Don't be fooled by this image, this is a DVD one 2x zoom so it's pretty grainy on the 40" screen. The picture's fucking amazing but neither of our components is capable of projecting in 1080p resolution. The only thing we have that can- our indoor antenna. We were watching Monsters Inc on ABC Saturday night and you couldn't tell me that it wasn't Blu-Ray. The Digital signals across the antenna are stronger too, we get all the local stations as clear as a bell.

Of course the Wii's been as fun as Hell too, though having Resident Evil 4 in the house while I'm supposed to be working from home will be challenging. The challenge being "How do I get them to think I'm still working?"

My next step will be to get a second video card for the desktop so we can watch Lost and the Venture Bros off the Net.

I've been watching my future TV like a day trader. I see the price rise and fall two or three times a day as the sellers with the lower prices sell out and restock. I watch the review trickle in. We are in the third quarter now if there's going to be a price cut it will happen sometime soon. When it does I will strike! Like a cobra!! >>>FHISK!!!<<<

In an anticipation of the new methadone metronome I've replaced the DVD player because it was starting to crap out on us and I replaced the antenna because... well... we didn't have one before. What we'd been using for it's antenna-like properties was a Dreamcast RF Switch. The funny thing is, Melissa's never owned a Dreamcast. The best we can figure, it's a left over from three boyfriends ago.

Well the real antenna get twice as many stations as the RF Switch did, that's twice as much insipid crap, and it's digital ready so the new set will feel at home right away.

I swear, EMC cuts-up their technical documentation.

Is the Manga bubble about to burst?

This isn't like the Image bubble of the 90's where clueless speculators and shortsighted comic book retailers gave the industry a shot in the arm and then a shot in the foot. The appreciation for Manga was real, though overrated.

I'm hardly knee deep in the Manga industry but I do read the Previews pages for Manga publishers and I've seen a trend away from Japanese produced Manga to American produced titles (I'm sure Manga fans have names distinguishing them but I'm too lazy to look those up). And the new titles that are coming out of Japan seem like more of the same, derivatives of previous older, better books.

America has always been a secondary market for Manga and publishers like Tokyopop have been hauling it over here at a gold rush speeds. I suspect that the backlog of good material has dried up and the American publishers tried to push out second and third rate Japanese and American produced material in an attempt to keep the momentum going.

For example, Tokyopop's been a middleman for years and now it seems like they want a piece of the proprietary pie, (Bryan Lee O'Malley, creator of Scott Pilgrim seems to think it's a bad deal.)

I suspect the Manga industry is experiencing a correction. It won't be the end of the medium but I wonder how this'll effect the convergence with European and American comics art forms. Will they all merge into a global sequential ant and industry or will they go back to their core audiences where it's safe?

Saturday Two hours into LA w/ only one traffic jam? And it was justified? Did we head East by accident? La Brea is awesome. Well worth $7 So was the LACMA It's a pipe if I say it is Tired of walking, let's drive to Venice Beach Bought Salt's self titled album "Salt" from Salt for $10. Bought some skulls Hit the the hotel. The room wasn't as nice as the web page led us to believe. But the location was awesome. Dinner with Chris and Barbra Hotel bar 'til midnight with above and Amy and Johnny Sunday Breakfast at Mel's Dinner Tourist stuff. Max Factor Hollywood Museum I wish I could have gotten pictures of their prized pieces: A pantsuit from Jurassic Park III and a capsule from Cocoon: The Return Ribley's Believe it or not. Lot's of fun. The Hollywood Wax Museum I was very impressed by Darth Maul's light saber Holy Shit! Crypt Keeper! That evening, April picked us up and drove us to Amy's show (good job, Amy! You my shiksa) and then Ameoba Monday More Mel's And a traffic free (Weird...) drive home.

Thus ends a successful vacation.

*


You've forgotten haven't you?
That's okay, I'm sure Infinite Crisis erased it from continuity.

*blame Dan.

During my break from the novel I:

Put a little work into a comic project, Sorcerer's Seven. Where I'm taking the Samurai Seven trope and applying it to a contemporary horror setting. I came up with three or four of the sorcerers but ran dry after that. Considered writing a Choose Your Own Adventure site. With hyperlinks it's a format that really lends itself to the web. I could use Creative Commons images and sound effects and it'd be a lot easier to make semi-static pages than finishing the programming for Zorjax. I threw down some promising notes but the story I want to do is going to take a lot of research so it goes on the back burner too. Thought about creating a website for weekly comic book readers called "pulllist.com" or something like that. Users would submit the comics they read by title and every Wednesday it'd compare those lists with Diamond's list of what to expect at the comic book store. And it'd email a sublist of what to expect to the user's phone or pda or whatever. Again, a lot of programming work that I'm not feeling up to. But I might be able to crack out the basics in Python in my spare time. If I wasn't so busy.

But the break's over and I'm plugging away at the third draft. I've been working on this book for two and a half years and it's only three hundred pages. How the hell does Stephan King do it? I've been working on this book for longer than I've known a lot of the people who are reading this post. I thought I was almost done back in October, now I'm thinking I'll be lucky to get it done by the end of summer.

But the only way I'll finish it is if I'll finish it.

Melmel and I caught the San Diego Derby Dolls Saturday night. It was my idea 'cause I told Suzanne (number i) that I'd check it out.

Wow. Those bitches were brutal. I know I wouldn't dive right in front of a jammer like these chicks did. The San Diego All-Stars were especially good. Well organized and since they were in it for the love of the game I could actually root for them in a way that I never could for millionaires in tight, shiny pants.

Part of the fun in the player names like; Vera Bang, Drew BuryWhores, Ho J Simpson, PT Bruiser and Wendy Machete. Melissa and I came up with a bunch of names of our own. The three I'm most proud of: Mrs Howl, Spillery Clinton and Virgina Dentata

Melmel and I are thinking about spending Memorial weekend in LA.

As I'm thinking about it I realize that I don't know crap about LA.

I usually end up in the Hollywood area because there's always something to do up there and if anything there's Amoeba Music and it's close to Amy's new hood.

Anyone know a good hotel in that area? Someplace with character?

While mollymillions combs through eBay and Craigslist for wedding dresses I've been focused like a laser on the Sharp Aquos 32-inch 1080p LCD HDTV.

The 1080p resolution is a bit overkill, apparently it's only good for a few games on the PS3 and we're just getting a Wii, but I'm keeping an eye on the future and I figure if we ever outgrow this TV I can use it as a computer monitor.

Rumor has it that Sony's going to start an LCD price war next month and I've already seen the price on this model drop $115. So for the next two months I'll be checking the price on this everyday and whispering, "Soon... soon..."

I just realized that I can use my wiki to keep track of My Comics Pull List and when I edit the list it'll keep track of the changes in the history, so I can look back and see what I was reading...

Yeah, nobody cares but me.

I attended Clairmont Christian School for grades two through seven, I guess my parents thought that Catholic Mass wasn't enough. The doctrine at CCS was some form of protestantism I don't remember which. I do remember some of the wacky lectures we received from guest speakers- "Scientists have found Heaven in the Andromeda Galaxy", "Man Does Not Live by Bread Alone, here's what happens if you try", and the standard "Heavy Metal-Satan's Music"

Of course there was also an "Idolatry in the Catholic Church" lecture at some point. Meanwhile at Mass they were giving a more subdued counter attack. The Protestants said the Catholics had it wrong and the Catholics said the Protestants had it wrong. I decided that they were both right and I remained an unaffiliated Christian for the next ten years. A believer in the Bible if not the church.

That ended when I heard that some Biblical scholars had developed a new version of the Gospels. It was the King James version but the words attributed to Jesus were colored black if the scholars thought Jesus definitely said, gray if it was something he probably said, pink if it was something he probably didn't say and red if it was something he definitely didn't say. My head was spinning for days as the idea that the Bible, even just some part of the Bible, was wrong worked it's way into my head. Bouncing back and forth from Catholic to protestant I knew that interpretations of the Bible could be wrong but it had never occurred to me that the book itself was flawed. From Christian I shifted uncomfortably to deist.

But I wanted so badly to believe; in an external purpose, in a cosmic justice, in an objective right and wrong, in rules, that the good were rewarded and the bad were punished. Being a Christian was so easy, all I just had to parrot back what I was taught as a child, occasionally reinforcing it with a rationalization.

I stood on this shaky ground until I took Comparative World Religions for an English credit. After I looked at the world's seven major religions side by side one stood out for it's simplicity, modesty and relative lack of atrocities, Buddhism.

While I haven't been a very good Buddhist I have finally found a belief system that isn't threatened when contemplated. The Four Noble Truths are philosophically sound and unthreatened by scientific understanding or other people's beliefs.

But most importantly, Buddhism allowed me to be happy.

Writing has become a chore so I'm going to take some time off from working on the novel and work on a different project for awhile.

I can't remember the last time I worked on a comic book project. Maybe it's time to get back to that. If anything it's be nice to have a seven issue limited series all written out.

Hey, avantard, I think I might be ready for that invite into the "City of" MMORPGs, if you're still playing.

...gave me the time to take a picture of the Normal Heights sign and add it to the Wikipedia entry.

RiffTrax = The Film Crew > Cinematic Titanic

Of course I cheat by watching it over at danifesto's place. Because for me watching cable isn't as big a time waster as not watching cable. When I have the set to myself and the DVR is cleared I'll compulsively surf because I feel that with hundreds of channels that there has to be something worth watching.
Even now I'll waste ten minutes cycling through the five channels we get on PV (PeasantVision). Fortunately that's a small enough set. Flipping through all the possibilities on cable, past all the worthless pay-per-view and home-shopping and ESPNs then I have to start all over because it's been 30 minutes and maybe "Bald Guy Eats Yeti Testicles" is over and something worthwhile has taken it's place.
Another 30 minutes of flipping: Repeat.

When I started at the new gym I set a goal to to all the morning classes every week. Three months later and I finally made that goal last week: Monday- Superclass (an hour of stationary bike, medicine ball and circuit training) Tuesday- Biceps and Abs class (35 minutes) Wednesday- Superclass Thursday- Triceps and Abs class Friday- Superclass Saturday- two mile walk to the gym, an hour of Yoga, back, chest and shoulders and a two mile walk back.

After finally reaching this goal I've lost... 4 pounds.
Hopefully I'll stick with this for a few more months and lose a little more.

-and 19 years since I first went in.
My first unit was 7th Comm Battalion, a garrison unit. Garrison units rarely get deployed as a whole rather they exist to draw detachments from. Since the unit itself serves no purpose there is nothing to do in a garrison unit except busy work.
I don't know if this is coincidence or what but when I got there about half of the WMs (Women Marines) in 7th Comm were pregnant. That means those kids are as old now as I was then. For their sake I hope they're not in 7th Comm or anywhere else in the military.

Me: I wonder what the outside of the Cook County Office of the Medical Examiner looks like...
Google: Like this!