Bent Corner

Today was Opening Day in Major League Baseball. That is, if you don’t count the game that took place last night in Washington D.C. between the Nationals and the Braves or the two games that happened last week in Japan between The A’s and the Red Sox.

Those two games counted as regular season games. Go figure.

The Red Sox then came back to the land of the Big BX and played the Dodgers this past weekend in Los Angeles in a “spring training” exhibition game in the Los Angeles Coliseum in front of 115,300 fans. The last time I sat in the Coliseum to watch a Raiders game there was only about 45,000 people there and a good many of them for Browns fans.

When I got off work I turned on the Orioles game on my XM Radio. They were beating the Rays 2 - 0. By the time I got home, the Orioles were losing 6 - 2. Good to see that O’s are back in true Oriole form.

They haven’t racked up 10 losing seasons in a row by accident. Could this year make eleven? Only time will tell.

Even though many Barack Obama supporters are are demanding that Hillary Clinton drop out of the race and let their candidate run unopposed for the Democratic nomination, Obama has announced that Clinton may stay in the race.

From Reuters:

“My attitude is that Senator Clinton can run as long as she wants. Her name is on the ballot and she is a fierce and formidable competitor,” said Obama, adding that the notion that Democrats have been split by the prolonged nominating contest “is somewhat overstated.”

Hopefully this will put an end to the shrill whine demanding that Hillary Clinton quit. At this point, it’s mathematically impossible for either candidate to get the needed delegates to lock in the nomination before the Democratic National Convention. That means the superdelegates will be deciding at the convention who the candidate will be. Not now. At the convention.

The big news in the world of comic books is that Time Warner is no longer the sole owner to Superman. The heirs of Jerome Siegel, one of Superman’s co-creators is now entitled to claim a share of Superman. Siegel along with fellow Superman co-creator Joseph Shuster sold the rights to Superman 70 years ago for $130.

It’s worth substantially more now.

Siegel’s widow Joanne Siegel and daughter Laura Siegel Larson now own half of Superman. Which half they actually own is not known. They are also due compensation for all use of Superman going back to 1999. That includes revenue from the recent $200 million “Superman Returns”.

I don’t think anyone should own the intellectual property rights to something created in the 1930’s. Superman should have gone into the public domain a long, long time ago. With that said, if anyone is going to have ownership to something created so long ago, it might as well be the creators. Or in this case, the people related to at least one of the creators.

Hopefully this will pave the way for William Shakespeare’s relatives to finally get what is owed to them.

Every once in a while I read a comic book that is so bad, so poorly written, I want to swear off funny books for the rest of my life. GREEN LANTERN #29 is one of those books.

Much of the story takes place while Hal Jordon is in the United States Air Force. It was obvious from reading this that writer Geoff Johns knows absolutely nothing about the Air Force or the military in general. It’s also clear he didn’t feel like doing even some basic research to make up for any lack of knowledge.

I don’t get that. If I was going to write about something I didn’t know anything about, I would try to learn as much as I could about the subject.

I spent close to 10 years in the Air Force and a good majority of that time was spent working on aircraft. Many of the gaffs in this book were just simply ridiculous. Most of them could have been avoided by simply doing a quick Google search.

Hal Jordon enlists in the Air Force on the day of his 18th birthday and then becomes a pilot. It doesn’t work that way. Enlisted people don’t become pilots. Someone who wants to become an Air Force pilot must first graduate college with a 4-year degree and then receive a commission to become an officer. Officers do not enlist. Only enlisted people enlist.

Major Stone is said to have more Silver Stars then the American flag. That means he has at least 51 Silver Stars. The Silver Star is the third highest military decoration awarded for valor. The most Silver Stars ever awarded to any one man was to General Douglas MacArthur. He earned a whopping 7. That would mean Major Stone was awarded at least seven times as many Silver Stars as General MacArthur, a five-star general that served in World War One, World War Two, and the Korea conflict. Even though Major Stone has earned 51 Silver Stars, he still somehow cannot get promoted to lieutenant colonel.

That’s just silly.

If a Marine threatens to kill a woman unless she leaves a bar with him to go have sex, other Marines wont just passively sit still and watch it happen. They certainly wont gang up and attack someone that defends the woman from her attacker. Threatening to kill a women unless she has sex with you is actually a big no-no, even in the Marine Corp.

They’re United States Marines, not Klingons.

I could go on and on with more examples of just how badly this book was written. What’s the point? Just because you personally don’t have the life experiences connected to a topic doesn’t mean you can’t still create credible stories. If you don’t personally know about something, seek the assistance of people that do. If you are going to write about a Air Force fighter pilot, maybe talk to a real life fighter pilot. If you’ve never seen an actual bar fight, talk to someone who has. Run your ideas past them first.

At least spend a couple of minutes on Wikipedia.

Cameron Stewart, artist for THE OTHER SIDE, the Vertigo miniseries about the Viet Nam conflict took the time to actually travel to Viet Nam and tour the countryside. He wanted to make sure he gave the book the right look. If Cameron Stewart can go to Viet Nam to do research for a comic book, Geoff Johns should be able to take a few minutes to read the Wikipedia entry for the F-16.

The newest version of everyone’s favorite blogging platform is now available as a free download. I told myself I wasn’t going to upgrade anymore until I was certain it was bug free. For some reason this morning I felt like living life on the edge and decided to spice things up by doing the upgrade.

So far, so good.

They actually changed much of the interface. The look is totally different. The dashboard used to be a sloppy, confusing place. Now it is much more streamlined. Everything seems to be set up in a much more user-friendly manor. Of course you wont ever see this unless you are a WordPress user. The actual blog looks the same. The actual blog acts the same. At least from what I can tell so far.

It appears that the ability to embed YouTube videos is built right into the platform, making the use of third-party plugins unnecessary.  With prior WordPress versions, you would have to post in the non-visual editor mode to post a YouTube video.  Otherwise the WYSIWYG editor would botch the YouTube formating.  I wont know for certain until I try to embed a video, but it looks like I should be able to do it.

If you are a WordPress user and you are wondering about doing the 2.5 upgrade, by all means do it.

I’m getting tired of hearing that the Democratic race is over and Hillary Clinton needs to drop out. The last time I checked, neither candidate has the necessary 2,024 delegates to secure the nomination. Barack has 1,414 while Hillary has 1,243. Just because one candidate has 171 more delegates then the other doesn’t mean that one with the least should quit.

There are still more elections to be conducted. Democrats in Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina, West Virgina, Kentucky, and Oregon have yet to cast a ballot. Democrats in Guam, Montana, and Puerto Rico have yet to caucus.

Shouldn’t Democrats in these states and territories have a say in who our candidate in the general election will be? There are still 566 delegates up for grabs. Calling for either candidate to quit at this point is just silly. In fact, it is un-American. The reality of the situation is that neither candidate can lock in the needed 2,024 delegates needed before the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Both candidates will need the help of the superdelegates. Neither candidate can win the nomination without the votes of the superdelegates.

I say let both candidates continue in the race. Neither candidate should just simply drop out and quit to make it easier for their opponent.

There’s a reason Syracuse men’s basketball head coach Jim Boeheim is my favorite. I used to think it was because I once saw him at the Wegmans grocery store when I lived in the Syracuse area. Any coach that shops at the same place for bread and milk as me is tops in my book. He just always struck me as being a good people.

Videos like this only reaffirm my opinion.

This video was from two years ago following a game against Cincinnati in the Big East tournament. I was on YouTube looking for something else (no, not midget porn) when I happened to stumble on this.

I stumbled upon this photo while looking for a photo of something else. Isn’t it great? It was taken flying over Edwards Air Force Base on December 2, 2004. Click on the photo to see a much larger version. I grew up near Edwards Air Force base and I love the B-52.

(Photo: chamorrobible.org)

A rattlesnake rancher in the fine state of Texas that goes by the name of Bayou Bob has been placed under arrest for selling bottles of vodka that included a baby rattlesnake floating in each bottle. Though he remembered to give himself a dumb name, he forgot to get a state liquor license.

He claimed the concoction was an “ancient Asian elixir.”

He might be right. When I was young, dumb, and in the Air Force, the first time I went to Korea I had to drink a shot of something called SnakeJu. It came from a large bottle of Soju, a very potent Korean version of vodka that had a dead snake floating in it.

To be honest, I forgot all about this chapter in my life. Don’t get me wrong. I remember going to Korea. I was somehow able to block out the memory of drinking a shot of snakeju. Until now.

Link

Chelsea Clinton was asked a question she didn’t like.  While visiting Butler University speaking to students about her mother,  student Evan Strange asked for her opinion “on the criticism of her mother that how she handled the Lewinsky scandal might be a sign of weakness and she might not be a strong enough candidate to be president.”

I don’t really understand the question, but I’m pretty sure it had something to do with Monica Lewinsky.

Chelsea responded with:

Wow, you’re the first person actually that’s ever asked me that question in the, I don’t know maybe, 70 college campuses I’ve now been to, and I do not think that is any of your business.

When I first watched the video, I agreed with her.  It was a private matter and it really was nobody’s business.  The problem with that is that Bill Clinton made it our business.  We all got dragged into the whole Monica Lewinsky scandal.  He could have made this whole problem go away before it ever happened.  He could have simply paid Paula Jones the $850,000 that he eventually ended up paying her anyway.  If he would have done that in the beginning, he could have avoided being deposed under oath by Jones’ attorney.  He wouldn’t have felt the need to lie about his relationship with Lewinsky.

It’s too bad that out of 70 college visits, nobody asked Chelsea Clinton that question before.  They should have.  I guarantee people have wondered about it.  Evan Strange had the guts to ask it.  Good for him.