But, Aquaman, you cannot marry a woman without gills. You're from two different worlds... Oh, I've wasted my life.

I was going to post this over at Atomic Romance but I don't think it would be appropriate to bump the somewhat somber post Swiney put up this morning. Head over there if you have a second and let him know you're thinking about him and his sick son.

Just a reminder that tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day. If you have a comic shop in your neighborhood they're most likely participating. It means exactly what it says: they're giving away a bunch of free comics created specifically for this yearly event.

If you have kids who like comics even a little bit I'd encourage you to participate in this. You can't beat the price and it's a lot of fun. Many shops have local artists come out to talk about their work and sign autographs.

I'm going going to be hitting a couple of shops myself but only after my oldest daughter and I watch the special screening of Star Trek I won tickets for last week. I don't mean to rub it in but I get to see the movie before everyone else except Steve, who already saw a screener and said it was good.

When I get to Free Comic Book Day I'm going to grab an issue of this free book...



Doesn't that look fun?

So, to sum up-- keep Swinebread in your thoughts, go to Free Comic Book Day by any means necessary and I'm seeing Star Trek before the rest of you rubes, not that I'm bragging about it or anything. This will be absolutely the last you'll hear from me on Star Trek other than the little review I'll write up this weekend which will be no tribble at all.

Sorry.

Live long and prosper.

Sorry.

Dean

You will travel far, my little Kal-El

Swinebread has asked me to help fill in over at his place while he changes diapers and such, so I'll be occasionally posting over at Atomic Romance on comics, movies, video games and such.

Well I've got a gal, she's as cute as she can be. She's a distant cousin but she's not too distant with me.

Oh noes! I missed noting Elvis's birthday yesterday. Happy birthday big guy. Here's a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich for you.

Also noteworthy is that today marks only eleven more days of having to endure the monkey juggling the hand grenade. Yay!

I see the Florida Tebows won the BcS "championship" last night. Thanks AP voters for supporting that bullshit. I am rooting big time that the Utah AG's potential lawsuit breaks up that joke of a system once and for all. Playoffs!

Lockwood has a link up to a great nerd test. I scored nerd god. Bow down before me my fellow geeks.

I'm with randal graves. I thought it was kind of cool that bands began releasing music on vinyl again but my daughter got me an old style album for Christmas and I'm still still scratching my head as to how I'm going to get it to play. I have a turntable somewhere but will it even work with my super modern stero equipment.

Swinebread wrote a nice little post about the classic film "The Warriors."

Ubermilf picked on rich people who don't know how to put cream cheese on a bagel. Like it's so damned simple to spread that stuff.

Don snabulus wins the "Simultaneous Hope and Bile" award for his post that contained this: "With that said, I think the passing of Dubya, like a painful kidney stone, is worth celebrating, so the inauguration will be time for joy at Rancho Snabulus."

Dguzman uses that mathy thingy to prove Bush was a failure. I don't need math to tell me that. Any man that chokes on a pretzel is not a man to be trusted with nuclear secrets.

Distributorcap NY is still taking nominations for Douchebags of the Year. Harry Reid rightly leads the pack.

Monkey von Monkerstein has his own plan to revive the economy. His best idea: "Keep all the proposed stimulus money out of the hands of banks, financial professionals, and anyone connected with any Wall Street institution."

Enigma asks a question I've been wondering myself: "Dear Mr. Bush, did you give your blessing for the violence in Gaza that's killing women, children and refugees?" Israel doesn't make a move without consulting the United States. Besides being an enormously immoral act, this comes across as the Bush administration's version of removing the letter"w" from keyboards on the way out the door. Only in their version people die.

Pissed Off Patricia has spent most of the week sipping martinis. I'm so jealous.

Thoughtcriminal makes the clever observation that, if you predict something has a roughly 40% chance of happening, you will never have it held against you if it never happens.

I wrote similar responses to this post by Liberality apologizing to the people of Gaza and this post by franiam asking about the definition of "peace." Here's why I sigh and shake my head when I watch the violence like that which has recently erupted in Gaza--

I believe that there are two types of people in the world.

In the first category falls the majority of the world's population. Whether they live in Senegal or Syracuse these people can be defined as having no other goal than wanting to live their lives safe and unmolested.

These people (and I count myself in this category) simply want to spend their days going to work, whether it's a factory or a farm, come home to watch a football (or soccer) game, make love to their husband or wife (or SO) and go to sleep with a satisfied smile on their face.

They have no larger goals in life other than celebrate the addition of children to their families, share the joy as those children beat life's challenges and dance at the weddings or graduations of those same children.

The other type of people are unfortunately a little more driven (type A?) which often puts them leadership positions within whatever society they inhabit. They tend want to believe something so strongly that they're willing to start wars over that belief. Sadly, these wars are ultimately fought by the rest of us who just want to live our lives in peace.

If we could just get this second group of people out of power the world would be a much better place.

(In case anyone is wondering- Elvis falls into that second category but he was the rare form of benevolent dictator.)

Oh, that's a wonderful place to start! Once you meet someone, you never really forget them.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving besides the fact we spent it with my Mother In Law.

The real fun was Saturday when we had don snabulus, Ladybug, Overdroid, Swinebread and Swinebreadina and Swinebread Jr. out to Faber University for a second Thanksgiving. Swinebread Jr. is just about the happiest baby I think I've ever ever met. This leads to all sorts of embarrassing mugging by the adults trying to get him to laugh some more.

Overdroid ran a round of old school Call of Cthulhu which was pretty fun. It's odd getting old enough to have our kids play with us. We stopped the Deep Ones from destroying Los Angeles with a tidal wave. Not that it would've been much of a loss to the world had we failed...

Besides getting our geek on we also spent a lot of time checking the score of the civil war as my Ducks destroyed the cocky OSU Beavers. Even though the Ducks have been spotty this year I had a feeling it would go this way despite home field advantage for the Beavers. This was the biggest game of the year for the Quack Attack and the Beavers would have a tough time not looking past their in state rivals.

Overdroid's girlfriend wisely decided that playing role playing games might not be the best use of her time while she was visiting so she headed downtown to the Portland Art Museum. Even though we're no Seattle, we have a pretty nice art museum which left her impressed.

Lest I forget: happy birthday to #1Animefan who turned 14 yesterday. You're my little sunshine, hon. Here's a Hayao Miyasaki video for you--

Many wars and feuds did Conan fight. Honor and fear were heaped upon his name and, in time, he became a king by his own hand.

The very cool West Coast Walker was kind enough to tag me with the Superior Scribbler Award.. It means a lot coming from Matt because between you, me and the wall, I harbor no doubt he's quite a bit smarter than me. But let's keep that on the QT.

Superior Scribbler Rules and Responsibilities:*The Rules: Every Superior Scribbler will name 5 other Super Scribblers.If you are named you must link to the author & the name of the blog that gave you the award. Then you must display the adorable award and link to THIS POST, which explains the award. The same post also allows you to add your link. Then they will have a record of all the people who are Super Scribblers!

My Nominees:

Pissed Off Patricia who hasn't seemed so pissed off lately but actually happy and hopeful. Maybe she should change her name to "Joyful Patricia."

Ubermilf who with great consistency makes me laugh with her unique take on the crazy world of parenting, being a milf and shirtless ranting.

Swinebread who doesn't blog as much as he used to because of the whole having a newborn at home thing but still provides my regular fix of comic book news.

Lockwood who has a wonderful dry sense of humor that I assume comes from the fact he resides in the rainiest state in the union.

Enigma who live-blogs all the important political events. An achievement dwarfed by the fact that she seems to be sober when doing so.

It's teaching its son all right. And, he's teaching its son just like people teaching its children, just like a papa.

We got to meet Swinebread Jr. this last weekend and I just want to say the kid puts every other baby to shame in the cute department. He is absolutely adorable and doesn't stop grinning, which is pretty cool for a two-month old.

It's kind of funny but as my kids get older I have to fight with them more and more for Swinebread's attention. From my oldest daughter who is into H.P. Lovecraft, to my middle daughter that loves anime to my boy who just loves comics they are picking Swiney's brain from the minute he walks in the door.

Mrs. Swinebread brought over some Ikea Swedish meatballs which were mighty tasty. They showed us a video of baby pictures that was pretty entertaining.

It's really an honor knowing those two in real life as they're a couple of the nicest people a guy could meet.

And I know you're a good father.

Please keep Mr. and Mrs. Swinebread in your thoughts and prayers today as they're supposedly in the delivery room at this very moment working to bring Pigletmuffin into the world. Updates when I hear that the little guy is here.

Here's an appropriate bit of dialog from the movie Parenthood that I think captures what they're in for--

Grandma: You know, when I was nineteen, Grandpa took me on a roller coaster.

Gil: Oh?

Grandma: Up, down, up, down. Oh, what a ride!

Gil: What a great story.

Grandma: I always wanted to go again. You know, it was just so interesting to me that a ride could make me so frightened, so scared, so sick, so excited, and so thrilled all together! Some didn't like it. They went on the merry-go-round. That just goes around. Nothing. I like the roller coaster. You get more out of it.

Enjoy the rollercoaster, Swiney!

UPDATE- The baby boy is here! Digital cigars all around...

Go wish Swinebread congratulations!!!!!

I'll need a good rope, a hunting knife, and a soft piece of leather.

Ick. Monday.

I hope everybody had a wonderful 4th of July. We took our annual drive up the Columbia Gorge to Cascade Locks to picnic and watch the fireworks. We shot off a few of our own. No serious burns. Stop, drop and roll and all that.

Liberality reminds us that the Declaration of Independence isn't the only thing we should be thinking about for the holiday. I love the Constitution but have a major crush on the Declaration. Who wouldn't love a document that at it's core is nothing more than a kick in the nuts to the establishment?

The establishment could use a good kick in the nuts once in a while. The tree of liberty has to be refreshed from time to time with a steel-tipped boot to the gotchas. You can quote me on that.

Of course if we elected Wall-E the president all of our troubles would be solved. I'm not sure he'd be that interested. He's already spent quite a bit of time cleaning up other people's trash.

Apologies for the randomness of this post. (Or "randal-ness" if you will, although I'm nowhere near as bright as Mr. Graves.) I've only had two large cups of double-black coffee this morning so I'm nowhere near as caffeinated as usual.

Have a great rest of the week and remember: watch out for bears.

To make a living people do many things God doesn't do.

I'm just going to do post covering all the stuff that's been on my mind and "clear the decks" in in a sense.

WEASELS - We were never going to win on FISA. If you think about it it's been Democrats that have allowed this to come close to passage each time until the netroots screamed bloody murder. I don't have a shadow of a doubt that party leaders decided after the last go round to spike it until the presidential primaries were over in order to give whomever our nominee was cover. Disgusting.

ET TU, BARACK? - A professor of constitutional law that doesn't understand the constitutionality of ex post facto law. It feels so great to see him trying to hide behind the skirts of the Dodd amendment to pull retroactive immunity. The chances of that passing are about as good as me flapping my wings and flying. Filibuster or die Mr. Obama.

DEVIL'S BARGAIN - With FISA in mind we get to vote for the President that will appall us regularly in the tradition of George W. Bush or the President that will disappoint us regularly in the tradition of Bill Clinton. Yay democracy!

THIS LITTLE PIGGY - Swinebread has outed himself as a looming papa. I know Mr. and Mrs. Swinebread in real life and I can tell you that little boy (they know) is going to have GREAT parents. Can't wait to meet the little bugger.

PALACE COUP AT FABER - Overdroid took advantage of the fact I was on vacation to utilize his long forgotten administrative rights to throw a wild Tom Tommorrow party at my blog. Lucky for me the damage was minimized when Overdroid got a spur of the moment job teaching improv to trial lawyers at Pepperdine at an event hosted by the infamous Ken Starr. I am not making that up.

LIKE A PACK OF WILD DINGOS - Ever watched one of those nature programs where a pack of dogs take down a gazelle? That's sort of what Franiam does with James Dobson. She doesn't even leave enough meat on the bones for the jackals.

SEVEN DIRTY WORDS - I have little to add to all the great eulogies of George Carlin but I admired the guy for the simple fact that he lived by nobodies rules but his own. He didn't broker bullshit and he didn't suffer fools. He'll be missed greatly.

TOLD YOU SO - Don Imus is a racist. Anybody with half a brain that listened to his show could tell you that. People with half a brain don't listen to his show so there you are.

IS HE PLUGGED IN? - I'm surprised John McCain is offering a prize for car battery. If anything I see him hoping they develop a better battery for pacemakers.

GOOD NORTHWEST POL - Oregon Representative Peter DeFazio has reintroduced his windfall profits tax on the oil industry bill. Among other things his bill would allow oil companies to avoid the tax if they spent some of any windfall profit on researching alternative energy sources or increasing refining capacity. It would also ban the export of any oil obtained on U.S. soil. Naturally the oil companies are against his bill.

BAD NORTHWEST POL - Washington state congressman Brian Baird who I listened to in an interview this morning. Among other acts of wankery he completely ignored a caller's point on FISA that the domestic spying had begun before 9/11 and argued that the surge was a success. Vancouver dems do us a favor and get rid of that asshole.

WORSTEST NORTHWEST POL- Senator Gordon Smith is a lying asshole. Smith says he's "one of the first to stand up to George Bush and other Republicans to end this war." Yeah, four years after the fact when he grew a spine. Shame on you Elizabeth Furse for going along with this crap.

I DID NOT KNOW THAT - Liberality hates flooding and rap music. If you rap about flooding she'll probably punch you in the face.

HELTER SKELTER- Joe the Troll wonders if Charles Manson associate Susan Adkins deserves freedom because she has six months to live. Only if she carves a little peace sign into her forehead.

COOL! - If I use a list of links to link to a dr. zaius list of links will it collapse the universe? I hope so.

I told you I had a lot on my mind.

I don't like theatrics.

Happy Friday!

In contrast to Swinebread's My Top 10 Comic Book Movies post I give you My Bottom 10 Comic Book Movies.

10. Catwoman - Even the beautiful Halle Berry directly off an Oscar win couldn't save this by-the-numbers film.



9. Daredevil - I like Ben Afleck but he didn't have much to do here.



8. The Punisher (1989) - Dolph Lundgren's career couldn't end fast enough for me.



7. Barb Wire - Pamela Anderson can't act. For most guys her natural assets are more than enough to offset this lack of talent. Not for an hour and a half they're not.



6. Superman III - I love Christopher Reeve as Superman and I think Richard Pryor was a comedic genius but whichever executive got the bright idea that mixing these two together would be cinematic gold should've had their family jewels separated from their body and rocketed into the Forbidden Zone.



5. Batman and Robin - I know some fans see the Tim Burton films which preceded this monstrosity as heretical to Batman, but at least those films had Burton's surreal production designs and quirky, off-kilter vision. This film was just a mess.



4. The Hulk - Those like myself that were excited to see what Ang Lee would do with a comic franchise were disapointed that he decided to make every effort to try and put his audience to sleep with long scenes of exposition and little "Hulk smash."



3. Nick Fury: Agent of Shield - Okay, I'm cheating a bit by putting this on the list since it was a made for t.v. movie but it starred David "I'm drunk eating a hamburger" Hasselhoff for God's sakes.

2. The League of Extraordinary Gentleman - I want so much to like this movie, mostly because of Sean Connery. It's just impossible. Great special effects but no heart about sums it up.



1. Howard the Duck - The first sign of George Lucas' descent into dementia. So bad it's STILL not available on DVD and nye impossible on cassette. Lucas has a habit of trying to hide his mistakes.



UPDATE - Randal reminds me that Howard the Duck did have something going for it in the form of Lea Thompson. The scene below is the sole reason why a young Dean Wormer saw this movie more than once.

Oh surely, I'm but a single bot, alone, as it were, in the vast universe thing. Maybe I can change the world.

Today's the big day in Oregon. I'm heading out to the Oregon City office of the Obama campaign after work to make calls for last minute voters.

I've been meaning to do a thing on vote by mail process since it's pretty unique to Oregon. I think I have a pretty good take on VBM since I was strongly against it before it was implemented but have come around to supporting the concept.

Voting

We actually receive our ballots a couple of weeks before the election date. Included with the ballot are two envelopes - a privacy envelope and a return envelope.

The ballots are bubble-style where you fill in your choice by pen. For write ins there are bubbles marked "write in" with a line to write in your choice.

After we have completed our ballots we stick it in the privacy envelope and seal it. We then stick that envelope in the return envelope and sign the validation signature on the front of that envelope. Above the signature is the following text-

Voter's Statement
I am the person to whom this ballot was issued.
I am legally qualified to vote in the county that issued this ballot.
This is the only ballot I have voted in this election.
I still live at the address where I am registered to vote.

The ballots can either be mailed or dropped off at several collection points located around the state on election day.

Ballot Processing

The ballots are collected at the local county election's office and the signature verified against our registration on file. If there is a problem (no signature) they will contact you. They are then sorted into precinct and the secrecy envelope removed but not opened.

Beginning five days before the election the privacy envelopes are opened and the ballots prepared for counting but they do not begin counting until election day. This process is not any faster than traditional voting. Every step of the process is open to the public.

What I think of the whole thing

As I mentioned I was really against VBM when it was first proposed by the Secretary of State. There were a couple of reasons for this.

The first is that I thought there would be too much opportunity to mess with ballots. It seemed like it was a prescription for fraud.

The other reason was that I just love going down to my local poll and voting. I'm not a religious guy but this was sort of like my religion. Vote by mail seemed like it would make voting more like paying the bills.

With regard to fraud I was completely wrong. What really opened my eyes was all the focus on our election process nationally in 2000 and 2004. In Oregon there is little difference in the ballots between different counties and municipalities. Our ballots are uniform other than the names on the ballot.

With regards to my second concern I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss going down to the polls and talking to the volunteers and going through that shared sacrament of voting. I had been looking forward to taking my kids down there to watch me vote when they got old enough to teach them the importance of voting.

On the other hand we sit down with our kids and go through the ballots and discuss the issues with them when we vote. I can say without question this has made me a better voter because I don't want to be uniformed when the kids have questions. This means that there's no blowing off the downballot candidates for county board, etc. My kids are going to ask me WHY I'm voting for that person and "because they were first on the list" doesn't cut it.

Pros and Cons of VBM

Pros

• Integrity and uniformity to process (no equal protection issue ala Bush v. Gore.)



• Less chance for cheating.



• More informed voters.



• Better turnout.



• As Swinebread pointed out you can vote naked. Although knowing Swinebread I would guess he wouldn't let traditional voting stop him from that luxury.
  

Cons

• No sense of community.



• Ballots can be picked-up by third party (potential weakness to system.)



• Paying postage to mail ballot seems a little "poll tax-ish."

Can't a man have a drink around this town in peace?

Tagged by Swinebread.

The nearest book, turn to page 123, locate the fifth sentence, and then post the next three sentences on my blog, and then tag five other people.

The nearest book is "Human Resources (HR) Policies for U.S. Employees."

"You are eligible for tuition reimbursement if you:

+ Are a U.S.-based regular or buffer employee

+ Work 30 hours or more per week."

Instead of tagging anyone else I decided to shoot them with a paintball gun instead. Since I can't do that online I'm off to visit the neighbors.

You're gonna eat lightnin' and you're gonna crap thunder!

Tooling around the net yesterday made me feel a little silly with my lame attempt at an April Fool's joke. At least I wasn't the only one taking a stab at it. There were a ton of sites that tried throwing their readers for a loop. Most of the stuff was lamer than mine so I got that going for me. It wasn't a good day on the interwebs.

Some of the stuff on my mind and in no particular order-

At Swinebread's suggestion I just finished reading Alan Moore's "The Watchmen." Better late than never, eh? It's an amazingly layered piece of art that really transcends it's genre. Perhaps "transcends" isn't the right word. It elevates it's genre and shows what's possible.

I am concerned that there's so damn much there it may be unfilmable but, like Swinebread, I'm now excited to find out. If it's successful it might kill superhero movies for a while. There's going to be no way the other that's come out will be able to match the psychological depth of the characters in this story.

Jess Wundrun won a story contest where she's going to get to go to California and eat at that "Hell's Kitchen" guy's restaurant. If you haven't read her story it's pretty good. It's sort of Michael Jackson meets Martha Stewart.

I'm not sure Hillary Clinton picked the best metaphor for her campaign with "Rocky." If you remember the end of the original movie you'll know what I'm talking about.

Oh, and Mash did a nice tribute to journalist Dith Pran who died this week. I had a pretty right wing buddy in high school that was always dragging me to movies like "Invasion America USA" and "Red Dawn." He took me to see the "Killing Fields" and it really had a profound effect on my thinking about governments and totalitarianism. Pran was a very brave soul.

The penis is evil.

I'm extremely happy that I can jointly announce with my good friend Swinebread that hostilities in the Great Cheesy Video War have come to an end.

Families of both our great nations can now relax comfortable in the knowledge that no longer will they face the threat of Monkees in tanks, Pimp Shatners or dancing Adam Wests.

I would like to quickly observe that this peace would've left a better taste in my mouth had Swinebread not decided to serve Zardoz cocktails at the signing ceremony on the deck of the Faber Deathmobile. But that's water under the bridge.

In the off chance that any other blog take this peace as a sign of weakness and that my oblique whisper of "Walken" was nothing but an empty threat, I leave you with but a glimpse of the darkness which will descend upon them should anyone dare threaten my blog--

That's just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs!

Mickey Dolenz wandering shirtless through the desert? I can't decide whether Swinebread's video attack is hurting my brain or my eyes more. Vicious. Bloody vicious.

I suppose that we could go on this forever but I'm willing to call it a draw and sue for peace. Should Swiney fail to accept my olive branch here's a demonstration of the awesome power of this blog-star I still hold in reserve---

Witness the power of my Singing James Bond of Doom!



I'd give this very, very careful thought if I were you, Swinebread. I still have at least one more ace up my sleeve and without giving too much away it's name is "Walken."

It looks bad, Batman. This brassy bird has us buffaloed.

Swinebread thinks his Wells meets Woods is a TKO. While I admit it left me smarting, I still have the strength to drag myself off the mat and sucker-punch him with a Batusi...

Stuff that up your Stately Wayne Manor, Swiney!

Nobody hipped me to that, dude.

I see Swinebread's Psycho Gigolo Shatner and raise him a dancing Pee Wee ---



Your call, Swiney.

And he, he himself, the Grinch, carved the roast beast.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Me - I had a ton of fun playing RPGs with Swinebread and Overdroid. One character mostly insane and the other sacrificed to save the world. Woohoo!

I saw a couple of flicks and thoroughly enjoyed both despite the fact they were worlds apart. "The Mist" was a brave horror film on a lot of levels as it had a LOT of talking and character development but what really sets it apart from current big stream horror was a cynical, kick you squarely in the nuts ending that echoed "The Illustrated Man" from years ago.

But the film I absolutely LOVED was "Enchanted." I'm serious. The thing has a strong "Princess Bride" vibe to it with lots of plays on Disney storytelling and faerie tales. Very funny, happy movie that's a lot better than the trailers make it look.

I don't know about you but I'm turkey'ed out. Bring on the Christmas Roast Beast!

Wormer.

I was afraid you wouldn't be able to stand up for me.

In response to Swinebread's "Leave Britney Alone" post I give you our President's take on that theme-

You're not Superman, you know.

Swinebread will probably enjoy this. Top 15 Unintentionally Funny Comic Book Panels.

My favorite is the one from "Spiderman." Poor Aunt May.