Additional Clarification to Previous Post

No, I did not intentionally arrange things so that the 'Megaforce' ad cut off where it did. As amusing as it wound up being, it was not a deliberate misrepresentation of the film to suggest that it featured Brad from Rocky Horror wearing a skin-tight jumpsuit and pointing out at the audience, saying, "Are You Man Enough For Me?"

But hey, if you want to do fanfiction about it, go for it.

It's the Obvious Sequel, In Hindsight

Follow along with me on this:

1) Bilbo, like the elves, "passed into the West" at the end of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. This was during the age of Middle-Earth, implying that it eventually came to be our Earth.

2) Tolkien, as a Briton himself, thought of Middle-Earth as the forebear of Europe. This means that if Bilbo and the elves went west on a great ocean, they eventually came to what would become the continent of North America.

3) His time as a ringbearer, while not good for his soul, did confer upon him extended life. There's no real way of knowing how much extended life would be granted; it's possible that he continued to live for centuries or even millennia.

4) His time as an adventurer granted Bilbo unique skills and talents that could, potentially, be called upon by others in need of a thief.

5) Although he's a skilled thief and an above average combatant for a hobbit his age, Bilbo would need protection if he was going to go on some sort of "mission" for the government.

This leads us to 6) Bilbo Baggins teams up with John McClane to save the United States from the last descendants of the orcs.

Summer 2016: Bruce Willis. Ian Holm. "Old Hobbits Die Hard".

...I'll start running now, shall I?

Conundrums for the Ages

How exactly does one reconcile writing, "I don't wast time on the mike with a dope rhyme" in the same song as "I'm just a squirrel, tryin' ta get a nut/to move your butt/to the dance floor"? I don't think I will ever understand this.

OK, Just One More...

If you have a dirt-floor basement where you keep your dancing plants, is it a Groot cellar?

And the Hits Just Keep On Coming!

Did you hear about the mathematician who sold a new line of shoes called "Contrapositives"?

They were just Converses turned inside out.

Today's Thing I Should Be Ashamed Of

I want to createa a pulp pastiche hero named, "Bick Pentameter", and every time he announce himself to an audience there would be a long debate about why he's not speaking in Shakespearean verse.

Stupid Things You Realize About Yourself

I just realized that for years, I've gotten Right Said Fred (the band that sings 'I'm Too Sexy') with Drop Dead Fred (the Rik Mayall movie). Only one way, mind you--I never heard anyone talk about Drop Dead Fred and think that they were about to inform me that they were too sexy for various items of apparel. But whenever there is a discussion of Right Said Fred (which may possibly happen someday, and no this doesn't count) I immediately think of a movie that I've never actually seen because frankly it looked pretty dreadful.

I wish I could tell you that this had some deeper meaning, but sadly I'd be lying.

And Doctor Voodoo Is the Sorcerer Supreme

Someday, I totally want to write a story where the Winter Soldier is drawn to an artificially-created Earth where all the superheroes are the edgy, alternative versions of themselves created to replace the real ones with anti-heroes. This world's Avengers are the USAgent, War Machine, Thunderstrike, the Red Hulk and the Scarlet Spider, and they're periodically joined in team-ups by Venom and the Red She-Hulk. They've just been waiting for the Winter soldier to join them on their perfect Earth, the ones where they're the real heroes...only, of course, there's a dark secret to its creation that they have to fight, because otherwise where's the conflict? But then at the end, their world is preserved as a running in-joke, a sort of Second Banana Heaven for superheroes.

And then a few years later, they can have a crossover with the Justice League, which is composed of Artemis, Azrael and the Eradicator...

Terrible Pun of the Day

I apologize profusely for the lack of posts lately; I've been working on a writing project (one that's perilously close to being ready for a formal announcement, I hope) and it's left me with little energy to blog on top of it. I've mostly been kicking back with 'Avengers: Alliance' in my free time.

One of the enemies in the game has an attack called "Unavoidable Slash". Today I found myself wondering if it was Kirk/Spock or Harry/Snape. I think that's a sign of something, but I have no idea what.

A Shocking Revelation

I can't imagine why I haven't seen this before.

He's an expert martial artist with a hidden backstory. He refuses to use guns, to the point of emptying the clip as soon as he takes one off a bad guy. He's determined to the point of seeming imperviousness to pain.

Eliot from 'Leverage' is Bruce Wayne in disguise.

Everything makes so much sense now.

Even I Hate My Brain Sometimes

This actually sounds like a good idea for a series: A group of superheroes tracks down a criminal organization that hides out where the law can't touch them...within the collective unconscious. Each week, a criminal manifests himself as a powerful archetype, and the heroes must battle by using their own archetypes to heal the mental traumas of the person whose body the criminal is using to commit crimes. Thus, by healing the victim's psyche, the heroes block off one more access into the world for injustice, setting up a final battle where the villains will be forced to incarnate themselves physically or risk being trapped within the shadows of humanity's unexpressed dark side forever.

Why does this depress me? Because I came up with the title first.

"Jung Justice."

How 'The Lion King' Should Have Gone

Scar: The future is littered with prizes
And though I'm the main addressee
The point that I must emphasize is
You won't get a sniff without--holy crap, is that lava? Oh my god, this whole place is going up! Run! Run, my hyena minions! Oh, God, no! Sweet merciful mother Earth, we're all going to dieeeeEEEEEEAAAGGHHH!!! (screams drowned out in an unholy explosion of superheated sulfuric gases, pyroclastic ash, and molten rock)

Then the rest would have just been Rafiki hitting people.

Half-Hearted Song Parodies Still Count, Right?

I'll probably come back to this at some point to do the other verses, but I'm concerned that if I don't post the beginning now while I can still remember it, I'll forget that part too. So...

Way out in outer space, so far away from here,
On a far-off distant planet past the Sense-O-Sphere,
In a tiny little igloo made of ice and wood,
There lived an alien name of Johnny B Ood,
And he never ever learned to read and write so well,
But his telepathy song was just as clear as a bell.

Go go! Go, Johnny go! Go! Go...Johnny B Ood!

Rhyme Assistance!

There's a song I've been hearing a lot lately at work. (KDWB--your place to go for one of up to six different songs!) It's a gentleman who's quite upset about the lack of emotional support he's getting from his girlfriend, relative to that which he gives her. He claims he would "catch a grenade for ya", and "throw my hand on a blade for ya", but after that he runs out of good rhymes and needs to resort to "jump in front of a train for ya" before claiming that she wouldn't do the same. (Incidentally, two points on this: One, most women care more about whether you'll run out to the store at 2 AM to get them donuts than whether or not you'll throw yourself in front of locomotives; and two, if you have actual first-hand knowledge of whether or not your girlfriend will catch a grenade for you, her lack of commitment is the least of your worries.)

In any event, I've decided to help the gentleman out by giving some other things that he would do for her. Such as...

"do time in a stockade for ya"

"drink some pink lemonade for ya"

"spray a cockroach with Raid for ya"

"put my hair in a braid for ya"

"wear a garlic pomade for ya"

"get pets neutered or spayed for ya"

"perform at Farm Aid for ya"

"take a nap in the shade for ya"

"lose my shirt in a trade for ya"

"sing a serenade for ya"

"dodge, parry, spin and evade for ya"

"freshen my room with Glade for ya"

"get all my clothing frayed for ya"

"score a high passing grade for ya"

"carve a statue of jade for ya"

I hope this helps. Although I understand that it makes it even more likely that she would not, in fact, do the same.

How Did I Miss This One?

A while back, I posted some ideas for "mature" updates of kid's cartoons, complete with the blood and gore and nastiness that characterizes said updates. But somehow, I managed to miss an obvious one!

Steve is trapped in a strange house where everyday household objects seem to possess a malevolent intelligence. There's a way out, but can he find it before he falls into one of the deadly traps created by the sinister puppet-master behind it all? If he wants to survive, Steve will have to decipher every last one of...

"Blue's Clues".

It's like the 'Saw' movies with an evil dog-woman! I smell money, people...

Question of the Day

Is there a "Ventriloquism for Dummies" book? And if so, does it actually teach you ventriloquism, or just how to be a dummy?

New On DVD

Apparently "Furry Vengeance" came out on DVD and Blu-Ray yesterday. Good for them. They get so much flack on the Internet, I think it's only fair that they should get their own back somewhere along the line. Brendan Fraser's in it--I'm guessing he's playing someone from 4chan, or Something Awful, perhaps?

In any event, it's probably fun for the entire family, or at least those parts of the family that aren't offended by people who like sex with heavily anthropomorphized animals. I probably won't see it myself, but anyone who's into that, have fun!

Stop a Limited, Specific Quantity of the Hate! (No, Not That Hate. The Other Hate.)

Television Without Pity has weighed in this week on the current season of The Amazing Race, providing a detailed and specific listing of why they hate it. (In handy slideshow format, no less.) Speaking as someone who has now watched...um...a full two-and-a-bit seasons of the show, and hence clearly an expert, I thought I'd weigh in on their weighing in. (I know, I've got strong opinions on The Amazing Race. I feel so bourgeois. But I'm stuck for topics this week, and it's either this or the NFL draft.)

Their first complaint, about the eating challenge in Leg Four, I'm going to rate as bogus. Yes, sauerkraut is arguably less disgusting than some of the things that contestants have had to eat in the past (I say arguably because I personally consider the stuff to be about as appetizing as toenail clippings, and would eat it only at gunpoint) but to me, the addition of a time limit makes it an innovative twist on the conventional eating challenge. (For those who missed the episode, you had to choke down a massive plate of the stuff in the amount of time it took a polka band to play "The Sauerkraut Polka." Didn't finish before the song ended? They refill your plate. So the more times you fail, the harder it gets.)

Their second complaint--that a disproportionate time was spent on the bizarre feud between Carol and Brandy and Brent and Caite--is absolutely true. Carol and Brandy were irritating and whiny, Caite was blatantly homophobic and trying to justify it with claims that "they were mean" to her (claims that relied pretty much entirely on a single incident that was relayed to her second-hand in Leg One) and in general, I do not watch The Amazing Race for interpersonal drama anyway. I watch it for the, y'know, racing. Every time they play up the "teams don't like each other" crap, I find myself wanting to fast-forward.

Their third complaint, that the cops are obnoxious catchphrase-spouting stereotypes that seem to be angling for a spin-off series--is true, but it hasn't really bothered me. But this is definitely the funniest complaint, and is worth reading simply for the humor value.

Their fourth complaint...seriously, Television Without Pity? "The cowboys have gotten lucky"? Seriously? Come freaking on. Every winning team gets a healthy dose of good luck to go with their good decisions. Remember when Tammy and Victor had the good luck to be stupid on the one leg where another couple missed their connecting flight and got there the next day? Or when the penultimate leg went through China, which gave them (the only team fluent in Chinese) a huge advantage? TAR is luck-based as well as skill-based. Get used to it.

Their fifth complaint...yes. "Mom-trepreneurs" was extraordinarily stupid. You had to put up with it for three episodes. Get over it.

Their sixth complaint was about the Blind U-Turn returning. (See my previous post on The Amazing Race for an explanation of how U-Turns work. Blind U-Turns work like that, except you don't have to let anyone know who it was that U-Turned.) This is a silly complaint to me, because a) Joe and Heidi did know who U-Turned them, because there were only two teams ahead of them and they got there less than ten seconds after the second team did, b) knowing who U-Turned them didn't help them, because they got eliminated by the U-Turn, and c) nobody else cared that they'd been U-Turned, because the only thing you care about when a U-Turn is used is, "Was it used on me?" If it wasn't, you're too busy thanking Fate to care about whichever team got hosed. This is not a game where long-term strategic alliances matter. The only way the "Blind/Non-Blind" option makes an actual difference is if 1) you U-Turn a team that survives the U-Turn, 2) it's not obvious to the other teams that you did it, and 3) you don't tell anyone. Since those are pretty unlikely, I say it doesn't matter. In fact, I think all U-Turns should be Blind, because as previously mentioned, I hate Drama, and anything that the actual producers use to "start shit" between two teams irritates the hell out of me. It's a game, not high school.

Their seventh complaint...yep. Brent and Caite are tremendously irritating on every level. No arguments there.

Their eighth complaint...again, yep. This season seems to have had a pretty weak field in general, with several teams that feel like they'd have been eliminated a long time ago if they'd been in any other group of racers. The fact that Jeff and Jordan lasted until Leg Six speaks volumes.

And finally, their ninth complaint--I honestly don't think that the drinking challenge was intended to be a major hurdle. (Teams had to share an oversized beer at a German bar. Actually, this one would have been a major hurdle for me, since I don't drink, and it was a similar problem for many teams. But I don't think that's "incompetence" on the part of the teams in question, like TVw/oP does.) But it wasn't a Road Block, it wasn't a Detour, it was just one of those little things they throw in to dick with the racers. I certainly don't think it qualifies as a reason to hate the season. (Certainly not as much as Brent and Caite do. Good Lord, if I have to hear her complaining about "the Lesbians" one more time...)

Grammar Niggle of the Week

If curious people are said to possess curiosity, monstrous people are said to possess monstrosity, and generous people are said to possess generosity, why do mysterious people supposedly possess a "mysteriousness"? Shouldn't they have a certain mysteriosity to them?

Likewise, furious people should be known for their furiosity, a wondrous event should be claimed to possess a quality called wondrosity, and of course, the nose of an elephant seal is remarkable for its bulbosity. And yet, the tyranny of the spell-checker insists that none of these are words. It's downright tragic, it is.

And since this is a fairly tiny, silly post, I'll puff it out a bit by mentioning that starting tomorrow, I'll be doing occasional guest posts on the explosively talented Christopher Bird's Mightygodking.com every Friday! He's generously consented to let me have a say every now and then, and I'm happy to ride on his coat-tails to the greatest extent the law will allow.

It Must Be Said

The official Leverage convention has the best name of any convention ever.

It's ConCon.

I'm not going, because I don't have the time or the money, but I like to just bask in the sheer, unmitigated joy of that name from time to time.

(Really, the Transformers people dropped the ball. Come on, "BotCon"? How do you do an official Transformers convention and not call it "DeceptiCon"? Oh, the lost opportunities.)