A confession..

She could not lie..

I've been doing this blog thing for something like 7+ years now (suck it Sims and your meager four years*), and as such, I know that blogging about how you have nothing to blog about is unpardonable sin #1.
The lack of content around here has been due to me not really having much to say about anything.
It happens.
Today changed that though.
Not the Kanye/Obama video. I had that set to post like a week ago.
No, today I was given something to blog about because two police officers (as best as I can guess) thought it would be funny to make me late getting back from my lunch break by pulling me over (with lights and sirens and everything) and then driving off.
I can only assume they were high-fiving and giggling as the pulled away.
Oh, did I mention that I hadn't been doing anything wrong?
I was actually going a few miles under the speed limit.
Anyway, it gave me a good excuse to post that picture though.

*= This is a joke, because I love The ISB.

I can be your Frankenstein..

This little dude is the best.

Also, I think I'm getting the flu.

Imagine what it'll be like in the future..

The Life Experience Test

Overall, you have partaken in 116 out of 169 possible life experiences. Your average life experience score is therefore 69%. The average score is 50%, making your experiences more than 93% of the people who have taken this test. The average for your age group (26-35) is 53%. Broken down by category: Art: 15/17 (88%) Career & Work: 8/13 (62%) Civics & Technology: 5/7 (71%) Crime & Disarray: 6/11 (55%) Education: 12/18 (67%) Fashion: 8/10 (80%) Fitness, Health and Sports: 4/7 (57%) Life in General: 7/14 (50%) Relationships: 11/14 (79%) Religion & Politics: 3/4 (75%) Social: 18/22 (82%) Travel: 8/20 (40%) Vices: 11/12 (92%)

Take the test and see how YOU compare

This is what I believe.

This seemed like an important day to post this.

I know this is going to seem silly to some of you and like too much information for others, so bear with me. I'm not trying to tell you what to do or how to think, I'm just telling you about myself.

Whether you've known it or noticed or not, I'll tell you that I've been going through some "stuff" lately.
And to be honest, there are times when it seems that my entire life has just been a series of "going through some stuff" moments.
The details aren't really important, and the full extent of these "moments" are unknown to even those closest to me.
There have been times when these "moments", or what amounts to the "contents" of my life, have left me with a kind of sadness that I would not wish on anyone.

But..

I have always found my way out of those times, and I am very thankful for that.

More than anything else, there has been one constant in my life, that, in my expert opinion (as I am the world's foremost expert on myself), has instilled in me an unshakable belief that no matter how dark it is or how bad things seem, there is always a way.
That there is always hope.

For my 28 years, that constant has been Superman.

I've tried, ultimately in vain, for years and years to explain what it all means to me. Not just what the character or idea of Superman means, but what he represents to me.

It hasn't been until these last few months that I've really started to understand what I'd previously only felt.
This is due in large part to the work and words of the first person I've ever heard who I feel like understands exactly where I've been coming from all these years.

I've basically pulled the most personally important (to me) quotes from Grant Morrison's recent interviews with Newsarama and strung them together in the way that I feel my brain has retained and latched onto them. (All bold emphasis is mine, not necessarily Grant's.)
I hope you'll take the few minutes to read it.
Last time for a while, I promise..



I see Superman in this series as an Enlightenment figure, a Renaissance idea of the ideal man, perfect in mind, body and intention.

...if we live by imitation, does it not make sense that we might choose to imitate the angels, the gods, the very highest form of being that we can imagine ? Instead of indulging the most brutish, vicious, greedy and ignorant aspects of the human experience, we can, with a little applied effort, elevate the better part of our natures and work to express those elements through our behavior. To do so would probably make us all feel a whole lot better too. Doing good deeds and making other people happy makes you feel totally brilliant, let’s face it.

So we can choose to be the astronaut or the gangster. The superhero or the super villain. The angel or the devil. It’s entirely up to us, particularly in the privileged West, how we choose to imagine ourselves and conduct our lives.

My own work has been an ongoing attempt to repeat the magic word over and over until we all become the kind of superheroes we’d all like to be.



It’s a pretty high–level attempt by some smart people to do the Superman concept some justice, is all I can say. It’s intended to work as a set of sci–fi fables that can be read by children and adults alike. I’d like to think you can go to it if you’re feeling suicidal, if you miss your dad, if you’ve had to take care of a difficult, ailing relative, if you’ve ever lost control and needed a good friend to put you straight, if you love your pets, if you wish your partner could see the real you...All Star is about how Superman deals with all of that.

In today’s world, in today’s media climate designed to foster the fear our leaders like us to feel because it makes us easier to push around. In a world where limp, wimpy men are forced to talk tough and act ‘badass’ even though we all know they’re shitting it inside. In a world where the measure of our moral strength has come to lie in the extremity of the images we’re able to look at and stomach. In a world, I’m reliably told, that’s going to the dogs, the real mischief, the real punk rock rebellion, is a snarling, ‘fuck you’ positivity and optimism. Violent optimism in the face of all evidence to the contrary is the Alpha form of outrage these days.

I have a desire not to see my culture and my fellow human beings fall helplessly into step with a middle class media narrative that promises only planetary catastrophe, as engineered by an intrinsically evil and corrupt species which, in fact, deserves everything it gets.

Is this relentless, downbeat insistence that the future has been cancelled really the best we can come up with? Are we so fucked up we get off on terrifying our children? It’s not funny or ironic anymore and that’s why we wrote All Star Superman the way we did.

What I hope is that people take from it the unlikelihood that a piece of paper, with little ink drawings of figures, with little written words, can make you cry, can make your heart soar, can make you scared, sad, or thrilled.

That piece of paper is inert material, the corpse of some tree, pulped and poured, then given new meaning and new life when the real hours and real emotions that the writer and the artist, the colourist, the letter the editor translated onto the physical page, meet with the real hours and emotions of a reader, of all readers at once, across time, generations and distance.

And think about how that experience, the simple experience of interacting with a paper comic book, along with hundreds of thousands of others across time and space, is an actual doorway onto the beating heart of the imminent, timeless world of “Myth” as defined above. Not just a drawing of it but an actual doorway into timelessness and the immortal world where we are all one together.



My grief over the loss of my dad can be Superman’s grief, can trigger your own grief, for your own dad, for all our dads. The timeless grief that’s felt by Muslims and Christians and Agnostics alike. My personal moments of great and romantic love, untainted by the everyday, can become Superman’s and may resonate with your own experience of these simple human feelings.

In the one Mythic moment we’re all united, kissing our Lover for the First time, the Last time, the Only time, honouring our dear Dad under a blood red sky, against a darkening backdrop, with Mum telling us it’ll all be okay in the end.

This is what I believe in.
And that's why I voted for Barack Obama.
Because I believe in Superman, and because I believe in him..
I believe in myself.
I believe in hope.
I believe that we can be the people we've been waiting for.
I believe that if we're willing to, that every one of us can make a difference.

Why don't you take care of me..

I wore a jumpsuit..

I've always been against goofy ringtones and whatnot, but for some reason I've had it stuck in my head lately that I want, nay, need to download a song to be the ringtone for my cellular phone.

Why is this?

What do you make of this?

You heard my pal..

Has ever an image so thoroughly encapsulated the entirety of my being?

Take me down..

I saw just now that Super Punch linked to this picture yesterday, and though it is awesome, the real reason I decided to post about it is because I SAW A DELOREAN ON MY WAY TO WORK TODAY!

FOR REAL!

Dude was all drivin' hella fast like he had somewhere to be.

It was pretty much as awesome as you would have hoped for it to be.

They arrested the counterfeiters..

Craig Ferguson speaks from the heart.
My thanks to Dean Fraser for bringing this to my attention.
Funny and sincere is a rare thing on late night television (or any television these days), and I really enjoyed this.

You're not one of them..

I don't know if you read my post titled "Responsible Adult = Secret Identity", but if you did, thank you.

If you haven't read it, by all means, feel free to do so. I'm not much of a writer, but I feel like it's one of the best things I've ever written and one of the most important things I've ever tried to explain.

My hope is that it is still accessible on a general comprehension level even if you don't know anything about superheroes.. but then, if you didn't know anything about superheroes, I doubt you'd be at my blog in the first place.

My point for writing this particular update though is to say if you do read it, please have a look at the comments as they gave me a chance to talk on the subject a little further and say some things that I didn't think about when I was writing the original post.

Responsible Adult = Secret Identity

I really like the idea that our responsibilities as adults are the suit and glasses we put on to fool the world, but underneath?

Oh, boy.

We're winking to the camera.

If they only knew.

The other thing is the few, select, special people that get to know the real us, who we are under the glasses (whether it be from us revealing our secret to them, or them somehow deducing it for themselves), those people get to be the people that are like the hero's hero.

Those are the people that believe in us.

The people that know what we're really capable of and have this incredible faith in us even when we've got our glasses on and are pretending to stumble trying to catch the elevator.

It's like people having faith in you makes you want to reward their faith in you by being what they believe you to be. Someone else having faith in you, believing in you, gives you the ability to go beyond what you are or what you think you are and be who they think you are.

And it's so easy when you're the person out there trying to save the day and make the world better, to get knocked down and dragged through the mud. The real you, though more capable and powerful, is unfortunately also more vulnerable to all the people and forces out there that don't want to believe or don't want others to believe. The you with the glasses on is able to blend in with the crowd and not be such a target. But I guess that's the price we have to pay for daring to dream of something better.

It's riskier.

It's scarier.

There are criminals and evil businessmen and monsters and giant robots from outer space all out there waiting to try to take you down a peg and be the one who beats you.

And not just out there doing evil things, but sometimes actively plotting against you while you're none the wiser. All kinds of traps and ambushes out there just waiting for us.

And yet, we have to not just endure it all, but persevere.

To not just find a way to survive, but to come out on top and be ready to jump headlong into the next adventure.

It seems like it's too much to ask of anyone. It seems like it's more than anyone should be able to do.

And maybe it is.

Maybe it is too much for anyone to do, but to think that there are people who believe we are capable of it, I think, is what gives us the ability to do so.

A message..

I am that guy.

Glass houses won't burn..

Quick-style!

- Saw Eddie Izzard last night. It was both hilarious and awesome.
- The new Weezer album is fucking wonderful. Hard-to-believeably so.
- We leave for New York today! Hell of nervous!

So, no updates for a little bit, I imagine.. unless NY is really boring.
Wish us luck and all that.
If I don't come back because we've become super-famous, it's been really great getting to be a part of your digital lives.

xo
ch

I still see the world...

I just tried this candy from somewhere in Asia that was apparently some kind of sweet & sour, quasi-gummy prune covered in sugar and super hot sauce.
This passes for candy in Asia!
What does that have to do with Tony Jaa kicking a guy in the head?
Well, in this metaphor Tony Jaa represents the "candy" and "a guy" represents my gag reflex.

Life is officially too depressing when the lady at the Taco Bell drive-thru tells you not to look so sad.

We are hiding..

Boy, you said it.
Via.

You're staring at me..

It is at times like these that I feel it is important for me (and everyone else) to remember that things could be worse and there is still a universal power that moves with us and around us and flows through us...


And is completely fucking awesome!
I know everyone in the world has already seen that picture, but it is comforting.
Also, in my fantasy world, they are playing a Queen song.
A Queen song about Star Wars.
It's a wonderful fantasy.