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Again.
It has rained too much lately. We got a little fishing in on Monday, because we seized the moment and went and were rewarded with the first bass of the season. But there have been far too few nice days.
Today is a huge mist/fog day, and it's persisted until now, well after noon, so it will be here all day, most likely. I thought it couldn't get much worse.
I just heard long, loud thunder.
incredulousI just had a positive experience with the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles.
I know! Weird, right?
But seriously, I did. See, recently my driver's license expired and I didn't notice because they don't speak; you have to look at them. Well, today I noticed that it had expired, and so I went to renew it online. But I hadn't changed my home address... or had I? I couldn't remember!
I called the office and was put on hold for so long that Jesus came back, but nobody noticed so he went away again. When someone finally answered, I explained my situation and, speaking with absolutely no accent of any kind at all, she said she understood! And she really did! So she changed my address right then and there, over the phone, no charge, so I could renew my license on line! She even changed my wife's address!
Her name was Laurie, and she has secured a place in the afterlife that is very, very nice.
My license is renewed now, and everything is good again. But the key things here:
-I was on hold forever, but that can't be helped.
-I talked to a human being
-That spoke English
-That was not stupid
-That was not snotty
-That was friendly
-That was helpful
-That resolved my problem over the phone quickly and effectively
So I'ma go buy a lottery ticket. Why not? I can drive legally again.
Today I saw an icthys on the back of a car. No big deal. They're pretty common.
The same car also had a toy triceratops on the rear dash.
I've given up trying to figure out these people.
I don't want to jump on the "Oh, look, everybody! Michael Jackson died!" band wagon, but I just had to mention this.
The most recent edition of The Enquirer, distributed Monday, has a headline that says "Michael Jackson battles cancer!"
Make anything you want of that. In my mind, it's just further proof that The Enquirer is best used by recycling it.
I attended a game last night. No, not a geek game like Dungeons and Dragons or anything like that. A baseball game.
No, really.
It was a minor league game, the Worcestor Tornadoes. They played some other team that won the game and yet I still can't remember them at all.
It was fun. The local community sponsored many family-oriented events. It was free ball-cap night. And it was my wife's first real baseball game, so she had fun too, and started talking about return visits as we were leaving, even though our team had lost.
It was plain all throughout the game that it was minors, and that most of these people would never graduate to the majors. But it was still a good game, with a final score of 4 to 2, in favor of whoever the other guys were. "Rox." They were called "The Rox." I can't remember the name of the city.
The sad thing is that our team lost to a team called "The Rox." Also, The Rox had a player whose last name was Thigpen, and I assure you I chuckled merrily to myself every time his name was announced. You know he had a hard time in school. Ironically, his uniform stayed clean the whole time, despite the infield dirt and the fact that it was gently raining a good part of the time that the game was going on.
Maybe that's why they won.
I out-geeked Bad Astronomer in Twitter a while back. Wil Wheaton tweeted a series of numbers. I noticed the pattern; the prime numbers from the Fibonacci Series. I mentioned it. A short while later, Bad Astronomer noted that Wheaton was missing a few numbers from the series. I sent him a message letting him know the score, and he acknowledged that he'd missed it, with the follow-on pun "How odd."1
So that was my shining moment in Twitter. Yeah.
So... he's against alternative medicine.
Now, while his comments on chiropractors are not sweeping and all-inclusive, I do sense a distinct generality to the statements. I have been benefiting from chiropracty for a while now. I don't feel that it has prevented cancer or any other disease, but it has eased my own discomfort for a specific skeletal-alignment based problem.
In other words, I think chiropracty has its place in the medical field, just like any other specific branch of medicine. But I won't see a chiropractor for a pair of glasses, any more than I'd see an eye doctor for a toothache, or a dentist for a sprained ankle.
'Cause that'd be just as bad as taking herbal tea and vitamins for leukemia.
The words "lemon" and "melon" are just two transposed letters apart, even though they're almost completely different except that they're both fruits.
Coincidence? Possibly.
But I think I'm on to something here. Question authority!
Arguably, the single most important event within the Marvel Comics Universe since Peter Parker got bit by a spider that had dangled too close to a radiation source has been the Civil War event. Friendships crumbled. Identities were revealed. Family members of heroes died. And heroes themselves died too, not the least of which was Captain America.
I missed it.
I just don't get out to the comics store any more, and the prices of them have steadily climbed. I'd begun thinking that it had become less about the story telling and more about the dollar signs.*
Obvious, I know, but I still had a bit of faith in the writers, knowing what it's like to craft a tale that is entertaining and engaging, and to tell a story that people really want to read, that is as important to the writer as it is to the reader. As major a story as Civil War has been, I knew I'd be able to catch up to it eventually, in some form of trade paperback collection.
That collection is now available. There's at least 4 installments of them. Each one is $25.00. I estimate, based on the thickness of the books and paper used in them, that there's about six comics issues per book. There may be more, but I very much doubt it. If you estimate six comics per installment, then that means they are charging the equivalent of four dollars per comic for the benefit of buying them all now. Even if there are eight comics/book, it's still $3/book, which is higher than the news-stand price. This business model (charging more for the collection than for the individual comics) is the exact opposite of what the rest of reality is doing.
That's not how it is with book collections. Look at a Lord of the Rings collection including The Hobbit, The Fellowship, The Towers, and The King. If it's about 25-30 bucks, then that means it's about 6-7 bucks/book, which is comparable to the price of buying them individually. Often, I find that a collection such as that is less than the total cost of buying the individual titles, often like getting a book free.
But Marvel is essentially charging what they believe they'll be able to get from the people that want to read it all.
They won't get it from me. I'm done with comic books. I simply can't afford that much for what amount to a non-essential. Comics are no longer worth the cover price. I'm not paying that much for the Civil War story, or any other story they want to tell.
Not even the return of Captain America, already in progress, which will also likely be part of a collection that includes his death and resurrection, and will have a price tag far higher than it needs to be.
In Lord of the Rings Online, by Turbine Games, you can play a minstrel. Your minstrel, or any other character class for that matter, can play a musical instrument while you're not out beating the crap out of Sauron. It's a matter of using the number keys like a keyboard, along with the alt and control keys to shift up or down an octave. Essentially, if you're a keyboard virtuoso, then you can play just about anything.
But that's hard.
Instead, you can use a /play command followed by the name of a properly set up text file, and your character will suddenly find himself playing Scarborough Fair. Or Rebel Yell. Or Blitzkrieg Bop. Or any of a plethora of songs you can make by converting a midi file over to the text using software available for download.
If that's too hard too, then go to a web site that offers the files for download and use those. It's what I did.
But this is a game... is playing music in the game really fun? Well, that depends on how twisted you are. If you're suddenly surrounded by hobbits, it's kind of fun to play All The Small Things. And Hotel California is always appropriately inappropriate in that setting. If you want to impress that hot Elven chickie, Jason Mraz' song I'm Yours just might get the message across. The only limit is your imagination.
And your music file library.
Better still; some people have set up multiple parts for multiple musical instruments. Some songs have a part for bass, drums, lute, horn, and so on. Several people with the appropriate file for each part get together in a group (or "fellowship." This is Lord of the Rings after all.) and they all start at once. If they're properly synched, they've got a band.
It's Guitar Heros of the Ring.
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