Comic for Friday, February 22nd, 2008

Posted: 7:55 am, Friday, February 22nd

Seriously, come on. There was no way this wasn't going to end this way. I missed the debate last night - and Lost, actually, again, although I did catch up to last week's Locke-bunny metamorphosis - but I hear Hillary's speechwriters wrote a bad joke for her to tell. I guess we'll see a shake-up in that wing of her campaign now. 2.0 and the 15 family "watched" it, although from what I gathered when I arrived later, they mostly talked about Hillary's hair or something. (Quick musical aside, "Dreamer in my Dreams" would actually be a nonsensical campaign song, but if both parties can be dumb enough to pick "Born in the USA" in '84, then anything's possible.)

I began reading Atlas Shrugged yesterday. Is this a mistake? I read some article on Bioshock that made me kind of curious about it, so I figured what the hey. It's 1,000 pages of small, small type, though, so if this is not a worthwhile endeavor, I'd like someone to tell me now, please.

This is one of the cooler tech demos I've seen for a video game in a long time - evidently, there's this Tank War thing for the PS3 where you can basically scan in your drawings, and it becomes your character in the game. And in a well-done manner, too! I dunno, it looks like a Wii sort of approach to gaming, which cannot possibly be a bad thing for the PS3 to be able to do.

I started going through the archives of the Comics Curmudgeon the other day, waiting impatiently for him to update, and found some old gems. A fascinating discussion of the incomprehensible art in Apartment 3-G here, commentary on possibly the most ridiculously proportioned female in comics since Rob Liefield was drawing X-Force in the early 90s (I'm talking about Blondie), and the single strangest Beetle Bailey strip ever.

Alright, off with me. Holy hell, the Irish are awesome at home. I leave you with that.

bullfrog

MNP -- Friday, February 22 2008, 07:58 am

my daily post-Irish basketball game comment that no one actually cares about...but I feel strangely compelled to make nonetheless It was incredible impressive that the Irish managed to come from 12 down to win by 12. Gotta love it when K-Mac just starts going off from 3-point range.

I think Atlas Shrugged falls apart about three quarters of the way into it. The ending is just plain bad. The secretary will most likely give you a different opinion.

I've played the demo of bioshock, have you played the full version? Thoughts? I kind of just wanted to wander around the city and the killing stuff part (i.e. the point of the whole game) kind of got in the way.

Also, did you ever play system shock 1 or 2 (old PC game that's the forerunner of bioshock)?

My favorite book of all time!!! It's got philosophy, mystery, romance...what more could you want?

Last night on Lost Kate turned into a giant bunny.

Well, i wished she would, anyway. I'm trying to decide if the writers really intend for her to be that annoying. Ever read 'Bless the Beasts and Children'? Kate's a ding.

Zero

I have not played Bioshock. It's a 360 exclusive on platforms, and my laptop takes like five minutes to open Illustrator these days, so I don't think it would run smoothly.

Hm. 1 yes, 1 no. Is Shrugged preferable to the Fountainhead? Just from what I know about Rand, I am guessing I'm only going to want to read one of these, so I might as well read the best of the two.

That's a negatory. Never even heard of that one, actually.

Honestly, I think I'm one of the few who prefers AS to Fountainhead. Fountainhead is definitely shorter. I think I prefer AS because the main character is a woman, for one. But you can always watch the movie for that one (Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal).

I recently listened to an audio CD of Atlas Shrugged (19 hrs of a book while on a cross country road trip is the way to go). It has a bit of a Chauvinistic feel to it and is a bit repetitive. But overall I found it to really draw your interest in and makes you think about how the attitudes of the people at the top really change the way a country works. I'm sure after finishing it you will of course realize that capitalism is the greatest thing in the universe and communism is mutual destruction in all its socialist forms. ;)

Looks like someone at the Times is (finally!) drinking the Kool-aid. Obama leads by five whole delegates!

http://politics.nytimes.com/election-guide/2008/results/delegates/index.html

I have to hand it to Hillary for saving her best answer for last in the debate. I *do* think her Xerox comment, and her insistence on turning the conversation back to this 'talk vs. action' issue after Barack had moved away from it (deftly I might add), made her look petty.

Question: I suspect Hillary will come out and say she wasn't responsible for the "Xerox" line. If she didn't write that comment isn't she then guilty of using someone else's words? I am not seeing the fundamental difference between borrowing someone else's line (with their permission) and using a speech writer.

I just heard two of my coworkers discussing the Oscars. Evidently, the Post has predicted Johnny Depp for Best Actor. It's like the Post *wants* to be wrong.

I read "Fountainhead" when I was in high school, and it changed my thinking at the time about art and identity and the role of an artist . . . for the better, I would say (it really made me think about the value of originality and beauty in art in a way that seems obvious to me now, though it wasn't then). It also has philosophy, mystery, and romance (a very sexist romance), plus architecture (Howard Roark is said to be based on Frank Lloyd Wright). I loved it as a teenager, don't know what I'd make of it now.

Maybe you read AS if you want to think about government and economics, and Fountainhead if you want to think about art.

Hm. Well, I'm 25 pages into Shrugged, so there's no turning back now! Also, I do not appear to own a copy of Fountainhead, so.

I read Fountainhead in my High School Freshman English teacher who was so tough, she had several levels of F's and would never get anyone a D. Either you got a C or you flunked. We read that book for the whole second semester. The first semester, it was the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit quartet. Ever since then, I've had a burning hatred against Tolkien and Miss Rand.

I like CK's take - I WAS an econ major, so maybe that's why I preferred AS and my brother, the architect's, favorite book was Fountainhead. I do think the romance is a lot less sexist in AS.

Opinion poll: Your cell phone is in vibrate mode. It starts to run out of battery power. Should it make the low battery warning beeps, or should it just die silently?

In a meeting today and my phone conspicuously made its sickly dying sound. I'd say the ideal would be option C... it should make a low-battery vibrate warning. No such luck here, though.

My 9th grade English teacher remains one of my least-favorite teachers I can recall. Most of my teachers have benefited from the passage of time, but my 7th grade social studies teacher and my 9th grade English teacher continue to suck evermore. (Although I don't recall the English teacher assigning particularly bad books to read... Just everything about her manner sucked. If Licia's in the crowd today, can you back me up on this? She actually sucked, right? Wasn't just me?)

I agree with option C. When I need sound security, I've found "vibrate" mode is not enough. You need to "all sounds off" (on my Verizon Nokia).

My phone's major annoying factor is that it will beep constantly while on the subway to let me know it's not getting a signal. Yes, thank you, phone, now STFU.

this 9th grade teacher - what about her manner sucked? was she inconsistent, or boring, or just a nutcase? did she know her material at all, or was she one of those b.s. artists?

She didn't seem to like the students at all, although it could've just been the boys. I don't recall anything too brilliant ever coming out of her mouth, but I'm not sure if it was a lack of command of the material, or just the lack of being all that smrt. She wasn't big on writing assignments, which you'll be shocked to learn I like, so maybe that was it. I seem to remember she had a very arbitrary set of rules, though. That was a big thing.

We wrote and wrote and wrote. Her test were nothing but one or two questions that she expected for you to take ten pages to complete. And this wasn't an AP or advanced English class, just standard Freshmen English.

My high school had a lot of little quirks like that. Junior American History involved making posters, like every week. Lots and lots of posters. French class was all about the cursing. Biology was not so much about biology than having to watch every sick movement of the biology teacher: she was double jointed. (Thankfully, I never had to dissect frogs: the school couldn't afford them.)

And world history was basically a crash course in hieroglyphics since the teacher had a hand-writing so unintelligible, unreadable it was scary.

And of course, the math department is summoned up thusly: one taught while visibly drunk and another while hating that she's teaching math. Yeah, I went to the worst high school in the states, with an indian "savage" as the mascot to boot.

I had a horrible teacher for 9th grade English, too. There was no general debate about symbolism or allegories. If the answer you gave wasn't the same as her Teacher's Edition - it was simply wrong. I had her again for AP English my Senior year and she wasn't any better. I scored well on my exam though and went back just to pull the old "Good Will Hunting - I got a 5 on my test, how do you like dem apples" line on her. I like to think I won.

We'll call my ninth-grade teacher Mrs. Palinski, which is not her name, but very close. She had a similar approach of telling students their opinions were wrong. Not a lot of debate, there.

I actually had several good-to-great teachers. My biology teacher was excellent, I thought; I remember two of my English teachers quite fondly, and one of my social studies teachers was probably kind of a dick, but I liked him a great deal all the same. Math was a lost cause on me, but Sossei was a good guy. Unfortunately, there were a lot of crappy teachers to make up for these stalwarts.

I must've blocked it out. I can't remember who we had! Anyway, I also prefer AS to Fountainhead, by a longshot. Also really liked We the Living.

I just did the online Jumble. These things are brutal.

http://www.jumble.com/play.html