Sally Ride Merges With The Infinite

I am very sad to say that Sally Ride has passed at the age of 61 after fighting pancreatic cancer.

Sally Ride was not the first name of an astronaut I knew or heard (the first name I really remember is John Glenn.  I think the KareBear liked the cut of his jib or something).  But something about Ride stuck with me not just because she was the first woman in space, but because she felt always seemed like the embodiment The Modern Space Program.  She rode shuttles, not capsules.  She wore the blue jumpsuit.  She was a pilot, a space jockey and a scientist.  She was the Shuttle era and the promise it held.

We all grew up proud of the name Sally Ride, but it wasn't until I was older that I appreciated how amazing Ride must have been to actually win that seat on Challenger and the pressure on her to not just be as capable of her male colleagues, but much more capable lest anyone seize the opportunity to hold her up as an example of why giving her a chance was a mistake.  I cannot begin to imagine.

And Ride pulled it off.

She succeeded not just at NASA, but went on to teach at UC-San Diego, formed a company to create educational materials for young scientists, and served as a consultant in aerospace and defense arenas.

Here's to one of the real pioneers of the era in which I was raised.  You will be missed.

Godspeed.

On the events in Colorado at the screening of "The Dark Knight Rises"

You see the phrase "we are saddened" expressed by PR wings when a tragedy strikes.  We can read between the lines and know that in many cases, the employees of the company may well be saddened, but the need to create a quick press release that admits participation while denying culpability is at the core of the statement.

But today, I am actually and truly saddened by the events at the screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Auroroa, Colorado.  As of this writing, what information I have found states that 12 to 13 people are dead, and many more wounded.  A gunman took the opportunity presented by a darkened theater and a room full of people with their attention elsewhere, and he took it upon himself to unleash horror.  Words fail me.

I arrived at work in a Batman t-shirt today and had not checked the news aside from the weather report.  Jim, the manager at the coffee shop, is a former comic geek (and now a barista by day and a reservist soldier on the weekend.  Great guy.) asked me if I was wearing the shirt "because of Colorado".  And then he saw my blank stare.  "You haven't heard..."  And he explained what he knew to me.

I'm not buttoning up the sport shirt I'm wearing over the bat symbol.  Batman didn't kill these people.  And despite my misgivings about some of the messaging about Batman and taking the law into one's owns hands that I expressed yesterday, part of why I think I can continue to embrace Batman as symbol is that Batman is , at the end of the day, a statement of defiance against cruelty and terror.  I haven't seen the final installment of the trilogy, but I can say that in mining the Batman mythos of the past 70 years, what Christopher Nolan dug up was the ability of a man to confront fear and let it pass over him and through him and let it become nothing.  In Dark Knight, we saw what seeming chaos looks like as a man wants to watch the world burn, and the choices we can make, even supposedly the worst of us, in those moments where we're put to the test - whether we give in to fear - those moments matter for all of us.

So, I put on the shirt with a smile on my face when I got dressed today, but now I'm wearing the shirt in mourning.  And, if I'm allowed to use the word, in defiance.

Be prepared for American politics to go crazy today talking about how the other side made this possible.  But those are cowards seeking an opportunity.  Nobody made this crazy person pick up guns or smoke bombs.  This was a person looking for an excuse and an opportunity.  This is when we decide how we'll react, and how we choose to respond shows who we really are.

Today we should be looking to Colorado not for answers, nor for blame, but out of respect for the dead and wounded.  I am very truly saddened, and I am very truly sorry.

Happy 70th Birthday to Mr. Harrison Ford

Happy B-Day to my imaginary friend from at least three movie franchises, Mr. Harrison Ford.  On Friday the 13th he turned 70.  

Far be it from us at The Signal Watch to ignore the birthday of the Greatest Living American.

On the Announcement of MonkeyBrain Comics and the New Digital Model

You guys will have to forgive me.  My brain has been on vacation mode for several days, so while I was able to participate in the MonkeyBrain Comics kick-off press call (I KNOW.  Look at me all acting like a legitimate news source.), I was unable to muster an intelligent question during the MonkeyBrain Q&A.

The basic idea behind MonkeyBrain is as follows:

MonkeyBrain will be your middleman and promotions arm if you're a creator-owned comic that wants to start off in the digital world.  That said, this isn't for just any schmo off the street to submit their work.  MonkeyBrain is Chris Roberson and Allison Baker's effort to develop a direct-to-digital channel for creator-owned work.  It sounds like a non-exclusive, digital-print-rights contract that will enable creators to show up on Comixology on Wednesdays alongside players like DC, Marvel, IDW, and more.

You can read the press release here.

In short, it seems Team Roberson/ Baker looked at what was going on and saw a way to support independent creators by creating a channel for them to get into the same "newsstand" as the big boys.

The effort is the logical outcome of the past several years of (a) the big players not adjusting their model to take advantage of the ability for distribution of chancier works the internet truly provided (b) the infinite newsstand of the internet - but placing the comics where they'll be seen.

Ray Bradbury Merges with The Infinite

Like many of us English-speaking Westerners, one of the great moments of my youth was having a Ray Bradbury book put in my hand.  Oddly, it was Fahrenheit 451 and I was in fifth grade.  Most certainly I had an ambitious teacher, one who did not mind much if she shattered our cozy suburban world with a picture of dissolute marriage in an ossifying culture that was just our culture carrying on from our current trajectory.

It'd difficult to say how much of an impact the book had on me, and continues to have on me, as I've returned to it a half-dozen times, seen the movie a handful of times, and even consumed it in comic form (one of the few forms of print Bradbury would suggest would survive the end of books.  The end of ideas.*).

Just a year before Fahrenheit 451, my parents, knowing I had a thing for that red dot in the sky, took me to see a play of The Martian Chronicles, and the honesty of what it had to say about us shook my ten year old little self.  

Throw in Something Wicked This Way Comes and re-reading the Martian Chronicles two or three times and you've got the literature that left an indelible impression on a worldview.  It's completely fair to say that these books had a huge hand in shaping my perceptions, and absolutely they posed the questions that helped to lay the rail for the long haul of developing a moral perspective.  And that's the value of fiction, I think, when you're coming of age.

And, really, how many millions of us are there who understood where Mr. Bradbury was going with all this?  How many of us clenched paperbacks on the school bus or leaning up against the wall while we sat on our twin -sized beds and learned something about us that sounded perhaps deadly accurate even when wrapped up in spacesuits or demon carnivals or watching old women die in a pyre of novels?

Westward, Ho! Allison B and Chris Roberson flee Austin

In a day or two Allison B and Chris Roberson pack up and depart Austin for the untamed wilderness that is Portland, Oregon, where they will most certainly be eaten by a bear.

I shall miss their hospitality, and Austin in poorer for their departure.  It is an odd thing to find oneself in the company of a writer you truly enjoy and respect first, and then get to make their acquaintance as a family unit living in the same town.

Here's to a great family as they set off on an all new adventure.

Portland, be nice to these folks.   They're all right.   And please find them decent tacos.

Everyone congratulate my brother. He is engaged.

I'm going to forego a bit of our usual programming to raise a social media glass to my brother and Amy, who is now his fiancé.  That's right, my brother is engaged.  To a person.

so much more about this now makes sense

I would have a cocktail to celebrate, but I think I've had enough cocktails for a few days.  We'll have plenty of time to celebrate later and plenty to celebrate about.  Right now, I am just very happy for them both, and I hope their bliss can survive the knowledge that Amy will now be loosely related to me.  God help her.

We all thought Amy was probably a little too good for Jason, but whatever.  She will soon be good enough to get half his stuff.

I love my brother, and our family has come to love Amy as we've gotten to know her.  We could not be happier that she'll be, legally, one of us.  Gooble Gobble.

Strange days as we plunge toward the future, but I am thrilled for them both.  Y'all congratulate them.  They deserve the absolute best.

Signal Watch Post No. 1000

Can you believe it?  1000 posts.

I am sure all five of you readers out there cannot believe it, either.  Heck, some of you may have read upwards of 6-7% of what I've written here.

While he doesn't comment, I've come to learn that my most avid reader may actually be The Admiral (my dad).  Go figure.  The man doesn't care about comics, Superman, John Carter, Myrna Loy, or most of the rest of my content (well, maybe Cyd Charisse), but he still checks in every day to see what The Boy is doing.

Thanks, Pop!

As of 3/13/2012 at 11:30 PM:

• 998 posts (I'm pre-writing this to publish in a couple of days)
• 2487 comments
• 9538 tweets
• lord knows how many Facebook messages and comments (you're welcome, Zuckerberg, you and your $%#@ing IPO)
• 136,363 total hits
• My number one post -  "I'm Headed for Waco, also Some Lawyers are Pigs"  has over 4200 hits.  Between getting hits because of the cute pig pictures, and as people find Austin's "anti-some-lawyers I've-dressed-as-a-pig guy" interesting, the post continues to get emailed around a bit
• The second most favored post - "The Giant Eyes of Dr. TJ Eckleburg", I assume high school students keep Googling the phrase when reading their Spark Notes (4000 hits and climbing)
• My top five topics are:  
• Movies (207)
• Comics (185)
• Superman (147)
• DCU (141)
• Reviews (115)
• My "About" page has received 483 views
• By far the most popular thing I've placed on Tumblr. has been the Batman themed "sound advice" post with 1387 notes after 4 weeks
• Since starting this blog I have thought about the following dames this many times
• Gloria Grahame:  3428
• Cyd Charisse:  3267
• Nichelle Nichols: 5299 
• Myrna Loy:  4823
• Lynda Carter:  3212
• Flo from the Progressive commercials - ubiquitous.  She's in an ad somewhere right now, you cannot avoid her.
• Christina Hendricks: 34,943
• Jamie Steans: 3,789,221,071
• Apollonia: 3
• I have made this much money from doing this:  $0

It seems like just yesterday that I was relaunching this foolish blogging enterprise after 4 months on ice.  At the time, I was excited about watching production on a Green Lantern feature film and the direction of DC Comics.  Oh, how young and foolish we all were.

That was less than two years ago.

As these things go, at some point it will be interesting to go back and read the subtext and be able to chart what was going on outside of reading comics, watching movies, etc... at the time.  At this blog I talk far less about my day-to-day than I did at League of Melbotis, Volume 1, but I'll likely still know.

If you'd told me two years ago that I'd see the wholesale rebooting of the DCU and a gradual but certain reduction in my interest in understanding and reading ALL the comics, I'd have burned you for a witch.  But here we are.  The truth is, I don't really feel that most of what's out there is for me anymore.  It was bound to happen sooner or later, I suppose.

We plan to keep doing this at least until December 31, 2012, so we hope the both of you will stick with us.

Happy 1000 posts to me here at League of Melbotis, Volume 2:  The Signal Watch

I appreciate all of you who read the site, follow the tumblr., follow the tweets, follow facebook...  however you participate, vocal or silent...  you guys make this fun.  A 1000 thank-you's on the day of our 1000th post!

Now let's see who feels like celebrating.

that'll work

Lack of posting is like a SOPA Blackout Sympathy thing

So it seems we are going for a bit of a blackout to draw attention to the SOPA Bill.  If you don't know what this is about, Google it, check it out on Wikipedia, or read up on it at BoingBoing.

In Blackest Night, people.

You're on your own til Thursday.  Contact your representatives.

6 Years Ago the UT Longhorns won the Rose Bowl

it seems impossible, but I don't own a copy of this cover, and I don't think I've ever seen it before

Six years ago I was living in the wilds of Chandler, Arizona.  It is safe to say now that 2005 was the roughest year I've experienced, and its got to be up there for Jamie, too.

We had moved to Arizona in 2002.  I had lived in Texas since age 4, and had been in Austin most of my life.   And while we loved Austin, I also knew that I needed to try something different.  So, when Jamie's job evaporated in 2001, we began looking outside of Texas, eventually winding up in Arizona.

For a multitude of reasons, we never felt comfortable in Chandler (where we lived) or Tempe (where we worked), and found it exceedingly difficult to find anyone with whom we could socialize.  I will always entertain the notion that I'm a deeply unpleasant person to have to deal with unless your paycheck requires you talk to me, but I think out there, we were just fish out of water in many ways.  And, of course, Jamie's health was always an issue.

By the summer of 2005, Jamie's health deteriorated considerably.  From late spring until November, we were on an hour-by-hour watch for changes.  And, unfortunately, I had fallen into horrendous eating and sleeping patterns.  

But in the Fall of 2005, the UT Longhorn football team was on fire.  Our quarterback was Vince Young, and you could just tell...  we were going to win a hell of a lot of games.  The odd part of watching such a season is that I think you kind of know early on that this could be the year, that this could really happen.  But then you watch every game wondering "is this where we blow it?"

I hadn't watched much UT football when I was actually at UT.  The team hadn't been great for a while, and while I liked some sports (particularly NBA basketball), I was also doing other things in my life than watching football on a Saturday, even when I was watching the NFL on Sundays as a way to defer the inevitable homework.

But I graduated, UT got a new coach, and I wasn't just reading about the games in the paper.  I actually tuned in.  I knew more than the name of the quarterback.  So by 2005, after the frustration of the Chris Simms era, we had this guy Vince Young step into the QB position (eventually.  We won't discuss poor 'ol Chance Mock too much).

FYI:  slighting either of these men in my presence will insure you receive an immediate and justified thrashing

In many ways, I have a hard time getting my head around the fact that 2005 was both My Very Personal Bad Year and The Year UT won the BCS Championship.  It seems like two completely different timelines.  Somehow we managed to catch almost every game that season, even though that was the fall when Jamie had to go back on dialysis and I recall watching at least one game on Pay-Per-View so I'm sure we missed a game or two.  If it were not for a memory of watching the UT/ A&M game on a TV at the hospital the Thanksgiving when Jamie spent her Turkey Day in a hospital bed (and I ate luke-warm turkey out of a plastic container), I'd never be able to reconcile the two timelines.  

By December, Jamie had begun to stabilize.  Jason came in for Christmas, and I know we talked a lot about UT football.

Living in Arizona, we were in Pac-10 territory, and it seemed that my work colleagues were, at best, humoring me once UT was in the championship.  UT was facing down USC, and the pundits and sportscasters were insisting this game was already decided (I particularly remember Chris Berman seemingly frustrated that they were bothering to even have the game, so certain was he of USC's victory).   But what you could tell was that 1.  the pundits seemed to be working from a certain narrative rather than demonstrating first hand knowledge one would have had they actually watched UT or the Big 12 that year, and 2. sports journalists have no idea what they're talking about (and people believe them.  Its hilarious).

In 2012 I'd Like to See...

Here are some things I'd like to see in 2012:

On Cryptids:

• TV audiences accept that if we ever do catch footage of a ghost, UFO or bigfoot on video (which we won't because, well...), it is not going to show up at 11:43 PM on a Saturday on Animal Planet.  
• The TV audience realizes that the people who are pursuing these things have decided to divorce themselves from reality for reasons that probably have to do with a lack of hugs in their formative years, because they played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons as kids, and/ or they might just not be very bright
• Except for Mothman, which is totally real

On Comics:

• Indie creators look at the marketplace and quit making the same five indie comic books over and over (you are only allowed to do zombies, vampires or were-beasts if your last name is Roberson and/ or you are going to do something entirely new with the concept).  
• On the flipside, I'd like to see DC and Marvel just make solid comics about their major characters (like Waid's Daredevil).  
• Someone, somewhere in comics makes a first issue that does half a good a job as your average TV show at setting up new characters, a setting and a conflict instead of just seemingly throwing genre bits on the page.  This may mean your first issue is more than 20 pages.  I'm sorry.
• Comic readers will realize that Dragon Ball Z and Pro-Wrestling are not the be-all/ end-all of storytelling, and we hit at least YA-levels of narrative in more comics.
• The stuff inside comics will be half as interesting as the stuff happening outside the comics
• Creators will realize they have the power to take things into their own hands if they can work out new models of vertical integration and a few step up to act like business people (Image for 2012)
• Publishers like IDW will realize their real job is to reach an audience outside of the direct market, including pricing models that work for folks on the street
• I have nothing to offer Marvel and DC.  You're both offering me small selections of books I'll pick up, but its clear its time for major changes at both companies.  I am waiting for your corporate bosses to clue in to this fact.
• You would sell more comics if they were 25 pages for $2.  I'm just saying.

On Television:

• My cable service will realize that offering me 200 channels is not something that's cost effective for either of us.  I watch shows, not networks.  If one cent of my money is going towards baking shows, bridal shows, home-shopping shows, pregnant teen shows, etc...  then cable may have quit making any sense for me.  (I really just need local news and TCM, HBO and ESPN at this point.  I believe everything else winds up on Hulu.)
• Someone will come up with a News Network that actually shows me the news and not Nancy Grace and that horrid Jane Velez-Mitchell being
• Another season of Louis would be great.  As would the continuation of Venture Bros.  

On the Election Cycle:

• For me not to want to gouge my own eyes out by June and wish for the replacement of our voting system with a monarchy
• For the unbelievable distortions and fantasy/ paranoid fabrications to be covered as such by mainstream news media instead of being looked at as if the complete distortions have a grain of truth
• For voters to actually think about what a candidate is really saying and weigh that against whether or not that's something a @#$%ing lunatic might say

Today - The Admiral Retires

Today isn't just Halloween, its also The Admiral's final day as a working stiff.

For a guy who started working before he was 16, I imagine its time to put up the feet and start relaxing a bit, and maybe coming over and washing my windows.  You know, if he has time.

I tip my hat for the The Old Man.  He's a credit to the sort of thing people talk about when they discuss opportunity, and while he hasn't got a particularly charming story, between he and The KareBear, I always knew where the bar was set, and how easy I'd had it when I put together his story.

My dad didn't actually finish high school.  He got a GED, joined the Air Force and somehow wound up in electronics, where he served a few years working on radios and electronics on the tarmac and in trailers in tropical locales half-way around the world.  He served in Vietnam during the early days of the conflict, and upon returning home wound up at a tiny airbase in Michigan where he met The KareBear.

Upon exiting the Air Force, he returned to Florida, enrolled in junior college while working, then enrolled at The University of Florida, continuing on to receive an MBA.  Somewhere in there, he married my mom.

He worked for companies like Martin-Marietta out of school, and eventually took jobs with Great Lakes Steel and Ford up in Michigan.

In the 1970's, he found work in Texas, and did a stint in Dallas.  In about 1981, he landed a job with a large corporation based out of Houston which made everything from hammers to spark plugs to oil tool equipment.

Eventually he wound up working in the finance arena within oil tool manufacturing, at different shops in Austin and Houston, lasting from 1984 until today.

Between he and KareBear, he managed to put us through school, put clothes on our backs and provide the sort of life you generally want for your kids and family.  And he managed to do it while showing up for games and plays, supporting my mother's extra-curricular activities as well (be that attending elementary school assemblies or the soccer games of kids he couldn't pick out of a line-up) but still managed to remain upwardly mobile within a multi-national corporation and travel the world, making the world safe for financial managers and accountants, I suppose.

The Admiral is a funny guy.  He does all of these things, and all with a sense of modesty utterly sincere and unaffected.  We do not talk about what we accomplish.  We talk about what needs to get done.  And we talk about the good things that happened yesterday and dwell on the mistakes of the past only to tell us how we can do better tomorrow.

Its a high bar, and were we all so lucky to just make it a matter of course.

As I grew up, school, work and geography conspired that it became rare I could visit his office.  However, it wasn't that many years ago that I had a chance to tour his then-office and get introduced to suites of colleagues that I knew reported to him or who were in his chain of command.  It was still great to see not just how he clearly was happy to show us where he spent his days between 8 and 5, and show such great pleasure in the place he worked and the people he worked with.  He'd never trumpet his own horn, but I know he was a VP of something-or-other.  A suit.  But he was still more or less the same guy you might see helping out at the Church bake-sale figuring out a better way to sell the pastries, and the one who merrily led my cub scout troop through making decorative eagles out of clothespins.

Anyway, here's a salute to The Admiral.  Captain of Industry.  Capitalist.  World Traveler.  Colleague.  Friend.  My Old Man.

The thing is - He's not going to slow down.  I know this guy.  Sure, the KareBear will have him running, but he's not one to just sit back.  He's going to have so many plates spinning in six months, I'm just nervous about what tasks I'll have assigned to me, and that's all right.  Its been a while since me and The Old Man were accidentally breaking something together.

Salut, Dad.

We'll see you in Austin.

This Moment in History: Qaddafi dead

Today I saw reports that Libyan leader/ dictator/ state-funded-terrorist-supporting quack Muammar el-Qaddafi (I'm going with the NYT's spelling) had been killed in a clash in Libya between Qaddafi's dwindling forces and the uprising against his regime.  On the elliptical at the gym, I watched Anderson Cooper trying to make sense of video footage he'd received of a bloody-faced Qaddafi, apparently just before his death.  And here's an article on the whole, ugly, final day of Qaddafi's life.  

Our younger readers will not necessarily remember Qaddafi as the bogeyman to the US that he was back in the 1980's.  But his participation in bombings of airline flights inform a bit of why it seemed logical to the US populace in 2003 that perhaps Saddam Hussein was supporting terrorist action.  Many of us remember Qaddafi in association with bombings such as the one at Lockerbie.

I also recall our repeated attempts to bomb Qaddafi, which eventually led to his retreat from the world stage as the US sent sorties of F-111's over Tripoli, strategically placing bombs into the bedrooms of his various homes.

I was in history class when we discussed how and why we'd bombed Libya.

I won't mourn the man, but just as I am uncertain that I was uncomfortable with the festival atmosphere that followed the death of Bin Laden, it doesn't feel like anything to celebrate.  It just feels like is something that never should have happened to begin with.  I dunno.  I guess we'll just have to differ on that.

Steve Jobs Merges with Infinite - Makes Shinier and More User Friendly

A lot of ink will get spilled over the passing of Steve Jobs over the next 72 hours.  And it'll all be deserved.

The man was as near an Edison as we were likely to see in our lifetimes, the personality and face which didn't necessarily do the heavy lifting back at the lab, but whose clear vision and ability to reach people where they lived made it possible for Jobs to push technology in bold and daring new directions, and ask the competition to keep up.  Like Edison, I'm sure Jobs had his Teslas, but I don't have any interest today in dwelling on the man's foibles or issues.

What I can remember is standing in a strip mall store with my parents and brother and then bringing home an Apple IIe that changed our household and within a couple of years, the classroom full of Apples in middle school.  And then the first Macs with the flying toasters.  But let's not kid ourselves.  It was the sleek Macs that came after the candy colored iMacs, those wildly powerful things in white and black casings.  Then the Scandanavian design of Mac product circa 2001.

The iPod suddenly made those piles of cheap discsman players you were constantly battling with utterly obsolete when it landed, and then Apple changed the media distribution model from the scummy BS of Napster to the legal and oh-so-Apple world of iTunes.  The iPhone stretching out your capabilities beyond the tri-corder and communicators of Star Trek with their sleek faces, and "Jesus, how did they do that?" interfaces and designs that you couldn't believe, and as if they knew how your mind sifted through information better than you, yourself.

So, those guys were hiking the Iranian/ Iraqi border?

I've kind of/ sort kept an eye on the story of the three Americans who were held by Iran for the past few years after they, apparently, strayed over the Iranian border whilst out for their morning constitutional.  I, too, had been concerned for the welfare of my fellow Americans caught in a potentially deadly situation playing out on a global scale.  But, I admit, my sympathy for the situation dropped significantly when I figured out today that the three had been hiking the Iranian/ Iraqi border.  To which I say:

...wut?

How has this not been a part of the story?  Why is this buried several paragraphs down in every article where the information actually does appear in some form other than "hiking along the Iranian border"?

I guess I know now why the Iranians thought our friends may have been up to no-good shenanigans.  Hell, I'm not sure I don't believe they were up to something.

9/11 post - 10th anniversary

It would be remiss not to acknowledge the events of September 11th, 2001.

But I don't know what to write about it.

Like all of you, I can tell a long story about where I was, and how it affected me personally.  I think these stories are important.  They're how we know the event happened as something other than images on a TV screen or in a headline.

I've told the story before, and I'll likely tell it again sometime, but not here or today.  Its just what happened to me and to Jamie.  It is not what happened in New York or at The Pentagon or in Pennsylvania.  And its not what happened in the days following, with candlelight vigils, American flags hanging from housefronts, and calm unity and certainty in the face of not just tragedy but of absolute and frightening change to how we thought about the world.

This is where I stop, because in reviewing the timeline, I'll start rambling on, and I strongly suspect that our visions of the world will differ, and I don't want to have that conversation.

The world didn't begin or end on 9/11/2001.  It changed.  And like a lot of changes (something we aren't very well equipped at dealing with in a single generation), the world changed enough that we had a chance to reveal ourselves, and for a short while, we were okay, and we got through it.  We remembered that emergency personnel are true heroes, that soldiers go to war for us, and that the civilization we've built will always have some on the outside who will crash against the walls.  That was for a while, and like all changes, this one showed new sides to us that we've not yet reconciled.

This isn't the place for anything else to write on the topic.  No doubt, you'll have skipped this or breezed through it, along with a thousand other 9/11 memorials and tributes that will pass by you today.

I don't know what to think about.  The victims, most certainly.  The first responders, absolutely.  The hi-jackers?  Why they were there and a half-century of policy most of us think about once or twice a year?  A strange man in a cave that we've finally killed a decade later?  The line from there to now and the thousand things I never guessed I'd see?

The fact that in 100 years this date may well be forgotten?  Or that this date in 2111 may well be remembered just enough to be used by mattress stores to discount their wares?

I don't know.  I know we'll see a hell of a lot of replays of footage I watched over and over 10 years ago, and I'll be able to remember sitting in a hotel room on the bed, uncertain of what was live and what was replay and watching the still aircraft on the tarmac for days, wanting to see them move and not wanting to see a solitary plane in the sky.

Oh, right. So, my folks' house did not burn down (yet)

Thanks to the heroic efforts of local firefighters, the abode of The KareBear and The Admiral still stands tall.

If you're catching up, their area of Austin, Steiner Ranch, was one of several areas experiencing wildfire thanks to drought conditions (and, it turns out, some power lines shooting sparks).  I'm not clear on how close the fire came, but it was still a bit away, so its not as if it burned right up to their property line and then respectfully stopped, not wanting to give The Admiral a bad day.

The folks have been out to the house, checked it for problems, and have headed back to Houston until next weekend.

I appreciate everyone's concern, and I know my folks appreciate it, too.

Unfortunately, there's no rain in our forecast, and we do have dry and breezy conditions forecast for the next week.  That ain't good.  All of Texas needs about a week of solid rain, as wildfires are breaking out across the entire state.  We're going from an agricultural problem to a potential catastrophe of state-wide proportions.

Here's to our emergency responders, who are working around the clock to save the day.

Texas on Fire

While the East Coast has been experiencing severe weather, and Louisiana has been grappling with a tropical storm, since the 4th of July, most of Texas has been dealing with record breaking heat by standards of both intensity and duration.  Add in the fact that it simply will not seem to rain here, and the Central Texas region, which is home to Austin has become a wildfire waiting to happen.

Fires of various sizes have been cropping up all summer, and its a credit to the firefighters that while we've definitely lost homes and property, by and large the disasters have not spread completely out of control.  Until now.

I'm afraid its gotten pretty bad out there.  My folks bought a house in North Austin they're retiring to before Thanksgiving, and were in town for the weekend for the UT/ Rice game.  Unfortunately, wildfires caught out in their area, and right now they're evacuated to my... sofa, actually.  Its fairly nerve-wracking watching the news and seeing the devestation.  And the crazy part is that Steiner Ranch isn't even the part of town hardest hit.  Bastrop, a former small town - now a bedroom community, is getting hit really hard.

Anyhow, I may be distracted for a while dealing with my folks' situation and real life, so I ask that you bear with us.

Here's The Statesman, our local paper, and their coverage.

Adios to the Old DCU

This week we'll see the last of DC's continuity as its been for the last 25 years.

But let's raise a glass, shall we?

Here's to 25 years of recent continuity.

It was a mess, it didn't make sense a lot of the time, it included the personification of lousy fanboy behavior punching the walls of reality in a hissy fit and accidentally bringing Jason Todd back from the dead...  But if it weren't a totally screwed up timeline and it didn't drive us all crazy, it wouldn't be the DC Universe.

My father's birthday included Robot Gorillas

Today The Admiral is 65.  Sixty Five.

The Old Man has been around the sun now a few times, and so we pay him his dues.

This weekend we headed into Galveston where we stayed in a condo on the beach and generally took it easy.  The days of running all over, Griswold-like, during any vacation seem to be receding in the rear-view mirror, and I'm quite pleased with this turn of events.  I am content to bob in the ocean and worry only about my next meal.

The Admiral then ran off, arms out at his sides shouting "vrroooooom!  VROOOOOOMMM!!!!".  This is a B17.

Unfortunately, we hit Houston at about 3:30 on a Friday in August, right before school started, so we were one of several million people on I-45 heading down past Hobby when I noticed, first, that our tire pressure alert had gone off.  I said nothing to Jamie so as to not cause undue panic, but was feeling the car handling poorly soon afterward, but funny thing about that stretch of Houston...  its almost impossible to pull off for a couple of miles.

Now, I will say this for the drivers of Houston:  their roads may have been designed by crazy people, but I had more people letting me know I had a flat tire than you can imagine, and people BLOCKING for me as I eventually managed to get off around Scarsdale.  And THEN we basically rolled into this surprisingly garage, and the guy patched my tire basically for free since he felt sad he didn't have the exact tire or fix-it kit he'd want to do a good job.  So, Houstonians,  I ask you to patronize Premier Foreign Domestic Cars when you have a chance.

We made it to Galveston only about an hour late, went to The Spot for dinner on the seawall.  Then back.

The next day we swam in the sea, then The Admiral and I went and got a new tire for the CRV while Jason, Amy and KareBear went to The Bishop's Palace on Broadway (which I pledge now to visit on my next voyage to Galveston), while the Admiral and I detoured over to The Lone Star Flight Museum.  For a small (inexpensive, too!) museum, they had an impressive batch of planes.  What was mostly impressive was that almost 3/4's of what they had was still airworthy.  So, in the morning we'd been bobbing in the ocean and watched a P-51 Mustang, a B-17 Flying Fortress, a T6 and a Stearman bi-lane go over, and all four were at the Museum while we were there, so we could walk right up to them.  I'm no plane aficionado, but for some reason I find the P-51, P-47 and F-4U interesting birds, and they had all three (no B-26, P-38 or P-40, but who is quibbling?)!  They also had B-17 which I stuck my head in (I wasn't supposed to, I think), and this thing, which is one of the models The Admiral worked on back in his Air Force days in Vietnam.

The Admiral asks too many questions about how he should pose.  I am not patient for this litany of questions.

He told me 10 times what this thing is, and I think its an A-8.  But that isn't actually correct.

edit:  I am told this is an A1-H, but The Admiral worked on the A1-E.  Both called the "Skyraider".

Last night we went to the Olympia Grill for dinner.  Had a lovely time.

This morning, Jamie woke me up once and said "You don't want to see the sunrise, do you?"  And I said "Hrrruughh?  Murrgghhh." and went back to sleep.

The condo we were in was pretty snazzy, up on the top floor of the Galvestonian with view both south and east, and so I could see her compelling argument, but at 6:45, all I could think was "pillow.  face.   Gnnrraaghhh."

10 minutes later she tried again, and so I got up and watch the sun just post-rising today.  And then I hit the beach for an hour.  The fishies were swimming exactly on the surface all around us, and pelicans were dive-bombing all over the place getting their morning meals.

We then packed up, and had to leave, enjoying a final meal at the themed "Rainforest Cafe" (where, if you have kids, you may have been.  Its really goofy.).

The League makes a pal.

The Admiral is one for stoicism in the face of nonsense, and perhaps I should not have pointedly asked the "safari guide" for their "most adventurous table", but we had a pretty good view of both the animatronic apes and elephants.  And, somehow, it seemed fitting on The Admiral's 65th, which is actually today, that we ring it in with the freaking out of robot gorillas and the faux-thunderstorm and other such, uh, whatever that is.

But I can recommend the Rainforest Ricky.  Its a tasty treat.