - one girl and one boy. The girl, we were told, does not play well with others so we focused our attention on the boy.

On Saturday we brought Dog to the Humane Society to meet him and they got along swimmingly! So New Dog is now at home with us as a foster-to-adopt dog. We have him until Tuesday when we can either give him back or sign the papers making him ours. I'm pretty sure we are going to keep him!

He is great with both of us. Over the weekend my sister and the kids were in town and he was great with the kids. Then last night the Nerds were over and he was good with them too. Good thing, because the Nerds are over a lot! Best of all he and Dog get along really well.

He LOVES to snuggle and has an all around good temperament. Today both Dog and New Dog are at the groomers as they both need a little work (New Dog especially!) I'll share pictures soon...

UPDATE:
New Dog BEFORE the Groomer...

New Dog AFTER the Groomer...

A Quasi-Celbrity Sighting!

2008-07-28T09:25:00.003-04:00

We had quite and enjoyable Sunday yesterday with my parents...lunch at the Nugget, trimmed the tree in our front yard , edged our flower beds, pulled weeds, cleaned out the garage and installed a fan in there. You know, all that crazy homeowner stuff you get to do... It's funny how much Husband wants to make a good impression on my parents. I've never seen him work so hard on a Sunday (or any day really)!

Anyway, we then took in the Dragon's game. They were playing the Kane County Cougars. I didn't even know from what state Kane County haled from until we got to the game, but while perusing the program I learned they are from Illinois and they are part of the Oakland Athletics' system. Then I saw player #24 from Kane County was none other than, wait for it... Shane Keough!

For those of you who are not hopelessly addicted to crappy reality television on Bravo, Shane is one of the kids from The Real Housewives of Orange County. A quasi-celebrity at best but still a fun little extra perk to the game nonetheless. More amusing than just seeing Shane was the fact that my mom had no idea who in the world he was, but my dad was about as excited as I was! Oh dad! He is so funny!

Here is my crappy cell phone picture of him. You can almost decipher that it's him with his standard five o'clock shadow.

So all in all, a pretty exciting day here in D-town!

Happy 4th of July!

2008-07-01T13:29:00.006-04:00

I realize it's been forever since either of us has posted, and neither of us really has an excuse for that. Summer is summer, and it's either busy or you feel like being lazy. I've been traveling and Husband is finally feeling the rigours of a 8-5 job. Ooooooo!

It's hard to believe but the Official mid-point of summer is upon us - Fourth of July and all of it's patriotic awesomeness! The celebration started around here last week. When you live in a military town the splendor of this occasion takes on new meaning. This past Friday we had VIP tickets to the Air Force TATTOO. With flyovers by all of the bomber and fighter planes (even the F-22 Raptor, AWESOME!) in the AF arsenal, it was a sight to behold. The AF Band of Flight provided the soundtrack for the flyovers which proceeded a concert by this man and his band...

Yes, Charlie Daniels my friends. "Devil Went Down to Georgia," anyone? Good fun!

And in true American fashion there were spectacular fireworks! Nothing says "HAPPY BIRTHDAY USA!" Like loud explosive things manufactured in China.

In all it was a wonderful event. Attended by over 70,000 people, the TATTOO was a rousing night of patriotism. We saw more then 30 new AF recruits take their oath. We saluted all of the veterans and recently deployed. We witnessed the bronze star ceremony of three individuals whose acts of bravery helped save lives, bring terrorists to justice, and make life easier for those impacted in Iraq.

It seems that on TV and in the news we are constantly hearing all the bad things about our country and our troops and this war, but last Friday I was reminded again why I am proud to be an American. It is an honor to be a citizen of this country and I'm happy that through my job I get to help support the work of the AF.

So... Happy Birthday America! And, Happy Fourth of July everyone... I hope you enjoy every Red, White, and Blue minute of it.

Is this about the quonset hut full of hookers?

2008-06-05T23:37:00.003-04:00

Good news, everybody! I is no longer unemployed!

On Monday, I actually managed to get multiple job offers (after only 3 weeks of no positive responses...), the best being a 9-week temp placement at The Job Center, the massive building down on Edwin C. Moses. Admittedly, I had no idea just how massive this place really is - 8+ acres of cubicles dealing with welfare applicants.

I'm working with the Youthworks program as a case manager, which consists of driving from one of my 34 job sites (assuming that the Trotwood school system doesn't make me go to each building separately) and making sure that my 165ish employees are working their full time and showing up when they're supposed to be.

It's not the most exciting job, and since I've been assigned to the Trotwood/Northwest area, it means driving a lot. But, the pay's good, and it's a garuanteed 40 hours each week.

Bathroom Renovation - Part 6, The End

2008-06-01T19:15:00.008-04:00

We have a functional bathroom again! We spent the weekend finishing the moulding, touching up paint, and putting the fixtures back it. It was a fun adventure including many trips to the neighborhood Ace Hardware (thank God for their advice) and lots of heavy lifting (thanks Husband!) Now we have a nice, non-leaking toilet and a sink installed in a crisp clean bathroom.

Here is Husband trying out his new throne and pondering the placement of the new toilet paper holder...

Placement was determined for the "futuristic robot penis" (Husband can explain that) and installation was a breeze. Finally, everything else including the vent cover, switch plates, mirror, and towl ring were put into place...

This afternoon we hung the door back up so, it's pretty well finished! I still want to get some sort of artwork to hang above the toilet and possibly some new towls, but it's effectively done!

Thanks to everyone for following along. I've really enjoyed sharing the experience!

GIGGITY

2008-05-31T18:04:00.003-04:00

"...she's got a deep hole and she just needs to have it filled..."

Sometimes it's worth watching VH1's trashy Saturday afternoon programming, as illustrated by this actual quote from 'Britney Spears' Secret Childhood'

Bathroom Renovation - Part 5, I HATE Geometry

2008-05-29T11:14:00.005-04:00

I have always loved old homes. They have so much character! I was really excited when we bought our house because, despite the fact that it's a little small (quaint!), it has fun little details like cut-glass door knobs, real plaster walls, archways between rooms, and hardwood floors (currently buried beneath carpet, next project???) However, after the last week of working on the bathroom I'm starting to hate some things about old homes... namely, the fact that after 60+ years of existence, there is no such thing as a level/plumb/square surface ANYWHERE in our home!

Normally this does not pose a huge issue, but in the case of installing paneling and moulding it becomes a huge issue. Figuring out the angles to be cut becomes a 3-dimensional task. Instead of taking for granted that the floor is level, the corners meet at 90 degree angles, and the wall surface is straight (ie: not concave or convex) I have to figure out random angles in every direction and account for every stupid little imperfection. It's probably one of the most frustrating things I've ever had to do.

I had some serious flashbacks to high school geometry class - drawing pictures of triangles and polygons, and trying to figure out the angles of the corners. I even tried to use the vague recollections I had about solving such problems, but realized that high school geometry does not really teach you to think in 3-dimension. At least not that I can recall. but I loathed math in high school so I'm probably suppressing lots of useful knowledge to my own detriment.

Fortunately, after lots of trial and error, I'm pretty much done with this step. I have one last cut of the baseboard to make and then touching up the paint where the nails went in. But here is a preview...

By this weekend we should be putting the toilet and sink back in! Yippee Skippee! Plumbing will bring a whole new pack of issues, but I'm accepting that in advance.

Honk if you love cookies!

2008-05-29T10:56:00.003-04:00

Have you ever been so stoned that you crashed your car into a tree? Then did you get out of your car and see there wasn't actually any damage from the accident—not so much as a scratch on your bumper? Then did you notice that there also wasn't any tree? When you were finally able to calm down and get back in your car to drive away, were you embarrassed to realize that all along it was the air freshener hanging from your rearview mirror?

Me neither.*

~~~

A few things...

Lots of fun this last weekend, traveling in pretty much every direction for a bevy of cookouts and parties. Good to see everyone, and to eat copious amounts of foodstuffs gratis.

I got a call this morning from one of the temp agencies with a possible employment opportunity, so I'm pretty much just sitting here next to the phone waiting for a call.

There's also this nice bit from the MentalFloss blog: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/15303
I wonder if 'Hachiko' was the inspiration for the most heroic dog ever, Seymour Asses.

Makes me tear up just thinking about it.

Finally, John Warner on McSweeneys has provided the following advice on getting the most important response from your students: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2008/5/15warner.html

*(joke shamelessly stolen from Brian Beatty)

It's a slow news week...

2008-05-23T09:58:00.006-04:00

The struggle for the rights of oppressed high-school failures to wear pointy cardboard hats has been taken to court. Because, you know, when we don't like a public policy, the only person who can help us is a Common Pleas judge.

"Their argument is we have no right to grant this request," said Donald Domaneck, acting as his own attorney. "But we're not coming from the standpoint of whether you have a right or not. We are asking you to consider the circumstances. The kids have worked hard. The law responsible for this policy is unfair. Are we being sensitive to the feelings of the kids or acting like a robot?"

Call me insensitive, but does anyone else really think that his kid had perfect attendance and a 3.5 GPA? It's been a while since I took the Graduate Exams (at least I think I took them, but I honestly don't remember), but they weren't terribly difficult. I can understand having a rough time and not getting it the first time, but the Tuesday article noted that these students have failed the exam multiple times.

Let's get judgmental for a minute - if you really want to help your kid, Mr. Domaneck, sit down with him or her and help them prepare for the summer exam. So far, you spent several days protesting and in court. Wouldn't those days be better spent? And this is coming from a person who's sitting on the couch watching a dog nap.

Yes, you should all be gasping collectively!

2008-05-20T09:21:00.002-04:00

Per usual, I found something that made me pissed off enough to make a blog post about 5 minutes after I finished a long, boring post.

According to the DDN (motto: "technically a newspaper"), a number of parents protested outside the Dayton Board of Education to demand that their children be allowed to walk for graduation, even though the children had failed to pass the Ohio Graduation Test. The argument these parents seem to have (at least according to the 2 parents who were quoted) is that the kids have the requisite number of credits to graduate, and therefore should be allowed to pass. To quote:

"Parker said her daughter earned 21 credits, was a good student and worked hard
to try to pass the test."

Whether we agree with the policy of the State Test or not, this is the same sort of excuse-making I get to hear from my (undergraduate) students - they worked hard, completed the assignments, why shouldn't they get an 'A' (or at least pass)? But it's not like these exams (or my own grading policies) are a surprise; every student and parent knows that they need to take these exams to graduate. If they don't meet the established requirement, why should they be allowed to march? Is there a 'right' to walk at graduation? Would these parents support a student who passed the exam but never attended a single class his senior year, then decided he wanted to walk because he fulfilled every other requirement?

If the parent's want to protest, that's fine. I'm glad they support their children (in a fashion). But then this quote shows up, from a parent named Mr. Domineck:

"The standards are unequal and it is unfair to kids in the city, white or black,
who don't have the resources of a Kettering."

To give a little context, the DDN article notes that Kettering schools allow students to walk even if they haven't passed the exam (the state law is that each school board can decide on its own whether to allow such students to march).

The matter of potential class/gender/race-based bias in standardized testing is certainly debatable, but to bring it in here is, frankly, bullshit. The majority of DPS students have passed these exams; I don't have the percentage of students in Kettering that failed to pass, but we can at least agree that there are in fact at least some who do so.

As often is the case, it seems like the last refuge for a filed argument is to claim victim status.

This ends your irregularly scheduled rant...

Coin collecting’s a lot like life; it stopped being fun a long time ago.

2008-05-20T08:39:00.004-04:00

The Wife's been hogging the blog spotlight with all this jibber-jabber about home improvement for the last few weeks. Just like I need to have a stare down with the Dog every few days, looks like it's time to re-establish my blogging dominance...

After barely surviving the last week of April (somehow writing 73 pages of papers in a single weekend), I'm finding my schedule depressingly empty recently. I've managed to completely strike out when it comes to finding work this summer - no available classes to teach, various HR folks telling me I'm overqualified to be a security guard, etc. It's kind of a downer when people at a temp agency look at my resume, make me take a 2-hour-long clerical test, then tell me I'm overqualified.

So I've been hanging out with The Dog a lot. We've taken some w-a-l-k-s (just in case Dog reads this, I don't want it getting excited), caught up on netflix and DVR (I'm about halfway through Battlestar Galactica's season 3 and have all of season 4 waiting on the DVR), and actually gotten some work done around the house (including starting a bonfire that ended up smelling suspiciously strongly of ganja).

I'm seen a handful of movies that I'll grant micro-reviews here. No Country For Old Men was actually better than I thought it would be; I haven't read the book (I got through about half of McCarthy's The Road and got bored), but it was a very impressive bit of filmmaking and storytelling. I don't really agree with folks who claim it's a Western, but I'm no Kent Anderson, so who knows. After several semesters of badgering, I finally watched The Player - it was certainly interesting, but I might have gone into it with too high of expectations (plus I had a hard time getting over early 1990s fashion). I sat through all 180 minutes of The Good Sheperd, and came away thinking that I still don't buy Matt Damon as an old man. I watched the Quentin Tarentino half of Grindhouse, and while I'm still not a fan of 1970s-style horror-thrillers, I can appreciate what QT was trying to do in Death Proof; whether I actually watch Rodriguez' half, who can say. I Am Legend was indeed much more faithful to the source material than The Omega Man, but it completely fell apart about 2/3 of the way through the movie (right after the dog gets it); since it was on Netflix, I never saw the variant ending, so maybe things were better there. One pleasant surprise was Spike Lee's Inside Man, which had remarkably few cameos from Lee and was actually one hell of a heist movie. Along with catching up with old BSG, I watched the entire season (about 210 minutes) of Frisky Dingo, an old Adult Swim show by the guys who did SeaLab 2012 - it's insanely funny, especially when you can watch it all as one continuous story (instead of watching 15 minutes each weekend).

Since I actually went to the cinema to see it, I guess Iron Man deserves its own paragraph. While I'm a big comic-book dork, the character is so non-mythical (compared to Superman, Batman, maybe Spider-man) that I really didn't care if Jon Favreau took liberties with the established story. I was quite impressed with the way that Tony Stark (the 'secret' identity of Iron Man, you non-nerds) was given some psychological depth and development. A few other critics have pointed this out, but I thought it was definitely worth repeating - the film makes the armor actuall seem heavy. It moves relatively slowly and deliberately, the opposite of the fluid acrobatics of Spider-man. It makes logical sense, given that it's a massive collection of metal plates, hydraulics, and circuitry. I move slowly, and all I'm wearing are New Balances, bluejeans, and a machete. Plus, if you're not impressed with the acting from the entire cast (especially Jeff Bridges, who might be my new god), you have no soul.

Finally, I must end with fairly sad news - the Enquirer announced today that the Bengals released Odell Thurman after he skipped the voluntary minicamp last week in order to attend his grandmother/caretaker's funeral. This brings to an end not only the widely fluctuating career of Thurman (April 2006-May 2008), but dooms my treasured Thurman jersey (Nov 2006-May 2008) to a premature demise, with the possible brief post-mortum appearance at StraightCashHomey.

On the rare honest emotion - take a moment today and pour one out for Isaac Klosterman, who was killed last weekend in a hit-and-run motorcycle accident.

Bathroom Renovation - Part 4, Attack of the Grout

2008-05-19T09:45:00.005-04:00

So we finally got to the grouting... Grouting is not as much fun as the rest of this project has been. It takes a lot of muscle to smear it in between the tiles and then A LOT of scrubbing. Oh, and it's terrifying. When you start working it in you pretty much cover everything, and then your beautiful tiles looks like this...

After letting it set up a bit you start to scrub it to get up all of the excess grout...

And finally, after hundreds of buckets of water (thanks Husband) it starts to look pretty again...

It's not fun. My hands were tinted black for about 5 days from all of the grout contaminated water that I was working with as I cleaned the floor over and over again. And the thing is, I still feel like it's not quite clean. Blah!

Next step... Beadboard and moulding. Yay mitre saw!

Bathroom Renovation - Part 3

2008-05-12T10:40:00.004-04:00

After a short lull in the productivity department we finally made some progress on the reno this weekend. I actually got the painting done a little over a week ago and boy is it bold! I mostly love it, but I'm slightly intimidated by the boldness of it. Clearly I can't think of any other word than "bold" to describe it so how about a picture so you can judge for yourself...

I figure of any room in the house to go a little crazy with color, why not the bathroom? Besides, everything else in this room will be black or white. A splash of color is really neccessary.

Below is a close up of our wonderfully vintage-looking new tile. I've been coveting this tile for months and months and I'm so happy it's finally mine!

After a frustrating trip to Lowes on Friday to gather more supplies, we actually got to working on the floors on Saturday. We laid the backer-board, did a dry fit of all of the tile, made the neccessary cuts, and finally got out the trowl and mortar and got them all down on the floor...

Due to Mother's Day and the fact that the temperature dropped overnight we weren't able to grout yesterday, but that is on the plate for tonight. I'm really trying to push this project through to completion as soon as possible - partly because I'm sick of the entire first floor of my house looking something like this...

And partly because Husband is finally home full-time and I'm sick of sharing one bathroom (and NO the urinal does not count!) Stay tuned for further developments...

Bathroom Renovation - Part 2

2008-04-29T09:39:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday was another day of hard labor in the bathroom... I applied another two skim coats of plaster and sanded everything down to an awesomely smooth finish. It's kind of sad, but now the nicest walls in our 60 year old house are in our guest bathroom. If my entire body weren't screaming at me in pain from using muscles that I never use, I would consider doing this throughout the entire house. It's super-cheap and makes a big difference in the look of the walls.

Here are the newly plastered walls with the final paint choice, as decided on by Husband (his one major contribution to the effort thus far)

Monday after work I made a quick trip to our friendly neighborhood Ace Hardware for painting supplies and got to work. It's amazing the difference a couple of coats of primer can make. Now that everything is solid white it almost looks like a new room (if you don't look down at the gross floor!)

This week I'm going to try t0 work on painting and laying the wonder board in preperation for the tile... Husband and I have a hot date with a lawn aerator and some fertilizer this weekend so I'm not sure how much inside work will get done.

"Live every week like it's shark week!"

2008-04-24T13:16:00.007-04:00

Today is awesome!

Tonight is the awards ceremony for 40 Under 40 and I'm totally excited. I had a moment of panic this morning when I found out that I actually have to walk across the stage, a-la graduation ceremony, to receive the award. Normally this would not be a big deal, but because I'm going to be sporting brand new 4 inch green stilettos and there are going to be 550 people there, I was slightly panicked. However, after a few practice walks around the office this morning I'm feeling more confident.

This morning I received the most beautiful flowers. There was no signature on the card so I was a little confused at first, but Husband finally admitted that he sent them. This is not typical behavior so I was pleasantly surprised!

Then, for lunch I was taken out by a co-worker to celebrate and on the way back to my car we saw the following bumper sticker...

I love a good bumper sticker! Especially ones that refer to violence in ancient societies and especially because this one was on a minivan. This day really is just AWESOME!

Bathroom Renovation - Part 1

2008-04-19T20:57:00.008-04:00

So, Husband has been harassing me for days about posting... It's been a while - I know. I've been somewhat busy with work and I was in Chicago last weekend for a girls weekend with my mom, sister, and niece. We had a fabulous time! And next weekend Husband and I get to go to Baltimore for a wedding. Wew! It's a lovely few weeks of travel for me!

This weekend, however, we're actually home. Husband has been working on papers and I decided to renovate the bathroom. I've been considering this for a while. I've never really loved our first-floor half-bath. It was relatively new - new sink, toilet, and fixtures. It just wasn't how I would do it. I had some ideas for how I wanted to re-do it, but there was always some other project that was more important. That is until last week when we determined that the toilet was leaking due to a faulty wax ring. That meant the toilet needed to be removed to fix it. We figured if the toilet was coming out anyway, then we should just go ahead and renovate. So with the assistance of my favorite reno-buddy, AW, I got to work today.

Here is the bathroom this morning as I started moving everything out...

Here is the beautiful floor after we ripped out the toilet, sink, molding, and the vinyl flooring...

Then, after a trip to Lowes to order the tile and round up supplies I got a good skim coat of plaster on the walls which were horribly uneven and dinged up...

Finally, after all of my hard work today, I'm laying on the couch considering my paint choices. I'm thinking of going with a teal-ish, blue-green, Tiffany kind of color. These are my top four choices...

The lighting in this picture is somewhat dark so it's probably hard to judge. You'll just have to stay tuned and see how it all turns out!

Hooray Professional Development!

2008-04-17T10:47:00.003-04:00

My last post (which I would have spruced up if I knew company was coming) got commented on by a real-life movie producer! He thanked me for the positive review, which means I'm only a bribe or a swag bag away from being a professional film critic!

My book review in IJOCA just came out - I'd include a scan or something, but I forgot to subscribe to the journal back in Novemeber, so I'm waiting on my copy before I can actually read the thing. I don't care if I got cut down to a single line, this goes down as my first academic publication-that's-not-on-a-sketchy-website-or-a-self-published-thesis! Huzzah!

I've actually got 2 of 3 diss. committee members lined up, and I'm just waiting for departmental politics to calm down before I approach my advisor...

I managed to read all 22 (1 dropout) final papers yesterday, and I was only up until 2am! The plus side is that I got to watch all of Daily Show and Colbert (some great Ben-Franklin-plus-French-Hooker jokes).

I finished by American Film make-up exam (stupid senior salute), but I had to cut the following question:

Question 9) Isn't Anthony Perkins creepy? Man, it's like that bird is looking right at you, right? Am I right? Bring in examples from the reading to support your answer.

Sex Cauldron? I thought they closed that place down!

2008-04-14T19:53:00.003-04:00

This is more of an obligatory post than anything else, as I've pretty much spend the weekend on the couch surrounded by library books, The Dog, and a laptop with a sometimes-functioning mouse. So far, I've got all of the #3 Essays graded (I get the next batch, #4, tomorrow morning), and I'm about halfway done with my Postcolonial Media paper.

After watching my 3 Netflix DVDs, I was a bit bummed out, since Saturday afternoon kind of bit for folks who aren't fans of PGA action. I was saved by the new Netflix feature that lets you instantly watch movies over the interwebs. (I'll keep shamelessly shilling it until Netflix sends the residuals check). Along with a couple episodes of NewsRadio (always good), the first season of the Dana Carvey Show (a lot funnier in my memory), the new animated Justice League New Frontier (suprisingly graphic, but with messed up voice acting), I happened to watch an very neat movie, Man From Earth

It's a very quiet film, as the subdued style definitely takes a back seat to the fantastic story. Man From Earth is a very intelligent, character-and-dialogue driven narrative that recalls some of the better 'Twilight Zone' episodes (not surprisingly, writer Jerome Bixby used to write for both Serling and the original Star Trek series). The movie's about a man who may - or may not - be a 14,000-year old immortal caveman; it' not just about whether or not he really is, but what it might mean. There isn't a single FX shot, and nearly all of the acion takes place within a single living room. About the only expense involved is the casting, which finds a lot of "That Guy/Girl" actors - Tony Todd is probably the biggest name, and I doubt many folks could even pick him out of a lineup.

In all, it's good to see a story that's intelligent and interesting enough to actually inspire later thinking.

PS- I had watched The Brave One the evening before, and was going to post about that, but I just can't figure out if I liked it or not; Jodi Foster looked scary, and Jeffrey Wright was awesomely subdued. The downside - Said died in like the first 10 minutes.

Take that, Tom!

2008-04-09T23:34:00.002-04:00

I am a comedy pacesetter!

On tonight's Colbert Report, joking about the Free Tibet protests of the Olympic torch in San Francisco:

"If the protestors are still bothering you, then just set fire to the
hotel. After all, we know that the city burns....

[boos from the crowd]

Too soon?"

Seriously, though, congratulations to Tom.

Foiled again!

2008-04-08T13:26:00.001-04:00

damn, someone beat me to it:

http://www.weirdasianews.com/2008/04/03/singapore-superhero-batman-bin-suparmen/

The government doesn't want you to know it, but people spontaneously combust all the time-That's why you see so many sneakers hanging from power lines

2008-04-07T14:04:00.002-04:00

The sheer volume of crappy papers (and the fact that I've really done nothing but grade papers for the last week) has kept me from posting more frequently. Some of the papers are good, and there are others...

Last week, while taking a break from said papers, I participated in the Grad. Teaching Assistant Tradition of looking up my reviews on ratemyprofessor.com. Aside from the creepily stalker-ish ("I WANT TO HAVE HIS BABIES!!!"), the most frightening was this Hitleresque one:

"He's really charismatic; he's able to teach without making it seem like he's doing anything."

Edited for comparison:

"He's really charismatic; he's able to [take control of Germany/invade Poland/commit genocide] without making it seem like he's doing anything."

Attention: Please Stop Throwing Cigarette Butts Into the Urinal

2008-04-01T09:39:00.001-04:00

It makes them soggy and harder to light.

Told you

"Aw man, it smells like a Bible story in here!"

2008-03-31T18:49:00.003-04:00

A relatively quiet and subdued weekend spent grading papers from both classes (because I'm the moron who made all the assignments on the same day), so I've been alternating between (mostly) despressingly crappy freshman research essay drafts and (mostly) well-written upperclass film papers. It seems that alternating back and forth makes it a little more tolerable.

Got to party hard (for two hours at least) at erOTic's (tm) bachelor party Saturday at Hofbrau, and learned a little bit of conversational Portuguese on the drive down.

Thanks to the dotseges (and johnnycakes) for putting up with my overly cooked pork chops on Saturday, and congrats to Tom for joining the Spring 2008 award-winners club. Too bad he still can't beat me at Smash Brothers.

Took my sister to lunch for her birthday, and she ruined my April Fool's gift. Jerk.

I just got done watching the new all-CGI Beowulf, and it was actually pretty damn good, at least once you get past the pixelated nudity. There's a lot of Neil Gaiman-esque themes present, which I appreciate. I'd like to to a side-by-side viewing of this version and Beowulf and Grendel, a 'historical' version from a few years back with Gerald Butler in the lead. I give it 4.72 Sparkplugs.

The Waiting Game sucks, let's play Hungry Hungry Hippos

2008-03-26T14:33:00.003-04:00

ARGGH - two full days of student conferences, where at least 75% of people haven't even started their 10 page Research Essay yet. It was assigned prior to Spring Break, I've been giving them constant pre-writing and outlining exercises, and the First Draft is due tomorrow.

I'm starting to get swamped by my own work (3 30+ pagers, all due within 24 hours of each other), but it's good to have the light at the end of the tunnel that represents never having to teach GSW again. Ever. No, really, I'm running like hell after I turn in my portfolios.

I watched perhaps the oddest collections of films the last few days. The first was Lake of Fire, a 3-hour long documentary on the abortion debate; while it remains objective throughout, it's really just depressing, since both sides of the argument are both absolutely right and absolutely wrong. Yesterday, in a discussion about comparing theoretical lenses of world cinema with American cinema, we watched Xica de Silva, possibly the strangest thing I have ever seen, involving gratuitous nudity and at least one orgy, along with some awesome 70s haristyles - I think the movie is a criticism of racism, but I'm not entirely sure. After 2+ hours of Portuguese-language sexfest, I got to (finally, as it's been scheduled on the syllabus for each class since week 3) watch Battle of Algiers; I had worked on getting this screened at the Neon several years ago, but came down with a flu bug the day it was showing, and missed it. But you know, watching a bootleg VHS copy on a small screen in an uncomfortable chair still didn't make the movie any less awesome. The instructor failing to plan properly (nothing new there; despite having 3.5 hours to work with, she can't schedule a 90-min screening) and having to stop the movie prematurely, before the climactic riot scene - that's what ruined the movie. Finally, I get back to my room and watch Blades of Glory while grading papers. I challenge anyone to top that combo of viewing!

I got some more feedback on my conference presentation this morning, as well as reassurance that my paper didn't completely bite. So I got that going for me.

If this doesn't make you excited, you're probably a communist

2008-03-22T10:42:00.002-04:00

Twenty dollars can be used to buy many peanuts...

2008-03-22T09:43:00.002-04:00

You've seen the pictures, and heard the stories so far, but you're wondering - what about the food? How have they managed to find McDonald's so close to their hotel? Has our beloved blogger finally given in and eaten tofu? Can sourdough bread really stop a small-caliber bullet? Is Rice-A-Roni truly a local 'treat'?

Tuesday:

3:15 est - Max & Erma's at the CVG

Before we leave for the West Coat, I try to build up my transfats and undercooked beef. Decent burger, trademark quality fries, sadly no Dr. Pepper

8:00 pt - Lori's Diner, Mason Street

We get off the shuttle from the airport (which is not at all complementary, by the way) and I'm bloody starving. Next to the hotel was a 24-hr diner, so we grabbed a couple of delicious grilled cheese sammiches. This was the last time I found non-fishbone fries.

Wednesday:

(no breakfast, presenting at conference)

2:00 pt - Foley's Irish Pub

There's something awesome about a traditional Irish pub that has an oil-painted portrait of Bono on the wall. I grabbed a panini (which is apparently the dominant form of sammich out here) with ham, cheese, and some more stuff - good sammich, but the 'fresh greens' it came with looked and tasted like my lawn.

7:15 pt - Colibri

The Wife had read a review of this mexican/spanish place, and wanted to come here. It was uber-trendy (old silent Spanish films being played on a plasma over the bar), but had surprisingly large portions. I got chunks of pork, she got chicken and mashed potatoes with orange sauce on top. My favorite part was the pineapple salsa that got served as part of a color-coordinated 3-salsa tray.

Thursday:

7:30 pt - Sears Fine Foods

Despite all the signs proclaiming good Zagat ratings, this place was pretty reasonable, and kind of like the Nugget (if all the servers were Guatamalan). The Wife got a seafood omelette, and I got the 18-Swedish-pancake breakfast (good, even though the pancakes were tiny and thin). I ordered an extra side of sausage links, but only got 2 medium-sized links (which apparently cost $1.40 per link).

1:15 pt - Cliff House Bistro

After walking for 3 straight hours, we finally hiked the final hundred (uphill) steps up to the restaurant. The Cliff House has 4 seperate dining areas, ranging from casual to snooty, and we were inexplicably pointed toward the lower, very-snooty area, where the cheapest salad was $28. We sat for 15 minutes without anyone stopping by or even filling up the water, then left and went back upstairs. We ended up at the bar in the Bistro (where we were trying to go in the first place), and enjoyed drastically better service. I got a chicken sammich that came with a surprisingly tasty (although bizarrely green) pesto sauce. I drank about 20 glasses of water, which would be more impressive if the glasses weren't tiny and ice-filled.

6:30 pt - Boudin's

Located down at Fisherman's Wharf, this place is a massive sourdough bakery on the lower level (where folks can watch the bread being made from the sidewalk) and a bar/grill on the second floor. I decided to go ahead and order a normal beer, and accombanied that with a oddly dry burger and a freaking awsome dish of macaroni and cheese (several cheeses, massive noodles). Wife got a sourdough bowl of chowder.

Friday:

8:15 pt - Port of San Francisco Market

Waiting for the ferry to take us across the bay to Napa, we both got egg/cheese/bacon breakfast sammiches, which were surprisingly large and tasty.

12:30 pt - V. Sattui Winery

Took a break from drinking for a couple of paninis - not bad, but apparently not enough food to soak up the Wife's wine and champagne later in the day (see above)

7:30 pt - Cafe Mason

Despite the snooty French names on the menu and too-hip decor, this might have been the best overall food(taste and size)-to-cost ratio so far. We give in and order cokes and an appetizer of potato skins (excellent). The Wife gets tortellini, which she said was good. I was all kinds of hip and ordered the Croque Monsieur (french-style ham & cheese sammich, only with French Toast instead of normal toast), and it came with non-fishbone fries! Huzzah!

Saturday:

[will update - planning on grabbing breakfast from diner next door, and probably airport lunch involving cinnabon]

DEATH at 14 mph!!!!

2008-03-21T23:10:00.005-04:00

The last 24 hrs have been eventful to say the very least. Our evening started off calmly last night. It was a beautiful evening and our plan was to go to Fisherman's Wharf and see the touristy sites so we jumped on the cable car which pretty much runs directly from our hotel to the wharf.

The ride up was nothing to really talk about, but after a couple of hours of marveling at Alcatraz, psychotic seagulls, and the crazy amounts of people who are oddly facinated with giant smelly creatures...

we were ready to just get back to our hotel and go to bed. So, we returned to the cable car line for the ride back to Union Square. With the ride there so pleasant, I insisted we sit in the front this time so we could see everything on the way back. Little did I know that the ride back would be terrifying!

First, we were chugging along and we hit the first big hill... I'm not quite sure what happened, but suddenly we started rolling backwards down the hill. The "driver" is dinging the bell and the assistant is yelling at the cars behind us to "GO AROUND!" The driver throws on the brakes and gains control of the car. Then, after rolling backwards all the way down the hill into the middle of an intersection we charge up the hill and make it to the top and over down the other side. We then go through a series of turns, random intersection transfers, down some super-steep hills, and we're racing down a side street that intersects with another cross street which has a stop sign, when something happens that makes me think I'm going to die...

A giant white van runs through the stop sign crossing our path and SLOWS down in the middle of the intersection. I, sitting at the front of the cable car, can look the van driver straight in the eye as we are careening down the hill towards him. The driver of the cable car again throws on the brakes and the driver of the van seems to finally realize that there is a cable car flying towards him and drives on. We literally come within a foot of hitting him! At this point I want nothing more than to be off of that crazy car! In a few more blocks we are off and to our room where we collapsed from exhaustion and terror! I don't think my heart has ever beat so hard!

Luckily, today was much more relaxed. We took the ferry from San Francisco to Vallejo and rode a private limo through Napa Valley where we visited 5 different wineries and tasted numerous wine varieties at each stop. It was fantastic! The weather was wonderful and the landscape was beautiful.

It was a great (quasi-drunk) day! I'm sad that our trip is coming to an end tomorrow. However, I am looking forward to getting home where there are no giant hills or runaway cable cars. I now appreciate that about Ohio... Funny how a near death experience makes you appreciate the mundane.

We're all quite proud of them...

2008-03-20T19:20:00.004-04:00

Yay for pb! It was great to return to our room and find out the good news...

And speaking of good news, several posts ago Husband mentioned that I was being nominated for an award. Well, I won. I have been named one of the buiness journals 40 under 40. The congratulations letter said I'm a "super achiever." Husband wants to order shirts so everyone knows.

Anyway, It's been a pretty great day so far. Here are a few pictures for your viewing delight. We're heading back out to enjoy the city.

City Hall

Alamo Square (or the Full House Houses!)

The Pacific Ocean

California, No Doubt About It..

2008-03-20T11:56:00.002-04:00

Happy belated St. Patrick's Day! We had a wonderful Sunday in SH where I got to walk a 5K with my mom and then we went to the Annual St. Paddy's Day Parade. It was a beautiful day to get into the Green spirit, even the Dog!

My niece and nephews are all about the parade. There is LOTS of candy (as you can see below) I think they get more candy at the parade then at Halloween. To be fair, on Halloween you actually have to walk around to get the candy. At the parade, you just sit there and they throw it at you! So easy... Husband got into the action by bribing the children to get him coolie cups and post-it notes. We are well stocked for the next year now.

So, we've been on the West Coast for over 24 hrs now and we are having a GREAT time! Below is a picture of our hotel, the King Geroge. It's in Union Square which is a fun part of the city with lots of art galleries and shopping, and there are wonderful restaurants everywhere. We've had some fabulous food. Today we are heading to Golden Gate Park and then over to Fisherman's Warf... Tomorrow we will be up in Napa Valley taking a limo around wine country! I'm super excited! We'll probably check in later so keep posted...

P.S. Good luck to pb and family on Match Day... We are thinking about you, and Happy B-day baby!

Frankenstien not understand line between fantasy and reality...

2008-03-15T08:51:00.002-04:00

Thank God the pressure of posting no. 100 is gone, and I can get back to normal blogging. Those of you who know me (hello, random reader who googled "Batman Ear Sex"!) understand that, sadly, I'm not hyperbolizing when I saw I actually spent several days mired in doubt and uncertainty before just panicking and avoiding the interweb altogether. Here were several of the possible ideas for the 100th post (that might be brought back for post #200):

A post from Dog's point of view, in which she exhorted the proletariat to rise up, cast off the shackles of capitalism, and bring her the head of Colonel Montoya (a shiny new donkey to the man who does so!)
After watching LOST from two weeks ago, an entire post from 1996 time-unstuck me, who is primarily wondering 1) where the hell he is and 2) why he got new shoes; it is estimated that "HoHos are my constant"
A completely blank post that encouraged the viewer to create their own ur-post; I blame this idea on a current course that's required me to view performance art
The word "poop" 100 times
The lyrics to the hit song "Thumby the Dirty Shoemaker"
A word-for-word reprinting of the very first post on this blog, about Pirate Day
Listing my 10 favorite comments from posts 1-99
Posting the 5 best things that never got posted (including a structural reading of the classic film Commando)
Finally, just posting an innocuous 101st post later that referred to the 100th post, again encouraging the viewer to create their own ur-post...

My only other (possibly legitimate) excuse for my absence was the long-awated release of Smash Brothers for the wii last week. It's pretty much bitchcakes, and thre's even an online option. Even though they dropped a couple of my favorite characters (no Dr. Mario?), the ones they added are all fairly worthwhile - even if I haven't figured out how to use Snake, it's pretty clear that someone who masters the timing of his slow attacks could be more or less unbeatable (I guess the same goes for the Pikmin guy). PB - if you don't have this yet, you should go buy it.

100th Blog Spectacular

2008-03-05T14:53:00.009-05:00

This was the biggest build up to nothing in the history of blogdom. Countdown to Aweseome? More like Countdown to Boring! And since Husband doesn't seem to have any intention of following through with his promise for awesomness of the 100th Blog variety, I am stealing his thunder and doing it for him.

So this is what we have been up to over the last two weeks...

I attended my 7 1/2 year reunion... Yes, you read correctly. I attended my 7 1/2 year reunion. It was quite fun actually! I got to see a lot of people I haven't seen in a while and I drank lots of beer. It was bizarre to me to see the breakdown of people in the room. At the 5 year reunion people generally hung out in their cliques from high school. This time around there was a nice split down the room between all of those who have children and/or are expecting and wanted to talk about child birth and diapers, and then everyone else. Thanks to MN (who may be new readership) for planning.
Husband was on Spring Break and did pretty much nothing. Oh, but if you ask him he was "writing papers" which must be lazy talk for "I slept most of the day"
The dog got a hair cut. She looks like a new dog. Seriously. She looks much younger and is more aerodynamic. You can tell she feels good about hereself as she struts her bad self through the neighborhood. Here she is sporting the hobo look before her stop at the doggie salon:

We got lots of snow last weekend... Here is a picture of Husband shoveling snow while I was warm and cozy in the house.

Finally, I just have to share with our readership just how ridiculous Husband can truly be (like you didn't already know.) Below is the unaltered contents of an email I recieved from him during a particularly busy day at work:
Since you apparently are choosing not to pick up your phone...I've made an executive decision. Juno is playing at 7:20pm at the Regal. We will be seeing it. I might make out with you during the previews and any parts where the movie gets boring. That is all.

Ok, next week we will be in San Francisco for one of Husband's nerd conferences. I get to tag along and do actual fun stuff while he networks and acts smart. My trusty laptop will be accompanying us across the country so maybe we will post from SF... if you're lucky?!

YAY! 100th BLOG! Catch-ya on the West Coast!

Countdown to Awesome, Part the Second

2008-02-28T09:52:00.003-05:00

In honor of my students, who just averaged a C+ on their second paper (really, is it that hard to find a 3rd source out of the 12 essays in the chapter?), I bring you this gem from The Onion:

"You Know What's Stupid? Everything I Don't Understand"

by Steve Bowman

For far too long I've sat idly by, twiddling my thumbs and respecting the right of others to form thoughts and opinions independent of my own, and I can't take it anymore. I've got to speak up about the many things that annoy me or I'm going to go crazy. Take these new credit cards with the microchips in them, for instance. Man, those things really get my goat—trying to improve a device that was working perfectly fine as it was. Even worse are those wrappers on CDs that take forever to open. But you know what I hate the most? The one thing that makes my blood boil whenever I see it? Anything beyond my mental capacity, that's what.

God, all the people, places, and things I haven't made the least bit of effort to comprehend should just die already.

Will you look at all this stuff I have neither the intellect nor the maturity level to process? What a load of crap. It's in my face every day, doing lots of things I don't have an immediate desire to do and saying things I can't identify with at this stage in my life. How lame is that? I mean, what kind of pathetic loser would actually enjoy something that's so incredibly not among my personal preferences? Not me, that's for sure.

Maybe my standards are too high, but if you like any of the hundreds upon hundreds of things that are too multifaceted for my attention span, you should have your head examined, weirdo.

And don't even get me started on complex and sophisticated notions I can't possibly wrap my head around. That stuff makes me want to puke. Just knowing there are people out there who like—actually like—interacting with concepts that overwhelm my feeble consciousness makes me embarrassed to be an American. I don't like it in our homes, I don't like it in our schools, I don't like it outside of my comfort zone—well, I just plain don't like it. And if that makes me closed-minded, well, then I guess I'll have to dismiss that accusation outright in order to avoid being introspective even for a moment.

Why, only yesterday I saw a commercial on TV for a new product I have no immediate use for and therefore cannot see any value in. Who's making this worthless junk? Seriously. If I see one more household appliance I am not mature enough to own or operate, I'm going to punch someone. I swear. Sell that to the suckers with the money and inclination to buy it, because I wouldn't take it off your hands if you gave it to me, provided me with a living situation stable enough to house it, and showed me how to use it in a manner that didn't disrupt any of my cripplingly sedentary lifestyle habits.

Same goes with any TV show, movie, band, solo act, artist, book, burgeoning subculture, celebrity, fashion trend, or religious belief that makes me feel excluded from my peers or otherwise ostracized by the mainstream. That stuff is retarded.

While I'm at it, I'm sick to death of this growing trend of people who don't share my cultural heritage. I don't know how you did things back in that country I never took the time to educate myself about, but around here, we dip our fries in ketchup. That's the way it's always been as far as I know, and that's the way it's going to be until such time as I choose to acknowledge diversity among the earth's 6.6 billion people.

If things don't start changing around here, I might have to up and leave this town. It's gotten to the point where I can't walk down the street without having some flier thrust into my face, advertising some dumb concert or stupid party or annoying art festival or lame-o Minnesota primary or any number of other events that no sane person with a crippling fear of the unknown and a wildly underdeveloped imagination would ever want to go to. I've never been to any of these social gatherings, but I imagine the scores of people who attend them must be total idiots.

You know what? You geeks go knock yourselves out. Really. Have a blast with all your differences in personality and preference. Don't worry about me, because I'll be sitting at home alone listening to the same four records I've been listening to since college, laughing at your expense.

What a bunch of losers.

~~~~~~~

(don't forget to tune in tomorrow for the 100th Post Spectacular!)

Countdown to awesome, Part I

2008-02-27T09:24:00.003-05:00

Only 3 more posts before the century mark, so I've got to make these count. I've been trying to hold off on posting so that #100 is timed for Feb 29th, but we'll see how well that works...

The weather's been miserable up in BG, as it just got cold enough yesterday afternoon for the 5+ inches of slush to freeze over, making me slide for about 25 feet down one of the streets on campus (thank God the other car choose to turn before hitting me). Now, so I don't have to worry about scraping my car out, I'm going to try to walk up to campus (with maybe a quick McGriddle stop on the way).

Last weekend was full of meeting people for meals, and I went 4 days without eating a meal by myself (which might be a record unbroken until I go to prison). I'll wish good luck to Dan in his attempts to buy ex-Soviet firearms and give a quick shoutout to Jay, who apparently has the soul of a jazz singer...

Plus, I've found this to hold me over the next two weeks until Smash Bros comes out for Wii: Comrade Mario

Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrell...

2008-02-20T10:28:00.004-05:00

These last couple of weeks have been nothing short of yucky. As Husband eluded to, my place of work has been enbroiled in controvesry. That which I cannot, well should not, talk about, but I will say that in my opinion it is all a bunch of hooey dredged up by a small time paper attempting to muckrack in the most unsuccessful of fashions. Unfortunatly, the pathetic attempt at journalism has led to the resignation of a good person and her great colleagues from a project that they have been working on for nearly 2 years. The resignation came not from any admission of wrongdoing, but because this faux-controversy has taken attention away from the things we should be giving our attention to. It's sad and disheartening. There are so many people who are trying to do really good work for our community. I cannot fathom why others would try to jepordize that in order to advanced their own interests. They should all be ashamed of themselves.

Needless to say it's been a couple of really really hard weeks for me. This had led to a reaccurring urge to drink a half bottle of NyQuil or half a bottle of wine to put me to sleep at night. This is probably not a sign of good stress management. Eh? Then I wake up this morning to the following scene...

And I have three voicemails and seventeen emails regarding the front-page above-the-fold article in today's paper, and then I look at the dog...

And it takes everything in me to not crawl under that blanket with her and call in sick.

The history channel just redeemed itself...

2008-02-18T22:07:00.004-05:00

Doug Benson:
A man and a woman are in an elevator.
The woman says "Can I smell your balls?"
The man looks incredulous, "Of course not!" "
Oh," says the woman, "that must be your feet."

Patton Oswalt:
A 40-year-old man and a young boy are walking in the dark woods at night.
The boy looks up and says, "Mister, I'm scared."
The old man goes, "You're scared? I have to walk out of here alone!"

Gotta love History of the Joke

You're the most sensitive man I know, and I know God

2008-02-18T14:14:00.003-05:00

It's one of those Mondays at the Batcave. I'm struggling to finish a couple papers for Tuesday's classes, and The Dog is sleeping, but I think she's kind of sick. I get to look forward to more snow for tomorrow's drive, so I'm really not looking forward to that whole mess.

The weekend was relatively relaxing and refreshing, considering the wife has been dealing with a public-relations meltdown at work for the last two weeks, and I'm swamped by a rediculously heavy work load this semester. I'm very much looking forward to the upcoming PCA conference in San Fran, assuming I can get the damn presentation written (or just put together enough pictures to take up 12 minutes).

I guess the third year isn't the Web Anniversary

2008-02-14T00:11:00.002-05:00

I doubt anyone but Johnnycakes will get this, but it was too good resist:

Happy St. Valentine's Day from the ISB!

Snow Day?!?

2008-02-12T07:19:00.000-05:00

Even though it doesn't look like there's been 8 inches of snow, it's sleeting and ActiveDayton's reporting 6 accidents just along the Dayton stretch of I-75. It looks like Northwest Ohio didn't get hit as hard, but I'm not going to chance icy roads in my little Honda. It's back to bed for me (read-writing the papers for class tonight and emailing them to the profs)

"We all have our own hands, and we come from different moms."

2008-02-09T10:48:00.000-05:00

If you don't know why that's awesome, you need awesome lessons.

2008-02-07T09:25:00.000-05:00

Well, after having a nice layering of rain, ice, and snow yesterday afternoon, it got a lot colder over night and everything just froze. Stupid BG weather...

I realized that I'm only 5 posts away from the 100th Blogging! I'm not sure what I'm going to do to celebrate, but it will involve malt liquor.

Primary Disfunction

2008-02-06T11:12:00.000-05:00

I love the delicisous awesomeness that is campaign season. Although the use of the word "season" is somewhat deceptive as we have gotten to the point where campaigns are more of a constant state of affairs, but I digress...

Yesterday was Super Tuesday and boy was it super! Obama is giving Hillary the race of her life which just encourages her ever-permanent scowl to the point that I think her face may never recover. Huckabee is turning out to be the dark horse on the GOP side in a way that is making this race much more interesting then the past few primaries. And all this talk about delegates and superdelegates and winner takes all primary histeria.... It's great! But in all honesty, I need to cut down my election night adiction to news networks. It's probably not healthy...

I just love the disfunction and the confusion and the "I'm not negative so I want you to think I'm being nice while I'm actually tearing apart my opponent." Not to mention the "I'm winning, SHE is losing.... NO, I'm winning, HE is losing" tantrums and appeals for voters attention and support. It's totally American and I love it.

implied clown fellatio = funny

2008-02-05T08:30:00.000-05:00

Heard on the radio while driving to work this morning:

News Announcer: [talking about funeral for famous circus clown] The minister, himself a clown trained by the deceased, blew bubbles on the pulpit...

Radio DJ: Well, at least Bubbles enjoyed the funeral!

foreshadowing?

2008-02-04T18:59:00.000-05:00

My horoscope for this week:

Your skin will soon feel like it's crawling with insects, but fear not: Spiders are actually arachnids.

I learned fried chicken at the school of hard knocks

2008-02-04T13:05:00.000-05:00

Not too shabby of a game last night, despite me calling a Pats win with 3:00 left in the game...

Combined with the meat sweats, this made watching the commercials slightly less jarring. Seriously, if you're going to pay 2.7 mil to show a dog drinking Gatorade, would it kill you to throw in a punch line?

There were a few enjoyable bits, such as the Charles Barkley/Dwayne Wade phone-based relationship and the early Pepsi Max bit. Otherwise, most of the ads were somewhat disappointing (although I really liked seeing the Fox NFL robot get in a fight with a Terminator).

My favorite ad was the Doritos "mousetrap" spot. It had a solid setup, with some nice minor touches (like the guy using an exact-o knife to precisely cut the bait chip), the giant rat-suited guy busting out of the wall was unexpected and amusing, and there was a good post-product joke of the rat continuing to wail on the guy. I give it 4 1/2 sparkplugs.

...also, the octupus got a racecar!

2008-01-30T15:33:00.000-05:00

LOST doesn't begin officially again until tomorrow, but I'm more than a little excited about tonight's pop-up-video version of last season's finale. I honestly don't remember a lot about last season, but I'm sure that won't be a problem.

Over at the A.V. Club, where smugness is a way of life, there's some good old finger-wagging going on, as the loyal commenters are mocking anything at all mainstream - as one pointed out, if LOST had been cancelled after the second season, it would have been considered the second coming of Twin Peaks (nerd confession - I'm not really that much of a fan of TP, but I can sort of respect the weirdness of it). The best post yet, however, comes from one guy ('Legface P. Backshoe,' to be precise) suggesting to another how to impress his wife's LOST-viewing party:

Dude, you should totally dress up as a polar bear and, when the party's in full swing, rush downstairs and kill one of the guests. When your wife is screaming "OH MY GOD! WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!?" just look smug, stroke your chin and say, "Aaah. All will be revealed......"

Trust me, LOST fans eat that shit up.

Just let this serve as a warning to anybody thinking of stopping by Thursday night - I really like Legface's suggestion.

Speaking of the A.V. Club, it was time to bid a fond farewell to the awesome "My Year of Flops" feature (celebrity deaths come in threes, with Brad Renfro and Heath Ledger). "Flops" covered 104 of the crummiest movies ever, and really gave me something to look forward to reading each day. Ah well, that's the Circle of Life...

Blah.

2008-01-26T21:11:00.001-05:00

So I'm pretty pathetic today... I'm sick with a vicious head cold that has zapped my energy and and rendered me totally lazy. Husband is out of town for a nerd conference so It's just me and Dog home alone snuggled up on the couch. There are worse ways to spend a Saturday, but I'm starting to get bored. Thus the reason I'm posting... Sorry reader(s) it's true...

Since I got a new camera for Christmas, I've been into taking pictures and actually uploading them. I lost the cord to my old camera so I was really bad about getting my picutres off of my picture card, but that has changed so expect more pictures from now on.

That said, I wanted to share the following picutres from the wedding last week...

To put this into some sort of perspective, the groom is a farmer and the bride is a pharmacist. The sign above her head said "Knapke's Fine Farmacist" and just in case you can't read it, the sign below her says "It's not how deep you plow, It's how long you stay in the field." CLASSY!

So it's true... Husband was not exagerating about the tractor in the reception hall. However, where I come from we would call this "tractor" a lawnmower, but I'll forgive the city boy's definition of tractor.

"If called upon you had to be ready to die in your L.A. Gear high-tops..."

2008-01-24T08:00:00.000-05:00

This is from The Onion:

Back In My Day, Being an American Gladiator Actually Meant Something

By Turbo

We were an elite group of highly trained combatants charged with the task of preventing contestants from collecting cash and prizes—and doing so with our very lives. We dominated the cable-televised arena, each grueling event a test of our strength, agility, and heart. The public feared and respected us. We had cool names and we were strong.
We were the American Gladiators. The real ones. Not like these shameless bastards.
This new breed of so-called gladiators has no class. They make a big spectacle of themselves, prancing around their "arena" as if they were actual gladiators. See, we never had to put on airs of greatness. There were no frills, no showiness, just gladiators tackling average Americans on national TV. That's all.
We didn't have to play characters, either. But what do you think this one new guy named Wolf does? He howls like a wolf before each event. What on earth is that? It's an absolute disgrace. I'm just glad Blaze, Laser, Thunder, Lace, Siren, Hawk, Ice, Malibu, Zap, Bronco, Jade, Dallas, and Jazz don't have to see this. They never could have imagined that someone would drag the name "American Gladiator" down so low.
In the glory years of foam-tipped battle, not just any 6-foot-4, 250-pound ex-bodybuilder or semiprofessional athlete could be called an American Gladiator. You needed something more. If called upon you had to be ready to die in your L.A. Gear high-tops. We earned the right to wear the red, white, and blue spandex, and we wore it with honor and dignity.
People may have called us mercenaries or brutes or aspiring actors looking for our big break on a popular syndicated program, but we were never in it for the money. All we cared about was the roar of the crowd as we shot tennis ball after tennis ball at a terrified opponent.
All we needed were those feverish cheers as we used every last ounce of our strength to prevent the contestants, who were in pretty good shape, from knocking us off elevated platforms while they soared toward us on rope swings.
That was what it meant to be a warrior.
Whether defending those cylinders that guys tried to stuff balls into, or knocking contestants off a pedestal with those gigantic Q-tip things, my generation of American Gladiators could do it all. We didn't have to specialize like they do today. When we were asked to do something, we did it, for the glory and the honor that could only be found in Gladiator Arena. We may not have liked standing behind that paper wall, waiting for contestants to come bursting through as they tried to make it to the ultimate $50,000 prize, but we did it because it was our duty. We understood dignity in those days, and we were proud to race along an upside-down racetrack made of Velcro.
Before an event all we had to do was clench our jaws, stare at our competitors, and make a few remarks like, "You're mine!" or "Come and get it!" or sometimes merely laugh maniacally for a few seconds, and they knew we meant business. That's why I don't understand all this thumbs-down business I see the new breed doing today. We didn't need hand signs. No sir. It was our actions while strapped to a bungee cord that proved our valor and nothing else.
Where have all the heroes like Thunder gone? Without fail he would protect the goal, rolling like a champion in his metal sphere. Thunder was a name that inspired awe, a rumbling force that said it was always Crunch Time. Compare that to one of the new names, like Toa. Or Stealth. That's not deadly or honorable.
That's just sneaking around a lot.
Pathetic. I guarantee you won't see a grape-flavored nougat candy bar named after any of these young fools.
It sickens me to see an American Gladiator congratulating contestants after losing to them. It is uncalled for, it is disgraceful, and it breaks the unspoken American Gladiator code. I once punched a guy in the face when he was beating me. I may have gotten disqualified and he may have earned some extra points, but he also got a message loud and clear: Turbo hits hard.
These new bucks—they just don't possess the heart necessary. I nearly died when I saw one of the new gladiators bow out of a match due to injury. They are soft, like children. We would never surrender. We wielded blocking pads with such fury that no one could withstand the cushioned force.
But it's not even about the competition anymore, is it? Not with fancy lights and special cameras and super-famous celebrity hosts Hulk Hogan and Muhammad Ali's daughter. Hell, I didn't even know who our host was until I had been on the show three years. Todd Christensen and/or Joe Theismann, Turbo salutes you.
I'd love to get one last shot out there and show everyone what it means to be a gladiator, but it would do no good. The world has changed. People are happy to settle for silly outfits and large tanks of flaming water and no longer care about brawn, skill, or courage. Still, the fact that these gigantic men and women are allowed in the foam-covered arena at all is an insult to gladiators everywhere, American or otherwise.

Boo, refusal to apply scientific principles!

2008-01-23T22:54:00.001-05:00

What the hell, History Channel?

I've been watching this show Monster Quest since it first aired a couple months ago. I'm a bit of a sucker for a good cryptozoology/fortean television program, and, while I'm generally a skeptic, these kind of shows at least get my attention.

The show started off pretty good. They did a forensics analysis of a Canadian hunting cabin that found blood and hair samples that might be Bigfoot - it's not revolutionary here, but it was at least an attempt to find physical, testable proof. There was only a single eyewitness account, and most of the show consisted of physics projections (to show the height and strength needed to tear a cabinet fixture off a wall, as in a photo) and DNA testing.

The second episode was even better, and managed to get photographs of a "Giant Squid" - basically, just by using advanced tech to send a camera deeper down in an area where lots of squid were assumed to be. It's not like the show found a Colossal Kraken, but at least they managed to show that biologists' predictions (that squids grow bigger at greater depths) were right - and honestly, footage of a 20-ft long, fairly intelligent (possible using symbolic communication), predatory (they attack divers) thing with 10 tentacles.

Since then, the show has pretty much taken a credibility nosedive. A show looking for giant north american thunderbirds concluded that...people think things that are far away are bigger than they really are.

An episode about massive, carniverous freshwater fish spent most of the show...interviewing "noodlers" who catch catfish with their bare hands (or, as Kahn Soupanousanphon knows it, "cat-fisting")

Last week's episode was about "rods" - small, cylindrical objects that were caught on video, but not the naked eye. While I spent the hour giggling every time I heard "...and here we see the rod bursting out of the water..." the team of 'scientists' decided that, rather than being transdimensional, precambrian, flying aliens...the "rods" were just bugs flying past the camera lens faster than the shutter speed.

All this does not bode well for science...

But after tonight, I just might need to find a new Wednesday night 10-11pm show. The scientific evidence that there might be a "Dogman" stalking the Wisconsin woods was...lie detector tests of 5 witnesses. Then, just before the credits, they find a hair sample in the woods. They take it to a forensics expert, who reveals...

...
...
...

"this hair has clearly been exposed to the elements."

Get naked and eat cake!

2008-01-23T13:06:00.000-05:00

I'm glad Husband told of his own stupidity so I wouldn't have to look like a jerk ratting him out on his inability to pack a simple bag for a one night trip. The no-pants debacle really was the story of the weekend, but Husband forgot to mention the second reason we were in, how did he say it... jesusfarmbeer country. That would be my nephews first birthday!

It was pretty cool. It involved food, drinks, presents, hungover uncles, and two cakes! One cake for the brithday boy and one for everyone else. This is what the baby's cake looked like BEFORE....

DURING...and AFTER...

It all seems like a perfectly useless waste of cake, but it was so cute! Hungover uncle number one (out of three) decided that such passionate enjoyment of cake should not be limited to your 1st birthday and promptly announced that for his 30th birthday he would like to have a party, get naked, and eat cake. Lucky for us we still have 4 years to figure out how to get out of that party.

"Don't you hate pants?!?"

2008-01-23T10:38:00.000-05:00

Another (much briefer) lapse in posting, this time because of a combination very busy week and sorta sick me. I'm about halfway through my second bottle of Dayquil (the convenience store in BG doesn't have gelcaps, so I'm stuck with a not-quite-orange-y taste in my mouth.

The Wife, The Dog, and myself got to go up to jesusfarmbeer country for a wedding last weekend - the wedding including 4 different square dances, the groom driving the bride around on a tractor, in a circle, inside the reception hall. Plus, there were three different kinds of Old Milwaukee served at the bar. In cans.

The highlight for me (aside from freezing my royal rastafarian ney-neys off in the 1 degree weather) was forgetting to bring my dress pants with me from Dayton. Now, normally, my suit coat and pants are permanently kept in a garment bag in the closet, since I only wear them to weddings and funerals. Somehow, the pants escaped the garment bag, and are missing (the police say I need to wait 72 hours before declaring them legally dead, so I just sent out an amber alert).

So that leaves me, 45 minutes before the wedding, 2 hours from home, wearing a dress shirt, coat, nices shoes...and no pants. Luckily, the only formalwear store in the county stays open until 3pm, so I sped over there, bought the cheapest black pants I could find in my size (my obese and gangly stature is not as rare up there, praise allah), got the lady working there to hem them, and walked out of the store with my new pair of backup dress pants. So, yeah...

As I prep for the San Fran PCA conference in March, I'm finding several other folks at BG who are interested in comics, which is always good. Now I just have to sit down and write the damn presentation...

Multiple posts in a single night? I must have a lot of work to do!

2008-01-17T00:07:00.000-05:00

This is from the International Society of Supervillains (http://www.the-iss.org/), in a preview/warning against/jeremiad aimed at the new movie Meet The Spartans:*

[O]nly you, the viewing public, can stop the horrid wrath of "Epic Movie," "Date Movie" and the like. They are killing America. And people still go to see them! It makes me hurt right in my shriveled black heart. I should be the one killing America.
Let's get this straight right now: A reference to "Superman Returns" or "Napoleon Dynamite" does not constitute a joke. A guy wearing a green crotch sling, who holds up his thumbs and says "It's niiiiiice," isn't a clever spoof of Borat, it's just theft. These movies are the film equivalent of a guy sitting behind your couch and occasionally popping up to remind you of "Nacho Libre" or shouting out "The A-Team!" before ducking back down again. It may catch you by surprise, but so does getting hit in the jaw with a hammer.

If only more of the mainstream movie critics would include hammer-caused-violence metaphors in their reviews, I would know whether to see Atonement. I give Meet The Spartans a pre-emptive 1 SPARKPLUG (out of a possible 4 1/2 SPARKPLUGs)

*Admittedly, as I see the ads for the movie, my inner nerd is just saying, "Thank god Kevin Sorbo was able to find work..."

Wrap your mindgrapes around this

2008-01-16T22:03:00.000-05:00

Honestly, I never thought anyone actually attended Cincinnati Christian University - I always assumed it was a tax shelter or a cult.

Regrets are for horseshoes and handbags!

2008-01-13T11:56:00.000-05:00

(let's just pretend like I've been posting regularly, instead of completely neglecting my duties as Blogmaster)

The Official MaximumGuttenburg Readership is increasing at an annual rate of nearly 400%! If these trends continue...Hey!!! Welcome to everyone's favorite midwest CSI, Aaron. So far, the blog's readership is limited to two groups: 1) people who live or lived with me at one point, and 2) people who are married to people who lived with me. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, but, you know...

Now that the '08 Presidential race is heating up, my own vote is for Jimmy Carter.

I think I had my best Fantasy Football season in a while this year, making it to the league finals with two of my three teams - the third team, which lost in the first round of the playoffs, was still first in points and second in overall record (Brees and Anderson just took the wrong damn week off).

My Xmas break was less productive then I was hoping for, as my desktop decided to quit working. I'm still waiting on the boys down at UDit to salvage the data, and possibly fix the problem - however, since it's UDit, I'm not holding my breath.

The Wife and I just went to see Walk Hard:The Dewey Cox Story - good lord, it's funny. I think it's even funnier when you're one of ten audience members in what might be the shittiest movie theater in Ohio (think your movie theater can match? I say thee nay!*)

Speaking of The Wife, she just got nominated for the an award, and even got to write her own blurb, which she assures me is more than 5 words long. I'll let her explain fully.

Of course, American Gladiators is back, after a 12-year hiatus. So far, we've gone three episodes and there's no sign of Gem-Gem-Gemini (Plus, they got rid of Atlasphere! What the hell, Universal Studios? Did the cages get repossesed?)

*(This joke 'tis dedicated to Johnnycakes)

Something made me laugh today...

2007-12-13T15:21:00.000-05:00

During a discussion on the A.V. Club about David Cross (the world's first analrapist) dying on the inside for appearing in Alvin and the Chipmunks, the following exchange occurred:

lexicondevil: last year I had 11th grade students who were mostly born in the 90's. Imagine growing up in a world with no Soviet Union. Whenever they found out how old I was (35), they'd say things like "wow, my mom's younger than you."

Alex II: The Alexing: You should sleep with their mothers.

Am I a bad man for finding this absolutely hilarious?

No one who speaks German could possibly be evil!

2007-12-12T14:39:00.000-05:00

I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel - all the portfolios are completed, the ritual project is done (even if it is twice as long as planned/necessary), and I'm just waiting on abuot 10 more papers from my UD students.

Unfortunately, I had to get an extension on my German film paper, since I've pretty much hid a brick wall when it comes to Werner Herzog. Like his films, he exists just to make everything more complicated. Here's his response to a fiarly innocuous interview question, just to give you a sense of what I'm dealing with:

Q: Before we start, are there any philosophical insights you'd like to give your readers?

A: I can answer your question only by quoting hotel mogul Conrad Hilton, who was once asked what he would like to pass on to prosperity. 'Whenever you take a shower, always make sure the curtain is inside the tub,' he said. So I sit here and recommend to people the same. Never ever forget the shower curtain.

(from Paul Cronin's Herzog on Herzog, 2002)

All I want for Christmas...

2007-12-10T11:24:00.000-05:00

"...goes great with anything from Ikea"

Permafrost - it's nature's mittens!

2007-12-06T07:53:00.000-05:00

It was 1 degree outside when I left for school this morning. That's just not right.

It's the final week of the semester, so I'll be updating frequently on my progress:

Student portfolios are all ready to be submitted (with 2 exceptions who didn't come to class on Tuesday)

I'm having terrible writer's block, and I haven't been able to get through my second book review for IJOCA. It was due last weekend, but it'll be accepted if I can get in in by the end of the work week.

I have most of the source material for my Ritual Theory final project (designing a "Ritual and Media Theory" syllabus and course plan); since I officially don't care about this class, I'm not planning on spending more than a couple hours on it.

I still have my final paper for German Film due on Tuesday. The primary challenge here is to connect all of my disparate notes on Mabuse, Herzog, and the Gaze into a coherent argument.

All of my CMM 110 students are handing in their final presentations tonight, so that'll be out of the way.

I need to come back to BG Monday to evaluate portfolios. If I'm lucky, I'll get a stack that's all obviously passing, and it won't take long to complete. If I'm unlucky, then I'll be fairly upset, and maybe cry.

They wouldn't listen to me, like when I said, "Stop hitting me with my own shoe!"

2007-12-02T12:40:00.000-05:00

There's sort of this clearcut inverse correlation between the amount of work I need to finish and the amount of time I waste farting around online (and the number of posts made to this blog). However, this morning, I have indeed struck gold:

Rob Liefeld's 40 Crimes Against Humanity

...and they did all of this with a crappy Bomb Squad supporting them!

2007-12-01T21:31:00.000-05:00

We're on the way to victory,
And when the Bombers get that ball,
They'll run right through the other team
And hit 'em hard until they fall.
We're on the way to win that game,
And then we'll let our banners fly;
For we are the unexcelled
Bombers of Xavier High!

PS- the wife will kill me if I don't mention that, while it wasn't the Div I championship, two teams from the MAC also managed to win big (including a truly awesome comeback against Youngstown Mooney)

Wouldn't You Vote For This Mayor?

2007-11-29T00:07:00.000-05:00

So I'm in the middle of my usual end-of-the-semester procrastinating, and I get wrapped up in a debate about Mike Haggar, an old video game character and one of the greatest playable elected officials in gaming history.

This is a guy who, when his daughter is kidnapped by a suprisingly multicultural street gang, responds in the way only a real Mayor can. He doesn't call for a press conference and tearfully beg for his little girl's return. He doesn't start a committee to discuss options for retrieval. He doesn't resign from office so the mob can't use him to harm the city.

Nope.

Mike Haggar rips off his shirt (thank goodness he wore his special heavy-duty mono-suspender today!), graps a lead pipe, and starts whomping ass with his spinning clothesline.

The campaign video for Haggar '08 is already in post-production: [not safe for work]

That'll move the chains!

2007-11-26T13:29:00.000-05:00

The good news from this weekend is that the St. Xavier Bombers will be playing in Canton next Saturday (and, thanks to Time Warner buying the rights, I can watch it from the warmth and comfort of home).

I spent a very, very cold 3 1/2 hours Saturday night watching a terrible game of high school football. Considering it was the top team in the country vs. the highest-scoring team in the state, we kind of figured the final score would be more than 10-7. Admittedly, both defenses played fantastic games, and there were a few bright moments, but most of the game was just dreadful. The worst part of the game (and what determined the win on the final play) was the horrendous offensive play-calling. I'm a stereotypical armchair quarterback - shouting about coaching and playing while hoovering down BBQ meatballs - but there were several plays that just left all of us scratching our heads in amazement. Sports coaching is one of those careers where everyone watching claims to know how to do your job better that you can do it yourself, but come on!

Sometime during the 3rd quarter, when we got bored watching both teams go 3-and-out without gaining any positive yards, I had some very deep, philosophical discussions with Matt Ackerman.

Matt: If you were going to be killed by one animal, what would you
pick?

Me: Can I fight back, like using a samurai sword against a bear?

Matt: Sure, but you're going to die by the end of it. I'd go with Portugese Man-Of-War, so I'd die quickly and just like I lived, floating.

Me: Hmm. Then I guess I'd want to be dropped from a plane...onto an
elephant.

In other football news, I've been punished for my hubris last week (mocking Adam) with a 2-point performance from Randy Moss. Even worse, it's against goddamn Hunter.

SUCK IT, KOCOLOSKI

2007-11-19T12:36:00.001-05:00

That is all.

I get political for a moment...

2007-11-15T08:45:00.000-05:00

Last week, speaking about Pakistani President Musharaff, Pres. Bush said the following:

"You can't be the president and head of the military at the same time."

We still refer to the U.S. President as the "Commander-in-Chief," don't we? Isn't this referring to the executive branch's role (at least since Truman) as the "head of the military"?

I promise, the normal blogging will return this weekend, as I post at length about my extreme trouncing of Adam in Fantasy Football.

(this comes from Deb Riechmann, Associated Press, 11/8/2007)

This week's surrealism showdown:

2007-11-14T13:26:00.000-05:00

I can't figure out which is stranger...

1) I grabbed a burger and Frosty from the Wendy's on campus last night. There were a bunch of, for lack of a better term, motivational signs that people waiting in line could read as they stood there (there's usually a 5 minute wait overall). Most of these signs were pretty normal, saying things like "Hang in there!" and "Your day's about to get better!" Bear in mind, these are supposed to be read by customers. The one that blew my mind, however, read

"There's nothing bad about making a profit."

WTF mate?

2) I was reading the BGNews today, and was impressed to see one of my students being quoted in an article about the costs of healthy food at campus dining halls. This is one of my better students, and the quotes provided were clear and made BG students sound educated about issues. Just as I was thinking that I was going to have to compliment this student in class tomorrow, I glanced at the crime log just above the article (the BGNews crime log, which covers all activity from the city of Bowling Green, is infinitely better than the old Flyer News), and found that another student had been arrested for DUI, possession, and resisting.

Bear in mind that, out of 20,000 students at BGSU, only 22 are in my class.

(the image is from Dan Liebert's blog, which is like a fantastic Deep Thoughts Jr.)

Tell my wife I said, "Hello."

2007-11-12T16:03:00.000-05:00

This is from McSweeney's, and it's a thing of beauty:

Adam Sach's "A Presidential Campaign Speech That Will Help You Win the Popular Vote"

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Thank you very much for inviting me to your wonderful state here in the great heartland of America but also pretty near the coast. It is an honor to speak from this podium, in this storied courthouse, where so many profound legal judgments were handed down that they more or less canceled each other out.

I am a simple man with a Harvard degree and a solid understanding of tractors. When I was a young boy, my father took me on his knee and told me the principle that has guided my life ever since: "Agree with some things, disagree with other things." His was truly the Greatest Generation, along with a few that came before and a couple that have come since.

Why am I running for president of the United States of America? That's a good question, and perhaps there's no good way to answer it. Or perhaps there is a good way to answer it. Either way, it's a good question and I'm glad it was raised.

I want to talk a little bit about our nation's children. Before this speech, a young man named Stanley Exley came up to me. Stanley is a mechanic, a noble profession if there ever was one. Or perhaps he is a chemistry professor, also noble. He was holding his small daughter, Emily, an adorable 3-year-old who was recently diagnosed with leukemia. Stanley is a straight shooter, and he came up to me and asked me a question I'll never forget: "Do you like children?" And I looked him straight in the eye and said, "Yes, Stanley, I very much like children." Maybe that's not a popular opinion, but it's what I believe. And to those of you who would say, "I don't think children are our future," I must reply in the strongest of terms: "I disagree." Sometimes you have to take a stand for what you believe in.

Our country is sharply divided over a war that is being waged in a distant land. My views on this war are clear: it is happening, it is happening in Iraq, and it will continue to happen until it stops. Some people believe we should withdraw all the troops now. Some people believe we should stay and fight until we've established a stable nation. Some people believe we should gradually hand over control to the Iraqi government. I feel blessed to live in a country with so many beliefs.

On the subject of South African apartheid: I strongly, strongly, strongly oppose it. I'm glad it's gone, and I hope it never comes back.

The state of our economy is in flux. Every single day, the stock market goes up or goes down or stays the same. If elected president, I will ask the Federal Reserve to take a good long look at the interest rate and decide whether or not to change it. If elected president, I will create jobs where there are none, and where there are jobs, I will create internships.

Let us take actions that will make people happy.

Let us take actions that will make people healthy or perhaps have the private sector do it.

Let us take actions regarding taxes.

And let us move boldly so that our children and our children's children can look back and say, "I'm glad they moved boldly on this, this, and that."

Thank you.

"All those times you said you were out getting drunk, you were really killing people?" "I was getting drunk, THEN killing people!"

2007-11-04T23:30:00.000-05:00

I was actually so bothered by tonight's TV, that I had to post it here:

A few decent one-liners aside, I was really, really disappointed in this year's Treehouse of Horror (number 18, for those of you keeping score at home). None of the three plots was really a funny idea to begin with (the writers' can't think of more recent films to parody than E.T. and Mr. and Mrs. Smith?), and each one made less sense than the one before.

For a little while, I was thinking that maybe The Simpsons was getting back on the right track - even if it wasn't as funny as the Golden Age of Simpson Comedy (seasons 4-7), it was quality humor that at least tried to be good. Now, I might need to reconsider.

Family Guy itself wasn't necessarily good tonight, but the episode was preceded by a clip show hosted by Seth McFarlane himself. The clips were a good reminder of some of the show's better moments - including the immortal "Rock Lobster" gag - even though most of the clips were jokes that were completely irrelevant to any plot or character development. This is Family Guy's specialty, the one-off non sequiturs and random references; Simpsons (and to a greater extent, Futurama) combined funny asides with multi-dimensional characters the audience could actually connect with.

In more pertinent news, this weekend was The Dog's 'birthday.' We celebrated by: 1) taking Dog to the vet for vaccines and a checkup, 2) trying to figure out why The Dog was completely freaked out from 4:30 AM to midnight on Saturday (I'm still convinced she say Ghost Ninjas), and 3) repeatedly brushing The Dog because she insists on sleeping in the flowerbed mulch.

So happy birthday Dog - hopefully, you'll require cheaper upkeep this second year.

Update:

2007-11-01T07:40:00.000-04:00

We managed 11 posts for the month of October (a good number, I must say), so I figured it was time for the blogging equivalent of a 'clip show' episode.

The papers have, mercifully, gotten slightly better with 13/20 getting at least near passing grades (the class is on a Pass/Almost Pass/No Pass grading system), which is up from 8 the previous paper. At this rate, it'll only take two more papers before 115% of the students are passing. (or, as Disco Stu puts it, "from 1970 to 1971, sales of disco records increased 500%; if these trends continue...hey!")

I'm still working on the second review for the IJOCA. The book, Comics and Film, is a collection of (barely related) essays, which makes it much tougher to completely cover in 1000 words. Hopefully, it'll be done by next week.

I've started 1 of 3 major projects for this semester, since I'm presenting it to the class next semester. I'm looking at Werner Herzog's newest wave of films, especially Invincible, as they relate not just to his earlier works, but to 'historical'/Weimar-era german national cinema. So far, it's involving a lot of scare quotes and references to Lacan. I'll keep a running tally of progress on this and the other two projects (both seemingly pointless assignments for a Ritual Theory class that's being taught like an undergraduate seminar) as the semester progresses.

My PCA abstract (in a greatly condensed form) about Captain America and Bucky (who I think is going to be revealed as the 'new' Captain America in the next few months) was accepted for the 2008 conference; not only that, but I've been assigned as a panel chair. I get to look forward to a fun San Fran trip!

I'm at or over .500 with each of my fantasy teams for the season, despite a miserable 0-4 start in the Cincy league thanks to the massive suckage of Steven Jackson and Drew Brees. To keep the record good, we'll forget my co-management of the Wife's team, which is not doing so well...

The fall TV season has pretty much settled down. Bionic Woman has pretty much been dropped (even though I still DVR it from time to time), and the Thursday night block has been real hit (30 Rock) and miss (Scrubs). The high point, though, has been Pushing Daisies, a fantastic program, for which I've been slowly working on a legitimate review.

Finally, the 'roll call' failed miserably, as I only got 2 responses - not to downplay Koco and PB, but the Wife didn't even bother replying, and I force her to read the blog constantly. How do you do it, Geoff Klock?

PS-Chris Sims, who I would have a nerd-crush for if I ever met in person, posted the following comics panel for the Invincible Super-Blog's holloween post. It really might be the single greatest editor's note I've ever read, and that's including an old Scott Lobdell note in X-Men that literally read "ed-we don't remember which issue this happened in, but trust us, it happened..."

"Your detective skills are impeccable, Samson. You have succeeded in exposing my sinister plan to lock myself in a dungeon, chained to an albino."

2007-10-30T11:29:00.000-04:00

It took 8 weeks, but I finally managed to go a perfect 3-0 for the week's Fantasy Football matchups, thanks to me playing Drew Brees in the Cincy league and Jay choosing not to play Brees in the Dayton league (my rosters are so convoluted that I'm always rooting for at least a few players that I'm also playing against - it's an eternal struggle).

I'm in a sorta good mood because of the Fantasy sweep, and because I managed to get all of the GSW papers edited by the start of class this morning (only 35 group analysis papers left!).

Plus, the Something Awful Comedy Goldmine for today was pure genius - the goons set up a flash-based contest to see who was the best at flirting. Here are some of the responses to random questions:

Q: What would you make me for breakfast?
A: Pregnant.

Q: How did you get over your last broken heart?
A: I ate her, stealing her power for my own.

Q: What will you be wearing on our first date?
A: The f***ing Darkman costume. You know, from Darkman.

Q: Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near?
A: Because I'm a 12th level Druid and can cast summon nature's
ally at will.

Nerds - is there anything they can't do?

Teaching an Old Sidekick New Tricks

2007-10-25T08:46:00.000-04:00

[The following is my abstract for the 2008 PCA/ACA conference]

In 2007, Ed Brubaker and artist Steve Epting made national news headlines when the character Captain America was assassinated within the pages of the critically and popularly successful Captain America series. The death of Marvel Comics’s flagship character quickly became a topic of debate between television news pundits and newspaper columnists, with cynicism over the trend of ‘killing’ characters as a marketing gimmick mixing with critical questions about what Cap’s death meant to American culture.

Overshadowed by the media attention was Brubaker and Epting’s series itself, which had skillfully managed to revitalize the title character in the 24 issues before Captain America was shot. As the fifth ‘re-launch’ of the ongoing series since the character’s creation in 1941,Brubaker and Epting’s Captain America struggled to find new, innovative ways to show a superhero with over a half-century of history and continuity.

Perhaps the most noteworthy change to the familiar Captain America narrative prior to the character’s death came when Brubaker and Epting reintroduced the character of James “Bucky” Barnes into the series. Bucky, who was originally Cap’s kid sidekick during the World War II Timely Comics Captain America Comics series, was most familiar to Marvel Comics readers as a corpse – the Marvel Captain America, after being ‘reborn’ in the 1960s, was continually plagued by guilt over the death of his former sidekick. Whereas most comics characters suffer ‘temporary deaths,’ and are quickly revived after news of their death has sufficiently boosted sales, Bucky Barnes was one of the few characters who ‘stayed dead.’

Yet, in bringing Bucky back to life, Brubaker and Epting also significantly changed the familiar Captain America narrative by literally re-writing the history of James “Bucky” Barnes. Flashbacks within Captain America reveal that Bucky Barnes was not just a kid sidekick, but a highly trained covert agent and government assassin who had been placed with the superhero by the U.S. government as a means of infiltration; the bright red, white, and blue colors of Captain America’s costuming and shield served as a distraction for the true weapon: Bucky Barnes.

This ‘rebirth’ of Bucky Barnes forces us to reconsider not only our conception of the sidekick in the comic book superhero narrative, but also the basic nature of the superhero. How does Brubaker and Epting’s Captain America series rewrite the history of other familiar heroes? With such a significant change to the character’s history, can we even consider this new Bucky to be a part of the pre-existing Captain America narrative continuity? How does this redefinition of the roles of Cap and Bucky affect America’s understanding of our own military?

Roll Call

2007-10-23T10:42:00.001-04:00

Screw Joe Addai for delivering the Hemlock of No-End-Zone-osity! (although I think that's Kevin Faulk in the picture)

In an attempt to cheer myself up, I was desperately hoping for a response from my dedicated audience. Stealing a page from my nerd-crush Geoff Klock's playbook, I'm using this post as a request - let me know you're reading this and tell me how awesome I am.

"Why is it every time I need to get somewhere, we get waylaid by jackassery?"

2007-10-23T08:13:00.000-04:00

My two-hour commute took me 3+ this morning, as I got stuck on the highway in downtown Dayton, where I-75 was shut down because of a fuel spill 2 hours earlier. I'm no engineer, but you're telling me that over the course of 120 minutes, you can't at least open up one lane of a three-lane interstate highway? Or at least get some warning signs and detours set up? I know it's 3:00 AM, but shouldn't that actually make it easier to clean up, since there's less traffic?

Once I got out of Dayton, after passing 2 different fiery car crashes in the opposite lane and almost getting lost in Harrison Township, the piss-poor weather kept me at a fairly low speed the rest of the way.

On the plus side...hmmm...not coming up with anything at the moment. But here's a bit of dialogue from Venture Brothers that makes me believe in the worth of human creativity:

Henchman 21 [attacking Dr. Killenger]: Semper fidelis tyrannosaurus!
Dr. Killenger [speaking in Henry Kissenger accent]: You mean 'Sic semper tyrannus.'
Henchman 21: What did I say?
Dr. Killesnger: You said, 'Always faithful terrible lizard.'
Henchman 21: Really? Sweet!

Oh, the humanity

2007-10-18T07:51:00.000-04:00

According to Wikipedia, a parking lot is “a dedicated area that has been provided with a durable or semi-durable surface.”

This was the opening sentence of one of my student's drafts. I've tried very hard to not post their work before (for a variety of ethical and legal reasons), but I just can't represent how miserable I'm feeling right now without providing a frame of reference.

C'est moi, tout les temps...

2007-10-16T08:46:00.000-04:00

(Consider this a 'filler' post until I have the chance to actually deliver on my promises from last week of awesomeness-thanks to The Wife, I really didn't get much accomplished this weekend, other than learning how to throw the long ball to Tab Perry)

"Grab a shovel. I'm one skull short of a Mouseketeer reunion."

2007-10-10T19:35:00.000-04:00

[I've got a fancier post scheduled for tomorrow, but since The Wife is out-posting me so far this week, here's some comic-book-nerd-related fluff...]

As I am wont to do every few weeks, I spent my Wednesday afternoon reading comics. Today, I read DC's Identity Crisis limited series, the pseudo-event that led to the most recent Massive Universe-wide Crossover Events (tm). The general plot is about a new threat to heroes that targets not just them, but their families and friends - a villain who knows their Identities (remember, in the ever-realistic world of comics, nobody can see through the clever disguise of Clark Kent's eyeglasses).

On one hand, I enjoyed the way that the series author, Brad Metzler, explicitly wrestled with continuity and history of the DC universe. This is what most of my current research is about - how current writers manage to write unique and innovative stories about characters that have existed in series form for decades (some characters, like Superman, have been in more-or-less continuous print since 1939).

In this series, there was a concerted focus on characters and stories from the 1970s and 1980s, as Metzler attempted to explain the 'familar' plots and behaviors in a clearly modern context, filling in the gaps between past issues, taking great pains to show what happens to the superheroes and supervillains after the spectacular fighting is finished.

What bothers me about Identity Crisis is, for lack of a better word, its intensity. Metzler's not just re-writing the old stories, he's making them a lot less fun - not only is there an average of one brutal murder per issue (there's 6 issues), but the plot pivots on the 1970s Justice League (the classic "League of Heroes," just before J.M. DeMatties transformed the league into a sitcom-style grouping of extremely quirky personalities) essentially lobotomizing one villain and erasing the memories of several others (as well as Batman, who was the sole dissenting voice in the whole magic-brain-messing stuff). The 'lobotomy' is how Metzler explains the chronic inefficiency and foolishness of most of the great supervillains. What's worse is the reason for the lobotomizing: the graphic rape of a League member's wife.

Other comics authors have famously used graphic violence in the process of criticizing mainstream comics - Alan Moore has several sequences involving rape, assaults, and violent beatings in most books, starting with Watchmen, and Grant Morrison's run on The Authority had a nausea-inducing scene where the Batman-analogue sodomizes a defeated villain [let's see how many Google hits that phrasing gets me]. In these other cases, violence takes place outside of dominant continuity - both Moore and Morrison are clearly using archetypes of well-known characters to 'safely' develop criticisms.

What makes Identity Crisis different is that now the violence has been established as part of dominant superhero continuity - worse, narrative history has been rewritten (literally), so that violence has always been part of the superhero story.

[If you've read this far, thanks - I'm on a rant-friendly mood on this topic, as I'm developing a similar reading of Ed Brubaker's Captain America series for next March's PCA conference.]

"With win-win-win, we all win. Me too."

2007-10-10T10:40:00.000-04:00

So after posting yesterday I was tasked with familiarizing myself with the awesomest company ever, Applied Minds, Inc. This company is amazing (click the picture below to link to an article about them). Their business is innovation. Seriously. Many companies say their business is innovation, but this company really is in the business of innovation. It actually makes me want to be an engineer or scientist of some sort because it just seems like the coolest place to work ever.

But to my point, I'm reading this article about AMI and in it they discuss one of their inventions, Babble. It is the solution to my loud phone-talker problem.

“Here was the paradox: sometimes the clatter of voices is soothing or energizing but other times it's grating. The difference, Hillis concluded, was when you could figure out what's being said. ‘It's the meaning that's distracting and obnoxious,’ he says. ‘Not the sound’…The result of this is Babble, a shiny black box the size of a paperback that plugs into the phone and has two speakers you put on top of the cubicle. As promised, when the speakers play a scrambled version of your voice, your real conversation can't be understood by someone standing even four feet away.”

So there you go! For only $395 I can stop beating my head against my desk every time her phone rings!

Don't mess with a man who owns a WayBack machine, I can make it so you were never born...

2007-10-09T14:13:00.000-04:00

Today's glimmer of hope: learning that the jar of loose change I've been saving since Senior year at UD was worth $75!

Today's soul-crushing despair: as always, my composition students...

"Is that for me, or for my gown?"

2007-10-09T10:38:00.000-04:00

So I work down the hall from the worlds loudest phone-talker. I'm not exaggerating here. She is really, really LOUD! Her office is about 20 feet down the hall from me and I feel like she's sitting in my office when she's on the phone. I often close my door to dampen the noise, but her voice still carries down 20 feet of hallway and through my heavy wooden door. To make matters worse, she is the membership director for the non-profit trade organization that resides down the hall from my office. Meaning, she is like the salesman of their organization. Meaning, she is on the phone A LOT! It's really too bad that loud phone-talking is not a talent recognized by the pageant circuit or she would be a shoe-in for a crown.

On another topic, Thursday is husband's birthday. Anyone who has been around him for five minutes in the last week knows that Thursday is his birthday and knows exactly what he wants for his birthday present, a Wii. The boy has become positively obssessed with the Wii. There is not a conversation that is started or ended without a comment about the Wii. It is driving him crazy knowing that I already bought his birthday gift, but not knowing if it is a Wii or some other unacceptable gift. Lucky for him (and me) the wait will be over in 48 hours. Then he can decide if I'm the best wife ever or if he will be divorcing me over a gaming system.

"And, because we've got soccer highlights, the sheer pointlessness of a zero-zero tie..."

2007-10-02T07:11:00.000-04:00

When I went to sleep last night, I was all sorts of excited. The Bengals were losing 34-13 with only 3 minutes, which sucks, but Randy Moss had caught 2 TDs for 1oo yds and change, which topped Houshmanzadeh's 1 TD and 82 yds - giving me the astonishing come-from-behind (zing!) win over Dr. Paul.

I wake up and check the box score, and find that apparently Carson Palmer is a douche, and decided to pass to TJ again, giving him just enough yards to break 100 and end up with a tie. Damn.

"Help, I'm being held prisoner in a complaint box"

2007-09-26T22:22:00.000-04:00

Taking a break from prepping stuff for tomorrow's class - thanks to forgetting my keys, I can't inside my office, where all of my previously prepared [read: stuff from last year] course materials are - to post a rhetorical question about the new TV shows I've been watching tonight [the remote doesn't work, so I've been watching NBC all night].

When you get a starring role on network television, does that automatically mean you get to bring in past co-stars in guest cameos?

In Bionic Woman tonight, there were a string of distinct appearances from BSG actors, and in the pseudo-cop-show Life, one of the key witnesses was Michael Cudlitz, who was one of the sergeants in Band of Brothers alongside Life star Damien Lewis. Maybe I'm just making a big deal out of this, but if Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith show up in tomorrow night's Earl, then I claim dibs on a groundbreaking theorum.

Bionic Woman was actually a damn good show, and I think it'll be the new show I start watching this year. I tend to pick two primetime shows each TV season - one drama, one comedy - that I watch through the end of the season. Last year was Heroes and Knights of Prosperity, the year before was the Office/Earl comedy hour and Invasion (I never said I picked good shows).

fudge

2007-09-25T06:31:00.000-04:00

Reasons why my week is already ruined:

1) I left my bathroom bag at home, so I don't have my deodorant, toothbrush, eyeglasses, contact fluid/cases/spare lenses

2) I grabbed the wrong set of keys as I left, so I can't get into my office, the department computer lab, or even the building

3) Since I've got a bunch of work to get done, I left extra early. Since most of the buildings, including the Union, don't open until 7am, I've spent the last 45 minutes sitting outside looking like an idiot

4) I have to pee [see part 3]

5) I still have a bunch of terrible drafts to read and edit

[UPDATE - a food services worker took pity on me and let me inside, so the mutant mosquitoes aren't biting any more]

Normally, the above image would cheer me up and make me laugh, but some days you're Barkley, and some days you're Godzilla - today's a Godzilla kind of day...

Why not?

2007-09-24T20:57:00.000-04:00

I usually think these things are slightly pointless, but I thought this one was kind of fun...

1. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car)
Boots Alero
2.YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (fave ice cream flavor, favorite cookie)
Chocolate Thin Mint
3. YOUR “FLY Guy/Girl” NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of your last name)
K-Gee
4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal)
Red Dog
5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born)
Link Coldwater
6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first)
Geeke
7. SUPERHERO NAME: (”The” + 2nd favorite color, favorite drink)
The Yellow Latte
8. NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers)
Mark Ivo
9. STRIPPER NAME: (the name of your favorite perfume/cologne/scent, favorite candy)
Sandlewood Skittles
10.WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother’s & father’s middle names )
Mary Marvin
11. TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME: (Your 5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter)
Heitkamp Hartford
12. SPY NAME: (your favorite season/holiday, flower)
Autumn Peony
13. CARTOON NAME: (favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now + “ie” or “y”)
Mango Sockie
14. HIPPY NAME: (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree)
Grapefruit Willow
15. YOUR ROCKSTAR TOUR NAME: (”The” + Your fave hobby/craft, fave weather element + “Tour”)
The Sewing Rain Tour

Review of Douglas Wolk's 'Reading Comics' (very rough draft)

2007-09-13T08:18:00.000-04:00

Douglas Wolk’s Reading Comics defines the field of comic studies and provides an innovative theoretical framework for future scholarship, all the while promoting comics as a distinct combination of aesthetics and text.
Wolk divides his text into two parts; the first five chapters summarize past comics scholarship and develop his own theoretical framework, while the more extensive second section consists of a series of separate analyses of an assortment of comics creators, both artists and writers. His first chapter begins by establishing a broad definition of comics that charts the history of comics as a progression from pulp books confined by industry conventions to the current variety of creative works; Wolk concludes that comics should be understood not simply as a literary or visual form:

Comics are not prose. Comics are not movies. They are not
a text-driven medium with added pictures; they’re not the
visual equivalent of prose narrative or a static version of a
film. They are their own thing: a medium with its own
devices, its own innovators, its own clichés, its own genres
and traps and liberties. The first step toward attentively
reading and fully appreciating comics is acknowledging that.
(14)

While Wolk is by no means the first critic to contend this point, he provides an especially convincing argument, including a lighthearted dialogue in which he defends himself from Straw Men embodying possible challenges to his foundational claims. Wolk then previews his argument for comics auteurship with an exploration of the evolution of art comics as an accepted and distinct form, comparing the change in style with the parallels in mainstream comics. Using Kant’s aesthetic philosophy, Wolk suggests that, even in images that are not realistic (including what Wolk calls “ugly comics”), we can readily find aspects of the comic that are both things of “beauty” in their composition and narrative function, but also “good” – the emergence of individual style within imposed conventions.

Throughout the second part of Reading Comics, Wolk will locate the “personality” of the comic creator as central to his analysis; he admits that such personality is easier to notice in alternative and independent press comics that are scripted and drawn by a single creator than in mainstream publications produced by entire staffs of writers, artists, and editors. Wolk is quick to note, however, that many personalities can be found within mainstream comics – after all, even the loudest detractors of Rob Liefeld’s distinctive anatomies can hardly deny his influence or the instant identification of a “Rob Liefeld” comic book. As such, Wolk’s analyses each focus on a single creative personality (with the exceptions of Will Eisner and his “disciple” Frank Miller, who Wolk connects in their dramatic influence on mainstream conventions, and Craig Thompson and James Kolchalka, who represent opposite ends of the early-90s trend of autobiographical comics), ranging from the Hernandez brothers to Steve Ditko.

Early on, Wolk admits that his selection of subject “personalities” is not meant to be a representative sample of all comics, nor is he attempting to establish a comics canon; rather, his choices are “comics and cartoonists I think are interesting to discuss” (137), mostly American books (Wolk repeatedly apologizes for not considering manga in any of his discussions) and series that are widely available. Wolk’s analysis tends to focus predominately on the art and visual layout of each personality, but he includes sections on Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, and Tomb of Dracula as examples of distinct narrative personalities that connect disparate artistic accompaniment.

Reading Comics struggles to unite popular superhero monthlies and independent alternative books. Wolk laments that “the schism between the two big American schools of comics - […] ‘the mainstream’ and ‘art comics’ […] is becoming wider and bitterer” (11). Even though many of his theoretical claims reinforce the similarities between the two schools – Wolk devotes an entire chapter to dissecting the evolving style and aesthetic of mainstream superhero comics – but the distinctions between mainstream and art comics are reinforced throughout the book. At one point, Wolk notes that, no matter how similar the two might be, the distinction between them persists due to the radically different readerships and the very different expectations these readers bring to the texts.

Douglas Wolk ends his discussion of comics as comics with a brief prediction about the future of comic creators. While the current trends suggest a split between “the rough wave and the smooth wave,” between highly individual, “transgressive” minicomics and webcomics, and drawings and the “self-consiciously pretty” styles utilized by trained artists. However, Wolk finds promise not in the schism, but in the possibility of new distinct personalities, styles that are clearly the artists’ own.

Great moments in classic Russian literature

2007-09-11T09:14:00.001-04:00

I found this a few minutes after I posted the earlier stuff, and I wanted to toss it up here before I forget:

Crime and Punishment AND BATMAN!

I try to be good hard-worker-man, but refrigemater so messy, so so messy

2007-09-11T08:06:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the lack of content lately, I'll try to get back in the habit of posting at least once a week. Let's go with the bullet points for today:

Good news: Finally heard back from IJOCA - they're going to publish my reviews of two books, Doug Wolk's Reading Comics and the collection Comics and Film. Now all I have to do is finish reading the books and write the darn things. I'll post the drafts when they're ready (at least one has to be finished by Wednesday afternoon)
Bad news: After the first week of the football season, I'm 1-2, with my only win being from the no-money-just-for-fun work league (although it was a monster win). If I had just played Randy Moss, instead of wussing out, I'd be 2-1
Good news: The St. Xavier Bombers are 3-0, after beating Cleveland powerhouse Glenville, despite having their best offensive player sit out with a sore ankle (Specht's saving him for GCL games, the ones that really matter). For the last two weeks, all but 7 points have come from Danny Williamson, a Wide Receiver/Kicker/Punter/Kick Returner/Defensive Back - dude deserves a D-I scholarship for his conditioning alone
Bad news: Even though the Bengals won last night's MNF, they looked absolutely terrible - the offense must have just stayed in the locker room at halftime, and if Shayne Graham doesn't kick the ball into the end zone, it's a guaranteed return TD. If you're forcing 5 turnovers and the game still comes down to a last-second goal line stand, you're in trouble. And yes, that was a bullshit interference call on Todd Heap, and I'm not saying that just because I have Heap on one of my fantasy teams
Good news: I'm tentatively scheduled to teach CMM 345 - Classic American Film next Winter at UD. Not only do I finally get an upper-level class (it's my turn in "The Show," to quote Kevin Costner), but this is my first step to replacing the Lainster
Bad news: Nothing kills a good mood like reading terrible work from a student who you've devoted significant one-on-one time to helping, especially when it's clear that said student has pretty much ignored everything you've told them
Good news: since I have to end this post on a high note, I should mention the trailer for the new Iron Man movie - I'm not really a fan of the character (especially as of late), and I pretty much expected high levels of suckitude, but...the trailer actually has me excited about the movie, and my excitement is only increased by shots of Jeff Bridges' evil bearded industrialist villain. Nothing against Kevin Spacey, but Bridges is now my #2 pick for Lex Luthor (after Clancy Brown) in the next Superman movie that doesn't suck

"It's not a tumor."

2007-08-31T10:22:00.000-04:00

That has to be one of my favorite lines of all time. I really didn't think the movie was that great, but I really love that line!

I'm happy to report that I am recovering quite well from my surgery. I'm feeling really well and the incision is healing much better then I ever anticipated. Also, last week I found out that there was definitely no cancer so that was a big relief!

This whole experience has been interesting. It's been scary and frustrating, but really fulfilling at the same time. It really puts things into perspective and reminds you of all of the wonderful things in life especially the great people who really care. I am truly blessed to have such wonderful family and fiends who were so supportive throughout this whole process. I appreciate everything everyone did. Thank you so much!

-interlude-

2007-08-29T22:22:00.000-04:00

It's only the second week of the semester, and I'm already so burned out that I can't even make fun of the above image.

"Crushed by rejection and maimed by a cat..."

2007-08-22T14:34:00.000-04:00

Everyone's heard of Superman, Batman, and Stilt-Man, but the best superheroes are the ones that fall through the cracks. As a small atonement for his blameworthy work on 52, I present Keith Giffen's Argh! Yle! - easily the most evil sock in the DC multiverse.

Basically, Giffen created Argh!Yle! as the nemesis for Ambush Bug, who was himself only used to highlight the stupidity of the DC forgotten continuity (like Supergirl's horse/centaur/love interest Comet). Even more impressive, this was back in the 1980s, when self-referential comic books were limited to English writers.

So why bring up Argh!Yle!? (other than to test out the exclamation point key) I'm bored/depressed about starting another semester of "Writing for Troglodytes," and I'm not in the mood to work on lesson plans.

"You seem malnourished. Are you suffering from intestinal parasites?"

2007-08-10T22:48:00.000-04:00

Some good news today: the wife finally had her surgery today, and all seems to have gone well. Thanks to all the people who sent cookies, candies, and food - since she's not able to eat solid food for a few days, guess who gets to enjoy all of that?

I used her phone to take a picture of her right before she was wheeled into surgery, doped to the gills on muscle relaxants and wearing a hair net. If I can figure out how to transfer it from phone to computer, I'll be sure to post it here.

On a barely related note, Roger Ebert, possibly the greatest populist film critic ever, is finally back from his illness-induced sabbatical. Today's review of Rush Hour 3 pretty much sums up how awesome the man is:

"If you are trapped in a rainstorm in front of a theater playing this picture, by all means go right in. You won't have a bad time, will feel affectionate toward Lee and Carter, and stay dry."

Q:"Are you sure?" A:"That's what it said on 'Ask Jeeves'."

2007-08-09T11:28:00.001-04:00

Well I made it. I finished the big project and had my vacation. I spent several days floating on the water drinking beer and one day floating on the water drinking very strong Mojitos (Woooo!) I don't remeber much of that day. Oh well!

Apparently the presentation went really well and the State guys said our region should be a model for the rest of the state. I guess that's a compliment. I'll believe it when we are awarded the money.

The husband has been spending loads of time at home. What exactly he's been doing I don't know, but it looks something like this...

I think it may be time for him to go back to school. It's probably better for our relationship.

"Why, Grover Cleveland spanked me twice, on non-consecutive occasions..."

2007-08-08T23:04:00.000-04:00

No matter how much free time I get, I keep neglecting to post anything onto the blog, which just got some new committed readership (thanks to Johnnycakes, who just posted a comment to a 2-month old post - a comment that included a wang joke that was outdated in 1999).

Spent the weekend outside of Cleveland at the final wedding of the summer. According to the groom, the whole thing followed a 3-point plan:

A) You bring your "A" Game

B) I'll bring my "A" Game

C) "A" Game!!!

[Bear in mind that said groom is a chemical engineer who makes about 6 times my annual salary...]

I've got one more week before my boring commute starts back up, so I'm finally getting around to watching all of the recent incarnation of Battlestar Galactica, the topic-du-jour at last April's Pop Culture Association conference. I'd previously resisted watching the show on Sci-Fi, despite the glowing recommendations and reviews everyone gives it. It's one hell of a show, but I'm really having a tough time suspending my disbelief at a few of the show's key plotpoints. Eh, even with some major flaws, it's still better than anything on TV this summer.

I've been meaning to post this video for a while now. I'm not at all up-to-date on what the young people are listening to, but I love videos about cyborg pirates:

PS- Buck Henry is on Daily Show right now with his new segment, "The Henry Stops Here" - seriously, the man is a genius. And he just made a joke about Joseph Pulitzer punching people in the nuts. Genius.