Take a month of Sundays to try and explain

Well, yesterday would have been perfect if not for the godawful unconscionable asswhipping the Patriots ladled out to my Bucs.

Here's what no one in all the rehashing is talking about --

That field was obviously frozen solid. Playing on it was like playing on a skating rink. Everybody was falling on their ass.

However, the Bucs were falling on their asses about four times as often as the Patriots. The Bucs' front line was letting Patriots pass rushers get in to Simms unblocked. Cadillac Williams was getting nowhere. Joey Galloway wasn't hitting his routes correctly. The Bucs defenders were dropping what should have been certain interceptions.

The Patriots, on the other hand, were playing better than they've played so far this season, and, well... I'm wondering...

Could any of this have to do with the fact that the Patsies got to practice on a frozen field all week long, while the Bucs had to come in... er... cold?

Look, even if the game had been played in the Bucs' home stadium, it's possible the Patsies might have won. They played well, and I'm not trying to take that away from them. But the Bucs looked like stumbling idiots out there, and they aren't, by any stretch of the imagination... not this season, anyway. I have to think, had the game been played on a field where both teams had equal footing, the Bucs would have done much, much better.

It doesn't matter now, of course... the NFL doesn't give you do-overs because your opponent really REALLY took advantage of the home field. And odds are, we'll still win our last two games... and if either Atlanta or Dallas manages to beat the Panthers, we can still go in as winners of our division too. Beyond that, I suspect the Patriots are going at some point run head on into the Colts, and since the Colts will be playing in a dome, they should hand Tom Brady's pretty boys their pretty asses with little difficulty.

Okay, leaving football aside...


I think we're starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel in reference to Christmas. There are still a few things on the To Do list, but for the most part, everything is wrapped and under the tree, stocking stuffers are at the ready, and we're pretty much set. SuperGirlfriend provides gifts and Christmas dinner to a needy family every year (they write what are called 'Santa letters', and she picks one out at the post office) and that's all in hand, as well -- we should be taking stuff over to this year's family Friday night. Then we get the SuperKids back Christmas Eve, go over to SuperGirlfriend's parents to open presents there that night, then back here for Christmas Day. It should be wonderful.

Bane, it turns out, isn't dead after all, and in fact, he stopped by yesterday for a few hours, and watched the Bucs get destroyed with us. Unfortunately, for the past three weeks or so he's been flat on his back and he played HeroClix a great deal during that period, so he didn't want to play with me... which was sad, since there are only about four people in the world who play clix by my House Rules, and I hate missing an opportunity to play with one. Still, it was nice to hang out with him for a while. He may be back on New Year's Eve. He's not working where I work any more, so we'll have to work at it if we're going to continue to hang out.


I've been trying to avoid ridiculing what I see on other blogs lately, since it generally strikes me as a sad way to act, and beyond that, I don't like giving the loathely of the world any extra attention. However, I just have to ask: is this chick a mind controlled dupe of the far right... or, on the other hand, is she simply the world's shapeliest retard?

Honestly, I simply cannot comprehend the level of brain damage it would take to type up something like 'The dhimmicrats voted down the only real protection a girl has. THE PATRIOT ACT IS DEAD! Man your battle stations!' In fact, if that opinion was the result of brain damage or mental retardation, either condition would have to be so profound as to preclude the hand/eye coordination necessary to type and post to a blog... so I guess she's mind controlled after all.

And... oh jesus, still scrolling down... she's a mom with two daughters. Ah, well... the next generation of Clinton haters is well launched, and John Derbyshire will know who to call for a date for the next decade and a half.

Moving from a female blogger I can't stand to one whose work I always enjoy (not least of which when she's posting on my blog), I wanted to note that Ragnell delighted me with the following quote from her December 13 entry:

And finally, I don't want to say the following because a) I'm mad the spin-off is late this week, b) I'm mad the spin-off wasn't solicited for March, and c) there is a disturbing lack of opportunity to see Kyle Rayner's butt in March.

However, Green Lantern #10 was still the most interesting preview this week. Simone Bianchi draws a wonderful Hal Jordan. (I prefer him to Alex Ross as a cover artist). The beautiful pencils of Ivan Reis! The plot thread that kept me buying the book after issue #3! Sinestro!

Now, it's not that she's actually saying something nice about Hal Jordan, which is rare for her (and in fact, she's not, she's saying something nice about an artist who draws Hal Jordan, but I say good business is where you find it), and it certainly isn't that she's saying something nice about Kyle Rayner's ass... except, of course, that it is, because I just find it delightful whenever I stumble across a female comics fan behaving in a fashion that we male comics fans tend to get screamed at a lot for by female comics fans, which is to say, admiring the unrealistically exaggerated anatomical features of a favorite super-icon.

It's always nice to see one of my female spiritual brethren admitting to actually having a libido.

And kind of on that subject, someone over at HC Realms mentioned something in a chat thread I found a bit strange -- apparently Gail Simone, the rather talented writer of the excellent Villains United series, refused to use Dr. Light at all in the series because... get this... 'the character is now a rapist'.

Gail won't write about rapists, see.

I guess it's a feminist thing, or something.

Look, I'm a Silver Age fan, so, emotionally, I'm on board with her. To paraphrase Cyrus, one time leader of the Riffs -- back in the Silver Age nobody was raping nobody. In fact, people rarely killed each other, either. This is one of the many many reasons I prefer the Silver Age, in general, to the grim n' gritty, grisly, gruesome, and gory Modern Age. But Simone's stance troubles me nonetheless, because, well, it seems a trifle hypocritical to me. Why? Well, because Villains United features, among other things, graphically depicted scenes of cold blooded murder (issue 1, Deadshot puts a bullet through the original Fiddler's head), torture (issues 2 and 3), disfigurement and cannibalism (Scandal bites off Fatality's ear and eats it towards the end of issue 3), disembowelment and one of the more disturbing sex scenes ever depicted in mainstream comics (issue 4), and, anyway... yeah, Dr. Light is apparently a rapist, now. Apparently, he raped Sue Dibny, and because a male fictional character committed a fictional sexual assault against a female fictional character, a real female comics author will not include that male fictional character in her stories.

But, you know, she'll write about psychotic serial killers with guns mounted on their wrists, people being graphically tortured, women who bite body parts off different women and eat them, and women who seduce their teammates for the sole purpose of getting pregnant because they want to raise their kid to be as twisted as they are.

I don't know. Rape is a very very bad thing, yes... but, still... I'm thinking that if this is true (and I don't know if it is) Gail Simone badly needs a lesson in perspective.

And, hey, I picked up Angel Season 5 while we were out running errands tonight, and would like to check out one or two eps of that before bed tonight, so I shall post this and head for the DVD player.

Happy Monday to everyone. Except, you know, the crazy chick at Atlas Shrugged.

World of Vampires

In my last post I put up a link to this David Fury interview, which was originally forwarded to me by the ever alert Hartmut, over in Germany, whom I really do owe some email to by now.

Here's the money shot, at least, as far as it reflects on Joss Whedon's approach to world building:

You know, Joss’ thing, and rightly so, is that he allowed the mythology to serve whatever story he wanted to tell so he didn’t lock himself into a concrete mythology that would limit him. If he had a story he wanted to tell, he would adjust the mythology accordingly.
I'm going to be very clear on this: this is not good writing.

Yeah, Joss Whedon has millions of fans and has made millions of dollars writing; I have dozens of detractors and have made dozens of dollars writing. Nonetheless, I do not hesitate to say: when you treat the world you are building under and around your characters as being subjective and subordinate to the needs of each succeeding episode in your ongoing saga, that's bad writing.

Joss doesn't seem to get it -- the setting is as important as the characters, because in a fantasy world, the world itself is a character.

Now we come to this:

And Joss was very clear, he said, "I don’t know how to do standalone episodes because if you’re trying to build emotional depth to these characters they have to carry the events of prior episodes into another episode."
See, Whedon cares about the characters, and that's a good thing. You have to feel that if someone came along and said "I have this great idea for a story, but we need to change the characters' back story just a little, we need to reveal that during Season 1, Buffy and Xander slept together a couple of times and nobody knew about it", Joss would most likely explode -- No, no, no, if Xander and Buffy slept together covertly back in Season 1 it would have completely reshaped not only their relationship but every other relationship the two of them had, you can't just go back and retroactively implant something that big, no matter how good a story idea you have that leads off it now, years later.

At least, I think that's what Whedon would say; I certainly hope it's what he would say.

Yet he doesn't seem to understand that 'mythology', i.e., the back story of the world itself, is just as important to the characters, and their relationships, as the emotional history of the characters themselves.

Honestly, it drives me crazy. But it certainly explains how we get so many internally contradictory episodes over the course of the show. We've seen, for example, Spike and Angel's origins each retold several times now; every time we see one or the other, some vital component seems to wildly vary from what we've already witnessed. If you care about these characters and the world they live in, if you'd like to be able to fully enter into it and fully suspend your disbelief, then it's jarring every time it happens... it's like, in order to make this one particular story flow more smoothly, the producers (and, very much, Joss Whedon) have deliberately left a big chunk of tile sticking up for you to stub your toe on painfully every time.

But to Joss Whedon, this is just what good writing is -- if you have a good idea for a story that conflicts with something that has already been established in a past story, well, that's no problem. After all, it's just fiction; none of it is real, and the writer should be able to do whatever he or she needs to at the moment without being 'limited by the mythology'.

I think that's horseshit. I think it's lazy writing and it's bad writing; I think it's 'in Hypertime, everything is real' nonsense. These worlds and the characters in them are fictional, yes, but it is part of the demand of the craft that the creator try to bring those fictions to life as credibly and convincingly as possible... and that means, paying attention to the details that have previously been laid down.

When you have a piece of fiction that you are making money from, you owe something to the paying public. Without his audience, Joss Whedon is driving a truck or washing dishes for a living. The BUFFY/ANGEL audience has demonstrated time and time again that we want this world to seem real, that we want to take these characters seriously; in contrast, Whedon has shown us, over and over, that he can't be bothered to make the effort.

And, on another, related subject, I'd mentioned in my last post my truculent, deeply rooted suspicion that Joss Whedon may have deliberately sandbagged BUFFY and ANGEL so he could clear the decks, so to speak, for FIREFLY. Whenever I type this out somewhere, or mention it to someone, I feel like I should be wearing a tinfoil hat -- after all, rotten as FIREFLY was (and thus, as deeply mental as Whedon must have been to come to prefer a crappy, poorly conceived and dreadfully executed space western to, well, one of the best horror/fantasy franchises ever), there's just no point in killing your first two kids when the one you really love comes along.

Yet sometimes emotions make no sense, and bizarre and conspiratorial though this theory seems, every time I read something else about the end of BUFFY and ANGEL, it gets a little more reinforced. For example:

Here’s the thing about it. Ultimately, a lot of the direction of the series went by Joss’ whim , as it should, it’s his show. He was busy writing the Firefly movie but he would still come in and he would say, "I want to do this, I want to do that, I want this to happen." Unlike early Buffy seasons, or even seasons of Angel when there was a consistent hierarchy like with Greenwalt and Minear, we weren’t really able to map out the season the way we really wanted to. Jeff Bell and I pretty much mapped out a season where we could see how it would work and we were planning on doing that but once Joss came into the mix Joss put his own mark on it and when he put his own mark in it, unfortunately, it blew a lot of our stuff out of the water.
Now, that's not particularly definitive -- all it proves is that Whedon came back onto his own show and pretty much took over creative control, while he was putting most of his effort into a project he liked a great deal more, during what turned out to be the final season. But then we get to this:

The only reason that Angel didn’t come back...it’s a very simple thing. Because our ratings were up, because of our critical attention, Joss specifically asked Jordan Levitt, who was the head of The WB at the time, to give us an early pick-up because every year they [would] wait so long to give Angel a pick-up [and] a lot of us [would] turn down jobs hoping that Angel will continue - he didn’t want that to happen. So, he was feeling very confidant and he just asked Jordan, "Like, make your decision now whether you’re going to pick us up or not," and Jordan, sort of with his hands tied, with his back up against the wall, called him the next day and said, "Okay, we’re cancelling you."
I honestly can't see any way to take this except as almost irrefutable evidence that the show's creator had decided he wanted the show dead. I mean, sure, I suppose it could just be a cocky, arrogant mistake... I've seen enough of Whedon to know he has no shortage of hubris. But he's also a smart man and a very experienced one in the ways of television networks. It's very difficult for me to believe that he would make this kind of demand without having a pretty good idea what kind of answer was going to come back.

Whenever I start in bitching about Joss Whedon, I admit, it seems a bit ungrateful and unappreciative. After all, without Joss, we'd have no BUFFY at all, and without BUFFY's subtle but pervasive influence over the cultural matrix, well, a great many things would be missing from the world.

Yet... BUFFY, good as it was, could have been better, and it should have been better. Worse, it could still be on the air... in one form or another, with or without Sarah Michelle Geller, or, for that matter, any other specific star. The franchise, and, yes, the mythology, are strong enough, and well enough conceived, to have gone on with an entirely new cast and an entirely new set of storylines... if only its creator had cared enough to make an effort to keep them going.

Fly, you fool!

So yesterday I got up at 5 with the two oldest SuperKids, meaning it was my turn to rack in this morning. Meaning I'd snooze until 7 or so, get up, amble sleepily through my morning routine, mess around on the computer a lot, maybe blog a little, and end up more or less dressed and ready for work by 9, when I'd catch my bus out to the hinterlands for my normal 11:30 shift.


Except this morning SuperGirlfriend shakes me awake at 6:07 and says "Sorry, but I couldn't remember, how early do you have to go in today?"

And like a plague of insects, memory came buzzing back: tonight SuperAdorable Toddler and Super Drama Teen both have their school holiday concerts, so after begging and pleading, I got my schedule shifted and am going in to work at 8:30 today instead of 11:30.

"Good LORD!" I roared, leaping to my feet, dashing to the closet, yanking out my spare suit of Guardsman armor, and quickly clambering into it. Then, with a whoosh of boot-jets, I was away, blasting across the River City skyline with a comet tail of flaming rocket exhaust blazoning the morning air behind me!

Yeah. That would be the life.

The reality was more prosaic: stumbling blearily into the shower, hastily hauling on some work-suitable clothes, sitting in the passenger seat with Super Adorable Toddler on my lap as SuperGirlfriend drove me to the bus stop, watching apathetically as the Breckenridge bus rolled on by, realizing with chagrin fifteen minutes later that the goddam Jeffersontown driver on the 23 route must have stupidly put the Breckenridge instead of the Jeffersontown sign up and I'd missed my bus, trudging back through the depressing winter rain to the apartment to call SuperGirlfriend to make her late giving me a ride to work... yeah, yeah. No nuclear powered battle armor there, my friend. Just that same old stale cake that reality serves up to us every day... albeit frosted with the pleasures of holding a lovely toddler briefly on my lap, and the joy of SuperGirlfriend's company.

Just started re-reading F.M. Busby's Star Rebel, to prep me for all the Hulzein Family novels I have in the in stack from last summer's raid on a second hand bookstore. Yeah, I still haven't gotten around to those.

Sometime after the holidays, I mean to go out and pick up a copy of George R.R. Martin's A Feast of Crows... and then toss it aside resolutely until the other half of the book comes out, sometime in 2017. Then, once I actually have the entire volume at hand, I'll sit down and reread the series to date from the start... so, sometime around 2022, I may actually be finishing up the latest installment. Hopefully just in time for the final volume to come out. Or at least, the first several thousand pages of it...

My dry ironic wit aside, I certainly don't mind that Martin is taking his time and trying to do a story of this scope, with this rich a fantasy world and this many fascinating characters populating it, right.

I just wish the fucker could type faster, that's all.

Old email buddy Hartmut, from way over in Germany, has been sending me some interesting BUFFY related links lately. Hartmut doesn't seem to be able to post to the blog no matter what comment thread engine I use, so I wanted to give him a shout out here. Thanks, Hartmut!

The latest link, for any fellow BUFFY fans out there reading this, was to a
David Fury interview that touches on the last season of BUFFY and the hypothetical sixth season (that now never will be) of ANGEL.

It's always worth noting, when I bring up the ends of either series, that a great deal of the blame for the decline and fall of the franchise has to lie squarely on Joss Whedon's shoulders... and not just in the indirect manner that anyone who is in charge of an ongoing project has to accept responsibility blame, but much more squarely, too. Both BUFFY and ANGEL began to go badly off the rails at the same point where Whedon first conceived, and then became completely infatuated with, his utterly idiotic FIREFLY concept. It's all well and good for someone to get tired of one long standing project and want to move on to another, but Whedon's desire to shuck all BUFFY projects seems to have resulted in an active antipathy on his part towards the series... or, at least, that's about the most credible way to interpret the astonishingly abhorrent character developments Whedon oversaw over the course of the sixth and seventh seasons.

When one sets out, consciously or otherwise, to destroy something as beloved and creatively unique as BUFFY and ANGEL, it certainly helps if one's next project is an acceptable replacement. I'm aware that FIREFLY has its avid fans, but honestly, I don't care; anything ever aired on television has a few thousand maniacally devoted zealots out there, regardless of its quality. FIREFLY was, in my opinion, rubbish; if this is what Whedon wants to devote his muse to, well, good luck and good riddance... but I wish he'd turned BUFFY over to good hands rather than simply destroying it to clear his decks.

In work related news, up is down... black is white. While we were told in training that we had a certain amount of unscheduled break time we could use every day at need, I cannot get anyone to confirm that now... although I did get one team leader to kind of vaguely confirm that yes, out of every full time shift that runs 8.5 hours, we're expected to put in 7 hours on the phones. If you do the math, with half an hour of scheduled lunch and two 15 minute scheduled breaks, what is left over is 30 minutes for unscheduled time off the phone, which we are supposed to hit the BREAK button to take. And I've been doing it, especially on days when I work at least an hour of overtime... but now I'm being told that I'm using too much break time (even though I've never come close to using up a half hour extra a day) and when I ask about it, all I can get is a vague "well, they give you a few extra minutes for potty breaks if you need them".

Clearly, management has decided to back off a hard number, preferring to keep things as undefined as possible, so if they feel someone is spending too much time off the phones, they can bitch about it. It's exasperating, but not surprising, given the number of places I've worked in during an adulthood spent largely temping.

I also asked the supervisor over my department directly if there was any additional paperwork I should fill out to get the train rolling on me being permanently placed here. She looked really uncomfortable, then said that, well, there were some temps here who had been here a long time, so they were making offers to them first, and they didn't know how that would work out.

Now, I know with absolute certainty that there are no temps in this department with seniority to me, because I see the time sheets every time I log my hours. She may be referring to other temps working elsewhere in the company, but my department is highly specialized, and I find it hard to believe they'd give preference to untrained personnel over someone who has gone through the classroom and has been on the phones here for three months.

So, I imagine they will keep me on through our busiest month (March, when most of our clients do close out) and then I'll be out looking for work again... provided, of course, I don't do something really egregious and get termed prior to that, of course. Like posting all this nonsense on a blog, for example...

Nothing matters but the weekend

...from a Wednesday point of view...

Well, let's see. SuperGirlfriend just left without her cell phone. It's always an ironic situation when she does it, as my first instinct is to call her on her cell phone and tell her she left her cell phone here.

It also underscores how much of the heavy lifting I still let her do with the SuperKids, despite my best intentions. I want to call the daycare she's taking Super Adorable Toddler to and leave a message for her, but for the life of me, I can't remember what the name of the daycare is. I know where it is, but I don't know the name of it, or its phone number.

At some point, she'll realize she doesn't have it with her and come back to get it, but it's going to be a big inconvenience for her. And there's absolutely nothing I can do about it.

Tomorrow I'm working 8:30 to 5, by special dispensation from my supervisor, so I can get out early and go to a holiday concert for the kids. Naturally, the idiots at both Super Drama Teen's school and Super Adorable Toddler's school scheduled their holiday concerts on the same night, so we can go to one, but probably not the other. I realize that it would most likely be impossible for all the music teachers and principals of all the various different schools at various different levels in River City to schedule their holiday events on different nights, but is it too much to ask that the three different schools our kids go too get their act together? Geez.

In breaking news, it is now official: I am an insulting, cowardly hypocrite. Or, at least, so says my first ex-girlfriend, in response to a brief paragraph in my last entry about our recent and abortive attempt at getting re-acquainted via email:

Some things never change, I guess. You still have this way of
insulting someone and then hiding under a cloak of nobility. And now
you can hide behind your blog. It's cowardly. And a little
hypocritical.

Of course, later on in her email, she notes that "given how we ended our relationship and then friendship..I knew you'd have every right to blast me to hell..."

I have every right to, but, of course, if I do it (which, actually, I don't think I did) I'm an insulting cowardly hypocrite. Or something like that, anyway.

Well, it doesn't matter. In honor of her, I'm thinking of retitling this blog "Cloak of Nobility". But I don't know. It seems to lack the geek bravado I generally strive for.

I'm really tired. I would love to call in sick today. Of course, I have no paid sick days, since I'm a temp, so calling in sick would be unforgivably stupid, since it would convert my two hours of overtime so far this week into six hours of unpaid sick leave, which would add up to about $70 gone from next week's paycheck, and we just can't afford it.

We did get a message on the answering machine from my temp agency last night, though, saying I should call them today before I go into work. The message seemed to indicate that one of my supervisors called them up to complain about a few things that need to be straightened out so I'll have a good chance of being hired on permanently at my current assignment, so that would seem to indicate I'm not being fired... and December is a hellishly busy month at the call center and we are already down about six employees on my team so it's not like they are going to fire anyone who is trained, experienced, and halfway competent at the job right now... but still. I am wise in the ways of temp agencies. SuperGirlfriend tipped me off to the message while I was still at work last night, and I brought home all my personal items. If it turns out I'm no longer working there, well, that will be disastrous for our personal finances, but, on the other hand, I will no longer be working there, which neatly supplies its own upside.

Here's the thing: I have a giant stack of customer commendations. I've had a similar stack at every call center I've ever worked at. I meet or greatly exceed every stat they measure us on at my current job. Our adherence to schedule is supposed to be 95%, mine is habitually 99 to 100% (while my peer group's compliance averages out to 43%). Our average talk time is supposed to be six minutes, mine is 4:55; peer compliance to the requirement is at 50%. Our average hold time is supposed to be 15% of talk time, mine is 6%, peer compliance with the standard is 72%. We're supposed to take around 40 calls per day, I generally take 56 to 65.

By every measurement, I not only exceed performance standards, I exceed the performance of very nearly all of my co-workers. And yet, today I have to call my temp agency and go over a few matters, because one of my supervisors called them up and bitched at them about things.

I have a feeling I know what this is about. The phone message mentioned specifically 'breaks'. Now, this is a call center and we have two scheduled 15 minute breaks. We are also allowed another 30 minutes per day of unscheduled 'break time', mostly to go to the bathroom if we need to, or, so smokers can run out and cop an emergency cigarette. I've never gone over that 30 extra minutes, but I do use a lot of it on a daily basis, and I suspect it's really pissing at least one of my supervisors off, because she's aware that I often 'go to the bathroom' when we have a lot of calls in queue. But here's the thing about that:

We have a lot of calls in queue all day long on very busy days. Generally on very busy days, I sign in an hour to an hour and a half early to help out with the heavy call volume. (This is because the local bus schedule requires me to be at work at 10 am every day for a shift that starts at 11:30.) This makes my day longer, and goddamit, I need more break time, and of course I don't have any scheduled, so goddam it, I take it when I feel I need it, which is often after I've spent an hour answering call after call after call and there are still twenty fucking calls in the queue from absolute idiots who will not get the goddam news and hang up and call back some other time when it isn't so busy.

When I feel like the very next time some idiot asks me why their flex spending card was turned down at the dentist's office, I'm going to lose it and start screaming at them... then I take a break.

Now, yesterday wasn't a particularly busy day for us, and I had a total of 47 minutes break time... which is to say, my two scheduled breaks, and another 17 minutes out of the half hour of break time I'm allowed. Which isn't bad; I suspect everyone clocks in right around then on the average day.

I also suspect I'm going to get a flea put in my ear about logging off the phones at 7:59 instead of 8:00. Now, I always log ON the phones at 11:28 or so instead of 11:30, but of course management doesn't care about that. Let me log on one minute late and I'll hear about it, but two minutes early every single day... they got nothing to say about that.

At the last call center I worked at, when I was on the floor, I worked the closing shift, too. There, the rule was, you couldn't log off until the supervisor sent a GOOD NIGHT e-pop out to everyone on shift, which he or she wouldn't send until they were sure all calls were out of queue. Here they don't have that rule, and they probably badly need to institute it. But until they do, my inclination will be to log off the phones as early as I think I can get away with it without being dinged for adherence... especially when SuperGirlfriend is usually waiting for me outside, and every extra minute I stay on the phones is another chance for some whiney stupid participant to call me up and cry at me for twenty minutes past my scheduled shift time about their goddam idiotic flex spending account.

By the way: if you have a flexible spending account and you have to call your customer service line for any reason, try to avoid using the phrase "but it's MY money". I swear to God, any time a customer uses that phrase with any of us, there's at least a 30% chance we're simply going to hang up on him or her immediately. Why? Well, aside from the fact that we hear it about fourteen thousand times a day, here's the actual skinny:

It's NOT your goddam money any more. You voluntarily signed a piece of paper setting that money aside into a special account, which has certain requirements and conditions pertaining to the reimbursement of said money to you. You thought the idea of getting all your health care expenses tax free without having to go to the trouble of itemizing your deductions at the end of the year on your tax form was just spiffy, so you went for it, and in so doing, you gave up all rights you may have ever had to say 'it's my money'.

Now, you jump through all the hoops, you get your money back. You don't, and you don't. But it's not your money until we send you a check and you cash it, and sometimes it's not even your money then, if you submitted the same claim fourteen different times because you're too stupid to know how to run a fax machine and you end up with an overpayment.

If you don't like any of this, then for the love of God, don't sign up for a flex spending account next year.

Oh, and here's another clue: saying "You know, this is too much trouble, I really don't think I'm going to sign up for this next year" does not have the effect on the customer service rep you are talking to that you want it to have. You think you are making some sort of threat that will cause us to leap to attention and kiss your ass even more than we already are, because our lousy job requires it. However, the simple truth is this: not only do we not give a shit if you sign up for the flex spending account next year, we actually hope you don't, because you're a whiney annoying asshole and we'd love it if we never had to talk to you again.

One more thing I've learned on this particular job: if you consistently have problems with your flexible spending account, it's because you're a dolt.

Now, this isn't true of other businesses and services. When I took calls for the Post Office I constantly talked to people who were having all kinds of trouble with their mail and it wasn't their fault, and when I answered the phones for Sprint I talked to folks who constantly had problems with their long distance and it wasn't due to any fault or character flaw of their own. But with flexible spending accounts, yes, this is absolutely true.

Oh, we do occasionally make mistakes. So if you have had your account screwed up once or twice, well, that could be our fault, and if so, we'll apologize for it. But if you are calling us every single time you send in a claim because every single time you send in a claim we deny it, guess what? You're a moron. You're doing it wrong. And it's not that hard; a lot of people who aren't very bright fill out their claim forms correctly and get their checks without any difficulty at all.

One bright spot to the morning: SuperGirlfriend came back for her cell phone, and since she was already going to be late for work, we totally (explicit sex scene deleted) before she left again, and that was extremely pleasant.

Okay, I have to go get into the shower and then call my temp agency to be kicked around a little. Yay.

I really wish I could just go back to bed.

Post script: Well, I just called the agency. Julie, the person who left the message and who asked me to call back, won't be there until this afternoon. The girl who picked up the phone looked in my account for notes, and said that according to the email they got from SHPS, I am 47 minutes over my allotted break time for the week so far... which is absolute bullshit, but, whatever... and I need to watch my lunches and breaks.

So... ::shrug:: I don't know what's going on. Except that there is incompetence everywhere, so why can't I get a permanent job?

When I call you up, your line's engaged

A while back, I promised my readers here a lexicon of call center phrases -- a veritable Rosetta Stone for customer service terminology, translating what a customer service representative tells you into its actual meaning. I've been jotting some of these down over the past few weeks, and now it's time to share:

We say: May I help you?

We mean: What the hell are you doing, calling me? Are you retarded? This job isn't bad enough without you bugging the shit out of me? Fuck off!

We say: Yes sir/ma'am, I would be more than happy to help you with that.

We mean: I hate you, I hate the clan which shares your cave, I hate the society which spawned you and which trapped me in this miserable dead end nightmare of a job listening to you, and I yearn for your prompt expiration and eternal damnation.

We say: That should take [vague period of time, carefully worded to sound more definite than it is] to get done for you.

We mean: I have no frickin' clue how long this will take, or if it will ever get done, and I don't care, because anyone who can afford to pay your monthly cell phone bills, or set aside $5,000 for their French goddam nanny and then complain that the IRS doesn't allow more per year for dependent care, is the sort of person who in any sane, reasonable world would have been long since marched to the guillotine alongside Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette.

We say: I sincerely apologize, sir/ma'am.

We mean: It's not my fault, it's not my problem, I'm not getting paid enough to care, I hope you die, please shut up and go away, NOW.

We say: Is there anything else I can do for you, sir/ma'am?

We mean: For the love of GOD for the love of GOD for the love of GOD please shut up and go away and leave me alone.

We say: May I place you on hold while I research this further?

We mean: The hold button is right next to the disconnect button on my console and guess which one I'm about to 'accidentally' press, dipshit?

And on that last one, let's take a brief look Behind The Scenes At A Typical Call Center:

YVONNE THE EVIL TEAM LEADER: This customer complained that you said you were going to put her on hold and then disconnected her.

ME: No, I put her on hold and then another call immediately beeped in and I had to take it. I don't know what happened. I think my phone is broken.

YVONNE: We've put in three repair tickets for your phone. Nothing is wrong with your phone. Why do you think this keeps happening?

ME: The Lord moves in mysterious ways, Yvonne.

There's nothing you and I won't do

Stuff:

A busy, stressful weekend, full of minor downs and euphoric ups, with SuperGirlfriend and the SuperKids. Friday night we got the tree, Saturday we decorated it during the brief period the middle kid, Super Dependable Teen, was home (she went out for a birthday beauty bash with her aunt in the morning, came back to decorate, then went over to a friend's to study for several hours in the afternoon). Saturday evening SuperGirlfriend and the eldest, Super Drama Teen, went out shopping, leaving me and SuperDependable Teen to watch SuperAdorable Toddler and wrap SuperGirlfriend's presents from me.

Sunday, perhaps foolishly, I decided to try to shoehorn the Bucs game into an already packed schedule. The Bucs were kind enough to utterly crush the hated Panthers, for which I am duly grateful, and watching the game at the local Dundee Tavern with SuperGirlfriend and the SuperKids was fun... except SuperGirlfriend left in the middle to run a brief errand, which turned into a nightmare of epic proportions for her, which made me feel bad because I wasn't there to help her with any of it, I was happily watching Cadillac Williams run all over Carolina's front line. After that we trundled off to see CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, about which I could say many things, few of them good, but I will simply content myself with "Worst film adaptation of a great book ever" and... "GO READ THE BOOKS".

I still hate the idea that millions of people all over the world will only ever know LORD OF THE RINGS from the film trilogy... but at least the first chapter in the film trilogy really rocks hard, for all it leaves out. However, this particular adaptation mostly blows like a firehose. It makes me sad... but, in all honesty, as many times as I've read and loved the Narnia books, I've always been uneasily aware that a live action version would nearly have to suck, because no matter how one decorates English school children with swords and armor and bows and such, they're still going to look ridiculous fighting Mythological Evil. And, well, I was right.


After the movie we dropped the SuperKids off at the house, shooed Super Drama Teen's girlfriend out (we can't leave those two alone; the place would burn down), and SuperGirlfriend and I went off to do laundry... a prosaic enough chore, and one I mostly dreaded when I was single, but that I kind of enjoy doing with the love and light of my life, who makes livin' fun.

I will say this: the holidays are a great deal of work when you have three kids, especially if they come on you all of a sudden when you're middle aged. Still, one assumes the pay off on Christmas morning will have to be worth it.

Home, finally, from laundry, after a busy, hectic, tiring day, all I and SG wanted to do was tumble into bed... so, naturally, SuperDepenadable Teen suddenly came over all clammy and nauseous, and had to puke her guts out for most of two hours before finally managing to get her stomach settled enough to get back to sleep.


Then I was an idiot with the best commenter I've ever had on this or any blog, something for which I am utterly and woefully sorry. And, finally, off to bed. I got up early with the kids so SuperGirlfriend could get a little more sleep, but neither of us is exactly well rested today. I get no paid sick days and am still holding onto a vestigial hope of getting hired on permanently at my current job, so I can't take the day off no matter how punk I feel, and SuperGirlfriend took two paid sick days last week, so she can't take the day off, either. And we both have fairly horrific Mondays staring at us down their predatory snouts, too.

I seem to have picked up a few new commenters, at least, on the comics related stuff, and I'm grateful for that. No telling who, if any, will stick around, of course... commenters come and go; I've come and gone myself from enough blogs to know that. Still, welcome to everyone who's dropped by, and thanks for any attention you've spared my endless blathering.


Remember the old friend who sent me an email out of the blue last week? I was digging on that, but I guess it's run its course. It's just as well... a few more emails and we'd probably have found each other intolerable. Her rant about Hilary Clinton, in her last email, really had me wondering just how much prescription medicine she was supposed to take on a daily basis, and when was the last time she'd had a dose... but never mind that. It's sad, but I'm learning more and more, sometimes we have to let go of the past... especially when it's obvious that the past has long since let go of us.

I haven't said much about comics in this entry... actually, I don't think I've said anything -- so let me close with a conciliatory statement towards all the grubby young Modern Age fans I've alienated on various blogs and chat boards over the last three weeks:

Kyle Rayner STILL sucks, and Hal Jordan is STILL the One, True Green Lantern and the Greatest Green Lantern EVER. Geoff Johns may have made Kyle seem tolerably cool in REBIRTH, but that's just because Johns is a genius. Underneath it all, Kyle is still the same pitiful, pointless, posturing wank he always was and ever will be... a circulation stunt, pure and simple, designed for overstimulated and infantile adultolescents with MTV attention spans and VH-1 intellects. He's the Pop Up Box Green Lantern. You kids must just be so proud of him.

There. That's the kind of shrill, pointless, vitriol that geek blogging is all about, dammit -- and has the additional benefit of being largely true.

I'll stop the world and meld with you...

Reasons to hate me

So I finished the last post, and started making my usual rounds of the various lefty blogs I enjoy (I should set up a blog scroll, but, you know what, I had a blog scroll on my very first blog, and none of those fuckers ever linked back to me, so scroom, and none of them will read this blog or comment on it either, so scroom again), and I got over to Bottle o' Blog (oh, Google the URL your damn self, I'm tired) and was reminded, once again, of the War on Christmas.

Which reminded me, once again, that I've been meaning for months or weeks, now, to do a post on All The Issues That Make My Fellow Liberals Wish I Was Dead:

1. I like Christmas. I think it's very cool. I'm not a Christian, am not even particularly religous (although I have articles of faith, at least one of which we'll get to on this list because it also pisses off my fellow liberals no end, the tiny minded little fuckers), but Christmas is what the Winter Solstice Holiday that every human culture has always celebrated was always called in my childhood, and that's the word I have the strongest, most positive associations with. So I say "Merry Christmas" on my own time, and in my house (and in SuperGirlfriend's house) our holiday celebration is, and will remain, Christmas, despite the fact that we are about as secular humanist as you can get, and we are both educated enough to know that even if Jesus ever was born, it wasn't anywhere near December 25th. We make Christmas cookies, we send Christmas cards, we put up Christmas decorations, we will goddam well have a Christmas tree.

Now, at work, on the phone with participants, I say "Happy Holidays". I do not do this to placate Bill O'Reilly, who is a colossal tool (although he probably doesn't actually have one). I do it because there are a great many jackasses in the world who damned well will take offense at me if I tell them "Merry Christmas", and while in my personal life I have only two words for those people (and those two words are not "Happy Birthday"), on the time I sell to my employer, I well endeavor not to piss off the people who supply the funds that eventually trickle down into my paycheck. (I also try to occasionally make vague, truculent, rudimentary gestures towards keeping my job, because, you know, we have this big apartment now and I have to pay the rent here.)

But on my own time, I say "Merry Christmas", and if that pisses anyone off (and I imagine it will, at some point), well, there are many people who get pissed off over how I choose to wear my hair, too. I think people who get exasperated over such things badly NEED to be exasperated, hopefully into fatal aneurysms. So I wear my hair long and I say "Merry Christmas", and that's enough about that for now.

2. I hate affirmative action. I know, I know, as a white male I have no right to say this, and it automatically makes me a racist and I should just give up the futile effort at fooling anyone and go put on a sheet with a hood. Well, fuck anyone who thinks that way, and fuck everyone who thinks that you can somehow fix racism by reversing it and then institutionalizing it. If the Federal government is going to be in the business of redressing social inequity... and I have no problem with that as a basic concept of government... then instead of creating laws that force people to take race into consideration with every personnel decision, they should be trying to create and model policies designed towards making such processes as color blind as possible.

One thing I've yearned all my life to see made illegal is the horribly medieval, utterly useless ceremony of the 'personal interview'. There is no necessary or desirable purpose to it. We now have the technology to test any candidate for any position at an impersonal distance, and anything that might suddenly crop up when this man or woman first shows up to actually do the job that actually bears on their ability to do it well would be legitimate cause to hire someone else. The personal interview doesn't give a potential employer the opportunity to evaluate a potential employee for anything that matters, what it does is, it lets your new boss sniff your crotch and test your asskissing abilities. Eliminate the 'personal interview' and you will eliminate 80% of the bias in hiring practices right there.

Let the Feds establish some kind of Fair Employment Testing standards. Some kind of standardized exam for every job that employers can use to evaluate your work skills and aptitude. Sure, they can also look at your experience and what past employers may say about you, but what they don't get to look at is your gender, your age, your race, your relative pulchitrude, how long your hair is, how stylishly you dress, or how well you cast your eyes downward and simper/chuckle at their lame ass jokes.

Let the Feds also set up means whereby interviews can be conducted entirely online. Yeah, this will place an emphasis on certain skills (like literacy, and articulation) but the personal interview simply puts the emphasis on other skills (like grooming, and groveling). I'd rather give new generations of job applicants a reason to learn how to spell, construct smooth sentences, and type quickly, than continue conducting seminars on how to provide slick, completely insincere answers while 'dressing appropriately'... which for men means professional, and for women means 'sexy but elegant'.

Bottom line: Affirmative action is racism; I dislike racism. And if Aaron Hawkins were still alive, he'd be coming for me with a table knife right now.

3. I intensely, and I mean INTENSELY, loathe abortion. I am pro choice... but only grudgingly, because I believe that, ultimately, it's not my decision to make, and individual human beings who happen to possess wombs should have the freedom to choose what transpires within their own bodies.

But, still, I hate abortion. Passionately.

4. I'm not sure about gun control. I'm still up on the rails about it. See, I hate guns, absolutely. Yet... our forefathers seemed to feel that individual ownership of weaponry was an essential component of individual liberty and social freedom... and I am not sure they are wrong.

I intensely dislike the idea of anyone anywhere being able to walk around with the power of life and death over me, or people I love. Yet, at the same time... the idea of giving all the boomsticks over to the authorities makes my hackles crawl. Would it make cops safer? Yeah, but... well, we don't draft cops in this country; they sign up for the job and last I heard, nobody advertised it as being 'safe'. I'd be happy to pay cops more and equip them better; I'm not sure I'm happy with the idea of seeing to it that they are the only people on the streets with guns.

Beyond that, it's extremely impractical. There are millions of guns in circulation. Gun control laws are not a magic genie; most of the people that society feels shouldn't carry guns are criminals already.

I've already come up with a solution for this; I wrote it up on a much older blog. I called it 'gun insurance'. Maybe I'll go back and dig it up again.

I also think our Constitution pretty unequivocally denies the power to pass any laws in regard to gun control whatsoever. I'm hardly a strict constructionist of the Constitution; in fact, I feel it's a deeply flawed document... but it is the Owner's Manual of the United States, so I do feel we should pay some attention to what it actually says.

Whatever the case, in the end and at this point, I'm just not sure about gun control.

4. I cannot support 'hate speech' and 'hate crime' legislation.

I deeply loathe many of the more extreme consequences of absolute freedom of expression. I abhor most exclusionary hate speech, and there are kinds of porn that will make even a filthy jaded old Internet pervert like me blanche... but, nonetheless, I think that the essential concept of freedom of expression requires that we tolerate ALL forms of expression. Letting any authority decide which speech is acceptable and which isn't... nuh uh, that's a bad road to start walking on. So when you start pointing out certain types of extremely distasteful speech and levying fines and even jail sentences on people simply for speaking their minds, well... I think you've left the Freedom Trail and are heading towards despotism. At a fairly decent clip.

Similarly, I feel that when you set aside a certain type of crime as a 'hate crime', what you are doing is criminalizing a person's thoughts and feelings, rather than their actions. I cannot support that. I don't mind 'criminalizing politics', whatever the hell that means. But criminalizing speech, and criminalizing thought... that troubles me deeply.

5. I believe in intelligent design. I really, honest to Whatever, do. I think the universe around us is simply too complex to have 'jest happened'. I think it's an artifact of some sort. What sort? I have no idea, any more than I have the slightest frickin' clue who or what set the whole thing in motion, or whether there is any greater purpose to existence than just existing.

I do not believe the idea of 'intelligent design' qualifies as science, but on the other hand, it mostly doesn't qualify as science because religious people think they KNOW who designed the universe, and 'scientists' feel just as certain that nobody/nothing did... so no one is trying to do any research into it. I understand my 'faith' in intelligent design is just that... but instead of having one side rather smugly say "Well, it's the absolute truth, and we know all the details because they're in our Bibles", and the other side just as contemptuously declare "No, there is no Higher Intelligence, that's all childish superstition, we KNOW the universe just 'evolved' over a course of billions of years as a progression of various random chemical interactions"... I'd like to see actually unbiased people who know something about how the world really works, really looking into it.

It's been said many times before, but I will say it again, because it's always worth repeating these essential truths: atheism is in every way as much a leap of faith, or an organized religion, as Christianity or Buddhism or anything else. Insisting that something DOESN'T exist takes as much arrogant gall as insisting that it does. No human being I am aware of understands how the universe around us works, or where it came from, or where it's going, or even, for the vast most part, where it is and what it is doing right now. We don't truly comprehend time, or space, or matter, or energy; our most brilliant researchers are waving a couple of lit matches around in an infinitely dark cavern of ignorance.

We have to keep trying to find stuff out. Embracing the ignorance and making a virtue of it, as the ultraconservative Christian right wants us to do, is absolutely deranged, but it's nearly as addle-minded to simply say "well, those guys we don't like believe in something, so we're going to laugh at it and pretend that we know it isn't true, when we actually do not know any such thing, because we haven't bothered to do any real research or experimentation on it".

I, personally, believe in Intelligent Design... in a vague sort of way. I don't insist anyone else believe in it... but I do get annoyed when all my fellow liberals insist that the entire concept that the Universe 'just goddam is', is the only acceptable thing for a truly enlightened and rational being to believe. The truth, at this point, is that no one knows for certain a single frickin' thing about the actual nature of the Universe. And if we can't agree on that and move forward with open minds, we aren't going to ever learn anything.

So, there you have it: a punch list of reasons for all true blue, red blooded liberals to hate me and want me off their bus. But, you know, I still loathe Bush and conservatives and Republicans and want us out of Iraq right goddam now, so maybe I can sit in the back, if I promise to be really, really quiet...?

Updates schmupdates

SuperGirlfriend just called and advised me she'll be getting off work early enough to drive me to my job, meaning I don't have to catch my usual 9 o'clock bus to get to a job that starts at 11:30, so I have way more time to work on this blog. I win, you win, the girl wins... everybody wins! Or something like that.

Let's see... I recently got some email from an old friend (who at this time shall remain nameless) and I'm diggin' on that. SuperGirlfriend and I, after my egregious misstep of earlier this week, are getting back into the Christmas spirit... we're off with the SuperKids tonight to hunt down and slay The Dreaded Christmas Tree, after which we'll drag it home and dress up its corpse in Yuletide gaud... a good time we're all eagerly anticipating. Our front porch looks, honestly, gorgeous, with the lit garland and the fake tree I bought last year all festooned with lights and little red velvet bows and the multicolored lights on the bushes.

So all that's cool.

In HeroClix... since getting my birthday clix brick, I've picked up 6 more boosters of ARMOR WARS, and added the House of M Wolverine (sigh) and Sentry (heavier sigh) to my Uniques for the set. No Crystal yet, dammit. On the flip side, I got a couple of rookie Executioners with the MOE TA, which I'd actually wanted more than the Vet I got, and both rookie and experienced Banshees. I also picked up a rookie and a vet version of Wendigo.

Now, explain this to me:


Crystal, a character with a genuine character arc over the course of the forty years that Marvel Comics has been putting out superhero stuff, who is an Inhuman and who has been a member of the Fantastic Four (in two different eras) and the Avengers... get's done, finally, as a Unique.

The Executioner, who is an immortal of Asgard, and the Wendigo, who is a frickin' brainless monster, both get full Rookie/Experienced/Veteran sets.

I mean, come on now. The Executioner's REV covers the maybe-ten Marvel-time years that occurred between his first appearance on Earth as a member of the Masters of Evil fighting the Avengers in their early issues, to his more or less heroic death in a Simonson THOR in the early 80s. And, as stated, he's got to be several thousand years old. I seriously doubt he changed very much in that time period. If anyone should be a Unique, it's him.

The Wendigo, as stated, is a brainless monster... a man eating carnivore that, according to Canadian legend, is what someone becomes when they eat human flesh (and apparently, the legend has the strength of a working mystical curse in the Canadian North Woods, at the very least). Once again, you'd figure pretty much any version of the Wendigo is going to be the same as any other, so if you're going to give us a Wendigo fig (and while I love Steve Englehart's writing, and the story in which he created the Wendigo, there are about 70 Hulk villains I'd put into plastic before I reached this far down into the bin), shouldn't it also be a Unique?

Someone at HC Realms mentioned what should have been obvious to me... that game mechanics also come into picking who is going to get a REV set, instead of Unique status, because the rules of HeroClix forbid playing with more than one Unique figure, while you can have a rookie Saturn Girl, an Experienced Saturn Girl, and a Veteran Saturn Girl all on the same team... which is one reason, of course, why I only play clix under
Doc Nebula's House Rules, to avoid such egregious bullshit.

Still, looking at Crystal's dial, it's hard to see exactly what WizKids was afraid of. Yeah, yeah, the front loaded Pulse Wave, combined with the inevitable Nova Blast feat card, will tear some stuff up, but it's not like they gave her Running Shot to let her move into place and get it off... and it's not like they'd have to give every version of Crystal in a REV that front loaded power. They could have saved the current power array for the Vet version, if they were so worried about it being duplicated, and made the Rookie and Experienced versions less susceptible to abuse... give the rookie some Force Blast, some Energy Explosion and maybe a little bit of Incapacitate, at, say, a 6 range, add some Perplex and some Quake to the Experienced version, then kick out the jams and give the Vet all that Pulse Wave. Then we could have had an Experienced Crystal with the FF TA and the Vet with the Avengers TA... but... well... they didn't.

It just aggravates me. But, hey, at least they finally gave us one. We're only about four sculpts away from an entire Inhumans Royal Family...

To taste the flesh not yet deceased

Over at Kung Fu Monkey, they're talking about the new Blue Beetle character scheduled to debut in his own series after INFINITY CRISIS wraps up. The blogger over there, John Rogers, is understandably excited about it, because he's scripting the book over Keith Giffen's plots.

Me, I wouldn't trust Giffen with a nickel I found at the bottom of a pay toilet; he is, to my mind, one of the most egregiously untalented 'talents' who has ever disgraced every title he's been entrusted with. I'd have to go all the way back to Marvel's WOODGOD to find some Giffen artwork I liked, and as far as I can tell, the man has never once had a single good idea as a plotter or scripter. So as far as the new Blue Beetle comic goes, I'm pretty much out.


However, I'm in the minority. As with most blogs done by professionals, the majority of commenters on Kung Fu Monkey tend to be somewhat sycophantic. Being a professional in a geek business confers instant validity in the eyes of most geeks, so the vast majority of Rogers' regular commenters tend to fawn all over him. It's a natural reaction... Here We Are, Talking With Someone Actually Working Behind The Scenes! The urge to kiss ass is nearly insurmountable. Those who can resist it are either personal friends of Rogers, or fellow pros... and all of them, naturally, like the new Blue Beetle, too.

However, besides me, there is one other guy who is not particularly happy with the new concept. Styling himself 'the ghost of Ted Kord' (Ted Kord was the recently murdered Blue Beetle's secret identity), this fellow will have nothing of a new Blue Beetle... he wants Ted Kord back, he wants him back NOW, and like Rick Jones lecturing Dr. Strange on the meaninglessness of death in the Marvel Universe, he can't see any reason why, if Fill In The Blank With Countless Once Dead Now Resurrected Characters can't be brought back, his particular beloved dead character can't be revived, too... and toot fucking sweet.

Meanwhile, over at HCRealms, I've been trying to hold some kind of textual line against a swarm of Modern Age loving gnats, all of whom are convinced that Geoff Johns should be crucified with giant splinters through his naughty bits for having the temerity to take a bunch of the most obnoxious slacker juvenile cretin sidekick characters that ever existed, and investing them with a little maturity. These guys constant refrain, other than wailing about how Impulse and Superboy just aren't any FUN any more now that they're behaving, you know, in a slightly adult fashion, is to sob and sob and sob that, yeah, it's okay that they brought back Geezer Lantern Hal Jordan, but gosh, couldn't they have given him a shawl and a chair by the fire with some milk and cookies, and let glorious godlike mule dicked male model Kyle Rayner continue to be The One True Green Lantern?

It's fortunate none of these people try comparing the Silver Age Aquaman unfavorably with the various horrifying Modern Age versions of the character, or I would honestly have to go out and buy a high powered rifle.

But as to, specifically, the anguished cries of 'the ghost of Ted Kord'...

Jeez. The pain in the posts of a ghost.


I want to laugh... Moore's Nite Owl (from WATCHMEN) means more, emotionally, to me than the walking talking fat joke that DC's BLUE BEETLE mostly was... and asking us to trust that the author of the fat jokes is going to give us a better version of the fat joke is way too big a stretch for me, too, parenthetically without parentheses... but I can't. I can't laugh at the ghost. His pain is very real to me.

I invested enormous childhood love... is there a more intense kind?... into dozens-hundreds-thousands of Silver Age characters at both Marvel and DC, and that love was rewarded by DC back in the mid 80s with the contemptible circulation stunt we all call CRISIS, and the reprehensible series of incomprehensibly awful reboots that rolled out senselessly and relentlessly for years afterwards.


So I know how he feels. I felt it for Hal Jordan, and Barry Allen, and Katar Hol, and Kal El, and Kara El, and pretty much the entire Legion of Superheroes, and Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth, and dozens/hundreds/maybe thousands more.

"But DC was about to go under, they had to do SOMETHING," harrumphs Mr. Comics Is A Business Too You Fucking Fanboy, as I saw the top of his head off and prepare to start sticking toothpicks with little colored ribbons into his shriveled, feeble brain.

"But all that Silver Age stuff was Plan 9 From Outer Space stupid, we needed to make the heroes more re-uh-LISS-tick," gibbers Captain I Would Have My Tongue Up Frank Miller's Ass Right Now If Only I Could Find Him Somewhere On This Wretched Mortal Coil, as I fasten the electrodes to his Bronze/Platinum/Diamond/Modern/Shite Age loving testicles and prepare to flip the switch.

Blue Beetle got shot. Apparently, Maxwell Lord did some time with Johnny Caspar, and learned Caspar's maxim... "Always put one in the brain". Is it possible Ted Kord could come back from having his brains blown all over four different comics panels? Sure. With Keith Giffen plotting him, it's not like he NEEDS a brain... he could be the new Ambush Bug!

For all that, all I can say about Ted Kord is this... I never liked him until Geoff Johns wrote him, and then I liked him, and then they killed him.


On the other hand, I loved a lot of other characters deeply for most of my childhood and into my early adulthood, and DC killed all them, too, and replaced them with strutting grim n' gritty poseurs in black costumes with laser autocannons and I don't know what the frick all else, and it took twenty years to even start putting that right, and now all the Modern Age crybabies are sobbing and wailing "But Impulse and Superboy used to sit around and play videogames and jerk each other off in Young Justice and NOW they're acting all grown up and mature and weeeeeee don't LIKE it WAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!"

You can't please everybody.


I'm just happy that finally, DC has a writer who seems to want to please me, about some things, at least.


On a completely unrelated tangent, I just reread Busiek and Perez's JLA/Avengers crossover, and it STILL FRICKIN ROCKS. Best. Superhero. Story. Ever.

I walk the line

Well, yesterday I had a very bad day. In combination with a typical Monday at work -- a nightmare of epic proportions as we wind down the claim year and everyone tries to get their one yearly claim in and processed so they can have money for Christmas -- I well and truly pissed SuperGirlfriend off, to the point where she sent me an email forbidding me to call her during the day, saying she'd talk to me about things when she picked me up that night... and I spent the day wondering if I'd have a place to sleep that night (yeah, what I did was that bad).

We talked in the car, and managed to salvage things, but I put a big ding in her trust for me yesterday, and gave us both an absolutely miserable day, and I regret it abjectly, but I have no Wayback Machine, and I'm just going to have to buckle down and do what we non-cartoon mortals have to do when we screw up righteously and are lucky enough to get another chance... make it right. It's going to take some pretty serious work on my part, but, well, without SuperGirlfriend and the SuperKids I really have no life, and anyway, if this thing fails because of me, I'll be letting them down terribly, and I can't stand that. So I have to make it work. And I will.

Anyway... a little housekeeping blogging for the morning. SuperGirlfriend and I did go see the title movie last weekend, and I kept meaning to blog about it, and not getting around to it, so I'll say here that, given that the film represents a reality tunnel I have very nearly no interest in, it still impressed me deeply. It's one of those films where the lead actors do not seem to so much portray their characters as channel them from beyond the grave... you just can't look at Joaquin Phoenix in this movie and see or hear anyone besides Johnny Cash. I grant you, the whole 'pill popping pop star' thing has become such a cliche these days that much of the movie's storyline seems hackneyed (a terrible thing to say about a man's life, I guess) but it's important to realize that Cash was one of the generation (along with Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley) who first brought that cliche to life, at least, as far as mass perception was concerned.

It's a beautifully made movie. Even if you're not wild about country and western music (and I'm certainly not), I'd say it's still worth watching. Think of it as kind of like Tender Mercies, but about real people.



A minor disappointment for me over the last week was watching the cartoon adaptation of Alan Moore's now classic Superman story "For The Man Who Has Everything". SuperGirlfriend and I were shopping for SuperDependable Teen's birthday (which, as she constantly reminds us in sing song cadence, is tomorrow) and I spotted a DVD with three episodes of JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED on it. I've kind of enjoyed the odd, parallel continuity that this cartoon series has established on the few occasions I've managed to catch it in the past, and when I saw that the first episode on the disc was an adaption of that Moore story, I had to have it. But if they'd only put actual credits on the DVD jacket, I'd have known better, since the actual script was written by J.M. deMatteis.

deMatteis seems to have landed a comfy job writing a lot of these things, and it just sickens me, since out of everybody who has ever handled the Justice League concept in the comics, he's the one I would least like to see entrusted with any other aspect of the franchise. And giving a hack like him the job of reinterpreting Alan Moore for a different medium... this is kind of like letting Jack the Ripper do an ice sculpture of Michaelangelo's David.

deMatteis rewrote the story fairly extensively, dropping out the near-essential Robin part in order to focus on just the three adult heroes. He also vastly simplifies the various dream sequences, turning Superman's 'happy fantasy' of a life on a Krypton that never exploded into, well, little more than just an idle daydream with none of the more interesting (if ultimately more cynical and deconstructive than I've ever believed the Man of Steel could truly dream up in such a scenario) details Moore fleshed out the original story with.

Batman's brief dream state never progresses beyond the point where his parents get mugged and his father steps up, grabs Joe Chill's gun, and just starts beating the crap out of Chill over and over again... and while Superman's rather more simplistic and Utopian 'I'm living on a Kryptonian farm with a beautiful redheaded wife who throws me surprise parties for my birthday and I have a lovely son named Van' fantasy does, admittedly, seem more in character for the rather idealistic Kal El (if considerably more boring than the original, darker vision of a still extant Krypton that Moore presented us with), Batman's incredibly simply fantasy would seem to mark the Dark Knight out as being rather unimaginative and, well, brutal.

Both characterizations are spot on for the Modern Age versions of Batman and Superman, and I've made the point before that Moore, in his original story, seems to have mixed up his dramatis persona, giving Superman a grim n' gritty, very cynical vision of a still surviving Krypton that is the sort of thing we'd expect Batman to come up with, while he gave Batman a very pleasantly idyllic normal life on Earth, in which he was married to Kathy Kane and had children, which we'd really expect to be the kind of sweet fantasy Superman would dream up for himself. deMatteis seems to have corrected this, but his corrections are, honestly, just plain goddam boring, which is always a sin when you're writing to entertain.

Beyond all that, deMatteis occasionally lets some of the original Moore dialogue survive, but every time a snatch of it surfaces, all the emotional subtext Moore has carefully laid is gone, so the dialogue itself is little more than meaningless noise. And, well, if you've read the story, you really have to miss the presence of the now missing (and in the DC Universe, now long dead) Jason Todd.

All in all, well, it was a fair let down, watching this cartoon. The other two on the DVD, though, "The Return" and "The Greatest Story Never Told", were pretty entertaining.



I'm getting towards the end of the the GREEN LANTERN SHOWCASE edition SuperGirlfriend got me for my birthday, and it's been a delightful trip so far. A few of these very earliest issues of the Silver Age Green Lantern are so painfully poorly plotted you just have to dismiss them as 'bad reporting' (to use Mike Norton's wonderful phrase for comic book stories about our favorite characters we simply cannot accept as 'real', no matter how hard we try). But most of them are a lot of fun to read. As someone who has always wanted to write comics, I cannot help but be struck by the significance of what John Broome was doing in these early stories... inventing not only the entirety of Green Lantern's future continuity from one issue to the next, but very nearly making up all of DC's outer space terrain as he went, too.

The Gil Kane art is fabulous, especially when he's inked by Murphy Anderson. Kane isn't a particularly good graphic designer, however, which is one reason why the Weaponers of Qward still look pretty retarded even to this day. Still, this artwork is beautiful and clear, something that is absolutely necessary when you are drawing a character like Green Lantern, who can literally do anything he can imagine at any instant.

There's a lot of nonsense physics in this comic, especially the stuff about the color yellow, which is the one thing GL's power ring cannot affect. This was always a bad idea because color is largely dependent on surrounding conditions, and if GL had had half a brain in his head, he would have simply created lightproof containers around every threatening yellow object he encountered. Without light, there is no color, so once GL put whatever yellow maguffin was messing with him this issue into a total blackout, he could have done anything he wanted to it.

This point is especially underscored by a story in which the Weaponers of Qward shoot a 'red' missile at Green Lantern. Naturally, he tries to stop it with his power ring because, you know, it's not yellow... but his power ring won't do anything with it, so he has to dodge it instead (hey, that was hard). After it blows up some poor guy's barn, GL gives the pieces the fishy eye and discovers that the goddam thing was yellow all along... it just had red lights radiating a red aura around it through its transparent casing. Those wiley, wiley Weaponers! Geez! And to think, he almost didn't bother dodging the darned thing! Boy, the joke would have been on him then!

Honestly, the brain boggles at this nonsense. The frickin' weapon has a transparent casing, with red bulbs underneath it radiating a red aura... and yet, somehow, it's really yellow! I'd ask what John Broome was smoking when he wrote this crap up, but, well, all us old Silver Age comics fans already know...

In your heart you know it's right

My crazy Uncle Fred, the one who makes all his money from some third rate Amway knock off pyramid sales company, sent me some email this morning.

Generally, when my crazy Uncle Fred sends me email, I just delete it unread, because crazy Uncle Fred has, somewhere along the line, changed from being the cool Uncle Rick who used to let me read his Superman and Captain America comics when I was little to being, well, a Limbaugh and Hannity reiterating pinhead.

However, every once in a while I sigh and open one of Fred's emails, because it's a little painful for me to think that my cool Uncle Rick really is gone forever. I keep hoping he may send me something that actually, at some point, displays a vestigial shred of coolness, or, if that's too much to hope for, at least, a tiny bit of sanity.

This is what he sent me this morning:


The lady that wrote this letter is Pam Foster of Pamela Foster and Associates in Atlanta. She's been in business since 1980 doing interior design and home planning. She recently wrote a letter to a family member serving in Iraq. Read it!

WHAT'S ALL THE FUSS?

Are we fighting a war on terror or aren't we? Was it or was it not started by Islamic people who brought it to our shores on September 11, 2001? Were people from all over the world, mostly Americans, not brutally murdered that day, in downtown Manhattan, across the Potomac from our nation's capitol and in a field in Pennsylvania? Did nearly three thousand men, women and children die a horrible, burning or crushing death that day, or didn't they?

And I'm supposed to care that a copy of the Koran was "desecrated" when an
overworked American soldier kicked it or got it wet? Well, I don't. I don't care at all.

I'll start caring when Osama bin Laden turns himself in and repents for incinerating all those innocent people on 9/11.

I'll care about the Koran when the fanatics in the Middle East start caring
about the Holy Bible, the mere possession of which is a crime in Saudi Arabia.

I'll care when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi tells the world he is sorry for hacking
off Nick Berg's head while Berg screamed through his gurgling, slashed throat.

I'll care when the cowardly so-called "insurgents" in Iraq come out and
fight like men instead of disrespecting their own religion by hiding in mosques.

I'll care when the mindless zealots who blow themselves up in search of
nirvana care about the innocent children within range of their suicide bombs.

I'll care when the American media stops pretending that their First Amendment liberties are somehow derived from international law instead of the United States Constitution's Bill of Rights.

In the meantime, when I hear a story about a brave marine roughing up an
Iraqi terrorist to obtain information, know this: I don't care.

When I see a fuzzy photo of a pile of naked Iraqi prisoners who have been
humiliated in what amounts to a college hazing incident, rest assured that I
don't care.

When I see a wounded terrorist get shot in the head when he is told not to move because he might be booby-trapped, you can take it to the bank that I don't care.

When I hear that a prisoner, who was issued a Koran and a prayer mat, and
fed "special" food that is paid for by my tax dollars, is complaining that his holy book is being "mishandled," you can absolutely believe in your heart of hearts that I don't care.

And oh, by the way, I've noticed that sometimes it's spelled "Koran" and other times "Quran." Well, Jimmy Crack Corn and --you guessed it, I could not have said this any better myself!

If you agree with this view point, pass this on to all your e-mail friends.
Sooner or later, it'll get to the people responsible for this ridiculous behavior! If you don't agree, then by all means hit the delete button. Should you choose the latter, then please don't complain when more atrocities committed by radical Muslims happen here in our great country,like are happening in France now.

So, what the hell, here are some random thoughts I had while I was scanning through this thing:

* * * 9/11 gave Americans everywhere a blank check to do anything we want, as long as we are 'fighting terror' when we do it. That's really cool.

* * * Islamic suicide bombers are not seeking nirvana. Buddhists seek nirvana. Islamic suicide bombers seek instant translation to Allah's Paradise by martyring themselves in an act of self immolation meant to take out many of the enemy, as well. Buddhists, on the other hand, crouch in really uncomfortable positions and chant a lot. I guess, if you're a moron, it would be hard to tell the difference between the two groups, but here's a hint: the Islamic terrorists are the ones that explode.

* * * How do you tell the difference between a 'brave marine' and a cowardly piece of shit? Well, again, here's a hint: if you're hitting a handcuffed prisoner repeatedly in the nads with a billy club, you're not a brave anything.

* * * Similarly, how do you tell the difference between humiliating torture of illegally imprisoned human beings and a college hazing incident? Well, generally there are fewer snarling Dobermans on leashes at the college hazing incident, for one thing. For another, most of the participants in the college hazing incident aren't being held at gun point in handcuffs. Finally, the illegally imprisoned people who are being humiliated and tortured would, if they were allowed to, leave.

* * * It amazes me that there are, apparently, no innocent, illegally held prisoners anywhere in the American occupied Middle East. No, it seems (at least, according to Pamela Foster of Atlanta, Georgia, and my Uncle Fred who enthusiastically forwards her email to everyone he knows) that everyone locked up in an American military prison is, in fact, a tried and convicted Iraqi terrorist. Apparently, tried and convicted Iraqi terrorists are not protected by international law pertaining to the treatment of prisoners... but, of course, I'm forgetting; 9/11 gave every American a blank check to do anything at all to fight the War on Terror.

Finally... Christ! Those goddam radical Muslims and their wave of terror in France! You just know something like that is about to happen here in America, any minute now, and when it does, it will be because of us no good lazy godless whining left wing egghead liberals who encouraged the little fuckers to do it, too! Jesus! How any decent right thinking American Christian can be expected to tolerate us for one more minute I cannot comprehend. In fact, it is the duty of every hard working God fearing patriotic American to shoot every fucking liberal they see, before we bring this country to its knees and surrender our way of life to be crushed beneath the iron heel of our towelheaded Islamic masters.

Please. For the love of God. Put The Bullet Here.

Having a really rotten Friday...

...and YOU people, not reading my blog, not leaving any comments, not sending me ANY DAMN EMAIL, aren't helping. NOT ONE LITTLE BIT.

Okay, having gotten that out of my system, here's why today has sucked, other than the rest of the world's complete and unacceptable failure to provide me with any positive attention to offset the negative attention I've been getting all day from pissed off participants --

Many of the people who have flexible spending accounts that my employer administers have a benny card attached to their account. People love benny cards, they think benny cards are just the cat's ass, because instead of going through the long, tedious procedure of filling out a claim form and attaching all their supporting documentation and sending it in and maybe getting it denied two or three times and having to jump through a lot of hoops to get reimbursed, they can just swipe the card like a debit or a charge card when they pay for their health care expenses, and that's MUCH easier.

But, what these people do not know is that there is a department somewhere that looks over all the charges they put on this card, and if they see something they don't understand, they send out what we call an adjudication letter, which basically says "we don't know what this charge is, please submit your explanation of benefits or your itemized receipt to validate this expense, otherwise it will be assessed as an overpayment to your account".

People rarely understand what this means, but they know it sounds bad, so they call me. And many of them are pissed, because, you know, they got the benny card (benefit card, sorry) because it was much much more convenient and they didn't have to do any paperwork and now they have to do paperwork? Well, fuck that noise!

The ones who are the maddest, of course, are the ones who, because they have the card, didn't bother to save their receipts, and now they are being asked for receipts, and they are like "Oh shit". So, naturally, they are taking this out on me.

Today, around three o'clock, I got a call from just about the meanest bitch in the universe, and she was just not going to let go. She was mad as hell. We were accusing her of fraud. She only got the card because it made it easier and now we wanted receipts? Plus she sent us her receipts, and it wasn't her fault they weren't legible! What was she supposed to do? This was way too much trouble and she wanted something done about it, now she had this huge headache at the end of the year and she wanted to know what I was going to do about it!

When I'd finally gotten her calmed down enough that she was willing to hang up in disgust, after she'd refused to take the customer service survey we offer at the end of every call, I wished her, in a monotone, a Happy Holidays... and THAT pissed her off. Then she WANTED to take the damn customer service survey, just so she could complain about how rude and sarcastic I had just been.

So I hung up on her, because, honestly, it was hang up on her or just go totally off on her, and the latter would have certainly gotten me fired.

So, then, 6 pm rolls around, it's fifteen minutes from my break, we've been slammed with calls non stop since 5 pm, which is when the day shift that works here goes home, but the day shift of desperate lunatic people who just have to call my employer hasn't punched out yet, which means that the same number of people who have been calling us steadily all day are still calling, but suddenly we only have half as many people working here taking the calls.

And I get this lunatic woman again.

And she goes into her tirade all over again, and now she wants to talk to whoever it is that looks over the charges on the accounts, and she wants a supervisor, and we have no supervisors because they were all smart enough to get the hell out of here at 5 or 5:30, and keeps me on the phone for twenty minutes of nonstop bitching.

And then she hangs up on me without warning, so I don't get a chance to hit the BREAK button, and BING, I'm right into another call.

And this guy? THIS guy says "I got this letter today, saying I need to send in some paperwork for some charges on my card, and I don't understand this..."

Hit MUTE button.

SHRIEK like a lunch whistle in hell.

Beat head on desk four times THUNK thud THUNK thud.

Repeat several times.

So I finally went on my 6:15 break about, I don't know, 6:45.

And that's just a sample. The whole day has been, more or less, just like that, just with different types of calls.

And YOU PEOPLE OUT THERE AREN'T HELPING.

Especially those of you who in addition to not reading my blog, sending me email, or posting comments, are CALLING ME UP AND ASKING ME STUPID QUESTIONS ABOUT YOUR GODDAM FLEXIBLE SPENDING ACCOUNTS.

Post script to SuperGirlfriend -- none of this is to YOUR address, you've been the only good thing in my life today. So you never mind this.

But the rest of you are on notice: Send me email, post comments on this blog, and stop calling my job about your fucking FSAs.

I mean it.

Don't make me come over there.

A secret plan to fight... something

From here:

WASHINGTON - By creating a federal agency shielded from public scrutiny, some lawmakers think they can speed the development and testing of new drugs and vaccines needed to respond to a bioterrorist attack or super-flu pandemic.

The proposed Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency, or BARDA, would be exempt from long-standing open records and meetings laws that apply to most government departments, according to legislation approved Oct. 18 by the Senate health committee.
In other words, drug companies would have a safe haven where they would be able to do any kind of medical research whatsoever, free from any kind of oversight or public scrutiny. Better yet --

The agency would provide the funding for development of treatments and vaccines to protect the United States from natural pandemics as well as chemical, biological and radiological agents.
That's right... you and I would be writing a blank check to the drug companies for this super secret, unaccountable, undocumented research.

Then there's this:

The bill does provide for limited compensation. However, another provision would grant drug companies immunity unless "willful misconduct" can be shown.
Which, you know, would be a very easy legal burden to meet, given that all the records of the agency would be classified and nobody from the public could ever get access to them.

The National Vaccine Information Center, an advocacy group, called the legislation "a drug company stockholder's dream and a consumer's worst nightmare."
See, if I were paranoid, I might just think that with a top secret national security research haven like this available, drug companies might be tempted to just stop doing anything at all on their own hook and do it ALL on the public tit. Then ANYthing they create, any product at all that comes out of this, will be protected against any kind of legal repercussions that might ensue, unless "willful misconduct" can be proved, which of course it can't, because nobody will have any access to any of the records involved.

Geez. It's a good thing my government doesn't do stuff like create secret military bases all over the world to illegally detail and torture people in. It's a good thing there is no obvious, inherently corrupt and steadily, horrifically increasing bias in our government towards wealthy, influential corporations, especially the drug companies. I mean, otherwise, I might think this could be a really really BAD thing.

What strikes me as oddest about this is, well... it seems to me that, essentially, if the government sets up this agency, it will basically end up socializing drug research and production in this country. And socialism is a bad thing, according to the Republicans who are pushing this bill... right?

Ah, but wait:

Frist spokeswoman Amy Call said drug company concerns about liability are real.

"There's really no financial incentive for them to get into the market, sell to the government at a reduced rate and then open themselves up to losses that could potentially bankrupt them," Call said.
And then:

"We must ensure the federal government acts as a partner with the private sector, providing the incentives and protections necessary to bring more and better drugs and vaccines to market faster," Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., said when the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions approved the bill.
See? It's not socialism at all! In socialism, the government controls certain essential processes and industries, presumably for the public good. But with this new agency, the government would just FUND the research, and PROTECT the research (from... um... us, I guess). They wouldn't CONTROL anything! So that makes it better!

"So... I'm sorry, doctor, I don't mean to be unpatriotic, but just what ARE you injecting me, my wife, my children, and my dog with?"

"That's classified data, citizen. But rest assured it's for the good of the nation."

"Ah. So you don't know what's in the hypo either, eh...?"

Personally, I think they should put Michael Brown in charge of the whole thing. Because we all know that couldn't possibly go wrong.

Bush, Cheney seek one armed man

WASHINGTON - An embattled, unshaven, apparently somewhat hungover Scott McClellan today admitted that both President and Vice President have initiated an internal investigation probing the source of the various scandals plaguing the Administration.

"They're looking for a one armed man," McClellan muttered, eyes cast down, face suffused with a look of utter self loathing chagrin.

In response to follow up questions, McClellan admitted surlily, "The President and Vice President both now seem to remember seeing a one armed man lurking around the White House hallways whenever any of these questionable incidents was about to occur. The President believes he was dressed as a maintenance man; the Vice President says he might have been a gardener. Whatever the case, both of them are pretty sure this one armed man was probably in a position to overhear certain conversations, such as entirely internal discussions of Valerie Plame's status as a CIA operative."

McClellan, under further prodding from an admittedly incredulous press corps, added, "Vice President Cheney is fairly certain this one armed man might also have had access to pre-war intelligence, and may have doctored it extensively before it came to the attention of him or the President."

When asked how a one armed maintenance worker, or gardener, could possibly have gotten access to such highly classified material, McClellan rolled his eyes, shuffled several index cards in his hands, then, in a monotone, said "There is reason to believe this one armed man was a terrorist spy equipped with sophisticated Soviet electronic surveillance equipment." He then stopped, peered closely at the card, took out a pencil, and vigorously scratched something out on it, penciling in something else. "I'm sorry. North Korean electronic surveillance equipment," he tacked on tonelessly.

He then announced that the FBI is conducting a search for the one armed man. "Also," he added, seeming rather weary of the whole thing, "President Bush told me today that he had personally contacted Aquaman of the Justice League, and the JLA is also on the case." McClellan gave an odd, shrill little chuckle at that point and wiped a fleck of spittle from the corner of his mouth. "I guess he's going to come here and interview all the goldfish in the offices, or something..."

McClellan ended the briefing at that moment, saying he really needed a drink.

Is there no help for the Son of a Widow?

This is new:

From: "richard morris"
Subject: The Freemason society of Bournemouth 2005 Grant.
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 13:51:02 +0000


The Freemason society of Bournemouth under the jurisdiction
of the all Seeing Eye, Master Nicholas Brenner has after series
of secret deliberations selected you to be a beneficiary of our
2005 foundation laying grants and also an optional opening at
the round table of the Freemason society.

These grants are issued every year around the world in
accordance with the objective of the Freemasons as stated by
Thomas Paine in 1810 which is to ensure the continuous freedom
of man and to enhance mans living conditions.We will also advice
that these funds which amount to USD2.5million be used to better
the lot of man through your own initiative and also we will go
further to inform that the open slot to become a Freemason is
optional, you can decline the offer.In order to claim your grant,
contact the Grand Lodge Office secretary Mark Anderson
Grand Lodge Office Secretary's email:mk_anders001@yahoo.co.uk

Richard Morris,
PRO Freemason Society of holdenhurst road,
Bournemouth.
London.

See, now, if this was just some shabby former African minister's dependent trying to hoax me into letting them deposit $12 million in offshore funds in my American bank account for a 10% finder's fee, well, I'd have none of it, sir. Clearly, those emails are fraudulent. But the Freemasons...! My GOD! They're on the square and on the level! And I've read From Hell, so I even know that Jack the Ripper was a Freemason! What more authority do I need?

I'm totally going for it. If it's good enough for ol' Springheels, well, it's good enough for me. Maybe I'll even get super powers!