Labels: geek stuff

This is all I'm going to say.

I'm still teaching at the same school. I'm still doing the same things with my spare time. I didn't lose anyone that day; hell, I've never even seen the places involved, except on TV.

Just the same, I feel like the course of my life has been radically altered. God knows I'm not the same person I was back then, even if that person's life is in roughly the same orbit.

This will come as a shock to the ones of readers I have, but I'm strongly considering giving up comics. The stars are kind of aligning that way right now.

DC Comics (who account for 95% of my comics purchases) has rebooted the entire universe; all the old continuity has been wiped out, and everything is starting over with a brand spanking new #1 issue. I think the idea is to provide a jumping-on point for new readers, which is beyond stupid. For starters, most adults have no interest in comics, and most kids that do read comics read those awful Japanese books. If people aren't going to the comic shops anyway, it's not like they'll ever notice "The New 52." And for my part, this is as good a time as any to jump off; every storyline I was following has been resolved, or was summarily dropped.

Let's talk about the cost. I'm spending $100+ plus a month on books, and that's even with the steep discount my mail-order service provides. $100+ each month in the midst of this economic cliff-dive. I'm going to need that money for the hypothetical children, or, worst case, to buy bread should a period of hyperinflation arise. (And back to my first point: each of these books retails for $2.99 - $3.99. That's almost as much as a month of XBox Live, for a hell of a lot less entertainment. How many of these mythical "new readers" can really commit to comics, when a year of one title runs from $36 to $48 a year?)

Actually looking at The New 52, I feel my inner cranky old bastard emerging. I despise the new costumes (Hey Jim Lee! 1993 called, and said you should move on), I'm annoyed by the changes in characterization, and am put off by the "darker, edgier tone" that supposedly reflects these troubled times (Hey DiDio! 1986 called . . .).

Finally, I don't have time anymore to read, let alone bag & board, sort & box.

So case closed, right? Seems pretty logical to me, but then again, I continue to be amazed at my own capacity for doing the illogical.

PS: The whole reason I actually logged in was to mention Jim Shooter's blog. Shooter has been a comic writer for DC and Marvel, and editor and EIC for Marvel, and a publisher for Valiant and Defiant. Every post is absolutely fascinating in how it describes the behind-the-scenes business of making funnybooks, dealing with the suits, and dealing with the talent. Did you know Marvel basically created the whole mythology of the Transformers? 'Tis true.

Labels: comics

Labels: true tales of education

So yesterday, I was struck with an intense desire to find myself back in 1996. This is irrational, of course, due to both the impossibility of time travel, as well as the seeming randomness of the year.

Why 1996? Not entirely sure, really. It was the first year of my teaching career. I was 23 years old, so I had that going for me, too. The X-Files and Millennium were the cornerstone and raison d'etre of my Friday nights. It was a period of general optimism, when we were free to ignore terrorism unless white guys were perpetrating it, or thinking about it, or trying to live alone in the woods. We had a Dem president who understood that he needed to find the center to get reelected.

Enough of the political, by the way. That's not the point of all this. The point is that the desire to go back to that point in space/time was gradually replaced by an ever-growing list of the things I would say to my 23 year old self. Here's what I came up with:

1) Do the goddamned dishes. Or switch to paper plates. Either way, a sink full of month-old dishes is beyond disgusting.

2) Exercise more. I know you're trying, but try a little harder.

3) You see these days here, where you're sitting on your hand-me-down couch watching Babylon 5? You'll come to miss them, and not because of B5. You'll be amazed how these mundane days shine so much more brightly when you're looking at them from a distance of 15 years.

4) Buy gold. I know you're making Catholic school money, but it will pay off, because, you see...

5) You have five years until everything goes tits-up and global stability becomes henceforth one of those golden memories.

6) Your beliefs will change; those of your friends will not. Don't be afraid.

7) The Spice Girls won't last forever. Then again, I suspect you already knew this.

8) The world won't end in 2000, nor in 2005. Probably not even in 2012, but if it does, it's not because the Mayans ran out of space on their calendar.

9) There's no point in buying all of those DVDs. If they don't have "Star Wars" in the title, you probably won't watch them more than a few times anyway.

10) Dial-up. How precious. And I like your shoebox-sized cell phone, and the 10 min/month plan you're rocking.

11) If you're interested in dating a girl, and you're asking yourself whether you should, if the answer is "yes," then you shouldn't. Seriously, your judgment is that bad. If it's "no," you probably still shouldn't.

12) You may as well forgive your father now. Karmically speaking, he'll get more coming to him than anyone deserves.

13) There will come a time when crass stupidity will get you your own show on MTV. Actually, that may have already happened.

14) TV networks will become everything other than what they are now. MTV won't play videos, Cartoon Network won't play cartoons, and Sci-Fi will play pro wrestling.

15) When buying a house, read the disclosure carefully, and assume a problem is, oh, 10x as bad as the disclosure states.

16) You're not a very good teacher, but someday you'll get pretty close to being a decent one.

17) You say you hate 80s music now; in 15 years, it'll be most of your last.fm playlist. What's last.fm? Shut up, neanderthal.

18) You'll get to a point where the knowledge that some parents let their 12 year olds watch South Park is the least of the signs of societal collapse you see.

19) There will come a time when technology will move faster than even you can adapt to, but Mom will still call each and every time she screws something up on her computer.

20) Speaking of which, get used to saying, "Don't click on that," and "Are you talking about the Internet, Facebook, or your e-mail?" Trust me, it'll make sense sooner than you care to find out.

21) You and your wife will predominantly speak in Simpsons quotes, peppered with occasional bits of English.

22) And yes, The Simpsons will still be on the air, but it hasn't been funny for a decade or so.

23) Lastly, you can't go back in time. Physicists call it "time's arrow," but what it really means is that every moment is a location in space/time, and you can no sooner go back one second than you can lasso a dinosaur, even if the difference between them is 65 million years. So, I guess I'd say you should try to collect as many good moments as you can, and do your best to remember every little detail, because that's about the best you can do.

...At which point, the paradox of having traveled back in time to tell myself that I can't travel back in time unravels the fabric of the universe. Or maybe Doc Brown fixes it.

This goes out to someone who doesn't know of this blog's existence.

Enough with the goddamn Facebook posts about how ashamed you are that Michelle Bachmann won the Straw Poll.

1) The straw poll doesn't mean anything.

2) You weren't even going to consider voting for someone other than Obama anyway. You know full well O could molest your parents, kidnap your children, burn your house to the ground, and wipe his sacred ass with your life savings, and you'd still vote for him. So don't give me any bullshit about how those hick teabaggers left you with no other choice.

3) You weren't so ashamed of Iowa when the state Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. Evidently, your love for the state is somewhat conditional.

Can we take a moment to recognize how boring Ennis' and Robertson's The Boys has become? A comic book series that started out with the premise of super-heroes with all too human foibles and perversities (and perversions, let's be honest here) has become a book where people talk. And talk. And talk. And talk.

Get on with it!

if anybody at DC Comics ever finds this, the reboot is a TERRIBLE idea. The new costumes are cool, if today is in 1993. The story previews I've seen suck. In all likelihood, you've managed to chase off someone who's been reading since Reagan was president.

I swear to Christ above, I'm at my saturation point. I don't even care if nobody agrees with me (and let's face it, NOBODY in my life agrees with me); what is driving. me. in. sane. is the sheer tenacity with which people cling to their progressivism, even if the suppositions they base their progressivism on are demonstrably, patently, and provably false. You know what? It's not even that. It's the way how if ANYTHING comes close to even remotely resembling a threat to their worldview, it must be utterly demonized, and so must anyone who dares to speak in opposition.

For instance: Warren Buffett's "Tax the shit out of us rich bastards" op-ed is making the rounds of Facebook and the internet in general today. Ok, great; as soon, however, as someone makes a comment (quite correctly) noting that anyone can give as much money to the government as they want at any time, the lockstep groupthink response instantly descends on the discussion. "Herp durp teabagger Koch brothers you love the rich nyah nyah nyah . . ."

First of all (and I know this will be hard, because it will require something other than a knee-jerk response), why is the notion that the people who want to be taxed more should step up and pay more on their own initiative instantly dismissed out of hand? Why is it that the people who push for higher taxes always lead from the rear? Assuming you're right, and we should soak the rich, who gets to decide what constitutes "rich?" Who decides how much they should pay? At what point does taxing the rich turn into punishing success? If it's so wrong for Tea Partiers to not even consider tax hikes, why is it not equally wrong for liberals to completely dismiss spending cuts?

For that matter, when did wanting the government to not spend more money than it takes in become "terrorism?" (PS: I'm really basking in this "new tone of civility" since the Giffords shooting. Loving the shit out of it.)

God damn, I can't even handle talking politics any more, because every single time I talk to a lib, their argument is essentially predicated on the idea that they're right because what they think is what all smart people think. If you agree with them, you're right. If you disagree with them, you're wrong by virtue of not being in congruence with what right-thinking people think. That's it. They have nothing else on which to fall back. Most of them have never once looked at their fundamental assumptions about how the world works, nor have they ever looked at the history of the ideas they parrot.

And yes, you're fuckin' a right I'm a little angry right now. I'm angry because, you see, I'm a racist. And a homophobe. And a xenophobe. And a hick. And an evil rich bastard. I must be, right? I have to be because I don't agree with the orthodoxy, and that's that. All enemies of progress are to be vilified.

Don't think. Don't ever stop to consider the possibility that I might be right about something. If you do, you might actually start to think for yourself.