Category: Uncategorized

Easter is day about sons and fathers, death and rebirth, sin and redemption. What better to discuss than Anakin Skywalker?

I am still fairly regular player of X-Wing Alliance. Nothing has ever come close. Now and then I crawl the nets looking for new mods, ships and whatnot from the geek community. Several months ago I went looking to see if anyone had developed an OPT for Anakin’s Jedi starfighter from the Clone Wars cartoons, or at least a Jedi starfighter that I could re-skin. No go. Yesterday I gave it another look, and discovered that a site had popped up and disappeared in the space between my searches, and that this site had devved just what I was looking for. Dagnabit. So, if anyone has the MTD Industries Anakin OPT, let me know.

After seeing this post on the RT, I decided to go and have the internet tell me just who it thinks I am. Not unlike our pal Garvey, I appear to be Spiderman. Twice. Now this just pisses me right off. I am not a fan of Spidey, not by a long shot. If I wanted a soap opera, I’d read some damn Bronte — I don’t even care which one. I give not one shit about who Peter Parker like-likes.

Along similar lines, I came close to divorce recently. Her Worshipfulness had the audacity to claim that Superman cheated on Lois with Wonder Woman. Despite my insistence that the stuff they put on the covers is usually just a ruse to get you to read the whole thing, that Superman was likely placed under a magic spell, or that the rumor smacks of Mxtlplk, she held her ground. Held her ground and very nearly found herself tossed to the curb. The very idea.

Oh great. The genius minds who managed to take oldest, best story western civilization has created and turn in into a loathsome, trite mess will now be laying their destructive bent towards the one piece of science fiction that holds a faint, flickering candle to Dune (science fiction’s supreme masterpiece). There are rumors that they plan on slashing my tires, killing my family, and buying me a dog so they can then shoot it.

I still haven’t fully recovered from the 2003 collapse of the Old Man of the Mountain, the natural rock formation resembling a human face in profile which was the symbol of my home state of New Hampshire. In my childhood, I envisioned men on ropes clambering reverently over the face, patching up holes and strengthening the weaknesses created by erosion. This job occupied a place in my mind similar to that held by lighthouse keepers, another patently New England office. Imagine being the caretaker and getting the call, the voice on the phone disbelieving and perhaps cracking just a little. You were in charge of keeping that face, the symbol of the patient resolve of the people who carve a life out of the granite, safe from the ravages of time, and now that symbol has fallen, never to be repaired. The thing stood for uncounted millenia, and it fell in my lifetime. You can never go home again, because your home has fallen to pieces.

Also in 2003, the world’s first openly gay bishop was elected in NH. This is presumably not related.

I’m not sure what city Fight Club is set in, but it’s safe to say it doesn’t have a decent amateur hockey scene.

Ah, the bored joy of a day off. I strongly recommend it. Yes, you’re going to end up feeling like you wasted the day screwing around. Yes, there will be emails a-plenty waiting for you Monday morning. Nonetheless, it is still worth it. I also recommend planning days off and vacation ahead of time. Having something to look forward to can apparently make a difference.

I’ve noticed that “stressed” has become the characteristic by which people define me. Not my close friends (while I’m sure many would not hesitate to call me such, it’s not the alpha/omega), but the various acquaintances, family members, and guest stars that fill in the gaps in the warp and woof of my interpersonal fabric. The small talk they offer when forced to talk to me reveals that the only thing they know about me is that I have a stressful job. That roughly translates to “wuss” right?

So what to do about this? Anything? Should I care?

Step 1: more vacation. Screw this coal miner crap.

Step 2: invent an interesting hobby and tell everyone about it. That way, when these poor, kind people are stuck talking to me, they can ask “so, how’s the ostrich farm?” or “hey, I saw something on snowmobiles yesterday. You still drag race them?”.

I suppose I could actually start an interesting hobby but that don’t hardly sound like me.

I’ve been trying very, very hard not to like this song. It’s just not working. Now, from my standpoint you have two choices when it comes to contemporary rock bands that might be gay and definitely wear makeup: wacko art students Franz Ferdinand or Las Vegas wusses The Killers. The main difference between these two bands is that Franz Ferdinand is good. Imagine my embarrassment and surprise, then, when I find myself declaring to other motorists that I’m Mr. Brightside.

I move we censor bagpipes. Like touchdown celebrations, the use of the once understandable, even appropriate, piping had become uncontained, unbridled in its fervor. I refer in particular to the sound of bagpipes being used in cinema and television as the theme for the beautiful-warlike-melancholy-male. It is as if the instrument can only play mournful war ballads.

The sound is now used as a convenient way to elicit the aforementioned Braveheart emotion. Why bother writing decent dialogue or presenting moving imagery when Hamish McHamish can set his bag to “archetype” and bring on the tears for a lot less capital?

The problem is that this doesn’t work. Despite the best efforts of the entertainment industry, we haven’t yet become Pavloved enough to paint ourselves blue every time some red-haired cannibal breathes into a Hoover. So stop it. Enough already. Save it for something actually Scottish.

You know what happened before The Great Escape? Blur hung out with a bunch of rich people, and it really pissed them off.

I’ve started a new blog for my GT4 pics.