One More Class

NKU's class is finished up and two of the Clermont classes. I have one more ENG 103 and it's off to grading final papers. It's been hectic but the students who actually show up for class have been pretty good.

Another Stupid Dragon Question

After the dragon/dinosaur issue from the new Scooby Doo DVD, we watched Rankin/Bass animated Hobbit. My stepdaughter asked about Smaug (if he looked that way in the book) and somehow we started talking about dragon books. She has the new Dragonology book and has read The Hobbit and Harry Potter.

Two questions: What would be your nomination for best dragon book overall? And what would be a good book for 12-year old girls? (She hasn't read Conan and I'm kinda happy to keep it that way. I was thinking the Dragon Riders series which I personally didn't like but has a strong female following.)

Devilboy's Kryptonite

(Set roughly 25 years in the future when I have enough energy to write a new Devilboy script)

Devilboy (growing to 75 feet tall a la Apache Chief from Superfriends): All mankind is doomed! Prepare for the portal of hell to be opened and Hell and Earth shall be one.

Person opposing DB, I don't know, let's say...Moe: This ought to stop ya! (throws object)

DB (screams, shrinking to microscopic size): My only weakness! Noooooooooo!!!

Moe (looking at spot where DB disappeared): Well, he's stopped for now. But if he ever returns, I'll have more of THIS waiting for him.

(Holds up a peanut butter jar as credits roll)


Yesterday I had to pick DB up from school because he'd broken out in a rash on his hands and face. I think it was from the peanut butter that he had on his toast (he smears it like crazy). Tomorrow he's getting tested for food allergies but he's never had a reaction to peanuts before.

Then I read about this. Great.

Recovering

Had a rough, rough Thanksgiving. My wife is visiting her mother and left me with the kids but it's winding down. It was my first scheduled day off since September 23 (I missed a class at Clermont due to, ahem, problems but yesterday was the first legit full day off). I'm real thankful to be working.

Liberal Bias

A blow to objectivity even if it does sound funny.

I have no problem with teachers having strong views or talking about them when it's appropriate (which is a worthless word since no one can agree when something is appropriate) but this guy just gave his opponents more ammo.

Even though I don't think it should be in the classroom, I would like to see the whole quiz. It's sounds like the opposite of this which was defended by some of the people who will cry foul about the new one.

"It Turns into Kim Cattrall When You're Not Here"

Is this guy really, really stupid or are bad 80s movies coming to life?

And is this guy just stupid or crazy?

Anyone From Mason?

According to Snopes, it's possible that someone in Mason, Ohio, has the most disturbing Christmas light display ever.

Has anyone seen this? Are there 12 people in the south-east Ohio area who would convict me if I shot this guy if he lived next to me?

Chasing the Wolf

I finished Nathan Singer's new novel Chasing the Wolf last night about 2:30. I'll say up-front that I know Nathan Singer but despite my high praise, he hasn't slipped me any payola (although I'm completely open to it).

It has a couple literary elements that I don't regularly care for but it all fits together like a surrealistic jigsaw puzzle. It's like the cyclone from The Wizard of Oz picks you up and you stare through your window at whirling faces who transform from the ordinary into nightmares. Only in this case the cyclone sets you down someplace much darker than Oz.

Although the plot involves time travel, it doesn't have a have a science fiction feel to it at all. Like Richard Matheson's Bid Time Return and Jack Finney's Time and Again, the focus is on the characters, not the mechanics of a time machine but this is far more dangerous. Octavia Butler's Kindred is the closest thing I've ever encountered: dealing with race relations and devotion beyond time.

I'm not normally the type who wants to read a happy-ending version of King Lear or hope for Lear II: Regan's Revenge but in this case I would love to see more of these characters and the world of this novel. Just the theories of Time-walking that one Walker develops are better than any hard-pseudo-science explanation. We get a glimpse of something incredibly intriguing and it ends before I was ready to let go. It's like watching a beautiful woman begin to undress but then she sees you and yanks shut the blinds.

I highly recommend Chasing the Wolf but don't start it at night if you have to wake up early in the morning.

Quick Class

Only about half my class showed up tonight but, being the day before Thanksgiving and after the snow we had earlier today, I wasn't expecting anyone. Naturally the students who came were not the ones who needed most of the lessons to begin with so I cut it criminally short. I've heard (possible urban legend) that this is the busiest bar night of the year so it's probably for the best that they get home before the drunks come out. I had a former student killed by a drunk driver and I'd rather let class out early than have another.

We read How to Give a Pill to a Cat and Dog for the Explaining Processes paper. It's probably the most popular reading assignment in any of my classes.

Science--A Major Disgrace

With everything else I should have read, I thumbed through John A. Keel's Complete Guide to Mysterious Beings. Compared to most of the paranormal crowd, I've always thought Keel was one of the sanest of the bunch. Then he goes and ruins it with:


believing in mass suicide by lemming (and here)and "boa constrictors crush all the bones of their victims before swallowing them whole."

"There has been much speculation since then [1760] that the plant was somehow introduced to our world by a crashing meteor."

"There are creatures which can fly on wings too short to support their bulbous bodies. We call them bumblebees."

"Most newspaper reports are very reliable."

"Science, by and large, is a lot of bull." "Science has become a major disgrace."


Keel classifies scientists as Type A who "works for a large corporation or an important government agency" and Type B "usually a teacher at some university or small college."

Type A: The scientist who works for a tobacco company and proves that smoking is unrelated to cancer.

Type B: Pharyngula.

Type A are trustworthy; "Much of the scientific rubbish you read in your daily newspapers comes from the mouths of Type B." (Okay, if newspapers are reliable, how can they also be full of rubbish? The sad thing is that he makes these statements just pages apart.)

He later chides Type B scientists for claiming that Bigfoot sightings are escaped apes. I can believe that someone has at one time or another claimed that Bigfoot was an escaped ape but most believe this, this, this, and this.

In fairness to Keel's, his claims are no more outlandish and his views on science no more hostile than 90% of the world's religions have been but, when I checked this book out, I really wanted to like it. Keel has a strong writing style and crams a lot of info on a page but attacking scientists doesn't make Mothman sound more credible.

I'll Pass on Russian Meat

You hear about mad cow disease and that dogs, cats, etc. are used in Chinese restaurants.

According to Polyansky, there has been no cannibalism cases in the Rostov region in more than 10 years.

Is it just me or does that remind you of a "No accidents for [blank] days"? I have heard that under Stalin, it was so bad that the government put up "Eating corpses is illegal" posters. Considerate guy, that Joey.

Turkeys are hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement!

Not exactly. But a bunch of them fell off a truck.

Thanks for the Dragons

A big 90210 thank you for everyone who helped think of dragon movies. (I don't know how I could forget Shrek--how'd my kids forget?

The animators who made The Hobbit and The Last Unicorn also made a movie based on The Dragon and the George called A Flight of Dragons. It's not spectacular but it does feature a boatload of dragons.

My new theory is that my kids didn't think the Scooby Doo dragon was a dinosaur because they don't recognize dragons but because the Scooby gang was vacationing in Scotland in that episode. That was probably the only time any toons have visited Scotland and not seen the dinosaur-like Nessie.

My five-year old is convinced that Nessie is real but Bigfoot is fake because Scooby Doo says so.

Movies with Dragons

The new Scooby Doo DVD has a dragon as one of the fake monsters and my kids initially thought it was a dinosaur. Sleeping Beauty and Sword in the Stone both have witches that turn into dragons but I can't think of many real dragon movies.

There's Dragon Slayer, The Hobbit cartoon, Mystery Science Theater 3000 fodder The Magic Sword (which was probably the best MST3K movie even if it was directed by Burt I. Gordon), the horrible Dungeons and Dragons movie, and a lot of low budget stuff. Am I missing anything or is there a serious lack of dragon movies available. I know Covington had a screen play about one--it could be Hollywood's next hot property.

Flying Machine Debunked

Via the Museum of Hoaxes, a website for disproving the myth that vehicles made of metal can fly.

It's almost too easy to say that's no dumber than Creationism but that was the first thought to come to mind.

Another Argument Against Having Kids

Daughter sells Mom's camera. Mom suddenly becomes popular.

15-Inch Waist

I've seen this before and kept hoping it's fake. I guess everyone has the right to do whatever they want to their bodies, up to hacking off parts with a clipper.

Fan Cuts Off Own Testicles

I might get so excited over an unexpected sports victory that I'd trim my ear or nose hair. Maybe, if I told everyone that I'd shave my head if my team won, I'd go through with it. But this guy went a bit too far.

"I can't have kids now but still want a family - maybe I'll adopt."

Crisis of Infinite Earths

I got set off over at Walk in Brain about the state of DC Comics. Most of what I don't like about DC goes back to the mid-80s with a storyline called Crisis on Infinite Earths. Yes, I have nothing better to do but think about something that happened to Superman 20 years ago.

Superman, Batman, and a million other superheroes were created back in the 1940s. Max Gaines, father of Bill "Mad Magazine" Gaines, was one of the men who saw the potential in blatantly nonrealistic characters (as opposed to comics about pirates, cowboys, police, science fiction and fantasy [realistic in their own worlds], romance, etc.

During WWII, the public couldn't get enough superheroes. After the war, all but Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman faded away. Twenty-some years later, superheroes made a comeback and DC Comics found themselves with dozens of popular characters.

The trouble was that if Superman and crew had gone up against Hitler and Tojo, they'd start to gray in the 60s, so, starting with a story about the Flash, DC established that the new heroes were on Earth 1, the WWII vets were on Earth 2 in a different dimension. Given that most comic book geeks were also science fiction geeks, familiar with parallel world stories, this wasn't a problem.

Eventually more earths popped up--Earth 3, plagued by evil versions of Earth 1's good guys; Earth X, where the Nazis won; Earth S, where Captain Marvel and his family lived; and many more. One earth was exactly like Earth 1 but everyone's sex was switched (Superwoman, Wonder Man, Louis Lane, etc.). Another was full of talking animals, protected by Captain Carrot.

Eventually DC introduced Earth Prime, our earth, which was on the verge of seeing its first superhero (hey, no dumber an idea than the Rapture). For a while it looked like DC was going to switch focus from Earth 1 to Earth Prime and reboot. The heroes of Earth 1 were getting old and could use an update.

Instead DC destroyed most of the earths and combined the few survivors into one world. Okay, given the Quantum Mechanics suggests that there are multiple, if not an infinite, number of our own universe, this makes the DC Comics universe far less wondrous and interesting than our own.

Now when writers tell "what if" stories at DC, they have to label it "Elseworlds, imaginary stories" (as if any story about flying aliens and bat people isn't imaginary). This has affected the way cosmic events are treated (the ending of Mark Millar's Red Son and anything with Jack Kirby's Tomorrow People seems off).

DC execs have admitted that the whole event was to attract attention from Marvel Comic fans and to reboot their titles with a fresh start so new fans wouldn't feel left out.

Not that it's a pressing issue of today but they wiped out a world where Georgia Bush is president for a sales gimmick that could have been avoided with more imagination. Oh yeah, they also killed Flash and Supergirl but it was destroying that transsexual earth that still has me miffed.

A Rose for Bucca

My dog has a weird effect on reality. His enemies come to gruesome fates.

He was passed along as a puppy and one of his early "owners" kept him in the basement a minimum of 18 hours a day, rarely fed him, and let him run loose in Clifton Heights, eating food from garbage cans. That guy died in a boating accident on the Ohio River, literally losing his head.

On Sunday, three police cars and a coroner's van pulled up in front of our building. After a short while, a horrible stench oozed over the whole area. One of the neighbors, who lived two floors directly below me, had died sometime around Halloween. I don't have full details and don't particularly want them but I can't see how serial killers can stand it. Rotting bodies don't smell so much as old garbage but like old dishes that have sat in a sink full of water for a long, long time.

I feel sorry for the guy and have to wonder if he had any family at all for this to happen. He was relatively young (at least ten years younger than anyone else on his floor) and seemed healthy the last time I saw him. He was known for complaining about dogs (repeatedly about my dog Bucca) and children (repeatedly about Devilboy until I brought up the magic letters "ADA" to the condo association). He also stopped and confronted my stepdaughter when she was walking home from school about making too much noise. Afterwards, when I went down to talk to him afterwards, he was pretty contrite.

One of the neighbors made the comment, "On the bright side, I guess I won't get any more letters about my grandkids."

I don't know if Bucca put the hex on him but it tells me not to complain about everything in life (and, no, that doesn't mean I'm shutting down the blog). I doubt if anyone could have done something to save his life but I don't know of anyone else who could disappear for two weeks and not be noticed.