I have a new hero.

Look out, RHPT...

It appears all of us working in the tech sector may soon be in for a replacement. Unfortunately, I've seen how this plays out, and it ain't pretty...

NERD ALERT!!!!

The Batman fanfilm which caused such a ruckus at the San Diego ComicCon can be found here. People have apparently been going batty over the thing. Batty... ha ha ha... ahhhhhh, me....

(update)

Well, I watched the Batman thing (it's a Quicktime download). The video looks really nice, and if you're an Alex Ross fan, Batman and Joker actually look really, really cool. The dialog is really terrible, and the "twists" they add in are... I don't know what they are...

Honestly, I don't know what this is. It reminds me of something I would have dreamt up in 8th grade, but I assume adults are behind it. Anyway, give it a shot, but don't break your arm trying to download the thing.

This afternoon I called the good folks at ADOT to figure out what I was supposed to do about my license plate. "What did you want on your plate?"
"Krypto. K-R-Y-P-T-O. Krypto."
"It's coming up as a drug reference."
"You computer has file of drug references?"
"Yes sir."
"And Krypto was one of them?"
"Yep. Ice, Special K, all this stuff I never heard of. All drugs."
"And Krypto?"
"You never know."
What was not clear was that anyone has ever actually called anything Krypto. But a quick web-search turns up that Krypto is a specific breed of marijuana. Who knew?!!

according to the DOJ: "Krypto," short for kryptonite, is hydroponically grown marijuana that is supplied by Philadelphia-based criminal groups who transport the drug to Atlantic City.

So because some idiot in Philly has decided to call his dope "Krypto," I may not get my license plate. I will find out after the "committee" reviews my request the 2nd Thursday in August. I am thrilled to know I get no rebuttal. Further, I wonder if DC comics knows the name of their beloved character has been co-opted for what sounds like some scientifically enhanced bud?

And can't the state of Arizona accept the fact I like to get groovy and just let the license plate slide? I suppose not. The ultimate irony being that this hydroponic weed is so potent, they named it after the stuff which takes down Superman. So the Superman connection comes full circle. I wonder if there's any "Ace the Bathound" wonder weed?

SUH-WEEEET!!!!

First teaser image of Doctor Octopus as played by Alfred Molina in the upcoming Spider-Man 2 (Amazing Spider-Man).

Part of my morning routine is checking the mail while Mel and I do our little lap around the neighborhood. This morning I received a letter from the Arizona Dept. of Transportation.

A few weeks ago it came time to renew the tags for my car, and like a good little netizen, I jumped online and took care of it immediately (I also took care of Jamie and registered her to vote). One of the options in renewing your tags was to get "vanity" plates for your auto. There's a lot more folks out in Arizona with vanity plates than what you see in Texas, and I discovered that these personalized plates are fairly inexpensive. So, without thinking clearly, I popped in my personalized info. and sat back to reap the benefits of high-speed bandwidth and a check card.

At 5:30 this morning, I got Saturday's mail. Despite the fact I filled in the little box on the form explaining what I had chosen for my plate to say, someone in the ADOT doesn't believe I had the best of intentions when putting "Krypto" on the back of my car. I don't know what they THINK it means, but it's pretty clear that "Krypto" was kind of freaking them out.

Instead of a performing a 30 second web-search to verify my claim, this government monkey sent my request to some review board. No time line has been given as to when I can expect to see whether or not "Krypto" has been approved, but the letter insinuated that the word or phrase had connotations which the state of Arizona did not like.

The thing which concerns me is that I have a tag which I must put on my car by the end of the month. This tag set me back no small amount of green, and I don't want to have to buy a new one if and when they do send me my plate. Lousy bastards.

I won't cry if the state won't allow me to put this on my car (although I think I will be vindicated). In fact, the decision to put Krypto on my car was one I kind of questioned about five minutes after I quit giggling as I sent off my request. This was the same sort of decision making which led me to wear a shirt in middle school which read: Vote LV-426 Planet-Con in '86! (if you can determine what that statement refers to, bonus points.) Nonetheless, it was a bad decision, but it was MY bad decision, and I am sticking with it.

I'll keep you posted as to how this pans out. I need to call ADOT tomorrow to see what I'm supposed to do about this tag +/- plate debacle.

Ann Coulter Nude

Well, I may have doomed myself to an endless hell of popularity with folks looking for nude photos of Ann Coulter.

8 of my last 20 hits came from folks looking for Ann Coulter pics or other... 24 of the last 100 hits.

Anyway, I promised to print results, but I have no idea what this means.

The truth is, right now I'm watching the new Teen Titans show on Cartoon Network, and it's not very good. Oh, well. I did like the first issue of the re-vamped comic by Geoff Johns, though. The cartoon is kind of anime style, a style which I have always not been very interested in because I assumed there was a lot lost in the translation from Japanese to English. I don't see the point of an American cartoon lifting the style, including goofy cultural shortcuts which are fairly meaningless to American viewers, and which are really kind of cutesy (even for a kid's cartoon). I guess the point is to use someone else's tools to fool kids into thinking this somehow fits in the Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon, etc... But here's the deal, Yu-Gi-Oh has toys and cards which go along with the show. It's all interconnected. As an intrepid comic fan, I know that no Teen Titans toys are en route (retailers feel there are too many girls on the team (2 of 5) and the toys would never sell.

The rumor turning on the Superman mill is that Cartoon Network will next be launching a cartoon based around Superman's Silver Age canine pal, Krypto the Superdog. It will be geared at very young kids. I look forward to it. BTW, Krypto doesn't talk in the comics. I don't know what's up with this issue.

Jamie and I joined Sam's Wholesale Club this weekend. Mostly, I just wanted one of those big barrels of pretzels because I was hungry. I'm not sure that the "wholesale" costs will help us. There are only two of us, we had to pay $30 to join, and we bought enough stuff that if we actually go back to Sam's before November, I'll be shocked.

Anyway, fairly boring weekend. Hope yours was better.

I hope to post my "In Defense of Megatron" think piece over at Jim's site this week. Hope you guys tune in. I posted there this evening. Go take a peek.

All the interests in my life are collapsing in upon themself into one colossal super project.

Howdy to all of you drifting in from www.jdedman.com. I'm going to be pretty busy today, so forgive me for being a bad host. Feel free to polk around and make yourselves at home. There's RC, water and orange juice in the fridge if you want some. Don't touch the cat, he bites.

Let me know if there are any questions.

Hey, Team,

Jim D. is moving to Beaumont (which reminds me, I owe him money), and he has asked me to Guest Blog over at www.jdedman.com. If you've been long associated with The League, you surely have flipped over to Jim's site at some point to see what the heck I was talking about. So, if my posts are shorter for a time, look for more Melbotis goodness to appear over yonder.

I am very busy today at work, but a couple of things:

1) I was thinking about the Japanese invention I mentioned yesterday which allows you to translate a dog or cat's noises into "speech" by analyzing the tone and then giving a pre-recorded verbal cue. Well, nice idea, but they need to reverse engineer the device so that I can talk back to my pets. Otherwise, the damn thing isn't going to really be of much use.

2) People looking for Ann Coulter nude continue to pour in. I'll do a final tally this weekend, but I think I had somewhere in the neighborhood of four or five people yesterday.

3) Sci-Fi Channel has been re-running episodes of an early 90's Discovery Channel program entitled Beyond Bizarre (not to be confused with "Beyond Belief", which is anything but...). Beyond Bizarre is a sort of Ripley's Believe it or Not! with an even slimmer budget.

Beyond Bizarre must not ever have had much popularity. I remember seeing the show in a drunken stupor when I was 18 and being mystified by some rocks which reportedly move on their own during the night, but I had kind of forgotten about the show the way the rest of the world must have. When you Google search for info on the show, you get bupkis, although you can buy the series on VHS.

Beyond Bizarre is done in quasi-documentary style and chronicles strange and unexplainable phenomena as well as people doing goofy stuff. Most of the strange phenomena are generally explainable with a little logic applied (although the producers of Beyond Bizarre give no siggestion that logic could ever play into these events). They explore strange monuments like Native American Mound Builder artifacts and pyramids. My favorite was an episode which explored "vampires," or bored goth kids who cut each other and drank one another's blood. Not only unsanitary, but generally a big sign that mommy didn't love you.

At any rate, I think at long last, I have found my calling. The show is hosted by this guy, Jay Robinson, whom I believe once played Dr. Shrinker on the Kroft Superstars. The early 90's delivered him to us as a man now clearly bent upon making himself into the prototype for Landau's Lugosi in Ed Wood. At any rate, Jay gets to wear all black, stand in a darkened studio with leftover Universal Monster Movie props and a fog machine while being only slightly creepy. He introduces the program and segues between segments with spooky aplomb. I am not yet old enough to have this job, nor am I likely to abuse enough drugs nor smoke enough cigarettes to have the sort of Crypty Keeper like countenance and vibrato which the job requires.

Ahhh... to dream the impossible dream.

4) A few years ago (circa 1996) some friends of friends shot and edited a movie entitled The Schedule. The film was not really received anywhere excpet for The Dobie off UT's campus. Nonetheless, it was a noble effort, and as I understand it, just never landed a distribution deal. Judging from the less than stellar 3 of 10 stars it has on IMDB, it must not have been a fan favorite.

But the premise is not dissimilar to Showtime's new program Dead Like Me. Both center around recently departed souls being recruited by the powers that be to act as agents of the Grim Reaper and collect dead folks' souls or something.

Anyway, aspiring attorneys may wish to contact the producers of The Schedule and see if they can't get a chunk of Showtime's coffers.

I need to go get lunch, but, my friends, this is what I am dealing with:

Home > Local Forecast for Tempe, AZ (85287)

112°F
Mostly Cloudy Feels Like
107°F (<---this is a damn lie. It feels like my eyes are boiling out of the sockets.)

UV Index: 9 High
Dew Point: 45°F
Humidity: 11%
Visibility: Unlimited
Pressure: 29.82 inches and falling
Wind: Variable at 6 mph

I may starve to death. Please send Ho-Ho's.

Cancer Free until 2083!

Normally I try not to drift toward potty humor, but...

Although I am not sure he'll want to be credited with this one, Randy sent me this link. Thank you, Australian Scientists, for giving me a reason to get that subscription which Jamie has so long denied me. Plain brown wrappers, I eagerly await your arrival.

Here's an interesting device.

You know, both Mel and Jeff are noisy animals. I think that they have deciphered that noise tends to get our attention, and thus, they make noise. The cat is especially bothersome when he decides at 6:30am on Saturdays that we have slept long enough and yowls at the bedroom door. But one has to wonder, what is my dog saying?

he's saying "Hey!" that's what dogs are saying when they bark. They may be saying "Hey, I'm at the door," or "Hey, there's a dog outside the window" or even "Hey, give me a treat," but all they are saying is "Hey!"

It's my assumption that this is also what the cat is saying, but it's hard to say. As chatty as Mel is, Jeff tends to just sit in the center of the room and yowl in existential despair. I like to think that if I invest in this little box, it will decipher's Jeff's great unease with the world and give me greater insight into what it is that troubles him so. Will he be proclaiming that "God is dead and all is a meaningless void!" or will he be whining for his fish kippers? All I know is that in order to find out, I have to drop $75.

I'm still getting hits trickling in from people looking for nude pics of Ann Coulter. I think I had one or two yesterday and one today. Well, done, America.

A LITTLE HUMPDAY PICK-ME UP

Here's something I wouldn't encourage people to do.

VIVA LANCE!!!!

As a former Austinite, I get excited about bicycles once a year during the Tour de France. Austin's own Lance Armstrong is going for victory number 5 in this most grueling of human tests. While I think riding a bicycle for a living is as silly as walking for a living, I still get really jazzed about this guy.

Whether he actually wins or not on this go-round, Lance is an amazing athlete, and he also, apparently drives a Subaru. But Lance is also the brains or at least the mouthpiece for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Lance had a nasty bout with cancer many years ago and he came through it with flying colors, and he's always used his prominence as the World's foremost cyclist to promote awareness of cancer research and to promote the US Postal Service.

So hurrah, Lance, and best of luck.

Welcome back RHPT

Randy has blogged once more! He's returned to the world of navel gazing and spouting off of partially founded opinions. Welcome back, mi amigo. Es bueno.

I could not tell you why, but this post on JimD's blog is absolutely hysterical. Maybe you have to have been following Jim's blog for a while to find it funny, but I had to share.

I just got my paycheck, and immediately checked it to see how the tax cut was supposed to effect me. I was especially curious after the flap occuring around RHPT.com's post from a few weeks ago about his tax cut. Randy had noted a $20 increase.

I noted a loss of $1.20. C'est la vie.

My beautiful wife Jamie has taken it upon herself to learn the guitar. I am quite pleased with her choice as she has chosen a hobby which does not require me to lose any square footage in our house, nor does it require me to pay out for the feeding and maintenance of a hoofed mammal. Previously, Jamie has been a voracious reader, and avid taunter of the cat. Now she is cursing like a sailor while trying to learn how to tune her Alvarez.

I am not musically inclined. I played piano for a year when I was 7. For two years in middle school I played the Tuba, but found it was only adding to the malaise of being labeled "nerd boy" by much of my middle school. I have no ear for music, and it was all too late that I realized what a neat trick for picking up girls a guitar can be.

At any rate, I wish Jamie the best of luck in her new endeavor. We are truly rocking out to such hits as "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and "Jingle Bells".