Action Comics #1

For your reading pleasure, I present....

The original Superman comic, scanned.

Ted Stevens

You know how I was saying that, sometimes, there's not better way to completely and accurately describe something than saying it sucks? Well, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens sucks.

Youtube Video of the Day

Wrestling robots. Small, action figure sized robots, with lots of mobility. This is everything BattleBots should have been, but never quite was.

Another Celebrity Affected by Scientology

Ok, I'm going into the wayback machine for this one, to talk to you about a celebrity who had the Scientology bug way back in 1986.

Im talking about the one, the only, Edgar Winter. You remember the songs Frankenstein and Free Ride, right? I wouldn't call those great songs, but they're respectible.

But in 1986, he had his big scientology album.



Ok, I'll give you a second to stop laughing at the album cover.

Mission Earth was inspired by L. Ron Hubbard's ten volume science fiction novel of the same name. Ten volumes of L. Ron. I'm sure that's fun in itself.

I'm not going to tell you anything other than friend provided me with a way to listen to the crappy album last night, and, I did so.

It's a "concept album," sort of like The Who's Tommy, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, and Green Day's American Idiot.... except completely horrible. Terrible overuse of snythesizers and saxophone, which is expected of 80s music, but this was much worse than your typical 80s fare.

First of all, was that really based on L. Ron Hubbard in anything other than name? I mean, I don't think any of those songs were deep enough to be based on a book, even a crappy Scientology book.

I heard vague references to planets and drugs. Basically the message of the album was drugs are bad and planets are, um, planets, I guess.

Oh, and there was one poorly written environmental song. It sounded like Hall and Oates with a gospel choir, and the vaguest enviromental lyrics imaginable... polluting is bad, so lets cry out, and not pollute, and stuff.

The last song was Edgar experimenting with all kinds of sounds, including actual ping pong sound effects... the message was something along the lines of life is one big ride and lets all be happy... Musically, it sounded like a rip off of lame 80s tv theme songs, Perfect Strangers in particular came to mind.

On Notice

Everyone else is doing it, so here's my On Notice board.

Jim Webb Takes the Lead

Over George Macaca Allen, according to the Zogby poll.

Books with Female Protagonists

So this weekend, my girlfriend had an interesting question for me... When's the last time I read a book with a female main character? When she asked the question, I couldn't even come up with an answer. The only thing that came to mind was Macbeth, which I read way back in high school.

Today I realized the answer is probably Carrie by Stephen King, which I reread a couple years ago. It's probably his best book in my opinion and I think it actually delves into the problems faced by adolescent women pretty well. But it's kind of sad that the last time I read a book about a woman, it was a frickin' Stephen King book about a woman who uses superpowers to get revenge on people who've done her wrong.

I don't think I intentionally avoid books about women, but, at any given time, I have a good five books already in mind that I want to read, so I' don't go out seeking books additional books. And I don't think many books with female protagonists are marketed toward men. I have to admit, I'm not going to go out and read Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood any time soon. But even a book like Memoirs of a Geisha, which I think I might like if I ever get around to reading it, isn't marketed towards men.

Books written by women are a somewhat different story... I've read the first three Harry Potter books, and while I'm kind of bored by them and don't want to go any further, I've at least read books by a woman recently. I'm reading Angels and Demons right now, which I'm finding extremely overhyped and a little boring, but that's a different post altogether... anyway, after I read that, the next book on my list is Team of Rivals, an 800 page or so biography of Abraham Lincoln written by Doris Kearns Goodwin, who happens to be a woman. So that should keep me busy for a while.

Anyhow, I'm feeling a little guilty about the lack of female protagonists in books I read, so I'm willing to take advice (I won't promise to read the books suggested, but I'll at least listen).