France....finally

OK, because my upload speed is so terrible I managed to get about 16 images up to my photobucket account before my patience wore thin. So here are some of the pictures from france (and there were 540 to choose from between my sister's camera and mine).

Linky link.

Quickly Draining Sanity

Alas! What is this I see out my window!? A faint hint of blue mingled amongst the gray heavens. What madness is this? I once heard legends of a great orb that floated amongst azure skies. In the deepest months of winter his magnificent light transmormed fields of snow into shining gold and verily in the most arid months of summer did his baleful gaze beat down upon our fair Earth. But alas, this great Thing is but a legend spoken in hushed tones, and nothing more. Forsooth, our sky's color is that of ash from the hearth and never has this legendary orb of the heavens been seen. Mourn my friends for this legend of bygone days and weep that thy children shall never behold his majesty save for in their dreams.

Crosspostings.

These got on my myspace blog but not here . Myspace is ugly as shit but I'm to damned lazy to find a "skin" or tweek my blog appearance. Bless you blogger for doing all the hard work for me.


So Wrong....

I think Heroes is a great show, better and more atmospheric than Lost is (or has been since season 1). For those that don't know one of the characters on Heroes is a HS cheerleader who has a Wolverinesque healing factor and that brings me to the following link.

Harry Knowles endorses Heroes This is from the ever churning cesspool of fanboy bitchfests that is Aintitcoolnews.com. It is kind of funny in sick perverted way. The depravity of man knows no bounds. Click the link.



Friday, November 10, 2006


The Winter Soldier...Cap at his best?

Well....in between things at work and am I using the down time to do school work....no...I'm putzing around myspace wasting time. Anyhoo I though I had some stuff to post about so here I am.

There is a long running joke (or was I suppose) for Marvel comics fans that the only character to stay dead, for reals, was Bucky (former sidekick to Captain America). That all changed a year or two ago with the Winter Soldier storyline. I picked up the first trade (Captain America: Winter Soldier Vol. 1) a few months ago and despite the sacrilegious horror it induced found it an enjoyable read. Ed Brubaker's depiction of the Captain is one that is tired, conflicted, and angry and often seemingly at odds with his superiors. A man dissatisfied with his nation as it stands and apparently unable to see the very ideals he believed in when the skinny Steve Rogers walked into the recruitment office oh so many years ago.

The Captain's emotional turmoil is only heightened by the reemergence of Red Skull and the strangely familiar visage of the Winter Soldier. Vol. 1 is a solid read with great art that ends with as many questions as answers. There is still some doubt that the Winter Soldier might not be Bucky; that is until Vol. 2. Brubaker maintains a consistent characterization of Cap but some of the storytelling elements here are a little annoying, most notably the exposition heavy issue that reveals how Bucky (yes it is indeed Bucky) came to be the Winter Soldier. It was sort of a dissatisfying conclusion to what could have been a real cool moment in Marvel Comics history.

Like Robin the Bucky character was one that makes little sense. The Captain was a soldier fighting in WWII and there is no real reason why he should be accompanied by a kid sidekick. What the Winter Soldier series reveal is a rather fun element to the Bucky/Cap relationship. Cap was the flag, the ideal, the symbol. Bucky was the truth, the dark underbelly of way. Only 16, he lied during enlistment, Bucky was Spec Ops, trained by the British S.A.S., he did the dirty, bloody work that would otherwise soil Cap's pristine Red, White, and Blue. While I doubt this is believable within the context of the original Cap stories it is, I think, an entertaining retcon that fleshes out what was essentially a flat character. Anyway Brubaker's wonderfully human interpretation of Cap, very much a product of the post 9/11 world, is a surprisingly compelling character who reflects the conflicting emotions of the American people as a whole (or at the least, this American person). He is an icon, yeah, but he is a person and he hurts in the same way the rest of the nation hurts. Anyway if you're interested reading a very well portrayed and believable version of the Captain than go ahead and pick up the Winter Soldier trades.

Anyhoo...lunch time. At a later date I plan on posting about Pride of Bagdad, and Civil War.

NWN2sday

Today is the release date of Neverwinter Nights 2. I'm hoping that a nearby Ebgames will have a copy on the way home today, but who knows. The game has gotten little hype, and we've seen almost no "official" gameplay footage, but I remain hopeful. At least I can count on user-made material to improve the gameplay experience. If I do manage to get the game I suppose I'll post some info/opinions on it eventually.

I finally got all of my France photos (and my sister's as well) onto my computer so I'll actually have some of those up (as I said back in August) at some point as well.

I still have some of the same old story ideas running around in my head and I've wanted to get some of that up here as well (since I started this blog) so at some point I guess I'll dig up my old writing and post some info.

Truth is there just isn't time for all the things I want to do and when I do have free time I'm usually so tired (physically and mentally) that all I want to do is sit and do nothing.

I actually set my alarm for 6 the other morning so I could go for a run, but when I woke up I just turned it off and went back to sleep for another hour. Close, but not quite. I'll get there eventually.....really.

I managed to send two job applications out this week (one for a fellowship at Cornell University and another for an Assistant Archivist job at Wenner Media), don't know what'll come of it. I usually expect nothing since I'm terrible at writing cover letters (I can bullshit 20 pages of a paper yet I struggle with what is essentially a 3 paragraph, minimum, form letter; go figure) and my resume is a mess. Not to mention the fact when I finish classes in December I don't get a degree until January (that is of course, assuming everything ends wells class wise and paperwork wise). I still have the application for the Philadelphia Free Public library sitting at home, but they could not pick a more complicated process. Applications and instructions are downloaded from the government website (phila.gov or some other nonesense), and are still somewhat confusing (where the hell do I send the applications, not to mention they want my transcripts).

All hail the Black Parade!

So ever since I saw their performance at the VMA's over the summer I was looking forward to My Chemical Romance's new album, The Black Parade. It has been a long wait but it is finally here and it was worth it. No bones about it for what I caustically label an emo band this is a highly entertaining album with some rather interesting and well put together music. Don't get me wrong it still is very much emo but it has some more depth than the typically "woe is me" mentality that seems to be infecting most of these bands, not to mention it has some really fantastic music that dares, at least a little, to stray from the mainstream screeching and whining choruses typical of the emo crowd. "Mama" in particular manages to somehow channel a little bit of Jim Morrison (the main rhythm is very reminiscent of Whiskey Bar) while managing to remain its own entity (complete with a Liza Minelli guest appearance of all things) and at the same time maintain its pop sensibilities. Despite the musical experimentation that the band attempts the album is still very much pop music, which isn't a bad thing.

All in all, a great album and a must buy for fans of the band or anyone interested in something a little bit different from what they're used in the modern rock genre.

Argggggggghhhhhhh!

"Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away."
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations. iv. 43

Yeah...time is a bitch. There really is never enough of it. So, two jobs and twelve credits, not the best of ideas. Two weeks into the semester and I already detest my morning commute. It really isn't any fun when you leave the house at 8 AM don't get back until 12 AM, leave at 8 AM the next morning, and don't get back again until about 8 PM that night. That means only about 7 or 8 hours at home in a 36 hour period. Luckily I don't have too many days like that, and none as far as I can tell this week; though next week doesn't look to promising.

Sleep hasn't been going too well either. I blame anxiety and stress about the aforementioned lack of time, but the lack of excercise isn't helping either. The wierdo dreams don't help either, but I'm not sharing those here (despite lack of readership).

Damn....just over a month.

New Audioslave=bueno

New Iron Maiden=not so bueno

Ok, the new Iron Maiden isn't terrible but it isn't good either. Dance of Death had some great standout tracks but A Matter of Life and Death not so much. I know absolutely zero about audio production but it feels like the mix is a little off. Bruce's voice is overshadowed by the instrumentals when it should be at the forefront and at times the music just feels emotionless and flat.

On the other hand the new Audioslave album is, dare I say, amazing. It lacks the meloncholy of their previous two efforts and replaces it with a funky upbeat drive that makes the album perfect for blasting through your speakers while crusining down the road. I maintain the Chris Cornell is one of the greatest rock voices of our time (latest efforts notwithstanding Bruce Dickinson is up there as well) and his work on this album is top notch. Though in truth this album is owned by guitarist Tom Morello. Morello's signature style, backed by some strong drumming by Brad Wilk and bass work by Tim Commerford, really drive the album forward at a breakneck pace. If you enjoy good music, if you're fed up with the whiny trend in most modern rock than do yourself a favor and go buy Revelations by Audioslave; you won't regret it.