A Comic From The Past

As is standard for a Saturday night, I was rummaging around through old folders and notebooks in the cabinet of my desk when I came across four panels of information that were generated approximately 360-some odd days ago, but remains relentlessly relevant even today. I don't believe I've shared this with the internet - a cursory glance through this site's archives yields nothing - so while it's certainly not my best work, I think the last panel alone is strong enough to warrant its dissemination. Now, a year after it was drawn, it is robbed of the context that would have been essentially meaningless to all but two people aside from myself. This improves matters, I think.

What Movies Did I Watch Last Week?

Starting from February 14th and ending an hour and a half or so ago, at 11:59 pm on the night of Saturday 2/21. I am comfortable saying that this is the highest density movie watching week I've had, moreso than any week during the contest of summer 2007.

52. Casablanca 2/14 *****
53. Alien trespass 2/15 (t) ***
54. It came from outer space 2/15 (t) ***
55. Chrysalis 2/15 (t) *
56. Logan's run 2/15 (t) ****
57. Runaway 2/15 (t) ****
58. Alien Raiders 2/15 (t) ***
59. The thing from another world 2/15 (t) ***
60. Repo Man 2/16 (t) ****
61. Invasion of the body snatchers 2/16 (t) ****
62. Killer Klowns from outer Space 2/16 (t) ***
63. Transformers 2/16 (t) *
64. I married a monster from outer space 2/16 (t) *
65. Stark Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn 2/16 (t) ***
66. Fanboys (t) 2/17 *
67. The Enforcer 2/17 ***
68. Sudden Impact 2/18 ****
69. The Dead Pool 2/19 ****
70. Thunderbolt and Lightfoot 2/20 **
71. Midnight Meat Train 2/20 ****
72. Owning Mahowny 2/21 ****
73. The Class 2/21 (t) ***
74. Angel Heart 2/21 ****

Total: 23

The numbers indicate both the order in which the movies were watched, and act as a running tabulation of movies I've viewed since January 1st 2009. Did I mention the one-a-day-average-movie-challenge-09 here? I don't think I did, though now I have seeing as it's exactly what it sounds like. Star ratings are on a scale of 1-5, and a "(t)" indicates that the movie was watched in a theater. Numbers 53-65 were watched in the span of 24 hours at the Boston Sci-Fi Marathon.

Now you Know.

What Did the Weather do Somewhere Else? or Places I Used to Live Keep Getting Fucked Up

You may recall (or, more likely, not recall) that in June of last year the city in which I spent the first (almost) ten years of my life got terribly flooded on. Now, as of a couple days ago, a more recent ex-town of mine has been Attacked by God Himself. Listen: part of me - the sensible, higher-level-reasoning part of me - is glad that I was not still around when swirling laser-winds of death descended from the heavens upon part of my old neighborhood and (more lethally) on some bullshit town down south that I'd never heard of and don't care about. There is, however, a strong nagging sense of having missed out on one of the Main Things that will probably happen around there for awhile, as well as the knowledge that I could have a way better tornado story than my current-and-only "one time when I was 17 I cut class and drove home from school in the violent downpour of a supercell while a wall cloud was lowering just half a mile away, and my mom was pissed at me for 2 reasons when I got home."

Anyway, Please enjoy the rest of this post, which is comprised entirely of pictures from my old neighborhood, a kind of place I don't like having to explain to people I've met since graduating high school, since being honest about it usually winds up in desperately and carefully apologizing for its gated-communityness, its attachment to a golf course, and all the things such a format and juxtaposition bring to mind.

photos courtesy of Brenda(?) who emailed them to my mom, and who needs to turn off that timestamp feature because we live in a digital fucking age in which metadata renders neon orange save-the-dates wildly obsolete.

Operation Thermal Underwear is Under Way

Walking home from work today I realized that I don't carry out enough missions in my life. By "mission" I don't mean like, piling into a van with a bunch of my too-smiling friends and driving down to some country that sucks with the intention of digging a well and then putting up a 200 ft. tall cross right next to the well to Remind People about God or Whatever. I mean missions like carrying out objectives and Taking Care of Business. While walking it also occurred to me that long underwear would have been a fantastic addition to my outfit, because I couldn't feel my legs and the outside temperature made me wonder what walking on the surface of Neptune would be like (hint it would be impossible because your legs would break under your own weight).

Net Result: Operation Thermal Underwear (not to be confused with Operation Thunderbolt which is definitely Badassier).

Objectives

• Wear thermal underwear (pants and shirt)
• Do not freeze to death anytime soon
• Tell people how great the first objective is going for me (example: say to someone "I am wearing thermal underwear. It is going pretty great, trust me")
• Really, seriously, honestly Do Not Freeze to Death.

I am going to make a little design for a button or something later on, to be awarded to people who survive the mission.

The First two-and-a-half Hours of 2009 - What you need to know

1) it is 2009 - this is important for reasons not worth going into here.
2) it is 8 degrees in the area where I am. Apparently when variables like wind and awfulness are factored in the outside world feels like -22 degrees. This is hard even to begin to understand, especially if you come from a time period or society that lacks the concept of negative numbers.
3) about 16,000 people worldwide have died since it became 2009 in the EST timezone.
4) I was wrong about a number of things in my predictive post regarding 2008. This included what the best movie of the year would be (I said Brothers Bloom which was pushed back until 2009 after first simply being delayed twice - shit, this year's best movie was, of course, Wall•E), the best video game (I guessed the most recent iteration of Smash Brothers when in fact it was Braid), and I was wrong about how I would abandon this blog - instead I just started that other one. What was I right about? I predicted we would elect a new president - check, and I was right about the best album.
5) That's about it

Another Christmas Special

You're welcome

It Snowed Yesterday

Which means, among other things, that figure C's relevance is in full effect.