Pay Attention, Alanis

Rain on your wedding day? Not ironic.

Ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife? Also not ironic. Unfortunate, perhaps... but not ironic.

But now when a man who happens to be the 91st richest man in the United States due to his multi billion dollar roofing business just happens to die falling off his own roof?

Well now, that's some delicious delicious irony right there, kids!

Verily and Forsooth; I, the Hulk, Smasheth

Secretly dig comics but like to put forth an air of pretension? Marvel's got a graphic novel for you! Set in the Elizabethan Age, Marvel 1602 posits a world where all the familiar Marvel heroes (Spiderman, Fantastic Four, Dr. Strange, and Daredevil, to name just a few) make their initial debuts in 17th century England rather than the modern day, with all the strife, pomp and circumstance of that era.

Written by Neil Gaiman (of Sandman fame) and illustrated beautifully by Andy Kubert and digitally painted by Richard Isanove, this novel is a literal feast for both the eyes and the mind. If you're a fan of Marvel comics, I highly recommended picking it up. I've personally re-read it twice so far after initially purchasing it 4 months ago, and it stays engaging and fresh with each reading.

Another Casualty of The Writer's Strike

I used to look forward to Thursdays... seeing as how I'm a Superman fanatic AND a connoisseur of fine female flesh, Smallville was my go-to for Thursday night entertainment.

Sometimes a little soap-operatic, sometimes just plain hokey, Smallville still never failed to deliver a potent combination of super-powered coolness and hot tasty babes. With the addition of Laura Vandervoort (see picture inset), things were only getting better...

Until the Writer's Strike took all my fun away. Why do the writers hate fanboys? Don't they undertand that without fresh new episodes, our attention spans wander away? (Pay no attention to the Trekkies who obsessively watch the same old TOS episodes over and over again... they're a mutant strain of fanboy we try not to acknowledge.)

Pigs are Tasty, Part Two!!

A grocery store in Manhattan (who shall remain nameless for legal purposes) was advertising hams as being "delicious for Chanukah" earlier today... at least until someone pointed out to the clerks that, however delicious the ham may be, nobody who celebrates Chanukah would be even slightly interested...

It's a damn shame, though... with modern government inspection and cleanliness standards in place, surely it's time to relax some of those strict Jewish dietary laws. The pigs the rest of us are wolfing down by the ribload are most certainly a lot cleaner than the swine from Biblical times, right?

Besides, "Hanukkah Ham" has a nice ring to it...

I Dig The Zoolights

Zoolights starts tonight at the Denver Zoo, featuring 38-plus acres of lights including over 150 animated animal sculptures. I've been a couple times before and heartily recommend it for everyone with children or for people like me who are just kids at heart.

I will say this, though... go now before the snow comes. The displays are beautiful and the walk is refreshing, but only if you aren't slogging through a foot of the cold nasty wet stuff...

The Teachers in Brighton are Perverts

As news of a third teacher-student sex scandal rocks the small Colorado town of Brighton this morning, it makes me wonder: Was this sort of thing going on when I was in high school 18 years ago and just not as widely reported, or have the criteria by which teachers are selected become much more lax? Does anyone even bother to investigate the backgrounds of the people hired to teach the next crop of American youth, or can any old sex offender wander into a school and start teaching History 101?

Additionally, if this sort of thing WAS going when I was in high school, why did none of my teachers look like Debra LaFave?

The Gulf Didn't Just Fix Itself Overnight

I watched the new Dinner: Impossible on my DVR last night... Chef Robert Irvine (a personal hero of mine, even before this episode) cooked a thank-you dinner for over 1000 Hands On volunteers in Biloxi, Mississippi; despite kitchen and supply problems, he managed to pull it off.

He then purchased furniture for a woman who had been rendered homeless by Hurrican Katrina for the last 2 years and presented her with the key to her brand new house, completely built by the volunteers. It really made me realize that the problems Katrina left in the Gulf Coast haven't gone away, and they really still need help from people like us.

Latest Star Trek Book

I just finished reading Before Dishonor, the latest paperback Star Trek novel involving the Borg (if you haven't figured out that I really like the Borg yet, you really haven't been paying attention)... and I have to say it was pretty good. Not the best Star Trek novel to come out, but definitely worth the read.

Without giving away any of the plot, it DOES bring together the characters Janeway, Seven of Nine, Spock, Picard and the crew of the Enterprise, which I thought was pretty darn nifty.

Countdown to IRON MAN

I'm really looking forward to the big screen adaptation of Iron Man, set to come out May 2 of next year... If history has told us anything, it's that movies based on Marvel Comics are either really really good (see Spiderman) or really REALLY bad (see Daredevil). From what little I've seen so far, this looks like it's going to be a good one...

Of course, scoring alcoholic millionaire actor Robert Downey Jr. to play alcoholic millionaire industrialist Tony Stark has to be the most brilliant stroke of casting this century...

Movie trailer and some pretty cool desktop wallpapers here.

Pigs are Tasty!

Just wanted to give a shout out to Famous Dave's... some of the best barbecue I've had here in the Denver Metro Area. The ribs don't fall off the bone, but are so tender they feel like they should... and the brisket is enough to make you want to slap your mother for having never made it that good.

The beans... the beans require their own paragraph. Rich and smoky, laced with BBQ sauce... the thing that REALLY sets them apart are the little bits of shredded brisket that permeate them. I can and have made a meal out of just the beans...

They're kind of a long haul if you live in the South Metro Area, but are worth every $3.00 gallon of gas you use getting there.

Quick, Somebody Call John Connor

The Earth comes a step closer today to being scoured of human life by Skynet as Toyota announces it has created violin-playing robots. Toyota claims the future harbingers of mankind's destruction were developed "to support people's everyday life."; however, we all know it's just a matter of time now before California's current governor begins attacking women named "Sarah".

Florida Poised To Drop 30 IQ Points

Apparently the next front in the battle to turn America into a nation full of gullible idiots will be fought in Florida, where a group of educators and politicians have decided to pander to the religious right by attempting to overthrow the standards set for science education.

Florida state Board of Education member Donna Callaway states that evolution "should not be taught to the exclusion of other theories of the origin of life," and has proclaimed that she will vote against the standards.

Ms. Callaway has an extensive educational pedigree, which makes me a little upset that she doesn't understand the difference in definitions of the word "theory" when used by scientists as opposed to your typical man on the street.... differences that anyone who was paying attention in science class in junior high is aware of.

America is already slipping behind other countries in education (most notable the Asian countries who refuse to allow religion to dictate their government). This whole country is literally a generation or two away from becoming a Third World nation.

At Least She Made It Home Safely

I've been following this story about the British school teacher in Sudan pretty closely, and thankfully it recently had a happy ending. One thing really stood out to me, however... if this is the way people behave in a society predominated by a patriarchal fundamentalist belief system, why are Americans so eager to allow fundamentalist Christians to have such unfettered access to OUR government? Is this kind of narrow-minded reactionary persecution really what the American people want in their own country?

Take a good look, folks... each step we take to abolish the line between church and state brings us closer to this kind of society.

Joke of the Week

Q. What's the difference between a golf ball and a woman's G-Spot?

A. A man will spend half an hour looking for a golf ball...

Can't See the Forest for the Phone Books

As I tripped over the phone books my local communications company had thoughtfully placed directly on my front doorstep, I was struck with the utter uselessness of said weighty tomes. In this day and age of Internet saturation, do we really need to kill the trees necessary to provide not one, but TWO giant books full of information that is readily available with literally a couple of button pushes on our cell phones?

Oh Goodie... A New Addiction.

When I was 10, my father moved my whole family to England for a few years. One of the memories that still stands out today was of tender, lightly battered fish from the local fish and chip shop... a taste I'd been unable to find back here in America... until yesterday.

I'd seen the little hole-in-the-wall place called GB Fish and Chips every day since my work moved to their new building, and yesterday I decided to give them a go.

I had the cod, and it was literally the flakiest, most tender, perfectly battered little plank of perfection I had tasted on this side of the Atlantic.

Had a chance to meet the owner, Alex, while I was waiting for my food. Really great guy, serving REALLY great food. You're doing yourself a disservice by not immediately packing up whatever you're doing and heading there.

No-one Consulted Me...

I understand the reasons behind the Writer's Strike. Hell, I agree that they should be rightfully compensated for their content when it appears on the internet. I just wish someone would have consulted me about the timing of the strike... because, quite frankly, 11 episodes of Heroes was just not enough. How am I supposed to get my Hayden Panatierre fix now?

Oh, and I'm sure as hell not running down to Best Buy to drop 30 bucks on a 11-episode Season DVD, either...

I read that during the 1988 Strike, television networks lost 10% of their viewership... AND NEVER GOT THEM BACK. Think about this: that was before the pervasion of video game consoles that we have now. Some of the story lines coming out of the game studios (See Halo, GTA IV, Mass Effect) are easily the equal of anything coming out of Hollywood... something the producers and studio executives should keep in mind before they let this strike go on for too long...