Reminiscing on Recent Slackerdom

Unlike Ragnell who's spent the last weeks of the year doing productive things, I've been performing familial duties (admittedly a worthwhile endeavor) and watching way too much tv (not so much this one).

As previously mentioned, I've been watching a lot of NCIS, mostly because it's kind of like Law and Order in that it's ALWAYS ON, but unlike Law and Order, I find it actually watchable. (L&O tends to piss me off like nothing else. NCIS is even less accurate law wise, don't get me wrong, but NCIS is like CSI Miami or the Sentinel or many other shows I enjoy watching for no reason except that it's like a comic book with sound and movement. I don't expect accuracy, so I don't get pissed off at the lack.)

I also suspect hypnotic rays because I'm really considering getting ahold of season sets. And by "really considering" I mean, I've already bought a few with Christmas money.

I'm weak.

I've also caught a little JAG for the first time in ages. I forgot how flipping DULL that show is. I cannot quite comprehend how a comic bookly-awesome show with explosions and identifying whether exploded people are your teammates by whether or not their lungs show signs of the BLACK DEATH could have spun off of something so dry and talky.

I do like the theme song though. I have a thing for trumpets and snares. I wouldn't survive a day in the military but I have a jones for their music like you wouldn't believe.

And also, Harmon Rabb? Is totally Hal Jordan. Seriously. If Hal were a lawyer and not a pilot? He would be that guy. The arrogance. The presumption. The control freak tendencies. The idiotic self-sabotaging ego. Heck, he even LOOKS like him.

Come to think of it, I think that guy should totally be Hal in the movie. He's got that stubborn lantern jaw thing going on.

I suppose that's why the show was so popular for so long. Women do love Hal Jordan.

I suppose now that it's New Years Eve, I really ought to start doing more productive things for the rest of my vacation. We'll see how well that goes, yeah? Heh.

Egack!

Okay, you know what, I HAD a nice, well thought-out post all ready to be typed out (a rant about fantasy genre and a certain justification that annoys me) but then I saw this post by Dorian and well...

Warning, don't go click if you have a weak stomach. I'm not kidding.

But um. Look. I know I have my problems with the Ultimate universe. Many many of them. But...

There has to be some sort of context that can save this right?

(Potential hypocrisy/DC bias warning: I thought the hound chomping Wendy and Marvin was kind of funny. Something about the cannibalism aspect and the chicken joke makes this much much worse by my standards. Your Mileage May Vary.)

I think I'm going to take some Zantac and lie down and try to convince myself it's possible to unsee things. Good night.

Babbling and a query

My mom, who is awesome and as supportive of my hobbies as anyone who is not inherently geeky in the same manner I am can be, keeps inviting me out to go see the Spirit.

I feel like a bad person because I know she's inviting me because she wants to show she loves me and share my hobby but there is no movie I want to see less than the Spirit.

I don't think she really wants to see it herself, or else she'd have already gone with dad, but it's still a lovely gesture. She doesn't understand my reluctance.

She's all: "But it's a comic book movie!"
I'm all: "Um, yeah, but honestly, I don't think I'll like it."
She's all: "But you like awful comic book movies!"

And I can't really argue with that. I actually liked both Fantastic Four movies after all. Still, I keep trying to explain my aversion in terms she'd understand:

"It's like seeing George Lucas trying to write a Star Trek movie." (Insert bad CGI obnoxious creatures, far-too-pleased-with-themselves-CGI, and the inexplicable inability to keep in mind the plot points in a grand total of three movies previous...and I say this as someone who LIKES Star Wars)

The next time the subject came up, I tried using an example closer to her own home turf:

"It's like reading Christine Feehan re-writing a Barbara Cartland novel."

I think she understood what I was getting at, but I do think in the end I'm probably going to end up in the theater seeing this movie that neither of us are particularly interested in anyway, on account of my mother being so lovably earnest and me having a guilty conscience.

Maybe I can distract her with a different movie. Is there anything good and/or entertaining out right now? Preferably something that doesn't involve Tom Cruise in an eyepatch....

More Thoughts on Willingham and Sturges on JSA

Ooo, an interview with Willingham and Sturges about JSA!

I like this bit:

BW: Well, the Justice Society is the Fables of the superhero world. It's a giant cast of legendary heroes from old that are being continuously updated. My god, now that I think of it, it's exactly like Fables.

...

BW: I for one am not going to attempt to be Geoff Johns-like because, what a silly thing that would be to even attempt. It's going to be about the stories and the characters. It's going to be a grand, sweeping, exciting book. We have lots of interesting things planned.

I get the Willingham criticism, but I think that as long as he keeps to the "grand, sweeping, exciting" part and leaves the politics behind, I think he'll be a good fit.

Granted, I can see the argument that Fables had a lot of conservative politics behind it (I don't know anything about Willingham's real life politics, and so I won't try to argue whether the subtext was intentional or not), but I thought the general epic feel of the characters/story was enough to counterbalance it. As much of a fanatic, hard-core liberal as I am, I never really found any of Fables' alleged political messages extreme or obvious enough to put me off reading until the Arabian Fables, and that was more discomfort at (probably unintentional) racial subtext. I'm hoping that because JSA has far less opportunity for an Arabian-Fables-esque "exoticized other" (barring Black Adam and company) the discomfitting elements will not be an issue.

And well, honestly, I'm not sure that a little underlying conservative overtones would be that out of place in the JSA. Well, admittedly, it would for characters like Power Girl, but this is a bit different than say, trying to put conservative overtones for Captain America (an FDR democrat who missed all the intervening conservative backlash). Many of the old-time JSA-ers probably would seem at least a bit conservative by today's standards.

As long as it's not too overpowering, such as when Dixon tried tackling abortion in Robin or well, Decisions period, the faint political subtext shouldn't be too bad.

On the plus side, he does do "legendary" well. And grand, sweeping epics are kind of his thing. Moreover, the man can pace a story very well. (Much as I love Geoff Johns, the man is an abysmal pacer. Most of his story arcs, I'd reckon, could definitely be rearranged/re-compressed without losing much of anything.) And he does very well with very large casts without really feeling like any of the characters are being neglected.

The Robin criticisms are fair, but it's hard to tell how much of it was mandated by editorial w/r/t Leslie or Steph. Shadowpact and Salvation Run seem to be better examples of Willingham's abilities.

And the more I read of Sturges's stuff, the more I like it. So there's that. :-)

I'm cautiously optimistic. And hoping Sand will get to do something badass. Or something at all. :-P

Nifty

Apparently there's a graphic novel adaptation of Crime and Punishment.

That ought to be really interesting. It's been ages since I read the book, but I remember liking it much more than the Great Gatsby which I also had to read for school and did not like nearly so much. (To be honest, I thought every single character was irritating as hell, and I felt a deep sympathy for Nick Carroway having to deal with those idiots. That probably says something about my appreciation for the American Dream or something like that.)

I do remember that in my first year of college, I took a Russian films class taught by a Russian Literature Professor, and his name was Raskolnikov, a fact which he found very funny and depressingly most of my class did not seem to get the joke. He was neat though.

It'll be interesting to see how it works in graphic novel form. :-)

Interesting!

So now we know the new creative team on JSA.

I wouldn't have thought of Willingham writing JSA, but that could actually work really well. Fables is pretty consistently good, and he is definitely experienced with writing a very large cast. I wasn't a big fan of him on Robin, but I suspect that was more stylistic issues. I'm looking forward to some Fables-esque badass moments for everyone. He even made King Cole awesome.

Though I admit, the treatment of the Arabian fables never quite sit well with me. Hopefully that won't be a problem to arise with this cast of characters.

It'll be pretty interesting to see what he does with this group, I think!

Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and all that!

Posting will resume tomorrow. :-)

Lethargy is Eating My Vacation

I've come to the following conclusion after watching way too many episodes in an NCIS marathon.

Is it just me, or is Tony DiNozzo like a much suaver version of Guy Gardner?

Some men have to TRY to be that obnoxious, other men raise it to an artform. :-)

(I didn't like the character right away, but there's something about an incredibly irritating man who beats someone up while having been tied to a chair that turns my crank. Heh.)

I just wish USA would stop playing that Monk commercial with the Magnum PI themesong*. It's echoing through my head like nothing else.

On the plus side, I got my Christmas presents wrapped (my family is Catholic, of varying levels of actual devoutness going from me, who is lapsed enough to be all but agnostic, to my mother, who actually taught Sunday School... I love my mother, but that development STILL boggles my mind) and have otherwise done little of consequence.

I love vacation. I will have no brain cells left for law school. Godwilling.

*Music identified by SallyP!

Not A Comics Post

You ever have one of those moments where you find yourself looking up and thinking "You know what? I'm pretty awesome!"?

I mean, usually, I'm more than a little prone to neurotic anxiety, so those kind of moments don't come often.

It's just that, today, for no real reason what-so-ever, I feel like I am awesome. I'm awesome. You're awesome. Everyone's awesome!

...I'd suspect that I was drugged, but really, I suspect it's just a pre-holiday high. No more finals. Actually getting sleep. Finding the book I needed. Having inflicted horrible TV on Ragnell in exchange for reading one of her weird Howard stories (for the record, my Howard protagonist of choice has always been Cormac Mac Art).

I'm at my parents' new house, eating good food, watching too much tv and getting gnawed on by their new puppy. (It's pretty much a walking dust mop. Thanks to it, my mother's labrador spends most of his time in a state of bemused confusion. It's all pretty amusing.)

You might notice that I haven't actually written a blog post for today, but that's okay because we're all awesome and we ought to take a moment to collectively enjoy our awesomeness!

Hmm

I was thinking about what power I'd least want to have. Without resorting to the powers that really, invariably suck a.la Cyclops's optic blasts, Rogue's sucky touch, or most of the Morlocks' little talents.

I suspect ultimately the power I'd least want to have, in the end, is telepathy.

I'm already neurotically self-conscious enough without knowing for sure what other people think of me, for one.

For two, I suspect it would be FAR too tempting to use for ill. I don't necessarily think I'd become a supervillain mind you, though I've been told I've a good mind for it (insult or compliment, you decide!) but I would, at the very least, be incredibly, remarkably petty.

For three, well, think about how little you actually want to know about your fellow man. For example, take porn. Many people like porn. Many of these people are probably friends and family of us. But I could go my entire life, happy, NEVER knowing exactly what kind of porn these people read. If I were a telepath? I might be stuck finding out. Egads.

I suppose, I'd take telepathy over having no power at all in a comic book universe (I'm not smart enough to compensate for being powerless) but I'd take pretty much anything else first.

Another Comic Idea that Amuses Only Me.

I've determined that a comic that I'd really like to see is Alfred and Ma Hunkel teaming up to run a domestic agency. To hire out maids, butlers and housekeepers to up and coming young superheroes.

It'd include tips like how to properly tend for a secret lair when you're the only person allowed in. Seminars on the pros and cons of robotic household assistance, and what in the world gets THOSE stains out of spandex.

Sometimes I suspect I'm weird.

Strike Out Not At Your Own Defenders

I am in a hotel room right now, officially on my way back home for the holidays. FREE of finals. Which means I finally have time to catch up on what I've been missing about the internet.

This post from Rick Rottman actually got me thinking. Well, really, it's the title more than anything.

"The CBLDF is making the world safe for virtual child-porn."

It's a sentiment that seems to be going around lately.

I think it's a sentiment that misses the point entirely. It's a sentiment that doesn't understand the role of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. It's a sentiment that doesn't understand the role of a legal defense.

Defending someone does not mean that you think they're right.

In fact, I've often said that the one thing no one teaches you about the law before you go to law school is that "lawyers aren't allowed to have opinions." Which is pretty much bullshit, as we have opinions as much as everyone else. But in a professional capacity our opinions count for jack shit.

In a sense, lawyers are interpreters. We translate the client's perspective into the language of legal claims, defenses, rights, statutory law, constitutional law, legal precedent and all that fun gobbledygook that is the reason we have jobs at all.

No one asks the opinion of the interpreter, and why should they?

Now this is particularly relevant when it comes to legal defense because, let's face it, while there are definitely innocent people stuck going through the system, there are a lot of people who are guilty too. And if lawyers only took part in the defense of people they believed to be innocent, well, there would be a lot of people left standing before the court, like a college student on his first trip abroad trying to remember how to stammer out "Where is the bathroom?"

A guilty person is still entitled to a legal defense. A guilty person is still entitled to have the government prove every element of the charge against him. And he also has the right to make damn sure that his and anyone else's rights weren't trampled on in the process of proving the case.

This guy bought something that may or may not be considered child pornography. But he still has the right to a legal defense.

And the First Amendment is one fucking doozy of a defense. No, freedom of speech is not absolute, and I think that you will find very few people who actually think it should be, but it is still a pretty fucking important right in the United States of America. And we should not and will not accept the erosion of our rights without a damn good reason.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is helping to make sure that the courts have a damn good reason in this case, or that they will not find this man guilty.

Ultimately, our opinions about whether or not this actually constitutes child pornography are irrelevant to whether or not the CBLDF is doing the right thing here. The CBLDF is working to defend one of our basic Constitutional Rights, and you don't necessarily have to agree with them to appreciate what they are trying to do.

Misguided or not, the CBLDF is trying to protect US. And while no one is saying that you have to support them, we should not condemn them for it.

(For a far better defense of the CBLDF's position, read Neil Gaiman's post.)

And I'm DONE!

Oh my god. Totally DONE with finals. Even the paper. Which I left way too long.

Anyway, now I've been letting my brain cool by playing a bunch of silly games. Something you may not know about me is that once upon a time I was Yahoo!Games's bitch. I've since been converted to Big Fish Games, because it's cheaper. But yeah, there's something about an hour demo that just hooks me.

I don't want to think about how much money I've spent over the last few years...eek.

Anyway, one thing that suddenly occurred to me as I played my umpteenth career time-management game badly is that...the main characters are always girls.

Essentially the plot of these games is that you're this girl, trying this career, and so on: waitress, stewardess, pilot, chef, hotel manager, real estate agent, fitness expert, pet groomer, mechanic and so on...

I'm not complaining mind, but it's a fairly interesting trend. You don't see a lot of genres of much of anything where the leads are almost entirely women.

In My Home Stretch...

Well, now it's just the paper. Shiny and lovely and due in at 5 pm tomorrow.

Yeah, I'm not getting any sleep any time soon. On the plus side, despite myself, I'm finding the topic kind of interesting. And it is slowly hammering itself out. So...there we go.

I'm going to be MISERABLE in the morning though, so...no post for you! Hah!

Late-Breaking News

I hate all of you right now. Yes. You.

I'll like you tomorrow. :-)

Though I feel bad for not posting anything, so here's a question. Before I asked which superhero you would most want to be trapped on a desert island with (presuming of course the island could keep those with applicable powers from escaping), so this time I'm asking which superhero you most would NOT want to be trapped on a desert island with.

The catch is, it has to be a character you actually LIKE.

I think for me it would be Guy Gardner. I love Guy, and I think it'd be fun to hang out with him, and I have a very convenient tolerance for macho and adolescent joking which comes from the same place as my love for wretched action tv from the 90s.

But let's face it, the one rule of Green Lantern-dom (after Hal Jordan always gets hit in the head, and Kyle Rayner's girlfriends always die) is that if there's going to be something bizarrely weird and/or bizarrely traumatic happening to one of the Earth Lanterns...it's probably going to happen to Guy Gardner.

It'd probably be fun to watch, but I don't want to die in the process. :-)

Solicit Babble

In the homestretch for my last final and my godawful paper. If I survive until Friday, I'm home free.

Until May, when it all happens again. Woe and trauma!

On the plus side, I might finally get the chance to recover my pull list from the comic shop...right before I go back home for three weeks or so. Hmph. I really need a better routine. :-)

On the plus side, the new DC solicits look interesting. Especially Booster Gold, since if future!Booster Gold is showing up...well, that could just be nifty. I mean, future!Booster Gold would then probably be Rip's-Dad!Booster Gold.

I don't actually mind the whole Mary Marvel takes a spin on the slightly slutty dark side plot in general (to be honest, I'm utterly indifferent about that whole clan, except maybe Black Adam who can be fun though sometimes I think he's nearly as overrated as Deathstroke) but I have absolutely no interest in seeing up her skirt, Mr. Ross. Thank you.

You know, of all the umpteen hundred Batclan tie ins advertised, I have to say, the Commissioner Gordon one looks most interesting. Probably because Gordon is neat. Also, the whole notion of a team up between Fatality and John Stewart intrigues me.

Is the Time Trapper still Cosmic Boy? I find the Legion remarkably confusing, I must admit...

Looks like a good batch. :-)

A Confession (Stealing Post Ideas from Blog@ since 2007)

So the new Blog@ has a post called "Comic Book Confessionals" where the point is to confess embarrassing facts about yourself as a comic fan. Well, since a) I need a blog post and b) this is much too embarrassing to ever admit on Blog@, I'm going to admit mine here.

I actually liked the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie better than the comic.

Yes. I know it was objectively speaking a terrible movie. Yes, I know that.

But I really HATE the comic. I like most of Alan Moore's stuff, I do, and I like the idea/concept behind the League. But I absolutely despise the execution. I spent the whole time reading it feeling as though I could sense the smugness wafting up from the pages. If a book could have feelings, I would have thought it was far too impressed with itself.

And don't get me started with the death of the Invisible Man. There're are scenes that are shocking, scenes that are darkly funny, and scenes that just spark the comment: "Huh, well. That was unnecessary."

I'll let you guess where my reaction was.

As for the movie, well, it made no sense. The characterizations were trite. The acting was terrible... but heck, everyone got to do something vaguely cool and contribute to the end, and that's really what I like in team movies. (It's actually where I thought the first X-Men movie disappointed. I mean, that movie was objectively much better, and great if you like Wolverine and Rogue, but well...I don't really. I'd have liked to see the others do a bit more cool things too.)

So yep. That's my confession. Feel free to mock and jeer. :-)

A Belated Anniversary Post

Heh. I got so caught up in finals that I missed the fact that as of December 11, Pretty Fizzy Paradise is three years old! It wasn't my best year content-wise (I blame lawschool, :-)) but there's always next year!

Three years. Man. I feel old. :-)

On Avatar:

One more week and I'm on holiday vacation. One exam (Criminal Procedure) and the rest of one thirty page paper (International Law) to go...

Still don't have energy to blog, so I'm linking a few posts:

This post by Glockgal and this one by Willow make me sad. They're great posts. I just hate that they're necessary. It's incredibly upsetting that so many white actors are being cast to play non-white characters.

Mostly it's the justifications of the defenders that are so irritating to me. The fact that Avatar takes place in a fantasy world does not mean that other races do not exist. Hell, considering that most racial features are adaptations to ones' environment, it would only make sense that a fantasy world with the same approximate construction and climate variations as Earth would have somewhat similar phenotypes in corresponding areas.

To tell you the truth, I'm the one person I know that never actually liked Avatar. My ex-roommate adores it. Does nothing for me. But even I could tell from episode 1 that most if not all of the characters were not intended to be Caucasian.

(And for the record, Aang having "round eyes" does not necessarily exclude him from being Asian. When I studied in Japan, I quickly noticed that gasp! people in Japan have variations in their features like everyone else. And some people in Japan do have rounder eyes than others! I've never been to any other East Asian nation, but I'm going to guess that a certain amount of variation can be found there too!)

Comparisons to Lord of the Rings especially don't fly, because LOTR takes place in what is specifically intended to be a fantasy variation of ancient Europe. Avatar features nations all over the damn world.

It's sad, because it's not like there's a lot of visibly non-white characters in mainstream fantasy. And then you have travesties like that Earthsea miniseries that take nearly every character that's supposed to be non-white and cast a white actor. That's utterly ridiculous. There are good minority actors out there, and it's not like white actors and actresses are hurting for major roles. There is no reason that fantasy should be white-washed!

Placeholding

Well, as I stare blankly at my Alternative Dispute Resolution take-home exam (I hate exam week, but thank you for the nice encouragement. :-)) I've realized that I need a blog post.

Damnit.

Oh well, I haven't been to the comic shop in ages and I'm losing my mind, so instead of a post of substance, I think I'll post about that silly porn star name meme.

How that goes is you take the name of the first pet you ever had for your first name, and the street where your childhood home sat for your surname.

Mine is "Misty Sinclair".

...I ought to use that in a project sometime, really.

Aw.

Aw, this news makes me sad. I really do enjoy Johns's work on JSA. Even if the Kingdom Come arc probably could have been a bit shorter without losing much. (I tend to have that complaint a fair bit. :-))

It'll be interesting to see who they pick. And to see if they ever give my favorite character panel time. :-P

Another Day Another Final

PR is out of the way, now for Evidence!

And since I'm out, I'm inviting you to recommend your favorite ridiculous television shows to me. 90s, current, even older, whenever! It just has to be wretchedly awesome!

Insert Panic Mode Here

No post today. Final in the morning. Losing my mind. :-)

Have bizarre urge to hunt down episodes of One West Waikiki, because apparently my already questionable taste in television plummets further when I'm terrified. Good to know!

Bye!

A Sudden Realization:

I had this realization today.

Watching two internet bloggers argue about the First Amendment of the United States Constitution is like watching two people who've never read a comic argue about whether the Hulk could beat Spider-Man and saying things like:

"Don't be stupid, the Hulk could just fly Spider-Man into the sun!"

"Oh yeah, well, first Spider-Man can beat him with his eight legs!"

That is all.

Escaping from the Books for a Moment

The following are a couple of things I feel that someone needs to tell most tv/movie/book/comic book writers:

1. Hearsay: You are doing it wrong. Yes, you. It's pretty much safe to say that if you reference hearsay at all, you're doing it wrong. Just accept it.

2. Diplomatic Immunity does not work that way.

3. The Chain of Evidence is your friend.

4. The 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments probably don't work that way.

5. Cross-exam can work that way, but honestly, the other side would win.

6. Legal ethics are squirrelly sometimes, but we do actually have them. And we also tend to regulate ourselves surprisingly well. :-)

7. Miranda rights are actually a good thing.

8. Public defenders are not usually evil or incompetent. Overworked and under-appreciated? Damn straight.

That is all. Good night. :-)

I WANT to comment, but words aren't enough...

Wow.

Yeah. Well then. Back to work for me.

A Thought Dies of Solitude in My Head...

As you may remember from when I talked about how I think a law firm in the DCU/MU would make for a nifty comic, I have this thing about combining real world professions and how they work in the greater superhero universe.

I just think it's neat to see how "normal" people deal with things like superpowers, villains, world takeovers, aliens, and everything like that.

Anyway, today I had the thought that another neat comic would involve a temp agency. I mean, think about it. One week, you might be working for Wayne Enterprises. Another week? Kord Industries. After that? LexCorp.

Think of the kind of weird situations you'd see everyday, heck, Ted Kord's self-dressing machine alone would be worth a few drinks at a bar with your friends later.

...I'll do anything to escape Evidence for a few minutes, heh. :-)

An odd rant

I got to thinking about a storyline that tends to turn up in a lot of places and never fails to annoy me. I think the first time I actually remember seeing it was in the sitcom "My Two Dads" but it pretty much tends to pop up anywhere there is a questionable familial relationship.

Namely the "Let's get a DNA test!" story.

It's not that the characters choose to get a DNA test that annoys me, I think that's perfectly sensible. It's that, invariably, the characters go and get it done, end up holding the results in an envelope which is usually then bequeathed to the characters who want to know the truth the most. And then, EVERY TIME, that character(s) tear the damn thing up without reading it, because he/she/they know what family REALLY matters.

Gah, that pisses me off every SINGLE TIME.

It's not that I don't agree with the sentiment at heart. Yes, family is what you make of it. Certainly, someone who has been there for you as a parent/sibling/whatnot is your parent/sibling/whatnot regardless of whether or not there's a blood relationship. KNOWING the blood relationship doesn't matter, in the end, because your family is your family as they were all along.

But that's not what this plot point actually says.

By destroying the results of the test and never reading them, the characters aren't saying that "blood doesn't matter". If blood truly didn't matter, they'd look at the damn test. Ultimately, if both Greg Evigan and Paul Reiser are Stacy Keanan's fathers, then it doesn't matter if the results declare that the little swimmers came from one or the other. They'd both still be her fathers.

But when the characters go through all that rigamarole and take the tests and all that and then choose not to look, they're really saying "I'm lying, blood does matter, I just don't want to have to make a choice."

And that's pretty much an insult to every happy adopted family out there, I think. Certainly most, if not all, adopted families KNOW they're not blood related. And that doesn't stop them from being a family. So why can't these characters look at the damn envelope?

This isn't getting into the fact that there are many reasons why being familiar with your biological history is a damn good idea. Isn't it a good thing to know if there's cancer, heart disease, diabetes, or any other medical ailment with genetic components running through your family?

How about hemophilia, color blindness, or other nifty little genetic oddities that one could be a carrier for and never know it? Wouldn't it be a good idea to be forewarned they're there?

What if you need bone marrow or an organ transplant? Wouldn't it be a good idea to know that, hey, this guy's the one more likely able to have the right qualities to save your life?

It's just stupid. It's empty, hypocritical sentimentality getting in the way of practicality and common sense. And often these are smart and perceptive characters that decide to do this! It's positively exasperating.

If it really doesn't matter which guy is really your biological father, then look at the damn test, note down which one to check for male pattern baldness and whether there's a bone marrow match first, then take BOTH your dads out for ice cream!

Sheesh.

Something Odd that I've Noticed

You know, one weird side effect to my oft-chronicled love of awesomely wretched 90s television is that every so often one sees familiar names in the writing credits. For example, to my utter surprise, Howard Chaykin was the writer of a few of my favorite episodes of Earth: Final Conflict and the Sentinel.

This is particularly notable to me because I've never been a huge fan of Chaykin's comic book work. I found Collateral Damage and Hawkgirl disappointing, and much of the rest of his work is simply not to my taste.

But the man writes episodes that really work for me. I'm not sure what it is. Possibly it's just that his style works better in television format, to me. Failing that, it might just be that with life action actresses, there's no excuse for drawing extremely pronounced cameltoes and nipples. Though it possibly should be noted that quite a few of his episodes do provide an excuse for attractive women to be in their underwear for no real reason. :-)

Miscellaneous Reactions

Hmm, I wonder if I should feel some sort of weirdness linking Blog@Newsarama posts now that I'm no longer columning there. On the other hand, they post daily and I need fodder so there you go. :-)

They seem like interesting folks anyway, with much more impressive resumes than mine (I might be suffering a bit of credential-envy) and they don't seem to be doing a bad job. Though not as good as us, of course. :-P

This Green Lantern rumor is interesting. Though I admit, I only remember that fellow from a couple of Everwood episodes I caught quite a while ago so in my mind I'm still picturing a WB-age just-post-teenager. Still, he's a damn site better than the Jack Black rumors, I suppose.

The picture of Gambit for the Wolverine movie looks interesting. That fellow has the sort of sleazy hotness that simultaneously sets my teeth on edge and makes me want to lock him into a shower with a bar of industrial soap to make him scrub away the imagined scent of cheap second-hand cigarette smoke. Which is exactly the emotions that the comic character tends to evoke in me, so I think it's an excellent choice.

God willing, he'll be able to manufacture an absolutely dreadful "cajun" accent too. Hee. :-)

Personal Update

Well, my nice vacation is over. On the down side, I didn't get nearly as much done as I wanted. On the up side, I actually got more done than I expected. So that's kind of fun. But now I'm into my last week before classes. And then two weeks of finals.

Two weeks of finals sounds nice to anyone who isn't in law school. The exams are nicely spread out. However, there's a catch. See, in law school, you don't get grades for the whole semester. You get one exam. Period. And what you get on that IS your grade. Period.

It's designed to make us lose our minds, I genuinely believe this.

Yeah, so terror mode starts now. Which means, likely, I'll be posting a lot of filler-type crap over the next three weeks. We'll see if anyone can tell the difference. :-)