Wedded Bliss

I apologize for this. Really. Dirty mind and all.

(well, I kinda apologize anyway.)

If only in-image text could be used for Google searches! I'd be king!

Oh, and I don't want to catch any of you kids running to find out what any of those things are! 'Cause I'm assuming you already know!

And that's half the battle.

(Unless you try them and send photos.)

Most Wanted

(Before reading)

It's been a while since I did one of these, but I feel obligated this week. It's one of those issues that you're both simultaneously anticipating and dreading. Part of me is kind of sad now that I'm holding it in my hands, but as long as it's a well-written and satisfying conclusion, I shouldn't worry too much.

Y: The Last Man #60
Writer: Brian K. Vaughan
Pencils: Pia Guerra

(After reading)

I thought I would write up a typical non-review outlining what I liked about the issue. Y'know? Like I usually do? Just kind of free-form describe it without spoiling too much. I knew that dancing around spoilers in a series long wrap-up issue like this one would make it a little tricky, but I thought I'd figure something out and just wing it.

But, I just finished it and really don't feel like writing about it in any depth.

I'll just say this:
Brian K. Vaughan? You made me cry. I'm actually bawling right now. Big snotty tears. If that's what you intended, mission accomplished you bastard!

Most Wanted Panel:

(Actually, it's easily one of the best single issues of anything I've read in a long time. I really can't heap enough praise on it, and I predict it's going to have all kinds of award nominations at the end of the year. It's utterly fantastic.

But you really must have followed the complete run from the beginning to fully understand how fuckin' brilliant it is. Highly, highly recommended.)

Gorilla My Dreams

Feeling much better today! Thanks for the thoughts, here's a monkey:

One Year Later...


Some girls will sleep with any old charming monkey they meet at a costume party.

(Just ask sexynerdgirl...)

(*Duck!*)

Sick Day

Feeling a bit under the weather today. Time to med myself up. Laters!

Monkeyshines

I love these romance covers.

Later ...


Hey! It's actually got one of them... whattacallem? ... real world current event allusions in there somewhere! See?!? I care. Soup has his pulse right on the problems that currently plague our fragile li'l planet! Yesseree! I know what I know and I know it's best to let others know what I know and how knowledge is important and that knowing is half the battle. Y'know?

We have too many gorillas. Hominidae Bastards!!!

(and, there are surprisingly few Weeping Gorilla images out on the web. I thought there would be a fan site or something...)

(Oh! Look! It's snowing! Yay!!)

The Happiest Place on Earth

Once again, I'm screwing around with a panel stolen from Adam (pointed out by his reader, sPat) that is perfectly funny enough as it stands, out of context. I just can't leave well enough alone, it seems.

But seriously - check this out and tell me there's got to be more to the story. Or at least a follow up!

That should be on the cover as a teaser, it's so enticing. Why does Lois want to go to Gay City? What's the big story? Why is it so dangerous? Why is it underlined? What's up with Lois' evening dress? Just what in the Sam Scratch Hell is going on here, anyway?!?

*sigh*

Well, we can only speculate. Let's say that the Gay City assignment (whatever it was) was far too dangerous for mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent, and he had to change into Superman along the way. But even that wasn't enough to handle the looming crisis so Supes made a side trip to pick up Batman and the Boy Wonder to help lend a hand. Finally, under the combined might of the World's Finest, the danger was dealt with, the crisis averted and the only thing left to do was for Clark to write up the story for the Daily Planet and Superman to fly the Dynamic Duo back to the Batcave.

With me so far? OK - moving on...

So before they all take off, Robin befriends the local Gay City boy gang* (hi Googlers!) who invite him to officially become a member. Robin, having no friends outside of a certain dreamy billionaire playboy with a questionable moral code, accepts and is inducted into the gang. After the ceremony, he convinces the two adults to let him take part in the post-induction celebration before they leave.

Yeah, that was a stretch, I know. But it's still funny.

And besides, you really, really don't want to know what I wanted to follow Adam's panel with...




*Bonus points are awarded to any suggestion for the Gay City boy gang's actual gang name. I'm leaning towards "The Pedoz"

(Or maybe "The Altar Boyz." Tough call.)

(Jets? Sharks?)

Unexpected

Goodbye, funnyman.

(Made with the best of thoughts)

Quickie!

Quickie time! Sorry, but something's come up that I need to take care of. So, once again, let's pull from the weirdness files...

Ye Gods! That's disturbing!

Actually, this one goes quite well with Adam's Golden Supergirl Rain panel. There's gotta be a connection, I tells ya!

Also, we could throw in that Lois Lane Mercury Shower for the trifecta!

Consult Your Local Physician

Blatantly stolen from another awesome out-of-context gem of a panel found by Sea_of_Green:

Earlier This Week...

Tee hee!

Sea made the joke. I had that romance cover in my "To Do" file. I stole the joke. Sorry. Kinda.

(Y'know? I think I'm getting to the age where that particular side effect really doesn't seem too bad. Maybe it's just me...)

Re-Visiting My First Thoughts on ASM #42

Another Quickie because... well, just because!

OK, Okay - let's call it, "Because I haven't finished with the Peter / MJ retcon jokes yet!"

Remember this?

Yeah... That's about right now.

Seriously ... That's how it now happened. I'm sure of it.

(tee hee!)

Smoochy Smoochy!

I have no idea where this came from.

Oh, wait! I remember!

(Damn, that was an interesting blind date...)

Area 53 - A Prequel

Let's see if I can actually get this thing going...

My hope is to get about 10 of these ready to go, then make them a regular entry. You wouldn't believe how many times I have the perfect joke but can't find an appropriate comic to photoshop it over. And, since I can't draw worth a lick, this seems like a good idea. They really do save a lot of time, to boot!

Anyway, more to come!

(hopefully...)

With that shelf life, you could stockpile them forever

It's looking like prequel joke week!

.0045 Seconds Earlier ...

Mmmmm... those do look good! Wonder if you can deep fry them?

Edit: Apparently, you can!

Wowsers!

Memories...

I've gotta go and score a Derby bout in about an hour (and yes derby ladies .. I can be bribed!), so here's a quickie.

But, not just any quickie ... just the Best. Single. Comic Strip. Ever.

(at least, I think so!)

Click for Biggie
And the bestest part?

That dude already has two kills! And cool shades!

Man, I so love this strip. And miss it. I know we all do. Watterson was the best ever, and for me - this was my favorite.

Extra Postal Boobage

OK, Okay! One more today... Just because it was too good to pass up!

Blatantly stolen through a recent entry from Sea of Green - an amazing "insert joke here" panel she found and posted for us:

(And, Boy! Was this one easy! I may use this Boobies ... err.. Image.. in the future!)

What Women Say:


What Men Hear:


But not YOUR guys, Ladies! No, no! ... we only focus on your eyes and on what you're saying! And, we know what you really mean! And how you really feel when you say it! Really! It's a deep Boobie connection!

I mean.. Ah, Dang it and Heck!

By the way - in case anyone wants to play along - Here's the blank. Thanks, Sea!

Trunks and Junk. Be-Donks and De-Donks.

Sometimes, the joke's a prequel.

One Minute Earlier...


Yes, I used the phrase "Brobdingnagian." Sometimes, I read things other than comics, you know...

(I may save that one for the girl...)

EDIT: (Crap! She's onto me! Damn her literary knowledge!!)

Career Paths

Offered without comment:

(Well, except that I made it, and I thought it was funny!)

"And more cleavage, please! Thank you!"

Seriously, MJ? Call me.

Time to eBay that statue

So I finally got around to reading that Spider-Man One More Day thingy.

My take?

Yeah. That's about right.

By the way.. I actually had a Coach Weed in high school. Coached varsity soccer. Richard Weed.

He went by "Dick."

Seriously.

(No, he was not my Gay lover. You people!! Sheesh!!)

Vacation Delay

Yes, I'm still here. Sorry 'bout the wait. It all amounts to still fixing computer problems + fun vacation cold weather stuff + setting up new blog things + Super Mario Galaxy (My, God - is that ever a fun game!) + bad camera (see the previous) + work + laziness + stacks of books to read.

I'll be back soon. Got another camera on loan. And the back-from-vacation work thing should get me back off the lazy track.

Plus, I hear MJ's available again, Rowr ROWR!

So - sorry! Here's a disturbing out-of-context Superboy panel to make it up to you:

Soon!

On the Birds and Bees, Plants and 150 ton Sauropods

Merry Christmas, everyone!

I'm off to romp around in the snow... but before I go, I thought I'd reprint a little essay I wrote back in the day when I was a young wannabe Paleontology student. I usually dust a version of this thing off every year and make a story out of it for the kiddies.

Yeah, I'm a dork.

---

On Birds and Bees, Plants and 150 ton Sauropods

Evolution's a funny thing. Like crop circles and Seurat paintings, it reveals itself only when you step way back and look at the generalities. Up close, cracks start to appear, but - taken as an overall, evolution teaches us a lot of fascinating lessons about how we can look at the world. It works really well if we have a unbroken fossil record (for the most part) over 150 million years long.

150 million years ago, the flora did not look like it does today. That probably seems obvious, but the differences were huge. There were no flowers. There was no fruit. No berries. No oaks, no elms, no hardwood trees, really. Nothing we could call a crop plant. No real bushes. Fact is, if you look outside your window, 99% of the plants you see did not exist at that time. And, I don't mean that particular bush you're looking at wasn't there - I mean that bush's entire family didn't exist.

What did exist were mainly softwood ground plants. Some just happen to be tall enough that you could call them trees, 'cept they weren't. Just big-ass ferns, really. Swampy plants. Cycads, Ginkos, Scrub, Vines, Pines, etc. You've probably seen recreations. It's all pretty uniform and uncreative, plant-wise, but then again, plants were just starting out. We'll cut 'em some slack.

But about 75 million years ago, that suddenly changed. And by "suddenly" I mean to say almost overnight, evolutionarily speaking. After this great awakening, pine cones started to make room for fruit. Flowers shared space with the ground scrub. Different trees started to create new forests. What happened? What forced plants to so dramatically change in such a short period of time?

(You people who know me already know what my next word is going to be...)


Dinosaurs!

See, the period we're talking about here is the Mid-Jurassic, which is the era of big dinosaurs. Dinosaurs in general are pretty big, I know - but this was the age of the giants. These dinosaurs were massive. Never before or since did this planet have such a vast amount of the largest animals ever - the sauropods.

Sauropods are those huge four-legged, long tail, long necked, little head plant eaters. Brachiosaurs and the like. You know that seen in Jurassic Park where they come over the hill and see that huge animal for the first time eating leaves from the treetops? The one that sneezed on the kid later in the movie? Brachiosaur. Nothing has ever been bigger.

(One particular fossil we've found was reconstructed into a critter well over 130 feet long. 130 feet. Imagine that. A creature that would be cramped in a football field. It was named Seismosaurus, because surely, when it walked, the earth quaked.)

Having so many huge herbivores lumbering around made it a bad time to be a plant. Epically when your means of reproducing was basically wind-driven and sporadic (hah! pun!) at best. Something had to be done to ensure new plants were coming along faster than the old plants were getting gobbled up. A new method of reproduction had to happen.

Hey! If you can't beat 'em, join 'em! Why not make the critters work for us? Soon, seeds were stored in fruit and offered to the giants who could (ahem) deposit them in new places. About this time burrs and sticky seeds started to appear. And, why just pick on the big guys? There are insects, too! Flowers began cropping up everywhere.

The landscape changed. By the end of the dinosaurs age (they still have another 75 million or so to go) plain, swampy greens and browns were replaced colorful fields and exotic flowers. Forests changed, too - trees became sturdier to better withstand the giants within. It must've been like when Dorothy landed in Oz and film changed to color. Except, it... um.. took longer.

So, while you're enjoying your Christmas Poinsettia, garnishing with cranberries, enjoying your fruit-of-the-month-club gift membership your aunt Petunia sent you, or - heck - munching on your fruitcake this holiday season - be sure to take the time to give a little thanks to our favorite big-ass four legged herbivores - the Sauropods!


Have a good holiday, everyone. May you find your lives immersed with the season.