Opinions... Everybody's got one.

Opinions...

Wow.

Y'know, I was thinking the other day about how many people actually believe that their opinion should be valued as equal in standing with other people's opinions, and I must say, I find that notion utterly preposterous. Sure, everyone is definitely entitled to their own opinion, but somewhere along the way, people started misinterpreting that as "my views are just as valid as anyone else's."

Hogwash.

The value and validity of an opinion usually stems from said person's experience with the subject at hand. This is why we hire financial advisors, consultants, and professionals to do our work for us. Because we value one person's idealogy and experience over someone else's. I know that it sounds pretty simple, but it is surprising how many times I stumble across someone who subscribes to this nonsense. If I were building a house, I would rather trust the opinion of a contractor with more experience than one that has only built a few houses; just as i would prefer a contractor with less overall construction experience than one that had more experience but had only built metal buildings.

This is why we must carefully examine ourselves and check who we put our trust in. Know your peers! Know their strengths and their weeknesses, and you can accept their opinions at face value. Take it from someone who has been there, the shortest road to personal growth usually lies with whomever you have trusted yourself with. And from my Birthday post, you can tell that I've obviously failed at some things... so take a tip from me. My opinion is worth a lot when trying to avoid failures. I've been there. ;)

It's My Birthday! My buhbuhbuhBirthday!

Holy Crap. This is how I feel. Bear in a cake. Hokey Smokes.

Sometimes it feels as if life just sneaks up on you.

IN WORK
A few years ago I was a young guy in a management position. I felt like I had progressed quite nicely for my age. Having been in "managerial" positions for quite some time now, I can tell you that I am not sure if I HAVE progressed all that far. Its not that I don't like my job, because I love my job, its just that every now and again I look at myself and think "shouldn't I be moving a lot faster?" Now, I don't mean that I should have some sort of ALL POWERFUL job title, on the contrary, sometimes I think I should be stripped of any titles at all and be forced to start all over again. But I guess that's just the defeatist in me.

What I mean by "moving faster" is that I feel like I should be progressing faster as an artist, as a Christian, as a person, and as a husband, father, and provider. I have seen a great deal of personal growth, but I wish that could be more pronounced as I think about where I was and am going... I have a vision, personal goals, and all that other jazz, but it seems sometimes distant and sometimes... very distant. I am believeing, however, that this will be my year to shine, and that the bear won't be back for the big Three-Oh. shudder

PERSONALLY
I am definitely rooting for this to be the "defining year" of my life where I get all my crap together. I'm afraid of a lot of things... I'm afraid of not being a good father, not being a good husband, brother, son, friend, Christian, person, human, mammal, or multi-celled organism. This is the year I hope to get out of debt (sans mortage, which is... most likely impossible), AND I hope to be more organized. I hope to work less and see my family more. I am hoping that this blog will help me put things in perspective, help me to see growth online and throughout these journal entries that no one reads but me. And maybe that's the point. I can read these and think "you know, some of that crap I wrote came to pass" or "looks like more of the same" or "well, you really had it good LAST year didn't you!??!" I hope to God I don't look back on this year and wish I had it "as good" as this past year.

IN HEALTH
After having Pancreatitis, Being sick all year, having my Gall Bladder removed, Being in ICU for a week, Being Diagnosed with Diabetes, Acid Reflux, Hyperlipidemia, and slight hypertension, I can only pray that nothing remotely like that happens this time. I'm taking my meds like a good little boy, and that is the beginning of a good thing... But I still need to lose more weight.

Well! Those are my major goals. I feel like I have a "new year's resolution." Except I'm resolving for a new life, not just a year.

Many thanks to Andrew Willmore for not actually permitting me to use the 29 Bear, but still letting me anyway. Huzzah!

Ion - Kyle Rayner's return to his own book!

I have known about this series for a couple of months now, but I am stoked about it! After a brief hiatus from comics (I quit for a girl... it figures), I returned to my first love in 1996. One of the first things I read was The Final Night by Karl Kesel and Ron Marz.

Now I had never been a DC fan before, so it was a big step for me to try it out at 19 years of age. In this book, I found an everyman hero that was a controversial, and he went by Green Lantern. Now, they were calling this guy Kyle and I knew that Hal Jordan had been Green Lantern when I quit, so i asked around and apparently, DC had replaced a styrofoam character Hal Jordan with a cocky young 20-something guy.

I thought he was interesting, so I tried the Green Lantern series.

I picked up the next available issue that looked like a good starting place (after Hal Jordan's "Funeral" in #81). That happened to be the issue you see on the right - issue #82. I found that Kyle reminded me a lot of Spider-man, which, at the time was just getting back around to being Peter Parker after the whole clone saga thing (yes, I just missed it!) and had not gotten back around to where he needed to be (he still hasn't but that's for another entry). Kyle was the character i could most relate to in all the comics I read. I picked up #83, and after that, I was hooked. I collected all the back issues I could and PRESTO!, Green Lantern became my favorite character. The series remained awesome until Marz left the book in issue #125. There were four fairly awful fill in books until Judd Winick's very mediocre run beginning in #129. Winnick started out good, but he started pushing his ever present political agenda. Eventually, Winnick buckled under the pressure from fans stating that they were tired of Kyle being a rookie, and that he needed to mature the character. Ion was the result.

Ion was a failry decent story centered around Kyle having Omnipotance and Omnipresence. Yes, he was a god. It did mature the character, but I thought it felt a little rushed. All of the sudden, Kyle was handing out super powers like they were candy and making the lame walk (literally!), along with becoming Earth's most powerful being. Oh yes, more so than Superman. He was all powerful, but he gave it all up to recreate what Hal had destroyed. The planet OA.

The book went down hill fast after the Ion storyline. Winnick was often filled in by the atrocious Ben Raab. Worst writer in comics. I swear. When Winnick was replaced by Raab for about 18 issues, I thought I might lose my mind, but then I heard that...

They were bringing back Ron Marz. Yes!

For Kyle's last story. NO!

Kyle's run as the main protagonist of the Green Lantern book ended with #181 (at left), an even 100 issues after I began collecting them. Since then, DC has brought back Hal Jordan as Green Lantern and he remains one of the dullest characters in all of comicdom.

But with the events of Infinite Crisis, Ion has been rebirthed! Sure, he'll no longer be called Green Lantern, but Kyle Rayner is back in his own solo book. I know that DC is marketing him as "what if Kyle's a villain now" but he's not. DC won't make the same mistake twice.

Please if you are into comics at all, chreck this series out. The more it sells, the more likely it is that it will become ongoing, and if it becomes ongoing, and you bought it, I'll give you fifty cents. I promise.

George Washington Carver

Carver Tribute

Wikipedia on George Washington Carver

I took a trip Tuesday to Tuskegee, Alabama for a black history project I was working on for my church. I've known about George Washington Carver for a long time, but last February, I re-educated myself about him for the first time as an adult. You know, there is much more to this man than what the history books read. He loved people, and spent all of his life for the betterment of not only his race, but of mankind in general. He was a botanist, geologist, chemist, teacher, mentor, but most of all a philanthropist, always putting the needs of others before himself.

He developed cost friendly ways to produce food, energy, paint, dyes, medicine, paste, rubber, ink, fabrics, paper, beverages, Cosmetics, insecticides, fuel... and the list goes on and on. Having invented 100 uses for the sweet potato, and over 300 uses for the peanut, this man single handedly changed not only th agricultural industry, but also the way it was viewed.

Read more about him. It'll make you feel good to know that people like George Washington Carver have existed and still exist today!

The most hideous thing ever.

eBay: AMAZING SPIDERMAN ORIG MARVEL COMIC ART OIL PAINTING (item 6608010277 end time Mar-01-06 19:35:35 PST)

Holy Cow... Words fail me.

Black Hole HC by Charles Burns review, No spoilers.

Okay. I expected this book to be strange and artistic, but no way did I expect it to be like this! I purchased this book on Amazon, along with the aforementioned Girls. I had read a brief review/ spotlight on this book in wizard magazine and I thought the concept of a Venereal Disease that mutates the infected was an intriguing idea. There was NO WAY I expected this book to have any sort of emotional pull to it, but it does.

It has an emotional pull alright, just not in the way that you would normally perceive that sort of thing. This book was written and drawn with such raw emotion that you could feel the atmosphere in which these character were immersed. If they were depressed, you not only knew it from the words, but you also sympathized with them on a visceral level. When they lusted, you understood why, even though their situations were often outrageously grotesque.

Another thing I appreciated about the book was its non-sequitor style of storytelling. You have to be careful reading this book, as I could see it being easy to lose track of the main characters by the nature of the storytelling.

I knew that this book would not be a normal book, and it wasn't. I wanted to feel more comfortable with the material, hoping that eventually, the edge would come off - but it didn't. I didn't want to feel for some of the characters in the book, but I did. I just wanted to read a book that required no thought processing, but I was engrossed from the beginning.

This book was extremely disturbing. I loved it.

Girls TPB by the Luna Bros. no spoilers.

Okay, last week I made a purchase on Amazon. Which usually means I did something stupid, like cleaned out whatever disposable income I had accrued (yeah right - accrued). This time was a bit different, as I had... TAX MONEY! So, my love of the Sequential Medium is on another upswing, so it looks like I'll be reviewing a few books as I read them. Girls was the first book I read from said purchase and I must say, I liked it. There were ups and downs, but the biggest sell point for me, as a reader, is that at the end of the book, I was ready for the next installment.

This book is an eerie, small town suspense-thriller much in the same vein as Stephen King's Maine based stories. without going into any plot details, the concept of this book (which hasn't actually been revealed as of this first TPB) is creepy. The Luna Brother do a great job of pulling you into a story by first making you relate to Ethan's plight with Girls and then, somewhere along the way, you become totally immersed in the twisted world of Pennystown and its inhabitants.

The drawback that some may find to this book is the pacing in the script. Personally, I prefer a character driven story to one in which you are plunged, mid-action into some sequence. This may seem cool, but ultimately, because of the lack of character investment, leaves the reader entertained, but not hooked. Of course this is not only just my opinion - its the right opinion. I hear a lot of criticism about the pacing of a lot of current books, i.e. - Girls, and anything Brian Michael Bendis writes. People complain about these titles, as if someone were making them read said titles. So, my only CAVEAT is that there is a lot of character progression, but plot progression is deliberately slow and paced nicely. I can't wait for the second trade...

What is this Blog all about?

Well, to all two of you that will read this blog, it's pretty much whatever I want it to be. Hopefully I'll be able to frequently update it. Some things you may see here are: Thoughts, Opinions, Reviews, and just general Hogwash. I'm gonna post pretty much whatever I feel like I should, so there. Eat that.

Welcome to my pretentious Blog...

Well, I've been thinking about starting a blog for a while now, and here is my first post... Hopefully I'll be able to post something worthwhile at some point in the near future...