Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Ruminatin'

First off, wee-haw, it's nice to be in Maine for a winter holiday -- the entire world could be smoldering under its disintigrating gas-blanket, and come December 25th, it will always look like Chrismas up here.

Been readin'.

Picked up the latest Hellboy trade paperback compilation yesterday; read it before breakfast this morning. So, so good. The only catch with a book like Hellboy is that with such a short-spoken, quippy protagonist, there's a not a whole lot to read. Mignola's art is so stunning in its simplicity that while its quality demands a slow read, a single-sitting push leaves me in the world of, "Oh yes, look, another page of black ink and... oh wait, yep, a monster... next page--", and when the dialog/action sequences are mostly of a big, red goofball telling a Hydra to "Shut up" while clocking it in the face, again -- makes for a quick read.

But oh man, so good. Also, a nice side-effect of such heavy-handed-but-somehow-intricate art is that it has immense replay value. Maybe 2008 will bring me a re-reading of the whole series.

Good, that'll kill about two hours.

Also finished Watchmen today. As I've been gushing about to, oh, anyone within earshot of me for the last week, Watchmen is a really, truly, good novel. The pictures help, too, but really, wow. Alan Moore runs so many concurrent story arcs over so many timelines, carrying so many motifs so successfully in both the text and artwork that it really takes time between sittings to digest the whole scope. Seriously. If you ever read Watchmen, take your time.

Wait, no. Rephrase:

Read Watchmen, and when you do, take your time. The graphic novel is a versitile form -- you can do things with dialog-over-pictures that would fall absolutely flat with text alone; allowing the art to narrate setting and mood opens up a vast space for characters to develop subtlely, for actions and locations to not lose their meaning in cumbersome description; you can show or hide anything and everything, leaving clues for the reader's brain to crunch between the delicious cookies of overt plot advancement.

Oh look, it's a stupid sentence!

Really though, reading a good book should feel like eating a good meal, and Watchmen delivers for hours and hours. Every possible advantage of the graphic novel's form is reaped and presented beautifully over a compelling, accessible, and very human plot.

Restate: read Watchmen, and when you do, take your time.

Now, of course, this leaves me one more holiday-season comic acquisition to digest -- Jhonen Vasquez's Jellyfist.

Then again, it's Christmas, I'm up in Maine with family, there's a big roast in the oven and almonds and prosciutto in my belly, and I don't want Vasquez's brain invading mine and leaving horrible little creatures to gestate in there just yet.

***

Meanwhile, my brother got a new digital camera just prior to joining us up in Portland, and for the past two days has been experimenting with its myriad, futuristic features. I've been pretty much stationary with my face in a comic book since Saturday, making me an excellent test subject for a new camera... so now there are probably two dozen test photos of me reading and picking my nose.

What, you don't pick your nose while you read?

Or blog, for that matter?

Bullshit. I don't believe you for even the scarcest fraction of a second. Every blogger's keyboard and every reader's pages are stained with the boogers of deep rumination and nasal spelunking.

Thinkin' and pickin'. Like peanut butter and jelly, baby, and don't you forget it.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Is this thing on?

Just remembered I have a blog.

Hmm...

Restaurant reviews? Inane ramblings? The hell is this thing for...?

Oh, meta-blogging, how lame you are.

Also, anybody out there have any advice for tweaking the graphics behavior in Parallels to behave non-retardedly with active windows in coherence mode?

Anybody?

Is this thing on?

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Flawless Tactics

Mitt Romney, asshole that he is, is now campaigning to run our fine, disintigrating country.

Sweet!

I'll keep this short.

The man, a chiseled movie-star-looking windbag of a politician, is up against some tall odds. For starters, he's a conservative coming out of deep hibernation in the grungy leftist cave that is Massachusetts. But ah, the man is so publically digestible, he's a publicist's dream: a friendly, smiling, family-man caught in the grips of complete political reinvention. Also, he's a Mormon, although I'm not entirely sure how that will play into all of this, except for liklihood of right-wing-friendly religio-politics. That certainly doesn't present a problem when your campaign base is in...

...South Carolina. So Mitt's in the ol' SC, and I imagine his plunge into right-wing national politics as sort of a supreme-dickwad-vision-quest. In the end I suppose he'll come out looking like a "compassionate conservative" -- not too dumb, not too smart, and the kind of guy you'd like to have a beer with.

There's a reason that a guy you'd like to have a beer with (Governator excluded) should probably not be elected to high office: he's probably drunk.

Anyway, Mitt's in SC, and his reinvention would scream insincerity and horse poo if it were not for the brilliant political reporting of Fox News: "Mitt Romney was in South Carolina campaigning this week for the important Southern vote, blah blah, vapid story, pause; his reason for being in town? A chili cook-off!"

Sounds like the kind of guy you'd like to have a beer with, eh? Damn, chili cook-offs are sweet. What a great parting thought...

...also, his campaign and publicists are stationed right down the street running their famous, annual Bullshit Cook-off.

I swear, if you dug up Joseph Goebbels and jammed his rotting corpse into a particle accelerator or something and set all the dials just right, out would pop Fox News, the many-headed propaganda monster disguised as a friendly news station for thrill-seeking, retard Americans.

Moromoromoro

Cadbury has this thing called the Moro Bar.

I don't know what's in it, but it tastes like crack.

Thursday, November 1, 2007

new(s)

Holler at your new blog.