Couldn't Sleep...

I couldn't sleep, so I've been looking at videos and such on youtube. Thought I'd share two of my favorite clips. One's from Flight of the Conchords, a hilarious show I adore and am thrilled is coming back for a second season, the other is one of my favorite bits from Family Guy, a show I absolutely hated but find myself enjoying more these days (even if I still find the older episodes unbearable to watch).

I'll check back later unless by some divine grace I'm actually able to fall asleep sometime soon.

Holy Christmas!

Five posts in one day, and another post the next day! It's almost like I have scores of people actually reading my blog and I have the urge to update for their benefit.

Anyway, I've updated all the entries with label tags for easy access. So if you just want to read my incoherent ramblings on TV, Vacations, Things that have screwed me over, or reasons why I think I'm going to Hell, you can, and with the click of a button. There's even a label marked "Button"!

...

I'm going to bed now. Sorry.

JLU vs. Superfriends

Here's a link to a great article online comparing Superfriends and Justice League Unlimited:

http://toddalcott.livejournal.com/65562.html

Here's an excerpt for whet your appetite:

"In Superfriends, Batman has a computer and a cave full of gadgets, Wonder Woman has a magic rope and an invisible plane, Green Lantern has a magic ring, Flash is fast, Superman has his multitudinous powers, Aquaman talks to fish. Those are all fine attributes, but they do not, in and of themselves, constitute character. If all that mattered was the number of powers, Martian Manhunter would be a more popular superhero than Superman.

"What the producers of Superfriends chose to do is give all their heroes the exact same personality, whether they are the Last Son of Krypton, the Dark Knight, the Amazon Princess or The Guy Who Talks to Fish. The heroes of Superfriends are uniformly game, brave, chipper, chatty, easily startled and, paradoxically, unflappable. No sooner do they exclaim "Great Krypton/Hera/Gotham/Neptune!" than they pull some improbable solution out of the air and calmly implement it (as Seanbaby mentions, this solution often involves "spinning around" the bad guy/explosion/missile/lava/monster/lava-monster until the spinning affects it somehow).

"This conceptual blunder, not the dumb plots or the cheap animation, is why Superfriends is so reviled. Television can soar on dumb plots and cheap animation, it cannot survive without characters. This is why episodes of Superfriends feel so shallow, repetitive and lame; there are seven main characters and they all think and act exactly the same way. Think about it: Hanna-Barbera actually gave the members of the Justice League less personality than they gave to the members of the Mystery Gang."

Honestly, I don't get why some folks are so hung up on Superfriends. It's the same thing with shows like He-Man and Ninja Turtles. I get affection for old cartoons you watched as a kid, but really, a lot of those shows are pretty bad. Not just the animation, but the writing and voice acting too. And hey, there are things I liked as a kid that I've rewatched as an adult and found nostalgic enjoyment in, but they're far from the be-all, end-all.

Wikipedia Update

So, I went back on wikipedia this afternoon to check out my status and -- surprise, surprise -- the great and powerful wikipedia screwed me over again. That wretched hag "DragonflySixtyseven" extended by ban, which, by the way, was set up for absolutely frivolous and hilarious reasons (as detailed in earlier posts below). Thankfully due to the intelligently measured actions of "Persian Poet Gal" my account was reinstated as soon as I alerted them to this curious affront.

Y'know, wikipedia kind of sucks, huh. Yeah. Little bit.

And they need to get a sense of humor and stop BLOCKING people who have the gall to laugh at a joke. "Encouraging Vandalism". Feh.

Six Years Later

I'd hoped to write something profound here and, to be honest, I'd written and re-written this post a few times before settling on this. I thought about something along the lines of how despite the events of September 11th being over-shadowed by a lot of the stuff that's happened since then, no ones forgotten or taken for granted the heroism and sacrifice of that day. It all came out sounding kind of trite and unsatisfying though.

I guess what I'm trying to say is thanks and God bless, and no one will ever forget.

I Beat the System!

".....meh, okay, so I overreacted. It's still not cool, but it's not THAT horribly uncool. Your block has been reduced to twelve hours. DS 04:45, 11 September 2007 (UTC) - DragonflySixtyseven"

Yeah! Take that wikipedia! Shows them what can happen when the little guy with a healthy sense of humor has a forum to get the word out and no one to BLOCK him. Assuming they realized they should reduce the BLOCK by reading this and not independently reaching that conclusion on their own, I suppose.

Yeah! And that goat anecdote showing up right after Jon Stewart and Jeff Garlin mentioned it? Still very funny. Yeah.

What the - - ?

I got blocked on wikipedia! Tonight on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart and guest Jeff Garlin made jokes about the his wikipedia entry, ending with Stewart making a joke about Garlin being nearly killed by mountain goats last year and how it'd end up on his wiki-entry. So I go to Garlin's page and see someone's changed it, and instead go to the discussion page and say how funny it is that it's been changed so quickly.

And then I get BLOCKED. For three days granted, but I'm BLOCKED for three days. For, apparently, encouraging vandalism. Here's the message:

"It is not awesome to vandalize Wikipedia articles just because Jon Stewart said it'd be wacky to do so. Nor is it awesome to tell people that their vandalism is awesome. You are blocked for three days. DS 03:53, 11 September 2007 (UTC) - DragonflySixtyseven"

What'd I do? Come on! Mountain goats nearly killed Jeff Garlin last year? That's very funny.

And, yes, I can still check out the wiki, and, yes, I only go there, like, twice a month or so, but come on! BLOCKED, for chrissakes!

Hey

What's up everybody that doesn't visit my blog. I know what you're not thinking -- a new message? And just a week after the last one? If I were a better blogger I'd be here posting that often, if not more. Then again, I can't even get close friends and family to stop by, so it's just as well I put my efforts into more substantial pursuits. Like this one game, where you have to get rid of these things without letting the kid on top fall into the water. It's real neat. That one of the other benefits of having a blog whose sole source of traffic comes from people who stumble on it by mistake; I can say things like "It's real neat" and not worry about coming off like a five-year-old.

Here's a link to the game: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/371834

Hey folks.

Mike Wieringo, artist on Spider-Man, The Flash, the Fantastic Four and many other books, died yesterday of a heart attack. He was only 44 years old. He was one of my favorite artists when I started reading Spider-Man back in the 90s, and did some really nice stuff in the Fantastic Four book a few years back. Most recently he did a ten issue run on Spider-Man, and just finished a Spider-Man/FF mini-series. I've always kind of wondered what it'd be like if folks whose work I admired died and what my reaction would be like since I'd assumed that would still be some years away. Turns out it's kind of like a punch to the gut.

(The sketch to the left is from Mike's blog at http://www.mikewieringo.com/. The Site's a busy right now, but I recommend you stop on by and check out his work. It's worth it.)

Wow. I'm a terrible blogger.

Sorry about that. I really need to update more often. For the benefit of the people who don't visit my blog, naturally.

But if you stumbled upon this by mistake, here's a short film I was in a few years back. I played the hell out of that dead body.



Have a good day.