One last weekend

Ramblings Post #177
The condemned man gets a last meal. Even if the governor gives a reprieve, there is one last bag of Cheetos and diet RC cola if requested. So here we are, on the verge of starting the last step towards this educational journey I started oh so long ago. So no matter what happens, and maybe I'm paranoid but I'm always waiting for the issue to arise, I need to go and have a good time now because until this is all said and done...it ain't all said and done.

The NFL season is over....but I went to a playoff party anyway.

A partner of mine, a big Falcons fan, was having a playoff party and since the semester didn't start until the following Monday, I stopped by the "package" store and laid out my "going ta meeting clothes". A little before kickoff, brunch eaten, I headed south. He and I had hung out many a time, always with a great cup of spirits in hand, and as a premier Falcon fan I expected a pretty good little shindig.

It got off to a rocky start before I even got there, when that sound my car was making that I had been trying to figure out the source of for a week or so turned out to be the power steering pump dying. Heck of thing to find out on 285. But since there was closer than going back, I trundled onwards.

The party was a nice little group, maybe twenty five or so people, game jerseys aflutter, familiar faces at every turn. It was nice to see some folks I hadn't seen in a while but whom I used to run into two or three times a week. It was hugs and smiles and joy....

Full Regalia. The man is a true fan.

....until we actually started watching the game. The host was in full regalia, and even changed outfits two or three times to try and change the Dirty Bird's luck to no avail.

I'm not sure how it will be in the future, although I had glimpse with my cousin at that other game party, but at this "throwback" function the stereo came on during commercials and liquor was a series of bottles on the kitchen counter. The men watched the game and cursed, the women stood around and talked about everything but football. And well aware of the wrestling match waiting for me in the car I went with a judicious mix of bottled water and juice with B12, which is why my recollection is so clear.

And as the game got out of reach for the home team, the crowd's interest waned further. The card table came out and dominoes started, following by spades with the game as white noise filler. There was only one Steeler fan in attendance, so by the time the second game rolled around, the idea was simply to hang out for minute. Realizing I had things to do, and a steering wheel to wrestle, I called it a day and headed home about midway through the second quarter of the late game.

I got home, cleaned up a bit, but didn't turn the late game on until the closing minutes of the fourth quarter when the Steelers had a chance to complete their comeback.

Let me say this: Tebow is living proof that it is better to be lucky than to be good.

He has bad mechanics and is so far from the typical NFL quarterback it's scary. What's even scarier is that because he has lucked up ...and I mean that, lucked up... and managed a string of victories and a playoff win, there will more of this style coming. Which means that more option and running quarterbacks might get a shot in the NFL. And it also means that a QB's career will probably have two to three years shaved off a career that's already only averages four to five years long. The hits take a toll, as your average running back can attest.

But all that was to get ready for the next big thing. Back to the books.

Barkeep. Well, you know how it goes. The usual.

Bar Chatter

Bar Chatter #23
Sometimes it just ain't enough to make a post, but it's still needs to go out....it's just bar chatter.


So, I guess football season's over.

Yes. It is. This is not up for discussion. I take heart that last year they were abysmal and this year they had a shot at winning the division. When life gives you lemons, you make lemon juice...because for lemonade life has to also supply sugar and water.

What I learned 2011

Well the first thing I learned is that I mis-named last years list. This is what I learned in 2011.

This year for the third or fourth time in a row, I stayed in on NYE. This year just didn't feel right, again. Maybe it's the waiting on grades, maybe it's the getting my budget right, maybe it's the number of jurisdictions between my house and the nearest party. But next year, I'm gonna hit one of those big parties, where they advertise that tickets are ONLY sixty bucks or so, and although they swear the party lasts until 6am you know that around 12:30 the joint is going to start emptying out....

Okay, seriously, as I've shared before, I'm not really big on resolutions. It's like a TO-DO list that lasts seven days or so. We make a personal promise, we hold out for week, we stop lying to ourselves, we move on. Maybe a month. So what I do is I take a few moments to reflect on what I've learned from this year.

NOTE: the idea for this piece is blatantly stolen from Esquire magazine. I like to believe that I'm just practicing for when they do actually call me for an interview. (It will happen!)


Too much time is as bad as too little time.

A leap of faith is sometimes all you need to get you need to get you out of your rut.

The power of inertia is unfathomable.

Take love where you can get it, because the real stuff is hard to come by.

Sometimes getting it done is better than getting it perfect.

Everyone needs a hobby. Collecting matchbooks, dancing, something.

Steady paychecks change your mindset.

Routines come from circumstances. Change your circumstances, change your routine.

The distance between done and almost done is forever. Squared. Times two.

Chocolate needs to be stopped.

You're in trouble when the journey becomes the goal. You need actual goals. Plural.

The unknown is just scary. The known can be terrifying.

Sometimes a hug can fix a lot.

Everyone has their own story, and it proceeds no matter what your plans are.

A Good Read

Ramblings Post #176
I am a reader. But I think I've said that. I read to make me a better writer. I read things I don't always find interesting, or things that I think maybe boring, if only to find out why so I don't replicate them. Which is how I ended up reading those Blaine McCraken novels by Jon Land (And no, I am not linking to those). Let's just say you need to read what you're not going to write, so you know not to write it. That, and I have a lot of free time since I'm off from school.

I love a good read. I started reading when I was young, with the typical for the time Hardy Boys and other fare. I lived in a fairly small town, and there was a time when my mother would let me and my older brother walk...across a major highway, the railroad tracks, a housing project and cut by the stream...to the county library. Unsupervised. This might have been when I was in the first grade, but I'm not sure. It was a while ago.

But I read everything. Historical novels, biographys, fiction, science fiction, fantasy, romance, westerns...most things written on paper. It has to be horrible for me not to read it, but if I get too far into it I'll finish it just because. But once I find something good, it pains me that I can't read all of it or that there isn't enough of it to satisfy me. In need something like Terry Prachett's Discworld series, now at thirty or more books or Battlefield Earth, which clocks in at a thousand plus pages. If the writer is good enough, and the story long enough you grow to like the characters and see them grow and mature which makes for a better read.

Lately, I've taken to reading webcomics. If you look around, what you get are basically graphic novels of a sort, comic books really, minus a lot of the reaching for the masses editing, while still giving enough of a story to read. And because they're webcomics...a lot of them go on for years, so as long as you're willing to hit next for a few while...okay, days...they get to be interesting.

The ones I'm going to list here are science fiction mostly, but the genre covers all areas, including Mary Worth style drama to High School Angst. I don't really read those, but I understand they are out there.

It might have been Monday when I started reading Schlock Mercenary, a series that once the art picked up has actually turned into something pretty good...and has enough width and breadth to amount something fairly intricately plotted. It started in 2001 and has run fairly regularly, with more than 3,000 strips since inception. It's a got a huge cast and continually oddly expanding storyline that just reads like one of those thick novels that has to list all the characters in the front so you can keep track.

Another I've been working my way through is Quantum Vibe, which posts five days a week. I only started a year or two again, and the art isn't as sharp as it could be, but then the author is on a tight schedule. I'm still trying to figure out where the story is going, but so far it's been readable. Mostly.

A new find of mine is Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant, a swashbuckling epic. The heroine is... "a master of forty seven different sword fighting techniques, and has fought Sikh warriors, Conquistadores, a small pride of lions and a very large Mongolian man with a large sword, a small brain and a bad temper. " It's been an good read, with great art so far. I'm looking forward to the end.

Another one that only started in the last year is Spacetrawler, a story of seven people abducted by aliens to save an enslaved race...and that story just keeps taking odd turns. The characters are memorable, and extremely flawed however, which makes for great writing. It only publishes twice a week, so I'm getting a little anxious.

I also check in from time to time on one called Endtown, another where the hero is a cross dresser called Skin Horse (don't ask), and the positively existential Sinfest.

May all time favorite however is Girl Genius, the creation of Phil Foligo one of my favorite authors. The book, which I've discussed on here follows the adventures of the title character as she reclaims her family throne. The interesting part is that the story, which posts three times a week, has been at this for years and only recently has gotten to what I guess is the meat of the story.

Two things about the stories that I like is that the characters don't fall into the normal characters that show up in every other story. They tend to move outside normal archetypes. Because the internet is such an inexpensive way to produce the stories outside the norm are possible. And the other thing I like is that the authors tend to embrace the new media of the internet properly. The sites generally don't charge for access. That's right, they give away the product for FREE. But Girl Genius and Schlock sell books of the collected comics...ala Doonesbury.. which actually sell well. I imagine most of the others will eventually if they don't already.

Their leveraging the product to build an audience for the merchandising. It's like when they sell books on Amazon for .99 cents. It's to build an audience.

Most of these I'll wait week to check out so I have a couple of days worth of work to read. And they usually post on a pretty good schedule. My latest interest is Drive, where the author was nice enough to tell you he had another project and the schedule was going to be off. It's a certain closeness to the product. The new medium makes that possible.

Barkeep, a bowl of Rice Krispies. I got some reading to do. Leave the box.

Off the Top Rope....Touchdown!

Ramblings Post #175
The sports festival that is the New Year is about to go into overdrive. Between the bowl games, the NFL, the NBA and my Playstation, it's gonna be a weekend to remember. Well, not really. Because the "match-up of the century" is going to happen every year from now until they run out of adjectives. And next year, I'll have the new iteration of whatever is supposed to be the hot sport. Maybe FIFA. Isn't sports grand?

This week the NFL, apparently desperate for ratings, has stolen a page out of the book of the people Jim Crockett Productions and staging a Loser leave town match...er, game for the NFC East title. If the refs get "accidentally" get knocked out at some point, don't be surprised. Happens all the time in wrestling.


Sunday night, in the last regular season game of the year, the Cowboys and the Giants will square off in New York for the NFC East crown, and the loser has to wait until next year to prove they didn't give up on the game. And since neither team can mount a running game at this point - Dallas due to injuries and New York because they just can't - it promises to a battle of quarterbacks. Much to the delight of the schedulers, this will be a off the top rope type affair, a high scoring shoot-out....

...unless the Cowboys defensive coordinator Rob Ryan does his job and actually stops somebody.

Ryan is the son of Buddy Ryan, the Buddy is the man who invented modern football defense for all intents and purposes. So Rob comes from good stock. He also is running a defense that in three games this season have given up leads in the fourth quarter of more than one score. He is currently...overrated. A lot of people look down upon Romo, wondering why the media and the football experts heap so much praise upon a man whose team comes up short so often. But Romo doesn't play defense, so he's not dialing up the risky blitzes in the fourth quarter...nor is he a play caller like Manning, so he's not the one deciding to keep tossing it when the team is up two scores. But then the 'Boys can't cobble together a running game for nothing these days.

Note: The key to great offense is a GREAT offensive line.

If the Cowboys lose, most likely it will not be the fault of the offense. Most likely. I'm not saying Romo is perfect, but he's doing more than a few things right. If we're gonna assign blame, how about we assign it's where it's due.

I wonder if I'll make it all the way through this game. Cowboys games tend to make me...um...testy. I get upset, loudly upset, at stupidity. Or at least what I deem stupidity. If there was ever a time I've screamed at a television set, it was during a Cowboys game. In the past few years I have had to turn them off lest I strike something. And since this game is a for a ticket to the big dance...a seat they weren't even supposed to have? Blood pressure medicine and a large whiskey sedative.

Barkeep...start setting them up now. Bottles, not glasses.

The Looney Toons

Ramblings Post #174
Since the break, I'm watching a lot of TV. Well that and playing the bejeesus out of my game system. In fact, I have to remind myself to leave the house for an hour a day at this point. I mean, it's cold outside, and my house is warm, the food is close, the bathroom clean, and there is a movie coming one I haven't seen yet. There are no women here...major drawback. But I really don't like the cold.

I am not a big fan of cartoon remakes or reboots, or whatever you call them. The vast majority of them wash away the beloved memories leaving only the original hard shill sell we all conveniently suppressed. Now, I realize that you can do that with some cartoons, say the comic book based that have already been revamped a hundred times already. But some things should just be left alone.

At some point they rebooted Scooby Doo when I wasn't paying attention. Well, re-rebooted, because I'm certain the Harlem Globetrotters or Don Knotts weren't in the original 60's version. But they made the monsters real, snatching out the mystery element. It's a damn shame what they did to that dog. The revamped Tom and Jerry look cheap, I'm not sure what director thought starting over with Droopy was worth the investment, and the new Transformers (okay, I only saw the commercial) made me cringe. The commercial for the Thundercats looked like they might have put some thought into that one...so I'll let that one pass. For now.

But the things they have done to my Looney Tunes. I like the original looney tunes. I once posted Rabbit Season and Duck Season signs in my office. If they ever sell the box collection of June Bugs, the 24 hour Bugs Bunny marathon, I'm buying. The classic 40's and 50's stuff is classic, its like before writers got a taste of something cynical. They first tried a restart in the in the late 60's, but the images were shoddy. But those look like gold compared to some of the latest revamps...including the "babies" version they tried or the one where they turned them into something out of Tron.

So it was with much trepidation that I tried this new thing, on Cartoon Network now. The Looney Toons show.


It's actually....good. I guess it helps that the first set of Looney Toons weren't actually intended for kids. Just because they were cartoons people have forgotten they were originally filler for adult films. The new show isn't aimed at kids, unless kids are really interested in Bugs taking dancing lessons, Speedy Gonzales opening a pizza parlor or Daffy trying to run a corporation. It's semi sophisticated humor, more on a Seinfeld-esque bent than anything else. I found it watchable, which was a first for me and reboots.

Well, Duck Dodgers in the 24th and half Century wasn't all bad, but then I only caught like four or five episodes.

I can actually recommend this bit of foolishness. It's as though they actually let the writers write, instead of the usual Scriptomatic 5000 output that has driven the masses to reality television. And the less I say about reality television the better. Seriously.

Barkeep. Let me get a Carrot Martini.