TPB REVIEW - Empowered Vol. 1

Empowered Volume 1
Adam Warren, writer & artist
Dark Horse Books, 2007
248 pages

So an entire graphic novel based on a character the artist designed specifically as a commission for parties unknown who like girls bound and in very little clothing; what could possibly go wrong here? Of course since it is by Adam Warren, the OG of the OEL, I had to pick it up and see what the fuss was all about. In a nutshell the book is pretty much what you would expect from what I described, except that while the bondage situations and lack of clothes are clearly exploitive, they never cross the line into pornography.

This book chronicles the life and times of Empowered, the central character's admittedly lame nom de hero. She gets her powers from a supersuit which is SKIN tight and for some reason, not very resilient. As the suit gets torn up her powers diminish until she is a mere mortal...and bound and gagged. While the first few stories in this volume seem little more than excuses to put the heroine in such situations, Warren's affection for the character and desire to do something more with the book shows through. This is particularly evident in his characterization of Empowered, who has very low self-esteem and only starts to get a little better when she builds a support structure around her.

As the stories get a little longer Warren introduces a couple of new characters which help pull the stories away from their bound and gagged origin and flesh out Empowered's world. First there is Thugboy who goes from being a generic henchman to Empowered's live-in boy friend, and then Ninjette, a female ninja, comes along and, after tying Empowered up, decided to go ahead and move in with the couple. My favorite addition to the cast is He Whose Name is Too Scary to Be Spoken, a demon lord who ends up trapped in some alien bondage gear. In typically ludicrous Warren fashion Empowered has to hang on to the caged demon lord because of zoning restriction on the Super Homeys' HQ. His dialogue is over the top enough to compete with the likes of Dr. Doom and Darkseid*, however he comes with a voyeuristic streak about a mile wide.

All in all I really enjoyed the book however it is only going to appeal to those who like their super-heroing with a liberal dose of absurdism and bondage.

* As I was reading the book I found myself reading this character's dialogue out loud and cracking myself up. I am not sure if this speaks to how funny the dialogue actually is or how sad my life is, take your pick.

Japanese Advertising

I love the cats over at J-list.com. They use adverts and pages out of magazines for packing material which, being the cheap bastard I am, I turn into "creative" wrapping paper for the items I have ordered as gifts. In this particular installment one page included this ad:


What I find curious is that the two main models featured in this advert are most assuredly NOT ethnically Japanese. I do not know why this strikes me as odd, I suspect it has something to do with how homogeneous Japanese society seems to be. I would be very surprised to find that non-Japanese make up more than 1% of the population. I imagine that the subdivisions within that percent would heavily favor immigrants from other Asian countries. Just something I thought I would share while I have a slow week on the writing front.

Would you like fries with that?

The other day I went to the local "mediterranean grill" for lunch. I, as usual, ordered a gyro plate with an additional gyro on the side. What? I loves me some gyro meat. While I was waiting on my meal I looked at my claim ticket, which is thoughtfully shown to the left for your edification. I know I did a double-take when I saw "Yog Sauce" on the ticket. I immediately thought of this and it took me a moment to figure out what was actually meant by "Yog Sauce." While I pondered I thought, "I bet it goes well with souls."

LOLZ Indy

Some of these were too easy and as I was posting these I thought of a better, alternate saying for Big Pimpin' Indy, "X NEVER marks the spot, bitch." You can view a couple of other pics from the set here.

I *HATE* the Holidays

Actually it is not the holidays that I hate it is the fact that MY CAR THREW A FUCKING ROD ON THE WAY HOME FRIDAY. FUCKITY FUCK FUCK! To add insult to injury I can't really afford to get a new one until sometime in April. Five months without a fucking car. I am going to get piss-drunk and eat pizza. I am sure I'll be back to my usual chipper self in a few days. Till then enjoy this:



Randy Taylor. I love you!

Dispatches from the Abyss - Monday, Nov. 19th

Well kids, I had a really good and busy weekend this week and it all started Friday evening. Scott had Bird, Brian and I over for a night of experimental cooking wherein he tested a few soup recipes on his unwitting victims. I believe the selections were chestnut, mushroom, and butternut squash. Of the three I think the chestnut soup had the most potential however it needed a little work. Regardless all three of them were pretty tasty and the rest of the dinner, coq au vin and some chocolate pie, was excellent! After hanging out for a bit I headed home because I knew on Saturday I was going to have a very full day and boy was I right.

I dragged out of bed around 8:30 on Saturday morning and headed out to Liendo Plantation for their Civil War Weekend. Liendo Plantation is a stone's throw from Prairie View, in fact the Liendo Parkway is the exit I take when going to visit my dad's house in Prairie View. 290 runs right along the edge of the current plantation property and for all the time I was living in College Station I would pass right by the plantation and their giant billboard advertising the Civil War Weekend. Every time I would drive by the sign I would make a mental note to myself that this is something I should check out. Then I would drive by the sign sometime in December or January and cuss because my mental note had failed me yet again! For whatever reason this event was on my mind this year and I finally managed to make it out to Liendo Plantation.

Despite the crap-ass weather on Saturday I had a very good time. I enjoyed wandering around the various encampments and chatting with some of the reenactors. I also chatted with a few other attendees, which is very unusual for me. I ended up spending a good part of the afternoon talking with Thomas Eishen, an accomplished photographer and novelist. Our conversation was very wide-ranging and I really enjoyed meeting him. Now all I have to do is pick up his book and check it out, something I meant to do today so I could read it over the long weekend, alas I was actually busy at work!

The "battle" itself took place on an open field bordered by trees on one end and a curve in 290 along the far side. This is probably the same field where the billboard I used to see every time I drove by lives. Saturday's scenario was a sneak attack on a C.S.A. camp by Federal forces. Interestingly Camp Groce was situation on Liendo Plantation's lands during the Civil War. Camp Groce, or Camp Liendo as it was commonly called, served as a prison camp for Union soldiers as well as a recruiting station and a refugee camp. Even with the home-field advantage the Confederate forces surrendered the camp, thus setting the scene for Sunday's scenario in which the Confederate forces retook the camp using much the same tactics.

As much as I enjoyed the "battle" on Saturday I left rather frustrated. As I said the weather was truly crap. Not crap enough to chase me indoors, but the sky was overcast with very thick clouds which meant when I was photographing the event I was shooting with some ridiculously slow shutter speeds. I ended up tossing about a quarter of the pictures from Saturday as they were so badly under-exposed I do not think I could correct the issues in Photoshop. Sunday the weather was MUCH better in the afternoon with the sun playing peek-a-boo in the clouds during the "battle." Overall I am significantly more pleased with the photos I shot on Sunday with two exceptions. The first is that due to the storms that rolled through on Saturday night, there were significantly fewer reenactors for Sunday's battle. This saddened me because as proud as I am of being a Texan, every time I see a Union regiment advancing with the regimental colors and Stars and Stripes flying in the wind I am almost moved to tears. This strikes me as one of the most beautiful and terrible sights on the battlefield. Here is a picture I took on Saturday which I was hoping to be able to recreate with better lighting on Sunday.



Oh well, there is always next year!

The second reason my Sunday pics bug me a bit is that due to where I chose to shoot from and the fact that I actually stood rather than sitting on the ground there are several shots which would be really cool if there wasn't this big fucking freeway in the background. DAMN YOU MODERNITY!* Additionally along the tree line which defined the back of the field of battle there are a couple of power lines. With some of the angles I was shooting the power lines actually come out looking like wires in the fence which bisected the battle field, however in other they are plainly not a fence. Fortunately they are against a busy and usually out of focus background so it will be easy enough to clone stamp them out in Photoshop. There is nothing to be done about 290 though. Argh!

After the reenactment I wandered through the camps a bit more and tried to track down a couple of the reenactors I had talked to on Saturday without any luck whatsoever. Since they were in a fairly primitive camp, which they called a campaign camp, I suspect they were one of the groups that got washed away. It was too bad because I wanted to get some contact information from them. They seemed like a good bunch and this sort of reenacting is something I have been interested in for some time. Oh well, I think I have tracked them down on the web. Time to fire off an email and see. I also picked up a CD from the local group Celtaire. I have seen them at Ren Faire and like this sort of music so I went ahead and bought their From the Heart of Texas album, a collection of twenty-three songs popular in the state during it's first one-hundred years. The album has been submitted for consideration in the Grammy category of best historical album. While the album is a rather hit or miss affair in my mind as I am not a big fan of the vocals, I certainly hope they win!

In addition to all the reenacting fun, Matt decided to crash at my casa after he worked at the UW on Saturday night due to the weather we were going to be hit with. He did not want to get caught out on the road. It was pretty cool to hang out with him for a couple of hours before I had to crash. We talked about joining the novice league over at the Aerodrome so we will see what comes of that!

All in all this was a really good weekend. Spent time with some old friends and made a couple of new friends and I think the photographing at Liendo Plantation was a good learning experience for next year. Who knows, maybe I'll haul my butt out to Bellmeade this next May and check out the reenactment there, as well. Well, it is getting late so I am going to get this posted and then crash. For your entertainment I offer up the following gallery of pictures I shot this weekend:


by james7329

* Oddly enough this is how I felt in Human Sit in college as well. I guess you can't teach an old James new tricks. Sorry ladies!

Watching Star Trek

So no post for you. Go play on YouTube or icanhascheezburger.com or something, I don't really care as long as you damned kids stay of my lawn!

BTW, this picture? Halo armor, are you fucking kidding me?

BOOK REVIEW - The Golden Compass

The Golden Compass
Phillip Pullman
Knopf, 2002
399 pages

As I said in this post, The Golden Compass is just the sort of book a young James would have been interested in therefore on one of my recent forays to the Alabama Bookstop I decided to pick it up and see if I could get through it before the movie came out. As it turns out I might be able to read all three of the books before the movie comes out as I picked this book up last Friday and completed it last night. I found the book to be very readable and, unlike Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (which I have yet to complete), the somewhat formal language Pullman uses at times to enhance the reading experience rather than distract from it. I think it is already evident that I very much enjoyed reading this book.

The Golden Compass, which is the first book in the his Dark Materials trilogy, chronicles the adventures of Lyra, an 11 or 12 year-old orphan who begins the tale as a ward of the Scholars of Jordan College, Oxford. The book opens with Lord Asriel, Lyra's uncle, visiting Jordan College where he is a fellow, to discuss some of his discoveries while in the north, which is a collection of savage lands populated by witch clans and the panserbjorne, or the armored bears. After Lord Asriel's visit, Lyra's life returns to normal until one day her best friend Roger is taken by a mysterious group known only as the Gobblers. The only thing anyone knows for certain about the Gobblers is that they take kidnap children who are never heard from again. The same day that Roger is taken the glamorous Mrs. Coulter arrives in Oxford with an offer for Lyra. Mrs. Coulter needs an assistant and she would like it very much if Lyra would come to London and fill that role for her. Thus begins Lyra's wild adventures through the confines of British aristocracy to London's streets and the wide world beyond.

Being the sort of geek that I am there are parts of me that find Pullman's world even more interesting than the characters he has created. It is a world not unlike our own however in Pullman's world magic is real and every human is accompanied by a daemon. Daemon's are physical manifestations of the human's soul and while inexorably linked to their human, they are individuals in their own right. Children's daemons' can shift their forms however around the time the human hits puberty the daemon settles on a final form. One other major difference is that in Pullman's world England is dominated by the Magisterium. In this first book the Magisterium is not discussed very much, however it is clear that it is the Christian Church and is not a power to be trifled with. Other differences include the previously mentioned witches and panserbjorne. The panserbjorne are bears who are self-aware and often sell their services as mercenaries.

While I have heard that there was a hue and cry from some Christian groups that this book is anti-religious, and I can see how they are pigeon-holing the book to appear that way, I do not believe this is the truth. Rather than serve as a condemnation of Christianity or Christian ideals, any anti-religious sentiments expressed in this book are anti-establishment sentiments. The only thing I found in the book that bothered me is that there are times where the characters do not get the happy endings you wish they would. While I completely understand why this happens, it might be a little rough for some younger readers to handle as I found myself tearing up more than once while I was reading.

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed this book and heartily recommend it to anyone!

Dispatches from the Anyss - Monday, Nov. 12th

Happy belated birfday Nikki! Here's hoping you took the man's advice at some point this weekend.

So how was your weekend, world? Mine was pretty damn good. I spent Saturday either in bed, working on a writing project which I am really fucking excited about even if it is not coming along as well as I had hoped, or partying with my own personal dynamic duo Rob and D. (I suspect D is Robin but I am never 100% sure with those kids.) Saturday was D-Unit's birthday and we celebrated with an evening of pizza, drinking, and friends at the casa. It was very enjoyable as I was able to wear a bucket on my head (photo forthcoming) and be funny, opportunities which rarely present themselves. I spent Sunday at the Lone Star Flight Museum's final fly day of the year before they put all the toys in annual maintenance and the like for the winter. Of course I took pictures and managed to escape with out ANY sunburned parts. I am starting to get good at this shit! When I got home I sacked out on the couch for a bit and then read most of The Golden Compass. I might finish that tonight depending on how motivated I am about hitting the office close to on time tomorrow. Today was just another day at the salt mines with the added bonus of being the day I had to complete my self-appraisal. I HATE doing the self-appraisals at my job for two reasons. The first is that we have to really hype ourselves up and contrary to what you may think I do not actually enjoy writing about myself, or at least in the way we are expected to around the office. The second reason is that our self-appraisals have to be written in third person so our supervisor can cut and paste them to make their appraisals of our performance. That just strikes me as being retarded, particularly since these have nothing to do with our raises in that I am certain nothing I write on there will get me any more money. It is just another opportunity to fail. Oh well, it is all done now anyway.

Sunday out at the LSFM was a very cool day; much more relaxed and informal than the airshow they have in April. Throughout the four hours they were performing flight operations they flew the B-17, B-25, P-47, Corsair, Hellcat, and a couple of other aircraft whose names/designations escape me at the moment multiple times throughout the day. The belle of the ball was their newly painted Hawker Hurricane, which has been in the museum's inventory and under restoration in Colorado since 1990. This was the first public appearance of the Hurricane, which is painted in the colors of L. C. "Wildcat" Wade (who is pictured on the left in the cockpit of his Spitfire), a Texan who joined the RAF in December of 1940 and earned his commission as a Pilot Officer in April of 1941. He flew Hurricanes in Egypt with the No. 33 squadron and then flew Spits in Egypt with the No. 145 squadron. He died in an accident in January 1944 at Foggia, Italy. He was credited with 23 kills and earned both the Distinguished Service Order and the Distinguished Flying Cross. (The museum's Spitfire, which I have yet to see fly, is also painted in his colors.) While it is no Spit, it was very nice to see the Hurricane in the air.

When I first arrived and walked out on to the tarmac I could not quite place the sound that assaulted my ears until a UH-1 Huey came flying out from one of the hangers and did a low pass over the flight line. It reminded me of the scene in We Were Soldiers where Mel Gibson introduces the troops to their new horses and put me in just the right frame of mind for shooting pictures. As soon as I made it to the flight line, they started prepping the Hurricane and soon enough it was in the air and I was able to get my first pictures of the bird. Here is one I selected mostly at random since I have not had time to cull the pictures I took. Enjoy!

A Question RE: Jennifer Aniston

Do you think Jennifer Aniston would rather be remembered as Leprechaun's Jennifer Aniston or Brad Pitt's ex-wife Jennifer Aniston? Please post your answers in the comments and show work where appropriate.

Dispatches from the Abyss - Wednesday, Oct. 7th

Well it took an extra day for me to get around to writing another Dispatch, but fear not, my intrepid readers, last night I did get some writing done. I have an opportunity to do some real script writing for a change and I do not want to jinx it so I am not going to talk about it too much here on the Opiate until there is actual news to report. Just keep your fingers crossed for me and with any amount of luck and a little skill you may see my name on the silver screen in a couple of years.

Monday, being the 5th of November, was Scott's birthday. We are all able to remember this because of the couplet we learned in V for Vendetta:

Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
And Scott's birthday...

Wait a minute, that's not right at all, but it is marginally (VERY marginally) funny. Anyways, several of us got together and went to Truluck's for dinner where I engaged in an orgy of crab consumption that would make mere mortals blanch. While "All you can eat"* and "buffet open" remain some of my favorite phrases in the English language, I do not actively like crab meat. It is not that I dislike crab meat, but it is not something that I actually like. I will eat it without complaint** however the next time I am going to order a steak. The funny thing is that since Scott and I had discussed all you can eat crab night, I have been craving crab, or what I thought was crab. I have the same problem with Big Macs. From time to time I will just CRAVE them and the only way to get over it is to go buy one and eat it. Every time I do this I get about three bites in and wonder what the fuck I am doing because this sure as shit does not taste like the Big Mac I have been dreaming about for the last few weeks; in fact this taste pretty much like shit. Oh well. The second lesson of the night is that when purchasing gifts for Scott, Rob and I need to coordinate our shopping. While I am certain that Scott will find a happy home in his stomach for the two bottles of Macallan 18 he received this year, I am the girly sort that worries about my gift being somewhat original.

When I got home from dinner I pretty much crawled into bed and suffered through food coma until I was able to fall asleep. Tuesday night I spent working on my idea for the afore mentioned writing project and then hit Downing for a round or two with Scott. While I still like drinking at Downing, staff departures over the past year have sucked some of the fun out of the place. Back when John, Emily, Shannon, and Ashley were all there it felt like home. Now it is just another place to drink. With shitty jazz on Tuesday nights. We have got to remember that and stop going then. It is excruciatingly bad and Downing is not a good live music venue. A guy with a piano might work in there, but even a jazz quartet is too much.

Tonight I rushed home from work and then went over to a friend's house to discuss the super secret project. I feel pretty good since she is on board with the idea I sketched out last night, with a couple of modifications. Now I just have to work on breaking the story and then coming up with a treatment. Again, keep your fingers crossed as this might be opportunity knocking.

And now I am home getting my hour of writing pounded out before I retire to the bedroom and finish watching Casino Royale before I sack out. I got in the mood to rewatch the movie because of a post on one of the Star Trek forums I read. With every new announcement about the new Star Trek movie, which began filming today, the Trekkies get up in arms and bemoan how terrible the movie is going to be. The most recent announcement which spurred a paroxysm of fannish rage came from Philippe Dauman, the CEO and President of Viacom, Paramount's parent company, during Viacom's Q3 2007 earnings call. While discussing the upcoming slate of movies he said, "Paramount will close out the year with Star Trek, a completely reconceived version of this franchise by, again, J.J. Abrams." (You can view the whole transcript here if you are really that bored.) The biggest problem people have is with the word "reconceived." A lot of people are reading it as J.J. Abrams is throwing out everything but the names and trying to rebuild everything else about the franchise, including the core concepts. I believe this word really means nothing, particularly in this case. Reconceived is a nice buzzword that people like to throw around. What they want to say is, "This ain't your daddy's Star Trek," however since their audience is made up of high-dollar investors and not the Montrose Beer and Gun Club, they feel the need to use buzz-worthy words. Now I am not saying that the fears about the film are completely unfounded as people with significant access have expressed concerns AND from the sketchy details which have been leaked about the plot there is clearly going to be some reimagining shenanigans going on, but I am personally trying to take a wait and see attitude and think the CEO was talking out of his ass.

I said all that and the next response was some cat going on a tear about how he is sick of things being reimagined and reconceived. He had earlier posted a similar rant in which he singled out Casino Royale for reboot suckiness as they turned Bond into nothing more than a petty thug for hire. I was shocked when I read that but then figured what the poster was really bitching about was that, much like in the books, James Bond was not a nice person in the new movie. Sean Connery played Bond the right way. Once the movies went off-book and they replaced Connery, James Bond became a bit more sentimental. I was so in awe of his comments that I felt the need to go back and watch Casino Royale again. While I really enjoyed Brosnan's work as Bond, except for the last one which was a stinky, stinky poo, watching Casino Royale was almost like watching my first Bond movie all over again.

Well, it is getting on in the evening and I want to hit the sheets before midnight, so I am going to end this a little early so I can get it to the Opiate and into your greedy little hands. I think tomorrow night I have an industry mixer I need to go to for work, however I should be back on Friday when I will discuss the WGA writer's strike. Till then have a good one!


* While I was at the office on Monday my office mate, Brian, and I were discussing the plans for the evening and I told him that "all you can eat" were my three favorite words in the English language. Of course he pointed out that it was four words and after a VERY lame attempt at defending myself by claiming there was a hyphen in there I responded that he was right and now I was going to go be a snarky dick about other people's grammar and spelling on the internet for a while to make myself feel better. It worked.

** Well I will kind of complain about it here, but that's what blogs are for, right?

Eumelia, my daemon

I am very interested in The Golden Compass, which is coming out on December 7th. This is the sort of book that I would have loved as a kid and I so far I have been very impressed with everything in which Chris Weitz, of American Pie fame, has been involved, therefore I am doing my little bit to help their viral marketing campaign. Apparently my daemon is a rabbit. Hrm.

Dispatches from the Abyss - Sunday, Nov. 4th

This week was pretty much a shit week. I did not get ANY writing done and I have no excuse for it. I had trouble getting out of bed in the mornings and trouble pulling myself off the couch in the evenings. Every night I had pretty disturbing dreams which led to me waking up without having gotten any good sleep whatsoever. All of this added up to make things a week in which I managed to accomplish nothing except somehow managing to blow through pretty much my entire paycheck. Having to pay car insurance SUCKS.

On the plus side the end of the week shaped up to be decent. On Thursday night I had Scott, Rob, and D round for dinner. I managed to burn the rice but cooked a pretty decent pot of Spicy Beef and Kimchi Stew as well as making a tasty Korean Cucumber Salad. Since I have so much kimchi left I am thinking about trying the stew again this week. All I have to buy is the meat. I telecommuted on Friday which was great. I worked on a specs paper for work and then took a long lunch to pick up some stuff to make an improvement or two around the casa. Once I was done with work I finally got around to putting the cup hooks in the wall above the sink in my kitchen. This opened up most of one cabinet for me so I could finally get the pile of bowls, small plates, and cup off the counter which means I actually have some workspace in the kitchen that is not on top of the stove. In addition to that I replaced the blinds in my living room. I have one window in my living room which is six feet long and the apartment complex put one set of blinds in there that covered the entire window. Being an apartment complex they used cheap-ass blinds and therefore not to long after I moved in I managed to rip the locking mechanism out of the frame. This meant I could no longer put the blind up. I have been meaning to replace the blinds since then however just never got around to it then a couple of weeks ago I tangled with the blinds again and managed to rip about a foot of the frame off. This made the blinds FAR too gimpy and something had to be done. I hit Home Depot, bought a couple of 35" wide blinds and mounted them in the window on Friday. Now all I have to do is get some drapes and the living room will look like a home. Well that and get the spare TV out of there and get the two piles of paper cleaned up, but I think I have accomplished enough for this month.

After the crap-ass week I had I decided that the best way to spend Saturday would be in bed. I alternated between reading and getting caught up on television. Somehow I managed to slack off and while being a mopey little bitch I managed to not watch any of my weekly television. On Saturday I managed to get all caught up as well as hammering through some of the stack of comics on the night table. I have no idea how I have managed to do it but I am about a week or so behind on the reading of the comics. I need to hammer through them before things get out of control again.

Saturday night was set aside for a wedding. My friends Rex and Julie were getting married. I spent some time on Saturday agonizing over whether to even go or not, having built up some considerable slacking momentum, however I decided to go. The next question was what to wear. It was finally cool enough out to consider the kilt as an option, however I do not have a semi-formal sporran and did not want to go the full-nine for this one. I just had my suit cleaned, however I fiddled around with the kilt idea a bit more and decided to go with the kilt. Since I do not have a tie that goes with the kilt I made sure to wear one of my white shirts with a button-down collar. I wore my formal sporran, which is kind of cheap-looking and may need to be replaced in the near future, my cream hose, ghillie's, belt, and a white button-down shirt. At first I was nervous when I was walking in but the cop who was working the door and the first person to see me complimented me on how I looked. After this the nervousness I had melted away. The wedding was very nice and I am very glad I went. Rex and Julie seemed to be having a wonderful time and I enjoyed chatting with my friends that were there. I got several compliments on the kilt from both complete strangers and my friends. I think this is the first time that many of my friends have seen me in a kilt and this was the first time that the Anderson kilt made an appearance with this crowd. Now the only question is whether to wear it to dinner tomorrow night or not.

While I was at the wedding I had one of those uncomfortable moments of revelation about myself. I learned that I am not very good at weddings. I am always a bit uncomfortable at them, as I am in most social situations but weddings have an added level of discomfort for me. The problem is that I want to be married. I want to fall in love with someone. I want to get married. I have for a long time. Going to weddings and watching people get married just emphasizes my lack. Not while I am at the wedding, but later, in the quiet moments when I am home alone and sitting in front of the laptop and confronted by a blank page. I wimped out last night. I left the wedding earlier than most because I got in to a strange head-space intending to come home and work through my head on paper but when I sat down in front of the laptop and opened a new file I did not like what I started to see. Fortunately my buddy Matt was online so we were able to chat and I did not have to face myself. After Matt bailed I monkeyed around on the TV and found some shitty Skinemax porn to watch for a bit before I just chucked it up and went to bed. (Please note that chucked it up is not a euphemism for anything dirty there and the shite porn I was watching was Girl with the Sex-Ray Eyes which is a real POS as far as soft-core porn goes. The nice thing is that they did not dub over the fake dirty talk with music.)

Today was spent reading even more comics, surfing the internets a little bit, watching football, and returning some extra cup hooks to Home Depot. The Houston Texans won so I consider it a good football day even if we were stuck watching the Texans beat the Raiders rather than the Colts versus the Patriots, in which the Colts managed to find a way to loose. Right now I have The Replacements playing in the background. I really like the movie and not just on its cinematic merits. Brooke Langton, who plays the Washington Generals head cheerleader Annabelle Farrell, is a stone-cold hottie. Apparently a guy that I did some film work with back about seven years ago knew her cousin or something like that. Sadly the bastard never hooked me up.

Oh well, that looks to be about all the time we have for tonight kids. I cannot promise anything about tomorrow night as it is Scott's birthday and I may be out celebrating too late, but we'll see you on Tuesday. Till then have a good one!