How to respond?

I was asked recently how I would respond to an obnoxious person at a party who would get right in my face and ask me, "How is your relationship with Jesus Christ?" (My wife asked me, as apparently it happened to a friend of ours just recently, and he was curious as to how I would respond.)

While I'm never as witty on the spot as I am when I have time to think about it, I suppose that here are some possibilities:

• About as good as my relationship with Quetzalcoatl (or insert a god of your choice - just not Heimdall, please).
• How is your relationship with Quetzalcoatl? (Yeah, I know, just a slight variation from the previous one.)
• We're just friends.
• He made sweet love to me last night.
• Who?
• I haven't spoken to him since he killed my dog.
• That zombie carpenter guy? You mean him?
• Wait...did you say Jesus or Jeebus?

That's all I've got so far. Feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments.

Suck it, Dr. Phil!

I've been putting off this blog entry for some time now, mainly because it will force me to admit something of which I am quite ashamed. I think that I'll just start with that, so without further ado:

I used to like Dr. Phil. Oh, dear Odin how it pains me to make such a horrid confession! Yeah, I know, what the hell is wrong with me? Well, whatever was wrong with me, it's now a thing of the past. I have seen the light.

But why did I like him? Oh, I don't even know how it started. I think that Kirsti caught him when he had a weekly gig on Oprah's show, and I watched it with her. (This is funny, because Kirsti has never been a regular Oprah watcher. I mean, she's been known to watch it, but not on any regular basis that I can recall.) I found myself liking him so much that I would be sure to sit down and watch every Thursday (I think that was his day). I know exactly what it was that I liked - it was fun to watch him tell clueless people to get a clue. After all, who doesn't deal with a lot of clueless people in their daily life? (Especially school teachers!) I suppose that it was some sort of bizarre wish-fullfillment fantasy, as I wanted to rail on the clueless people just like he did.

Things got even worse when he finally got his own TV show. I actually caught the first few episodes! While it was hardly something that I would TiVo in order to not miss an episode, I watched it pretty regularly. It was wall-to-wall revelations of the stupidity of people. In many ways, it's like the dramatic irony of a Shakespearean tragedy - you understand the character's faults even if he or she does not.

Eventually though, it hit me just how totally asinine this guy was. I guess I'm just a little slow sometimes. I suppose it was a combination of things. For one, he started to do all sorts of weight-loss episodes, which is pretty cynical if you ask me. After all, that sort of thing draws in viewers, even though he doesn't really have any sort of nutrition/dietary expertise. Along with that, he also started shilling all sorts of diet products with his picture on them doing a total douche move. See for yourself:




That made me start to wake up a bit, but the thing that really shocked me out of my stupidity was a particular episode with a particularly clueless woman on it. Basically, she went on and on about how she spent too much money on her daughter and how she had racked up a huge debt by buying all sorts of toys for her. She had bought so much that her daughter didn't even have any sense of just what she had any more. To conclude, she said something along the lines of, "Dr. Phil, please tell me how to spend so much money on toys for my daughter."


I tell ya, it was like Paul on the road to flippin' Damascus for me. It all just rushed at me. What the hell was wrong with this woman? What the hell was Dr. Phil going to say that any other person wouldn't say? Sure enough, he said a bunch of folksy blah blah that was pretty much just common sense. I remember thinking that his next guess was going to be a guy who hit himself repeatedly on the head with a hammer, and then he would ask, "Dr. Phil, how do I stop hitting myself with a hammer?"


Yeah, I was pretty slow on the draw, but I finally woke up to why I was enjoying the show - the aforementioned pleasure in watching dumb people being told that they were being dumb, and I realized that was a pretty awful reason to watch something. Perhaps I should have gone on the show and asked, "Dr. Phil, how can I realize that you're actually just a douchey bag of wind?"


And typical of me, once I finally woke up to it, I couldn't stand to hear that moron talk about anything any more. Kirsti will once in a blue moon have his show on, more as background noise when she's doing something, and every word that comes out of his mouth just pisses me off. The thing is, there's nothing wise, nothing profound, nothing valuable about anything that he says. And now that I've actually been in therapy, I've learned that it's a process that takes some time to get any real value out of it; there's no way that he's actually solving any problems on his show.


What finally prompted me to write this entry was when I heard an ad for his show this morning. Apparently, he's going to talk to that woman who just had eight kids despite the fact that she already had twenty-seven (or something) while not having a husband or a job. They had a brief soundbite, and he was telling her, "These aren't dolls we're talking about here!"


Gee, really, Dr. Phil? Man, you must have some kinda fancy fricken' degree to figure that crap out. I'm sure that he's going to get to the bottom of this and finally cure this woman of her dimwittery.


What an ass.

WonderCon - not this year

I was tempted to make this the second part of my "Comics Rule" series of posts, but somehow that doesn't seem fitting considering it's ultimately about how I won't be attending WonderCon this year. What is WonderCon? It's a comic book convention - you know, those things where a bunch of nerdy people with no lives hang out and discuss nerdy things. If only they had the fulfilling lives of people who sat around the house and watched TV all day.

I went to my first comic book convention shortly after I became a regular reader of comics, which was when I was twelve. It was the very first WonderCon, although that first year it was known as the Wonderful World of Comics convention. My uncle had told me about it, as he was there helping a friend of his who had a booth there. So, my parents let me take BART into Oakland and meet my uncle there. (Don't panic - the convention was at a Hotel that was pretty much right outside the station. I wasn't hanging around Oakland all by myself.)

I didn't really know anything about conventions, so I pretty much just wandered around looking at all the cool stuff that was for sale. I also don't think that I had a whole lot of money to spend either, but I don't seem to recall being bored. Oh, and the highlight of the whole experience was that I got to meet Stan Lee (co-creator of Spider-Man, The X-Men, The Hulk, etcetera).

(Actually, now that I'm thinking of all this, I may be combining the first WonderCon with the second one in my brain. Whatever, the point is that I had a good time at the first one - enough to go to the next one a year later, and I met Stan "The Man" Lee.)

WonderCon became a yearly ritual for me, and I usually had a friend or two come along with me. However, even if I couldn't get somebody to go with me, I was always more than willing to go by myself. The early years, when I was in middle and high schools, were the best. Back then, Marvel Comics had representatives there (for some reason, they stopped and haven't shown up for about a decade now). Their panels were always the best, as not only were a lot of my favorite artists and writers there, but they usually did all sorts of fun things (like a contest where I won a subscription to Daredevil).

I also got to have a lot of conversations with some of my favorite creators. For me, (and this is still true), meeting the guy who writes Batman is as cool as meeting the guy who plays Batman in a movie would be. What's even cooler is that I got to meet some comics artists before they hit the big time. I remember walking right up to Jim Lee and telling him how much I enjoyed his work on Punisher War Journal. The next year, the guy had a line that went all the way around the convention center, and he can still bring in that kind of a crowd.

Another highlight was the movie previews. Keep in mind, this was before the Internet, where you can download pretty much everything. For many of the movies, WonderCon was the first chance to see any footage of them, and it was always fun to tell people who weren't there about what was coming out that summer.

One other cool thing, and this tended to be true if I went on Sunday, was that I could score some really good deals on comics. There was always a huge $1 comic blowout section, where I was able to find all sorts of stuff I wanted. Not only that, but I remember picking up the $15 Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told for a paltry $3.50.

Over the past few years, as WonderCon has moved to San Francisco, it has become a much bigger production. They've had special guests like Tobey McGuire (and I got his autograph on a Spider-Man 2 poster), Christian Bale, Gerard Butler, Jon Favreau, etcetera. Seeing those folks were definitely amongst the many fond memories.

So, why after more than 20 years, am I not going to the latest one? Probably the biggest problem for me is that it's just too damned big now. I generally can't stand being stuck in a large crowd, and last year I was feeling downright claustrophobic. Not only that, but going out to San Francisco is always a pain in the butt, as whether I drive or BART in there, it's always going to cost a big chunk of change just to get there.

I would like to see the presentation for Watchmen, as the director and some of the stars will no doubt be there, but there are so many interviews and making-of features that I can just catch online now. (Shoot, they'll probably put that particular panel online). Also, Ed Brubaker, one of my favorite comics writers right now is scheduled to appear, but with these huge crowds, it's doubtful that I'd get to say more than a few words to him.

What about the great deals? The past few years, I managed to find some cool graphic novels for half off, but what with the internet and Amazon.com's used shops, I can usually find deals that are as good, if not better. And if you factor in the cost of the ticket to get there (along with the cost just to get there and whatever money I'd spend on lunch), I'm not really getting that great of a deal.

Another thing contributing to my apathy is that the convention is becoming less and less about comics (which explains why it's growing, ironically enough). Last year, Steve Carrel and Anne Hathaway were there to talk about Get Smart. It was pretty cool to see them, but what the hell does that have to do with comics? Also, if you walk around the exhibition room, you'll find all sorts of stuff that's not even remotely comics related. Every year, it seems to be more of a media convention than a comic book convention. Yeah, I know, comic book fans can be a nerdy bunch, but they're MY nerdy bunch.

So, despite my obsessive-compulsive desire to keep the tradition alive, I'm going to pass on this year's convention. Honestly though, I'm eying the Super-Con in San Jose (May 16 & 17). While going to San Jose is probably a bigger pain than going to San Francisco, this one seems more like what WonderCon used to be. I had gone to a couple of Super-Cons before, but I stopped going when it seemed to be nothing more than the poor man's WonderCon. Now though, that's pretty much what I'm looking for.

DirecTV, you're dead to me

I just watched the latest episode of Lost with my wife, and it was really nice. Not so much that it was a good episode (although it was) but it was nice that the image didn't get all pixelated every five minutes. Of course, that should be the norm, but it hasn't been for the past year or so. Today was different though because I switched from DirecTV to Dish Network.

Unfortunately, switching from one to the other hasn't been an easy process. I've had DirecTV for some time now, and for the first few years I didn't have any problems. It wasn't until I upgraded to their HD service that I started to have some problems. Basically, it was fine for the first several months, but then some of my shows would come in all pixelated and messed up. After they sent somebody out to fix it, things were fine again for a few months, but then the whole mess started up again.

What was worse was that eventually the initial warranty ended, and I had to sign up for some extended protection or have to pay for every time they came to my place. I made a stink about that, and I got them to charge me less than they normally would. Eventually though, the DVR started to crap out on me, and I had to have them send a replacement.

Not too long after that, it crapped out on me yet again. By this time (and I've probably left out a few other times) I was done with them. The only catch was that I was locked in a contract with them, and they wouldn't let me out of it without paying a harsh penalty. I asked to be let out of it, but they convinced me to let them try and fix the problem one more time.

Of course, it was fixed, but just a few weeks later, the whole mess started up again. This time, I not only called but I also wrote a letter to them, insisting that I be let out of my contract, even threatening legal action. (A friend of mine who's a lawyer confirmed for me that I actually would have the law on my side if they continued to be unable to provide the proper service to me.)

When I called this weekend, I found out that they had finally let me out of the contract, and I promptly cancelled, despite the nice lady on the other line asking if there was any way they could make things right with me. The next day, I called Dish Network, and then they had an installer come out the day after that. I'm still getting used to this new system, but so far, so good.

Writing about this, it doesn't seem so bad, but I've written before about how much I hate talking on the phone in general. Calling to deal with this stuff caused me a lot of stress, and no doubt a seriously raised blood pressure. The thing is, I'd go weeks in between when there was a problem and when I'd finally call, as I found myself getting way too worked up about it. Yeah, I'm weird, but I can't seem to change that particular aspect of my personality. (Some of my shows would actually always come in fine, like The Daily Show, but shows like Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles I wound up watching online, which isn't too bad, but what's the point of having a flat screen, 42" TV if you can't watch a show like that on it?

Kirsti had some friends of hers tell her that they weren't happy with Dish Network, but none of their complaints had anything to do with their shows not coming in properly. The complaints had more to do with their automatic billing system and their equipment (one friend said that she hated their remote). I'm not too worried about equipment problems, because the guy on the phone told me that if it breaks down, I can always take it down to Radio Shack to exchange it. There's one of those just a few minutes from my house, so that's not so bad.

Honestly, all of the stress that this has caused me has made me wonder if having TV is even worth it. I suppose that if everything works out, I'll start to view it as something to help me relax rather than something that drives me crazy.

Comics rule - part I

I've been contemplating a really long entry on comics and why they're awesome ever since I started this blog. I soon realized that I'd never be able to write everything that I wanted in one entry. I then started to try and map out exactly how I would do this, and then it started to seem more like work. This blog is intended primarily as an excuse to write for the sake of writing, and it's a nice added bonus that not only do friends and family members read it, but I sometimes seem to get complete strangers from all over the world checking it out as well.

So, I have no plan here, and I don't know how many entries this will be, but I figure that I have a good subtopic right now to get this thing started. And without further ado...

I'm not sure exactly when I received my first comic book. I remember that there were always plenty of things to read for me while I was growing up, most of them children's books, but there were also some comics as well. I seem to recall getting a couple of large, oversized comics when I was I was three years old and in the hospital for open-heart surgery. I still have one of them, and the copyright date on it is 1976, so my memory is probably correct. It's a Batman comic, and it has quite a few stories in it - one of them written by Dennis O'Neal, whom I would meet as a teenager and have a long talk about writing at a comic book convention. (Not that I paid attention to that sort of a thing when I was little.) Flipping through it, I still think it's a pretty cool book, and I'm amazed that it's in as good of a shape as it is. It's basically just a little worn, but the cover and all the pages are still intact.

There were others, I'm sure as the years went on. I believe my Mom told me that she bought them for me and my sister when we lived in Iran. I seem to recall some Archie and Scrooge McDuck comics for the most part. However, it wasn't until we came back from Iran when I was five that my mom bought for me the one comic that would have the biggest impact on me. It was another Batman book, an issue of Batman Family, which was regular-sized, but it was basically a collection of stories featuring different writers, artists and characters. The feature story had Batman fighting an old man who transferred his mind into a giant gorilla.

I still have that one, and I still think that story is cool. There were also some stories featuring Robin, Batgirl, and Batmite. And then the story in the middle, the one that REALLY freaked me out featured The Demon. I thought that was scary as hell, and Michael Golden's art really gave me the heebie jeebies. In fact, I was so creeped out by it that I was afraid to actually read it, yet at the same time I found something to be strangely compelling about it.

As the years past, I probably got a few comics here and there. The ones that I remember are an oversized Superman comic that my oldest sister bought for me on Christmas and an adaptation of Return of the Jedi (which featured some really awesome art by Al Williamson). It wasn't until I was twelve and some kids were bringing in issues of Transformers and GI JOE that I started to think about getting them on a regular basis. After all, I was getting an allowance - I had to spend my money on something!

So, I started off with Transformers, but it was only a matter of months before I moved on to the monthly issues of The Amazing Spider-Man, since Spidey had always been my favorite hero (despite the Batman comics). My first issue was Amazing Spider-Man #276. The last issue that I bought was 586, just last week. No, I haven't bought every issue in between. However, I doubt that I've gone more than a month without going to a comic book store since I was twelve.

I remember my aunt asking me when I was a teenager when I was going to get "out" of comics and start getting "into girls". (I never understood why they had to be mutually exclusive.) Well, I'm 35 and married now. Somehow, I don't think that I'm ever going to get "out" of comics.

Why? Because comics rule. Lots more to come on that.

Creationists - shooting themselves in the foot

I was just sent this article from SFGate. Basically, what's happening is that a guy is filing a lawsuit against UC Berkeley because they have a website called Understanding Evolution. According to this fella, since the university receives government funding, it's the equivalent to putting a cross up on public property. Because evolution is like, a religion and stuff.

Except, you know, it like, isn't and stuff. I'm not going to go into how evolution is the foundation for modern biology and that our understanding of the theory is leading to all sorts of things that have practical effects on our lives (like the curing of diseases and whatnot). If you're still one of those people who think that it's "just a theory" or that we don't share an ancestor with the apes, then there's just no telling you anything. If you're on the fence, check out Berkeley's site that I linked. It seems to be a pretty comprehensive overview of what the theory is and what the evidence for it is.

Basically what's got this guy all ruffled is that evolution contradicts his literal view of The Bible, and therefore the government shouldn't support anything that interferes with his religious beliefs. On some level, I agree with that. I wouldn't want to see the government closing down churches or banning religious rituals. (I'd rather see that happen on its own - although I'd want at least some churches to still stand for the same reason that I think that the Acropolis and the Pyramids should still stand.)

However, if we're going to not allow the government to support any statements that contradict religious belief, then we're going to run into all sorts of problems, aren't we? Does this guy really want this much attention to be drawn to this issue? After all, a spherical, heliocentric Earth contradicts a literal interpretation of The Bible. The fact that women need a man to impregnate them to have a baby (at least in ancient times) contradicts The Bible. The fact that there's no correlation between hair length and superhuman strength contradicts The Bible. Is this the sort of thing that this guy wants brought up in a court of law - especially one that would no doubt draw a lot of media attention?

The creationists already shot themselves a serious blow in the Intelligent Design trial in Dover. This will only hurt them even more. What's more, it will hurt religion even more.

Here's the thing, Religion. You're like a tiger - powerful, beautiful, sublime. However, you're jumping into the shark tank on this one, and now you're nothing but chum.

Odin's probably real

Even though today is Thor's Day, I got to thinking about Odin while walking my dog tonight. Actually, a bunch of tangential thoughts all coalesced into some thoughts that I'm going to attempt to express right now.

While walking Argos, I was listening to my MP3 player. To be more specific, I was listening to the soundtrack of Into the Wild. All of the songs are by Eddie Vedder, the lead singer of Pearl Jam (which just happens to be one of my absolute favorite bands). I purchased it just a few days ago, as I just can't seem to stop thinking about that movie. Kirsti and I rented it a few months ago, and I liked it so much that I bought the Blu-Ray. After watching it yet again, I found myself compelled to buy the book, and then, of course, the soundtrack.

For those who don't know, it's all based on a true story of a young man who gave up everything he had so he could travel the country and live a spartan existence. He eventually went out into the wilderness of Alaska and was shot from a helicopter by Sarah Palin. No, wait, that's not quite right. Actually, he wound up dying of starvation while out there. One of the sad (or morbidly beautiful, depending on how much of a romantic you are) things about it is that he seemed to know that he might not make it back.

Of course, a lot of people dismiss him as being stupid for what he did. I wouldn't necessarily say that's wrong, but it's too simple of an answer. He basically was a man who sought absolute freedom, and he got what he wanted. And from what I gather, he wasn't harboring a lot of delusions as to just exactly what that might entail. (Although, and this is where his intelligence gets called into question, it turns out that there are a few things that he could have done while out there that might have prevented his tragic fate.)

So, it's true tragedy in the sense that it reminds us of the great potential that humans have while at the same time showing the reality of how we oftentimes wind up destroying that same great potential. His story fills me with a lot of conflicting emotions - hence the reason why I can't get it out of my head.

The aspect of his story that was swirling in my head today was the nature of, well...nature. This is a theme that's also well expressed in the movie Grizzly Man - another true story of man trying to live in harmony with nature. The thing is, nature is neither good nor bad. It simply is what it is. It can bring life, but it can just as easily take life. It's not out to help you, and it's not out to get you either. It can be nurturing, and it can be destructive.

During my prep period today, I started to put together some notes for a unit on Norse Mythology. Using a couple of books that I have, along with some useful websites, I started creating some notes about Odin. One thing that I found to be pretty interesting about him was just how downright capricious he was. He was revered, but nobody was under any sort of delusion that he was going to always be kind and generous. He was simultaneously known as The Allfather and The Destroyer - amongst hundreds of other names that run the gamut between those two ideas.

This is not too surprising. After all, the gods of the Greek pantheon could be pretty nasty sometimes as well. Zeus would favor certain heroes, but he had no problem making things miserable for others. Also, if you read your Old Testament, Yahweh is equally fickle in his dealings with human beings. (Don't believe me? Try reading Job!) Of course, when Jesus comes along, he's a little bit more of a kinder, gentler sort, but you still have that awful blood sacrifice and all sorts of other things that are tough to reconcile with the kind, loving God that Christians like to describe, despite the fact that their Holy Bible paints a pretty different picture.

I think that the ancient peoples had it right. After all, what were the gods but an attempt to explain what was not understood about the natural world? You know, that same natural world that trapped Christopher Johnson McCandless in the snow? The same one that put Timothy Treadwell in the belly of a bear? It only makes sense that Odin would be seen in so many different lights. Why should God be described as a being that's wholly loving, wholly caring? If He does exist, then he watches countless children die every day - and no arguments about it being a result of us having "free will" can ever change that. (After all, what free will does a child dying of malaria have? He dies because I've turned away from God? Does that really make God seem any more kind?)

Of course, neither Odin nor the God that most monotheists today describe are literally real. However, this god who supposedly loves you and wants nothing for the best for you? He's not even real on a metaphorical level. Give me Odin any day - at least you know where you stand with that guy.

(But as always, Heimdall can shove it.)