In My Heart, I Believe His Name Is Smeaton

But they don't give his actual name.

Man Survives Fall.

Went to the launch party tonight for my friend Eilis O’Neal’s The False Princess. It’s her first novel, so it’s a special occasion. I haven’t read the book yet, but the excerpt I heard her read tonight was intriguing, something like The Prince and the Pauper with magic. Not only is she one of the nicest people I know, but she’s also a really good writer, so if you like YA fantasy, check it out.

I Am Tony's Complete Lack of Surprise

I usually steer clear of politics in the blog, because it raises my blood pressure and loses me friends. For instance, I stayed quiet when people, including people I know and like, were saying all sorts of insulting and ridiculously untrue things about the lack of civility on the right compared to the left after the recent shooting.

But this is just ignorant. Some of Barack Obama's supporters are complaining that there was no substantive plan for job creation in his SOTU speech last night.

Well, what did they expect? Number one, Obama's never had a substantive plan for anything. At all. His foreign policy plans have all boiled down to "I'ma talk them into stuff cause I'm, like, awesome."

And number two, he thinks he is focusing on jobs. He just doesn't know how. The boilerplate he regurgitated last night was substantially the same as the economic "recovery" plans he spouted during his campaign for President--clean energy, infrastructure, health care--with the exception that he got the health care part passed.

That's what's been so simultaneously frustrating and amusing about disillusioned moderates and independents complaining that Obama spent so much time in his first two years pushing health care and cap-and-trade instead of focusing on the economy. He was focusing on the economy.

When Obama was asked about economic issues on the campaign trail, he would inevitably end up talking about health care and clean energy as necessary prerequisites to building a stable, prosperous economy. He never really supported his contention that these things needed to be done first. He would simply say, "The first thing you've got to do..." and then go into his plans for medicine and energy and infrastructure "investments" to put the economy on a "solid foundation."

Maybe people figured he was just doing that media-consultant-driven thing where you turn any question to your big central theme, like Jack Kemp somehow turning a question on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a call for a flat tax. But I always figured that on some level, he really did believe what he was saying, no matter how stupid. What's sad for the country is that so many people were lulled by the mellow tones of his voice into ignoring the very ignorant crap he was saying.

So let's get a few things straight about Obama's nonsense. Number one, the health care law he got passed is not going to make health care better or more affordable, nor will it help the economy or job production. Even the people on his side have abandoned that fiction.

And number two, clean energy is not going to be some economic salvation, certainly not in the short term, and possibly not in the long-term either. Just the opposite, in fact. And I'm not just talking about the fact that any job gained in the "clean energy" industry is a job lost in the current petroleum and coal industries, making the whole thing a wash from the start.

Wind and solar energy are more costly and less reliable than fossil fuels, which is why they aren't more prevalent. The only way to make them cost-effective barring some amazing imaginary future technical breakthrough is to drive up the cost of fossil fuels through regulations and punitive taxation, which Obama admitted in rare moments of candor on the campaign trail. This drives up the prices of all goods and services, depresses the economy, causes more job losses. Worse still, it disproportionately hurts the poor, those downtrodden masses the left are continually throwing up as the justification for more and more government excess. The truth is, the left cares nothing about the poor except as a bludgeon to lash out at the things they're mad about.

The problem is not that Barack Obama has not been concentrating on the unemployment disaster. The problem is that he has no idea what a real job is, nor how to create one. He's like a cargo cultist, building something that looks like a runway in the jungle in the hopes that planes will land there once again. His speech last night was not an abandonment of the "laser-like focus" on jobs he's been promising every couple of months since he was sworn in. It was a demonstration of what his idea of focus on jobs looks like.

Super Movie Monday - Superman III, Part 2

Just testing the widget

Super Movie Monday - Superman III, Part 2

State of the Site-January

So it's been a slow January for posts here, as I've been concentrating extra-hard on Hero Go Home. I'm worked ahead for two weeks on Movie Monday and about to hit a section of the novel that will allow me to reuse a lot of material from the previous drafts, because it's the big 2nd Act climax.

Still no real income from the site. I did get one donation, which was awesome, not only because of the money, but because of the validation and the sense that if one person's willing to donate, others might be, too. I tried putting up ads from Project Wonderful, but that didn't work so well; it runs on bids, and if no one bids to be on your site, you end up with a big hole on your page.

So Project Wonderful is history, and I'm back to building up traffic as I try to figure out a new approach to monetizing. The Girl Genius ads are bringing in a small, but steady amount of traffic, and a few people have actually stuck around to read some chapters, which is good. Now I just need to kick it up a level to get more eyeballs in. I'm thinking of upping my advertising budget (which would not be hard, since so far, I've spent less than $5.00), and I've also added a widget to make it easier to share the posts on social media. So if you are active on Stumbleupon or reddit or delicious or Digg, and anything I've written catches your eye, please feel free.

I'm also thinking of putting Part III behind a paywall. In other words, you can read almost 30 chapters for free, but you'll need to pay to see how it ends. Not unfair, I don't think, but when I was considering the idea before, it was all academic speculation because almost no one had read more than the first two chapters. Now a few people are reading through, so I'll see if I can't get a couple of donations for the ending.

And in the meantime, I want to put otgether some T-shirts and/or other merchandise, as well as another couple of secret projects that I'm trying to fit in around the edges for other revenue streams, and seriously, it's hard keeping my mind moving in all the many directions it needs to go at once. So not everything's getting done, which is another reason why I'm pushing to get worked ahead. I just hate the sick feeling that all this work I'm doing is never going to pay, that I'll never be good enough at this for more than five or six people to actually like it.

Still Breathing

Was off-line for several days, but I'm back now. It's weird coming back after a few days away. On the one hand, I've gotten the chance to do other things that I wasn't spending time on before (I meant to get a lot more work done than I did unfortunately--instead of working last night, for instance, I ended up listening to 80's music for hours, almost like traveling back in time, and the day before that, I watched three or four crappy vampire movies from a DVD set I got for Christmas).

On the other hand, everything has piled up with amazing speed: emails, game requests on Facebook, spam comments needing to be deleted, and after only three days away, I'm almost afraid to look at the news. Is the world even the same anymore?

Breathing Room

This week's chapter in Hero Go Home was a hard one to write. As the story has been serialized, I've been made more aware week by week of the need to press forward with the plot. In the earlier drafts, not much happened in the first two thirds of the book. It was all a gradual build-up to the frantic action of the last third. In many ways, it felt like I was just padding things out, having aimless conversations while waiting for hte word count to reach the magic number where I could start the climax to Act 2.

But this time, I've been more plot focused. So much so that sub-plots that had been important got almost completely dropped. And as the characters are headed into the big action climax to Part 2, I realize that I haven't really let people get to know the supporting cast as well as I should. So I decided to write a chapter in which not much happens, but the characters get a chance to breathe and just be themselves without pressure for a while before the hammer drops.

It wasn't easy. Because even though not much happens, I still needed to weave things together and make it flow. I had to try and make it interesting, illuminating not just the characters, but the world the characters inhabit. I hope I succeeded.

2010 In Review

This is not really a look at the year in any depth. More just a reflection that, my lack of submission to publications notwithstanding, I produced a hell of a lot of work last year. 33 recaps for Movie Monday (both on this blog and at Hero Go Home), along with 35 comics recaps for Out of the Vault. In addition, there were a bunch of Big Game Wednesday posts , along with almost 50,000 words of novel content for Hero Go Home, along with 21 Extras and at least 10 variations on the header image. And then there were the reviews for examiner.com for a couple of months there. And of course, the radio play (or audio drama, if you want to be technical).

It's not the machine-like flood of work that some other guys are doing, but for a guy who's so far been doing it strictly for the love, as it were, it's not bad. And I'm starting to get slightly more attention. So now I'm trying to put together a more organized and disciplined approach to this year's work, so that I can get the job done better and more efficiently, and maybe coax more work out of myself (as well as plan ahead better for things like Halloween--I want this year's to be *spectacular*).

I'm not calling it a New Year's Resolution or anything like. Just a modified approach that I hope will work better than what I've been doing. Fingers crossed that it will work.

Oh yeah, and somebody actually read all the way through Hero Go Home a couple of days ago. I hope they liked it and will tell friends.

The Year to Come

Cross-posting this to Hero Go Home as well, because a lot of what I'm talking about applies there.

I'm starting off the year feeling pretty energized about things. Things are coming to a head in Hero Go Home, the novel. They are about to kick into high gear in just a few weeks, and when I say high gear, I mean you haven't seen anything yet. That alien invasion back in Chapter 11? Small potatoes. Our heroes are about to get tested in a very big way, and after that... well, after that, look to Chapter 1 for a clue.

The current novel is a little over halfway done, I'm thinking, which means that it should be finished sometime in May, maybe. Since the donation model hasn't been working, I'm thinking of different ways to generate revenue. But that's contingent on getting people to actually read the story and be interested in how it turns out, which doesn't seem to be happening much. I'm getting more visitors, but not a lot of hits on the actual novel pages.

Still not sure what's to be done about that, although I may go back and revise the earlier chapters. Some chapters combine several unrelated scenes, because I wanted to provide a minimum level of content each week. I may break those down into shorter, punchier chapters. I'll also do some smoothing, because as the plot has adapted, and as I've run into deadline crunches, some chapters were rushed and are not as good as I'd like them to be.

When it's all done, though, in the second half of the year, there will be a Kindle edition with everything included, plus some extras, as well as the option of an actual dead tree edition. And I'll be starting another Digger novel, which will probably be the prose version of the aborted webcomic story from a couple of years ago. I'm hoping to actually not bog down on the damn car trip to the hotel this time. There was some funny stuff you never got to see, and some characters I really want you to meet.

And in the meantime, sometime within the first three months of the year, I'm going to be adding something new to the site. I'm not going to say what it is just yet, but it's darker than Hero Go Home and will not be serialized in the same way. Ideas are still being firmed up.

Weekly Extras are going away. I still have some Extras in the works, but trying to come up with one every week in addition to all my other obligations has resulted in some less-than-satisfactory work, in my opinion. So the Extras are to be more sporadic, but better quality.

Out of the Vault and Super Movie Monday will continue like before, though, and this year, I'm getting a little more organized and planning further ahead in the hopes of both avoiding a crunch and putting together some really special things for Halloween and Christmas. There will also be an occasional non-super movie featured on They Stole Frazier's Brain.

And that's basically it, for now. Is that a lot? It seems like a lot. And I haven't even mentioned my whole other Secret Project. Whew.

Happy New Year, 2011

So I went out earlier in the week and bought some champagne, then I got invited to a party, then I bought a cigar, because I really wanted one and the two I have are both quite expensive holdovers from an earlier era and I want to save them for something special.

I went to the party and had a good time, but at some point, being the single guy (sort of) among all these couples gets sort of tiring, especially given how much everybody talks about sex, which I'm not getting any (for years now). So I left early, thinking I'd come home, pop the cork on my champagne and light my cigar and reflect on the year past and the year to come or something.

Instead, I discovered that this had finally happened, and any plans I had went out the window for a couple of hours. Mr. Plinkett is no longer the amazingly fresh thing he was, and the red meat in the reviews comes accompanied with a lot more fat than before, but still, he makes some really salient points, including some I hadn't expected. Kick ass.

Irony, Thy Name Is... Well, OK, Irony, But Still...

So I go out and place the ad on Girl Genius (a really fun webcomic by Phil and Kaja Foglio), and get a little bump in traffic over at Hero Go Home. Then I'm checking my traffic numbers and I see I'm getting a (relative) ton of traffic here at Frazier's Brain. What gives?

Freaking Foglio. The esteemed Steve Bissette (who was the kick-ass penciller on Swamp Thing back in the Alan Moore glory days) has linked to my article about D'Arc Tangent in the midst of a discussion with Dave Sim on Creators' Rights in the context of shared works. And on the one hand, I think it's really cool. And on the other hand, I'm sort of embarrassed by my uninformed BS'ing all the way through the article.

And I really wish I had the cojones to shill for Hero Go Home in his comments, but that would be in bad taste. Shit.

Tiny Progress

So I've dipped a tiny toe into the advertising waters by placing a tiny button ad on Girl Genius. Which is to say, I never see the ad when I click over there to check on it, but I have gotten some traffic in from it, so I know it's there sometimes. Apparently, even though I bid one price worldwide, the system breaks the bid down into regions, so basically, my ad is showing on Girl Genius everywhere but in the U.S., where the majority of my target audience is. I'm not sure how to fix that.

I'm placing the ads through Project Wonderful, which seem to be only wonderful for webcomics so far (in fact, I originally started the account when I was putting together the Hero Go Home webcomic, but never used it).

Here's the cool thing about Project Wonderful: it's set up like an auction, so you're bidding for space on the site, and your bids are automatically regulated so you never pay more than you have to.

Here's the bad thing about Project Wonderful: it's set up like an auction, so if your site has really low traffic (like mine, though growing slowly), you may get no one bidding on your site, and therefore make no money from ads.

So traffic is the key. And the two steps I've taken recently--adding Movie Monday and Out of the Vault, and placing the Girl Genius ad--have noticeably increased traffic, though it's still barely comparable to this blog, let alone a successful one. Networking would be good, except that I've pretty much cut ties with most of the people I should be networking with. The closest thing I've got to a networking arrangement was the guest appearances by naamah and sargon, who are also serializing a novel (an idea I shamelessly stole from them), but I haven't linked it because our audiences don't really overlap at all. I need to fix that; they did help me out, after all. So I'll just put a big NSFW label on it or something.

And all the things I'm trying to do to increase the viewership of the blog take away time from producing content for the blog. This is really hard, and I worry, now that a couple of people have read the first chapter and no further, that I need to go back and punch up the beginning to keep people reading. But I also need to be moving forward. Aaaarrggghhh, too many things to do and no idea whether any of them will do any good in the long run.

Aftermath

So there was no Christmasiness around the blog, because I put it over on Hero Go Home. And really, as I've probably said before, I'm not much of a fan of the holiday season. And if anything could make me even less of a fan, it's working retail.

My God. The day before Christmas was a frantic rush, with people grabbing whatever they could for last-minute gifts (and just as often, picking up something, changing their mind, and leaving it in another part of the store--that always happens some, but that day, there were just carts and carts full of it). The day after Christmas, when we put all the Christmas stuff on clearance, the crowds descended like locusts. The Christmas corner looked like a bomb went off back there, and there was a huge pile of discarded stuff all around the nearest price scanner, where people couldn't be bothered to take the things back to where they found them after deciding they still weren't cheap enough.

As for Christmas itself, not terrible. Dressed up in tie and hat again, like last year, and took my daughter her present. I was really proud of this year's choice: an art instruction book called Dragonart Evolution. Daughter likes to draw and is on a big dragon kick, so this seemed like a natural. And she seems to really like it, so I'm glad it worked out.

Went to Muskogee later to have dinner with my family. And that was nice, too, although everyone's getting older and frailer.

Present-wise, well, I have a car and a job (for now, at least), so I don't really need presents. Which is fine, because I couldn't really afford to get anyone else anything, either. But I did get a really nice antique plate from Japan from my mother-in-law, and a really unexpected gift from my stepbrother, which was awesome.

Now we just cruise into the New Year, and then I'll fill you in on what's happening with the other blog. I think it's staying.

Awesome Is Measured In...

(ETA: In case you don't know what this is referring to, you can read about it on Wikipedia here. I just thought it was kind of silly. The original artist is the same guy who inflicted this on us, though, so don't this is some kind of blanket endorsement of his work, though if he hadn't done that, we wouldn't have had this)

Hello?

Sorry, just listening to the echo. Without Out of the Vault and Movie Monday, it just seems so empty around here. It's my own fault, I know. The funny thing is, I did more posts this year than in any previous year on this blog, and yet now, it has fallen to almost nil.

The move has worked a little, though. I'm getting a little more traffic over at Hero Go Home from people searching out either the comic featured on Out of the Vault or from people searching out the featured movie. It's a bare trickle now, but traffic was so sparse that it's really noticeable.

My next step (assuming I'm able to renew the domain) is to get some ads out. That means I have to make up the ad banners, which means I have to come up with an interesting idea for an ad banner. And I'm debating whether to make it an animated GIF. Which would mean I have to learn how to make an animated GIF.

I doubt it's all that hard, and one of the things I've enjoyed about the whole Hero Go Home process is all the new things I've learned to do, but at some point, you just get tired of doing it all yourself. Plus, there's just so much work involved--every week I write a chapter, put together a new Extra, read-scan-write entry for Out of the Vault and watch-screencap-write entry for Movie Monday, plus most weeks revising the banner as well--that it gets mentally draining after a while. I would like to get back to some Big Game Wednesday, as well as doing some non-superhero-related Movie Monday over here again, but there's no way I have that much energy.

The holidays add their own kind of crazy on top of that. I've not been much of a fan of the Christmas season since I was a kid, anyway, and working retail during the holidays doesn't help. And with the present economic woes, I know several people who are hurting this Christmas season. At least I was able to get my daughter an affordable present that I think she'll really like. I hope.

Not sure where I was going with that, actually. Just venting a little, I guess. Go over to herogohome.com for the entertaining content. Nothing to see here, at least for a while.

Christmas 2010

Another OSFW Christmas party last night, and while it was a good one, it felt kind of strange. The group has really changed. Many of the folks who were regular attendees when I started no longer show up with any regularity (if they haven't moved away entirely). Of the 20-odd people who showed up last night, less than a third were regulars when I started a little over, jeez, seven years ago now.

Which has me questioning the whole writers group thing, really. The first few years there, the group was an exciting place to be, with several old pros mixed with newer up-and-comers like Matt Reiten and Richard Cox and me. I was writing stories in different genres, stretching my wings, finding what worked for me and what didn't. And I was getting to know people in the sf/fantasy community.

But over the years, everything has changed. I lost confidence in everything and mostly withdrew from the writing community again. I rarely write short stories anymore, and don't submit the ones I do write for publication. I'm concentrating on blogging and on the occasional novel, though I'm really not submitting them either. Plus the disintegration that has happened in my personal life.

The point is, when I joined the group, I had a reason for joining. I wanted to step up to the next level in my writing career, and the group seemed like a way to do that (which it was, quite frankly). But now that reason's no longer there, really, and now it has just become sort of a social obligation. Now I just show up but rarely contribute, except with an occasional chapter or the roughly one short story per year I write now. I'm just questioning whether the group is worth the effort any more.

Anyway, as usual, here's my fragment from this year's contest. But first, a word about how it came to be. Several years ago, a bunch of the group's members colluded behind the scenes to write their fragments around a single theme to tweak K.D. Wentworth, who as coordinating judge on the Writers of the Future contest, was seeing a lot of stories with the same elements over and over again (I was not in on the joke, so my fragment was one of the few that didn't fit in). It was so much fun that in subsequent years, we decided to formalize a theme for all the entries--bad science one year, robots the next. Last year was steampunk.

This year, they decided to have everyone write from a plot seed rather than a theme. The seed: the phone rings, and no one's on the other end, but the person answering knows what the call is about anyway. I wan't a big fan of the specific seed, nor of the general plot seed concept, and was considering blowing the whole thing off this year. But one member who was also not thrilled with the idea proposed writing around a counter-theme, that being pirates. Which gave me the hook I needed to actually work in the seed and the theme, as well as probably breaking an unwritten rule by writing about the holiday itself, however obliquely. Because the Christmas fragments are almost never actually about Christmas.

Anyway, here's the fragment, entitled FORTUNE: DANGER!

The lozenge of plastic was only a couple of inches long, pink with the white face of Hello Kitty at a jaunty angle. Nikolai picked it up with blunt fingers and looked at the scarred man across the table from him. "And this is all of it?"

Junkers nodded. "IFF transponder codes for every air force in the northern hemisphere," he said.

"What about the southern hemisphere?" Nikolai asked.

"Exactly what major air power were you worried about down there?" Junkers asked, and Nikolai laughed, baring yellow, uneven teeth. "You should know," Junkers continued, "Warlord Motumbo has his men looking all over for you."

"He's still mad about the drugs," Nikolai said.

Junkers nodded. "It's harder to quash a rebellion when the rebels have access to medicines that the government withholds. People's loyalties can turn against you. He got wind of our meeting somehow, has had men tearing up the quarter looking for you. They're led by someone I've never seen before."

"What does he look like?" Nikolai asked, though he feared he already knew.

Junkers squinted, twisting the puckered scar under his right eye. "I've never used the word 'beautiful' to describe a man before, but this one is. Beautiful and scary, with blond hair that..."

The door burst open and several armed men ran inside, followed by a beautiful man with flowing blond hair. "...looks quite like that, actually," Junkers finished.

"Nikolai," said the blond man, "at last I have you."

Nikolai's smile was perhaps even more disturbing than the blond man's beauty. His round face twisted, making his whiskers jut out in random spikes, and there was a glint of wild madness in his eyes. "It's been a long time, Scratch, you old chicken-counter."

Nikolai's arm moved and there was a magnesium flash, accompanied by a ball of acrid smoke that forced tears from the assembled men. Machine pistols clattered, echoing harshly in the small room, and a man's scream was quickly cut off. Scratch wiped at tear-filled eyes and saw one of his men on the floor. Nikolai was gone.

"After him," Scratch shouted, "quickly!"

Nikolai thundered down the back stairs. Two men tried to block his way, but Nikolai was larger and had momentum on his side. He batted them aside as easily as if he were a bowler picking up a split. He heard footsteps coming from above and below and cut into the second floor corridor to try to confuse the pursuit. He dashed for the elevator, but it dinged open before he reached it. Three men stepped out with machine guns.

Nikolai ran the other way with the men in hot pursuit, when suddenly, a door flew open just as he ran past and a huge, scaly wing stretched out across the hallway, clotheslining all three pursuers. They fell to the ground, senseless.

Nikolai turned as a tall man stepped into the hallway, the squamous wings stretching up from his back brushing against the ceiling to throw both men into uneasy shadow. "Miguel," Nikolai greeted the man.

"Nikolai," the winged man greeted in return. "Let's go."

Nikolai followed the winged figure through the room and out onto a fire escape. In moments, they were standing on the ground in a narrow, dirty alley. Miguel turned to Nikolai and said, "That'll throw them off for a couple of minutes, at least. You're welcome."

"I didn't need any help," Nikolai said.

"You always say that, but it never looks that way," Miguel said.

"Looks can be deceiving," Nikolai answered. "Just ask your brother."

"Oh yes, Scratch. What was he after you for this time?"

Nikolai held up the Hello Kitty flash drive. "IFF codes for the Solstice Run."

"Are you still doing that?" Miguel asked in disbelief.

"It's a tradition," Nikolai said. "I've got to go. My ride's waiting."

Nikolai set a finger to one side of his nose and shot into the sky. Miguel looked up to see a sleek craft turning north before zooming out of sight. "Vaya con dios, my friend."

As Nikolai stumbled into his office, later, the phone rang. He picked it up. "Hello?"

There was no voice on the other end, no sound except for the creak of wood, the lapping of waves and the distant cries of gulls. "Captain Geisthammer, if I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, I don't work for pirates," Nikolai shouted into the silence. "No-ho-ho!"

The Future of Hero Go Home

This is copied from an identical post appearing at herogohome.com

Okay, here's the deal. I'm enjoying Hero Go Home myself. And I had hoped that the story and the site would find an audience, but I have about three weeks before I have to pay a little over $200 to renew the domain and the hosting. And to date, I haven't gotten a single donation.

So on the one hand, though I really like the idea of the site, and think I've been doing some interesting things with it, they're things that have been of interest to me only. And I'm wondering if $200+ is too much to pay to continue what is essentially a vanity site.

Then again, I've got plans for the future of the site if it continues. I'm going to be putting ads on the site very soon, and perhaps advertising on other sites as well. And then there's the crazy plan.

What's the crazy plan? Well, how does another novel sound? And not another Digger novel (although I have another story planned for after Hero Go Home), but a completely original story set in an unrelated continuity. The absolutely insane plan is, two days of Hero Go Home content (until the current storyline is finished--it's about halfway done now) a week, plus two days of columns (Out of the Vault and Super Movie Monday), plus another two days of the new novel, a Sam Spade meets Cthulhu/Godzilla story set in the 1930's. That's one chapter and one multimedia extra every week for two novels running concurrently, plus two weekly columns.

Now how much would you pay?

But wait, there's more! Because that's only six days a week, and there are seven. What would I do with the seventh?

That's a surprise.

Okay, actually, I don't have a plan for the seventh day, yet. But if herogohome.com turns into a money-making venue, you can bet I will. So, the terms:

If I get at least one donation before the end of the year, even if it's only $5, I'll renew the domain and continue the experiment. If I make enough to cover the $200+ renewal cost (a long shot, I know--that would take over 40 people at $5 a shot), I will launch the new novel on the first Wednesday of the year (January Fifth). And if I get enough to launch the second novel, the biggest donor will get the option to pick what feature will run on the seventh day.

This doesn't mean I absolutely won't renew the site if I don't get any donations--I'm still willing to reconcile with my wife after 2 1/2 years apart, after all, so I'm an easy mark--but a donation, no matter how small, would certainly take out the guesswork, wouldn't it?

These Are Not the Movies You're Looking For

Movie Monday has moved to Hero Go Home. Today is part one of a huge, picturiffic recap of "Superman, the Movie," starring Christopher Reeve, Marlon Brando, Gene Hackman and 15 others. Learn about relativity and big blue Kryptonian balls!

It's Time

If you think things are looking a bit bare here, you're right. Out of the Vault has moved to Hero Go Home, along with Movie Monday. Today's title: Action Comics #402, one of the oldest Superman Comics I own, along with a special bonus featuring a certain writer's secret origin as a superhero fan (hint: it's genetic).

BTW, having listened to all the hype, I decided to try a Four Loko the other night. To start with, it tasted nasty. But man, it really did knock me on my ass. I drank about 3/4 of the can (it's a pretty big can), decided to go to pass out (though to be fair to my own male ego, I was only operating on about 2-3 hours of sleep because of my weird Target schedule), woke up about 4 hours later with a weird coffee smell coming out of my pores. So from my one experiment, I'd say the hype is real, but I'm not on the side of banning it. And bring back ephedra while you're at it. That stuff worked.

Smeatons and McClanes

Had to move our game night around this week due to my crazy Target holiday schedule. So we gamed Monday night and it was a doozy. We were involved in a huge battle that was a combination of Helm's Deep and Pelennor Fields which ended up a bit like Task Force Smith. Smeaton rode out with a chariot sortie into the thick of battle, while the rest of our group stayed on the walls.

And suddenly our resident witch, who has lately been growing all kinds of awesome from the higher level spells she's been learning, performed a face-heel turn which made Smeaton's look about as convincing as Dave Foley's conversion to "pure...... evil" on Newsradio.


Our leader was taken captive, the rest of our group was knocked out of commission, but Smeaton fought on, killing a couple of giants to rescue a fallen king and commandeering a war mammoth to help his comrades escape.

Because although Smeaton may suck at being pure.... evil, he is still teh awesome. In fact, as I got stuck in a "Die Hard" quoting loop last night, let me state right here and now that awesome is a measurable quantity, and the unit of measure for awesome in America is the McClane.

But in Europe, where they operate on the metric system, awesome is measured in Smeatons. And there are roughly 2.1 McClanes to a Smeaton (cause Smeaton's a really big guy).

That is all.