Today We Feast on Victory Chili!

-PEOPLE OF THE WORLD - 

There.  Now that I have your attention, I need to make a disclaimer.  It is Holy Hell Balls Cold out where I live right now.  Like, so cold that Jack Frost took a quick jaunt into our neck of the woods and said "Eff this business, brah.  Too cold."  He then proceeded to hie himself to Hawai'i.  Because, really, screw the Pacific Islands.  Also because it's the only place he can get away with saying "Brah" in a non-ironic fashion.  It is so cold, in fact, that words and thoughts have literally frozen in place in my brain and are having a hard time getting out in a coherent fashion.  (Yes, this is in fact a difference from the normal lack of cohesion we've all come to know and love from your friend, Markatoa)

I'm dying, Brah.  But it hurts so good.

Possibly because of this brain-freezing deathfield that's hovering over my portion of the United States that I came to a decision today.  And that decision is that whomsoever created the QWERTY keyboard layout (Originally Christopher Latham Sholes in 1867, for the curious) did so solely to get people in trouble when they're typing in a hurry.

Yes, I know taking typing classes and not being in a hurry or just plain paying somewhat more attention when you're typing can solve any of the problems the layout possesses.  And  yes, I'm aware that once you in fact get used to it that it is efficient enough to solve all your needs.  But...it doesn't stop me from accidentally writing "busty" sometimes.

Instead of "busy".  Because the "t" and the "y" are right next to each other?  You see what I mean - it's right there in the name of the layout.  QWERTY.  I mean, say you're typing off a quick IM/email to someone about their day.  You're at work, there's monkeys screaming and toddlers on fire in the background (I don't know what your office is like.  Mine is legit, though).  Maybe you don't have time to do a proof read and spell check doesn't say anything when you accidentally ask your mother in law is everything is "busty over there?"  Then maybe your father in law sends you a FedEx Priority package with a couple of bullets in it and a family picture with your face crossed out in red ink.  Then you live your last few minutes in pants wetting terror before it ends mercifully.  All because Stupid Christopher Stupid Latham Stupid Sholes thought putting those letters near each other was a good idea.  He's trying to jack your stuff up from beyond the grave.

Don't get me wrong - I mean, there's a lot of times when I'm saying "busty" and talking about boobies.  They're fun to talk about and generally to interact with.  Not that I'm playing with just the general mass of boobs in the world.  No, sirs and lady sirs, I am a one-woman, two-booby man.  I can appreciate the existence of other breasts, but only in an academic sort of way.

Also...artistically?  Thanks, comic books.

To me, I haven't had any other issues while typing that you can accidentally write a real word that totally changes the meaning of your sentence with a single keystroke.  Most of the other ways you can do that would be noticed.  Sure, if you missed an "i" you could end up with different words.  But I think you would notice that.  Or at least someone would just assume you messed up the "I".  Although, now in the future I might just ask a friend "what are you dong tonight?" just to see what happens.

Keyboards, man.  Always trying to get me in trouble.

All twisted up in AmazonTown

...I realized that there are two, possibly more, ways I could go after I sculpted that laser-etched, surgically sharp title of mine.  And by "ways" I mean things far more arcane than leftwise and righticle.  Perhaps even more confusing than upsides and southdown.  Yes - there are concepts more esoteric and unknowable even than those.  We're talking full-on Lovecraftian geometry up in here.  The two things that I was mostly thinking about are however, somewhat related and so with that in mind (and also the fact that literally no one can stop me from writing whatever I damned well please) it has come into my brainsauce that I shall cover both topics.

They have to do with content.  Media, even.  The consumption and reportage of the same and the various interpretations of classics that modern audiences find themselves exposed to.  See that?  If you didn't know any better you'd almost think that sentence made sense.  You'd be hooked - wondering what it is that this obvious savant has to say relative to the 21st Century Media Culture that saturates our lives.  Well, lords and ladies (and, I suppose, poo-covered peasants), let's get right down to it, shall we?

First, Smallville was a pretty popular show.  Say what you want about it, but it's a thing that did well for DC Comics try to keep the worst superhero in the universe relevant.  It cemented ratings for the fledgling WB network (and then the CW) and gave the world Kristen Kruek - or however the heck it is she spells her name.  These are pretty decent accomplishments.  Things to be proud of.  They even almost made people so interested in DC properties that there was an Aquaman live action series of the same vein.

Aquaman, for the love of all that is holy.  Now, it would have been called Mercy Reef and if there's any justice in the world would have been more of a sequel to Baywatch Nights and less about Aquaman but unfortunately that didn't happen.  What happened instead?  Arrow.  It's about a guy who shoots arrows at stuff.  For justice?  Well, for some damned reason anyway.  It's marginally fun to watch and marginally successful in ratings and (I imagine) advertisers.

Naturally, of course, that leads us to the newest project in that vein that's been announced.  Amazon.  (See - it's starting to tie back in to my topic.  It took us a while, but we got there.  It's like Oregon that way.  But with less dysentery and oxen.  At least I hope less of those things.)  Amazon will tell us a modern, up to date, edgy version of everyone's favorite woman named Dianna Prince ever - Wonder Woman

Lynda Carter remains skeptical.

The thing that confuses me about this is the basics of Wonder Woman's origins.  And no, I don't mean the bondage fantasies of her creator - although an episode in which she loses her powers because "her hands were bound by a man" would be hilarious and I would watch the heck out of it.  Not in a creepy way, because the girl in question would be over 18.  I mean, in a way that I wouldn't necessarily want Ladytoa to be in the room with me while I was watching it, but not a super creepy way.  Maybe like 45% creepy.  It's not even a plurality of creep.  STOP JUDGING ME, SWAN!

What I mean is simply this - Wonder Woman's life before she started flying invisible jets and pulling crazy dominatrix stunts on the criminals of the world was boring.  She was either A) created out of nothing but clay when someone got lonely and lived as the only child in a realm of immortal, intelligent, perfect, peaceful, wise women (yeah, alliteration!) or, B) really, some variation thereof.  I mean, she comes from a place literally called Paradise Island for the gods' sake.  I don't think you can reinvent that too much.  Unless you're calling "Paradise Island" a housing project deep in the worst bowels of New Detroit something that has a name like that would not give itself over readily to a lot of seedy crime, nor have much of a driving need to combat the same.  Wonder Woman only works when she's left her origin behind and is out busting heads and stopping Nazis from stealing our milk (True story - and one of the greatest comic book villain plans ever).  She's out to understand Man's World and teach her super-intelligent, immortal sisters about what the world has been like in the 2000 years since they've been hidden away in a perfectly protected, completely benevolent society.

I think a well-done WW series could be awesome for the geeks of the world.  Try to show people out there that not everyone who enjoys comics only cares about the ladies for what they can get out of them (yes, yes, we would sort of need to remove the crazy bondage overtones, but luckily those have been mostly out of the comics since, like, the 80s).  I just don't know that a stripped-down origin story works as well for this character as well as it did for some others.  There's not really "Wonder Girl" stories (yes, Donna Troy.  Yes, Cassie Sandsmark. No, let's not get into that right now) that matter at all.  It wouldn't be interesting to watch Dianna discover her powers because she was trained in how to use them pretty much since birth.  Watching her hang out and receive a Classical Greek education just doesn't sound like riveting TV to me.  That said, I'm going to watch at least the Pilot Episode when it makes it to the air.  Hopefully I'm wrong.  Maybe it will start In Media Res.  Maybe, like Namor, she'll wake up with amnesia and need to relearn about herself? I don't know.

Going Leftwise from there - Amazon.  The company (AMZN) that is.  Specifically, Amazon Prime.  That stuff is legit and it blows my mind in a way that for some reason Netflix never really did.  Maybe it's because you get the shipping upgrade for their physical stuff in addition to their streaming options.  Maybe it's because their Prime-eligible free streaming is pretty robust for something that they're not charging you for.

Or maybe, and this is probably the most likely, it amazes me because I'm an old man.  Not quite tottering around in diapers old, but the transition away from physical media and into a streaming consumption model really hit me when I saw the way Amazon was handling this.  Sure, Netflix had streaming but it was originally an add-on that sort of became more convenient.  Hulu has streaming, but Hulu sucks unless you pay for Hulu Plus.  Amazon is just like, hey, you paid me for this one, completely unrelated service, would you like some free access to stuff along with that?

And the answer is yes.  Without a doubt yes.  I will continue to purchase and collect physical media for as long as that's a thing that exists (I like to *own* things, not just the right to watch those things) but it no longer bothers me as much as it used to to see it go away.

I think I'm done with my rambling for now.

Hell comes to Suburbia

Ahhh, Internet.  I see you there.  See you there seeing me.  What with your creepy, soulless eyes and your CCTV cameras.  Yeah, I see you.  Anyway, Internet, if you and your denizens are anything like the rest of the universe, you will have in no way, shape or form have noticed my absence over the course of the last few weeks.  Had you noticed, I'm sure that your life will have been made better for the lack of listening to my words as they radiate from my keyboard and out into the vast, unknowable AetherSpace in which you find yourself entangled.

That all said, I apologize.  Not for being away, because quite frankly, you were all happier to see me be gone than any of us are comfortable mentioning in polite company.

Or, realistically, any company

I apologize for being back.  But now that we've made our peace with the fact of my continued, fetid existence let's just all put our heads down and power through, shall we?  There are a few reasons why I haven't been around.  One horrible, national tragedy that struck far too close to home (as every tragic moment does for those who find themselves afflicted with them) about which there shall be precisely zero jokes out of me.  Ever.  Also, due to the more sudden than expected moving on from our hilarious cast of housemates Ladytoa and I had to go find ourselves a landing pad and, well, land there.  Moving takes time and energy.

Also, and here's the one I can really mock - my coworker was recently banished from the Northeastern United States and shunted off to where all of the worst people in the universe are trapped.  A place they struggle both against the harsh, poisonous environments and also their own base, depraved natures.  A place of fire and brimstone and Foster's. (Which is Australian for Beer.  Alright, I admit it.  he was in Australia.)  In case you're wondering, I did some very solid research about Australia before he went away.  That way, I would be prepared for whatever desert madness he brought with him.  It turns out that literally everything in Australia is poisonous and has unexpectedly large teeth.  Even the vaginas. 

 Especially the vaginas.

Because of this, native Australians are actually not able to eat anything at all from their own continent and so have an entire culture built on piracy, both internet and otherwise.  They sail from their ports with their flags inverted only to ravage the countryside of New Zealand and Tasmania (sometimes ranging as far asea as Japan), taking what they can, burning what they can't and then retreating back to their coastal hovels to jealously hoard their ill gotten gains and attempt to protect (via knifings and football riots) the small bit of normalcy they buy themselves with the pain of others.  You think I'm making this up, but I'm not.  My coworker came back missing an eye but with peg leg and a propensity to cheer for Arsenal.  True story.

His trip created a situation in which I was doing literally two people's work for the last six weeks and just haven't had time to find inappropriate photos of carny-freaks to show people who have nothing better to do. Now he's back and that problem, at least, is solved.

But what does the future hold?  More posts about absolutely nothing?  Probably.  More jokes about my own lack of worth in this whole internet game, as it were?  Almost certainly.  Anyone who blunders into my path wondering aloud who this person is who uses phrases like "this whole internet game" and lamenting their loss of time while they read through the above paragraph?  Yes.  Check and mate, planet Earth.  I just won.

For really, though - my life is about to be a whirlwind of change.  Within the next six months (at the outside) or as few as three (at the earliest) I will be moving along with Ladytoa to the mythical land of Tejas.  Ladytoa will be blazing a trail for us first, and also starting a job to ensure no gap in health insurance coverage (yay! adulthood!).  I will be following when said things are all in place and all of our stuff (or at least the majority of it) has been put to bed up here.  Once we get down there and settled, our next real challenge begins.  It has to do with Apache Chief.  He just loves to bogart the whiskey.  (No?  Too Soon?  Not soon enough?  I mocked both the late-70s classic Challenge of the Superfriends and also Native Americans' unfortunate propensity for alcoholism.  In case you missed what I did there.  Now you know.  The real challenge, by the way is learning to live in the South.  Or even Tejas.  Which is like so South that the South thinks you're southern.  Also buying a house.)

While things remain in flux, chances are high that I will continue to post my random thoughts about the goings on of the day.  I may eventually settle down and write a more coherent blog with an actual overriding theme (shudder) - whether that replaces or supplements this, however, only time will tell.