Potatoes Have Feelings Too

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Apparently since it's my fault the update was late, I should be the one to write the rant...

I don't owe you an explanation.

I bought Astonishing X-Men: Torn, the third Astonishing X-Men graphic novel yesterday, and proceeded to read a half year's worth of comics in one evening. This is a series that continues to impress me and is one of the few comic series I'm actually reading at the moment. The Torn story arc grabbed me every bit as much as the first arc, Gifted did. John Cassaday's art is fantastic and Joss Whedon's typical banter works surprisingly well for the X-Men.

I also appreciate how Cyclops is portrayed. A lot of X-Men writers make him incredibly dull, but Whedon's portrayal of Cyclops is reminiscent of Chris Claremont's writing from the 80's, when Cyclops actually had a personality. This is, of course, before Claremont's writing began to suck. Similarly, Wolverine is handled very well; many writers make him into just a clawed fighter with an attitude (Wolverine in my experience is one of Marvel's worst written books), and while I won't say I think he's the most fascinating X-Man, Joss uses him wisely and there are even some laugh out loud moments involving Wolverine in the story.

I'm tired of ranting now.

-Kevin

Monday, March 05, 2007

Is it normal to be intimidated by research papers? Its the second half of the semester, midterms are mostly over and the home stretch is in sight. Unfortunately, its not so much of a stretch as it is a huge gauntlet of terrifying scholarly obelisks, whirling with bladed opinion and barbed conjecture.

I've always been good at having an opinon, and terrible at actually backing it up. The problem is that I don't really care if anyone agrees with me. I'm not interested in convincing people, if I'm right, I will be shown to be right in due time. I also don't particularly require credit for any of my opinions. Academics seem to traffic primarily in recognition, and I just don't care. The truth is the truth and it was around long before anyone "discovered" it. Particularly in cases where the truth has yet to be discovered, and people are just waving their degrees at it.

Unfortunately, I need my own degree to wave, now that I've sunk 5 years and uncountable thousands of dollars into it. So I guess I'd better start getting used to being awesome? Well, more substantially awesome than hypothetically awesome I guess.

- Emrys