Friday, January 26, 2007

Netflix Pals

This is how I got to 2000 posts.

If anyone wants to be my NetFlix Pal, click here.

I tried to set up my friend account with Maxwell, and it doesn't look like it worked, so please try it here.

I have no idea how this would benefit you.

Schrodinger's Bath

Oh, sweet Christmas...

You kind of have to have a mean streak to enjoy this, so this should be perfect for a lot of you.

Automated Cat Bath.

Thanks to Jamie for the link.

Titles are hard

Huh

Apparently, there used to be Love Boat action figures.

I have a new life quest. I will own an Isaac action figure. Oh, yes. I will.


Blogging

So I had dinner with Pat, Jeff and Keora this evening.

1) Polvo's is good, but it's kind of weird that it's still such a huge hipster hang-out. If it's about being seen, who wants to be seen cramming their face with moderately priced enchiladas? La Reyna, half a black down was kind of empty, as was El Mercado, another block down. Sure, those places aren't quite as good (especially after I discovered the Burrito Gigante [translation: Giant Burrito]), but they also has inside seating.

I will never understand this city and it's celebration of seemingly random restaurants. This includes the Olive Garden on S. Lamar.

2) Pat is against blogging. Or at least he thinks it's pretty silly. I can support that. Heck, half the time I have no idea what I'm going to say when I start writing, and suddenly I'm two pages into some inane monologue about how I hung shelves in the garage.

The whole blogging thing is NOT something you can explain to someone, or convince them is a good idea, if they're already pretty much convinced you shouldn't be doing it, anyway. Like scrapbooking. Or brushing your teeth.

Pat sort of kidded about starting his own blog, which, he said he would fill with "all my interests that nobody I know cares about". But when pushed, he eluded the question. All the more mysterious.

He did ask me discuss here either the cover-up of surrounding the death of 60+ birds on Congress Avenue a week or so ago. Now they're saying it was cold weather and parasites, but, I am told, I am to begin to say this is obviously NOT true, and there's something sinister at work.

or else I am supposed to speak in praise of "The Day After Tomorrow".

I forget.

Shoemaker, here's that blog I mentioned: Lady, That's My Skull


Shelves

So I've long had a theory that when I finally finish with the garage, which I've never really unpacked, I would get a job within a week. This has gone from a lingering suspicion to a bit of fatalistic thinking I've decided to take the lead on.

I've delayed and delayed putting the garage together, mostly because the garage is cold. And lonely. And there are spiders.

Yesterday I finally went to Lowe's and bought my melanite shelves, brackets and other assorted doo-dads. Now, an oddity of our garage is that it's exactly big enough to accomodate two cars, but not a lot of space for other stuff, such as lawnmowers. In fact, most of my neighbors have at least one car in the drive-way to accomodate their junk.

The icy weather last week reminded me that if we're hit with ice again, and I DO have to go to work or whatever, I'm going to go out in the rain or ice to get to my car. SO... Luckily our garage is really tall inside (our house sits on an incline). So I'm putting all the shelves up really high.

Not a lot of quick access with stuff sitting that high up, so items finding a home up there include things like Christmas Trees, etc... that we can afford to forget about most of the time.

I am very proud of how handy I've been today. But I also have a long way to go (maybe another two days in the garage) before I'm done.

Then, voila, I should have a job waiting for me next week.

Except that I still haven't finished organizing our books upstairs. That could be a project...

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

2004th Post

Hey, Leaguers!

Hope everyone is doing well.

Things are slow on the home front. Jamie's off one of her meds, and it's got her feeling a bit lowly until her body gets used to not having that particular med (withdrawal isn't as much fun as they made it look in "Trainspotting"). So we've mostly been sticking to the house and trying not to think too much about what kind of lousy weather we've been stuck with.

Really, I'm enjoying the rain and cold. After all, PHX has many things, but weather is not one of them. It's mostly the dogs who are making me feel bad. Poor doggies have been stuck inside for days.


Books

I finally finished "In Cold Blood", a book I started some time ago. I know this because I have one of Jamie's business cards which reads "Human Code" as a place holder. I loved the book, but found it relentlessly depressing, so I would put it down for years at a time, and then have to start over. That, and I always read books in bits and spurts, and I started this one again right after we moved here, so... yeah.

Next up is "The March" which I received for Christmas. I also have "The Time Traveller's Wife" which JimD, Steven and Lauren all recommended to me, although Lauren said "It's a little pulpier than I thought it would be." Luckily, The League lives for pulp, so let's hope Lauren's reveal rings true.

Also, I'm reading a metric ton of comics. I just wish the Superman books were back on schedule.


THANK YOU'S

I wanted to say thanks to all Leaguers. I enjoyed writing my 2000th post hoo-hah, but it was quite nice to get so many comments.

Hopefully we'll still be doing this in a few years, and we'll see where we are on posts at that time.


NetFlix

I'm back in.

Leaguer OH e-mailed me to ask my opinion of NetFlix, and it got me thinking about their service.

We'll see what happens this time, but a few things contributed to my decision

1- Talking in movies. There's less distracting talking at my house.
2- At $14.99 a month, rather than $16 for two people to hit the theater, I'm practically making money
3- My post office box is much closer here than in PHX, making the whole movie-by-mail thing less daunting.
4- I am now willing to manage my NetFlix queue to balance the "quality" movies with the very stupid. My first two movies? "The Grapes of Wrath" and "Manos: The Hands of Fate"
5- I no longer have forty movie channels. In Phoenix, we would subscribe to whole packages of movie channels. Couple that with the DVR, and I never really felt like I was at a loss for a movie to watch.
6- I do like movies. I have a degree to prove it.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Read Checkmate

Up on Comic Fodder


Coming to Trade Paper Back soon.

Other Pictures

Ah, extra pictures. These are some extra pictures left over from the past several weeks.



The Bros. Steans enjoy some quality time during the Holidays.


Our loverly Christmas lights


Jamie enjoys our Christmas lights.



I pose with Dave the Somewhat Animated Christmas Deer.


Cousin John, his wife Julie, Mandy, Ellie Gamble



Elf Rami



Mandy, Ellie Gamble, Feral Andy



Mel.



Lucy in her lovely Christmas collar.






Ice Day Flashback

Last week we were hit with some ice. Believing the gods were angry with us, The League was terrified. We cowered inside our home, and emerged to take only a few photos.


Mel zips around the front yard, enjoying the ice crunching uder his feet.



Icicles hung from the front of the house. I don't remember ever getting icicles like this before in Austin. The window on the left is the window to the Fortress.




Icilces in the backyard hanging from the porch. I kept one of these. It's in the freezer.




Ahhh... the firepit. The firepit filled with rain. And then the rain froze. And now it's melted, and it's gross, but the yard is all muddy, so I haven't cleaned it out. You can see icicles beneath the firepit.



Ah, the front yard. Yes, the front steps did ice up and become a deathtrap. As did the sidewalks.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

2000th Post!!!

Son of a gun. 2000 posts. That's what Blogger is telling me.

I'm not sure if this includes the "draft" posts I never bothered to post nor delete. It also doesn't include the first week of posts Jim D. had to salvage when I committed blogocide early on, then JimD convinced me to have a change of heart. But, according to Blogger, this is big 2000.

Great googildy moogildy.

When I think of the time I've spent working on this blog, I realize I could have obtained a masters degree, written several novels, or dug a tunnel between here and Guadalajara. It's kind of pathetic. Instead, I've spent countless hours navel gazing, performing haphazard self examination and generally wasting everyone's time. I'm glad to see so many of you who've chosen to stick with me every miserable step of the way. After all, I already know what I think, so you keep coming back, I suppose to see what nonse will appear here as part of my permanent record.

League of Melbotis has been instrumental in my ability to locate old friends, make new friends, and keep up friendships in ways I never would have predicted. We've been linked to from USA Today, have made appearances in some odd blogs, and can proudly state that we've become the number one destination for folks looking for pictures of "supergirl + naked" using Google. I am so proud.

We've traced my dissatisfaction with Chandler, Arizona straight through to my final, crucial decision to skip town and return to my beloved Austin in my beloved Texas. I'm not sure that move would have happened as soon as it did, in the way that it did, had I not had LoM as a communication tool between myself and some other parties. Nor do I think my leap would have made as much sense to friends and family had I not chronicled my dissatisfaction with such excrutiating detail.


The assembled Justice League of America looks back on 2000 posts

It's my hope I've been able to somehow pique your interest in the sequential art form known as "comics" with my unending diatribes which I shall qualify as my "enthusiasm" for the subject. Comics were always my bag, but with very few entertainment options and fewer social outlets with my arrival in PHX, comics became a great source of distraction and amusement for me during some pretty tough times over the past few years. It's been my hope that you guys might hit your local comic shop once in a while to see what's available, and maybe find something you can enjoy.

I've spent no small amount of time dwelling upon all things Superman, and will continue to do so. It's my hope that I've dragged you kicking and screaming from seeing Superman as a silly man ina cape to a pop-culture icon and symbol for modern mythology. I also hope I conned you into seeing this summer's "Superman Returns".

Some of this enthusiasm you've shared with me, some less. I've taken my desire to blog upon comics and tried to do something with it. I hope you're either checking out Comic Fodder or breathing a sigh of relief that every third post isn't about the genius of Justice Society of America. Without years of practice here, I sincerely doubt I would have made the decision to throw my hat in the ring and give such an effort a try.

We've dwelt upon all things pet-related. I confess, the blog was much heavier in pet-related posts in the first year. Honestly, the pets sort of have their patterns, and I'm not sure how much of their daily activity to cover which won't start to make me the "crazy dog guy".

In the past few years I've also become much more interested in sports, so I appreciate everyone humoring me as I waxed rhapsodic upon the 2005 Lonhorns, the Phoenix Suns, the lowly Diamondbacks, and my occasional bursts of enthusiasm for various NFL teams. Sports is the great equalizer.

And League of Melbotis has given me my rooftop from which I get to regularly proclaim that I am, indeed, a lucky guy. Not too many people get to meet someone who can be their high-fiving best friend and get to marry them. Nor do I know of anyone else who is married who has a spouse as patient, understanding and as much fun as Jamie (sorry, rest of the world. It's true.). And she's given up a lot of quiet hours while I've sat and click-clacked on a laptop, in order to post as regularly as possible. So thanks, Leaguers, for letting me try to get you to know Jamie, just a little.


It seems like just yesterday I was telling JimD I didn't think I had enough to say to sustain a blog. And I was right, but that hasn't stopped me.

There are no plans for League of Melbotis to disappear anytime soon. I know I occasionally whine about a lack of readership, or that I feel as if I'm whistling into the wind here, but by-and-large, this has been a phenomenal experience for me, and I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Thanks to all of you for making 2000 posts not just possible, but something I wanted to do.

We'll see you at 3000.


The entire Superman Family wishes you a happy 2000th post

Post for Monday Morning

SHAME

Leaguers, only a small fraction of you bothered to wish Reed a happy birthday. I am ashamed of you.

Reed has been a vital part of this blog for many years, and all you had to do was post a birthday message. But, apparently, you're too busy. Apparently, you're too good for Reed. I had no idea this was the sort of snobbish audience the League had grown to cater to.

I shame myself and I shame the good name of The League if I can't get you to post a "Happy Birthday" message to Reed.


SUN

We finally got some sun today. It's been cold and wet since last week sometime, so a little break in the weather was a welcome change. We didn't manage to take as much advantage of the weather as I would have liked, and I didn't make it home until after dark, so I didn't go running, which I'm feeling sort of badly about.

We've got another wintery blast scheduled to come through (cold, but not a freeze), and then we should have sunshine again on Thursday. So, right now, I'm holding out for Thursday.


PLAY-OFFS

We're not even done with the 1st quarter of the NE/IND game as I watch this, but I did see the end of the Bears/Saints game. I suppose I must now make Superbowl plans. No matter what, I suppose I shall cheer for the team that is NOT the Bears, unless I am given a compelling reason why the Bears should curry my favor.

I've been fairly dispassionate about pro-Football this year, and have already snuck over and watched a few NBA games (although I am reminded that the NBA coverage in Austin is abysmal in comparison to what we had in Arizona. My kingdom for an NBA Season Pass on Time Warner Cable).

Peabo was right about one thing in life, and that's about the inherent superiority of College Football over Pro Ball. I cannot get onboard with the anti-NBA plank of his platform, although I understand his argument.

***UPDATE***

Holy SMOKES, man!!! Was that ever a game! Holy cow!!! COLTS are AFC CHAMPS!!! Whoooo!!!!

(sorry, we like Peyton Manning at League HQ and have been waiting for him to have his shot at a ring for a while.)


GHOSTRIDER

I've never been a huge fan of the Ghost Rider comics. I sort of think the idea begins and ends with character design, and you can get more out of an 80's-era Iron Maiden poster than you can out of the average Ghost Rider comic. GR's not actually terribly scary or anything, so I'm not really clear on the point of the guy. I actually think he would be handled better as a DCU Phantom Stranger/Spectre-type character, but that's just me.

Now it's a movie. So far, the most interesting thing in the trailers has been Eva Mendes. And my deep love for paying to see very bad movies.

Who am I kidding? I'm going to see this movie. I sort of wish I could figure out a way to see it with Randy, because I bet Randy is going to love this flick. Somehow the idea of dragging Harms to such quality, low-brow entertainment is equally appealing.


Norbit

Is this movie just about making fun of fat girls? Am I really supposed to pay money to see that?

Eddie Murphy.... You used to be beautiful, man.


John Wayne

So the other day I watched all of "The Sons of Katie Elder", which I had never seen before. Darn good Western, and one could clearly see where they'd lifted some moments for Silverado. I did not know this, but 2005's "Four Brothers" was a sort of homage to "The Sons of Katie Elder". Only, with Marky Mark instead of John Wayne.

Last night, after watching "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", I watched a good chunk of "The Undefeated". I've got "Rio Grande" in my DVR queue. Either I, or TCM or AMC am on a John Wayne kick. Given the amount of John Wayne on TV everyday, I am inclined to think it's me.

Sure, me and Mr. Wayne might not have agreed on too much had we ever met each other, but I love a good John Wayne movie. I think, partially, because I respect Wayne's ability to make any nonsense that comes out of his mouth sound like God's own truth. And he's not above having a good laugh at other people getting slugged in the head in many of his films.

Oddly, I've not seen too many of John Wayne's non-Westerns, such as "The Green Berets", "Donovan's Reef", or "The Flying Leathernecks". Luckily, I have DVR and basic cable, so it's just a matter of time.


Hope everyone had a good weekend.

Make sure you wish Reed a happy birthday.