Day in the Life of an Idiot

Okay, so I know the people over as io99, but it's still pretty awesome to be mentioned in the same breath as William Gibson....

And since I'm talking about the awesome all-about-me-ness... when I was over at Dave and Rachel's house last Sunday, Rachel mentioned she'd seen Archangel Protocol listed in a book called THE GREAT BOOKS -- BECAUSE WOMEN SAY SO! from the Minnesota Women's Press. (You can apparently order it here, but not on Amazon.com.

Yesterday afternoon I had a great deal of fun hanging out with my friends Frank and Denise Gosar and Frank's sister's family. Mason, who'd been angling to go to the beach, very politely asked if there was a community pool nearby. Since we always travel with swimsuits (sunscreen, bugspray, towels, scuba gear -- okay, PRETEND scuba gear,) when the answer was, "why yes, four blocks down," we hit the road. We then managed to spend a very wonderful time rough housing with Zachary, the oldest boy, and otherwise causing mischief and mayhem in the public pool. (Zachary brought water rifles! There was warfare! There were surrenders and cease fires and sneak attacks!) Although our motto became, "Hey, let's put the fair back in warfare, shall we??!!"

Though the swimsuit of mine that lives in the travel bag is the... uh, somewhat more revealing and snug one, and I nearly had some eye-popping wardrobe malfunctions every time Zach launched himself at me. I also managed to accidentally take a water rifle butt to the face, so I'm sporting a rather rakish bruise under one eye. (Note: I've always secretly wanted a good facial bruise, because, you know, you always see them on TV. I'm only disappointed this one hurts liks a sonofa... but it's not very noticable.)

Also, in thoroughly thrilling news, Facebook's "Which Avenger Are You?" app decided that I was none other than Captain America. Okay, wo I cheated a little. Thing is I know Cap pretty well, and they honestly didn't list my favorite school subject. The options did not include art or English... so I went with history, which I was fairly certain was going to land me in the Cap category. And, it wasn't a total cheat; I was a history major in college.

But... when they showed me the pie chart, I noticed I was THIS close to being Iron Man. Ah, how the times have changed. When I was first reading comicbooks I would have been truly horrifed to be pegged as either. Now, I'm like, "hey, that's pretty cool."

Speaking of comics I did manage to start to go through my pile. I wasn't terribly thrilled with the newsest Captain America (#39) installment. It really felt like the parts in a book that I'd call "transitional" scenes, you know the ones you write to link the action scene to the next action scene. So, despite the cover's promise of a big showdown between Bucky/New Cap and Evil Clone/Old Cap, they didn't even meet up until the last panel.

I also read the Mighty Avengers (#15) and The Avengers: Initative (#14) and both read like revisionist history. I can no longer remember which was which without having them at hand, but one was the "and this is how Spider-Woman became a Skrull" and the other was "and this is how we replaced Hank Pym/Ant-Man"... I could have done without the flashbacks. I'd like this story to advance now, please.

Speaking of which, I totally grooved on Ms. Marvel (#28). I've been thinking a lot about the sheer and amazing absence of awesome women in the Avenger/Marvel universe, and I have to say that in #28, Ms. Marvel went a long way to rectify that. There's not a lot of her usual soap opera malarky about her blog, boyfriends, and low self-esteem... instead she just gets down to business and kicks some serious Skrull a$$.

I read Hercules (#118) just because I'm a completist, and, WTF? The puppy is a Skrull??? That is just _so_ wrong.

Although I think someone should do an article about Skrull gender identity (not me, I have too much on my plate right now, but maybe I'll do an extended blog for the Mid-Ohio ComicCon folks). I was fairly struck (and impressed) by the fact that in The Avengers: The Initative (or the other Avengers title, which ever one it was,) you see a Skrull going through the transformation to becoming Ant-Man and its a woman.... or perhaps more accurately a female Skrull. Kind of dainty little one, too. And she single-handedly positions Henry Pym/Ant-Man as key to the whole invasion plan for the Skrull. That's kind of awesome, and the image of her becoming all muscle bound and masculine is going to fuel many of my transgender fantasies, I think. I mean, if it was that easy and you could get THAT kind of body... well, sign me up.

Oh, and I read the Fantastic Four (#2 of 3) and I was kind of happy to see Johnny Storm colluding with the enemy for love (or at least the possiblity for sex). That's so him. And, if the writers are brave, they could really do something interesting with a "turned" Skrull. The idea of "working with the enemy" is rather fraught, and could be topical given all the issues of war and warfare in America now. (It reminds me, too, of last season's LOST, which I'm only just now getting around to watching via DVD, and the whole Juliet comes to "our" camp as a spy/etc.)

Anyway, I've rambled long enough. It looks like the weather is going to turn hot and humid here, which, in a word, sucks.