During the day at work, I post random things that enter my head as updated Facebook statuses, and I also update Twitter between one and two dozen times on a typical weekday. I don’t get to this blog nearly as often. Twitter is wide open, but my Facebook posts are almost always limited to friends. Basically, if you were only following this blog you might not think I’m very active — and, in the grand scheme of things compared with people who have several thousand subscribers on Facebook and upwards of 20,000 tweets, I’m not. But, I am more active than this blog might indicate. So I’m going to try a new plugin that will feed updates from here to Facebook. This still won’t catch everything that goes from my phone to Facebook, etc., but it might be a way to bridge some of the gap between content on Facebook and content here.
This new plugin should allow you to use your Facebook or Twitter accounts to log in and comment, if you’re interested in that.
Not really. Saturday has been for partying, really. They’re all gone now, but we’ve had people over basically all day. Both of them brought their daughters who are about Helen’s age, so the girls partied in the back yard most of the day, and right now Helen is still in the basement winding down and watching “Tangled.” I’ll have to go check on her soon to see if she’s asleep.
We braved some rain and hit up a couple of garage sales this morning; in typical fashion, everybody found some little things to come away with except for me (not that I’m complaining). Helen’s big score was a bag of about 450 Pokemon cards for two bucks. She’s caught the Pokemon bug, and we keep trying to find time to learn how to play the card game while Millie isn’t around to jump into the middle of things and start throwing cards all over the room. Still want to make sure we can do that somehow; the game plays into several of the things that are likely to get me hooked on it — namely, collecting things, and strategizing how to use available cards to build a game deck. I’m sure I’ll have fun playing the game with her once we get into it.
What I’m Drawing
I put out a call on Facebook this morning asking people to request drawings; I bought a pack of 15 blank postcards when I was at Blick’s in Minneapolis last weekend. I thought it’d be fun to get them and have people ask me to draw something for them, and then mail it to them. I had a couple of people that I just wanted to send something to, so they got on the list, but even so I had enough responses in a couple of hours to occupy all 15 cards with a few left over. I’ll have to buy a second package of them if I can find ‘em and make sure everybody who asked for one gets something. It seemed like a fun, tangible project that could force me to draw; I drew four days this week, which for me is pretty good. I need to find actual things to draw instead of just dinking around in my sketchbook, though.
All for now.
What I’m Reading/Watching
I have started filling in the void on my Geek Card that is occupied by “A Game of Thrones.” I picked up the hardcover trade of the first half-dozen issues of the comic series and read through that; I read the first couple of chapters of the novel; and I’ve watched the first two episodes of the HBO series (which essentially mirrors the events of that comic trade).
The comic was a tough read; I bought it for Tommy Patterson’s art, because I’ve been following him on Twitter for awhile and he’s a great guy. But it suffers from the same thing a lot of modern comics suffer from, in that it never telegraphs scene changes. You are on one page with one set of characters in one location, and you turn the page and find another set of characters in another location with no warning that the setting has changed. All it would take is a narrator’s box in the upper left-hand corner of the first panel that says “Name of New Location,” and you’re off to the races. But a lot of comic books today ignore this.
The show’s OK — I don’t love it, but I don’t dislike it enough to quit on it after only two episodes. Peter Dinklage, who plays a dwarf named Tyrion Lannister, is really the highlight of the series, and he doesn’t get nearly enough screen time as the show bounces around between the myriad settings and sets of characters.
I’m maybe 20 pages into the book only; not enough to have an opinion on it yet.
What I’m Touring
I got a chance to go check out Northwest Technical College’s Sustainable Environment Technology Center today; they have combined elements of their home construction, plumbing/HVAC and metalworking programs to teach students how to install things like residential solar panels, small wind, geothermal heating systems and other high-efficiency, sustainable home energy sources. It was pretty awesome, and it briefly resurrected the part of me that long ago thought it was going to make me into a mechanical engineer. I took a bunch of pictures on Twitter; you can check those out. Really fun tour.
What I’m Playing
Diablo III came out Tuesday. I’ve put about four hours into it already; servers weren’t cooperative last night, so I didn’t play as much as I kinda wanted to. It’s fun – run around and explode things. I’m looking forward to playing more with Mel.
I’ve also been playing the Avengers game on Facebook, but I think I’m out. They added what they call a “special operation” that you could farm mercilessly and eventually earn the right to unlock Mockingbird; on the surface that seems awesome, and I was going to try it. But they added a ridiculous fifth kind of currency to the game, and require that currency to do each of the fights in a mission. Basically, it seems almost impossible to contemplate having enough of that currency available for the fights in the operation, and be able to repeat those fights enough times to earn “mastery” on each level, within the timeframe allowed without using actual dollars to buy the currency. There’s no way that’s happening. So the game now seems pretty pointless.
What I’m Buying
I actually got this on Monday; I signed up for a three-month trial to Birchbox. This was a total impulse buy; it just seemed silly and fun to get a little box full of unknown loots in the mail every month. The first box came with a pair of really nice green and blue Richer Poorer socks, a trial size bottle of Zirh shave gel (which I’ve actually used for years), a bar of this Kiehl’s soap, and some Billy Jealousy facial cleanser. Super-fun. I’m curious now to see what sort of goodies I get next month…
What I’m Reading
Tons of good stuff today. Tons. Batman #9 continues the Court of the Owls storyline, as a weakened Batman tries to flush the Court’s Talon assassins out of the Batcave; this entire series has been comic book brilliance, and today’s issue was absolutely no exception. It’s incredibly well-written, and Greg Capullo’s just been in the zone on the art for all 198 pages so far. It’s one of four DC books I’m still buying after my experiment to try out around half of DC’s New 52, and as long as the creative team of Scott Snyder and Capullo stays together, it’s getting my four bucks a month. I just love it. G.I. Joe #13 came out today as well, and I wrote a review of it last night for The Terrordrome. Just read this morning’s post; it sucked and I really don’t have much more to say about it.
The two digital comics I buy also both came out today — Invincible #91 and Morning Glories #18. Both of those were really good as well. Invincible also ends with a great cliffhanger, as we discover that the Viltrumite scourge virus meant to kill Mark might have altered him in noticeable — and exceptionally painful — ways. And there really aren’t enough good things to say about Morning Glories at this point; it’s just now a year and a half old, and it’s one of the best things I’ve ever picked up. The story is phenomenal; Joe Eisma’s art is gorgeous. This is just a fantastic comic.
I’m also a couple of weeks behind on this, but I finally got the second issue of the Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples collaboration, Saga, today as well (two bucks on iPad — I freaking love digital comics). This series is amazing. Absolutely fantastic. The premise is simple enough — boy soldier from Army A falls for girl soldier from Army B, resulting in child C; powerful people who don’t like that they’ve combined forces send assassins to kill them. So they run. Vaughan’s using a really clever narrative trick to drive the story along, and Staples’ art is just flat-out beautiful. The full-page cliffhanger splash at the end of the second issue is just a genius comic book page; based on how the issue progressed, the ending is nothing you would expect in a million years, and visually it’s just stunning. Fantastic page.
I am really enjoying the fact that I am to the point that I absolutely love everything I’m buying now. So fun.
Who I’m Following
There has been a bunch of research regarding social media that says people tend to surround themselves with people who share similar opinions on political issues, and that despite the infinite ability of the Internet to connect people of every imaginable viewpoint, people tend to freeze out those who don’t agree with them. I’m really finding that I am exactly the opposite. After today’s news that President Obama came out and explicitly supported gay marriage, the reaction from my social media circles has been overwhelmingly and basically exclusively positive. I’m not sure I have seen anything from any of the people I follow on Twitter or are friends with on Facebook that has come out and complained about the position. The only remotely anti-Obama things I’ve seen today have been obvious jokes on Twitter, really. I think I have a diverse group of people that I’m following; it could be that is not true, or that the people who lean to the left just tend to be far more vocal. And, it could just be that the right-leaning people who are vocal (and I do follow some) just haven’t felt like commenting about this. Whatever the reason, the overwhelming one-sidedness of the reaction stood out.
As for this particular announcement — for those who are pursuing this right (and they should be; the 14th Amendment, equal protection under the law, First Amendment, religious freedom (and this is a religious issue, and only a religious issue), all of that) what the President said today is a shot in the arm. Unfortunately, in the grand scheme of things, right now it’s meaningless. North Carolina is passing constitutional amendments banning it; Minnesota’s trying to do the same thing. There’s no possible way the federal government passes anything; the Supreme Court doesn’t seem to be touching it. It’s a feather in the cap, for sure, but, functionally, nothing seems as if it will actually change any time soon.
What I’m Studying
Grades are posted for both of my spring courses at Winona State; I have officially completed my first year of grad school with a 4.0.
G.I. Joe #13
IDW Publishing
Street Date: Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Cover price: $3.99
Written by: Chuck Dixon
Art: Will Rosado
Colors: Romulo Fajardo, Jr.
Letters: Neil Uyetake
Cover A: Wil Rosado, with colors by Romulo Fajardo, Jr.
Cover B: Wil Rosado, with colors by Romulo Fajardo, Jr.
Cover RIA: Tommy Lee Edwards
Cover RIB: Tommy Lee Edwards
G.I. Joe #13 is another setup story for what is shaping up to be a Snake Eyes-centric story arc. Snake Eyes has reassured Hard Master that his mission to rejoin the Arashikage has a higher purpose, and in this issue an event occurs that surely will aide in his motivation to destroy Cobra from the inside.
We also are re-introduced to Copperback, an interesting sidebar Cobra agent from Season One who had a decent-sized role in the MASS Device storyline; and get a look at what Dr. Mindbender is currently overseeing for Cobra. His punishment for participating in the coup attempt against Cobra Commander at the end of the Cobra Command storyline has been to be put in charge of a mining operation in South America.
This issue gets off to a rough start; the first three pages are wasted on the deaths of two characters who have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the outcome of this issue, and certainly not on any overall plot arc involving Mindbender and Scarlett. They weren’t even killed in a way that served to develop a new character named Urso, a new Cobra agent introduced by Dixon as the overseeer of the prisoners Cobra is using for labor in the mine.
In fact, introducing Urso at all seems like an odd decision when there are dozens of existing Cobra agents from the toy line who could’ve been introduced here; this character easily could’ve been somebody like Metal Head, or, at long last, Firefly. Even though Major Bludd was introduced as a prison overseeer during season one, it seems as if that well could’ve been tapped again. Having his underlings prove themselves by overseeing mining operations seems very much to be Cobra Commander’s style.
The Joes, of course, receive intel that reveals the existence of Cobra’s operation, and off Bravo Team goes to investigate. Scarlett gets to be tough and show she’s in control by leading an unsanctioned op; Mainframe gets to sneak along, jump out of an airplane and play a fun game of Blue’s Clue while he talks out loud to the reader and pretends to be a field agent. In the end, of course, nothing goes as planned for Team Bravo, and just like that we’ve got added motivation for Snake Eyes.
Coming immediately on the heels of a poor outing for Snake Eyes #12, the series seems to be stumbling out of the gates in its followup to Cobra Command. While Snake Eyes #12 existed entirely for Snake Eyes to deliver a message to Hard Master that he knew what he was doing and had a plan when he agreed to rejoin Storm Shadow and the Arashikage, this one exists entirely for Scarlett to get captured.
ART
Will Rosado has done better. Scarlett is… chunky in her first few panels where you can see her entire torso; and not in an Eve-from-Invincible way. She’s got a normal head, but Rosado just completely blows the torso. She’s back to normal by page 18. The panel of the Viper in the Trouble Bubble on Page 3 should’ve been zoomed out a little, also; the way it’s drawn you might think it’s shooting bullets out of its lights, and zooming out would have minimized how badly the Viper’s head was drawn. The scenes of Bravo Team jumping out of the plane are nice, and the shot of Dr. Mindbender walking over the mine shaft does a nice job of giving some sense to the scale of Cobra’s operation.
It would also be interesting to know if there’s a guideline for when to use Vipers with the ’86-style helmets and when to use Vipers with the IDW-style helmets we saw throughout Season One. They’re both used here.
COVERS
The A and B covers are both done by Will Rosado, and are part of a six-cover series running across all three IDW G.I. Joe books this month. The two for this issue feature solo illustrations of Duke, on the A cover, and Roadblock, on the B cover, on white with no backgrounds and a gold foil logo. Both are solid images featuring classic-looking uniforms, and the Cover B featuring Roadblock is the better of the two. The only thing that would improve it would be a significantly bigger machine gun.
Snake Eyes and Cobra will get similar treatment later this month.
Rosado has uncolored versions of both covers up on his Blogspot blog.
This month’s issue has two retailer-incentive covers; the A incentive is a very sketchy image of Scarlett drawn by Tommy Lee Edwards. The B cover is a black and white version of the A cover, but zoomed in on Scarlett’s head. The more time I spent with these, the more I liked them — particularly the full-size, colored A version.
PREVIEW
The Terrordrome has a preview of G.I. Joe #13 here.
This morning on Twitter, I linked up a very interesting pair of stories from our local media outlets covering Friday’s commencement ceremony at Bemidji State. The first was from our local television station; it featured basically no males, other than having some walk through group shots. Both of the interviewed students were female, and the isolation shots of students during the ceremony were predominantly female as well. It really jumped out at me as being an odd way to package that story.
The second was from our local paper; it had a brutal typo in the headline. Instead of walking across the stage on Friday, apparently 950 of our graduates walked across the state. That’d be a good trick.
Other stuff I read
Apparently you cannot play DVD or BluRay movies with the default installation of Windows 8. That’s going to go over well… They seem to be betting heavily on users being savvy enough to download a paid addon to Windows after installation to get them the necessary codecs, and not having those users go immediately into Rage Mode.
Also, Evernote bought Penultimate. I looove Evernote, and while I own Penultimate it’s not something I’ve ever used very much. Due to limitations with mushy-ball styluses I’ve tried, writing by hand on the iPad sucks; you can’t take notes on it during a meeting very well at all, because there’s no accuracy with the pens. Still, this could be a remarkably powerful combination; since I use Evernote all the time anyway, with an acceptable way to write with a stylus on the screen, I could conceivably never use paper at work again.
Finally, a Washington Post blog post claims that the amount of money being spent every year by the military on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan could fund 2/3 of the cost of free college at public universities for every America. It’d be really interesting to fact-check that claim; if it’s true (and it probably is), it’s a pretty damning indicator of where our priorities lie as a nation.
That’s basically all; quick update for tonight.
I’m going to throw a quick post in at the end of what has been a pretty crazily busy weekend here.
What I’m Watching
Avengers – twice. It had been my goal to get two Avengers showings in this weekend for about a week; Helen had been wanting to go see it for months, and after talking with Mel about it decided to do an advance screening to make sure it was OK for her (cut to the chase – Mel and I took her last night, and she lovedlovedloved it).
There’s not much I can say about this movie that hasn’t been said 12,000 times all over the Internet already, so I’m not going to bother with a review or anything like that. Suffice it to say that I absolutely loved this movie. Absolutely loved it. Since the brilliant first Iron Man movie, Marvel’s buildup to this massive event flick has been pretty solid if not spectacular – Iron Man 2 got bogged down a bit by the need to shoe-horn in the Capt. America and Thor references, and the two movies stemming from those references were pretty solid but not great by any means. Still, expectations for Avengers were pretty high — and, man, it delivered. Tom Huddleston was brilliant as Loki; Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk absolutely stole the show (best representation of Hulk outside of a comic book ever); Robert Downey, Jr., just is Tony Stark at this point; the SHIELD Helicarrier was amazing; the final battle was everything the Transformers: Dark of the Moon Chicago fight wished it could have been… On and on and on. It is a fantastic movie.
Even better – THANOS. As great as this movie was, Avengers 2: Avengers in Space could be even better. Especially if Marvel somehow gets the rights back for ROM: Space Knight before then…
What I’m Reading
I took the girls downtown for Free Comic Book Day on Saturday; Helen loves going, and I’ve taken her each of the last four years. This was Millie’s second FCBD appearance, as well. Helen decided to get a HeroClix miniature of Thor; she’s picked up the HeroClix every year I’ve taken her, and now has Thor, War Machine, Batman and Green Lantern. I was able to get IDW’s Transformers 80.5, the lead-in to the Transformers: Generation One series they’re starting up this summer as a direct continuation to Marvel’s Transformers series from the 1980s that ended at 80 issues. IDW’s relaunch will start at #81, and just carry on the old series.
They have done the same thing with G.I. Joe to some success; they hired Larry Hama to resurrect that series from the dead, relaunching it with a #155.5 issue at Free Comic Book Day two years ago and then starting its continuation with #156. It’s the only one of IDW’s four regular monthly G.I. Joe series I don’t read, even though I have most of them upstairs…
I saved my Wednesday store run for this weekend because of FCBD; I didn’t want to go in and get free stuff and not also buy something (this tactic cost me Animal Man #9, which kinda bums me out, but that’s the risk I took when I removed everything DC off of my pull list). They had copies of DC’s Earth 2 and World’s Finest debuts left, so I picked both of those up.
Nicola Scott’s art in Earth 2 is really the highlight of both books; she gets to draw Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman all getting killed in one issue, which is a pretty good trick, really (even though the panel where Wonder Woman bites it is kinda problematic; it seems like Scott’s hands were tied a bit by the space she had to draw the scene). The World’s Finest book is mostly a “here are your two main heroines; here is how they got where they are in this universe” type of situation. It strikes me that it could wind up being the more interesting of the two books, mostly because Earth 2 not only killed the three biggest heroes in the DC universe in the span of just a few pages, two other characters who played pivotal roles in the book fell through a wormhole of some sort into a parallel universe — landing as the two main characters in World’s Finest. So, really, not a single super-hero we saw in this book will make it to issue #2. It closes with some character introductions and a chance encounter with Mercury (yes, the god Mercury) to foreshadow some of the heroes we’ll meet next month, but for now every superhero we saw in this comic was either killed or transported to a parallel universe. If you are a hero on Earth 2, man, those are not good odds…
Coming up this week: Batman #9; G.I. Joe #13; Invincible #91; Morning Glories #18 (not confirmed as a release this week). If the shop gets Takio #1 (if it ships), I’ll get that for Helen, too.
All for now. *yawn*
This is a bit old news at this point, but from April 22-28, Target, Disney and Julie Andrews teamed up to celebrate “National Princess Week. Here’s an LA Times story on it; basically, it was an opportunity for Disney to shill princess merchandise at Target, including the two “Princess Diaries” movies on BluRay — which Andrews was in.
Of course, that led to a bunch of stuff like this, all over the Internet about how this was terrible for girls, and shame on Disney for continuing to shill these horrible role models, shame on Target for continuing to promote and profit itself from all these horrible role models, and Andrews should feel bad for taking part in pushing this horrible anti-feminist princess agenda, etc., etc., etc., blah, blah, blah.
I have three daughters, and I’m not a huge fan of princessization either. But, none of the princessization is the fault of Julie Andrews, or Target, or even Disney. None of it. Julie Andrews is taking money to be a spokesperson; people do that all the time. Good for you, Julie. Target and Disney are massive corporations that exist to make massive amounts of profit for their shareholders. This isn’t their fault either, and people trying to attack them over it are completely misguided.
Princessization exists because there are legions of people buying this merchandise, and because parents aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing and making sure they’re exposing their daughters to more than one thing. Megan was totally into princesses, but also was totally into Powerpuff Girls. Helen’s totally into princesses, but she also loves Transformers and has been marking out over the thought of going to see Avengers for more than a month. Millie loves princesses, but she prefers to watch a cartoon called Ruby Gloom that features a character called Skull Boy.
They like lots of different things because they’re exposed — intentionally — to lots of different things. And when Helen decides that what she really wants from a garage sale box is a toy from the “Aliens” movies, I buy it for her. Is it something she treasures always and forever? No. But it was a quarter, and for a couple of hours she thought it was awesome — so it was well worth the quarter. And in the grander scheme of things, she spent a couple of hours exploring what she wanted to explore — and didn’t have me slapping her down with “no, that’s for boys. How about this nice crown?”
Princessization isn’t Target’s fault, or Disney’s fault, or Julie Andrews’ fault. It’s the fault of parents who princessize their daughters.
What I’m Watching
In one hour and 40 minutes, I will be watching The Avengers. I’m so pumped. That is all.
What I’m Reading
I started the A Game of Thrones graphic novel tonight; read George R.R. Martin’s intro, didn’t get into the actual comic yet. I’ll read it tomorrow.
Who I’m Meeting
U.S. Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.) was on campus today; I got a chance to meet him briefly. I figured everybody else would ask him serious stuff, so the only question I asked him? “Was the Three Stooges movie good?” (I had heard him mention to his media guy that he’d seen it). “Yes, actually, it was very good,” he told me. It was awesome.
I live-tweeted his open forum on campus; here’s one of the tweets with a pic of him and our sustainability coordinator, Erika Bailey-Johnson (who, in amazing fashion, wore her Yoda t-shirt for her meeting with a U.S. Senator).
What I’m Watching
I keep hearing about Doctor Who, and how it’s supposed to be this vital cog in the geek machine; I’ve never watched it. I’ve had it in our instant queue on Netflix forever, but it was only tonight that I got around to giving it a try. I’m starting with the first season that Netflix has available, with Christopher “I was an awesome Destro” Eccleston as the Doctor. Watching the second episode right now; so far, it’s pretty campy and ridiculous, and it’s hard to imagine that I’ll get into it at all. I could be wrong, though; who knows.
What I’ve Been Writing
It really just occurred to me yesterday that this could be considered writing… All week, Helen and I have been playing a game before bed — she gives me three random words, and I ad lib a bedtime story featuring those three words. So far, we’ve had tales including Justin Bieber being pummeled with cauliflower for acting like a jerk at a Spaghetti Factory; a brave princess named Helen going on a quest to China to defeat a dragon and obtain the Crown of Flowers… You get the idea. It’s been super, super fun. We have been doing two or three of them a night, and some of the better ones I probably should be writing down when they’re done. The Princess Helen quest to China story ended up being about 15 minutes; the princess had magic weapons named Lilith and Evelynn and wore shiny templar armor, she needed the Crown of Flowers to save her sister Princess Millie from a powerful curse that would turn her into a demon on her third birthday, and when she met the dragon they battled on the beach for five consecutive days without resting, etc. I really went all-out with that one. 
And, really, I start talking as soon as she finishes giving me the three words, maybe taking a few seconds to get a general concept, but then the stories just get made up as I’m telling them.
What I’m Reading
I have been checking out more of DC’s 52 event from a couple of years ago; I found the first trade paperback at a thrift store in town for two dollars a few weeks ago, and I couldn’t just leave it there. I’m maybe 38 issues into the 52-issue event right now; there are maybe five concurrent storylines, none of them seem connected in any way and I have no idea where the overall story is going. Good thing I’m almost done, because I’m running out of patience with this. Things seem to be picking up in the thread involving Lex Luthor, and perhaps in the one featuring Booster Gold (which was one of the key stories in the trade I bought), but otherwise I have no picture of where this is going. I hope it ends strong.
What I’m Studying
Grad school grades for my law & ethics course are in; I got a 95 percent on my final paper and missed a total of six points during the entire semester. Grades aren’t in for the facilities management class yet, but that’s the test I got a 93 percent on the bizarre final for, so I’m mostly waiting for the grade on my final paper. All indications are that I will finish my first year of graduate school with 12 credits of As. I’m now enrolled in two summer-school courses, and will take two courses in the fall and two in the spring and be done and able to put “, MS” after my name on my door sign. Good times.
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