Every day I write the book

Idle thoughts...

Do you have a flexible spending account? If so, did you call your plan administrator today, perhaps under the idiotic and ridiculously ignorant misapprehension that you had to have all your claims in by the end of the year, and although you've had that really torturously moronic idea in your head for at least 12 months now, nonetheless, you couldn't be bothered to do anything about it until today?

If so, you're a goddam cretin, and worse, you're probably one of the many goddam cretins who called me today in a fine frothing panic, because, well, see above.


Personally, I think it should be a law: if you wait until the last minute to do something, you waited too long. I think the post office should refuse to accept tax returns on April 15th, and I absolutely believe that whenever the fuck the close out date for your flexible spending account is, if you wait until then to submit your claims, your claims should automatically be denied.

Or, you know, just explode in your hands when you're feverishly stuffing them into an envelope or trying to frantically feed them into your fax machine.

In case you're not getting my gist, today was a really really crappy day at work.

Moving on from that -- SuperGirlfriend has some kind of magic touch. She wanted to cheer me up after today's spectacularly horrible work day, so she bought me three boosters of Armor Wars, and two of them had Shathras in them. I mean, personally, I think that's pretty astonishing. The boosters also yielded up yet another Veteran Quicksilver (that's the third I've pulled) and another Veteran Crimson Dynamo (my second, I think).

As to stuff I didn't already have, well, I got a Veteran Killer Shrike and a Veteran Warpath, along with an Inertial something something Battlefield Condition. And another Repulsor Shield, which is always a happy making thing. Now if I could just get a Shell Head...

I like three day weekends.

Those of you who haven't checked out my old friend Opus' blog as yet really should. She's a better, funnier writer than I am. He said, grudgingly, through clenched teeth. Why are all the women I've ever been in love with smarter and more talented than I am? I must secretly be a matriarchial monarchist, or something.

Okay, well, I take it back. Kristy's not smarter than I am. But my other girlfriends, past and present, certainly are.

Hmmm. All right, Rebecca isn't, either. But, fine. The first one and the current one. They're definitely smarter and more talented than I am. Plus all the bitterly unrequited loves of my life have been smarter than I am. Which, come to think of it, probably factors heavily into the whole 'unrequited' thing. Or maybe that's wisdom. I don't know.

Say, Bane's coming over tomorrow to hang out for a while. Maybe I'll get to play HeroClix with someone besides the older two SuperKids. That would be pretty cool. I'll probably play my female Fantastic Four -- Sue Storm, Medusa, She Hulk, and Crystal, most likely with a visiting Lockjaw (he's a dog; he doesn't upset the theme). Yeah, I know I loathe She-Hulk, but however much I truly hate every molecular nuance of the character, she's a genuine one time member of the group, and she has the TA, unlike Tigra, whom otherwise I would probably stick in instead. Besides, the FF should always have a beat stick.

I'll play the new FF TA, naturally, because otherwise Medusa is just a waste of points. I may even put the whole team In Touch With, I don't know, Reed, I guess, so I can amp up their stats a little at need.

Oh, over at Bewildering Stories, they're doing their yearly retrospective, where their editors pick out what they consider to be the year's best stuff they've published. As it happens, they chose three of my short stories and two of my articles, which seems like a pretty good score.

But still, no one will pay me for this crap.

Earlier this week I was planning to do a blog entry regarding fun and easy ways to bait hapless Modern Age comics fans into a shrieking frenzy, since I've gotten quite a lot of recent experience doing so over at the HC Realms threads. And I may still write it. But it's been a horribly busy week at work, and I haven't had much time to write otherwise.

Plus, the whole thing will probably be rather mean.

But, you know, Modern Age fans kind of deserve that. I was over at Ragnell's blog the other day and I started hitting all the links in her blog scroll, and oh my God! I am like the only person on that whole lengthy thing who is over the age of 12. And every other blogger she knows absolutely hates the Silver Age, especially Hal Jordan, and they all absolutely adore the Modern Age, especially Kyle Rayner. One of them (I think he's gay) goes into lengthy gushing rhapsodies on his blog about all the Silver Age stories where Hal Jordan hits his head on something. I mean, Jesus Christ, I would imagine there are many many Modern Age stories where Kyle Rayner hits his head on things, too (most likely the lower stomachs of various other male characters, while he's bobbing industriously in and out), but I'm at a disadvantage here, because in order for me to catalogue those occasions exhaustively, I'd have to read the truly appalling stories they appear in, which would make me long for death (Ron Marz's, not mine). Whereas Modern Age fans, if they want to yank a lot of Jordan bashing panels out of context and guffaw over them childishly, well, all they have to do is read Silver Age Green Lantern stories. And that's actually FUN.

Anyway, I may yet write that entry, because, honestly, why not? You can't possibly be unfair to a Modern Age fan who hates Hal Jordan and loves Kyle Rayner. In text, I mean. I suppose it's possible they don't actually deserve to be broken on the rack or anything... but... well... I wouldn't rush to that judgement. Certainly I'd want to bastinado them for a few hours while I made up my mind.

SuperGirlfriend and I get the SuperKids back tomorrow, so that will be cool.

If I'm not back before then, Happy 2006, everyone.