Geeking Out.

Okay, so we're gonna talk about something else here. If you came to immerse yourselves in the Current Adventures of Miss Pirate Queen Ghost Princess as she rails against the evils of bees in her garden and vegetables in her pasta, well, you're just gonna have to wait until she does something adorably impossibly cute, which'll probably be tomorrow morning during breakfast, because that's just how she rolls, yo, but anyway, today, like I said, we're talking about something else, something that's near and dear to my shrivelled little lump-of-coal heart.


See, I read a lot of comics.


And when I say a lot of comics, I mean A LOT. It's kind of an addiction. In fact, if one were to ask hypothetically if my house were on fire, which would I probably pay more attention to, my comics or my daughter, one might be disturbed by my answer. (Listen, she's SMART. She knows how to get out of the house on her own. In fact, she's usually leaving the house on her own every day before I have the chance to get any underwear on her, so I think she knows what she's doing, okay? Get off my back.)


Don't get me wrong: I may have a lot of comics, and I may try to keep them in good shape, but it's not because I'm hoping to cash them in for a nice retirement fund one day (that's what my limited edition Pokemon are for). It's because I like to read them, and I like to let other people read them, because when it comes down to it, some of the most challenging and provocative literature around these days is being presented in comic book form, and the more people who know about it, the better.


Plus: geeking out over comics with fellow geeks is pretty goddamned fun.


Which is why, four days out of five, I'm bringing stacks of reading material into work to lend to so-and-so or whatsername or whosit and generally making a nuisance of myself by turning well-adjusted, law-abiding, normal people into weird anti-social fanboys; and of course it was during one of these moments (when I'm pretty sure I was expounding on how a certain run of Legion Of Superheroes during the 80's was not just high-adventure space-opera fun, but was also a subtle commentary on the comic industry's refusal to entertain any sort of narrative growth or evolution, or at least woud've been if a) the editorial department hadn't thrown a wrench in the works by constantly changing which characters the writers and artists were allowed to work with, and b) the main writer would've finished his goddamned scripts...) that Kali suggested that I should possibly write a column about comics. 


Which, y'know, stroked my ego for a bit, and I think I spent the rest of that day aswoon in my own imagined glory as Comic Book Afficionado Extraordinaire, before realizing that basically that title translates into BIG GIANT NERD WITH TOO MUCH TIME ON HIS HANDS AND FAR TOO MANY OPINIONS. Still: at any given moment, close to a third of my collection is not on my shelves, due to everyone and their dog voraciously devouring any old rag I show them, and yet (and here's the thing) there are still more people than not who look at me blankly when I mention names like Grant Morrison or Warren Ellis, or titles like Scalped or Criminal or OHMIGOD HOW MANY OF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE INVISIBLES YET???


Well, damn. Obviously, y'all need to be educated. And, seeing as I've been reading these stupid things since, well, for as long as I can remember, obviously I've gotta be the one to educate y'all on whatchy'all should be reading and (also as important) what you should be avoiding, and maybe even a little bit about comic stores and the strange creatures that dwell within (and if any of you mention anything about The Big Bang Theory, I'll pimp-slap you, are we clear?). 


So, for the next few days, I'm gonna talk about comics. Feel free to ignore it. Or, hey, maybe you're an even bigger fanboy than me, and you might recognize that I need to be schooled in my arrogance; well, then, feel free to do so (unless, of course, you're talking about Stan Lee, in which case: you're wrong, he's a whore, shut up). 


Now I must go watch kung-fu. Be good, or I'll bend the covers on all of your first issues.

Walking WIth Hazel: The Princess Gets Her Hands Dirty. Kinda.

So, yesterday, The Little Miss came over a little earlier than usual, which meant that Dad had to get up a little earlier than usual, which meant that there was a lot of coffee to be had, because Dad doesn't do well with mornings. Like AT ALL. Still he was up, and had some time to kill before The Little Miss arrived, so he decided to stop being a disrespectful neighbour or whatever it is that homeowners call each other and rake up the carpet of leaves that'd gathered over the last week on his lawn.

Which was actually kinda fun, as most yardwork tends to be, its just that Dad does so little of it that he tends to forget the fact. And wouldn't ya know it, The Little Miss arrived just as Dad had made the last pile, so we decided it was time to go inside and have more coffee so that Hazel could show off her new castle to her Mom; and lemme tell ya, it's a castle worth showing off. It's got three towers, and a drawbridge with an alligator underneath it, and one of the towers has a catapult, and another one has a trapdoor that leads to a dungeon, and there are steps on the outside so that invaders can kinda climb up, but it's also got a portion of the wall that collapses into a sort-of deck for fightin' on, as well it's got a cauldron on top right over the drawbridge, which at first Dad thought was for dumping boiling oil on the invaders, which seemed both awesome if a little gruesome when you think about the fact that this was designed for, what, 4-year-olds? But it turned out to be a cannon, actually, which was just as awesome, and it came with 5 knights: two black, two red, and one that was black and red, and, well, if that ain't ridiculously cool then I don't know what is.


So Mom and I attacked the castle with giant stuffed mice, and Hazel defended the castle, and then coffee was done, and it was time to get back to the yardwork, so we waved goodbye to Mom and then went to clean up the leaves.


Which Hazel had decided that she wanted to help with, so we found her a pair of workgloves that she could wear so that she wouldn't have to touch any slugs or gross stuff, but those gloves were too big, so she decided that she needed new ones: her ball-glove and her oven mitt. 

Which worked FANTASTICALLY.

Of course, she was wearing her fairy wings and princess tiara and carrying her magic wand, so she was obviously well-suited for this kinda work, as she proved by grabbing the rake and spreading the piles Dad had already made all over the yard. 

Sigh. 


Still, we made good time, filling about four big garbage bags full of leaves, during which time Hazel taught Dad how to speak in chicken-language, which he's unable to translate here, but rest assured she was just as fluent in it as she was the previous week when she claimed she could speak in Spanish, which leads Dad to say, good try, kid, you'll get it one day, and then we talked about butterflies, and Hazel was asking why they have curled antennae, and Dad explained that they use them to sense things, kinda like ears and noses and tongues rolled into one, which led us to conclude that butterflies run around all day with their tongues hanging out like puppy dogs.


Then Hazel showed Dad her impression of a puppy dog, which he tried taking pictures of, but they came out all blurry so you'll just have to use your imagination.


Then we looked at the birdhouse, and decided that we'd clean it out NEXT week, because we didn't feel like getting the ladder out, and then it was time for lunch.


And that was our morning. Other stuff happened later on in the day, but Dad's gotta go make pancakes now, so you'll just have to be happy with what you got.