Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Don't look now, but I wrote this one

I will be the first to admit that I am way behind here and as a result, I have no idea where to begin this blog. I could start by doing updates, of which I am behind on, or some things that have crossed my desk, or the ever exciting life I lead when it comes to booking the radio show, or some news stuff that I found interesting, I just don't know.

Maybe the best place to start would be to send out ye olde congratulations to a couple of people that are on the friends list, and while I have asked people before to stop by and check out their pages (they are usually more interesting than my mindless bleatings), that doesn't mean that you have actually taken me up on my advice, so I will have to do the legwork for you and send along the blog style congrats to Jean on her pending nuptuals and to Angie and Lee for surviving yet another year together. You do realize that if you keep this up, people are going to start talking, don't you?

I have some update action to get out of the way as well. After last week, it is official, I have claimed one of the two byes in the first round of the hockey playoffs, coming soon to a theater near you. We have one week left in the regular season, and I am playing the 1st place team, more for pride than anything else, we both have locked up the two byes in the playoffs. I went 6-2-2 last week, so the new overall record is now 125-69-26, but despite the record, I dropped a point to first place, so I now trail by 14 pts, which means in order to finish in 1st during the regular season, I need to go at least 8-2-0 this week (I would win the tiebreaker based on victories). This is not likely to happen, so the goal is to finish well and enjoy the fact I am off next week.

We have a change meter update with a stipulation. Those of you that have been with the page from day one will remember the blogs over the moral implications of the change meter, the what if I found questions regarding large sums of money, wallets etc. Well, I did find 67 cents so the new total is now $12.79, but that is not where the implications lie. The issue involves the fact that I found someone's Visa debit card as well. So, in essence, I could put an asterik by the change meter total, because we will never know how much is in the account (unless I were to find a way to hack it). Instead of hacking it for potential cash however, I opted for the high road (or the stupid road, depending on how you look at it) and when I saw the name on the card, I came home and did a quick white pages search online to find a similar name in Pittsburgh that may be the owner of the card. Once finding a match, I placed a phone call only to find that it wasn't the owner of the card, but that they had a nephew with the same name who lived in my neighborhood, which makes sense since that is where I found the card (and it was a valid card, it didn't expire until August of 09), so I tried calling the number they gave me, but just got voice mail. No problem, I figure he can call me back, but he never does, or if he does he doesn't leave a message, so after holding the card for a few days for the potential owner, there is me trekking all over downtown Pittsburgh in single digit wind chills, trying to find a branch of this guys bank so that I can return the card. Had I realized that I would get no response and froze my ass off trying to do the right thing, I would have rather just thrown the damn thing back out in the street and let someone rip him off and been done with it.

The radio show has kept me busy recently. I have Andrew Cockburn booked for today, I had James Swanson on the show Monday, he authored the book Manhunt, which is the story for John Wilkes Booth after Booth had assassinated President Lincoln. I also have some representatives from the local Israeli Film Festival coming in today, and early next month, author Jeanette Walls will be on the show. I am also working on a few others, though I haven't nailed anything down yet, including Drew Curtis, whose work has shown up on this page from time to time. I also have a couple other things in the hopper, but those are the most recent adds to the schedule or close to adds to the schedule.

Part of the reason I have been away from posting original content is that 1) I am very lazy and 2) I have had two doubles this week, working the radio job from 5am-12:30pm, going to lunch, then coming back to work from 2pm-3:30pm followed by working the parttime job from 4pm-10pm. I have a third doube in a row tonight, but the parttime gig is from 5:30pm-9pm, a measley 3 and a half hours or as I told my boss, that shift is about as useful as masturbating with a Brillo pad.

I would like to say I have a Joe Random update, but I haven't played the game recently, I have been playing with my old hockey game on the PS2. I started a sesason and once again I am hooked. I am about 65 games in, so I will probably complete it first before diving into baseball again. Sorry, but it takes very little to distract me, and right now hockey is doing it.

The newest name to pop up in the steriods in sports scandal is none other than Pittsburgh's own Kurt Angle. It's true, it's damn true. I don't know if he is guilty or not, but it is troubling that prior to his release from WWE there were rumors of his abuse of pain killers and now this pops up. While I hope for his sake it isn't true, it isn't damn true, I wouldn't be surprised if it were.

I have blogged about comic books in the past, most recently regarding the events of Marvel's Civil War storyline. In a brief recap, the war starts as a group of heroes, the New Warriors, are filming a reality show. In the show, they vidoe themselves taking down bad guys and then the show appears on TV. During one encounter, they confront a group of super villians, including a villian by the name of Nitro who can create explosions. During the encounter, one such explosion occurs outside a schoolyard killing over 600 people, many of them children. Because the event was taped for TV, video footage shows the heroes role in the events and public outrage ensues. The government then passes a Registration Act, forcing all super powered beings to register their identies with the government or face being in violation of the law and imprisionment. Some, led by Iron Man, view the steps taken by the government as neccessary to maintaining security, others led by Captian America, view registration as a violation of their civil liberties (and you thought I just read comic books for the pictures). Well, the subsequent stories would have Iron Man's forces rounding up former friend and foe alike to enforce the law, and offering former villians a chance at redemption. By implanting devices in their brains to control their behavior, Iron Man offers villians a chance to track down their former enemies with the sides being switched, the bad guys were now working for the government while the former good guys were now fugitives from justice. This all comes to a head in Civil War #7, where both sides have a knock down drag out brawl in the heart of Manhattan. The results seem to be promising to the foes of registration, as it looks like they are winning the final battle, until one looks around and sees what has actually happened. As a result of their dispute, a large amount of property damage occurs and another 50+ innocent bystanders are killed during the battle. Seeing this, Captain America orders his people to stand down, and surrenders to Iron Man to face whatever justice may await him for opposing registration.

I mention all of this, because if some of you like myself have been watching the news wires this morning, you will see a story that Captain America is killed. Apparently, while being led from the courthouse in handcuffs during his trial, a sniper shoots and kills Captain America, which will surely send shockwaves throughout comicdom if it is true, given the iconic nature of the book itself and will certainly lead to quite a turn in future storylines for all of the characters involved in the Civil War storyline. It should be noted that after Captain America's surrender, many of the former unregistered heroes opted to register themselves, while some are still holding out against the act, though I wonder Captain America's death will play with that faction. I realize that I may be the only one on this page that finds any of this compelling, but compelling it is and it is one of the reasons that I tend to like Marvel books more than DC books in general. There usually is a certain metaphor at play, whether that being how mutant were treated (similar to racism) or the current Civil War (security vs civil liberties) or even the characters themselves, who seem, while superpowered in some degree, to always be a little flawed as well which I found refreshing.

Well, I should get to work, rumor has it I have a radio show going on, I might want to pay attention to it. Toodles all.

P.S. Don't tell anyone just yet, but it looks like I will have Drew Curtis on the show next Thursday. I will let everyone know once I have things confirmed.

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