One of my favorite daily comic strips is The Norm. Even more than Dilbert, it's the strip that matched up pretty well with my life. (There's definitely a Boy Mike) Well, it looks like something is up with the norm for next year based on a little survey on the site. While I sympathize with him a lot more when he's single and not dating anyone, I think it's an obvious choice both who is going to win and who to vote for....

We report, you decide?

I think it's funny how the ad campaign makes it look non-partisan, but really,
this is silly. If CNN is the Clinton News Network, as right wingers happily claim, does this make Fox News the Bush News Network?

"Well, the days of the X-Men being fat and happy are over."


I really hope that this relaunch lives up to expectations -- I'd love to be able to pick up the mainstream X-Men titles again for the first time in over a decade. I can't wait to pick up my copy of the DVD next week, which is one of my favorite films of the year, and I think Marvel has wasted the potential of the series over the last several years.

Guess the Dictator/Sit-Com Character. Though I didn't know Buffy qualified as a sitcom. (I took it "as myself" and came back as Riley...ok, a little wishful thinking, I think. If I'm anyone in the Buffyverse, it's Xander or Wesley...)

Odd. I think something wierd is going on with Blogger, because I lost my link to my first page of my archives on the archives page. I think I've got it added in again properly, but it is still frustrating.

I was recently recommended on Amazon.com to check out for music of Grey Eye Glances, and after downloading some samples, I think I'm going to have to pick up some of their albums in the not to distant future. It sounds very, very promising.

This is very much the sort of music that makes me feel better. I've also been (at long last, perhaps) getting into Radiohead in a really big way, but that's just me being very much behind the times.

And speaking of Amazon.com, I noticed that their recommendation engine is now giving the reasons why something is recommended -- which is actually more useful (and interesting) than the recommendations themselves!

I've felt like I've been treading water over the last year or two -- I wasn't feeling well for quite a while with some digestive problems, and I finally found a combination of things that seems to have taken care of it. But it means that besides work, there hasn't been much going on with me. I don't know, maybe I'm seeing my 20s come to their conclusion, and besides work, what is there now.... that's probably one of the reasons why I've got this little website thing. I'm not an artist, or a musician, or really anything like that.

Well, I've got a bunch of cleaning I should be doing....

Couple of things for now -- first, one of mine -- I reviewed The Sixth Day for the MISFITS website.

More on the Marvel Revolution: It looks like several X-Books (including John Byrne's Hidden Years, which was one I picked up) are going to be cancelled. It was very much a nostalgia title for me -- John Byrne's Fantastic Four and his work on the X-Men in the 1980s is a major part of my adolecence, but it's certainly not a forward looking book. I'm very excited about the new direction at Marvel though, as I think I'll be able to pick up and read a mainstream X-Men title again once Grant Morrison takes over.

I watched the tape of both Buffy and Angel last night after I got back from The Sixth Day. Both episodes were very back-story heavy, as they were designed to be. Not the best moments of the season, but I really like to see Drusilla back, and it's very interesting to see Spike develop -- though it makes me wonder about this whole "vampires don't have souls" thing -- I wonder if that's all propoganda, to take a page from Ultraviolet

Hmmm. One frustrating thing about using another site like Blogger to automate the process of making a page is that when it has problems, you have problems.... But otherwise, this is a pretty cool way to do a page like this. And it's free, which is always nice; this is, after all, pretty much a pure vanity site.

I can't wait to see tonight's Buffy and Angel -- I have to tape them, since I'm going to be out tonight, but I always do that anyways. Dru is back, and so I'm looking forward to it. I'm a bit frustrated that there is so much Television on Tuesday night that I'd like to watch, but don't get to, where I don't watch a lot of television the rest of the week. I've missed That 70's Show all season so far, and I'd really like to catch the repeats of Freaks and Geeks, because I get the impression that it might hit real close to home, and I never watched it when it was originally on. (But then, who did?) But Buffy and Angel are my first priority when it comes to television every week.

Otherwise, I'm not watching much. The X-Files might have picked up a bit with the fresh blood, and a necessary reinvention, by changing it so that Scully is the Believer and the new agent is the skeptic. A long running TV series really needs to reinvent itself from time to time. I also usually watch Futurama and the Simpsons, but that's really about it for television shows that are on weekly. I haven't watched a conventional sit-com in years; I had a "must see TV" phase when Friends first started out, and there were some other sit-coms that I was really fond of in the early-to-mid 1990s, but I haven't watched a new one in years, probably since I moved back to Minneapolis.

I added a guestbook to the site, the link is normally on the main page, but thought I'd put it as an entry here as well.

News Bytes - BuffyGuide.com is reporting that the Season 1 Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVDs are going to be delayed some due to some syndication issues. Argh! And I won't buy the new boxed set of video tapes either -- DVDs only now for me, thank you! (Well, except for Doctor Who, because I'm skeptical about what will happen with all of those on DVD.)

I'm in agreement with what Salon.com has to say about when it is time for Gore to concede -- and why it may, in the long run, be better for himself and his party.

Great comparisons: "And Bosley, Charlie's deputy, clearly stands for Vice President Gore. Gore, after all, is deputy to Bill "Charlie" Clinton, a charismatic, all-powerful figure with a creepy fondness for beautiful women."

One of the things I've been thinking about with regards to the recent election is how I think there are times that people decide who they are going to vote for, and then figure out the reasons for it after the fact. According to a news story I heard on NPR this morning (and also in various other news reports) that the people who voted for Bush voted for the "more honest and a better leader" and Gore as being "more intellegent and 'cares more'". But I don't really believe that's the reason why people voted for who they voted for -- I think that people make their decision for a whole set of reasons (some issue, and some cultural) and then find reasons like those to justify it. I don't think we have a lot of evidence that Bush is terribly honest either -- we know that he wasn't honest about his DUI arrest, and that a variation of the law that he's challenging in Florida concerning the handcounting of ballots he signed in Texas. And to be bi-partisan, I think that we can't be sure that Gore "cares more" than Bush either.

Wow! After last night's toon-a-thon, I went looking for and found the ultimate SchoolHouse Rock website.

MISFITS had a toon-a-thon yesterday; nine hours of animation. We had a fairly wide variety -- The Hunchback of Notre Dame, an episode of Batman, Freakazoid, Starship Troopers and The Tick, A Charlie Brown Chistmas and How the Grinch stole Christmas, and some Schoolhouse Rock as well. What was also interesting was a Japanese animated film that was very much not genre -- more a coming-of-age self-discovery woman's film -- it's the sort of movie I would be unlikely to watch if it was a live action American film, but the animation was gorgeous, and I think it says a lot about the maturity of animation in Japan that they can do animated films that aren't musicals like the Disney ones, and aren't as genre-specific.

As such, I found it interesting to watch. It is one of those things that I like about seeing movies in groups like that is I see films I wouldn't otherwise see.

I want to read Why Do We Have an Electoral College after skimming over it quickly, but I'm going to go to bed soon and will read it later.