My Final Day of 2016

After helping Adi and the posse see out the year earlier in the day, I've spent most of the evening playing the original Fallout, a post-apocalyptic video game with radiation mutants and desperate people trying to survive. I found it cheerful.

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 1787

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 1787

Just Frickin' Stop Already

I cannot handle any more of this rotten year.

No more

This year can just stop now.

Christmas Thoughts

The blank page stares up at me...

I really don't have much to say. It's been a long day. Eric and I have watched a bit of TV together. Inkwell threw up to give us a Christmas present.

I played a couple of video games - The Room, Fallout (the original) and DC Universe Online.

Now we're watching a "It's a Wonderful Life", which is both good and bad. When George is having his worst moments, I really empathize with him. Sometimes it all becomes overwhelming, and that evil Potter saying "you're worth more dead than alive" was a moment that makes me want to smack someone.

I'm also annoyed by the fact that the worst thing that could've happened to Mary is that she became a librarian. *I* wanna be a librarian.

I need chocolate.

Various freewritten thoughts

I'm just going to write, I don't know what will come out... read at your own risk.

Some Links

I hope Carrie Fisher fully recovers. She has no idea how many fans echoed her heart attack when they heard about it.

The thing about this story that makes me very curious is why the letters are sent to that particular address in the first place.

Yes Virginia, there is a Spider-Man.

Here's a gingerbread creation I can get behind. I want a C64!

I was delighted to hear a great story about my hometown police department:

"Adrian and I were driving on Lincoln Ave. Towards Wal-Mart when I saw a police car with 2 officers and they were talking to a lady and her little (maybe 3 year old) daughter I thought something must have happened...Well it did in front of my eyes I witnessed these 2 policemen handing the little girl a wrapped present from the trunk of the car...I was almost in tears and I gave the officer a thumbs UP and a Honk of approval and he waved back . It made my Christmas seeing this Act of Kindness in my Town !" -Betty Lynn Garza on Facebook

I love this video that sets two pug puppies against a mostly indifferent kitten. The fact that the puppies aren't sure whether they should be playing with each other or trying to get out amuses me.


I still haven't been able to wrest control of my Twitter account from Inkwell. At least he is still allowing the blog posts to go through.

A new vaccine developed to protect against ebola was apparently 100% effective in a trial during a live outbreak. If that's really the case, it would be an amazing success. A total of 5,837 people were given the vaccine. Two people had serious side effects (including an allergic reaction) while many others had general soreness. The World Health Organization has a good summary of the results. While the vaccine only protects against one strain of ebola, it's a good start and the trial is definitely promising.

Author David Brin answers the question "Is Government Useless".

Question: If you are pro-life, are you for preventing unwanted pregnancies, or are you for punishing people who have unwanted pregnancies? Because there are many ways to reduce abortion that don't involve making it illegal and punishing people who are in desperate situations - but the pro-life movement rejects them all. Which suggests to me that the movement isn't about preventing abortion as much as it is about punishing people who have sex.

Ug.

I shouldn't have promised myself I would post something every day...

A Bunch of Videos

After the fold, of course, to keep the main page a little tidy...

Politics

Some thoughts...

Thoughts

Some pointless thoughts after the jump...

A Sunday Review

There's really no point in apologizing on how long it's taken me to read and review these comics. My life has been... difficult... lately. Depression is a nasty, nasty thing. I have been having trouble enjoying things at all, and getting back into comics was/is both frustrating and delightful. Frustrating because at first I couldn't enjoy them at all, but slowly more and more delightful as some of the joy is coming back. With the joy will come reviews*, so here are my first reviews since October.

*Yes, I know these are short capsules and not proper reviews, more like little reactions. I perhaps will work my way up to proper reviews again someday.

These books came from DCBS, and are sorted by the original shipping date:

• Jun 22nd
• Aquaman #1 - I like Stubbs. Cool new character with a lot of promise. I'm hoping to see more of her in the book moving forward - maybe she can be part of the bridge between Atlantis and the rest of the world. That said, ouch. Manta is a real nasty.
• Justice League #52 - Luther takes on the Super-mantle, blah blah. Boring. He should have just stayed on Apokolips.
• Adventures of Supergirl #4 - Hubby-Eric located the first two issues of this series, so we were able to catch up and read it all. So far, it's a bit of a wild ride, focusing on stories that probably couldn't be easily told on the TV screen. I think the portrayal of the characters is spot on, and the art is decent. Not bad for a TV series spin-off.
• Doctor Strange #9 - Having recently seen the Doctor Strange movie (which I enjoyed) I have to say this book continues to be odd and a bit of a befuddlement. That said, the plot is slowly slowly moving forward. Probably about as slowly as possible for a plot to crawl along and still be compelling enough to read. I suppose I'm being a bit unfair, but this has Strange picking up some last magical items, telling off his butler, and a big ol' fight starting - with several pages of people just standing around.
• Back To The Future #9 - Marty and the amnesiac Doc find yet another way to achieve 88 MPH, and head back into the future, where Marty is immediately tagged as a terrorist. I really am enjoying this book.
• Usagi Yojimbo #155 - Oooh, another Inspector Ishida story! What a delight! I hardly need to say much about this book. It's good, you should buy it. Always. I don't think I've ever read an issue I didn't enjoy to some extent, usually a great deal. And this issue is a nice set-up of a murder mystery involving a painting that might just be a gateway to hell. Along with a more mundane land dispute. I look forward to the rest of the story.

Penguins vs. Santas

In order to showcase crowd rendering graphics, Brilliant Game Studios pitted 11,000 penguins against 4,000 Santas in an epic battle for the pole position. You want your war on Christmas? Here it is, eight minutes of carnage!

DuckTales!

It's the End of the Year As We Know It...

Via.

Who Am I?

Eric, who wrote about the Newbery Awards in the most recent post on this blog, has been urging me to start blogging again.

Reading the Newbery Winners: The Voyages of Doctor Doolittle

Oh, this was fun, and took me back. By the time I became a voracious reader in the early '70s, the Doctor Doolittle books had fallen out of favor and quietly gone out of print. I didn't know that at the time, however, and my school library still had many of them, which I enjoyed reading at the time. So I was eagerly looking forward to the second Newbery winner, The Voyages of Doctor Doolittle. However, since that is actually the second book in the series, I decided to also read the first book, The Story of Doctor Doolittle as well. Fortunately, my local library system has the very nice (and ever so slightly edited to keep up with the times) editions of both books published by Books of Wonder with afterwords by my friend Peter Glassman. (Sadly, these editions seem to now be out of print as well.)

So, first off, a quick look at The Story of Doctor Doolittle: It does a terrific job of establishing the Doctor and his world, and how he came to change from a doctor for humans to a doctor for animals who could actually talk to them and find out what was wrong with them rather than poke and prod and guess like your standard veterinarian. And of course we find out how he learned to talk to animals in the first place, thanks to one of the best characters in the series, the long-lived and very experienced parrot Polynesia. Doolittle gains fame in the animal world by curing a disease among the monkeys of Africa, after running afoul of the king of Jolliginki, but it is Prince Bumpo who helps the Doctor get back to England after Doctor Doolittle helps Bumpo achieve one of his fondest wishes. (Those familiar with the original version of the book can probably understand why this is probably the biggest change made in the Books of Wonder edition. Fortunately, it includes a thorough foreword that explains the original and why the changes were made.) It was a surprisingly quick read, and does a good job of building this world and developing the Doctor's character.

Now the main attraction: The Voyages of Doctor Doolittle. Much to my surprise, this was not a slight little book, but a much larger volume, over twice as long, and divided into six parts! It still proved to be a quick read, however, as this is a rollicking series of adventures. We get to see a lot more of Doctor Doolittle's life in Puddleby through the eyes of a new character, Tommy Stubbins, the cobbler's son. Tommy is the narrator for this book (and much of the rest of the series, if I recall correctly), and that new, up-close perspective really opens the story up. Stubbins (as the Doctor calls him, making him feel very grown up) becomes Doolittle's assistant and pupil, and also learns to talk to the animals. Through Stubbins' eyes we learn more about the Doctor's house, how so many animals can live there, and how the Doctor and his friends go about their lives. Much of the first third of the book takes place in Puddleby, but before long they decide to go on a voyage, in part to investigate the disappearance of another famed naturalist, Long Arrow. But first, they need a crew for their new ship—which leads to trouble when they try to recruit Luke the Hermit. It turns out that Luke is a fugitive from the Mexican law (hence his becoming a hermit) whose past has caught up with him. The trial proves to be one of the biggest events in Puddleby's history, but thanks to Doctor Doolittle being able to interpret for Luke's dog, Luke is found not guilty and is then reunited with his wife. Since Luke isn't available anymore, the Doctor's old friend Bumpo makes a timely visit during a break from his studies at Oxford and is then recruited instead. Bumpo, Stubbins, and several of the animals prove to be an able crew. After putting a stop to the bullfights in some Spanish islands along the way and many adventures at sea, the crew eventually makes its way to Spidermonkey Island, save Long Arrow, brings about peace between the two warring factions, and anchors the island after it drifts too far south (yes, Spidermonkey Island is—well, was, now—a floating island). So of course he is made King of the island, which is exactly what a humble man like Dr. John Doolittle doesn't want. Nevertheless, he is a kind and extremely proactive king, and makes Spidermonkey Island a very nice place to live. His friends all realize that unless they take action, he will never leave, so they conspire to give him a way to get back to Puddleby, which he eventually takes, albeit reluctantly.

Yes, this book was a lot of fun, and to be honest, the doctor is much too humble! He is a good doctor, but also a brilliant and clever naturalist and linguist, and a kind and compassionate soul. He doggedly tries to learn the shellfish language throughout the book, and brilliantly succeeds in the end. And to be honest, I now can't recall if I ever read this book before! I remembered bits and pieces as I read, but I think a lot of that came from the musical film. Many of the incidents that weren't in the movie I don't remember at all. But it has also been at least forty years since I read any of the books, so I may just have forgotten. But I have really enjoyed reading about Doctor Doolittle again, and I may very well see if interlibrary loan or cheap used books can help me read the rest of the series, just for fun.