A taste of things to come?

Oh yeah, this thing ... again ...

Where the hell have I been these months gone? Well, first there was a lot of more nothing going on, and then some cool things happened.

EMPLOYMENT
I got a job. I'm back in retail, but it's cool retail, and I'm a manager, so it's a good gig. Can't wait to abuse my employee discount as soon as possible. Having income again is AMAZING, which leads me to ...

MUSIC
Wow, a bunch of cool stuff came out while I was unemployed. I stopped by Waiting Room yesterday, and got away with a pile of new, or new to me, cool music, and all for a song (pun intended). I decided I haven't been listening to nearly enough disgustingly heavy metal recently, so I'm doing something about that. The new Patton Oswalt album isn't music, but it is awesome, although I haven't listened all the way through, so I won't comment fully, even while what I have heard is awesome. Now, I just need to wait for my next check, so I can check out this Floor boxset I got a look at. Eight discs? $40? Thundering? Yes, please!

COMICS
No New 52 for me yet, but only because Action #1 sold out. Also sold out is the first issue of the all-new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles book, but I picked up on what was going on in the second issue pretty easily, so no worries. It's a total reboot of the continuity, which is interesting, and makes me a little uneasy, but there sure was a hell of a lot of stuff I never got to read, so a clean slate is okay by me, I guess. In other news, I continue to forget to ask God-Emperor of Funnybooks to order me Shadoweyes in Love. I could go on Amazon and do it myself, no problem, but I want to order it through the shop because I feel terrible that I've been away so long.

VIDEO GAMES
Is it November yet? Seriously. Where the hell is my copy of Saint's Row: The Third? I need it. It comes out three days after my birthday, and I'm at least half-serious when I say I might be taking a bit of time off in the interest of firing hookers into skyscrapers.

ROLE-PLAYING GAMES
Black Crusade is out, but Amazon won't let me buy it yet. :( Sure, I could pay $60, plus shipping, on the Fantasy Flight Games webstore, but fuck that noise when I can get it for $37.77 with free shipping on Amazon. Don't get me started on how cool, and totally silly, the collector's edition is.

You Come and Go

As most of you know, I've been following professional wrestling for a little while now. I've also explained that the reason I started following in the first place was because of a new wrestler to the WWE, named Kharma. She's also wrestled as Awesome Kong and Amazing Kong, while friends and family call her Kia Stevens, and her wikipedia page does a pretty good job of summarizing her career, but that's not so much what I want to talk about.

Awesome Kong at TNA Wrestling with her Manager, Raisha Saeed

On the surface, sure, when I saw pictures of Awesome Kong, in relation to a dispute with radio "personality" Bubba the Love Sponge, my initial reaction was something along the lines of, "Whoa, who is this vicious vision?" I tend to make no secret of my preferences regarding women, and had to admit she was a sexy beast. I read about her work with All Japan Pro Wrestling and other promotions, and got the impression that she was actually kind of a big deal. I think she was at TNA at the time, but I was still in denial in terms of pro wrestling fandom, and I also knew a little something about how often women's wrestling gets buried in most American promotions. Let's face it, also, most of the so-called wrestling on display in women's divisions tends to amount to little more than Rock'em-Sock'em Barbies. Anyway, I figured this would be the first and last time I would see or hear much of anything about her.

That changed when she signed with WWE last December, and took the name Kharma. I actually surprised myself with how excited I was, and over a period of weeks I watched her blaze a path of unchallenged dominance through the Divas division. Finally, this was a female wrestler who demonstrated actual physical prowess, who had presence and a kickin' rad theme song, and who seemed set, in my vivid and delusional imagination, to turn the tide of bullshit women's wrestling toward a brighter tomorrow. That's a whole lot of hope, and I fully grasped the unlikelihood of my hopeful prediction coming to pass.

Even so, I remained cautiously optimistic that it wouldn't all be over in a matter of weeks at the indecisive and often bafflingly ignorant hands of Vince McMahon. As much as I was interested in possibly seeing more powerful ladies throwing each other around, I knew there were deeper concerns at stake. Kharma stood to become a symbol, not only to female wrestlers, but to wrestling fans of both sexes. I knew by then that the work she'd done as Awesome Kong, and before that when she was Amazing, was exemplary in terms of both skills and psychology. Sure she had size on her side in most match-ups, but there's more to wrestling than being huge (Vince McMahon, take note!). She sold the "story" of every match at a level where she was just a whole lot of fun to watch, even while she never said a word. She and her opponents made each other look awesome, and I wanted to see that brought to the long-languishing Divas division.

Alas and alack, it was not to be, well, not yet. Last week on Raw, Kharma sauntered in to break up an 8-woman tag match. She climbed into the ring, fuming and glaring like always, only to drop to her knees and cry. After two cuts in and out of commercial, with Kharma still sobbing amid the dumbfounded Divas, the action shifted on the second cut back from commercial to a match between Kofi Kingston and another buried mid-carder. All week since, fans and reporters have been abuzz about the rumor of Kharma's pregnancy, citing an overheard comment that she would be out for at least nine months. Well, last night this was proved true when Kharma spoke to the audience at Raw about her pending absence.

I'm sad that she's going away, but wish her the best, and can't wait for her return. Hopefully her parting shot at the Bellas bears not only the fruit of their destruction at her hands, but also points the way to that brighter tomorrow I mentioned. Despite their swagger, the Bellas are terrified like the rest of the Divas (it can be assumed from their reactions at her entrance last week, although some formidable opponents like Beth Phoenix and former TNA rival Gail Kim have yet to face her in the ring) at the thought of confrontation with Kharma. If WWE Creative can spin this into a shonen-manga-style training arc, with the Divas stepping up their game in preparation for the monster's return, we might have something really cool in the meantime and certainly in a year. It's about time Diva matches became something more than a signal to a bathroom break.

Oh yeah, this thing...

So it's been just shy of a month since last I posted here. Let's see, what's happened in the intervening time?

Well, I still haven't finished revising my novel. The hardest part of writing is getting started, psyching yourself up, and then just slamming words into the screen so fast you don't even realize what you're doing until you're suddenly looking at thousands of words. After that, you just keep doing it. That can be hard too, but it's those first few thousand that are the real hurdle. Once you've got that set down, you should have notes to work from, and it should be cake till the end.

Revisions are a different story, in more ways than one. When I started to get halfway serious about finishing a novel, I set the goal of one thousand words a day, just like the pros. I did pretty well for a little while, and got a lot of writing done. The book is nearly finished. That's when I hit the wall.

There are still a few scenes that need to be completely rewritten, for various reasons owing mostly to the fact that they were written before some changes were made to the overall narrative. Once I get these scenes done, I can assemble the full doc, slap it up on Google, and let the critique begin, assuming people have time to sift through my 200-odd pages of guff. What I have right now is far from perfect, and I know there's a lot of revision to go.

I think the problem is that I stopped for too long when I thought I was finished the first time. This is part of the problem of working on something for so long that it mutates into something else over time, and with sitting on a project for so long that it's all done in my head and I don't remember what's written and not.

Either way, this weekend is DairyCon! I have an un-opened Generations Scourge that I found at a Missouri Wal*Mart this past weekend, and I've been debating whether to just open him because he's cool or to use him as the basis of a trade with some dealer in the north. I really hate to turn into one of those people I so revile, but I honestly haven't made up my mind about him, and I know he and his wave-mates have been difficult to find. My grail at the moment is Wheeljack, but who knows what else I might find?

He's not dead. He's up there fixing the sun.

I finally got around to watching All Star Superman. I've had the blu-ray combo pack since sometime right around when it was released. I loved the comics, I love Grant Morrison (gee, really? derp.), and I love animation, especially when it's about superheroes, so it was kind of a no-brainer purchase, even given my financial plight.

PREMISE AND PLOT

The story is complex without being incomprehensible. Almost from the word go, it becomes obvious that this is a Superman who lives in a heroically exaggerated Silver Age (or somewhat early Bronze Age, though that's a slippery one) universe (anyway, it's a mix of pre- and post-Crisis sensibilities any way you slice it), wherein anything and everything is possible, science is magic (lowercase m, not the uppercase variety that gives Kal such trouble), and larger than life hardly begins to describe the super-heroics on display.

The short version is that Superman gets a sort of super-cancer from tremendous over-exposure to yellow sunlight, when he rescues the first manned mission to the sun. With time running out, he must do all he can to get his affairs in order before his inevitable death. There are some vague parallels to the 12 Labors of Hercules, which might actually be more precise than I realize at the moment, given how long it's been since I read about the original 12. Suffice to say, this is a great big, huge story that would have been impossible to fit in the time span of this animated movie. I'm glad they didn't try to cram too much in, and they hit a good number of the high notes, even while some exceptionally cool scenes from the comics were lost in the adaptation.

PRODUCTION

The animation is strong. While the characters resemble something more like Peter Chung than Frank Quitely's original designs, the animators can hardly be faulted in not capturing Quitely's unique, and not entirely animation-friendly, style. Little touches in facial expressions and the way the characters move really set this above the standard, which has so far been par for the course in DC's growing library of animation titles. One key example is the way in which, much like in Frank Quitely's designs, Clark Kent is differentiated from Superman in both posture and gait, as well as things like Kent's clumsiness. It really becomes a little easier to fool oneself into believing that the two are separate people.

The voice work is superb, but that's expected in any DC animation. Ed Asner is perfect for Perry White. Christina Hendricks does a good job with Lois Lane, although I'm unfamiliar with any previous voice work she may have done. All I really know her for is jaw-dropping necklines and the bubbly goodness they just barely contain, but I digress.

The soundtrack is similarly well executed. While I couldn't hum any particular melody from the score, I never once thought that any music was inappropriate or that a cue seemed to be out of sync with the action.

LOST IN ADAPTATION


In adapting any work, there are necessary sacrifices, whether for time, clarity, or in the interest of a clean and focused narrative that marries both concerns to a satisfying end. That said, I was really disappointed with some of the scenes left out of this one. Anyone who has read the comics could probably tell you about the touching scene in which Superman comforts a would-be suicide jumper on the precipice of a skyscraper. Similarly, although it was an entire issue rather than a single page, the alternate supermen from various times and dimensions are not at all included. Of course, that story was a lot of fun for total nerd-out comic geeks, it would be a strange diversion for anyone not steeped in the kind of comic book sensibilities that really enhance this sort of Silver Age homage. I say that without any intention of pretension, although the sentiment is probably inevitable. They also left out the whole story with the Bizarros, but I know I'm in the minority that missed it.

FINAL THOUGHTS


I'm really impressed with the animated films DC have been putting out since Superman-Doomsday. I didn't particularly like that one specifically, but I like what's followed. This is exactly what should have been going on for some time now. There's already a whole universe of cool stories to adapt, so why bother trying to re-invent the wheel like so many comic-based movies have been. Give a bit of background for people who've never heard of the Green Lantern Corps, sure (although they seem to be a vanishing lot, and it's not just because of the impending movie), but let's also leave lots of room for something cool like New Frontier. This format works much better for self-contained stories like that one and All Star Superman than it would for something intrinsically connected with an ongoing title, but there's lots of those to pick from, or to adapt from at any rate.

TECHNO-RAGE!

I am a little annoyed at this blu-ray version, though. Let me say first that the fault does not lie with the disc itself. Now, I'll explain. I only bought the blu-ray because it has extra features that the DVD doesn't, like: a commentary with Bruce Timm and Grant Morrison, at least two features on Grant Morrison talking about the book and about Superman in general, bonus cartoons, a preview of the Green Lantern animated anthology Emerald Knights, and some other stuff. Luckily, my copy also came with a DVD, although it's nothing but the movie and a menu for spoken and sub-titled languages.

Now, my only means of playing blu-rays is the PS3 connected to the big TV out in the living room (with composite cables, blech. I bought some component ones, I swear, I just can't find them now, damn it). When I tried to play the disc, the system told me that I needed to update the firmware. What the hell kind of ridiculous technological witchcraft is this? I can't watch movies on my movie player without an internet connection to tell the machine how to do it's job first? Is there anything I can do without one anymore? The only connection I have when I'm in my apartment is the one I can sometimes sneak into, which the PS3 doesn't even recognize. This same thing happened when I bought StarCraft II.

I understand that many people have an internet connection available to them at all times, but there are also many who do not. I understand that updates are sometimes necessary for a machine's firmware, but what the hell does this disc do that an off-the-shelf PS3 can't handle, is my (RHETORICAL) question. The increasing pervasiveness of internet dependencies for non-internet-centric devices, or things that shouldn't (that's shouldn't, not can't) need one in order to carry out their basic purpose. The PS3 is a sophisticated blu-ray player, but at the end of the day, that's what it is: a blu-ray player, a machine that reads a disc with a blue laser, and puts pictures and sound in my TV. The only time I should need to go out to the internet from my PS3 is to download something entirely new, not to teach the thing how to do it's fucking job.

I like the way that X-Box 360 titles that need to update the firmware always seem to come packaged with the update right on the disc. Similarly, don't lots of PC titles come with the latest version of Direct X? What a novel concept: data on a disc. With all the space on a blu-ray, is there really not enough left over to include a patch to make sure my device can play what's on the rest of the disc?

Am I blowing this whole thing out of proportion? Perhaps, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. I am stating my objection to this sort of thing, and I feel that my outrage is perfectly reasonable, although exaggerated for effect. I'm also not interested in hearing a lot of 'derp derp caveman want make box do thing, but box no do thing for caveman, so caveman bang rocks and yell, and no understand how new shiny box work'. What I'm saying is not that it's stupid that I would ever need an update, but that it's retarded that I would need to update for this sort of thing in this way and that I can only do so in this way. Put the shit on the disc. End of story.

Meh

I had a job interview today at an organic grocery store. It was actually the first place I applied to, immediately after leaving work on the day I got laid off. That was December, so I was surprised to get their call yesterday.

I wouldn't mind working at the place, and I think the interview went all right, but to be honest the thing that most excited me was seeing a familiar face on the way back to the office where the interview would take place. One of the guys I met in my group interview at the book store last week got a job at this place instead. The field has narrowed, and I remain cautiously optimistic, since the book store is where I would prefer to work.

After my interview, I drove to my parents' house, and got to talk with Philosopher King. He was just in for lunch between clients, but it's always nice when we get to talk.

My initial purpose was to file my taxes, as the forms had just been sitting in their manila folder since I filled them in last week. It turns out I actually made a tiny error on one of them, which the electronic version pointed out to me, but it was an error that means I'm actually getting an additional 8 dollars, so I'm good. In checking for my routing and account numbers, I also discovered that I'm getting close to my bank card points goal.

Patton Oswalt stand-up is a great soundtrack to just about anything.

Now I'm sitting here listening to the audio book of Zombie, Spaceship, Wasteland, which is that rare audio book that's actually better than the printed one. Michael Stipe reads the R.E.M. lyrics, the version people with money would buy in a store or order online actually includes a PDF of the comic section. Once I become one of the self-funded once more, I might actually grab a physical copy to go with the book. Yeah, you could say I've enjoyed it. Though, I'm still trying to figure out if I'm a spaceship or a wasteland. Maybe something like a crashed spaceship in the middle of a wasteland.

Last night, I fell asleep watching the first episode of Kindred: The Embraced. It's not that it's a boring show, although it was less cool than I want it to be, but more that my circadian rhythms have been crazy anymore. I just feel like immersing myself in vampire stuff would be helpful in working on my novels. I actually watched The Lost Boys the other day, for the first time. I know, I probably would have liked it more if I'd been the same age as Corey Feldman's character when I saw it, but it was better and worse than I'd expected.

I think I've become distracted and diverted now to the point that I'm just going to leave this as is for now.

Ohshitohshitohshit!

Fantasy Flight Games has announced a fourth installment in their Warhammer 40K RPG series: BLACK CRUSADE!

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Holy shit! We've been talking about playing Chaos in one form or another since Dark Heresy, and now we can finally do it with full mechanical support for both human and Space Marine heretics! I know Valkyrie is excited and so am I!

So far not much has been revealed, given that we've got an announcement and a brief introduction to the nature of Chaos to go on, but I am definitely waiting with baited breath for what's to come. I think it's a safe bet that we'll see a second book with expanded rules for the followers of each god, along with a host of sweet vehicles and equipment. With the release of Deathwatch: Rites of Battle, we've got official mechanical support for Dreadnoughts, so it would be a shame to have to wait to field one tainted by the whispering Warp.

Hopefully we can see something like a total "bad guys" game come from this, where more xeno races become available to players as well. Yeah, there's the Ork Freebooter and Kroot Mercenary in Rogue Trader: Into the Storm, but I'm talking about support for a revival of something like GorkaMorka, where everybody can be a unique Ork character, or a Kroot, or Tau, or something other than human for once. With Dark Heresy: The Book of Judgement on the horizon, we're looking at a new way to approach the gang warfare of Necromunda, so the possibility is there.

I really want to run something other than 40k, although I have a strange drive to be the one running it, and all these cool new releases I've been reading about aren't helping. Another cool one is Only War, a supplement for Dark Heresy to take the Guardsmen career path much more literally. That's just the Dark Heresy stuff, too! Hats off to Fantasy Flight for really fleshing out these lines into full-on games unto themselves. I just wish they wouldn't tell us so far in advance when all this cool stuff is coming out.