new jersey sux i

In New Jersey, all gas is full service. Before visiting New Jersey, the last full service gas station I saw was 25+ years ago, riding in the car with my mom. Apparently, there are still some backwaters where they exist.

save batman: odyssey

Neal Adam's Batman: Odyssey is one of the most bizarre, surreal, hilarious, incomprehensible vomit-splatters of excess ever committed to the comic page. After running 6 issues, it disappeared from shelves, after revealing in issue 5 a plot twist that (contra the insanity of surrounding events) illustrated a (I thought) very clever insight into the nature of Batman.

[Spoiler? ~ the idea that Batman is being "distracted" (by "clowns" (Joker, Riddler, etc.) who "escape" (yeah right) on a regular basis from so-called Arkham Asylam) from some real, deeper (implication: non-clown) problem / conspiracy / evil.]

Why did the series disappear? It appears from dropped sales and (more specifically) a lack of solicits. Neal Adams himself put out a plea to fans to encourage their local stores to solicit the rest of the story. Help the cause! Don't you want to see the "neanderthals, evolved dinosaurs, magicians, war, death, gnomes, trolls and tests, the like of which Batman, the modern Ulysses has never faced in his life... all happening in a real underworld" ?

If you doubt, check out this extremely entertaining review / summary / homage.

jon on ron

here.

impending doom

message in the mountains

smith on station

The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice.

~ Adam Smith (1759) The Theory of Moral Sentiments

dictatorship of security