It abruptly occurred to me that I’m not going to sleep tonight. In which case, I may as well do this, instead:

Technical difficulties

So. When last we left our hero, he had just managed to, by sheer luck and divine inspiration, successful install a new modem from Wal-Mart and get back online late Monday night.

Tuesday morning, a big thunder boomer rolled through Zephyrhills. I was lying in bed thinking groggily I should get up and unplug the phone line from the computer, and not really wanting to, when I heard the phone ring and Paul answer it out in the kitchen. A few minutes later he opened the door between the kitchen and my room and walked through to use the bathroom (I have a privacy curtain up so people can get to the bathroom and I can still be visually isolated in the bulk of this room, for times when I’m, well, jerking off, or just laying around in a general state of deshabille, which probably isn’t how you spell that, but what the hell), and I called out “who was on the phone?” hoping to hell that anyone had been on the phone… otherwise, that ring would mean a power surge through the phone line, which could well mean my new modem was toast.

“Nobody,” Paul answered blithely, having no idea he had just thrust an icicle through my heart. So I got up and unplugged the phone line from the computer, feeling very much like the farmer nailing up the barn door after his favorite horse had already been stolen, and went back to bed, and impatiently waited the hour and a half it took for the thunderstorm to blow itself out before I dared check and see if my modem still worked… dreading all the time finding out that, in fact, it didn’t.

Finally, the storm blew over and I started to get up, and once more Paul opened the connecting door and said “Hey, is your phone working back there? I got no dial tone up here.”

Well, naturally, I immediately realized that the front phone, in the kitchen, is plugged into my computer (the cord runs over the door) so with my computer unplugged from the phone line, Paul would indeed have no dial tone up there. So, smirking, I grabbed the phone I keep plugged into the back jack (which doesn’t work as well as the front jack, which is why I use a long cord to plug my computer in to that one out there instead of the one in back, which has a lot of static on it and which won’t surf the Internet quickly at all) and raised it to my ear, preparing a pedantic speech to Paul on why he didn’t have a dial tone out front…

“FUCK!!!” I screamed like a hog being butchered (well, a very vulgar and remarkably articulate hog, anyway). “THE FUCKING PHONES DON’T WORK!!!”

Yes, sports fans, you got it… the big thunder boomer that I was afraid had neatly fried up my new modem had definitely knocked our phones out.

Now, I came to the benighted, desolate region known as Zephyrhills from civilized lands, and in civilized lands, when your electricity or your phone or other vital modern technological appurtenances get knocked out by meteorological phenomena, or, for that matter, acts of terrorism or geological catastrophe, trained professionals spring into action and the problem gets fixed quickly… within, say, a few hours at the most.

Not so in the magical kingdom of Zephyrhills. No, gentle readers, I am here to tell you that our phones, which stopped working sometime around noon on Tuesday, were not restored to their proper function until 7 p.m. or thereabouts on the following Wednesday.

Now, let’s recoup. The previous Wednesday (or maybe Tuesday) I woke up and found my modem had simply, overnight, chosen to expire. For the next five days, all sorts of assistance was promised me on a daily basis by the mooks and galoots that festoon this residence every night (and sometimes day) like bats cloistering around a favorite stalactite. None of this assistance materialized, and after, let’s see, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday of NO GODDAM INTERNET, I finally gave up, bought a goddam modem, and installed it my own goddam self, and got back online where a geek like me belongs.

The following day, I awoke in the midst of a thunderstorm, was too slow getting my computer unplugged, and spent the next hour and a half in fear my new modem had been blown out by said thunderstorm.

Now, the thunderstorm is over, and WE HAVE NO PHONES.

And we continue to have no phones until the evening of the following day.

One of the reasons for this? Well, yesterday I walked up to Chad and Mel’s around 4 in the afternoon, ostensibly to use their phone to call Verizon and bitch at them yet again (I’d already done it Tuesday evening, to no avail) for me not having a goddam dial tone yet. I also wanted to check my email and this page for comments. (Email has sucked lately, BTW. All I’ve gotten besides spam is a generic note from one buddy, who has lately gotten into the annoying habit of sending out these generic notes, like those really annoying chain letters or newsletters some people send out at Christmas, to a bunch of his friends at once. He does it in hopes of getting a lot of email back, and I’ve humored him with that up until now, but I’ve mentioned to him before that I find it annoying to get goddam mass email instead of something individually addressed, and he keeps pulling this shit, so fuck it, I’m not responding to this crap any more. If he doesn’t have anything he wants to say to me individually, well, that’s fine, he can live without an individual response.)

On the way, I passed two Verizon trucks parked beside 12th Street, next to a big hole in someone’s front yard. There was a cool canvas umbrella over the pipe that was being worked on, and two Verizon employees standing about ten feet away next to one of the trucks, talking desultorily to each other and apparently not doing a goddam thing towards getting my phone turned back on.

So I walked up to them. Now, I hate confrontations, although I guess most people who have any experience with me wouldn’t believe that, because at the age of 41, if I have to confront someone to get something done, well, I’ll do it. Sometimes I am amazed at some of the people I have simply walked up to and gotten cranky with right in their faces, when I look back on it afterward, and the fact that it hasn’t gotten me badly beaten or killed yet is actually quite astonishing. I don’t like doing it and I’ll walk miles to avoid doing it if I feel I really can afford to, but… well, if I feel something has to get done and a confrontation is the only way to get that process moving, I tend to tie right into it. Strange but true.

So I go up to these guys and say “Hey, fellas, any idea when this is gonna get fixed?" I’m keeping my voice reasonable and even pleasant. “Because my phone’s been down since noon yesterday and I’d sure like to check my email.” “Welp,” says the older of the two, a guy probably ten or fifteen years older than me, “we cain’t work in all this h’yar lightnin’.”

Now, you weren’t there, so let me tell you that, yes, it was overcast, and yes, there was thunder, distantly, and yes, it was even kind of half raining… little spats of droplets were coming and going with the whim of the wind. But in late July in Central Florida, that’s not even remotely close to a thunderstorm; that’s practically clear weather.

However, I admit, I was rather bemused by the fact that I was, apparently, addressing someone straight out of Coen Brothers movie, at least, judging from his thick as nutty peanut butter Southern accent. I half expected him to look at me, blink, and say ‘okay then’ any minute. But what I did say was “Well, you realize this is storm season, right? So it’s going to be doing this for like the next three months?”

He just kind of looked back at me like I was some novel but not particularly interesting specimen of toad he’d found on his car seat one morning and repeated, “Well, we cain’t work in all this h’yar lightnin’.”

And then, after a few seconds’ careful reflection, he added, “And yore gettin all sarcastic about it ain’t gonna help move things along any.”

“Ah,” I said. See, I have a threshold, and it’s a very small one. When people give me straight lines, well, I have to swing on them. “Well, just for the sake of my own curiosity, what do you think would move this along some? Um… say… maybe it might be something like, you guys going over and picking up those tools and actually doing some work? Something of that nature?”

See, you don’t want to start up on me with sarcasm. That’s like picking up a light sabre and going after Darth Vader, or challenging Barry Bonds to a home run hitting contest. I say that with absolutely no false modesty at all. I’m not very good at a lot of things, and there are any number of areas in which anyone can compete with me and win fairly easily. But sarcasm? Don’t even go there.

Now my hillbilly pal is getting a tad bit upset with me, but hey, I’m sure his phones at home work just fine. “Now, look, fella,” he says, “I told you, we…”

“Cain’t work with all this h’yar lightin’,” I say, my voice slightly high and overly nasal as I viciously mimic him. “Yeah. Well, listen here, Tex… the phones are out because that place you’re working on already GOT HIT by lightning. That means it isn’t going to get hit by lightning AGAIN. Leaving aside the fact that there isn’t any actual lightning right NOW, anyway, and if you’re really going to wait for clearer weather than this, then we aren’t going to have any phones until Thanksgiving. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“No, no,” he said, rather hastily (since I assume he had a supervisor who was already up his ass, given the number of screaming complaints they’d doubtless been getting from all my neighbors over the last day or so), “it’ll get done, we jest need to see if this h’yar storm is rollin’ in or rollin’ out, that’s all.”

So I gave up; clearly I wasn’t going to move these guys. “Okay,” I said, starting to turn away. Then I turned back. “Lemme ask you something though… while you’re standing here… and I don’t have any phones, and neither do any of my neighbors… you know, the people who pay their phone bills every month, which pays your salary… as I say, while you’re standing here not working in all this h’yar lightin’… are you all getting paid?” He didn’t say anything to that, but I believe he did have the good grace to flush a little.

It’s worth noting at this point that there were two trucks, and two Verizon guys, standing around doing nothing when I left him. A half hour later, when I was coming home, there were THREE trucks, and THREE Verizon guys, standing around doing nothing. And when Scott showed up to play Paul’s new STAR WARS game at six or so, he mentioned that he’d gone by there and there were now FOUR trucks, and FOUR Verizon guys, standing around doing nothing.

However, about an hour after that, our phone did start working again, so I guess they decided they could work in that thar lightnin’ after all.

To say I was fit to be tied during all this would be an understatement verging on irony. It would be akin to noting that the Atlantic Ocean is an area of high humidity, or that the moon is a somewhat arid place.

Anyway, the phones came back on last night around 7, and I promptly trundled to this h’yar PC and hit the AOL icon, praying that my modem would please, please, please, if there is any sort of loving God in this universe, PLEASE, work.

AOL wouldn’t open.

You have never in your life seen any being, mortal or immortal, more aggravated than I was when I kept clicking stupidly on the AOL icon and it kept… not DOING anything. What the hell was this? It was maddening! Finally, I just went over and hit SHUT DOWN at the start button, figuring I’d reboot and hopefully that would fix it.

As soon as the Windows screen collapsed into the background pic underneath it that you see when you first boot up (in my computer’s current case, a very nice pin up shot of Katherine Heigl), the AOL rectangle unfolded. Grinned at me for a second or two. And then vanished, as my computer SHUT DOWN.

So I rebooted. Up came the computer. We got to the Katherine Heigl pic and the little grey rectangle that allows me to log on. I hit CANCEL (I always hit CANCEL unless I really feel like logging on as one of my many web pseudonyms, or one of the protagonists of one of my novels) and Katherine vanished, to be replaced by a blank screen, then the various icons of the shortcuts on my normal desktop, then the background graphic (currently, a nice collage shot I put together of various different pics of Katie Holmes).

No sooner had Katie’s many smiling faces appeared than a Grey Box of Death also appeared, informing me that 3comwrkl had committed a fatal error and would be closed. I had no idea what 3comwrkl was, as I had never seen that particular error message before, but like all Windows users, I loathe grey boxes of death, which have only two options on them: Close, which usually makes whatever you’ve been working on for the past six hours go away, and More Information, which only masochists ever hit on, because all it does is tell you a lot of gibberish that doesn’t accomplish anything, then you still have to hit Close. There should be at least one more option, like Fuck You Grey Box of Death, Someday I Will Find Out Where You Live And Kill You Gruesomely, but there never is.

I hit CLOSE, expecting my entire Windows Desktop to implode, but no, the GBOD just went away, which was a relief.

So I clicked the AOL icon. To my relief, AOL immediately opens up… well, the initial rectangle opens up, AOL always takes its sweet time about actually opening on my system. Eventually, the AOL screen pops open. I hold my breath, whisper a fervent prayer, and simply hit the space bar (I never bother to type in a full password when I’m just checking modem function; if everything is jake, the modem will connect and AOL will give me a second chance to put in my password then) and RETURN. And wait.

Nothing seems to happen. Then: a white box of death pops up: “America Online is unable to initiate your modem.”

My screams, at this juncture, are such as to cause parents for a four block radius to hustle their children out to their vehicles while hastily unfolding their emergency evacuation road maps.

So I fuck around with the modem reloading software in Windows for a while and that does nothing. I curse and snarl and shut down the machine. My idea is to put in one of the many modems I’d tried the previous weekend, specifically, the one that came up as an ‘unknown PCI device’. See, my newly bought, now apparently fried, modem is also a PCI device, so I’m hoping the CD ROM that came with it will have a driver for the ‘unknown PCI device’. Worth a shot, right? So I unhook the CPU and get the side panel off and manage to get the other modem into the modem slot and get the CPU hooked up again and reboot.

And, about twenty minutes later, I’m forced to admit, this isn’t going to work… if the driver for this goddamn unknown PCI device exists on this CD-ROM, the CD-ROM stubbornly refuses to admit it.

Now, I could not tell you why I did what I did next. Perhaps the ghost of Jeff, looking over my shoulder, inspired me telepathically to do it, like Richard Dreyfuss in ALWAYS. (Although Jeff never owned a computer before he died in 1993. But maybe he’s hung out and picked up some cyber savvy since then.) But, I decided, what the hell… and I went in, deleted the modem parameters already installed in Windows, unhooked the CPU again, pulled the side panel off, and reinstalled the previous modem, that I assumed was now burned out, in a different modem slot (since the unknown PCI device was in the slot I’d been using before). Then I brought the computer up again, and Windows basically automatically installed the old ‘new’ modem all over again… and…

AOL still refused to initialize it.

So I did what I’d had to do Monday night… went into AOL’s Expert Install and set the new modem as the Default.

Expecting nothing, I went back, hit the space bar and ENTER…

And the modem worked.

Now… since that blessed moment, I’ve had this computer shut off and turned on again, I think, three times. And what I’ve learned from that is sometimes, when I shut this computer off and bring it back up, all is well, but other times, I immediately get that Grey Box of Death regarding 3comworkl, or whatever, and then I have to delete the modem configurations, shut down, restart, reinstall the modem, and set it to Default with AOL’s Expert Install… all of which is a huge pain in the ass. I don’t understand why this error message comes up sometimes but not all the time, but from now on, this computer stays on.

This is annoying, because (a) this thing is dying and its hard drive makes odd and annoying growlie noises and in this bedroom, it’s no more than ten feet away from me at all times, and (b)this is Zephyrhills, and it’s storm season, and within 24 hours at the most, we’ll have another thunderstorm and the power will go out for at least a few minutes so this computer will shut off anyway.

However, whenever I’m not online, the phone line will be unplugged from this computer. This means I had to go to a lot of trouble to reconfigure our phone set up, getting really long cords to plug the kitchen phone into my jack here in the bedroom, so that Paul still has a phone out there when the computer isn’t plugged in. My phone back here will be unplugged whenever the computer is, but that’s fine. I never get calls from anyone, and if I do, I can go out front.

Okay, that’s the computer shit. Comment if you like, or just throw up your hands in disbelief at my idiocy.

A living room far, far away

Well, I just got all exultant about not being hooked on X-Box or other computer games. In fact, I was feeling very superior, because Paul’s buddy Scott called in sick at work yesterday, showed up here at 1 p.m., and he and Paul did not so much as stir off the couch for TWELVE SOLID HOURS. Then Paul threw Scott out at 1 a.m. and he played his own Star Wars game until SEVEN IN THE MORNING.

Yeah, I’m so much better than THOSE goobers.

Well, I had Paul show me the basics of getting around the X-box controller and how the STAR WARS game works, so I’ll be playing it a bit while he’s at work today, no doubt. I set up my own wannabe Jedi, a blonde named Krell Marader, who is seeking redemption for her unsavory past by becoming a Jedi Knight.

You know according to the opening scroll in this, it takes place FOUR THOUSAND YEARS before the rise of the Evil Empire?

FOUR THOUSAND YEARS, and they still have the same science fiction technology. Same starships. Same blasters. Same droids. Same light sabres. Same warp drive.

Technology doesn’t work like this, especially advanced technology which requires an intricate and interactive knowledge and engineering base, especially in a capitalist, profit driven culture like the STAR WARS culture clearly is (they have interstellar trading corporations). Technology only stays static when either (a) it’s very primitive and requires little maintenance or technical manufacturing know-how to create, or (b) nobody really understands it, it’s simply being stamped out by rote. Neither seems to be true in the STAR WARS universe (player characters can, fairly casually, extensively modify, upgrade, and other alter and rearrange and re-engineer and reprogram advanced artifacts like energy weapons and droids, indicating that pretty much everyone understands the basic concepts) so for this kind of really complex and highly advanced technology to have remained in absolute stasis for five millenia or longer… well, it’s just frickin absurd.

Hell, even STAR TREK had the warp drive and transporters improve from the 23rd to the 24th Century, and people invented holodecks in between ST and ST, Jr. And that’s a ridiculously slow rate of tech improvement, compared to the meteoric technological progression we experienced in the 20th Century.

But, what the hell. The game seems kinda fun. I’ll see how quickly I can get poor Krell killed off.

Workforce innovation

It appears I’m being fired again. At least, from the ranks of the gainfully Unemployed.

Which is to say, I got a notice in the mail today from the Agency for Workforce Innovation, AKA the State of Florida Unemployment Department, telling me I’ve been scheduled for an Eligibility Review. Said ER is to take place on July 31 at 9:30 a.m. in lovely scenic Dade City, and I’m supposed to answer a bunch of questions on the back of the form, which is okay, and bring along all my work search documentation, which is very bad because I haven’t done any work searching except for occasionally calling Westaff’s availability line and letting them know that if they have an assignment for me in Zephyrhills, I’m available, and if I don’t come to the interview I can’t get any more Unemployment checks, which is worst of all, because Dade City is several miles up the road THAT way and I have no car, and Zephyrhills has no bus system.

If I COULD make the interview, I suspect my Eligibility would be Reviewed and found severely wanting. However, I can’t really see how I can make the interview. Well, okay, I could take a cab, and it would probably only cost $10 either way… Friendly Cabs runs people into TAMPA for $40 one way, so Dade City would probably be about half that both ways. But taking a cab to an interview where I’m just going to lose my benefits anyway strikes me as silly.

I could, with some effort, fake a reasonable work search… go back through the past several months classifieds online and write down secretarial ads and claim that I’ve faxed or emailed resumes to them electronically… and I suppose I might do that. I don’t know if they’ll find that convincing. The fact is, I haven’t sent out resumes to ads in the paper because there are no secretarial jobs in Zephyrhills and I have no way of getting into Tampa for even an interview, much less a job. I haven’t filled out any applications in Zephyrhills because the only work around here is at places like Wal-mart, and I haven’t been anxious to become suicidally depressed.

However, I did hear recently (from Paul’s friend Scott) that Access, the local call center, has a job called ‘online correspondent’ that is basically answering customer’s email, and that sounds perfect for me. So I suppose I’ll just have to go do that.

But it was more fun when they were sending me money to do nothing.

A four oz. glass with 2 oz. of water in it

Well. I’m trying to remember to be appreciative and thankful to the powers that be, because my sore throat hasn’t had a resurgence lately, and I didn’t have a migraine all day today. Of course, the modem thing has been aggravating, and the losing my Unemployment benefits deal is a pain in my ass. But at least I’m not actually in physical discomfort, much less pain, at the moment, and am not worried at the back of my mind about whether or not I’m going to finally have to give up and go to the emergency room, which I have been worried about quite a lot the past few weeks. So that’s something, and it’s in fact quite a good something. Call it half full if you want to.

Hey, kids! Comics!

My box of comics from Demolition finally arrived Tuesday, so, yes, it’s that time again:

JSA ALL STARS #3 - Pretty much more of the what they’ve been doing; focusing on one JSA member each ish. This one is about Dr. Fate, who is currently Hector Hall, who I always felt was one of the more useless members of Infinity Inc, but whom other writers than Roy Thomas have managed to do interesting things with. Mike Norton mentioned that he just waits for the graphic novel collection of these miniseries to come out, and that’s probably a wise foreign policy. But it’s not like I buy a lot of comics anyway.

I should mention that there was an interesting ‘Golden Age’ Dr. Fate back up story, featuring Kent and Inza Nelson, in this issue. I enjoyed it; it was written and drawn in a sort of Golden Age style, but with very much modern day sensibilities (Inza was an equal partner, not just someone for Fate to rescue). Feminist sensibilities aren’t the reason I enjoyed it; it was a well written and fun little story despite the intrusion of relentless late 20th Century political correctness.

JSA #50 - the Golden Age Green Lantern, who has been calling himself Sentinel for the last couple of years to avoid confusion in the marketplace, takes back the Green Lantern monicker in this issue. Which makes me wonder if the modern GL book has just been cancelled or something, and if so, hip hip hooray, I never liked that modern day poseur one bit. Beyond that, this was a typical issue of JSA: a lot of really hectic confusing stuff involving a great many enormously powerful characters and a lot of transdimensional travel, all tied up with a lot of heavy post Crisis DC continuity, occurred. Apparently Power Girl is not actually the granddaughter of Arion, Warlord of Atlantis, which is nearly as nice a development as Alan Scott getting the Green Lantern title back. All told, a good issue, if one I can barely remember already… one of the problems I have with JSA. Like Geoff Johns’ work on AVENGERS, I enjoy this book while I’m reading it, but don’t retain much after I’ve put it down.

POWER COMPANY #s 17 & 18 – the last two issues. Ehhh. Not bad. At least both were drawn by Tom Grummett, which was much nicer than the lousy fill in artists they’ve been getting. Kurt seemed to wrap up most of the loose ends well enough, although he really didn’t seem to have much of an idea how to use all the characters in his final interdimensional battle scene, and I get the feeling he’d have really liked to sprawl the story over several more issues. I enjoyed the idea of this book and am sorry it didn’t catch on better, since I think Kurt could have gotten into his stride and done some good work here, given a chance. However, on the other hand, the man is pretty much the closest thing I have to a mortal enemy and another personal/professional failure for him can’t be a bad thing on Planet Darren. Hey, I bought the goddam book; it’s not like I wanted it to fail… I’m just finding a silver lining, here.

LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT #169 -- written by Tom Peyer, which is why I bought it. Drawn by someone named Tony Harris, who very badly wants to draw for a Grant Morrison VERTIGO title, from what I can see, and who probably regards drawing Batman as beneath him. I don’t know how I felt about this story. It’s an old, old idea… the guy who has the power to make people obey him, in this case, after shaking hands with them. The story ends with Batman about to shake hands with him, although it occurs to me that the ability may not work through gloves, which could be Peyer’s easy out. Peyer does some interestingly four dimensional character work on the main villain, and even gets into Batman’s head a tiny little bit, but… well, I just expect more from Tom Peyer, who seems to basically be jerking off since Hourman got cancelled. Maybe it’s over for him. Maybe, like Kurt after Liberty Project bombed, and Nicieza after Psi Force, Peyer has just shot his wad and will never get it back again. Pity if that’s true.

Black Panther 61 - I am simultaneously sick to the point of vomiting of Kevin “Kasper” Cole, and absolutely fascinated with watching him go through his own peculiar version of the Rite of Ascension. Similarly, I’m getting rather annoyed with Christopher Priest’s incredibly pretentious shortening of his own pseudonym to the rather more trendy ‘Priest’, and yet, enjoying his work on this title more than I ever have. ‘Priest’s blog page is similarly insufferable. It’s enough to make me both sorry and glad that this title is being cancelled. At least I won’t have to simultaneously love it and hate it any more… although, as has always proven true in the past, when this particular Black Panther title goes away, something unique and extraordinary and priceless will once more be lost to comics.

Avengers 68/483 - I like the fact that the rebooted Marvel titles have started doing the dual issue numbering as a sop to us old time fans. Beyond that, I can’t remember much of this issue of Avengers, probably because the lettering is very modern, the art is very modern, and nothing much ever happens in each individual issue. I believe the She Hulk freaked out and turned into a monstrous type Hulk monster and did some damage to the rest of the team (nonsensically managing to ignore the Vision’s intangible disruption technique, and harm him when he was diamond hard, which no one, not even Count Nefaria, has ever managed to do before), and the major villain revealed himself at long last (making us all feel stupid for not getting that ‘Dell Rusk’ was an anagram all along, or associating the ‘red gas’ with, well, rearrange the letters and see for yourself). Beyond that, I can’t remember anything else… probably not much else happened, actually.

I’m enjoying this title, but word is Johns is leaving the book soon, and it’s hard to figure Marvel having anyone else they could put on it that I’d care to read. But then, I said the same thing when Kurt left, so I can always be surprised. Maybe they’ll give it to Tom Peyer. Although he seems to work exclusively for DC, so probably not.

Terra Obscura - partially plotted by Alan Moore, also plotted and fully scripted by Peter Hogan. I generally hate it when Moore does this, but I didn’t mind this issue. The world and characters of Terra Obscura are really too silly to take as seriously as Moore obviously wants us to, but the various goings on were interesting and entertaining and I’ll keep buying it… assuming it comes out at all regularly. Beyond that, nothing much really stands out in my memory… except the central themes and plotlines seem rather pedestrian, unoriginal, and predictable, for Alan Moore. Clearly he’s just throwing rough ideas out and letting Hogan run with them, and Hogan doesn’t seem to be much of a runner.

Promethea 26 - the strangest issue of this title yet… well, okay, not really, but still, this one is pretty weird in its own right. The first America’s Best Comics crossover I’m aware of, as our heroine Sophie runs off to Millenium City to hide from the FBI, so, naturally, the FBI enlists the aid of Tom Strong and his family to bring her in. Moore gets in a couple of very enjoyable zingers at the expense of an unnamed Bush Administration, and obviously has a good time letting us see Promethea from Tom Strong’s POV, while also showing us Tom Strong as filtered through the rather grittier and more post-modern lens of this title's murky, morally ambivalent ambiance and atmosphere, rather than the more Golden Age, black and white, pulp hero context we usually see Tom and his supporting cast portrayed in. Tom seems, oddly, much more four dimensional and credible in this issue than he ever has in his own title; I wonder if Moore himself was startled, while scripting this story, to find that suddenly his favorite pulp hero/melodramatic mannikin had suddenly taken on a life and reality all his own.

Promethea herself doesn’t make an actual appearance in this story, showing up only once as a sort of dream figure. Mostly it’s about Sophie, in her new identity, hanging out with some new boyfriend she’s picked up, and his stoner friends, and trying to avoid the notice of the authorities. As always in this book, very little happens, but even since that godawful tour through the Kabala, the very little that happens has all been very character driven, so I don’t mind. I would have liked to see a bit more of the plight of Jack, however.

Last and certainly not least, my Supreme: The Return TPB finally showed up. This was both a treasure and a disappointment, since I’d been hoping that the Story Of The Year TPB, reprinting the first half of Moore’s run on the title, which I’ve read only a few of, would show up first. Most of what’s reprinted in this, the second half of the run, I actually have, so there was very little new material for me to read. In fact, only “The Ballad of Judy Jordan” and “A Silence At Gettysburg” were stuff I didn’t already own, and, well, “Silence” is, for Alan Moore, pretty dumb stuff… Wild Bill Hickock goes crazy and decides to change the outcome of the Civil War, resulting in one of the more turgidly cliché modern day alternate Americas I’ve ever seen, until Supreme and those whacky kids in the League of Infinity set things aright.

Now that we have a working phone again, I have to remember to call Demolition sometime today and make sure they order the first Supreme TPB for me. That’s the one I was really looking forward to reading; I only have maybe two of those issues.

RULES OF THE ROAD

In one of his many invaluable essays on life in Hollywood, Mark Evanier described his first meeting with legendary TV comic and icon Milton Berle. Upon being introduced to Uncle Miltie and shaking hands with him, Mark, who is a pretty witty guy, blurted out without even thinking about it, “Wow, I didn’t recognize you in men’s clothing”. According to Mark, this soured Uncle Miltie on him from that point forward, because Mark had broken Rule Number One When Hanging With Milton Berle, namely, Never Be Funnier Than Milton Berle.

I’m reminded of that anecdote now.

Recent experiences at Electrolite being pretty much entirely similar if not completely identical to my previous experiences at Uppity-Negro.com and TampaTantrum.com, I thought I’d take the time to extrapolate whatever wisdom there is to find in the whole mess. Here’s The Deal, as far as I can see:

If you want to make friends and influence people when you head out onto the blogging trail, at least, as regards your posting comments on other people’s blogs, you MUST NOT:

Rule E comes mostly out of my experiences with Aaron Hawkin’s Uppity-Negro blog. He gets a lot of female posters and like any of us male geeks would be in that admirable position, he is thoroughly whipped by them. If a new reader comes along and does anything whatsoever to offend the babes on Aaron’s blog, that new reader can expect a cold shoulder from Aaron roughly the size of the Greenland glacier. I don’t really blame Aaron for this; for a male geek, positive female attention is a jewel beyond price, and if I ever had any women posting to my blog who weren’t related to me by marriage, I’d most likely dance and sing like a puppet on a string when they cracked the lash, too.

I should add to this that I’ve learned, from Electrolite, that one Must Not Be Whimsical, Oblique, or Overly Geeky When Posting To A Big Important Political Marketplace of Ideas Type Blog, because those guys just have no time for Theodore Marley Brooks or Cornelus van Lunt references, regardless of how amusing or entertaining you and some others may find them.

Now, I am posting this to point out that while these may be the universal Rules of the Road on other blogs (and as far as I can see, they are, indeed, pretty much universal) you can ignore them here. I don’t care if you:

Oh, and I like geeky references and would just adore whimsical, cleverly elliptical posts to my comment threads, although I suspect I’d get annoyed if someone started posting a whole lot of Harry Potter-speak here, just for one example.

If there is a universal rule on this blog, it is quite simply, Do Not Be A Bigger Asshole Than The Blogger. In fact, if you can avoid it (and most of my small number of regular posters avoid it with style and panache) Don’t Be An Asshole At All. I am quite a big enough asshole myself to supply all the assholiness necessary for any blog, and I will continue to keep this blog well furnished with stupid remarks, doltish mistakes, whiney rationalizations, and defensive recriminations by the ton lot, there can be no doubt. You need bring none of your own asshole nature with you, I have plenty and am always willing to share.

THE INEVITABLE DISCLAIMER

By generally accepted social standards, I'm not a likable guy. I'm not saying that to get cheap reassurances. It's simply the truth. I regard many social conventions in radically different ways than most people do, I have many many controversial opinions, and I tend to state them pretty forthrightly. This is not a formula for popularity in any social continuum I've ever experienced.

In my prior blogs, I took the fairly standard attitude: if you don't like my opinions or my blog, don't read the fucking thing.

Having given that some more thought, though, I'm not going to say that this time around, because I've realized that what this is basically saying is, 'if you don't like what I have to say, tough, I don't want to hear it, don't even bother to tell me, just go away'.

And that's actually a pretty worthless attitude. It's basically saying, 'I don't want to hear anything except unconditional agreement and approval'. And that's nonsense. This is still a free country... for a little while longer, anyway... and if you really feel you just gotta send me a flame, or post one on my comment threads (assuming they actually work, which I cannot in any way guarantee) then by all means, knock yourself out.

Unless your flame is exceptionally cogent, witty, or stylish, though, I will most likely ignore it. You do have a right to say anything you want (although I'm not sure that's a right when you're doing it in my comment threads, but hey, you can certainly send all the emails you want). However, I have an equal right not to read anything I don't feel like reading... and I'm really quick with the delete key... as various angry folks have found in the past, when they decided they just had to do their absolute level best to make me as miserable as possible.

So, if you don't like my opinions, feel free to say so. However, if I find absolutely nothing worthwhile in your commentary, I will almost certainly not respond to it in any way.

Stupidity, ignorance, intolerance... these things are only worth my time and attention if they're entertaining. So unless you can be stupid, ignorant, and/or intolerant with enough wit, style, and/or panache to amuse me... try to be smart, informed, and broad minded when you write me.