Mod Post

[icon_uk]

In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like. Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat among yourselves.

Well, how much time could I have saved had I realised that much of what has been going on could be summarised by ABC; America, Brexit and Covid-19.

the US is preparing for the inauguration of Joe Biden and we have around 24 hours left of Trump, so that's something to hold on to. Protests are apparently planned for State Capitals. Stay safe folks!

One of the Capitol rioters has been arrested and accused to stealing a laptop from Nancy Pelosi's office. Apparently shopped by a former romantic partner, just to add that TV movie twist.

The current First Lady made a final speech, but her time in the role seems to be summarised by The Guardian: During her time as first lady, [Melania] Trump focused on combatting cyberbullying through her campaign “Be Best”. Her tenure ends with her husband’s permanent suspension from Twitter “due to the risk of further incitement of violence”.

Brexiteers are starting to realise some of the big/small implications of Brexit that they had not anticipated, or outright ignored. What fun.

And Covid, well, you know you're own countires situations better than I do. I repeat the "Stay safe" from above!

A restaurant in France has become the first vegan establishment to earn a Michelin star

I saw "The Predator" in the cheap bin at the supermarket, and after starting to watch it, realised I had seen it already a year or two back and had completely forgotten every single possible thing about it. How bad does a Predator movie have to be to be FORGETTABLE? (I mean I pretty much hated AvP2 but I at least I remember why I hated it.)

I'm reaching the end of Animaniacs 2020 (I've been rationing them) and they've started to introduce new characters... Ummm... yes, well... "Starbox and Cindy" seems forgettable, but they're certainly heading towards the surrealist end of things with "The Incredible Gnome In People's Mouths" and using a lot of the imagery from Bill Bixby "The incredible Hulk".

For those in the UK, Russell T Davies has a new series starting at the end of the week: "It's a Sin", which details gay life in the UK in the 1980's and especially the horrific impact of the AIDS epidemic from that era. Not exactly fun, but it should be compulsive viewing.

Late addition - All episodes of the original "Muppet Show" from the 1970's will be available on Disney+ from February! (This includes season 4 and 5 which were never released on DVD)
 
Random question of the week: Favourite poem? (Be it Wordsworth or dirty limerick... or evena  dirty limerick BY Wordsworth)

Comments

[leahandillyana]

The creators of "Rainbow Madonna" are facing a process in Poland. They might get as many as two years in prison, which is higher than the lowest sentence for a convicted rapist. To show my solidarity, I' decided to have her as avatar in my social media.
It’s cold. Very cold. -14 here, -20 elsewhere. Weirdly, heavily industrialized lands like the one I live in have the best air quality in Poland currently - "only" twice the norms. Biggest cities in Poland were the most polluted cities in the world yesterday. That's because in industrial cities/towns people heat with electricity while elsewhere they burn whatever shit they have (often rubbish or plastic).
Sailor Moon Eternal Part 1 premiered in Japan. Due to Japanese heavy dislike of spoilers, I don’t know the exact story covered by the film (it could be equivalent to the whole fourth season of the 90s anime or additionally cover the few first episodes of fifth season), how much does it deviate from the source material, nor the quality of animation. It is honestly my least favourite part of Sailor Moon franchise due to an overaboundance of weird kinks (two different little girl/ teen boy romances, two different human girl/ male animal romances, drag-queens-slash-possible-trans-women as adversaries). Additionally, the only part I liked, the special Rei and Minako short story that hinted at beginning of the romance between the girls, was apparently omitted from the adaptation.
I’ve read Seraph of the end up to the most recent chapter. When the anime was airing, the running joke was „if what I’m seeing is not a slowburn romance between the two protagonists I don’t know what I’m seeing”. I thought „no chance”. I turned out to be wrong. Unfortunately, meanwhile the plot took a hard turn into weirdness, so I cannot really hope for a happy ending for the two boys.
I’ve been feeling really unwell recently. I leave my room only to use the toilet, and only when I have to. I work on my laptop, but have no energy to spend on anything else. I am sleeping more than 12 hours a day. I barely averted a disaster when I slept with a candle still burning.
My favourite poem is "You who wronged a simple man" by Czesław Miłosz (link: https://brucespoems.blogspot.com/2013/11/you-who-wronged-czeslaw-milosz.html). In few words it summarises they anger at the world I feel all the time.

[onsokumaru]

Wait, you can go in jail for blasphemy in Poland?
I know that in many countries, even in Europe, blasphemy is forbidden and can get you a fine, but I wasn't aware it could go as far as prison sentence.
I shouldn't be surprised, though. I live in a secular country with anticlerical tradition, but it seems even here more and more people (including the youngs) are in favor of the return of blasphemy laws.

I hope you get better soon. I wish I had good advices to share, but all I can say is keep enjoying what you are enjoying.

[leahandillyana]

Yes. The laws are very harsh, but applicable only when a catholic has their feelings hurt. The prosecutor of these women is known for publicly talking awful things about queer people. She had a process but was declared innocent because homo/transphobia is not a crime in Poland. She is very smug about it. At the same time, there's a process of three male anarchists who demolished a statue of a bishop who cooperated with nazi occupants and helped send many people to gas chambers, and after the war helped hide the evidence of mass scale child sexual abuse and forceful baptism of non-catholic orphans in church-run orphanages. These anarchists face up to ten years in prizon.

[scorntx]

So first the Bungling Idiots (also known as the British government) said that things might've been looking up by April. Then it was mid-summer. Then August. At the moment, it's September, but probably at the very least by Friday we'll be hearing "oh, it'll all be over by X-Mas" again. If not then, by next week.

Decided to watch that Dark Phoenix on Disney+.
It was pretty much what I was expecting.
Next time, I'mma just watch Frozen 2.
(Think maybe the best... or least terrible adaptation of the whole Phoenix saga we've ever got was the 90s cartoon version.
... what a terrifying thought.)

Hasbro has announced that the seventh Transformers movie is going with the script that continues on from Bumblebee, rather than the Beast Wars one.
And we're all just shocked by that.
... still, Bumblebee was alright.

[werehawk]

I thought your post had a poem the way it was formatted. I fixed it :)

I watched Dark Phoenix
On Disney+
I just couldn't see
what was the fuss
Next time, I'm gonna
watch Frozen 2.
If its better that's
Terrifying too

Predators

[dan_ingram]

Well, in fairness, you can only do 'aliens hunt humans' so many times before it becomes old.

I'll give credit to the last two being smart enough to have a diverse character cast, though. Hope the next one shows what's become of Royce...

[janegray]

Amazon sucks, so I try as much as possible to buy from smaller stores.

But goddamn do they make it difficult.

Almost every time I try to buy from a smaller store, they pull some bullshit. Anything from gross incompetence to borderline scamming.

[deh_tommy]

If I’m ever buying something from overseas online, I usually just stick to eBay.

[victory_or_death]

Etsy is where it's at, Friend.

[zachbeacon]

I mean, your mileage may vary. Most of the online scammers I’ve dealt with have been third party sellers on Amazon.

(Though Borders is probably to most incompetent online seller I've dealt with and I can see why they don't exist anymore. I do miss the retail stores though, those were great.)

My biggest frustration tends to be shipping.

Even before the pandemic, Prime “two day shipping” tended to take at least half a week and he drivers that work for Amazon sometimes pick … interesting places to leave packages.

Meanwhile the new office chair I ordered from Staples actually did show up in two days and the shipping was free.

Admittedly my attempts to support a used bookstore chain I frequented in the before-times were aborted because of their nonsensical policy of charging shipping for each individual item instead of combining it or giving free shipping for large orders. When the shipping cost is larger than what’s in the cart, I think I’ll pass.

Then there’s the “America in 2020” problem.

Thanks to Trump continuing the decades-long Republican quest to destroy the post office, USPS is moving at a crawl. I really like In Stock Trades for physical comics collections* but, through no fault of their own, orders that used to take a week now take a month.

*They’re cheaper than Amazon, have better customer service than Amazon, and my orders are always well packed ….whereas I’m pretty sure Amazon pays a guy to stomp on my books.

[skjam]

Hoping the vaccine distribution gets sorted out by the time I'm eligible--I'm not a high risk candidate, but my employer has a lot of pull and is very pro-vax, so it's uncertain where I'll be sorted. My stir-craziness is almost to the point where it's overwhelming my extreme caution.

Favorite poem? I like "Our Fathers of Old" by Rudyard Kipling.

Over at my blog, I've seen Disenchantment Season Three. http://www.skjam.com/2021/01/17/webtoon-review-disenchantment-season-3/

[zachbeacon]

About that vaccine ...

https://www.rawstory.com/vaccine-stockpile/


I'm still not sure how I feel about Disenchanted part three. Its never a great sign when the show admits its making up everything as it goes along. I will say that it was better paced than the first two parts and it was nice to have Bean bounce off characters other than Elfo and Luci ... but there was still way too much Elfo and not nearly enough Luci. Also, for all the talk I've been seeing about how this is moving to plot along, the end of part three feels a lot like the end of season one.

[owlbrigade1]

Disenchanted would be far better if it followed Futurama or The Simpsons in being an episode of the week style of show rather than trying to do the serialised storytelling. It would pick up the glacial pace a fair bit if it did.

[zachbeacon]

Would it, though? It was pretty episodic early on and went nowhere. All the mini arcs in part three at least gave the illusion that it was going somewhere ... until I realized it was mostly going in a circle.

The episode structure is another thing worth exploring though. It avoids a season that's too long (like most of the Netflix/Marvel shows) or too short (like all the animated originals that try to pass off a handful of episodes as a "season"). I'm not sure any of the episodes needed to be 30+ minutes, though; most could have been closer to the standard 22 without losing much and maybe a couple could have been expanded to a two-parter.

I still feel like Bean's crew are the biggest problem. Bean is interesting but kinda inconsistent (just like most Futurama /Simpsons characters) and I'm fine with that. Luci is just Bender again; he's fun to have around but his plot was resolved in part two and he was barely present in three. Elfo sucks; I feel like we're supposed to care about his parentage but I just don't. Secret mutants and evil brains aside, Futurama barely had a plot but its still my favorite show ever because it was fun to watch the main cast hang out; I don't get that here.

Can we just replace Elfo with the Pig? Or the step-brother? Or the step-mon?

Heck, as much as I like Bean, this show would be a thousand times better if it followed Pirate Queen Oona instead.

[trooper924]

In somewhat brighter news, Biden has picked Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine to be his assistant secretary of health. If confirmed, she'll be the first transgender federal official to be confirmed by congress.

As a Pennsylvanian, I'm glad to see this because she's been working hard to combat Covid while suffering a lot of transphobic abuse from conservative hacks in the state, so it's good to see her get rewarded like this.

[iamrman]

This week's comics reading has been a mixed bag. I loved Batwoman's Detective Comics run and the first two volumes of her New 52 series.

I read some 70's Daredevilin the form of several Masterworks volumes. Things started well enough with a fun story arc by Tony Isabella that involved HYDRA. Then it came to Marv Wolfman's run. My opinion of his Daredevil run is pretty much the same as my opinion on his Amazing Spider-Man, eminently forgettable.

On a more positive note, I habe also read Mars Attacks Judge Dredd. I am only faintly familiar with the Dredd comics and I would have given it a pass if I hadn't found out that it was by Al Ewing. Thankfully, the series was just as mad as I had hoped.

[stubbleupdate]

I've got one issue of Mars Attacks Red Sonja to read. It's not been dreadful.

[tripodeca113]

I found out recently that the library has both read Necronomicon and The Courtyard (I didn't realize the library system had the first one because it mistakenly listed the author as Alan C. Moore). So I put them on hold and plan to read them. I've heard certain things about Necronomicon, but there's a nice all in one collection of Providence coming out this year, and I feel that I should read the other related work before that.

Oh, look Dark Horse is finally releasing another Usagi Yojimbo Saga. This'll be the final instalment, and following the series switch over to IDW, the last Usagi book published by Dark Horse.

I've been watching Scooby Doo with my brother, we finished the first show and have gotten up to the one with all the celebrities. It's odd because I don't know who most of these people are. The monster are more generic looking then usually. The Batman episode, has Joker and Penguin, but the main baddy is just some guy in a hood. For shame.


I finished watching the first five seasons of The Venture Brothers. I do own season seven, but not season six.

Watched more of RWBY. Volume four had some good stuff, but it had some real pacing and structural issues. The plot that gets the most focus seems the least interesting, while one plot just sort of ends ,and another peaks quite a few episodes before the end. Thankfully Volume five was much better, at juggling its plot threads. Though it is annoying how one of them involves a group of characters sitting around in a house (especially as it in a new location)

[thezmage]

I recently watched the Mama Cass episode. A solid 40 minutes of fat jokes at the expense of a woman who would die from a heart attack in less than a year. That was not their best idea.

[zachbeacon]

“Oh, look Dark Horse is finally releasing another Usagi Yojimbo Saga. This'll be the final instalment, and following the series switch over to IDW, the last Usagi book published by Dark Horse.”
If its anything like their later Conan omnibi, it’ll have a low print run.

“I've been watching Scooby Doo with my brother, we finished the first show and have gotten up to the one with all the celebrities. It's odd because I don't know who most of these people are.”
I’m pretty sure I only know who the Harlem Globetrotters are because they showed up in this and that one Futurama episode.

“I finished watching the first five seasons of The Venture Brothers. I do own season seven, but not season six.”
I know people complain about the series ending on a cliffhanger and I hate AT&T’s treatment of, well, everything but I do enjoy that the series ends with Rusty and the Monarch both discovering the big secret at the very end. Would have liked more closure on Hank, though.

“Watched more of RWBY. “
The show has obviously suffered since the loss of Monty early on. I actually kinda liked that they broke up the team in season four but then Blake didn’t turn up for another season. I thought they were getting back on track after the massive lore dump in season six but now it feels like they’re just dragging things out and pandering to shippers.

Music rocks though.

[thezmage]

I don't really have faith in CMON and their overly Kickstarter focused business model, but I really have to give them props for including Scrappy Doo in a product made in 2021: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cmon/cmon-presents-the-animation-collection?ref=section-homepage-projectcollection-2-staff-picks-popular

Speaking of board games offered through Kickstarter that offer way too many figures, I finally got a chance to play Renegade's Power Rangers Heroes of the Grid board game this weekend. It was fun, but I still feel like it would have been better for them to have made the enemies little cardboard circles that I could put in a bag by type rather than force me to dig through a box full of random figures looking for the Pudgy Pig amongst the various putties

I spent quite a bit on the game Smash Up this weekend. Got the Bigger Geekier Box, and the Obligatory Cthulhu, Monster Smash, Big in Japan, and Cease and Desist expansions. Looking forward to the Marvel themed stand-alone soon

A Scottish Podcast just made it explicit that there's going to be a season 3.

[icon_uk]

A Scottish Podcast just made it explicit that there's going to be a season 3.

Oh excellent, I lost track of a lot my regular podcasts when I switched to a Windows 10 PC, with it's world famous hatred of iTunes.

Looking forward to more of the most foul mouthed podcast I've ever encountered, and many of them in accents I recognise! :D

[mistersandman]

Langston Hughes wrote a poem I've thought about a lot in the last few years:

https://poets.org/poem/let-america-be-america-again

I'm in DC right now. My usual run takes me through the National Mall area, but that section of the city more closely resembles the capital of Baghdad than the capital of the United States.

Just to be safe, I'm getting out of the city tonight. Back in December there was a smaller scale Trump protest that stopped traffic on the intersection right outside my window. They were chanting about 'globalist elites' stealing the election and armed revolution... I'd prefer to avoid that experience again.

[werehawk]

I was always keen on this Violent Femmes song based on a poem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf_q3lhb16c

https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/beauty-sat-bathing-spring-0

[juniper6]

Twenty-three hours to go.

The display of flags in DC prompted me to look up my state flag, and I could swear I’ve never seen it before in my life. Apparently our state motto is “Liberty and Prosperity,” which I can’t really object to in principle, although I’d like to see more of the latter, and more evenly distributed.

Mom has been transferred to home hospice care, but it looks like it’s going to be a long and increasingly unpleasant decline. It’s already extremely “unpleasant” so that’s something to not look forward to.

Favorite poems: This Be the Verse by Philip Larkin and (without apology; we can’t all be edgy all the time) The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost.

Theory of Relativity

[stubbleupdate]

Emigration
For a snail
Pansies to potting shed
Seven hour trail.
Puffins on Staffa
Mid July
Atlantic by August
Seven day fly.
Zero to Twenty
Whole lifespan
Twenty to Fifty
Flash in the pan!
Mary McCabe, 2001

[thezmage]

I fear as a poet I'm wasting my time
'Cause my poems just don't seem to rhyme
They all started out good
but inevitably would
end poorly every occasion

[owlbrigade1]

Philip Larkin's 'This Be The Verse' is the poem that always struck a chord in me. I wish I had a happier poem. And lately, Kipling's 'The Truce of the Bear' as it is a metaphor over Russia, since that has had some applicability in recent years.

CW: Bad language in the former, and descriptions of graphic injury and Imperialist language in the latter.

[juniper6]

That’s the poem I listed too. I only hope it’s not what my daughters would choose.

[owlbrigade1]

Thankfully, I took Larkin's advice so that is not a worry for me.

[deh_tommy]

Aw man, I really liked The Predator. That was funny, thrilling, and a load of good old stupid fun. Mind you, I didn’t actually see any of the trailers and went into the film blind, so that may have impacted things. But even putting aside all that, how can you hate a film where the villains’ evil plan is to splice themselves with autism?

I swear, Pokémon’s battle towers are rigged to high heck.

I don’t read much poetry and I don’t like choosing favourites, but there was this one poem that always stuck with me (‘His Faithful Dog’ I think that was called?). I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for The Mending Wall, too.

[onsokumaru]

Trying to figure out what to say to my best friend tomorrow, to keep his mind out of american politics, as he'll probably be very upset.
He felt into the Qanon rabbit hole and regulary texts me about election fraud and other stuff. I'm afraid that whatever I would say against all those crackpot theories may be taken as a way to dismiss him and make things worse.
Maybe I'll try to suggest him some twitter accounts who are mocking both the trump cultists and the woke circus.

[lissa_quon]

Wait wait - is he QAnon? or just scared of them?

[bravest_spinja]

Well, I've never thought I'd recommend Tim Dillon as a gateway out of Trumpism but...

[stubbleupdate]

I've finished the story of AC Valhalla, but still have some tidying up to do before I've exhausted its potential. And then there's the Beowulf story and the DLC still to come.

[thezmage]

People who have purchased the digital version of Batman: Soul of the Dragon report that the upcoming JSA movie will include a time traveling Barry Allen. The small blackened part of me that still remembers what hope feels like wants to believe that this will be him directly following on from Apokalips War

[flo_nelja]

Poetry!
Here is a French poem I love a lot (with a translation, that always loses a bit of what I love)
https://crustaceansandtranslations.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/translation-desnos-jai-tant-reve-de-toi-with-comments/