I found a phone number written in an unlikely place today at work. Unlikely place being one of our various uniform log books. If my life were a Sierra adventure game, as I often wish it were, that number would be important, and I would want to make sure to write it down on a piece of scrap paper floating about my person, as you must have when playing a Sierra game, and it would eventually come in handy.

Sadly, my life is not a Sierra game, and so that number is probably very mundane and is of no importance to me now, or later. When I fid a picture, I sometimes wish that the contents were pertient to my quest, whatever it may be. They never are. What I am saying, I guess, is I wish sometimes that my life were more like a Sierra adventure game.

But then, I never could beat Space Quest V, so maybe that's for the better.

Man, this is the best goddamn news I have heard all year!

So some of you may know of my love of Edgar Rice Burroughs, specifically his Barsoom series. Well! I was reading up on various movies being released this summer and thought to myself, "Hey, I wonder if there is any movement on the John Carter of Mars movie?" So I checked, and man was I surprised to see what I saw!

I already knew that Andrew Stanton (writer/director of Finding Nemo and WALL-E) was set to direct, and with another Pixar man, had written a script. This was enough to make me gleeful. Well, I found out they have brought on another talented man to help revise the script. Who? None other than Pulitzer prize-winning author Michael Chabon.

“I’ve been hired to do some revisions to an already strong script by Andrew Stanton and Mark Andrews,” Chabon said. “I wrote my original screenplay The Martian Agent back in 1995 because I wished I could do [Edgar Rice] Burroughs’s Barsoom. So this is pretty much a dream come true for me.”
-(source)

Chabon became one of my Top Authors after I read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay on Beca's recommendation. If you have not read it I cannot say enough nice things about it.

So, lets take a look at what we have here. Andrew Stanton and Michael Chabon working on a script that Stanton will direct, backed by Disney money and shooting for a PG-13 rating.

Yes.

So...it must have been three years ago. Andrew, Nate, Stefan, and I were at the PADD when that big snow storm hit that winter. We all decided to go down to the Quad, since there would be something awesome going on there. We got into an epic battle, and afterward Nate commissioned me to write an epic poem to fully encapsulate what occurred.

Now, as you know I am a haikuist, and not good at longer-form poetry. But, I have tried before to write longer things. This is one of those attempts that I have found while looking for something else entirely. I do not believe anyone has read it before, and this was the first time I read it since that winter. I was amused, and hopefully you will be too. However, I make no promises about how good this is.

( The poem )

So I have not yet posted about Sakura-con. I must blog about this!

Sakura-con was wildly fun. I took three days of vacation time to attend, and it was worth it. I spent far too much money on everything and now I have far too many anime statuettes but far too little space to put them all. I also have pictures hanging on my wall, so that's cool. I need to organize my room. I have cleaned it already, but now it needs to be put just so, in a way that I can be proud of it. This includes putting up my art and shelving. You'd think I would have time for this sort of thing by now!

The only disappointment of the con was the auction. They had an auction wherein you could buy some very nice things for very good prices. Or very elaborate prices. One of the guests of the con this year was a monster designers for a few Godzilla movies, as well as the guy who designed Mothra for the Return of Mothra series. He did some original paintings for the auction. The mothra went for $600. The Godzilla one went for considerably less because it was not full color, but I am to this day regretting not putting in a bid for it. I mean, it's probably better that I am not $400 poorer, but man, to have an original Godzilla to hang on my wall, done by one of the guys who does that sort of thing professionally, that would have been awesome.

Sakura-con was a good vacation, though, and well I actually do not feel more relaxed than before. I feel lazier instead. I do not know if this is the point of a vacation since I don't really take them. One of these days I plan on taking a real vacation. I don't know where I would go. If I could scrounge the money together, I would go to Japan. Or Iceland. I'm still undecided. I think Japan, though, since there is way more to do there. Iceland would be rad, but in actuality I would be looking at very old rocks and waterways and ooing and aahing with wonder. So probably Japan. Too bad they are so expensive I will never be able to afford it!

This next paragraph is for the two of you who care about DnD Insider. So I subscribed to DnD Insider. I saw Jeff use it at a game last night and decided that I needed it as well. It makes character building so very easy. It shows you feats, classes, races, magical equipment, etc, from all the books. Using this I was able to get myself an awesome Waraxe that does an additional d6 when I am bloodied. It also has a daily use of making me bloodied for two turns. Without DnDI, I would not know about this. It also does math correctly so my +7 to attack went up to +9. I am fairly pleased with the service.

Okay, back not not-DnD stuff. I have been asked a few times now by a few people how the post-college life is going. I have spent the past couple of weeks watching anime and playing Pokemon. If you count that as a good thing then it is fine! On the other hand I have yet to look up grad schools. This is not so good since I should really be doing that. I also need to research GRE prep stuff. I found a pretty good class that a dude teaches for a lot cheaper than the chain prep classes, so that is good. It does not have a proctored practice test, which I would like, but as long as I am prepared I do not care. I am a fairly good test taker as it is, and believe that I will get fairly good scores on everything but the Math, for which I will need to reallly study up for, since I have trouble doing even simple addition.

I am really hungry. My dinner break is not until 7pm or so, though. However tonight I may take it early, because I am starving. Turns out eating a bit of pasta and tuna at 12pm makes you hungry at 6pm. Steve thinks this is abnormal, but then I think he is abnormal!

OK fuck it time to eat.

-Tomorrow I need to clean my room. It is really, really messy. I have been putting it off, but it needs to be done.

-Emerald City Comicon was pretty fun, but it was disappointing in the sense that there was nothing there that peaked my interest, so I ended up buying nothing, which is always sad. I did get some pretty awesome tapirs though. First I got one from Jeff Jaques. His tapir looks somewhat worried. The second is from Gabe, who did not know what a tapir was when I asked him to draw me one. That didn't stop him, however. The tapir is one of my favorite animals, as some of you may know. Evolution was not kind do them, for they are horribly awkward looking, and are not sure if they are a pig or an elephant.

-In four days or so is Sakura-con. I am very excited for this. I have vacation time at work, and I have some money saved up. I looked through the schedule of stuff and saw many things I would be down for. I am looking forward to it.

-One of my monitors failed today. Good thing I have another, right? Well now I am down to one monitor. After having two, it feels...degrading...to use just one.

-I have now been out of school for two weeks. I need to start doing responsible things. This is unfortunate; I rather liked playing video games all day.

-apparently hulu has Death Note. If you will excuse me, I have some anime to watch and some pokemans to catch.

Has anyone else messed around with kosmix? Or even head of it? My work internet is all kinds of dumb (it blocks images on wikipedia). It looks interesting, though. It gathers information from all around the internet and puts it together to give you information about what you are looking for. It is pretty comprehensive. The page for whinnie the pooh shows me things about pooh groups on facebook, what people are saying about the iconic bear on twitter, and even shows me memorobelia for sale on ebay. Shows you relevent search items from google, news items, etc. It is very interesting. I like information, and as such an approach like this interests me. As per usual, I tested this by looking at the Godzilla page (don't judge me -_- ) and found it to be quite comprehensive. The page even showed me relevent videos currently residing on hulu and youtube. Fairly interesting stuff. I'm interested to see how it gets along as it develops (it is currently "Beta-ish").

In other news I need to get off the internet and study for self-concept. I am not really going to study very hard for Dinosaurs under the assumption that I know that a) hadrosaurs & tricerotops came after the sauropods and thrived because of their advanced digestive system, b) T. Rex was a scavanger and c) Veloceraptor had feathers. This is all that I really learned during the second half of the class. So I'm good.

Okay enough talking to co-workers and surfing the web. Time to study.

I seem to recall that gay marriage opponents were angry that we would dare call gay unions "marriage," because that would destroy the sanctity of marriage. They would be fine with civil unions or domestic partnerships, but calling it marriage was just too far. Infringes on religious rights, they said.

Well, apparently granting domestic partnerships the same state benefits that married couples get to domestic partnerships (but not federal benefits) is also infringing on marriage.

"Religious and traditional-values groups are waging campaigns to derail the measure, which passed 30-18 Tuesday night. In commercials broadcast on cable outlets and posted on YouTube, in a newspaper ad, and through phone calls to state lawmakers, they're targeting legislators and voters in swing districts, warning that the bill redefines traditional marriage." [emphasis mine]
Link to the Times article (I would link to the PI version however apparently the PI does not want to cover important things hmm why are they going out of business I wonder [I kid PI...I will miss you :tear: ])

Now what about that says that they are upset that gay marriage would infringe on their religious rights? Looks more like they are just mad that gay people could be considered in the same boat as them legally. I am very happy that it passed the senate, and I am sure it will pass the house just as easily. It upsets me to hear that if this passes they are going to try to get voters to repeal it. You know at this point you think they could at least tell the truth and tell us the real reason why they are so against gay marriage: "Well we just think it's kind of icky, you know?"

I have 8 days of instruction left. I have two finals on Monday the 16th and a paper due on the 18th. After that I will be totally and completely free.

I am still unsure how to feel about this. It finally hit me the other day when someone asked me what I was going to do to celebrate. I am still unsure what I will do, if I will do anything exciting at all.

I still am not sure how I feel about graduating. I do not know if I will be able to answer that particular question until after the fact. I do know that this is my 6th Winter Quarter. I have been in school for five years and one quarter. That is a long time. I also have not had a break from scholastic thought since Fall quarter of '03. I graduated Spring '03 from HS, worked that summer and fall, and then started school in Winter '04. I would like to think that I will finally be able to relax, but I know that is not true. There is still the GREs and the headache that is applying to Grad school. I am still clueless about where I will go.

But uh, 8 more days of instruction, and 18 days total, left.

Woo?

I know I just updated but I felt like posting some more. This post started off as an edit but grew fairly long. As a warning it is about racism and that jazz. I wrote all this because I was irked by some stuff I saw on the interwebs this morning and felt as though I needed to react. If you like reading about racism this might be up your alley. I would like any comments anyone has on this. Do you agree with me on these issues? What did you think of The Post's supposedly racist cartoon?

This article from one of the NYtimes blogs is pretty lollers. Basically, the Attorney General made a comment that the US is still lacking in its dealing of racial issues, going so far as to call us a "nation of cowards" because we refuse to tackle the issues like we should. This, of course, gets a lot of people on the defensive and many opinion people across the country claim that he's patently wrong and we've made oodles of progress and hey our new President doesn't seem to want to talk about race issues so if one black guy says it then we shouldn't talk about it and everything must be a-OK. They tout out the fact that we have a black history month as progress, that throughout K-12 we constantly talk about race. The comments are amazing, though. One poster says, "Young people don’t care and intermingle without thought [about race] — even in the South." This is pretty false from the studies that I've seen on this topic.

That's not the best commenter though. Hartsell Phillips, a 62-year-old "white professional," knows the score:

"Affirmative action has hurt my career and destroyed the hopes and dreams of many others who don’t happen to be black."
Lemme lay this out: I do not agree with affirmitive action as it is enacted currently. I think it is a mostly broken system that needs a lot of re-vamping if it is going to do effectively what it intends to do. However, I can cay that studies have been done to show that the chance of a white guy getting a job is not affected significantly by affirmative action, good or bad. White guys are very likely to blame affirmative action when they don't get a job, however, due to various psychological defense mechanisms that I could go on about, but no one wants to hear me go on about that.

"And most importantly what is there to discuss? Are we to discuss the huge advantage blacks in the US have over every white when it comes to almost all walks of life?"
Yes, because them blacks sure are at an advantage. This is evident when you look at the black quality of life and how it's much higher than the white quality of life in the U.S. Oh wait.

"No, the dicussion is always about how we need to allow Blacks more and more of everything that they have not earned, nor deserve, and be happy to do it, not about the lack of eqaulity that exists between Blacks and whites that has placed myself and others of my color in a position that cannot be debated."
Yea fuck those black guys they don't deserve shit! Us whites, however, deserve everything but get nothing! We have literally no priveleges!

This commenter proves the point of the Attorney General. His point was that we do not talk about the issues in a useful way. We talk, yes, but it never gets serious. The racial issues that still exist in America (And they do still exist. Electing Obama did not end racism, contrary to popular opinion) will not go away by simply talking about how we feel. Action needs to be taken. The Attorney General can help this. The criminal system is itself biased against people of color in a big way. The educational system...hell, most all institutions are set up biased against one group or another, be it racial or SES groups. Bias is everywhere, and we need to not only be conscious about it, but willing to act on it.

In contrast to what I have said let me discuss that now infamous political cartoon depicting a shot chimpanzee. Personally I rarely find political cartoons to ever be entertaining. I think political cartoons are where cartoonists go when they are un-funny and where political commentators go when they can't write. Peronal opinions aside, I saw this cartoon and instantly connected it to the recent story of a woman who was mauled by a chimpanzee. I also connected it to the often used analogy of inept things being written by chimps. Yes, you can construe this as a racist cartoon if you wish, and yes, the author's intention often has nothing to do with the analysis (Tolkien can deny it all he wants but LOTR = WWI) but this is not always useful. Let me discuss with you my Gay English Teacher.

My Gay English Teacher had a mohawk and an agenda. I disliked him overall but he did teach me one thing that I have found to be very useful. The class he taught me in was English 200 and we had to analyze various fantasy books. Many people would analyze books one way or another, and we would discuss the analyses. One thing he often asked was, "but what does that get us?" You can analyze a book to say pretty much whatever you want, he taught us, but you should look not only at what you can make a book say but also how useful it is to make it say that. I have found this to be a very useful in my everyday life and apply it to many domains. So let us apply it to this cartoon.

Let us analyze it as I saw it, and how it was originally meant to be interprited. As that, it tells us that the stimulus plan is so ireverent it might as well have been written by a chimpanzee. It won't do very much good. In fact it was written by the very chimp who tore off that woman's face in Conneticut. Let us not forget, the monkey story that the cartoon was based off of was pretty large news in the North East, and given more coverage than it was given here.

Now let us analyze it as Rev. Sharpton saw it. As that, it tells us that the stimulus bill is so dumb that Obama should be shot, and that we find the bill to be so offensive that we must compare Obama to a chimpanzee, a very old and offensive comparison.

Now, which is more useful? Honestly they both say the same thing; that the stimulus bill is not well-written. Sharpton's version has violent, racial hatred towards Obama and basically disregards the chimpanzee story. If this cartoon were to be have been released as-is in a world where a chimpanzee did not rip off a woman's face, then okay, yes, racist. But I think that Sharpton is discounting the most likely explanation so he can feel offended. Yes, he was offended and that is unfortunate, but I think he is getting worked up over nothing. It seems very likely that the intent was not there for it to be racist, and that it is accidently racist at most. Sharpton, for the record, has cried out that the artist is obviously racist because he could not possilby forget that black people were once compared to chimpanzees. For the record, it is not implausable for a white guy to forget the various ways black people were put down back in the day.

So my point is this: While we can look at this cartoon in a racist viewpoint it gets us nothing but anger and spite. If we look at it in a political viewpoint, it gets us commentary on the stimulus bill. Which is more useful?

I guess the summary of my post here is, we have a lot of work to do regarding race issues in our country, and the work requires us to actually do something about racism. At the same time, however, we need to be careful not to be oversensitive to racism because that can densensitize people to the issues and make them no longer care, thus defeating the chance you have at deterring racism. We need to choose our battles; choose our words carefully so we do not put off those who do not particularly want to discuss the issues. It is a delicate balance.

There is also that whole issue about Resident Evil 5 being racist, but that's another discussion for another day.

It was early in the morning when I said to my brain, "hey don't go nowhere, we're not done yet." My brain was packing away its toothbrush in its suitcase, overstuffed already with its belongings. "Maybe you're not," my brain said, "I'm out man; good luck." As the door slammed shut behind my brain I felt a particular sense of emptiness creep upon me.

This about sums up how me week has been going. Trying to concentrate on school work when your mind has decided it has had enough is difficult, and due to a raging case of senoritis I have had difficulty staying on track. This is maybe why my final Monday did not go so well. I don't know how not well it went yet, as grades aren't posted, but I am unsure I did too well. In abnormal psych I was receiving less than a 3.5 so I decided to take the optional final this morning, in hopes of bumping up my grade. All I had to do was get a 90% on the final and I would get higher than my lowest test and justify my taking the final. Instead I got the exact same score as my lowest test. So now I am guaranteed not a 3.5 in that class. Coupled with my Personality class, I am unsure how my GPA will fare after this quarter. This is causing an intrapsychic conflict in which my ideal self is conflicting with my actual self. Rogers would tell me that I need more unconditional positive regard and that these conditions of worth I have set up for myself are damaging to my ego. I would tell Rogers in turn that he is a goddamn hippie. Fuck humanistic psychology, amirite?

So my optional final was at 8:30am today, which I could blame for my low grade since really who expects anyone to be awake and cognizant that early, but I was surprisingly awake for the final. I have used the time since then to work on my take-home final for Racism class (and napping). I came to Odegaard to work on said final so I guess I should actually work on it instead of updating elljay. I just have to keep telling myself: This is my last assignment. This is my last assignment.

What only six icons! Oh rite my paid account expired. I think I'm going to let it be expired. I don't really use the ell-jay that often anymore and more and more people are doing so as well. Maybe I'll follow the trend and get my own blog or some such nonsense. I had an idea for a blog the other day. It's called "It's A Kick in a Blog" and I would add Tang to a food/drink item once a day until the Tang we have is gone. It would probably end in disaster.

Today is basically marked down as a loss. Somehow I failed at going to school. The first time was when I fell back asleep when I turned my alarm off, again, and woke up just around when I'd have to leave to get to class at the starting bell. So I said "fuck that I'll just get up now to go to my other class at 11:20." And then at 11 I said, "o hay I'm going to take a shower and then leave at 11:30 so I can get to class on time! :D " And then at 11:20 when I got out of the shower I realized my mistake and decided fuck today. It's not like I missed much anyway. My Racism teacher teaches right out of the book on Tuesdays most of the time. I think I'll mark down today as a Mental Health Day. As a psychologist I know how important mental health is so really I need to take a day every so often. Yes, that's the plan...

If I didn't have a lab meeting at 5 or dinner at my parent's house later on, I don't think I'd leave the house today. The only thing of note I plan on doing today is cleaning Dot's cage. It smells.

Yesterday was two midterms. I got my results back the same day, which was pretty rad. 47/50 in Abnormal and a 43/50 in Personality. The latter isn't so great but man, a 47/50 is pretty awesome. If I can keep doing that I'll have no problem acing that class.

Still don't have a place to live in ten days! Exciting! But today or tomorrow we should hear back from a place on Queen Anne, and Steve is turning in an app for a place in Ballard today, so hopefully one of those pans out.

On another note I really want to see W. at some point. It's going to be the feel good comedy of the year. There's also a Transporter 3 coming out. I predict it will be even worse than the steaming pile that was Transporter 2.

I guess I should start packing soon.

This looks like the feel-good comedy of the year, folks. You may think I'm being sarcastic, but I'm not. I really think this movie will be not only good, but amazing.

Today sucked for an assortment of reasons so I'm glad I had this trailer to come home to. It'll be amazing. Trust me guys.

Also our heat isn't turned on because the thermostat is downstairs where we can't get to it I'm so cold :(

So I saw Phantom of the Opera with my mom tonight. It was pretty goddamn amazing. The acting was pretty great, and the singing was amazing. The Phantom did an incredible job and put so much emotion into the role it was intense. Overall, A+ would recommend.

OK, I really don't like how Google Chrome doesn't really support the spellchecker too much in text fields such as this one. Why should I be expected to know how to spell words!

Also I totally "pwnd" Ray at CoD4 tonight.

I finally finished The Count of Monte Cristo. It took 28 days to read. I wasn't reading most of those days, but still, that's how long it took me. Monte Cristo is amazing. It's pretty long. I mean, really long. But it is worth it. It's one of the classic tales of revenge. The writing is pretty good, for an older book. It's not very dry, which surprised me. I expected it to be like other older books I've read; wordy and dry. It was wordy. Very very wordy. But all of the words were well-placed. I really liked reading it, and now I'm sad that it's over. It's been like a friend to me this past month. Andrew however has reassured me that I can catch up with all those missed friends in The Count of Monte Cristo II: Weekend at Villefort's. I'm anticipatory.

The Protomen are pretty amazing, fyi. If you've ever wondered what a rock opera about Megaman would be like, you should give them a listen.

the iPhone has a feature where it will show you the lyrics of a song when you tap on the screen, if you have the lyrics in the song tag info. I am now casually going through all my music and adding lyrics because that is rad.

School starts in 9 days. Too soon! Too soon!

I gave my lizards away today.

I took them to PetCo. The guy I talked to who worked there took one look at Baragon and told me that he is very sick and therefore he would not be eligible for adoption, He would, however, take him home and nurse him back to health. He seemed to know exactly how to make him better and said he had the stuff at his house, adding that he has 15 lizard tanks back home. I took it that he was the lizard guy there.

I am sad that I no longer have Gigan and Baragon, but I am happy that Baragon is going to get the care he needs to get better. I didn't have the time or money to help him get better, and I'd rather give him to someone who can help him than have him die while I do nothing. I gave Gigan away as well, because if I can't take care of one then I should give the other away as well. I loved those guys. Hope they'll like their new keeper.

I still want to own a lizard, but I'm not going to get one anytime soon. This has taught me that keeping an exotic pet means making sure you can afford the vet bill if they get sick. I didn't really consider that part of it when I took them in the first place. I should have, but it didn't really cross my mind. So until I have a surplus of funds, I shall have to be herp-less.

Today is also Grad School Day, wherein I research grad schools. I picked six programs that seemed interesting and am looking into those today. Over the next few weeks I hope to narrow the field so when someone asks, "do you know where you're going to apply?" I can at least give a "maybe" instead of a "no fucking clue", which is my standard reply now.

Friday there is apparently a steampunk art gallery opening thing. I don't think I need to explain how much I am looking forward to this.

PAX, day 3.

I played Starcraft 2 again. I lost again. It was quite disappointing and embarrassing. Zerglings are weaker than they were in 1, and that's what I'm sticking with as my excuse.

I saw the final round of the Omegathon, which I was very much looking forward to. The final challenge was Vs. Excitebike, a game that was never released in the US, on the Famicom. Most exciting game of Excitebike I've ever seen.

I talked to some peeps on the floor about various games and was relieved to find out that Monsterpocalypse was sold out because I was way too close to buying it since I tried out the demo and was very amused.

The Spore demo was amazing. I really can't wait for it to come out, but fear that I won't be able to afford it when it does, since it comes out in a week or so. We'll see, I guess.

PAX day 2:

Better than Day 1. I spent a long time in line for the Fallout 3 demo but I got in, and it was great. I've never been big on the Fallout series, however after seeing the demo for Fallout 3 I realized I had to play the original. I'm notoriously bad at RPG's, both in my skill level and also in the actual playing of them. I rarely if ever finish one, or play one for very long. I love the concept, but I have such a hard time playing them. Fallout 3, however, seemed amazingly awesome. Cannot wait. Will be buying.

Also talked to the dudes at WOTC about the DnD Insider "thing". I am sorry to say I may actually subscribe to it once it's up. The character builder is so damn useful, for one. It makes character creation a breeze. The tabletop sounds pretty rad as well, although they don't have that fully up yet. The reason why I'd probably subscribe is it has a LFG feature, so I could actually end up playing some DnD, which doesn't seem to be happening so easily in real life as everyone but me seems to have a group to play in >:(

I played a crazy-awesome game for the DS called "Lock's Quest" which is essentially a tower defense game for the DS but with steampunk elements. I don't think I need to go any further as to why I would like this game. The demo for it took like an hour to play. It was pretty great.

I got some sort of free online shooter game where you build a giant robot and fight with and against other people with giant robots. It sounds pretty neat, and it's 100% free, with in-game ad support. One thing bad about it is that, to build your robot you use credits you earn by destroying other robots or completing goals in PvP stuff like capture the flag, etc., but you can also buy the credits using real money, so theoretically if you have the money you could just buy an awesome robot. I'm not sure if the game is even fun since I didn't play it I was just handed the CD and told to give it a wirl at home.

Privateer Press now has a Monster-based miniatures game out called Monsterpocalypse. I have been waiting for something like this for quite some time. It has most of the bases covered. Aliens, Lovecraftian horrors, tokusatsu robots, earth defense force robots, etc. No radiation mutated horrors yet, which is a detriment, but I cannot fault them for this. I was going to pick up a set, but I found the cold reality is that a starter set is $25 and only has enough for one person to play. And I'd want to play at some point (more like make Nate play with me hey buddy) and that would be another $25, and I'd need at least one booster set for $13 to fill out the ranks and get some good mini's because the starter sets never come with anything super rad, and well you see where this line of thinking leads. It'll end with me getting herpes from whoring myself out to afford to buy more booster sets. I cannot play collectible games like this. I think there should be some sort of Executive Order to this extent.

Wil Wheaton will be at PAX tomorrow again, signing shit. The question remains, should I bring my Wesley Crusher Star Trek CCG card in and have him sign it? Would he punch me if I did? Matt theorizes yes. It's a real possibility, but at the same time the possibility of having Wheaton sign my Wesley Crusher card sends nerd tingles up my spine. Because even though Wesley was a little shit he still sat at the helm of the flagship of the Federation and only so many have done that (oh god I'm a nerd halp :( )

Tomorrow is the last day of PAX. If things are done right, I'll come back with a sweet new t-shirt, a signed STCCG card, and absolutely NO Monsterpocalypse miniatures. We'll see how this goes...

I was a little doubtful about Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog at first. The first minute or so did not interest me, and when I watch videos I find on the web that is usually about how long they have to wow me.

It is however, a concept that I quite enjoy. I've always liked non-traditional takes on the super hero genre. Things like Mystery Men or Marvelous Bob, for anyone who was lucky enough to stumble upon that internet gem before Kelvenger decided to take it down so he could do something more formal with the story to honor the deceased author, but in doing so removed an incredible piece of fiction from the net. But I digress.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is much funnier than I thought it would be. The production values are also pretty good for what it is. And, like the last awesome thing that brilliant bastard Joss Whedon (yea, that Whedon)did, this one also ends with me wanting more, so much more. Will he do it? Well, with the distribution medium of the Internet, he doesn't have to take orders from any greedy pimps. This might allow him to continue on course with making it, and as it is the top downloaded series on iTunes right now, maybe that will convince him to continue the thrilling adventures of Dr. Horrible and his arch-nemesis, Captain Hammer (Neal Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillon, respectively).

You should really watch this, though. It's only 15 minutes an "act", and there are only three acts thus far. You should trust me on this. I have good taste, even if others (by which I mean Sara) refuse to believe me when I say that some movies are actually quite good.

Also the Count of Monte Cristo is very very long. I'm on like, page 300-something and am not close to the halfway point yet. It's a detriment to my moral in one way, but in another it's good to know that THIS BOOK WILL NEVER END because really it's quite enjoyable.