What boring and trivial things have been going on lately? I’m glad you asked because who doesn’t like to revel in the trivial and mundane? Well, most people don’t but I do. At least on the level of writing about such mundane things because that’s all the stuff that gets forgotten over time. Don’t get me wrong, I also like writing about larger ideas that may or may not influence our lives and thinking but the ephemeral nature of the small stuff also appeals to me. It can fill your head up one day and be forgotten the next. I’ve written blogs on subjects that I don’t even remember writing any more. It’s the only record I have of those small things I did or small thoughts that went through my head. I find records interesting.
I think that a hundred years from now historians are going to love this age we’re in. I must have heard on a dozen documentaries over the years how great it was for historians to have people’s personal letters of correspondence. It gave them insights into the minds and worlds of the letter writers. Then said historian would usually go on to say how sad it was that people no longer wrote such letters. I guess the telephone changed all that. But now we’ve got blogs. Lots and lots of blogs documenting everything from the mundane to the ridiculous. Some people even document the intimate comings and goings of their dating lives. You won’t find that in a letter from the Civil War. Future historians might think, “Holy crap after the internet was invented these people wouldn’t shut up”. I wonder if this is all a temporary thing or if people will continue to blog well into the future?
Anyway here is my first bit of mundanity for the day. At the comic shop this week I bought an action figure. The only reason that is news in any way shape or form is because it is the first action figure I’ve bought since about 2003. At first I thought that date was 2001 as I have a Spider-Man action figure that I bought when the movie came out but Then I looked at the date on my Hulk action figure’s foot and it said 2003. I must have bought that one when the Hulk movie came out. I was never an action figure collector but throughout the 1990s I was a bit of an action figure accumulator. I’d often hit the toys stores at lunch time with some of my toy collector friends. Usually I’d buy things from the sale bin while my friends purchased whatever it was they were looking for. I haven’t bought any action figures since 2003 because of room and money. It seemed like a waste of my limited budget to buy an action figure when I could be buying more hardcover comic collections. Why drop twenty bucks on some toy when that same twenty can get me the latest Conan hardcover collection? The toys were usually impulse purchases but that impulse left me less money for the comics which I generally preferred. And the toys took up room. There is never enough room for an accumulation let alone a collection.
And what action figure did I get you ask? (You’re just full of questions today.) I got a “Flashpoint” Cyborg figure. Yes that’s nearly a completely random figure to choose. I have no real reason for picking him except that he was pretty much the only character in the “Flashpoint” series that I liked and I just felt like buying an action figure. I’ve kind of wanted to buy one all summer, for whatever reason, and finally gave in to the impulse. Cyborg, also of the New Teen Titans (circa 1981), seemed like the best one to get. He looks pretty cool all tough and machine-like. Now he just stands there on my drawing table.
The next bit of mundane news is that I don’t like the funny noise my XBox 360 is making when I start it up. I already had to have it fixed a while a go when I got the red ring of death. I’m pretty sure it can’t be that again but what the heck do I know? It makes a semi-loud hard-drive-winding-up sound when I turn the thing on. That sound does not fill me with confidence. It makes me want to redo and modernize my whole TV setup but I really don’t want to do that. It’s too much bother.
The rains of hurricane (now tropical storm) Irene fall as I write this. Things has been calm for me as my home still has power and has no basement to flood but there is a lot of flooding and power outages in the wider outside world. I always find it a little bit odd when people who are not personally affected but a storm or similar act of nature are disappointed when the disaster isn’t bigger. What is that about human nature? I think people like to feel smug if the warnings and weathermen are wrong. Not that they were wrong in this case but the worst case scenario that was planned on didn’t happen. I think that’s a good thing and nothing to be smug about. But I’m a plan for the worst case kind of guy. Though I must admit that the three days of “Fear and anxiety TV” before the storm was a bit much. It will get you wound up even if you’re trying to avoid such a winding.
To bring us back to Cyborg and the “Flashpoint” series from DC Comics this summer I’ll give a quick summary of my thoughts on said series. The final issue of the actual “Flashpoint” series has yet to come out but most of the side mini-series have finished. I was looking for some new comics to try out this past summer and so read a bunch of “Flashpoint” stuff. It was generally okay but nowhere near great. The greatest flaw of the various mini-series was their lack of endings. The first two issues were decent but the third final ones were not. Since the last chapter of the story is in the fifth issue of the main “Flashpoint” series most of the other mini-series just kind of stopped. Confusingly so in the case of the Aquaman series. Most of the DC stuff I bought this summer won out over the Marvel stuff based on price. With DC “Holding the line at $2.99” and most of Marvel’s books that I saw being priced at $3.99 I bought mostly DC comics. Four bucks is too high a price to pay to try out a single issue of a comic. I’d rather pay twenty bucks and get a collection of a bunch of comics. It’s about the same price per issue but is in the format it’s meant to be read in (“Written for trade paperback” as the saying goes). Unless Marvel and DC give me a reason to buy a monthly comic why would I?
Anyway that’s the word from the stuff that’s going on in my mind right now. I think I’ve forgotten it all already but maybe someday I’ll appreciate it.
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