and not for the first time.
i just had phone conversation with a girl i know. she was complaining and making fun of her BF because she saw him reading a cartoon book. one of those manga’s or whatever. please tell me why this grown ass man was all intense into it.
i was curious, and asked what it was exactly. she went into the other room, found it on the table, a big hardcover The Walking Dead.
i said “oh, well, yea. absolutely”
“absolutely what?”
“oh, i mean, absolutely he Should be reading that. its excellent. you know, you should try picking it up and checking it out yourself”
“uh… no. i’ve got better things to do than sit around reading comicbooks about zombies. i have NO interest.”
“well, its not really about the zombies. i mean, they’re there, but its more about the people. about how they—
“No. i know. you’ve talked about it before. i’ve seen the show. i know what its about. i still don’t care. like i said i have better things to do then read about cartoon zombies”
“well, what if it was a book? a novel about zombies? i mean, is it the medium that you have a problem with? or is—
“No. no. youre not going to talk me into it. i told you, i have no interest”
and that was the end of that. we’ve had similar conversations before. and after we talked a bit more here she mentioned that after she hung up the phone her plan was (among other things) watch Monk on netflix.
so, apparently “better things to do” is watching crappy tv shows on netflix. no offense to Monk, i think its fun. but, for me, that doesn’t qualify as better things to do. if you were too busy to read silly comicbooks because you were spending your time at the lab trying to cure cancer, then ok. but not Monk, or In Plain Sight, or any of the other silly shows she’s watching now.
i’m a little bit annoyed now. her attitude about it seemed condescending and small minded.
And then somebody made a comment about its just like a regular earthworm, only bigger. And then i felt incredibly stupid.
i also found a bunch with signatures on them.
if i were to try sell these or something, i wouldn’t even know where to start.
Batman and Punisher crossover signed by both Barry Kitson and Denny O’Neil
Detective comics written by Chuck Dixon, illustrated and signed and numbered 865/2500 by Scott Hanna
2 Zen the intergalactic ninja. i don’t really know anything about this series. both signed by artist Bill Maus
the adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix signed and numbered 345/5000 by Scott Lobdell
Dawn signed by writer/artist/creator Joseph Michael Linsner.
Shattered Image written by Kurt Busiek and Barbara Randall Kesel. inked by Kevin Conrad. illustrated and signed by Tony Daniel.
Elementals signed by Tony S. Daniel who was still going by the name Antonio back then. personally signed to my brother D.J. we have another one somewhere signed to me as well.
Tony Daniel has gone on to do some incredibly cool and high profile stuff. X-Force. a Spawn mini-series written by Alan fucking Moore. some Flash stuff. i think he did a few Teen Titans. he’s done a Batman series written by Grant Morrison. last i heard he was doing Detective comics once it was relaunched with the New 52 thing.
we have a number of stuff from Tony as well. he’s my moms cousin. i’ve never met him but my ma, my sister, and my grandma all went to his wedding in chicago years and years ago. his mother, my ma’s aunt, on a few occasions collected a number of things he’s done and mailed them to us. we have stuff from X-Force, Spawn: Blood Fued, his own series The Tenth, and a few other things. i think we stopped getting things around the time the Tenth was finishing up.
my brother and i were old enough to realize how cool this was. but we weren’t old enough fully understand and appreciate Exactly how cool that really was.
going through old comics. my brother was more of a collector than i ever was. and we both stopped years and years ago.
among many other neat stuff i found:
a Ghost Rider comic written by Warren Ellis.
3 medievil Spawn and Witchblade comics written by Garth Ennis
2 Wolverine stories illustrated by Sam Keith
a Daredevil cover by Mike MIgnola
an Ash mini-comic issued out by wizard magazine. this was a series done by illustrator Jimmy Palmiotti, who has since gone on to do great and wonderful things. and written by Joe Quesada who became the guy in charge, the editor-in-chief of Marvel for awhile. i also have a full issue of Ash somewhere signed by both of them. but at the moment i don’t know where it is.
i thought this was sweet. all of the stuff with Hellboy and his dad, professor Bruttenholm, is always sweet to me.
“If you don’t mind me saying, you look a little familiar, sir. Do i know you?”
it’s funny to me that he can walk into a place and everyone there doesn’t just run screaming in terror.
“hey, whatcha readin’? “
I’ve always hated this question. I learned fairly early on that the people who ask don’t really care. They see you with a book and just want to use that as an excuse to talk about themselves. I’m tired of people asking about what I’m reading, completely ignoring my answer, just waiting for their turn to talk, then tell me about the latest Danielle Steele or Tom Clancy.
No. No interest at all. Sorry.
“Oh, you read books? Wow, so do I! Here let me tell you about it. You Have to read it, it’s my favouritest ever so that means you must like it too.”
that’s it how it works. I don’t want to discredit anyone’s taste. Or even to say that one author is better than another. But you people gotta understand taste and context. Is that too much to ask?
If you see me with a book that you have read, or its written by an author your familiar with, then yea, let’s have a conversation.
Its to the point now where I answer “hey, what’re reading?” by saying Harry Potter everytime. (Or on accasion Sweet Valley High, but not too many people get that reference anymore.) Its easier to politely speed along the inane conversation if I just play along and tell them what they want to hear.
(via burning-soul)
we live in amazing times for story telling.
once upon a time the only way to get a good story was to read an old musty book. even television, during its earliest incarnations, was often referred to as the idiot box. the internet was just used for Myspace and to watch videos of kittens on Youtube. we’ve gone leaps and bounds ahead of this since then. funny to because relatively speaking it wasn’t that long ago.
today i surround myself with books, ebooks on the kindle, comic books/ graphic novels, tv shows, movies, online streaming sites like Netflix or Hulu and/or content created for the internet, and video games.
the things they’re doing in the gaming industry i just wouldn’t’ve believed 4 or 5 years ago. emotional and compelling and engages me in such a way that rivals the big movie releases or award winning tv shows.
A friend of mine gets annoyed whenever i mention video games. she claims that they are just a waste of time. what’s funny about that to me is the fact that she’s said this to me, more than once, on days that she skipped work to stay home and watch silly tv shows on Netflix. my view is, at least with a game i feel like i’m interacting with something and i’m rewarded with a feeling of accomplishment after i finish it. unlike watching a marathon of the show Psyche. (nothing wrong with Psyche. its fun. but it doesn’t exactly leave a meaningful impact on me)
its not just her. many of the people i know still view games as something for kids, or boys who don’t want to grow up. maybe that was once true. i grew up on Mario like so many others of my generation and i still get enjoyment from those type of games but some of the gaming experiences i’ve had in the past few years have left a lasting impression on me same as any good book or movie would. as i said above, a good story comes in all forms. a person shouldn’t limit themselves to any one genre or medium.
playing through Heavy Rain made me feel as if i was living in the movie SE7EN. an emotional, intense, slow burn, detective story about a serial killer. the Uncharted series was like the original Indiana Jones movies. fun, adventurous, witty dialogue, likable characters, amazing locations/settings.
below is a trailer for the upcoming “The Last of Us”. it looks moving. it looks desperate. it looks strangely beautiful. like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
i know even less about this next one. but it also takes place in a post apocalyptic world. and also makes for an excellent trailer.
i was going through the online-journal-type-thing i had before tumblr was a thing. and i came across this:
“i have just loaded up the Dune series on my kindle. some neil stephenson and william gibson as well. i’ve never read any of it before. don’t know if i’ll ever get around to it now. but just the fact that i have it ready is sign enough. there’s no hope for me. no salvaging me. just kill me now.
if no one stops me, there is no telling how far i’ll go. maybe i’ll get a red dwarf tattoo on my chest and back, order a russian bride from some skeevy website and force her to have an apollo and starbuck themed Galactica weddding with me.
jokes aside, i’ve never cared for science fiction books. maybe a few exception, but not really. a few of the stuff i mentioned above i actually would like to try. just to see what its like.”
i’ve crossed that line. i finished reading the first book of Dune yesterday.
"It is a popular fact that nine-tenths of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong… It is used. And one of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary and turn the unusual into the usual.
Because if this was not the case, then human beings, faced with the daily wondrousness of everything, would go around wearing big stupid grins, similar to those worn by certain remote tribesmen who occasionally get raided by the authorities and have the contents of their plastic greenhouses very seriously inspected."
-Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
testing testing. 1, 2. 1, 2.
i’ve finally gotten around to reading Frank Herberts DUNE. and i realize this is the first time i’ve ever seen the movie of something before reading the book. hell, i still haven’t read the books of Fight Club or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas even though i’ve read everything else by each of those authors and still name those two on my list of favourite books.
