Bent Corner

If you are regular reader of this blog, you know that spelling is not one of my strong suits. Chances are if you are in the habit of reading my blog and you have never noticed any misspelled words, it’s probably because my lovely wife has already read what I wrote and corrected my mistakes before you got a chance to see it. She’s really good about that.

That’s why I can’t believe what I did today. I actually criticized the spelling of someone else. Not just anybody, but an actual editor for Marvel Comics. A guy that feeds his family by correcting the mistakes of others. It’s how he makes his living.

I was reading a Blog@Newsarama post that linked to a blog post written by Marvel Comics Tom Brevoort. He was trying to defend the fact that CIVIL WAR #1 actually won a Harvey Award. This is from Tom Brevoort’s blog post:

I know it’s not popular to believe, especially online, but plenty of people really did like CIVIL WAR–both readers and retailers. And while it certainly had no pretentions towards being “art”, it was very much dedicated to being a crackling good super hero story. And people responded to it, in a way they haven’t to anything else the majors have produced in the past few years. That’s the reality–get over it.

Though I found most of the above to be ridiculous, what really got my attention was Brevoort’s use of “super hero”. I thought it was superhero. As in one word. Not two. Tom Brevoort was the editor of Marvel’s CIVIL WAR. In CIVIL WAR, it’s one word - superhero. If it was constantly expressed as one word in CIVIL WAR, why then did Brevoort write it as two words in his blog post? It seemed, I don’t know, inconsistent.

I then remembered what I hated most about CIVIL WAR. It was the inconsistency.

For example, in CIVIL WAR #4 we see Sue Richards leaving her husband Reed Richards in the middle of the night. She didn’t tell him that she was leaving him. She wrote him a note. In FANTASTIC FOUR #540, we see Sue Richards leaving her husband in a much different way. They have a huge knockdown argument that culminates in Sue leaving Reed. There is no note and we don’t see her slinking off into the night.

The two events did not match. They were inconsistent.

I left a comment on the Blog@Newsarama pointing out Brevoort’s use of “super hero” instead of “superhero”. I was taken to task for pointing this out because it seems either “super hero” or “superhero” is correct. In fact, it can even be hyphenated. I guess that is correct. It can be properly conveyed either way.

It was the consistency I was questioning.

Update: I totally forgot about something until DJ Sloofus made mention of it in the comment section. Marvel and DC Comics jointly own the trademark to the word “SUPERHERO”. Not “Super Hero”. Not “Super-Hero”. They actually legally own the word “SUPERHERO”.

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I’m sure everyone by now has heard about the college student that got shot with a Taser when he tried to ask Senator John Kerry some questions. It pains me to admit this, but I think campus police officers did the right thing when they repeatedly fired a Taser at college student Andrew Meyer. Not because he was asking dumb questions of Senator John Kerry and then not allowing him to answer his questions, but because he was a line jumper.

I hate line jumpers.

Andrew Meyer cut in front of a bunch of other people to ask his “questions”. What makes him so important and so special that he placed himself squarely in front of other students that wanted to ask the good Senator a question? He was being obnoxious and he was being a jerk. The Washington Post is reporting that he may have set the whole thing up. He supposedly brought a video camera with him and handed it to friend before asking Kerry his “questions”.

I hate line jumpers. I only wish I could personally Taser people that cut in line. In fact, I think the only time a Taser should be used on a person is if they cut in line. And people that talk loud in movie theaters. They too should feel the sweet embrace of 1,000,000 volts.

I feel sorry for John Kerry. He didn’t need something like this added to his Wikipedia entry. The man has gone though enough.

Barry Manilow is refusing to go on The View because he says he wont share the stage with Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the girl that was once on Survivor and is currently The View’s lone token conservative. Evidently he doesn’t appreciate her conservative views.

Not to say that I do either, but the show is called The View for a reason. She is there to express her viewpoint on things. What Manilow is doing is a form of censorship. If he doesn’t agree with her opinion about the Iraq war or her opinion that life begins at the moment of conception, he should go on the show and confront her about it. Not that I believe either topic would come up on the view during a Barry Manilow segment.

I don’t like Barry Manilow. I never have. I hate to judge a man by his physical appearance, but he looks too much like my middle school vice-principle. I never liked her.

I saw this on this week’s Lying in the Gutters and found it to be hilarious.

This from the Associated Press (Via Yahoo! News):

The Iraqi government Monday ordered Blackwater USA, the security firm that protects U.S. diplomats, to stop work and leave the country after the fatal shooting of eight Iraqi civilians following a car bomb attack against a State Department convoy.

The order by the Interior Ministry, if carried out, would deal a severe blow to U.S. government operations in Iraq by stripping diplomats, engineers, reconstruction officials and others of their security protection.

The presence of so many visible, aggressive Western security contractors has angered many Iraqis, who consider them a mercenary force that runs roughshod over people in their own country.

The reason many Iraqis consider them to be a mercenary force is because that is precisely what they are. They are mercenaries. They are professional soldiers that perform military work for money. They are often referred to as “contractors” because it sounds better.

Contractors usually need a contractors license. Mercs don’t.

Robert Jordan, author of the bestselling fantasy series The Wheel of Time has died, succumbing to a chronic illness. He was 57.

In 2006, Jordon (real name James Oliver Rigney, Jr.) had been diagnosed with primary amyloidosis with cardiomyopathy. The disease was attacking and weakening his heart muscle.

Unfortunately for his many fans, he was unable to finish the The Wheel of Time series. He will be greatly missed.

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Not that this was news to me. Of course it was about the oil. It was always about the oil. This from The Sunday Times (UK):

AMERICA’s elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, has shaken the White House by declaring that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil.

In his long-awaited memoir, to be published tomorrow, Greenspan, a Republican whose 18-year tenure as head of the US Federal Reserve was widely admired, will also deliver a stinging critique of President George W Bush’s economic policies.

However, it is his view on the motive for the 2003 Iraq invasion that is likely to provoke the most controversy. “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” he says.

Greenspan, 81, is understood to believe that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the security of oil supplies in the Middle East.

Britain and America have always insisted the war had nothing to do with oil. Bush said the aim was to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and end Saddam’s support for terrorism.

Not only was the invasion about the oil, but the continued occupation of Iraq is about making money for Halliburton and KBR. Money from the U.S. taxpayer. Where are all of the fiscal conservatives when you need them?

A recent congressional analysis shows the Iraq war is now costing almost $2 billion a week. It might be different if we were actually getting something of value for our money. The middle-east is more unstable then before. There are more Islamic fundamentalist terrorists now then there was before Bush invaded Iraq. One of the goals in The War On Terror™ should be to make the number of terrorists go down, not go up.

I’m old enough to remember when being a Republican was all about fiscal responsibility. That seems like a long time ago.

I saw this killer art from Colleen Coover this past Thursday and then I couldn’t remember where I saw it.  I finally found it again and promptly stole borrowed it.  Isn’t this cool looking?

Technically, this isn’t really a robot.  It’s appears to be remotely controlled by the dorky looking girl in the plaid skirt.

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Our illustrious president spoke last night on the television about his most favorite subject - the Iraq war. From his speech:

Anbar province is a good example of how our strategy is working. Last year, an intelligence report concluded that Anbar had been lost to al-Qaida. Some cited this report as evidence that we had failed in Iraq and should cut our losses and pull out. Instead, we kept the pressure on the terrorists. The local people were suffering under the Taliban-like rule of al-Qaida, and they were sick of it. So they asked us for help.

The al-Qaida he should be worried about is the al-Qaida in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. That is the real al-Qaida. That is the al-Qaida that attacked the United States on 9-11. The al-Qaida in Iraq? They just call themselves that to give themselves some cheap terrorist credibility. Everyone knows that al-Qaida attacked the United States six years ago and Bush has failed to bring them to justice. Bush has failed to make them pay. Bush and his inability to make al-Qaida pay turn them into the terrorist organization that every two bit terrorist wants to be apart of.

Just because they call themselves al-Qaida doesn’t make them al-Qaida. The al-Qaida in Iraq is as much al-Qaida as American skinheads are Nazis. Sure, they may have a photo of Hitler in their mom’s basement, but that doesn’t mean they are the same bunch that fought Patton’s Third Army in the Battle of the Bulge. Those were real Nazis. They weren’t pretending to be Nazis.

Just because someone identifies themselves as a Nazi on their MySpace page doesn’t mean they are a Nazi. Just because someone in Iraq says they are al-Qaida doesn’t make them al-Qaida.