Authorship

Thursday, December 31, 2009

2009 in Closing

With 2009 coming to a close, that means that tomorrow I begin a new with the only holiday tradition that has a great deal of meaning to me, Japanese New Year. 


Oshogatsu has been a family tradition for decades now. It brings out the best and worst of my folks and well I love it. For the past three days, my mother, father, and I have been preparing food for an expected 100 guests who will stroll through my childhood home and feast on traditional family fair. I will wake at 7:00 and start making sushi, transition to making gyoza by 2:00 and continue cooking until the evening. By early evening, when all family has left, I take whatever food remains to my friends at my local pub and share the tradition with all who could not make it.


Some of the recipes have been handed down from my grandparents, food and taste memories that keep them alive even though that generation is now gone. Some of the more extraordinary delicacies of the bygone eras are also absent from the family table, for example whale. My father stated that the canned whale he had once was like chewing on a shoe imported in a can from Japan. Some recipes we serve are more "fusion" than tradition. Chow mein, and tofu wontons are not Japanese per se, but they do fill plates. And the "round-eyes" never know the difference.


So to close the year I leave you with a super simple recipe for my spicy tofu wontons

  • 1 package wonton skins
  • 1 package firm tofu
  • 4 jalapeño peppers
  • 4 large shallots
  • 1/2 bundle of cilantro
  • soy sauce
    1. Drain tofu and slice into three large slabs. Wrap in a paper towel and press between cookie sheets to drain off excess water. This may seem odd, but you need to get rid of all of the extra water from the tofu so you have a decent filling.


    2. Roughly chop cilantro, keeping some of the stems and place them in a food processor with the shallots and jalapeño peppers. Pulse in the food processor until finely chopped.


    3. Break apart the tofu by hand into small crumbles and add the chopped vegetable mixture. 


    4. Mix the vegetables and tofu together my hand until well integrated. You may want to wear gloves if the pepper are especially spicy given they may burn a bit.


    5. Add a small spoonful of the filling to a wonton wrapper. Fold the corner of the skin to make a triangle and seal with a little water. Press edges together firmly. This part is a little odd so follow the strange illustration bellow.





    (Original Source: feed://maize33.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default)


    6. Deep fry.


    7. Eat.




    Happy New Year...Don't be a Douche Bag!

    Sunday, December 27, 2009

    Blackest Night Profiles: John Stewart

    If you're a fan of Green Lantern, you have probably chosen your favorite emerald warrior. John Stewart happens to be mine.

    If anything, he has been created as one of the most multi-dimensional character in decades. However, due to confusion and writers who have no idea who to properly utilize a minority character, they have often failed characterization with this individual.

    Brash, head-strong, an architect by trade, and a lover of Barbra Streisand (seriously, can't make this up), he will kick your ass three was till tomorrow.

    While everyone thinks Hal is the greatest of the Green Lanterns, he has never been made a guardian.



    John Stewart was chosen as a replacement GL in case there was an accident to the original. At various times, when Hal acted as a wimp and decided to forfeit his duties as his protector of his space sector John stepped up.




    He also accidently led to the destruction of the planet Xanshi, which led to him going a little crazy, and becoming the ultimate urban planner on the planet Oa. If you haven't read, Mosaic, go to the dollar bins and pick up the back issues and read them. It is an amazing series in which Gerard Jones and Cully Hamner develop John Stewart to his fullest potential.



    While Hal Jordan basically deals with being a douche most of the time when he isn't cowboying around. John Stewart deals with the numerous aspects of being a minority in America. The panel below perhaps best illustrates this. Hal of course thinks John is crazy, but here we see probably the best representation of the multifaceted representation of multi-cultural identity in comics. The balance of stereotype and tokenist representation versus cultural interpretation.



    John Stewart has been called the angry Green Lantern,  but a "Chip on His Shoulder," a phrase the fictional  character uses to  describes himself in a recent issue of the comic, is perhaps the most appropriate.

    So here we are, left with a man who possesses one of the most powerful weapons in the universe. We are left with a soldier who loves Babs and who mourns for his fault in the destruction of over a billion lives.


    Saturday, December 26, 2009

    Post-Christmas Stuffing

    With only a few days left in the year, I feel it's important to remember the birds.


    The wise owl lets us remember that 2009 is a year that will not be repeated...until the Great Crunch occurs. At that point in the distant future, when the universe stops expanding and the accelerating forces of the Big Bang no longer push dark and light matter into the ether, the forces of gravity will hold and all matter of the universe will be pulled back to its point of origin. Thus time will play backward in some strange parody of the way we think of things.





    The wise owl has many sage things to say to us. Like, "Spread your wings for 2010," and "How the hell did I ended up as a decorative mount in a resort lodge in the Columbia Gorge?" The wise owl should make us all remember, that we are never far from being piddly tourist attractions once our endings come.





    The wild turkey on the other hand wants revenge. The wild turkey knows what you ate for your xmas dinner, and thinks to himself, "My head is bare and free of feathers so I can easily pick at your carcass when the great wrath comes." 







    The wild turkey might not be wise like other birds. And it really can't fly very well. But that ugly head will eat your eyes out. And it will do so with only the type of pleasure that a wild turkey can. 





    So to 2009, we give you the bird. If fact we give you the bird four times over. Let this year die away like other ones. 




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    Friday, December 25, 2009

    Happy Jews Go to the Movies Day

    Krypton (comics)Image via Wikipedia
    If legends and the bible are correct, about two thousand years ago, a star shone brightly in the sky leading three Arab kings to the birth place of a sun god.

    But what was that great star that illuminated the night sky? Or, for that matter, was it actually a star that exploded?  For a supernova to appear suddenly and send light to the planet earth in such a short period of time to signal the birth of some god seems a bit out of question, thus I propose that the magi actually witnessed the explosion of a planet.

    The planet would have had to be close enough to Earth's solar system to be noticed by the unaided eye. And the size of the explosion would have needed to be small enough to dissipate after the epiphany.

    If the Planet Krypton is located within the Milky Way Galaxy, light from the explosions would have taken about 3.26 years to 1 parsec distance. But given that the universe is expanding this time is probably reduced since the space between Earth and the doomed planet were smaller. Also once must take into account the various elliptical orbits of planets and the additional forces of accelerations of dark matter pulling that light closer to our planet.

    As a result, above a cave in the town of Bethlehem, some teenager knocked up by an older man she never married, a man older than the known universe, gave birth to a baby. To make the the boy seem even more special, his unwed mother decided that claim that he was born on the same day that the Roman celebrated the feast of their sun god, December 25th.

    Two millennia later, we honor this day not by paying tribute to the billions of Kryptionians who died as their planet blew up. We also don't honor unwed mothers who have to create elaborate stories about their  child because the baby's daddy was playing the field.

    No.

    If you're Jewish, you go to the Movies.
    If you're Christian, you spend too much money to celebrate baby Jesus's birthday.
    If you're Japanese and live in Japan, you make reservations at your local KFC get a bucket of fried chicken and a bottle of wine.

    Or if you're single, you drink alone.

    Perhaps Christmas is the most ephemeral and cluttered of all holidays. Tomorrow we will have national buyers remorse and try to get rid of the crap we were given.

    Cheers, everyone. Cheers!






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    Sunday, December 20, 2009

    Meowable Song of the Day: Timebomb * Update *

    My love of Beck is probably only matched by my love of hamsters.


    For years, I had this vision that I would buy a pet hamster, give it a French name, and take it on walks with a little leash made of lace. I would then meet a lovely young woman who loved French-named hamsters, and we would then raise our hamster together.


    Unfortunately, the lovely young woman never came along. But I did get a hamster, well three over time, all named after French philosophers. Montaigne was the first of my hamsters, a noble free roaming soul, who often escaped from his cage and found himself wandering the heating vents and nooks behind book cases seeking some kind of adventure. Simone was the loud and rabble rouser of the night. She loved to run on her on some existential quest that could never be completed. My last hamster was Julia Kristeva, and if you want to have a really mean hamster that bites you close to a dozen times, name said hamster after a Marxist Feminist. Seriously. Downright mean!


    In any case, this homemade video found on the defunct Diskolito Beck page, via YouTube is fine ballance of Flash animation, hamsters, and homage to the historical videography of Beck.


    The song itself ranks a 5 meows on the 5 meow meowable scale.











    Edit* In the credit where credit is due department....

    A new acquaintance informed me that this video was created by a Japanese Woman who goes by the name Ham. She hosts a Japanese language Beck fansite. 

    Saturday, December 12, 2009

    Why Oregon is Special...

    When I think of the numerous reasons why Oregon is one of the most unique places in the the country this video, once legendary, now viral, comes to mind.

    The anchor man is Paul Linnman, former newsman for KATU. The location, Florence, Oregon, a small costal town about on the long stretch of long stretch along the Pacific. The subject of the news cast, a giant rotting whale.

    The video speaks for itself at this point.



    There are further legends that persist beyond this film. Legends of further "documentation" government, ODOT, Oregon Department of Transportation films that chronicle more of the exploding whale carnage. Individuals of a certain age set have had the pleasure to see this footage on their evening news broadcast. Every once in a while, KATU combs its archives and replays this in all its analogue glory.

    About every seven to ten years another whale will wash up on the shores of the oregon coast. Unfortunately, no fiascoes like this one have been repeated.

    Of course every state has something special, ridiculous, and kind of embarrassing to boast about. Tennessee once hanged an Elephant for going berserk at a circus and killing someone.  And Connecticut is the birthplace of George Bush the lesser. So having a glorious exploding dead whale is probably a good thing.

    Thursday, December 10, 2009

    New Ventures in Nerdery...

    The death of Supergirl. Art by George Pérez.Image via Wikipedia
    While my obsessions with comic books are quite noted, one story remains the acme of perfection in my mind. Crisis on Infinite Earths is in my mind the ultimate example of perfect comic book story telling. Cast of thousands, new characters, shocking events, earth shattering revelations, and a story that is easy to follow.

    Pieced together in a twelve-issue maxi-series during 1985, this series changed the course of DC Comics for the next twenty-five years. But the story began much earlier with a series of appearances by a mysterious character named the Monitor.

    For the past two years, I have been collecting all of the cross-over issues related to Crisis on Infinite Earths and numerous ancillary texts that have accompanied the series. There are the "Official Cross-Overs," the "Red Sky Issues," the "Unofficial Tie-Ins," the "Passing Reference" books, the "Pre-Crisis Monitor Appearances," and numerous homage and other books revisiting the events of the Great Crisis. Overall, 199 issues have been compiled in my collection to chronicle this epic. These issues have lovingly been prepared to be bound in a series of eight, custom, hard-bound editions, of the story to accompany all previous versions of the text I have amassed.

    To map out what I have created, I decided to create a side blog, an omniblog of sorts, titled The Burnt Selena Project: Confluence of Infinite Earths. The plan is to go through each issue and provide a synopsis and brief index and annotation of events of the characters in the story relevant to the crisis. Some stories have direct correlates to the text, some are included for odd passing reference. Some I include because, they make sense in my circular referential mind of comic book knowledge.

    So please visit the new blog over the next few weeks, months and years. Hopefully I will provide some interesting distractions and additional comic book clutter to your daily life.
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    Tuesday, December 8, 2009

    Blackest Night Rainbow Coalition Profiles: Star Sapphire

    Star Sapphire (comics)Image via Wikipedia
    While Geoff Johns might be calling the ring bearers the "New Guardians" I really do think The Rainbow Coalition is a much better name for this colorful (ahem) ensemble of villains and heroes gathered together to fight the forces of the undead.


    So that brings me to today's featured character, Star Sapphire. Tragic, tragic Star Sapphire. The one of the few villains to put dependence into Co-Dependence on a regular basis. Why? Because everything the Violet Light does is done for love...kind of like a Richard Marx song. Makes you want to puke or kill yourself with a strong overdose of narcotics, right?


    Of course, Ms. Carol Feris, wasn't nearly this...um Mature in her early incarnations as you can clearly see. The nineties were quite unkind to this lover of Hal Jordan.  And since Hal Jordan is the ultimate d-bag when it comes to women, she kind of got the shaft. Over and over and over and over ad infinitum. She even killed the wife of the Green Lantern John Stewart. No Good. She even kind of ruined her business and left her fiance to be with  a guy who came back from the dead who kind of blew her off (Hal).  So what's love got to do with it? What's love but a second hand emotion? Well, apparently it can make constructs that will kick your ass and turn your fear into fuzzy feelings after you've been entombed in crystal for a month or so. 


    But now...With Boobs and without a silly hat, she is out to save the universe. The other members of the Rainbow Coalition are pretty new. Indigo 1...new. Same with Larfleeze, Saint Walker (which would have better been served with Walker Texas Ranger...but oh well), and Atrocitus. Hal and Sinestro round out the pack of Crayola Crusaders off to fight with the might of colored light and hopefully make our futures bright. 


    Okay I will stop.








    s
     


    Take away lesson from all of this. Don't trust women in silly hats fixated on past lovers, who put on lycra costumes and say they are going to save the universe for love. You'll be in for a world of hurt in you get mixed up in the that bad juju.



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    Happy Pearl Harbor Day: A short history of what it means to be a Japanese American

    {{fr|Affiche ordonnant l'internement des citoy...Image via Wikipedia
    December 7th, 1941, perhaps the most significant day in the life of my family.

    Zeroes swoop in from nowhere on a calm day and nearly destroy the entire Pacific Fleet. War is declared.

    And a small family of immigrants tries to sort out what to do next.

    The legends about my family's actions after the news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor are sparse. Like many Japanese Americans, they stopped talking about this era of their lives, the times in the camps, the uprooting from their homes, the loss of property and livelihoods, the loss of dignity. One persistent legend is that as news circulated around the Japanese farmer population of the northern California town where my grandparents lived that government men, FBI agents, were coming by houses and taking away the town elders, Grandma took all the pictures of her youth in Tokyo and began tossing them into the wood stove. A childhood of images burned away. History lost.

    FDR signed Executive Order 9066 declaring the entire West Coast an exclusion area and by spring of the following year, my grandparents and three of their children were shipped away to a prison camp in the Colorado desert. This would be home for the next three years.

    In the picture below, the woman standing with the baby is my Grandmother. She is pregnant with her fourth child. By the time the war will end and the camps will close, my father will be born. He will be her sixth child of thirteen. He will be the last born in the camps. A baby in a prison.



    My father and I have had a long standing tradition of putting on a Kamikaze bandana, pulling out our Imperial Navy Flag and hoisting and irreverent middle finger to the whole of America on Pearl Harbor Day. We watch Tora! Tora! Tora! the only decent film made about that glorious and tragic day. And in general we observe a bit of tasteless revelry in tragedy.

    Why? Because our family lost. My father is an American citizen born in a prison with all rights stripped away because the American Government and Populace was paranoid and racist. We observe the right to say this country of ours was WRONG. We don't celebrate the deaths. We don't celebrate the destruction. We have a wake for our civil rights, for all of the things my grandparents lost.

    And with these pieces of contradictory history I am left with distinct actions of distasteful distraction. Today I serve some of the few veterans who fought in the Pacific Theater. Today the Japanese are model minorities, fetishized and stereotyped into a particular role they have carved for themselves after the war. Today I still don't trust the government because of what they did to my family over sixty years ago.

    Today is Pearl Harbor Day a day that America lost. The first of many days that America has lost. America lost on the day FDR removed the rights of thousands of loyal American citizens. American lost when FDR believed that tens of thousands of children were a threat to this country and should be segregated from society.

    God Bless this Mess.


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    Sunday, December 6, 2009

    Perfect Sounds...The Muppets sing Queen


    Somethings just speak for themselves. And while I typically try to avoid posting viral videos, this this caught my attention.

    In this presentation of Perfect Sounds, The Muppets cover Bohemian Rhapsody. While this song is a classic in its own right, it has unfortunately been sullied by Wayne's World, and countless other pop-culture uses that have taken the glory out of this epic. 



    This version is a bit more "child-friendly" than the original. No guns, no death, no devil, no scaramoushing. But the tongue in cheek satire that embodied the Muppets is still there.






    On my Meowable Music Scale: I give it a 5 meows out of 5.



    I believe Animal and Beakers parts are my favorite. Even if you hate Queen, you have to love The Muppets. If not, you obviously are inhuman, so some type of evil automaton. 






    Friday, December 4, 2009

    Guy Gardner: Bowl Cut

    Guy Gardner is a unique case in the world of comic characters.
    Not only did he sport a highly unfashionable bowl cut for decades, he is also one of the few arch-republican comic book characters. 


    And perhaps it is fitting that as a republican he will turn into a rage-filled-blood-spewing-vomit-monster-Red-Ring-wearing monster in the next issue of the Green Lantern Corps. It's a little known fact that the Red Lantern Battery is actually fueled with the hatred spread by AM Conservative talk radio hosts, but that is a different story all together.





    I am here to talk about on hell of a Guy. Consider this to be a bit of a requiem for Guy.





    If anything, he has always been a victim of bad luck. He was supposed to be the Green Lantern of Earth. But because he was too far away, he didn't get the green ring.  But that didn't stop him from doing good. He became a social worker, worked with kids, dealt with an abusive father, blah blah blah. Got a bad hair cut he based on his favorite comic book character. 


    Guy with all of his foibles had a level of dignity. All the fans hated him. They hated him as a replacement for Hal Jordan, even though history shows that Hal Jordan is just as much of a jerk if not more of one than Guy ever was. Guy Was the headstrong rebel, the John McCain (before the senator became a sell-out).







    And of course he was completely nuts. He took a girl on a first date to a stag film. To a theater owned by Black Hand! Which is comedy in itself. He then kicked Black Hand's ass.



    So whether Guy will return from being a Red Lantern or not, we won't know until the end of Blackest Night. But I kind of hope so. He is a great flawed character. Proof that good heroes can be Republicans. And that a bad haircut doesn't mean that you can't fight Doomsday or Sinestro or Superboy Prime and still be a badass.

    Tuesday, December 1, 2009

    Ride the Bronze Buffalo: Ride the Bronze Dog

    Sometimes statues are meant to be mounted like a noble steed. Sometimes those bronze statues are those of dogs. How this Bronze dog sculpture near Children's Hospital up on Pill Hill manages to balance rocks on his nose, I am not certain. Well...I am certain, they are welded to his snout.

    This reminds me of what by chance might be the coolest of the most odd comic book heroes ever created--The Dog Welder. But this character is best left for a second post at another date.





    Remember, if you have a picture of yourself riding a bronze statue of an animal, please send it along. Somewhere on this page is a place to send me a message.

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    Monday, November 30, 2009

    Perfect Sounds...

    I have been thinking of what my favorite songs would be if I had to make some type of playlist. When looking at my i-pod, I realized that the top 25 most played songs are not necessarily the songs I envision as sonic perfection. Of course I end up with "Hair" by Cowsills near the top and I can't quite explain it. 


    Taking a cue from some other things I have strolled across recently, I decided to list somethings I am damned grateful. Today, I am grateful that I got the chance to hear this song live.


    "Diamond Sea," by Sonic Youth.







    My first live exposure to Sonic Youth was in the Memorial Colosseum in 1995 when they were the opening act for the nearly aborted REM Monster Tour. The drummer for REM has suffered an aneurysm a few months before, the tour was almost scrapped. I got some of the very last tickets on sale and sat in the high elevation seats wondering whether it was worth it. 


    Something about this song makes me calm. Maybe it's the ten-plus minutes of droning ending with a crash of feedback; a punctuated pause of how we all want to react to the mundane.  Or maybe I get lost in the lyrics. 


    I could try to explain it but it really doesn't come out in words. I have deleted this damned post three times before deciding that this song just makes my head melt and my heart kind of drift a little. 

    Sunday, November 29, 2009

    Ride the Bronze Buffalo: Ride the Exalted Ruler

    The elk is a majestic beast. There is no better animal to represent the Pacific Northwest than this massive animal...

    And continuing a long absent started tradition on this blog: I present "Ride the Bronze Elk."



    There are probably a bunch of people who mightfind meclimbing on a bronze statue a little disrespectful, but we truly do love the Elk.

    For the elk provides us with jerky. And everyone loves jerky.



    Other things considered, I probably could have done something more productive with my day after Thanksgiving. But when you conquer a statue, you find some form of reward.



    So once again the offer stands, if you have a photograph of you riding a bronze statue of an animal, please send it to me. I will post it on the page. You will be memorialized on the Ride the Bronze Buffalo page.


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    Monday, November 23, 2009

    Philosophy and Idleness

    Bertrand Russell, Nobel laureate in Literature...Image via Wikipedia
    Minoring in ethics and having studied philosophy many educational lifetimes ago, I find myself pondering some of the greater conundrums of the world. For example:

    If Bertrand Russell decided to be a wrestler, would he have chosen the name Bertrand the Muscle? As a wrestler would his finishing move be called The Bertrand Tussle

    Many people consider Nietzsche to be a genius; those same people often attribute his genius to his insanity. Nietzsche's insanity was caused by a case of untreated syphilis. Ergo, to attain genius, one must contract syphilis.

    Why is the phrase "Kant predicted the existence of Uranus, " always funny despite being a statement of fact?








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    Sunday, November 22, 2009

    Why We Should All Fear Birds

    If you are a frequenter of the world of old saturday morning cartoons, the SuperFriends were probably part of your weekend morning rituals. They were part of mine. One of my first memories was an odd episode of a later incarnation of the television show, where Darkseid is the primary villain and Superman dies. 

    But why the hell did I post a five-minute You-Tube video of the Green Lantern, on my World of Clutter? Because I come to give you a grave warning about alien princesses, magno-beams, birds, and headgear.

    Hal Jordan, while everyone thinks he is the greatest of all Lanterns, has a problem that needs to be addressed.  Of course there is the possession by the embodiment of fear, the classic weakness to yellow,  bad hair, and general douche-baggery--but this is a much more ominous ever present peril.

    Birds.

    Yes, birds.

    Just watch the damned video. It's worth it. I laughed for a few minutes. And I return to it every few minutes to laugh some more.



    Monday, November 16, 2009

    Perfection...

    Perfection...

    That is about all I can say about this picture of a jackalope. 

    Now I am going to listen to Boston and hoist a giant a middle finger to the rest of society for the evening.







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    Thursday, November 12, 2009

    November Idleness Continuing...

    Upward and they like to say. Though, I have never quite figure out who they actually were.

    I decided that I should try to come up with a list of information that I should pass down as tried and true wisdom for future generations. I like to think of it as part Thus Spake Zarathustra, part Grocery List, part road map to the future. Confusing? Well, think of it like a million points of light, but less pointy and considerably more illuminated. Let's call it in the Dozenish Aura of Illumitations.

    Here is the list thus far:

    • Don't shave when your angry.
    • Connie Chung is not a real form of martial arts.
    • Its always fine to cry into your coffee, but if you cry into your tea...then you're just a pussy.
    • When in Turkey try a Turkish Bath.
    • When trying to impress a date with your record collection, don't play the Chariots of Fire Soundtrack.
    • Say something absurd twice a day, or four times to a person who just won't get it any way.
    • Implant an ABBA song in someone's head just to be evil.
    • Ponder religious queries: How many pins can you stick into the head of a dancing angel?
    • Wash, rinse, retreat.

    Tuesday, November 10, 2009

    Yep


    I have more formally decided that November shall forever be known as a month for idle thinking. Why choose such an arbitrary month as November? Well, think of the following things:


    • The eleventh month, written numerically (11th), is vaguely reminiscent of the word "Idle," which when you take an "I" and an "l" and place them next to each other, creates the number eleven.
    • Jesus had eleven toes.
    • When you write the date 11/11 as in the Eleventh day of November it looks like you are taking a tally of the number of times someone does something incredibly annoying. Truly, this cannot be a coincidence.


    So filled with this knowledge, I have modeled my month around idle thinking. Well, more so than I had been doing before.  Who knows what interesting things will ensue.

    Ergo, I present assorted fish heads.


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    Saturday, November 7, 2009

    A Parallax View

    So what makes a good super-hero turn evil?
    Readers of the Green Lantern have tried to answer this question for ages. At one time, traumatic shock ensued after the loss of millions of lives when his hometown was destroyed by a an evil alien despot. Some believed his evil was a seed of his innate arrogance. And then a giant yellow alien bug came by and it all made sense to the comic reading public.

    Thank you Mr. Johns.

    But I really think that crept into the essence of super heroics when they are given bad haircuts. In this case, Hal Jordan has the evilest of all hair styles, the Mullet. Yes, the mullet is cliche, it is really the first hallmark of this character's demise. Of course people will say that the gray hair was a sign of Parallax, but I posit that the mullet drew evil to him. And like most people with bad hair, he has tried to shape the world to his own warped view.

    If you are looking for a more contemporary example of bad hair and comic book characters, just consider  Norman Osborn. He has probably the worst hair in all of comics, strange striped ridges that has only occurred once in nature...and he is currently trying to reshape the world in his own warped image.

    Be affraid.




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    Monday, November 2, 2009

    On Recycling...

    My Chemistry class had a project due in about a week on the topic of recycling and I thought that I should do something innovative, something ground breaking, something beyond the scope of normalcy that everyone will be shocked and awed by how shockingly awesome it is.


    Thus my class project:


    The Mercury Recycling Project for the Portland Area:


    The new long-lasting compact fluorescent bulbs have become a troublesome blessing to the environmentally concerned individuals of this city.  On one hand people want to conserve energy, on the other the mercury in the ballast of the bulb is a grave hazard to the environment. The bulbs cannot be disposed the way a normal incandescent is tossed away,  And who wants a house cluttered with toxic burned out light bulbs?


    So what do we do with the Mercury? We recycle it! How? Well, since mercury is no longer used in thermometers, that market is a no go, but there is one popular use for mercury that never goes away. The world of vaccination has an everlasting need for mercury. Why? Well mercury acts as a preservative keeping the vaccine stable as it is used over and over preventing the plagues of the world.


    So if we take those burned out bulbs and all that useless mercury and add it to our vaccine supply, that will ensure that it will be stable for a lot longer. Preservation for the masses. And when we need to use those vaccines we can inject babies. Why? Because we want to keep our babies healthy and disease free.


    By making babies holding vessel for all of our unneeded mercury waste we take care of our light bulb problems and the inevitable future pollution problems those bulbs would cause. The ground water would never be rendered toxic, our salmon will never have brain damage, and our tuna will be able to be canned safely without fear of being canned with Mercury. The earth is saved!


    Of course there comes a point when babies grow up. At that point babies are no longer appealing to the public and we won't want to take care of them by vaccinating them. These toddlers will need to be sent into space. And new babies will need to be created, of course. This cycle will need to continue until we no longer have to worry about the compact fluorescent bulbs and their accursed mercury. And what about those toddlers in space? Well eventually they will come back to earth's orbit. But don't worry, everyone loves shooting stars. Those toddlers will fill our days with thousands of millions of shooting stars...so make a wish everyone. Make a wish.

    Sunday, October 25, 2009

    Tasteless halloween costumes...

    Yep, it is that time of year...When we all sit around waiting for Jesus to rise from the grave...to eat our brains in honor of Halloween.

    Last year, I went as a "Suicide Balmer." My paraphernalia of oily doom was constructed of vaseline and chap-stick, duct tape, and thoughts of God and country.




    Other ideas for Halloween costumes:

    • Hegemony Cricket--the Conscience of George Bush
    • The Other Jackson 5--Action Jackson, Latoya Jackson, Andrew Jackson, Jesse Jackson, and Jackson Pollock
    • Wallpaper
    • Sanitation Worker from Mars
    See that is what is great about Halloween. You can be just about anything. Except sensible.



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    Tuesday, October 20, 2009

    True Portland...

    So if you are a true Portlander you know that we have only one team...and it isn't the Winterhawk, Forest Dragons, Timbers, Beavers, or anything else...


    In Portland, you are a Trailblazer Fan or you are a plebeian fool. Everyone loves the Blazers here. From when they are at their highest highs playing in the first round of the play-offs, to the inevitable lows when they are knocked out of competitions after three games in that first round, we still love them. We love the Blazers when they drive at high speeds bright yellow SUVs while smoking their friends smoke pot, we love then when they are not. We love the Blazers when they are out of jail, and we even love them when they fail...all too often. The businessman, the Tri-Met driver, the methed-out tweaker, to club going hipster all love the Blazers.


    But nothing says that they love us as fans as they did in 1992. During this glorious year for Portland's only team, they recorded a rap song. It is important to note that 1992 is the most important year for rap music ever, a point I will elaborate upon on another post. So without much further fan fair...be prepared to experience what RIP CITY is all about...


    Thus: Bust a Bucket...











    Quick post script: I don't believe anyone in Portland knows where Rip City is or what Rip City really meant.

    Brave and the Bald

    Ziggy (comic)Image via Wikipedia
    The funny pages have provided America with a source of entertainment for many decades now. But there are some strange trends with comic strip characters that I have yet to understand.

    I don't understand the humor in apathetic bald individuals. Two individuals come to mind. Charlie Brown and Ziggy. Charlie Brown, I don't think was every meant to be pure humor, instead, the Peanuts strip was an examination of existential conundrums formatted as a Socratic dialogue in three panels with an occasional Jazz background.

    Ziggy in contrast is an exercise in pathetic futility.

    Now why would I state this about this single daily comic? Well, beyond the pure lack of humor in the strip, Ziggy is an emblem of children's illness. And without getting into too many details, nobody finds a child with cancer funny. Not even me. Even in the comic everyone from Ziggy's pets, friends, and antagonizing parrots tells the titular character that he is pathetic and unwanted.

    Ziggy wasn't even originally a comic strip character. He was a greeting card product squeezed into the realm of Family Circles and Far Sides. And nothing says "Thinking of you" like a short, bald, apathetic man who is the poster child of kids with cancer.

    If you think about it you probably feel dirty for laughing at the comic. You should. So ask your newspaper to stop publishing it. Then buy a condolence card for someone who really cares.
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    Sunday, October 18, 2009

    Evil Monkey: Mustached Menaces

    Intuition and conditioning tells us that people with mustaches are by nature friendly. We all knew them from the educational films we watched in 5th grade health class. You remember those films--the whirring projectors, the teacher with a headache, the worry the film spool might break. 


    Anyway, the men with mustaches drove large cars and vans and they liked to hang out around playgrounds. And they always had candy. What was there not to be trusted about them? And motorcycle cops had mustaches, and everyone can trust a police officer wearing leather chaps with shiny handcuff on his belt, right?


    But of course the evil monkeys had to come along and ruin it. 


    That white mustache might look like one of those insidious "Got Milk" advertisements, but it is actually a line of pure cocaine, evil, and monkey hair. In fact the Mustached Monkey is the only mammal to naturally secrete its own narcotics into its own body. This constant supply of cocaine makes permanent stains on the upper lip of this evil simian and the constant flow of drugs turns it into the biggest asshole out of any other monkey. When you need to use the restroom, it is there taking with a group of other Mustached Monkeys chattering at a high rate about how important their band will be to the music scene. 



    The Mustached Monkey however is an avoidable beast. Given the animals tendency toward self-importance and other ego-stroking activities, it likes to spend most of its time around hipster bar bathroomstalking about how cool they are and that they are so cool because they secrete their own cocaine instead of spending their evil monkey trust funds on it. So if you go out to see a show, don't go use the restroom.


    Their status in the Simian Kabal ranks low. Greater evil monkeys and apes will often sell Mustached Monkeys is a weird forms of narcotic-slavery trade. Unsuspecting coke heads try to purchase the Mustached Monkeys thinking they would be a new source of everlasting dope. When this occurs, the monkey usually eats the unsuspecting coke head, unknowingly ridding the world of one annoyance but leaving us with a well fed evil new one.



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    Friday, October 16, 2009

    Things to ponder as the weekend draws near...

    Grape mimes think a like...

    Just say it really fast...
    And think about it...Seriously...This is how my brain works.

    Wednesday, October 14, 2009

    Book Binding For Fun...

    This was found in a Popular Mechanics digest size book from around the 50s. I figured since I have been working on binding my comics, this image was appropriate.

    Sure, it isn't as exciting as soap carving, making leather wallets, or macrame. But Hey...Let's bind a BOOK!






    So the next comic book bind is a collection of the entire Crisis on Infinite Earths cross-over including pre-crisis appearances of the Monitor. Now if preceding sentences make no sense to you, consider yourself lucky. That means that you probably have a social life, girlfriend, and healthy pursuits in your life.


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