Ranting Ash

If it weren't for bigotry, would we have flying cars?

noreply@blogger.com (Ash) — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 06:59:00 +0000

I've literally been woken up in the middle of the night by this thought. By the idea of what we as a species let alone a society have deprived ourselves and our people of with bigotry. This video brought this home. It's less than two minutes long if you skipped it go ahead and watch it now. I'll wait.

Okay, so if you made it through that without wibbling I"m guessing you live under a rock or are 100% clueless about social justice and the horrific things we do to each other when we don't like the status quo being challenged.

Who knows what treasures we've snuffed out, what beautiful spirits we've broken and squashed, what insights and advancements will never be imagined or perceived let alone realized because we found it easier to look away or commit acts of calculated depraved injustice.

Maybe, if we as a society, as a culture, and as a species weren't bigots, just maybe we'd have flying cars by now.

I don't know about you, but I'd rather have a flying car than another child committing suicide, another person sexually assaulted and then blame for it, another pointless bloody murder that helps no one and hurts everyone.

Flying cars or useless suffering, not a tough call.

So what? Hate is bad right? Well how about this, for one day, just one you think about flying cars when you meet a stranger and you evaluate how you treat and react to that person, are you working for a flying car or not?

Misogyny as Fashion

noreply@blogger.com (Ash) — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 09:36:00 +0000

Rather than actually write my own post (hey it's almost 0300, even for me that's late) I'mma post a link to a remarkable young woman of my acquaintance and ask that you ponder it.

From the BG News: Do Not Perpetuate Misogynistic Fashion

BEES

noreply@blogger.com (Ash) — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 07:43:00 +0000

BEES

I've been reading and researching about honey bees for the last few months. I'm still reading and researching but after double checking my local zoning (no goats allowed sadly but poultry and bees are fine) I really want to go ahead and start a hive this spring.

I also want to have poultry again (we had at various times in my childhood, ducks, turkeys, and chickens) but as that's a much greater investment of time and money (hard to leave your poultry for a long weekend without someone willing to check in on them etc.) I'm going for bees firstly.

Also bees are straight up fascinating.

Some of the books I've poured through in preparation are:

Beekeeping for Dummies

The Backyard Beekeeper

As well as countless posts on the invaluable site www.beesource.com and the incredibly valuable forum for the site.

Books I intend to read ASAP to round out my 'knowings' before I take the plunge, get a hive, and hopefully join the Pierce County Beekeeper's Association in order to learn more, order bees on the cheap and eventually (hopefully) rent the honey extractor owned by the organization and like, be an apiarist, are:

The Practical Beekeeper Vol. 1 Beginning Beekeeping Naturally (hopefully volumes 2 & 3 as well at some point)

Grit's Guide to Backyard Bees and Honey (I picked this up for a song in I think June, when the Mother Earth News Fair was at the local fairgrounds)

Beekeeping for All (I'm leaning toward a modified version of a Warre hive it's a bit like a Langstroth/Warre hybrid but want to see what I may be getting into first)

Better Beekeeping: The Ultimate Guide to Keeping Stronger Colonies and Healthier, More Productive Bees

I should note that a lot of these books have redundant information but so far each (Even those by the same author/s) have been worth reading.

I also found this incredibly charming title from 1914 (apparently originally published in 1901), The Life of the Bee by Maurice Maeterlink at the ginormous used bookstore I venture to every few months. It is practically and scientifically spurious but chock full of loving and vivid descriptions of bees. Mr. Maeterlink clearly loved and was fascinated by bees and nature.

Why bees? A fair question. I use beeswax for all kinds of neat things around the house and such so I could certainly use that up ironically it's the honey I'm mostly concerned about. Like most of us in the good 'ol United States I've grown up on a diet with a lot of refined sugar and never really developed the same taste for honey. Don't get me wrong I *like* honey but I just don't consume much of it. I use it in tea and occasionally on toast but that's really about it. So I may need to either let the bees keep the vast majority of the honey (I don't necessarily see a problem with this particularly during the first year) or make pals with some farmer's market stall owner or some such. Although, honey has far more applications than just culinary, in addition to being the only food we eat that is made by insects it also never ever spoils. It crystallizes but you can heat it right up and it'll liquefy again. Not to mention it has antibacterial properties and was and is a wound and burn treatment. It's kind of astonishing stuff.

Whatever the case since I can't have a yard-taming goat and I don't trust my brains to be reliable enough to remember to feed and water something that is wholly dependent on me (unlike our two cats, who, as cats do, absolutely make sure they are fed watered and pampered appropriately) bees it is!

Proposition 74

noreply@blogger.com (Ash) — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 10:36:00 +0000

Okay so I'm just one chick with a handful of followers, an irregularly updated blog, and a house I never leave (hey you try working from home and not having a car) but I'mma rant about Prop 74 and why we as decent people need to approve equal marriage rights. (note there will be more Rants in future regarding this and related topics, if this is not your cup of tea, too fucking bad there's an entire internet out there).

Check out the Seattle Times special on September 16th

Gay marriage does not harm anyone. Period. The fact that someone's religion tells them that a behavior in society is wrong is irrelevant. This is (theoretically?) a secular nation which means that your religious beliefs are (ought to be) a non-starter. Obviously this isn't the case in thirty-fucking-two states (not to mention the repeated failure of ENDA).

Let's take a moment to discuss the definition of secular, shall we? Bare in mind I am fully aware that secular on paper means fuck all in reality but still let's give it a shot eh?

sec·u·lar
adjective

1. of or pertaining to worldly things or to things that are not regarded as religious, spiritual, or sacred; temporal: secular interests.

2. not pertaining to or connected with religion ( opposed to sacred): secular music.

3. (of education, a school, etc.) concerned with nonreligious subjects.

4. (of members of the clergy) not belonging to a religious order; not bound by monastic vows ( opposed to regular).

5. occurring or celebrated once in an age or century: the secular games of Rome.

All cribbed from Dictionary.com, per usual.

So let's focus on the top 3 'cause honestly I've never ever seen / heard the latter 2 usages.

Alrighty then, basically what we have is a word that is defined as devoid of religion. The idea is that our nation and thus our laws are to avoid favoring a particular religion or, indeed, any religion. Period.

Now as thinking aware people we all know this may be truer of the United States of America than in other areas of the world but it is also way more true in others (say huuuuuge chunks of Western Europe? Yeah those folks).

We know that religion is at the root of a lot of the LGBT discrimination rampant in our communities and society. We know this, again, because we are thinking and aware people.

The hilariously pathetic thing is that the go-to justification passage for this evil behavior (yeah it's fucking evil, I said it) in the Bible is not only from the Old Testament, a portion of the bible that many modern Christians seem to forget isn't exactly meant to be addressing them but rather the Jewish nation and people, y'know the ones a lot of these self-same shitheels damn to hell as godless Christ killers? So let's set that aside for a moment.

There's still another glaring well known error here, the book they cite? Leviticus? It's a bunch of laws for priests. I'm not saying that homosexuality etc was de rigueur and a-okay for laypeople back in the day. I have no idea either way. What I am saying is that taking the sacred words from a text directed at the holy persons of a people you likely despise (either actively or through that bizarre 'pity' so many of these particular 'Christians' cough up the 'you poor Jews just don't know the word of Jay-sus!' vibe) in order to abuse, disenfranchise, violate, and perpetrate violence against another group of people is beyond hypocrisy.

Never mind the insanely ridiculous other 'laws' outlined in Leviticus that these fuckheads cheerfully ignore outright.

So that's it for the religious argument.

What else? Seriously, what else? Studies have shown time and time again that children raised in LGBT homes are not harmed in any way. In fact many experienced less abuse than in a home with heterosexual caregivers.

It's not going to erode our moral fabric but rather, in my very not humble opinion, strengthen it. How anyone can say we're the home of the free with a straight face while this (and a myriad of other institutional and societal injustices rage freely) mystifies me. We've never been the land of the free. Ever.

But, we have been and can still be the land of the brave, every time someone stands up against bullshit injustice that's an act of bravery. Whether it was the freedom riders in the 60s, abolitionists in the 1800s, Suffragettes here and in the UK in the 20s up through today (if you think women are equal thee and me shall chat) OWS protestors today or Pride organizers these are brave people that are putting themselves in the sometimes literal line of fire to demand an end to societally condoned malicious cruelty.

So stand up in November, be one of the brave, look your friends, coworkers, neighbors, and fellow human fucking beings in the eyes the day after election day and be able to say with a calm and easy heart:

Yes, I voted for equal marriage because I give a shit and I will not allow bigotry hiding behind and within a religion to justify abusing my people. I will not stand by and let this pointless fucking cruelty and abuse continue, I voted for equality not because I'm a saint but because I have the fucking gumption to say enough and start turning the goddamned tide, okay?

Because if you don't? If you vote against equal marriage? How can you look anyone in the eye again? How can you stand to know that you stood before thinking, feeling, wounded and disenfranchised human beings, your people and said yes, I believe you are a second class being, yes I believe you should have your rights restricted or revoked simply for falling in love with another human being.

How the fuck can you do that and consider yourself decent? No really, do you want your nieces and nephews or grand kids or shit your own kids to look up from a history book in ten years and ask you about Prop 74 and have to fucking lie because you were afraid or blinded by talking heads and their dire threats this November?

And once you've said yes to Prop 74 and equal marriage turn your attention to D.C. and help us all be a nation that's a little bit closer to our ideals of equality and secularism. Take the pointless hatred out of our laws and stop favoring a single religious view that is damning all of our people to pointless fucking arbitrary suffering and collusion in the same.

And now I leave you with a clip from the West Wing, a clip that left me on the verge of tears and cheering when I first saw it. Yeah I know it's circled the net a bajillion times but I love it so there. (feel free to post other vids etc in the comments, anyone gets trollish you're out and as the blog runner I am god as far as moderation goes. If you're worried I'll knee jerk negative comments you ought to check out some of the earliest posts on this blog and the bigoted comments that were NOT removed)

August was Boring... Sorta

noreply@blogger.com (Ash) — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 10:03:00 +0000

So yeah, August, what's to say about August? It's usually the hottest and driest month. Happily this year was not a repeat of the 'lets-pretend-we-all-live-in-an-oven-shall-we'? Weather of a couple years ago. Well, three...I think. I remember I was still taking courses at Pierce and I graduated from Pierce in '09 so maybe it was even '08 whatever the fuck, the point is, it was viciously fucking hot. Hot like public cooling centers and people freaking DYING from the heat hot.

So that was good.

Aside from that...not much to report.

I did get a delicious lateral promotion at work from the phones to chat. Chat has been interesting and wonderful and weird.

Oh wait ha ha yeah. August.

My oldest brother and his family visited from Japan! I finally got to meet my only and firstly nephew. Great kid amazingly awesome. Not sure if that's 'cause he's Japanese or he's just naturally a bad ass toddler being a hybrid of two awesome families and all. He only freaked out like twice and considering all the traveling, the heat, the strangers, everything being, looking, feeling, and smelling different? That's seriously admirable.

It was kind of shocking to see my brother with his son though. I mean yeah I know on an intellectual level that we're all adults etc. I know this. Still, seeing him with that kid it finally sank in. That little boy is my blood and my brother for all his faults and wonders is a really good father. It's surreal.

Which makes me wonder, at what point do we actually become adults? When puberty wraps up, takes down the tape and picks up the oil cloth, wipes its hands clean and tips its hat on the way out the door? When we reach an arbitrary age? What age? 14, 18, 21, 25, 30?

I don't have any answers but I do know that while I'm a kid at heart I also gave up my 'ideal' plans to help save the family home, I served in the military, I did all these wise and responsible things - and a few dumbass things too. But I didn't really feel grown up, not completely, until I saw the kid I used to get into fights with holding that boy.

It only took me twenty-eight years...

How I Quit the Worst Job in the World OR How I Almost Got Fired That One Time in Tacoma

noreply@blogger.com (Ash) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 05:57:00 +0000

I've had a lot of jobs.

My first job was working a counter and later the drive-through at a Jack in the Box. The irony of this was that it was actually quite a difficult job to get. Partly because I was shockingly shy as a child - shut up it's true. I ended up stopping in at the same restaurant several times a week for six months. I suspect the manager interviewed me out of sheer exasperation. I was so nervous during the interview that I almost lost my voice. Shut up, it's true.

So I got the damn job and since then I have had seventteen more jobs. Why seventeen jobs? I've never been fired. Officially. I've been laid off and twice I've had jobs just stop scheduling me which I think is the PC don't-bring-a-shotgun-to-work method of firing these days. But mostly the jobs /hours dried up or I moved on to a better position somewhere and then there was school getting all up in it too. So of alllll the jobs I've endured, tolerated, savaged, and survived, which was the worst?

Some might think it would be my time as an F-16 crewchief at the ass end of Honshu working stupid long hours in literally all weather. But no, that was a challenge but I got a great deal out of my time in Japan and in the military and don't regret a minute of it. Okay then, what about working in a sweaty dangerous deli or fast food? What about temping at a candy factory working overnight steeped in the reek of chocolate and stale sweat? Taking notification calls from bereaved family members? How 'bout janitorial work or housekeeping? Working three jobs at once? Navigating an office full of lunatic women with twisted values and no sense of mind-your-bidness? What about being forced to sell credit cards with criminally high rates or lose your job? No?

No. The worst job in the world was a very special, very terrible, and very very depraved gig. Partly because it looked so great from the outside that I gave up a shot at working for R.E.I to get it.

See, it's not just that the job was fucking awful - though it was, and it wasn't just that my coworkers were vile evil heaps of human refuse - though most were and all of management absolutely was, and it wasn't even just that the hours were shit and the conditions primitive though again, they were. It was all of these things flavored with desperation and the sure and certain knowledge that none of it had to be that way.

See, the thing is if you've had a good job or even a decent job when you wash up on the shores of destitute horrifying ineptitude and malicious managing tactics... the whole experience is exacerbated by a factor of at least one thousand. And, say what you will about the military or basically any other job I've ever had, they all had their ups and downs but all of them were highly functional healthy and successful endeavors compared to the Worst Job in the World.

Now I'll need to set the stage a bit here. Firstly when I left the military in '06 my carefully laid plans took a flying leap off the side of the highway of life when my mom died. These things happen, I put my plans for going to school on hold, handed over all the ready cash I had to my Dad - because even with Mom's catastrophic health insurance and charity care from the hospital where she died we still had a few thousand in medical bills plus funeral costs etc - and went to work. Dad couldn't cover the household bills alone and I couldn't afford to rent my own place so we basically teamed up. Sorta.

Eventually I enrolled in our local community college and managed to juggle various crap jobs then I got hired on through a friend at a place that did background checks for a particular industry, mostly union labor so no big deal. But it took a lot of concentration and training so I chose to skip a quarter of school so I could concentrate on the job more - mind you half of my income at this point was coming from the GI Bill monthly stipend. So I quit school confident - as I had been promised that the usual spring / summer layoffs this particular business was subject to were not going to occur that year - that I would have a couple months to focus on work and be the bestest little researcher I could be and then re-enroll in school again.

Except that they laid me off with less than a paycheck's notice.

So, with about ten days notice I had a last paycheck and fuck all else. Bring on the food stamps! No, seriously. And y'know what when the state gives you a couple hundred a month for groceries and you can only spend that money on food it is amazing how well you can eat. When all you have is $30 and you have to get groceries for a few days and gas for work the food quality suffers but when all you have is nothing and $30 on your EBT card ... well, you get the point.

Now let me make something clear, from the time I left the military until about two months ago I have lived paycheck to paycheck. So it wasn't like I had that mythical 'three-months-of-funds-to-cover-monthly-expenses-cushion' all the online money planners advise the wise and industrious person to maintain. So basically I was staring at a future where within 11 days I was not only going to be broke but in the red.

Anyway, I ended up ricocheting from temp jobs and landed a sweet gig as a steady temp working 5-7 hours a night on swings at the nearby R.E.I. distribution center. The work was physical but the pay was a fuckton better than the zero I had been getting, I got to listen to my MP3 player most of the day, and I liked the people I worked with. Not just my fellow temps mind you, R.E.I to their extreme credit, made the privileges and differences between temps and regular hires very clear but aside from those guidelines we were all treated very well and morale was surprisingly good.

Meanwhile I kept digging and snuffling for a 'real' job i.e. one where there was a hint of security. Seriously, just a hint, like set hours, I didn't give a fuck about benefits, benefits were a golden rumor that people with Careers had. So I kept sending out my resume to every place I had any shot at being a fit for, literally, and applying to probably twenty or more locations a week until it got to the point where I had memorized the various job listing available from worksource, craigslist, monster, etc and could spot a new posting from ten feet away. That's not really an exaggeration either, if you spend two hours a day working over job sites then you get to a point where you can recognize the rhythm and shape of text from across the room or spot a few initials or key terms and know exactly what the job advert is. Ahh the skills you pick up.

So, I was contacted by a person I will refer to as Dick (his real name does start with a D but ...yeah) with an offer for an interview. I could barely remember applying for the job and tap danced the fuck out of the phone interview. I had initially answered the phone on a whim after working a swing shift and waking up with a headache at seven A.M. (this is important, in retrospect I should have realized that anyone that makes phone interview calls that early has to be playing by a different set of rules than the rest of us). I nailed the phone interview.

At the time that made me feel pretty good, I mean, here I was, laid off with no notice scrambling to keep afloat and finally there was light at the end of the tunnel, light that I had seen thanks to my still-silver-though-tarnished tongue. So, I went on the interview and nailed it - I kept working at R.E.I. for another week.

One of the leads, a fine fellow whose first name was also part of his lastname and was a shining example of R.E.I's leadership - no sarcasm here, seriously great bunch of people - inquired if I was planning to apply to stay on. I told him that while I had entered my application I had already accepted a full time job at forty hours a week and just over $9.50 an hour with benefits and a union. He asked a few questions and it was only after he had walked away that I realized he had been feeling me out likely to offer me a few hours as a semi-regular.

Fuck, I thought, fuck, I could have probably worked something out. Then I thought about the golden word that Dick had slipped into the phone and personal interview... benefits. Well, I thought, I'm twenty-whatever, it's time to grow up, time to get Benefits and a Career. So I finished my time at R.E.I. on a high note and prepared for my New Career.

At this time I was also trying to find a Bachelor's program I could get into ASAP and would result in some flavor of B.S. I didn't want a B.A. but was too stressed and tired to really stop and think about a good program. I had once had pipe dreams of going to UW for an environmental science degree until I saw the prerequisites and realized that if I could pass all the high level mathematics and physics courses it would still be at least six years and high two figures in loans before I could even think about walking away with a degree and that was only if I actually passed everything. I eventually turned my eyes on to online programs and as I kept digging I started my new job. At this point, to be honest, I was mostly looking for a feasible program so I could like, pay my bills with the GI Bill, y'know?

Now. About the Worst Job in the World. It was at an industrial laundry. Prior to this little adventure in hell my biggest exposure to large scale laundry operations had been via prison movies. Reasonably confident that shanks and gang rape were not going to be integral parts of this experience and further armed with an abundance of self confidence bolstered by the sure and certain knowledge that I had to keep this job and therefore failure wasn't even on the table let alone likely (man we're good at lying to ourselves) I walked face first into misery.

The biggest problem from the outset was the complete and utter lack of training. This turned out to be one of those places that didn't exactly have a corporate hand book. It was family owned and operated - though the only time I met the Family was for about four seconds during my deceptively successful interview and from afar as they wrote checks and yelled at people. So because of this ad-hoc we-do-it-this-way-literally-because-we-always-have-and-for-no-other-reason-take-your-fancy-digital-computers-and-fuck-off system training was, at best, haphazard.

Throw in the fact that the the two women who ran the supply section were sisters one of whom - the sane kind one - had been diagnosed with a serious health condition and the three new hires - including myself - were intended to replace her and they and their family had married into the company though not in the Family and you can begin to get a feeling for the baroque mob-style politics, power plays, and mental illness shrapnel I was about to joyfully face plant into.

Anyway this place had shockingly little turnover (aside from the purge that was rumored to have occurred prior to my hiring due to the company taking on several federal contracts and having to part ways with a large portion of the workforce who lacked proper documents). They specialized in hiring desperate people and keeping them on the hook until the mediocre union benefits kicked in and they got to enjoy little perks like annual physicals and life insurance. Thus treated to the decadence of being considered a human being worthy of security they would decide that being treated like utter shit, bullied by coworkers, and run into the ground on a daily basis until Eeyore the clinically depressed cartoon donkey looked like an optimist was a fair trade off.

Now, back to the job on hand. When I first started I worked in supply and, to be honest, to this day, I'm still not sure what the hell my job description really was. I didn't have a title, I didn't have a job description. I was given the broadest of guidelines by management - who, in retrospect, clearly didn't know what the fuck supply did either - and handed off to the de-facto queen bitch of supply, Katherine. Her name wasn't Katherine, I won't say what her name was, but I will say that she shared her real name with some of the worst people I've ever known. Seriously, I don't know what it is about that name but whenever I hear it I flinch and start looking for a weapon.

Katherine was not stable. At first I assumed that she was hostile because she was busy and her sister was ill. After all I was an ignorant noob the fuck did I know about shit? I should also mention that we started work at 0400, yes gang that's at least two hours before dawn. So, being a dedicated nightshifter/nightowl I was usually too zombified and zeroed in on my tasks to give Katherine too much thought aside from the basics.

But then I woke up a bit and started to talk to my other coworkers, who, it turned out, were only two weeks 'older' than I. When you had a question, needed clarification or guidance, you were better off going to one of the other new people than Katherine. With Katherine you had a one in three chance of getting an answer and a two in three chance of getting your shit reamed and ignored, being flat out ignored - and I mean blatantly ignored too like standing in front of her calling her name and she doesn't even look up, or insulted and ignored.

Whether or not her decisions were conscious I'm not sure but she's pretty much the worst person I have had to personally interact with on a regular basis. She would seemingly at random choose one of the three of us to treat like a human being everyday and none of us could ever figure out how or why she made the decision. That one person would be able to ask questions and the like just fine the rest of us didn't dare approach her until 0900. Mind you that was after our lunch time. After half the day had passed. Half of the day where we couldn't ask questions, get help, or accomplish our work in anything resembling an efficient manner.

This went on for about six weeks during which Dick and other management persons and nosy outsiders would screw with us demanding to know what was wrong with the section and shying away when we pointed out that there were no materials to reference for guidance when Katherine was gone, that Katherine herself was a lawsuit waiting to happen and may as well have been sabotaging the section, and that management themselves couldn't make heads or tails of our section.

Then Katherine went on vacation. Yes folks less than a month after hiring all new personnel in the section all leadership was gone and the clueless management was left to 'supervise' us as we did our level fucking best to do whatever it was we were supposed to be doing. Again, remember, I'm still not sure.

So, after awhile we started to let management know what the hell was going on I may have been a tad impolitic and, eventually, I was moved to a new area. At first it was because someone was on vacation, then someone else was on vacation then someone was promoted etc etc and suddenly I was no longer working supply but spending eight hours a day handling coveralls and uniforms fresh from the 'tunnel'.

The tunnel was a little slice of hell. I still have a scar on my arm from the button on a set of coveralls fresh from the oven that gave me a third degree burn. Basically damp/wet items would be hung and run through the tunnel which was a fifteen foot free standing oven with a conveyor system. By the time the damp items exited they were dangerously hot but there was no time to let them cool they had to be moved to the correct racks so the delivery drivers could load them up for delivery the follow day.

Dick kept an eye on me. Not sure why maybe they had a bet or something. I spent another month or so working the tunnel and the line, putting wet clothing on hangers to run through the tunnel. It was back breaking work made worse by a muscle I tore in my back a few years previously.

Then I was moved again. I'm not sure what specifically spurred this move, I suspect it had a good deal to do with my agitating the women on the tunnel and oven against Katherine's tyranny and encouraging them to speak to their foreman - I worked there long enough to be a member of the union for about six weeks - and get some justice, or at least try.

So I moved to a new area, I'm not sure what it was really called but I always thought of it as intake. This was where deliveries of soiled clothing arrived first. Here's the thing though, most people who have foul laundry usually make a point of chucking it into the laundry as soon as possible because it's gross and nasty and letting it sit is stupid. But not this place.

Now, remember it's high summer by now and while we might start at 0400 it's still hot as shit out by 0900. So what I got to do was take receipt of bags of laundry that had been sitting on the trucks for, in some cases, as long as a week. This would be gross anyway but when you consider that this joint provided laundry and uniform services for hospitals and produce / meat markets... well.

I clearly remember one day working emptying bags and shaking them to make sure there weren't any goodies in the pockets (I missed a pen once and a load of laundry was 'inked' Dick had a hissy fit because I didn't burst into tears over it, sorry I'm an adult with emotional control and a sense of priorities?) then sorting them by type and sending them off to be washed. I was working away one day listening to my headphones and minding my own business when I noticed a familiar unpleasant smell. It was acrid and cloying, oddly penetrating and lingering. It wasn't until that afternoon that I realized what I had been smelling all day.

Death.

Yes ladies and gents I had been marinating in death all day. I took a second look at the items I was sorting - scrubs and bathrobes - and took a hard look at the goodies falling out. Pens and sundry mostly but occasionally an empty needle-free dispenser of medications. I took note of the name on one of them and on my break used my phone to look up the medication. It was a high end narcotic painkiller used for terminal agonizing illnesses, like cancer. Turns out I had been sorting through the discards from a hospice.

Fine, whatever, I don't have a problem with death. It happens to all of us and I had spent time working at a funeral home so I wasn't afraid or even grossed out so much as vaguely and additionally depressed. Then it got worse I was moved to another area of intake and started dealing with the produce and meat discards.

Let me tell you by this point the writing was on the wall Dick had set up, if memory serves, two meetings between himself and I with our useless steward as witness. Meetings where he said nothing useful aside from veiled threats. I knew that one more meeting and I was likely on the outs. In addition that torn muscle in my back had gotten worse than ever. I had to take ibuprofen horsepills and use icy-hot cream on my breaks just to make it through the day, several times I sat in my car after getting home just trying to figure out how to get out with the minimum angering of my back. Things were bad.

I had also by now started at Kaplan University but was still stuck waiting on the VA to get their shit together and restart my GI Bill payments so I could get on with life (they eventually did almost three months after I got back into class). So, with the writing on the wall and my score in my Statistics course plummeting I decided that the time had come.

I didn't want to be unprofessional, I wanted to grab Dick when he wasn't in a totally shit mood and let him know I was leaving but for once I couldn't find him. He was one of these managers who cared more about busting people than actually improving his workforce so inevitably he was a fly-on-the-wall at the worst time kind of guy too. Thus, when I actually needed the bastard he was MIA.

I kept working with my doubled gloves and pulsing back and then I reached my least favorite clothing types. The uniforms were used by a produce and meat supplier that used what appeared to be navy blue or black lab coats for their meat cutters. They often came wadded up in layers as the users wore more than one for warmth and they were a bitch to sort through and untangle in search of rogue pens and other goodies.

I was still debating keeping my resignation to myself until after a long weekend so I could enjoy the break when I picked up a coat, peeled the layers apart, checked the pockets and felt what I thought was a wad of plastic gloves in one of the hip pockets. The users would often pack the pockets with throw away gloves to avoid having to search for them while they were working. Still half thinking about finding Dick and quitting I opened the pocket and reached in. Only to have my gloved fingers plunge into something horribly soft, nauseatingly warm, and ...moving.

Some clever bastard at the meat plant had stuffed a double fistful of raw hamburger meat into the pocket, fuck knows why but now, a week after it had been put there, an unrefrigerated week, an unrefrigerated week in high summer, an unrefrigerated week in high summer on the back of a metal truck, it had metamorphosed into a maggoty mass of reeking horror. And I had just buried my hand in it. Up to the wrist.

I found Dick at the next opportunity and let him know I was falling behind in school and wouldn't be continuing my time with their fuckhole company. Only y'know with less profanity. Hilariously he asked when I'd like to end my term, I said with my best (worst) poker face that I didn't want to leave them in the lurch so I could stay for two weeks. He made some kind of noise and asked if the next day would be too soon. I smiled and said no.

My last day was a thing of joy. I said my goodbyes, showed my teeth at Katherine and fucked off out of that place with a grin on my face, a swagger in my step, and the sure and certain knowledge that every nightmare I will endure for the rest of my life will feature the fundamentally wrong sensation of the maggot meat engulfing my hand.

Femshep and I

noreply@blogger.com (Ash) — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 08:01:00 +0000

If you know me, and likely you have some idea of who and what I am by now, or an assumption thereof, you may be surprised when I say that I never play as femshep. That is, the female version of the main character in the Mass Effect games, Commander Shepard (anyone else have a helluva time remembering the spelling? I'm half convinced the reason the web has shortened his/her name isn't because of usual 'net laziness but rather to short circuit the spelling issue).

My main issue with the character isn't anything that grievous. It's the freakin' voice acting. It isn't that it's *bad* per se, it's that the actress sounds as though she downed a fifth of cheap scotch and force smoked two packs of cigarettes twenty minutes before the recording session. It puts my back up, it's like nails on a chalkboard. I'm not talking an aggressive growly semi-sexy early Eliza Dushku growl, I'm talking that terrifying bus driver that wreaked of despair and was one puff from a tracheotomy growl.

Just sayin'.

I get that Shep is a tough determined character and depending on the past her player chooses she could be anything from a colony brat and experienced soldier to a hardcore street kid from the slums of Earth and a sole survivor who chose to sacrifice her team to hold an objective (this is all pre ME1 background that the player can choose).

She's a bad ass. I get that.

Doesn't mean she has to sound like she gargles with a box of rusty ten penny nails every morning, she also doesn't need to sound like a sex pot honey trap eager to molest your ear drums. Can't she just sound, y'know, 'normal'? Average?

Just sayin'

Life...and Mass Effect 3

noreply@blogger.com (Ash) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 23:44:00 +0000

Of the two of which, ME3 is likely primary in m'mind and yours on this fine February day.

Anyway, update: I got a job.

*waits*

Yep. You read that right. I actually started this job on November 11, 2011, pretty awesome way to remember Veteran's day 11/11/11 eh?

I work for Amazon. I get to help people over the phone. I get full benefits. I work from home.

I work from home and get full benefits.

YES I KNOW RIGHT?!

Anyway. Aside from that kicking SO MUCH ASS IDEK YOU GUYS

I am between quarters of school at the moment. Kaplan screwed up and got my course schedule off so I have a quarter off pushin my graduation date back to July as my last class starts in May.

The upshot?

I have *free time* ish. So what do I plan to do with actual time on my hands?

Play ME3 guilt free of course!

I've been romping in the multiplayer demo just about once a day, which, if you're already a friend of mine on XBL (ID is, cleverly, Ranting Ash) you know that to see me actually playing a game is super!ultra!mega!rare. I pretty much own an Xbox at this point out of habit and a need for a noisy whirring noise in the background when I put Netflix on.

Sidenote, my paragon totally banged Jack, either Miranda or Tali (I don't remember which and a friend has my copy of ME2 just now so I can't check) and Liara (again) in the Shadowbroker DLC. So uhm. I think my 'good' shep is going to have quite a reckoning on his hands.

I mean, I get going after someone else, I mean Liara only risked her life to save his carcass from the Collectors and stuff. Then again she did blow him off when he tried to get her to come with him and help and she was all 'pshaw I'mma shadowbroker hunter now!

Still bro, banging the mentally and emotionally unbalanced murderous biotic savant and then DUMPING HER? (remember romancing Jack takes a lot of time and effort because she has MASSIVE THROBBING TENDER TRUST ISSUES)

I hope all sentient milky way life doesn't get snuffed 'cause you couldn't keep your pants zipped Commander.

Just sayin'.

(never mind that I, the player did these things...the point still stands, also interesting that banging and dumping Jack doesn't result in a boost to renegade points, the paragon renegade system does a good job at this point of pointing out that it is NOT a good/evil system ...sorta).

Anyway my male human soldier and I (because I CANNOT unlock the (&$%(^!#&^%)!! Krogan soldier) are gonna go shoot Cerberus mooks now.

Long time...no writey

noreply@blogger.com (Ash) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 19:52:00 +0000

So I poofed again, but we all know I do that occasionally ;)

SO, changes. I have a job now. I'm working out at JBLM as a housekeeper in army lodging. It's...interesting. It's also a federal job but ha ha ha laughs on me not only am I Flex i.e. not even part time thus I don't accrue any kind of benefits BUT in a year or so all of Army Lodging in this area is going to be privatized. Story of my life. Thus, while I am working my 24-32 hours a week and continuuing with school I'm also working on finding a better position.

School, I could have graduated in November but that would've required me to take three classes at once. During the holiday's quarter. Sooo yeah no. I'm on track to graduate in February now. If my Hashimoto's doesn't flare up again, speaking of which...

I had a physical the other day turns out I have a hole in my head ...er, eardrum... and my Hashimoto's DID flare up again so I need to have my meds adjusted. Again. I see a pattern here ;)

More actual rants incoming later this month :)

New York Does the Right Thing and Why I'm A Straight Ally

noreply@blogger.com (Ash) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 07:00:00 +0000

So as most of us know by now late on Friday night the New York state Senate pulled their heads out of their keesters and voted to approve gay marriage in the state. It was a narrow vote, 33-29 but it got done.

Now, I'm glad that Washington has civil unions but civil unions are not marriages. That's the same schtick that we used to swallow whole regarding separate but equal in regards to racial segregation. A civil union has many of the same rights as marriage but not all., key among them is the social and societal acceptance hinging on the term marriage.

Until everyone in this nation that is of legal age and sound mind can get married to whomever they like the battle isn't over. Civil unions are not 'good enough' or whatever other phrase the pundits want to tap dance around.

I'm a straight ally 'cause I won't stand here while some jackass with a religious agenda tries to legislate my friends, neighbors, coworkers, bosses, fellow human beings into second class status. I'm stubborn, resentful, and contrary and I won't let anyone tell me that treating someone like shit because they're in love is okay. Ever.

So until people can understand the concept of separation of church and state and realize that there are religions out there that support and celebrate LGBT human beings and their love, that there are citizens out there LGBT and otherwise that won't stand for this bullshit, that there are parents, children, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, coworkers, acquaintances, employers, students, teachers, and legislators out there that also celebrate and respect our LGBT citizens and their basic human rights, I'm going to make a stink.

I encourage you to join me.

Obnoxiously Shallow Video Game Characters - I'm Looking at YOU inFAMOUS and Alan Wake!

noreply@blogger.com (Ash) — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 07:01:00 +0000

Okay, I dunno what it is but it seems like writing a decent lead character is kind of a challenge for some games. To me, a lead character has to be engaging on some level, they don't necessarily need to be a nice person, look at Don Draper in Mad Men, he's a womanizing drunk but still a fascinating and sympathetic character. And okay, so traditionally games have functioned largely on the premise of the story and the cool stuff you can do. But, aren't we moving beyond that? Don't most long running series have some kind of interesting characters? So why are so many relatively new games still coughing up half formed stereotype laden leads?

Alice taking shit from Alan

Take Alan Wake, the game play is reasonably unique, the environments are bad ass and the basic plot is interesting enough, even Alan's creepy/obsessive manager is okay for a sidekick. The basic premise is that Alan is a cross between a drunken rock star and Stephen King. He's been battling writer's block and his wife convinces him to take a vacation to BFE Washington to sort out his head. Once there his wife is spirited off by the Big Bad of the game and the adventures being.

Alan himself however, is a dickhead and his wife is a cipher for every clueless masochistic damsel in distress in fiction. Seriously, we get to know them for like ten minutes and in those ten minutes we learn that Alan is an ungrateful shit who mistreats his well meaning, patient, long suffering wife - who simply accepts his awful behavior and doesn't call him out on it. Then she's disappeared and douchebag spends the rest of the game going through hell trying to get her back. Only the player - if they're anything like me - doesn't really give a crap about saving her or really even keeping Alan alive or his personal travails because he's an asshole and there's no emotional hook or sympathy for Mrs. Mary Sue Wake.

Alan Wake the man, the myth, the epic shithead

I pretty much played because I liked the environments and some of the tertiary characters were amusing. That's it. If I'd paid full price for the game rather than getting it used I'd be super pissed, even the included free DLC did little to assuage my dissatisfaction.Which is a real pity as the game's premise, mythology, and beautiful environments are great and if Alan hadn't been such a fucktard or his wife (Alice? see I can't even remember her name and I only remember Alan's because I hate him and it's the name of the game) hadn't been a waste of pixels it could have been seriously great.

Then there's inFAMOUS. Now to be fair the only reason I played this is 'cause Sony gave it to me for free, it was part of the our-bad-we-fucked-up apology pack after the PSN was hacked.

For those that don't recall it, it's super similar to Prototype - at least in the broad premise in that it details an average Joe suddenly endowed with super powers and his quest for answers. I haven't played more than the demo of Prototype so I really can't do a thorough comparison of the two though this article apparently compares them. Now to be fair I believe both came out in '09 so they're not exactly new (inFAMOUS 2 was released about a week or so ago).

I used to ride a bicycle, my girlfriend Trish is unreasonably hostile, and I blow shit up

Anyway. I will forgive inFAMOUS slightly as one of the points of the game is that you can choose whether Cole - the main character - is an evil bad ass or a noble bad ass. Still, dude you can make a generic character open to moral choices that has a damn personality.

The game opens with a mega explosion flattening a good chunk of Empire City and our hero surviving it somehow. He limps off while being chased by electrical arcs and lightning before passing out. He wakes up and discovers he's now endowed with electricity based super powers. WHEEEE.

Ahem.

He's also being blamed for the initial explosion and since his girlfriend's sister was toasted in the explosion she's being a snarly bitch. Aaaanyway all we really learn about Cole is that his girlfriend is an unreasonable bitch and he can use electrical powers like WHOA. We don't even figure out that he was a bike courier delivering a package to the point of the explosion, they literally never say he was a bike courier it's up to us to piece the clues together until the very last fight scene wherein the bad guy calls him a loser for being no more than a bike courier and then there's an expository scene (done in an admittedly not-bad comic book style) where he FINALLY says he was a bike courier.

Seriously. That's it. His jackhole buddy Zeke is more interesting.Trish is a screeching unreasonable harpy and the bad guys are pretty pedantic. It's a an okay game particularly because it's free but dang people.

How hard is it to write an interesting lead? Heavy Rain did it well enough although Ethan had some massive issues. And all it required was a little groundwork during the tutorial section. That's it. I'm not asking for a novel or an autobiography here people, just throw me a frickin' bone. And while it's possible to make a douchebag hero (say Kratos or Don Draper) it's not wise to have your lead start out that way, particularly if you expect someone to stay engaged and give a shit for a game that could last for 10 + hours and cost $60.

If I'd paid full retail for either of these games I'd be pissed. Alan Wake was tolerable and inFAMOUS was pretty fun but both would have been immeasurably improved by some decent characterization and back story.

And holy fuck people is it really that goddamned difficult to write a decent female supporting character? Or say a female lead? Dang.

Note: I had pictures of Trish and Zeke but Blogger freaking sucks and kept dying so I've had to settle for what's here :/

Heavy Rain or, Why I Love David Cage's Obsession with the Supernatural and Serial Killers Even Though He Kinda Sucks at It, Sometimes.

noreply@blogger.com (Ash) — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 07:01:00 +0000

Note: Here be Spoilers, not huge game destroying spoilers but you've been warned :)

Sexy Times! Omikron style

Lemme explain. David Cage is a French game creator and founder of the game studio Quantic Dream. He has made three games to date, Omikron: The Nomad Soul (featuring David Bowie), Indigo Prophecy / Fahrenheit (with game play that could legit cripple you from its insane button mashing), and the more recent Heavy Rain.

Each game has a series of slayings by an apparent serial killer at its core, and, while the first two are clearly more SF/Supernatural than Heavy Rain they all have quite a few themes in common. Not least of which is sex, the last frontier of gaming.

I'm pretty amused by the attitude some media outlets *cough* Fox News *cough* and others take towards sex in video games in general. For instance the sex scene between two characters in the first Mass Effect. What these outlets seem to be ignorant of, or more likely, overlooking, (in that particular case at least) is that the game was rated Mature for a reason.

Behold, the wildly uncensored sex scene late in Indigo Prophecy

Now, don't get me wrong, there are cases of asinine exploitation type sexuality (bouncing volleyball boobs much?) but Mass Effect, Heavy Rain, and other Mature rated titles with plot driven sex scenes are no worse than most PG 13 / R movies and generally have more justification and less flesh on display.

So, Cage doesn't mind sex in his games and when its there he generally attempts to make it logical. The sex scene in Omikron is pretty cut and dried and rendered mildly hilarious by dated graphics. Further, in the U.S. version actually called Indigo Prophecy - everyone else in the world knows it as Fahrenheit- the sex scenes are heavily censored/edited. In Indigo Prophecy -if you get the European version there are at least two opportunities to shag, but again, - the limited graphics and tech render it more of an amusing diversion than a stimulating or titillating plot point. Not to mention that depending on plot points and decisions previously it's more like a creepy sort of necrophilia than sex. Which, one would think would be more controversial than a bunch of pixels embracing the joys of friction. Which brings us to the scene in Heavy Rain. It's clearly far more believable? Due to better graphics and, in my ever so humble opinion, better storytelling/justification. But, I have one major problem with it.

Ha ha button mashing =/= sexy times

Basically, the scene comes about after Ethan, the main character, completes one of several trials assigned to him by a sadistic serial killer in order to save his son's life.

The trial he is required to attempt (not necessarily complete) prior to the sex scene is the killing of a drug dealer - that happens to have children of his own. Upon returning to his hotel room, a total wreck sporting numerous scars and wounds from previous trials, intrepid lady reporter Madison Paige arrives to put him back together.

Things gets heated and if you choose to reject her shmexy overtures (either because poor Ethan has been generally beaten the fuck up, or because he's savagely traumatized having just killed another human being) Madison basically fucks off. She still appears in the story but in a lesser role and the ending of the game changes.

Fair enough, no one appreciates having their HORRIBLY timed sexual advances spurned. And to be fair Cage sets Madison up as a bit of a headcase suffering from horrifyingly real night terrors involving a home invasion and all the good stuff that goes with that.

Still. Really?

The mechanics of the sex scene are pretty amusing as well, it basically amounts to hitting the right button at the right time and is moderately graphic in that you see some undies and there's some kissing and petting but that's it.

Nahman Jayden being all shouty

I haven't played through Heavy Rain with the Move system - ironically because this game is the reason I originally purchased said system - because it's so incredibly awkward to use the Move controllers with it that I've been left stymied by the 'tutorial' opening.

That said, I can't imagine the hilarity of standing in front of your TV waving your arms and hitting buttons when your room mate, SO, parent, mailman etc walks in and sees that your frantic gesticulating is meant to approximate the shmexytimes on the screen. Its bad enough with the controller.

Another thing about Cage's games that makes me bugfuck is his love or acceptance of HUGE FUCKING RED HERRINGS THAT ARE NEVER EXPLAINED.

Ahem.

In HR he goes to great strides to make sure the player has enough evidence to believe that basically any of the four main characters could be the Origami Killer.

Ethan holding his friend, the origami dog

Madison Paige: plucky reporter is, as outlines, unhinged.

Scott Shelby: Asthmatic P.I. seems to be pursuing the killer on his own but seems to know more than he should.

Norman Jayden: FBI agent has an addiction to a blue liquid drug called Triptocaine, which, paired with his VR investigative tech gives him hallucinations and hideous vision doubling migraines. Oh, and the shakes. (He also has a hilarious Boston accent, PAHK the CAHR NAHMAN seriously I think he's British or French and the resulting accent is BIZARRE)

Ethan Mars: the hero out to save his son suffers from blackouts, claims he's seen drowned bodies in his blackouts/dreams and once woke up with an origami figure in his hand crouched outside, in the city, in the rain.

And I'm cool with that, it's a great way to maintain tension etc.

Madison staring down at the soggy city post or peri-night terror

The problem is that a lot of it is never explained or wrapped up at all once the killer is revealed (and unfortunately the identity of the killer doesn't change on additional playthroughs which would've been awesome). And indeed on a second playthrough some aspects of the game (internal thoughts, statements, the blatant deus ex machina and some super lazy red herrings) start to grate and annoy.

For a more intense and thorough not to mention spoilery rundown go here.

Another thing that makes me crazy about Heavy Rain is that it's set in a nameless large American city that looks like it's supposed to be on the East Coast somewhere but there are tons of little clues (not least of which are the voice actors which do a decent job but are clearly not American with the possible exception of Scott Shelby) that indicate that, no, this is not a U.S. city.

Scott Shelby, teddy bear with a .45

The Machinist managed to do something similar, the city still felt slightly off and foreign, although the creators did a helluva job with set pieces etc to avoid any blatant indicators, but that fed into the story as the narrator/pov character was an insomniac skeleton having hallucinations.

If Cage and Quantic Dream were trying something similar with Heavy Rain they failed. I mean, what's wrong with setting the game in a European city in the first place? If they were worried about language then stick it in a fictional big ass city in the UK.

That said I still really enjoy HR and Omikron, even Indigo Prophecy though I've never had hand cramps like that before or since. One of the redeeming aspects of HR and the others are the soundtracks. Omikron featured several unique and exclusive tracks by David Bowie, Indigo Prophecy introduce me to Martina-Topley Bird - so thanks for that- and the score for HR is excellent.

Cage and Quantic Dream's biggest weaknesses seem to be in creating truly solid and tight storylines (there are issues with Omikron and Indigo Prophecy too), believable human actions (I seriously get skeeved by Madison on playthroughs) and technology.

Indigo Prophecy and to an extent Omikron were both borderline playable due to the defects or archaic nature of the platforms they were built for. Indigo's controls scheme was tortuous, a sadistic riff on Simon Says with early onset arthritis and dead characters to attest to failure while Omikron had a reputation for crashing PCs. Heavy Rain's main drawback was, oddly, the late introduction of the Move system. It's a pity Quantic Dream wasn't able to develop the game in tandem with the Move system, if ever two were meant to be together... but for whatever reason it didn't happen. Which is a pity since, as I've noted, the HR Move version is hugely awkward.

It would be nice if Quantic Dream and Cage could get their shit together for their next creation. Stop creating serial killer centered games with awkwardly inhuman characters and stories holier than my cheese grater, manage to integrate their gameplay with technology in a far more feasible manner, and basically step up their game to the next level. Clearly, they're visionaries which is great but creating a functional product with an amazing, coherent, intact plot with solid characters would be fantastic.

I'll still probably get their next game. If nothing else they're really good at creating games that aren't really games and since I'm contrary that's my bag baby.

Rue Morgue!

noreply@blogger.com (Ash) — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 07:01:00 +0000

So as some of you ever loyal readers may've seen on my facebook page or had me babble mindlessly at you last weekend at Crypticon - Rue Morgue will be featuring Slow Burn in the comics section of their July issue. Yes. Featuring.

I was interviewed via email about two weeks ago but was expecting a friendly blurb and a link to the rest of the interview online etc (probably still be something along those lines) but then I received a follow up email for bio information and then a few days later a request for some 300 dpi images for the feature.

I'm still freaking out. I may continue to freak out until like September. I'm not sure yet. :P

And, not only is that fucking AMAZINGLY WONDERFUL BEYOND REASON!

But, as a tasty bonus, my short story, The Improbable Apocalypse You Never Saw Coming - which some may recognize as the source material for the fourth entry in the Nightmares of the Macabre anthology - has been accepted into a digital anthology entitled, Not in the Brochure: An Anthology of Disappointing Apocalypse Stories. It will be put together by Christopher Nadeau.

It's unpaid and all profit will go to a literacy charity. Something I find oddly appropriate as I had a helluva time learning to read as a kid, so it's somehow cosmically appropriate that the first short story I've written that anyone's taken an interest in will contribute to other's learning to read.

Wicked.

As to the TSA job, I got part of my test results last Tuesday (same day as the test, really can't complain) and my TSH levels were within norms, I sent that bad boy in so fast! I haven't heard back yet but presumably (hopefully) I'll be off med hold and on to my way to training as a TSO before too long.

As well as the TSH test my doc ordered an antibody test to check for evidence of Hashimoto's Thyroiditis. I received those results on Friday. The normal antibody levels are like 0.0 - 6.0 mine were at 168. Pretty sure that's indicative of Hashimoto's. So at least I have some kind of answer as to why my freakin' thyroid has been having a hissy fit for years, my immune system has been trying to eat it. Poor thing.

So, while I might be less than flat broke at the moment (thank you for shorting my GI Bill for two months running VA) things are looking UP!

And just a reminder Slow Burn is available in digital format from www.drivethrucomics.com for $.99 so y'all can see what all the fuss is about :D

So tell me friends, what good things are going on for you?

Crypticon! Ron English! ZFW! Crypticon!

noreply@blogger.com (Ash) — Fri, 27 May 2011 07:01:00 +0000

So for anyone not 'in the know' so to speak today kick's off the first day of our very own horror con, Crypticon Seattle. For a full line up of guests, panels etc visit the official site. Stop in and meet Timothy W. Long local horror/bizarro (or absurdo) author of such tasties as, The Zombie-Wilson Diaries and Among the Living: A Zombie Novel - Revised and Expanded and even Barriers Beyond. The infamous Mark Rahner of Rotten fame will be in attendance with a load of goodies for old and new fans alike, and lucky us, we'll be seated next to hizzoner at booth 805A.

That's right this is all a sneaky advert to plug Crypticon so you folks will come find us at Crypticon and make us grin. And buy stuff. :D

I'll be there Fri/Sat dunno about Sunday yet.

And, because you fine folks are such wonderful and long suffering lovelies, I shall remind and berate regarding the excellent ZFW: Volume One trade and the shiny and new Ron English Presents MC's Secret Circus order cut offs are this weekend so get down to your LCS and order 'em up! In fact a little bird shared that you can get Ron's book for %35 off at midtowncomics.com.

Go forth! Con it up! Get some great comics!

:D

HAPPY POST RAPTURE!

noreply@blogger.com (Ash) — Mon, 23 May 2011 07:01:00 +0000

I trust each and every one of you looted to your heart's content? Excellent. In honor of the day of idiots - er the Rapture I present:

Something about this video strongly reminds me of the 1980s BBC miniseries of The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Now that I have that in my head I need to share it. NEED.

Now, bare in mind that when this was made computers were hugely expensive behemoths roughly the size of my house. So all the graphics you're seeing were actually hand drawn animations. Yeah. Fuck yeah even.

Aaaaaanyway

So allergy season is well and truly here. I'd forgotten how incredibly potent benadryl is I went ahead and took one, thinking I'd be able to function like a human being afterwards, PSYCH. Five hours later I woke up. Heh.

So in order to limit such occurrences and make the half packet of benadryl I've got left last longer I've been wearing a painter's style paper mask while weeding, shoveling gravel etc. I would wonder what my neighbors think about it except I'm reasonably sure they're so overcome by delight that someone is doing something about our ridiculous yard that I could be wearing a speedo and pasties while singing operatic arias and they wouldn't mind (that's an image that will pop into your head .5 seconds before you fall asleep tonight and startle you awake).

Also the city is putting raingardens in a few of my neighbor's yards so there are gawkers abounding anyway. But it does remind me of when I first got to Japan, I noticed quite a few locals wearing similar masks. At first I thought maybe it was an air quality issue - not - or maybe it was flu season - but it was May - so I chalked it up to allergies. I was wrong turns out if you're sick in Japan etc a lot of times the ill person will wear such a mask to limit the exposure of other people. Can you imagine anyone wearing an uncomfortable weird looking mask just to protect random strangers in the west? Weird yet cool right?

I don't really have anything earth shattering to report today. Well, not yet anyway, the day is young, we've survived 'the Rapture' what's not to look forward to?

I'm going to wander off now and pretend that the universe didn't collude in plotting to give me terrible allergies and painful womanly troubles in the same period of time and that the ibuprofen I took forty five minutes ago just hasn't kicked in, not that it is pathetic in the face of my angry body, and therefore I'm not really feeling this headache. Yeah. :P

Job Hunt / The Importance of May 24th

noreply@blogger.com (Ash) — Fri, 20 May 2011 07:01:00 +0000

Thought I'd update you fine folks. As most of you know none of the partners in CEP makes a red cent off her, it all goes to the creators we work with and back into the company so I've been living on my G.I. Bill and getting my learn on. Buuut time's being what they are I need a job. The G.I. Bill just doesn't pay that much and is subject to the whims of Congress and a massive bureaucracy. Anyway the point is I need a damn job. Last time I worked a real job was The Nightmare Job from HELL with the Infamous Psychotic Supervisor.

Anyway.

So, back in March I started the process of applying to the Transportation Security Administration at Seatac. I passed everything, the Computer Based Test, interview, security check, and nearly all of the physical. That is, they didn't find anything to disqualify me but I had to, of course, disclose my hypothyroidism and the medication I take for it yadda yadda.

They put me on medical hold. I have to show that I'm within normal limits while on medication. Problem is my medication has been undergoing adjustment since I was first diagnosed in October. I have another blood test on the 24th, and if that shows normal limits they'll take me off medical hold and stick me in the candidate's pool. I'll probably still end up waiting who knows how long before being actually hired and trained.

Also, I just got an email saying the applications I filled out a billion years ago to be a clerk at a state run liquor store has been short listed. I've filled out the pre-interview questionnaire and am now waiting to hear back.

I'm not picky, I'll just take one that lets me pay my bills, really.

In addition to all that I've been filling out at least one job application a day for anything I might remotely qualify for. No joy.

So if anyone needs a vacancy filled drop me a line... ;)

I'll Pray for You

noreply@blogger.com (Ash) — Wed, 18 May 2011 07:01:00 +0000

A loaded term if ever there was one. I've found it used predominantly by Christians, usually unsolicited by the person addressed, and about half the time it's a condescending judgmental conversations stopper, the other half it's meant sincerely and kindly. For the latter I've graciously accepted the statement as a gesture of compassion and sympathy. The former?

FUCK. YOU.

That said, what would the average Christian do if a Wiccan, Druid, Eclectic Witch, Kemetic or other pagan said, I'll pray for you?

Now, to be fair, I would be flabbergasted if the average pagan actually did that, by and large most pagan religions, creeds, etc are strongly against any kind of proselytizing and tend to be almost overly sensitive about interacting with another's faith/path without being specifically requested to do so (say via prayer, spells, even energy work). It's a touchy subject. So this question is massively theoretical. All of that said, how would a Christian perceive a Pagan turning that phrase back on them?

Would that be seen as a demonic assault? At the very least I imagine that it would be unwelcomed and possibly perceived as a hostile act. Well how the hell do you think the non-Christian hearing it feels? Even if it's a reactionary statement to a bad situation uttered by a lifelong Christian truly meant with love?

I'm genuinely curious. There are douchebags from all walks of life, every religion, every creed, every philosophy. The danger, I think, lies in the inability or unwillingness (out of fear, judgement, spite whatever) to realize that the people we are addressing have their own framework they're working from and may not be aware of or care about ours and can take something perfectly acceptable in our framework as a massive insult. Obviously that isn't limited to just religion etc. It can apply to nearly any interaction but it seems to set off more problems when religion and such becomes involved than otherwise.

I think part of the problem is that, at best, the term is a platitude. When I started working at Powers Funeral Home the site manager did some one on one training and one of the things she told me (which I'd already learned going through my mother's death) was to never ever use platitudes when offering condolences. It's insulting, aggravating, and offensive. Things like, 'they're better off now', or 'at least they're not in pain', or 'this is what they would've preferred'. Why? Because it's making assumptions about the wishes and fate of the dead, things that are often impossible to know, and it's mitigating and minimizing the pain of the mourners.

"I'll Pray for You" also makes assumptions. The phrase assumes that the user and recipient share the same faith, worldview, operational framework, etc. It also mitigates, marginalizes, and insults the possibility of a different still valid faith, worldview, operational framework etc.It strongly implies a dismissal of the other persons' values and therefore their inherent value and equality. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, feel free to argue or correct if you think I am but that's my perception.

/rant and ramble.

So what do you think, are you offended or annoyed when someone says that to you? Does it come up often if ever? Do you think it's acceptable in some situations but not others? How has that phrase been used around you? As a bludgeon or a bandaid?

Note: I thought I'd add in here that anyone that gives a crap is welcome to visit my other blog to follow along with my flaillings and musings as I work through Ár nDraíocht Féin: A Druid Fellowship's (ADF) Dedicant Path program, I'll also be touching lightly and briefly on the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids initiatory stuff as well but in broader non-specific terms as most of that is meant to be private, it's a mystery initiatory tradition, similar in that respect to the Masons. So what OBOD material filters in will be in the form of more broad comparative strokes than specifics.

Mead

noreply@blogger.com (Ash) — Mon, 16 May 2011 07:01:00 +0000

I like mead. I'm not a wine person (red goes straight to my head, seriously I can have a six pack and be mildly happily buzzed, couple shots, few cocktails whatever, but half a glass of red and I'm swinging from chandeliers), I like beer and liquor though tequila, rum (any sweet liquor really) and hypnotiq are banned from my cupboard due to poor effects on me or awkward associations.

So, mead. Let's define it shall we? This is what wikipedia has to say int its first passage regarding mead:

"Mead ( /ˈmiːd/ meed; Archaic and Dialectual "medd" from Old English "meddu"), also called honey wine, is an alcoholic beverage that is produced by fermenting a solution of honey and water. It may also be produced by fermenting a solution of water and honey with grain mash; the mash is strained off immediately after fermentation.

Depending on local traditions and specific recipes, it may be flavored with spices, fruit, or hops (which produce a bitter, beer-like flavor).

The alcoholic content of mead may range from about 8% ABV^[4] to 18%. It may be still, carbonated, or sparkling, and it may be dry, semi-sweet, or sweet.

Mead is known from many sources of ancient history throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia, although archaeological evidence of it is ambiguous. Its origins are lost in prehistory. "It can be regarded as the ancestor of all fermented drinks," Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat has observed, "antedating the cultivation of the soil."

Claude Lévi-Strauss makes a case for the invention of mead as a marker of the passage 'from nature to culture.' " (site)

So mead is old and AWESOME!

I prefer the dry to the semi-sweet or sweet (for the same reason I tend to avoid rum and other sweet liquors it plays havoc with my stomach), though there's an awesome fireweed mead by FairWinds Refinery out of Port Townsend that's pretty dang delicious. It has an almost nutty kind of bready undertaste that lingers with the warmth of the booze. Very tasty. There is at least one other local refinery/brewery/thingy that does an acceptable mead as well, though I've only been able to find their semi-sweet and sweet variety with any regular success, their dry though, is quite good. I'll add a note once I've hunted down the name of the joint.

There are all kinds of varieties of mead and spins on it as the wikipedia article hints at, I've seen spiced mead, mead with huckleberries and other fruits, I haven't had a chance to try sparkling mead though I wouldn't mind.

Mmmm meeeeeeaaaaad. Hell if it's good enough for Vikings, god only knows how many of our ancestors, and Ancient Celts, who am I to say no?

Monday / Fear of Islam

noreply@blogger.com (Ash) — Mon, 09 May 2011 07:01:00 +0000

Who couldn't use a lil bit of the Bangles to kick off their week eh? I like the 80s they were an amusingly jaded yet in retrospect strangely naive time. I say strangely because while I was born in the 80s I don't actually remember them very well, a fact that seems to stymy people. I apologize for not recalling the Thundercats, I was probably busy in the back yard with my dog and some sticks making a fort or staging an invasion of G. I.Joes. I had priorities people!

Not to mention that I was probably a toddler and thus only allowed to watch Sesame Street. Just sayin'.

I do remember Exo-Squad, She-ra, Masters of the Universe, the Ninja Turtles, and a few other shows. I don't remember Gem, a fact that has stunned and horrified no less than three women I've known. The great thing is that these women couldn't be more different from each other, a fact that I find endlessly amusing. I also remember Captain Planet and was horrified upon watching it as an adult to discover that it was, at best, poorly disguised propaganda. Weird.

So on to our topic today.

Note: You won't see any pretty pictures for this post, honestly I couldn't really find any that weren't asinine, hateful, or just crap. If you can think of any feel free to post a link in the comments or suggest some.

I was listening to the radio on Friday night in my car as I drove down to Comic Evolution (I was helping Chuck move some inventory to the shop's new location). I heard a short news bit about a religious conference about Islam in Seattle, the topic was something along the lines of fostering a better understanding of Islam and less fear. The Imam that advocated for a mosque at Ground Zero was a speaker.

But here's something I've noticed.

We seem to blame and condemn people for being afraid of Islam and Muslims in general.Which, okay, fine, but let's look at the facts for a moment.

People wearing yarmulkes, pentagrams, oak leaves, crosses, etc didn't kill 3,000 innocent people. People claiming the title Christian, Pagan, Latter Day Saint, Jew, Hindu etc didn't do it either. Fact is the assholes that took those actions claimed to be Muslim, claimed to be doing it for glory and favor for Allah and so on.

It's fucked up and unfair that all Muslims are painted with the red-neck-bigot-hate-'em-'cause-I-can bullshit brush. It is, but is it fair to condemn and deride the fear people feel when faced with people of that faith? Yes and no - in my opinion.

I would split hairs and say this, it is fair to condemn fearful and hateful acts against someone for their faith, skin color, favorite sports team, job, or any other arbitrary aspect or condition.

But, feeling that fear, having that sphincter tightening reaction is, I think, not something that a lot of people can help and probably feel shame and guilt over. What decent person wouldn't?

I'm not trying to justify acting on these reactions or even having them in the first place by any means. I feel a sick rage toward anyone that acts inappropriately based on fear, ignorance, or hate. It truly baffles me that there are people out there that lack the most basic compassion. That are so devoid of empathy that they can Otherize another person to the point that treating them horribly is not only okay but preferred. I don't get it. I flat out don't and genuinely hope and pray that I never do, there are some things i don't want to be capable of comprehending. Call me a coward.

No, what I am saying is that when we feel fear about another religion, person, situation or aspect of our lives that is considered unpopular or inappropriate, that, instead of getting defensive about it, instead of feeling shame or guilt about it, instead of quashing the reaction and moving on with our days we take a moment to ask ourselves why.

Why do you feel like you should pull your children close when you see a man with a covered head (be it Sikh, Muslim, or balding man), why do you feel a thrill of resentment, fear, or suspicion when you see a woman wearing the protective garb of her faith? (which can be as much a function of cultural norms as adherence to faith) Most importantly why do you feel you should act on these feelings but manage to stop yourself before you actually perform them?

It's great that we as a people seem to be gaining some sense of sanity, compassion, and decency regarding the amorphous fear of something as abstract and subjective as a religion. But when you have that moment of fear or uncertainty, ask yourself, WHY?

Are you really afraid of the person or the faith? (being afraid of a complete stranger moreover a non-threatening one is hard to justify, as is being frightened of a freakin' religion) Or are you afraid of causing offense or distressing the other person? Are you afraid of looking like an insensitive ass in front of strangers at your favorite grocery store? Are you afraid to engage the unknown person in conversation or smile at them or interact with them or acknowledge their humanity as a reflection of your own?

If you are uncomfortable or afraid you owe it to your peace of mind to figure out why. Maybe read up on it, call a local mosque, synagogue etc and ask to speak with someone who wouldn't mind answering some stupid questions from an outside, go online and do some research, make up a handle and join a chat room or message board where you can ask these questions and not worry about looking or feeling like an ass because it's anonymous. Because here's the thing, odds are your fears, questions, and concerns are not yours alone.

Admonishing and quashing inappropriate, thoughtless, hateful, even violent behavior motivated by hate, fear, resentment and so on of someone's religion is absolutely a good thing to do. But if we don't explore and come to terms with the reasons that people, including ourselves, have these impulses in the first place then we're putting a bandaid on a bullet wound and pushing the issue aside. What good does that do any of us?

All I ask is that in addition to smacking the bigot shit head making pajama jokes at the woman wearing a burka in line at the grocery store, you take a second to wonder at the little voice of suspicion that spoke up in your head a split second before the bigot actually started to talk. Ask yourself what the difference between the two of you really is, is it just that he voiced the joke aloud?

Because while some of us may not act on it, some of us may act on it, and some of us (too few I think) may not even think it; we all know that these feelings and suspicions are buzzing around anyone wearing their faith on their sleeve. Whether they're Muslim, Orthodox Jews, Latter Day Saint, or any other religion or creed with a visible, demarcating symbol.

I'm not innocent I feel a spike of resentment in the back of my head whenever I hear someone mention their god as though he/she/it is the only deity out there, or assumes that I naturally worship theirs. I know what motivates it, I've been mistreated by people claiming the title of Christian. I know that it's fucked up when I get that buzz of hot headed annoyance. As a result I try to make a deliberate and conscious effort to kick it to the curb, because for every asshat that's looked down their nose at me, been condescending, judgmental, or flat out rude. There are at least a half dozen people that claim that same faith and have been fucking amazingly kind, inspirational, sincere, generous and basically the best ambassadors of their religion possible. So I can't justify a reactionary hatred to an off hand comment usually made by a well-intentioned stranger.

But I still have those moments, they may only last for a heartbeat, and I castigate and beat myself up over it but they happen. So I'm not asking anyone to do anything I'm not trying to do myself. I'm not asking us all to change our stripes for spots, to turn around years or decades of thinking overnight. All I'm asking is that you take a moment, a single breath, and think.

Please?

As always, thanks for reading and feel free to comment!

Update: This link popped up on my newsfeed on FB I'm not sure who or what posted it initially but it touches on some of what I'm trying (probably badly) to say here and does so in a an amusingly acerbic way that I enjoy. I love me some Cracked.com.

Note: You may have noticed that I slapped an adult content advisory on the blog recently. That's mostly so I can swear freely and not feel like my kindergarten teacher is clicking her tongue at me. Mrs.Fields was awesome. Also upon consideration I think I'm going to start posting three times a week, hopefully this will cut down on bullshit fluff pieces and allow me to properly polish and eyeball future posts.

Two Shows That Ought to be Resurrected by the Beeb!

noreply@blogger.com (Ash) — Fri, 06 May 2011 07:01:00 +0000

In my arrogant yank opinion of course. And, to be fair, the BBC needn't necessarily bring them back, I suppose ..no shut up self, these are far too British to be manhandled by the U.S. networks. To be fair I haven't seen the remake of Being Human but in general...just say no to U.S. remakes. Besides these need to be brought back with the cast intact (oh impossible dreams of impossibility).

Here's why this might be a practical idea, British television isn't devoted to the 22 episode format. It's not unheard of to have a show that lasts for say one two hour movie a 'season', or has a season of two movies and fucks off for a couple years only to return with a miniseries format. They do this shit all the time.

Now, look at some of the beloved shows (by fans and critics) of cable lately, Mad Men - 13 episode seasons, The Walking Dead - 6 episode first season slated for a 13 episode second season, Breaking Bad, 7 episode first season 13 episode seasons thereafter. The magic number seems to be 13 episodes. Why? Well honestly it's probably a lot less grueling on the cast and crew to do half the number of episodes as the standard run. Therefore the writing can be a lot more coherent and consistent and plot arcs can develop at a sane pace. In my ever so humble opinion of course.

So on to the two shows in mind.

Allison and Robert

The first is Afterlife starring Lesley Sharp (some may recognize her from the episode of Nu-Who 'Midnight' where she was Sky, the woman that sat next to the Doctor) and Andrew Lincoln (AKA Rick from The Walking Dead).

Sharp plays a woman named Allison Mundy and Lincoln plays Robert Bridge a shrink. Here's a youtube link to ten minutes of the first episode:

Allison and Robert sort of team up. Robert's life work has been the exploration of humankind's need to believe and the folly thereof. So he takes on Allison as a case study and asks permission to observe her and write a book. She reluctantly agrees partly, I think, to fuck with a skeptic. The show was on for two seasons and was consistently excellent. Also yes Allison was just cyberstalked and guilt tripped by two well meaning old people. Ahh life.

Why I love this show:

1. It's one of the few horror/sf/fantasy shows out there that doesn't present weird shit and assume the audience will just take it.
2. The skeptic is kind of a shit head. Robert argues a decent case but there comes a point when he's clearly just shouting in the dark and Allison makes no bones about calling him out on it.
3. Back story, there's a whole back story for Allison that the writers drop hints about but was never developed properly because the show was killed off, what hints there are, however, are excellent and after seeing what back story is provided (and it's significant) it's amazing Allison isn't locked up somewhere with liquid lunches and IV anti-psychotics.
4. Chemistry, for once the chemistry between two opposite sex heterosexual characters screams quite strongly of friendship rather than lust. How utterly refreshing. (Don't get me wrong a healthy dose of lust is fine it's just that actual friendship is so much rarer in media)

You can find afterlife online if you don't mind doing some digging. It was recommended to me by one of my bestest friends Charlotte. *waves* (Faithful reader, you may be fortunate enough to hear directly from Charlotte herself at some point)

The second show is Wire in the Blood recommended to me by my twin brother. It's a gritty, sour, dark, and violent British crime drama based on a series of books by Val Mcdermid. Now, if you can watch this clip and guess which character is the shrink and which the patient before the reveal you get brownie points. Go ahead, I'll wait. *waits*

Did you get it? No worries if you didn't I was thrown too. S'part of why I love this show. Robson Green is great at making the extremely weird and should-be-creepy Dr. Hill somehow sympathetic and admirable. He works with DCI Carol Jordan for at least the first two seasons by semi-profiling super creepy and realistically non-standard serial killers (unlike some that show up in say, Criminal Minds etc, that are more Hollywood shock than logical). He does so in order to assist DCI Jordan's team, in the face of outright hostility from her superiors at first, though after some time they STFU and use Tony at will. Tony Hill doesn't worry about politics, vengeance, saving face and all the rest of the crap we all tend to mire ourselves in, rather, he genuinely only cares about catching the killers and if possible understanding them as well as he can.

Meanwhile, he struggles to continue his pursuits in academia and fulfill his duties to his few patients. DCI Jordan is a tough nut as well, more married to her work than anything, or one, else. There are hints of something possibly developing between them but Hill is so fucking weird and screwed up that nothing really materializes, though Jordan has plenty of issues and baggage as well. Not that she's some kind of neurotic basket case, far from it, she's an efficient and dedicated officer but she's reasonably flawed. There seems to be a trope to make female cops ineffective bumblers, men with boobs, or neurotic battle maidens that fuck for sport and kill for fun. Or maybe that's just in my head. Whatever the case Jordan is none of the above which, again, is pretty nice to see.

I haven't read the books the series is based on though I'm assuming that after the first season or two the show and the books go about their business on separate planes of fictional existence, rather like Dexter (not to mention I'm fairly sure that at least one of the books was published after the show's run). I'd like to read them but haven't bothered to track down the paperbacks yet and the kindle copies are $8 a piece so yeah. But, for those interested they are:

*NOT to be confused with a book of the same title by Lisa Carey,a very different book indeed

So, reasons I like this show:

1. Chemistry, I know I know, I just said how nice it was to have a sexually compatible pair with something aside from lust on the mind. Well, here's the thing, due to Tony's weirdness and unexamined issues (in the show at least, I'm pretty sure there's more expansion/explanation in the novels and suspect there's more than Tony being shy standing in the way) a physical relationship between them is pretty much a non-starter. Which, IMO tends to make it more interesting if not entirely more realistic. Not that I would really know obviously.

2. Wacky wacky Tony Hill / Robson Green. Seriously, this guy should be disturbing as hell, and probably would be if we were in the room with him when he's doing his role play mind meld thing but since there's a TV/Computer screen between us and him we're safe to kick back and enjoy the show. Not to mention the inevitable appeal of a person who, at the end of the day, genuinely cares most about stopping dangerous people and saving lives than his personal anything. Hell, in one episode a person he trusts accuses him of something abominable and even has him arrested before he's proven innocent and it never really occurs to him to go after the offender on a personal level. Who does that? Doctor Tony fucking Hill, that's who. And Robson Green brings Tony beautifully to life. Also, again, BACK STORY that isn't spoon fed to the audience. After the clip above it's pretty clear that 'ol Tony is damaged goods but the writers don't sit down and spend five minutes of some character monologuing about Tony's history.They let Tony tell us in his own way and in his own time and even then not everything is revealed, as it should be! Seriously, who among us has ever had the iconic reveal moment of a fucked up friend's reasons for being fucked up?

3. There's loads of eps compared to some other canceled series. Seriously I think there are six seasons plus one film (set in Texas, Tony is brought in to consult on a potential death row case involving an Iraq war Vet and the murder of the man's family. Interesting to see such a very British show's take on Texas and the U.S.).

4. It's genuinely compelling. Seriously, the twists and turns are so tight and well done that often even pausing the show to use the restroom etc is annoying and to be held off on.

5. The soundtrack / audio editing. As far as I know no soundtrack has ever been released which is a pity. The soundtrack is one of my favorites and extremely distinct. The sound editing is also quite well done especially during Tony's montages.

The series is excellent though Jordan is replaced in later seasons and the quality sags a bit. The movie set in Texas (Wire in the Blood: Prayer in the Bone) is not as good as the series but is interesting and worth watching regardless. And, unlike Afterlife or loads of other shows WitB had a healthy run nonetheless it would be a great one to resurrect.

Wire in the Blood is available on netflix instant, Afterlife is harder to find but if you know your way around the 'net I have faith you'll be able to track it down. As always, thanks for reading!

Special Supplement! Free Comic Book Day! Ron English! ZFW: Volume One!

noreply@blogger.com (Ash) — Thu, 05 May 2011 23:53:00 +0000

Note: I was going to post this on Saturday, then it dawned on me that doing so may be a rather poor idea as who gets up early to read a blog on Saturdays? So here it is a couple days early to insure you folks get a chance to plan your Saturday accordingly. Enjoy!

Okay so, first things first, Saturday, May 7th is Free Comic Book Day! FCBD is the one day when you can bop down to your LCS (Local Comic Shop) and get free comics! That's right! It's a great way to find out about upcoming comics, find out about announcements regarding new titles or changes to existing titles, and sample something that you wouldn't usually pick up because it's free.

Comic Evolution storefront

So, this year I strongly recommend checking out Comic Evolution in Puyallup on the corner of Meridian and Pioneer, downtown by the US Bank. This year Chuck Messinger owner/operator will have a special edition flip book available featuring Zombies Vs. Cheerleaders, and as a special Comic Evolution bonus Steve Franks and Mark Rahner will be on hand to sign it! For those of you unable to attend feel free to go here to pick up the Comic Evolution exclusive cover of the flipbook and if you order before Monday Mark and Steve will sign it for you!

Chuck has some great deals going on for variants and back issues right now as well so feel free to pick up an armload or two while you're there!

Now if you can't make it to Comic Evolution but are in Southern Washington or Oregon check out Odyssey Comics and Coffee in Vancouver, Washington. Josh 'Bile' Cantrell will be there to sign comics and hang out with all our fans :D. Odyssey comics is located at 1503 NE 78th STE 10 in Vancouver and will be open from 9am to 7pm on Saturday. Come on by! They're also having a huge sale and special deals.

Also worth noting is that most libraries will also have some free comic books available, so why not bop on down, purchase your very own signed copy of the Rotten/Zombies Vs. Cheerleaders flipbook, a whole passel of free comics, get some good eats at the farmer's market and then swing by the library for a few more comics?

And while you're at CE or your local shop don't forget to order the newest and best offerings from Creator's Edge Press.

The amazingtastic cover!

MC's Secret Circus - A circus clown becomes a corporate powerhouse with the aid of a helpful alien.Ron English puts a contemporary twist on the pre-code comic aesthetic with the secret history of MC Supersized, the man who would be Ronald McDonald… if he hadn’t eaten the food. Also introducing MC’s obese alien sidekick Francis, who came to serve man… but got served. The comic, featuring parodies of comic book advertising, wacky packs, and introducing the Kursed Kids, offers a second chance at corruption for the generation of post-code consumers who were not sufficiently damaged by the comics of their youth. Pre-Order Now at your Local Comic Book Shop through Diamond Distribution, Order Code MAY110972.

Unfamiliar with Ron English (odds are you know him but don't know that you know him)? Check out his page for more examples of his work and awesomeness. Here's an excerpt "One of the most prolific and recognizable artists alive today, Ron English has bombed the global landscape with unforgettable images, on the street, in museums, in movies, books and television. English coined the term POPaganda to describe his signature mash-up of high and low cultural touchstones, from superhero mythology to totems of art history, populated with his vast and constantly growing arsenal of original characters, including MC Supersized, the obese fast-food mascot featured in the hit movie “Supersize Me,” and Abraham Obama, the fusion of America’s 16th and 44th Presidents, an image widely discussed in the media as directly impacting the 2008 election. Other characters carousing through English’s art, in paintings, billboards, and sculpture include three-eyed rabbits, udderly delicious cowgirls and grinning skulls, blending stunning visuals with the bitingly humorous undertones of America’s Premier Pop Iconoclast. "

Take a stand for great art and subversive thinking, help keep indie comics indie and celebrate the culture of freedom of expression we're so fortunate to have and order Ron English's MC's Secret Circus by Creator's Edge Press today! Diamond order code: MAY110972

The second offering CEP has for all the fine discerning readers out there is ZFW:Volume One.

Cover for issue #1 / Primer

We proudly announce that the full finished first graphic novel of Josh 'Bile' Cantrell's Zombies of Foreign Wars is complete and available for pre-order via Diamond! Featuring the art of Hopscotch Sunday a local Portland, Oregon artist ZFW details the exploits and adventures of a band of irascible vets that battle their way with booze, bullets, bullshit and camaraderie through a zombie infested United States.

A group of emo-teens perform a dark ceremony in a small town cemetery only something goes terribly wrong unleashing hoards of the undead from their graves. The teens panic and flee but only one survives and manages to reach relative safety in the local VFW hall. Once inside the teen pleads for help from a steely band of over the hill, hard drinking, hard cussing, and hard fighting vets. The zombies follow the teen to the hall and all hell breaks loose.

Will the heroic vets kick ass? Hell yes! Will they find the real source of the zombie plague? Will they take names and kick ass across the U.S. in a quest for answers and more booze? Order ZFW: Volume One to find out! Diamond order code: MAY110973

As always thanks for reading and feel free to comment! Remember, only you can keep independent comics independent!

Update: Holy crap I just found out that the Pioneer bakery down the street from Comic Evolution is going to be celebrating their 85th anniversary on Saturday. They're advertising $.25 coffee and donut and $1.00 loaves of bread! You can get an armload of comics, coffee and a donut, for only $.25 on Saturday! Get on down there folks! This is the link for more information on the anniversary celebration!

Jerome Bixby's The Man from Earth

noreply@blogger.com (Ash) — Thu, 05 May 2011 07:01:00 +0000

I'm going back to the old standby of movie/television show reviews for Thursday and Friday's posts. I've tried to choose some somewhat obscure favorites to tantalize you fine readers. I say tried because the weather here is finally becoming downright nice, never mind pleasant, and I really don't expect anything I post to really be able to vie with anyone's attention span when lovely weather beckons. Still, the sun goes down at some point and a good movie or show can be just the ticket.

Aaaanyway, to kick off I'm going to babble a bit about one of my new favorite flicks that's a bit obscure though it was released in '07. It's an interesting film partly because it's main method of distribution prior to its appearance on Netflix instant and on DVD (I think its even on BD now but I really don't see why) on Amazon etc. was via peer to peer torrent based file sharing. That's right, the movie was basically pirated and passed around but get this, instead of getting upset the creators and producers thanked fans for sharing it and solicited donations. It's fair to say it was a successful distribution method since, as noted, it's now reached a much wider and more profitable audience. There is an interesting entry for it on Tv tropes beware that it's spoilery although they do hide major spoilers.

John likes it by the fire

This film is, as the title of this blog states, Jerome Bixby's The Man from Earth, or The Man from Earth.

The film opens with a man loading goods into a pickup truck. Soon other characters arrive and tease him about leaving a party and so on. Turns out the man loading the truck is named John Oldman and is a professor that is retiring/quitting his job to pursue other interests but with very little notice to his colleagues and no real explanation of his flight or where he's going. His companions tease and cajole and finally call him out on the mystery. This is where it gets interesting.

DETOUR

I'll digress for a moment to warn the potential viewer about the quality of the film stock. For whatever reason they opted to use film or cameras or something that rendered the picture extremely grainy. The soundtrack is crisp and clear, the dialogue likewise and the set and location (yes just one of each really this is more like a play than a movie) are quite nice and yet...so, so grainy. So, if you can't stand poor picture quality (can't blame you if you do I despise bad audio or poorly leveled audio, y'know where the action is five billion times louder than the dialogue?) you may want to go in cautiously.

END DETOUR

John admits that the reason he's leaving (now don't laugh this actually works quite well in the movie) is that he's a 14,000 year old Magdalanian caveman and people around him are now beginning to notice that he isn't aging. Now he doesn't just blurt that out, he leads into it via the whole, 'what would you say if' schtick and presents it as more of a thought experiment than a reality before he launches into a spiel about how he had a chance to sail with Columbus but was still a little concerned about falling off the world. Yeah.

John being moody while his companions discuss him in the background

What follows is his autobiography while his friends (anthropologists, biologist, etc) try to reason out the logic of the claim, they even call in another character, a psychiatrist/psychologist (he states he's one but another characters refers to him as the other) to see if John has completely lost it. They discuss historical events he was part of, people he knew, and people he was.

The logic is pretty decent though the bit about the flat Earth bothered me as the Greeks were fully aware that the Earth was round. Still, as John says, "One man, one perspective" when asked about great historical events he was nowhere near when they occurred, meaning, he may've had a pulse at the time but wasn't necessarily on the scene. So I'll take that to mean he missed out on that bit of ancient Greek wisdom, or hell might've forgotten it, after all presumably he only has a normal human being's memory banks to work with. They do a good job of touching on and elaborating on the practicalities and questions most people who've pondered literal human immortality have likely wondered about.

The gang arrives spoiling John's plans

Now, about the writing. D'yeah know who Jerome Bixby is? No? Well then. This is his wikipedia entry but to save you the trouble of clicking I present a tasty excerpt (unfortunately he passed away 1998 The Man from Earth was his last work finished on his deathbed):

"His best-known television works include two Star Trek: The Original Series episodes: 1967's "Mirror, Mirror", which introduced the series' concept of the "Mirror Universe"; and 1969's "Requiem for Methuselah", about "Flint", a 6,000-year-old man. But his short story "It's a Good Life" (1953), adapted as a teleplay for The Twilight Zone by Rod Serling, is arguably his most generally known work to reach the small screen. It was popular enough to be revisited in the 1983 Twilight Zone film, and famous enough to be parodied in the Simpsons Halloween 1991 episode "Treehouse of Horror II". His 1968 Star Trek episode "Day of the Dove" is also much respected by fans of science fiction. Bixby also conceived and co-wrote the story for the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage, Bantam Books obtained the rights for a paperback novelization based on the screenplay and approached Isaac Asimov to write it.

Bixby wrote the original screenplay for 1958's It! The Terror from Beyond Space, which was the inspiration for 1979's Alien. The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine seventh season (1999) Mirror Universe episode, "The Emperor's New Cloak", is dedicated to Bixby's memory.

Jerome Bixby's last work, a screenplay The Man From Earth, was conceived in the early 1960s and completed on his deathbed in April 1998. In 2007, Jerome Bixby's The Man From Earth (as it is now called) was turned into an independent motion picture executively produced by his son Emerson Bixby, directed by Richard Schenkman and starring David Lee Smith, William Katt, Richard Riehle, Tony Todd, Annika Peterson, Alexis Thorpe, Ellen Crawford and John Billingsley."

So, really now, with talent, skill, and experience like that to back it up it's small wonder the darn thing is so well written and compelling. Remember it's basically a half dozen or so academics drinking whiskey and pondering shit in a cabin. Seriously, that's it, and it's still a great movie, a real brain twister that leaves you (me) kind of wondering/hoping if there might not be a John or Jane Oldman out there somewhere. The performances as well are decent though the fella playing John comes across as a hair over actory in one or two bits.

Behold, the trailer:

And apparently at least one performance of the film-as-a-play has been done which makes me giddy, I'd love to see a local group perform it, I think the story and such would be fascinating to see live. Here's a trailer for a play production of it, thus proving such productions exist:

Game of Thrones!

noreply@blogger.com (Ash) — Wed, 04 May 2011 07:01:00 +0000

So I started reading the Song of Ice and Fire books a few months ago. Actually if I'm honest I started to read them like two years ago but I only read the first and was then eaten by other projects and the like. Special thanks go to Gabe for introducing me to the series and then hounding -er 'reminding' me to read on. I'm not saying the series is dull enough that harassment is required to finish it, quite the opposite, I'm just a special little snowflake.

Aaaanyway. For those unaware the first book in the series A Game of Thrones has been made into a 10 part HBO miniseries and after the excellent reception of the first episode a second season has been fully greenlit.

In broad strokes the series is basically a retelling/reworking of the British historical conflict the War of the Roses. Only with like, magic, and dragons, and incredibly intense drama and angst. So, maybe saying its inspired by the War of the Roses would be more accurate. Hmm.

Sean Bean as Eddard Stark

Anyway in broad strokes the story takes place on the continent of Westeros. Years beforethe story opens, Robert Baratheon lead a rebellion against mad King Aerys Targaryen. Robert won the day and the crown with the assistance of his friend Eddard (Ned) Stark as well as Jamie Lannister a member of the Kingsguard who betrayed and murdered Aerys. The Targaryen family was also wiped out including an infant.

The Targaryens were the descendants of an invading family from the land of Valyria several thousand years in the past. Valyria later fell to an unknown cataclysm (widely believed by fans to have been an enormous volcanic eruption) leaving the Targaryens and their dragons the last of their kind. They invaded with actual dragons (seriously Westeros was doomed to fall imagine air power against swords...yeah) united the existing seven kingdoms of Westeros under one banner and forged the Iron Throne. Which is all nasty hooked jagged bits that grabs and cuts at the ruler sitting in it.The Targaryens are known for having violet eyes and marrying their siblings (they don't seem to have the violet eyes in the HBO series, at least not yet). Some think Aerys lost it because of his dubious lineage. Two Targaryens survived and fled, well two and a bit but one died in childbirth in exile. So Viserys Targaryen and his younger sister Daenerys live in exile in the Free City Pentos across the Narrow Sea from Westeros when the series opens.

Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen

Eddard Stark returned to his northern lands near The Wall after securing Robert's crown and has lived there with his wife ~~Caitlyn~~ Catelyn, their children Robb, Bran, Rickon, Arya, and Sansa as well as Eddard's acknowledged bastard Jon Snow. The stark children and Snow live and work together largely as equals though there's always the niggling presence of John's unknown mother and illegitimate status between them. ~~Caitlyn~~ Catelyn despises Jon as she resents the hell out of his mother's however brief existence and still warm spot in Eddard's heart. Eddard refuses to speak of who Jon's mother was.

The wall is a massive, like, obscenely huge creation of ice and stone (700 feet tall and 300 miles long) that separates the free north lands from the southern lands of Westeros. The Stark family has held the North for thousands of years but the persons that guard and watch the wall are the Night's Watch. Members of the Watch forswear children, families, and heritage when they vow to the wall. Meaning that anyone on the wall cannot sire new or claim existing children (I don't recall if any of the Watch actually had children before becoming members hmm), will inherit neither title nor lands, and are bound to the Watch until they die (these same rules seem to apply to the Kingsguard as well, once Jamie Lannister joined the Kingsguard as a teenager his twin sister became their father's heir as he refused to name his despised son Tyrion as heir). Desertion results in execution. Because there hasn't been any legitimate threat to the wall in generations the Watch is now largely fortified with criminals and the like. Beyond the Wall in the Free Lands are two flavors of enemies. The Wildlings, which are usually human but sometimes contain giants in their numbers they are wild people who tend toward chaos and are undisciplined though fierce fighters. The second enemy are the White Ones or the Others some kind of ancient undead wights that are ridiculous dangerous and nearly impossible to kill.

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Jamie Lannister

Robert has devolved to a drunken lump of a king more devoted to whoring and hunting than certain aspects of state, a situation he is fully aware of. He married Cersei Lannister twin sister of Jamie Lannister the Kingslayer, daughter of Tywin Lannister (an extremely skilled and ambitious statesman) and older sister of Tyrion Lannister who is a dwarf and is highly resented by his family not only because of his stature and hideous appearance but because his mother died having him. Soon after the first book opens Robert brings his court to Winterfell the ancestral castle of the Starks and requests that John replace his dead brother in law as Robert's Hand. The Hand of the king is a dangerous position and most Hands tend to die young through treachery or the hardships of the position. Robert reveals that he is aware of some of the danger at his court and can only trust Ned.

So there you have it, four houses the Wolves of House Stark, the Dragons of the Targaryens, the Stags of Baratheon, and the Lions of Lannister. Soon after the first book opens things go south in a big way.

Mark Addy as King Robert Baratheon

This hugely complex interwoven story could easily fall apart or just fail in general if it were not for the skillful prose and deft handling by George R. R. Martin. Each book is told in third person via several point of view characters. Martin's characters are raw, rough, believable and biased. No character is safe and no event or hardship is too hideous. Each book is massive and yet they are some of the easiest reads I've ever come across. I highly recommend the books to anyone interested.

Now, the HBO series. This is where you might expect me to piss and moan about poor adaptations, the differences in media and necessary changes etc. Buuuut I'm not gonna. As of now I've only seen the first episode although the third aired Sunday but so far I am floored by the excellent spot on casting, the attention to detail in props and costumes, and most of all the wonderful adaptation of the story to such a different format. So, if you want to read the books (highly recommended even if you're watching or plan to watch the series as there are aspects missing from the show necessarily as each book is like 500 pages) with a mental image and voice for most of the characters already provided then you could do much worse than using the HBO cast.

Kit Harrington as Jon Snow

Fair warning there is a quite a bit of sex and violence at least in the first episode for sure, but here's the thing, there is in the book too. Yes, Martin doesn't shy away from it but he also doesn't write such scenes for pointless thrills they're usually plot driven and tastefully done. then again, if you're watching a show with swords on HBO aren't you expecting some rampant good times?

Whatever the case if you have HBO you owe it to yourself to catch a Game of Thrones on Sunday nights, there are seven more episodes to go and a no doubt great second season in store for us as well.

Note: I read the first book as a paperback then purchased all four on the kindle to re-read the first and so on. Great purchase and great reads, they're perfectly adapted to the .mobi format. Also the fifth of a slated seven books A Dance of Dragons is slated for a July release.

E-Readers / Kindle Part 3

noreply@blogger.com (Ash) — Tue, 03 May 2011 07:01:00 +0000

Okay so it's been a few months now that I've had my kindle, and the shiny has aaaalmost worn off it.

I've really enjoyed using it at the gym when doing cardio etc it's nice to lose m'self in the story or whatnot I'm reading and thus not obsess over my breathing, pace, etc but let my body figure that shit out itself (usually works better that way too). It's great for the gym because it's so darn small and light. Even with the dayplanner style case I keep it in it it's still nicely portable and I don't have to worry about propping a heavy paperback or turning pages. Win.

Unfortunately the clip on light I've been using proved itself to be a neurotic unreliable battery eater. It may've just been my experience but yeah. It has a button on the back of the lamp section, when I first got it pressing it once turned on one of two LED lights pressing it again turned a second on and a third time turned them all off. Now it's basically completely useless. I suspect a lose connection or bad bulb but since I can't take it apart to repair it without basically destroying it (something I'll probably do now that the warranty is useless) it's hard to say. Until it stopped working though, it worked great. Which is a bit like saying until he died he was fine.

As far as syncing reading material between my laptop, Iphone, and the kindle itself that's been a mixed bag as well. If I read something on my laptop then go to the kindle itself and open the same file the kindle is excellent about asking if I'd like to sync to the furthest point and doing so. However, kindle to iphone is not as rapid or accurate and I haven't tried laptop to Iphone yet. I will say that I appreciate the kindle to personal computer app as with my wonky reading light I can now still read at night without screwing with an awkwardly angled bedside lamp.

Converting .pdfs to .mobi files has been mixed as well. All the freeware/shareware I've come across is not as successful or accurate as the amazon conversion process offered for a small fee but both tend to have some weird artifact issues, particular with heavily columned material like a document with a newspaper type layout, particularly if there are photos or advertisements separating the columns. Ideally as software and the popularity of e-books increases more documents will be made available in .mobi from the get-go and conversion software will improve. It's still very possible to read a .pdf on the Kindle either way.

The one thing I have yet to investigate is using E-books from my local library. I've read that many libraries offer this service but as I am Princess Fail and no longer have a library card (the one I did have expired gods only know how long ago) I'll have to investigate further and report back, and again, there may be limits and exceptions unique to my library system rather than the Kindle.

Aaaand We're Back! / Ding Dong the Witch is Dead

noreply@blogger.com (Ash) — Mon, 02 May 2011 16:20:00 +0000

Apologies for vanishing. Perfect storm of shit got real. Aaaaanyway. On to the purpose of this post.

Ding Dong! The Witch is dead eh? Which Witch? Why the Great American Boogeyman Osama Bin Laden. Now, don't get me wrong I had the same gut gleeful reaction as the rest of my people when I heard the news, sort of a fuck-yeah-we-got-im with a bit of that'll-teach-him and a dash of relief.

Why relief? I'm not sure, granted he was a monster but he didn't do anything to me specifically. I never got a note in the mail or an email saying, hey Ash, we're coming for you. Then again I was a member of the United States military, a woman with an education and a mouth, and a non-Muslim so I don't think we'd've been pals even discounting the wholesale slaughter of three thousand or so innocent human beings. He was a monster, I think we can agree on that.

But, compared to the weird glee when we captured Hussein (as a friend rightly pointed out my experience was likely amplified as I was on a U.S. base overseas at the time but I think the comparison still stands) this feels ...hollow. Yes, we killed the son-of-a-bitch, yes he deserved it but what now?

When we got Hussein there was a series of events and then an execution. It was drawn out for three years, I don't think anyone in the U.S. didn't see the photo of a hairy filthy Hussein freshly dragged from his hole or the photos of his execution.

Maybe it's a poor comparison as realistically speaking there was no fucking way Bin Laden would ever be captured, held for trial, tried, executed, and buried. Security concerns just couldn't justify the risk to life and limb. Hussein was largely hated and the security to keep his evil ass 'safe' until the state could execute him was some serious shit.

And clearly the expense and effort to attempt to keep the fucker under wraps just to have him become an even more public martyr than now would've been prohibitive. I'm not complaining that he didn't get a trial or a court though maybe it's a bit hypocritical of me not to. No, I get the need to slice his cancer out of our world. I do. But it still seems...anticlimactic maybe?

According to Wikipedia this is how the death of the most wanted man for nearly a decade went down (wikipedia tends to be more neutral than other sources, at least in my experience and opinion):

On May 1, 2011 in Washington, D.C. (May 2, Pakistan Standard Time), U.S. President Barack Obama announced that Osama bin Laden was killed by "a small team of Americans" acting under Obama's direct orders, in a covert operation in Abbottabad, Pakistan, about 50 km (31 mi) north of Islamabad. The Telegraph newspaper identified the compound's specific location on Google maps.According to U.S. officials a team of 20–25 US Navy SEALs under the command of the Joint Special Operations Command and working with the CIA stormed bin Laden's compound in two helicopters. Bin Laden and those with him were killed during a firefight in which U.S. forces experienced no injuries or casualties.According to one US official the attack was carried out without the knowledge or consent of the Pakistani authorities. In Pakistan some
people were reported to be shocked at the unauthorized incursion by US armed forces.The site is a few miles from the Pakistan Military Academy in Kakul. In his broadcast announcement President Obama said that U.S. forces "took care to avoid civilian casualties."Details soon emerged that three men and one woman were killed along with Bin Laden, the woman being killed when she was “used as a shield by a male combatant”. DNA from bin Laden's body, compared with DNA samples on record from his dead sister, confirmed bin Laden's identity. The body was recovered by the US military and was in its custody until, according to one US official, his body was buried at sea according to Islamic traditions. One U.S. official stated that "finding a country willing to accept the remains of the world's most wanted terrorist would have been difficult." U.S State Department issued a "Worldwide caution" for Americans following Bin Laden's death and U.S Diplomatic facilities everywhere were placed on high alert, a senior U.S official said. Crowds gathered outside the White House and in New York City's Times Square to celebrate Bin Laden's death.

Wonder if Obama was tempted to say mission accomplished?

Now, the idea of Pakistan, a nation with a pervasive secret police/security presence, somehow not knowing that the Great American Boogeyman was living within such a secure and sensitive area in a frigging compound is mildly ridiculous. I can't say I'm surprised but like most of us I think a disappointed sigh and some annoyed tongue clicking and head shaking is certainly in order. I imagine the awkwardness of receiving a phone call from the most powerful man in the world that states basically, "Hey shit heads, we got you and your little dog too". Someone's face is red.

Back to the point, the GAB is dead, ding dong. Now what? Now that we've shot our national load in one night of glee - not to disparage or question the celebrants in D.C. and New York, particularly New York but what now? We're still mired in 2 wars not counting whatever the fuck we're doing in Libya, we're still mired in a recession - I don't give a fuck what Wall Street and the Fed say until myself and my friends who are also unemployed have jobs with livable wages and college grads can actually get hired a year out of school we're in a goddamned recession - and we're still facing a more divided political system than I've ever seen (in my entire 27 years and some six months). So, what, now?

If we'd killed the GAB years ago it might've done some good, admittedly the manner of death and disposal smacks of mitigating backlash - an impossible thing to eliminate- but so what? The extremists are still going to come after us and Al-Qaeda is still going to be a threat.

It just seems... odd, non-plussed, dull, and worn now. Adding to the surrealism (for me at least) are the large number of people celebrating that were children when the attacks initially occurred. Hell, I wasn't even 18 when they happened although I'd enlisted in the USAF the summer before. Maybe it's the combination of realizing I'm pushing thirty combined with a bit of a generation gap, after all I had a life where Al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, IUDs and other post 9/11 terms were utterly foreign and they haven't.

So in the end maybe it's just me but waiting ten years for impersonal vengeance against a nebulous threat to me personally is not a very tasty dish after all. I hope the survivors and families of the 9/11 victims and all the people we've lost since get some satisfaction from the death of Bin Laden.

Update: This vid popped up on my fb page as a few friends had posted it. It's pretty damn funny so in an effort to inject some levity into this reasonably somber post I'm reposting it here. Enjoy!

As always thank you for reading and feel free to comment!