I Don’t Have Time To Play the Xbox Series X That I Just Bought

This is ridiculous. What the hell was I thinking? Oh, the hubris!

Amazon’s availability of brand new Xbox Series X consoles has been extremely low since its release on November 10, 2020. As in, indefinitely unavailable. Only within the last two months has Amazon extended an invitation-only option to secure an Xbox if one is deemed worthy. All you have to do is submit an invitation request and wait it out. I thought, why not? I’ve been casually checking availability once in a while anyway without much urgency to actually buy the thing; what could it hurt? With a confident click of the mouse, I sent my invitation request. I put it out of my mind immediately. I was expecting to hear back in the next six months. Perhaps a year.

I got the email two days later with the subject “Congrats, you’re invited!”

Eep.

Xbox Series X - You're Invited!

It begins…

Well, damn. Okay. I wasn’t prepared! They caught me off guard! 72 hours? Why, that’s somewhere between 2 – 4 days! They cornered me into a hasty decision! $500. $550 with tax. Shit, that’s a lot of food I could buy to feed my kids, I– nope! Too late! Click click click, proceed to checkout.

Two days later, it was in my hands.

What was I getting myself into?

Oh my God, dude, I have to open the box? It’s 9pm on a Sunday, I have work in the morning, and I have to open the box? Gotta get a knife. Ok, easy does it, I don’t want to carve into the console like all the cars I keyed this week. Why are there so many pieces of tape on this thing? Which way does the box even open? Every side is folded into a different edge! It’s like one of those impossible figure illusions.

Whew, ok. I got it. Careful. Open the box carefully so that the console doesn’t crash onto my hardware floor and scatter 19,000 broken pieces all over my house like razor-sharp shrapnel. Oooh, cool, it comes with its own HDMI cable. My Xbox 360 didn’t come with one. I had to steal one from work.

Jesus, everything is wrapped up in this thin foam packaging. It doesn’t look like it would help whatsoever if I just dropkicked this shit down my stairs, but I won’t try that until I play Dark Souls. Why did they secure these cords with tape. MORE tape? I’m a busy man! I can’t be fumbling around with– ah, there we go, that was easy actually. Now to just take the controller included with the console and– WHY AREN’T THE BATTERIES ALREADY IN IT? I spent $550 on this! With tax! And how old are these batteries? There’s a 2021 date on them, aren’t those expiration dates supposed to be about seventeen years in the future? It’s going to corrode the electrical contacts. That’s going to blow up my whole house when it inevitably explodes, causing me to descend to Hell before I get a chance to confess all my sins!

Ok, never mind, these batteries seem fine. There’s another date on there that says 2029. That’s when that asteroid was supposed to hit Earth. That’s a long way away, so we’re good for now.

Xbox Series X - Andre Braugher

Captain Holt has never touched an Xbox in his life.

A plug here, and outlet there, some connections here, now we’re in business! This thing is huge, it can barely fit in that little shelf underneath my cheap 11-year-old Target TV stand. I have to move all these kids toys we shove in there for no reason at the end of every day. They can just go in the garbage. They won’t even miss them!

Oh God, what now? I have to link my console to my Xbox app? My what now? I barely even have a cell phone! I already have two apps and one of them tells me the weather. Fine, Microsoft, you forced my hand again. Now, with the app, I can set up my new console exactly two minutes faster! That’s actually pretty damn good, every second counts in my hellish existence. That, however, takes me 25 minutes since I’m a goddamned moron who forgot to turn his WiFi on. That’s a whole episode of Bob’s Burgers! This isn’t worth it!

What’s this now? Syncing the console with the controller? Why? I never had to do that before. Isn’t it like a TV remote? Why do I have to do this? And this takes me another 30 minutes because I press the button on the console and then it blinks and then I press the button on the controller and then it blinks and then nothing happens. Then I go through every single combination of pressing and holding and doing one before the other and sacrificing a hippopotamus to Baphomet and nothing is working! It’s not working! It’ll never work! I spent $550 on this thing with tax and now every controller I ever try to connect to this damn thing is going to– oh, there it goes. I don’t know what I did, but there it goes. I hope I won’t have to do it again.

Xbox Series X - Bill Gates

Look, nerd, you stay away from the Microsoft products! Bad! Bad Bill Gates!

Look at this thing! I can re-download my purchased games! I can browse the store! I had never bought an Xbox One, so there’s plenty of last-generation games I need to catch up on. There’s a whole slew of old Xbox 360 games I wanted to play too and never got around to either. This is great! Wait a minute, what’s this? They have Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX, X, X-2, XII, XIII, XIII-2, and XV available? Remastered? Are you shitting me? I haven’t played X in 17 years, I’d love to play that again. I never thought I would ever do that again! I’ve always wanted to play VII, VIII, and IX but I have never had the opportunity. And now I do? I’ll never play all this! I–

Hold on. A remastered compilation of the PS1 Crash Bandicoot games? A remastered compilation of the PS1 Spyro the Dragon games? Have I lost my mind? Those were my FAVORITE games in the late ’90s. And I get to play them again and relive some childhood magic? You mean here, in 2022, I get to play all six of these masterpieces with enhanced graphics? But I have so many other new games I’ve never played before! I have a job and kids and I’ve rekindled interest in other hobbies through this blog! I’d love to find time to read novels again someday! I–

YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS. A REMASTERED TRILOGY EDITION OF GRAND THEFT AUTO III, GRAND THEFT AUTO: VICE CITY, AND GRAND THEFT AUTO: SAN ANDREAS?

I can’t own this Xbox. What fuck did I get myself into? This cannot happen to me, this is too much. It’s too damn much. I’m hyperventilating. I’m going to go crawl into a hole. I can’t handle this. I’m going to cry. Someone, anyone, please, just hold me. Tell me it’ll be ok.


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East of West, Issue #18 – “The Path of the Prophet”

* Part 3 of 14 of the The Apocalypse: Year Two storyline *

Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: East of West, Issue #18 – “The Path of the Prophet”! In the previous installment, Death meets up with Xiaolian again (for one last time, as the Message prophesies) and they do really strange sex stuff in front of everybody! Like animals. Anyway, they share an earnest fear for their son’s well being and his involvement in the apocalypse yada yada yada they fuck and they’ll never see each other again.

Other than that? The Great Beast, aka Babylon, continues to be gaslighted by his Balloon. Archibald’s niece is his Chief of Staff, a smarty who will be able to point out flaws in his ideas. John Freeman 8 is going to bleed the Union dry. And all these people will probably be dead after this issue! Probably not. But maybe!

East of West, Issue #18 [March, 2015]
Written by: Jonathan Hickman
“The Path of the Prophet”

East of West, Issue #18

“Spin against the axis.”

Cool quote, man. Very cerebral. Doesn’t make sense, though. You can’t spin against an axis. Sorry. *pushes up nerd glasses*

Babylon saunters through the scary, creepy woods with his mean, manipulative balloon. From Babylon’s point of view, through his beer goggles, the orb actually looks like a balloon. A large, frowning balloon.

“Okay, seriously. This place is creepy. How much longer until we’re out of the woods?” Babylon asks his captor. I’ve noticed in the last couple of issues that Babylon has dropped the Big Band Theory Sheldon act and has been speaking more like a normal kid. I suppose that’s what being unhooked from the Matrix will get ya.

Balloon doesn’t answer in a straightforward manner. There’s a lot of “what really is ‘here’ after all?” or “permutations of variables are consistent with location positions blah blah blah shut up geek”. Babylon tells him less talk, more navigating. Get them out of the woods faster, damnit.

Plus, Babylon knows very well that Balloon is equipped with GPS and MapQuest and a 1760s sextant, so don’t jerk him around. Balloon knows exactly where they are, and he ain’t talkin’.

Deflecting completely, Balloon instructs Babylon to hop on top of him so they can avoid the “dangerous animals in the area”, specifically one that has been tracking them. He goes on to relate their situation to a Robert Frost poem. “The best way out is always through.” How do you like them apples, buckaroo?

East of West, Issue #18

Again, you can’t spin against an axis. Doesn’t anyone listen to me??

Babylon indulges Balloon’s musings. Because why not? They have all the time in the world after all, and Babylon’s a big nerd when push comes to shove. He mentions to Balloon that he sees a clearing ahead and continues Balloon’s philosophical train of thought.

“But you’re talking about a man [Robert Frost] who was surrounded by nothing but tragedy… his family history of mental illness. His wife died. I mean, the man watched four of his children die… This all means something.”

Balloon asks him to get to the point.

“The way through– that’s the metaphorical white light. The road not taken– living when you got no business doing so.” Balloon concludes that Frost had any guts, he would’ve sent a bullet ripping through his throat. But he didn’t. Makes you think, eh?

Balloon tells him that he’s wrong, but he nevertheless admires his interpretation. But enough about, there’s a beast on its way. Babylon assumes the position in a large, verdant meadow with a single green tree. He sees a desolate wasteland with a group of gnarled, dead trees. The beast is here! “Evasion scenario 1002, Balloon,” the little pipsqueak commands, “and tool up.”

Balloon turns on his weapon systems and the beast arrives. It’s Ezra Orion riding the Hell Demon! “Stand down, DHF001-DFF09.666. I mean you no harm,” Ezra tells the orb after overriding its weapon systems with a secret password: “Chosen”. The orb tells this bald bitch to call him Balloon now. It’s a better name. It’s also a better name than Ezra! Ha ha, nerd!

Ezra is like ha ha ha ha ha ha I’m not Ezra anymore! I also have a better name. It’s Bumper Pool. Pfft. Ok, it’s Prophet Orion! Not much of a change, admittedly, but there’s a nice ring to it.

Prophet Orion looks like a gross, decomposing old man on a lumpy, toothy, smelly looking demon. This is what Babylon sees:

East of West, Issue #18

Hello, son, I am L. Ron Hubbard! I have a cool pamphlet that I want you to read.

“I am an oracle of the times. Watch me laugh. Hear me lie.”

“We are all so blind. Won’t someone show us the way?”

Flashback to however long ago that Babylon McDeathMao was a baby. So, like, twelve years or something? The three Horsemen are actually HorseMEN…except that two of them are women, but whatever! Semantics!

“Here it is. Like some useless little worm…” War says with disdain in her every word, “I plucked it from its cradle while the mother wept and mewled.”

Pay no mind to this awful, nasty woman, Orion! She’s just mad because she misses the old Wild West days from about 175 years ago! Also Genghis Khan. Also Putin and Ukraine. Good times, good times.

Ezra Orion is on his knees before the Horsepersons. “Are you an agent of the end of times,” Conquest asks her large adult son, “Are you what the Message demands?” That old chestnut. It’s never a yes and she knows it. Come on, now.

“Then prove yourself,” she says, tossing the baby to him like a dang football. Here’s what’s going on: this is a simulation. Not a stimulation, mind you, but it could very well be that too for all I know. Orion’s into some pretty sick shit.

So here’s what’s happening: Cheveyo and Archibald are witness to Orion sticking that Matrix helmet on the young DeathMao.

East of West, Issue #18

Yeah, stop crying you little nerd. Prepare to get redpilled. Or bluepilled. Whatever, I don’t remember. You probably have access to Reddit on that thing, go check with them.

Cheveyo brings the goods. This is all primo technology from his people. “The program we designed is scalable and will need adjusting over time,” Orion mansplains to the other men in the room, “We will learn as he learns.”

They turn that sucker on, and the rest is history! Cool, huh? Wild stuff!

Sphere Balloon Orb has been activated. The fun begins. “Peekaboo, I see you,” the Orb coos at the child, presenting itself as a balloon from the very beginning.

And here we are today, with Balloon manipulating the image of Orion as a new age Joel Osteen. Orion’s here to make some, uh, modifications to Balloon. Babylon asks if he can play with his giant gerbil. Orion says yes.

“His name is Buer and he loves to play fetch…or really anything that involves biting,” smiles Orion. Babylon grabs a stick and throws it. “Go get it!” he goads the Hell Demon. The Hell Demon complies. Meanwhile, Balloon’s core had separated itself from its shell and moseys on over to Orion for a little chat.

“Where’d you get the demon?” Orb asks.
“Cheveyo summoned it from the plain and I grew it as an arm,” Orion responds sulkily.
“Hmm. Sounds painful.”

“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Babylon chirps with a lightbulb over his head! He rides the Hell Demon like a horse. They’re really becoming good friends! It’s so touching. On paper.

“You’ve changed,” the Orb tells sad-sack, lumpy-headed Orion. It’s because the Armistice is gone, so all that work building it for nothing. Also, by the way, he just realized that he’s been a pawn all this time in the Horsemen game, so that sucks too.

East of West, Issue #18

Hell yeah, jumping rope transcends species AND dimensional barriers!

Orion explains that he represented the Word, sure, but then he realized he had to become the Word to fulfill the prophecy of the Word. It was a choice he had to make. ERGO, while the Chosen are spending a lot of time dictating little DeathMao’s fate, it’s really up to him in the end.

Oh, ok, so free will then? Let’s all just get our free will sticks and bash everyone’s brains out.

Orion asks the Orb to take out his SD card. “He will be or he will not be the Great Beast. Let’s see what he shows us.”

Here’s what Babylon shows them: he tells the Hell Demon that it’s time for a nap, and curls up in one of its 200-ft tendrils and drifts off to sleep. The Hell Demon joins him! Awww, adorable.

East of West, Issue #18

Doesn’t it just warm your cold, dead heart?

At the People’s Republic of America’s staging area, Xiaolian and Death hold hands while watching the envoy move around the sky like a creepy mechanical snake. She tells hubby dear that the Endless Nation agreed to assist PRA in the war, but, as you remember, the Endless Nation all but exhausted their supplies and manpower fucking up Texas, so they need Xiaolian and her people. Xiaolian has the upper hand here! That’s some good shit right there.

“I buried our real interests like seeds and reaped a harvest,” she tells him, explaining that she had a long list of demands for the Endless Nation before she would agree to theirs. Like, 11pm curfews, full access to the remote control, and Pizza Night every Saturday. Oh, and at least one trip to Six Flags over the summer.

And although Mao Town’s real demands weren’t very forthright, the Endless Nation will catch on eventually. They have to. “Doesn’t matter,” Death responds, “Anyone else’s urgency pales to our own. What did they give you?”

“The location signature of every mobile AI platform currently in use.”

Oh…huh…ok…that’s fun…uhm…

Ok, well, gotta go! But before Death fucks off forever, he’s got a little present for Xiaolian! *throws her a locket* You can talk into it and Death will hear her, but he can’t talk back and she’ll never know if he actually heard her or not. Ok, bye!

Death mounts his fireball-shooting bug horse. “Hurry back to me,” she says. “You have my word, Lady Mao,” he responds, lying. “The only thing that could keep me away… is me.”

lol

East of West, Issue #18

There goes the best husband I’ve ever met…

“What follows…”

The next morning, alone in the meadow save for his Balloon, Babylon sleeps peacefully in the meadow. “DING!” Balloon goes off like an egg timer, “Time to wake up, young man. Exciting new adventures await.”

Grbbrbrbrb…zzzzzz…..ZZZZZZ…….. Z!

“Everybody left?” the child asks groggily.
“Yes. But I’m sure we’ll see them again.”
“Okay.”

Babylon has never felt this sensation in his stomach before, so he’s not sure if he’s right about it or not, but he thinks he’s hungry? He could really go for a Hungry-Man TV dinner right about now. The one with Salisbury steak in it.

“Well then, Babylon.” Balloon smiles, “You should eat.”

Final Thoughts

I hope Babylon gets his Salisbury steak.


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Sucky Funnies for August 21, 2022

Summer is almost over and the school year is upon us. My oldest daughter starts kindergarten tomorrow! Isn’t that fucked up. I think so! Especially since she’s going to beat everyone up while she’s there. That’s my girl!

I’m switching things up for a while starting today. Three usual strips, but I’ll be nixing the user comments section on those. Then, I’ll post today’s Mallard Fillmore (which has the most loopy, completely unhinged comments I’ve ever seen on any strip) and spotlight those. Mallard Fillmore every Sunday until I get tired of that! How long will that take? Probably two weeks.

Frazz

Frazz, August 21, 2022

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Everyone’s favorite Calvin & Hobbes ripoff comic comments on sports-related nonsense that pretends to be way more thought-provoking than it actually is (not at all whatsoever). Baseball teams have their preseason in nice weather. Football teams have their preseason in nice weather. It’s like a really, really shitty version of that George Carlin bit. Jef Mallett doesn’t know when to stop ripping everything off.

Would you want your child to spend the day alone in a canoe with the school janitor? Something nefarious is going on here and I don’t want to be around to witness the worst of it.

Arlo and Janis

Arlo and Janis, August 21, 2022

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The only thing I ever have to say about Arlo and Janis is that there is never a discernible punchline. It’s like an avantgarde piece of musique concrète in the form of four colors of ink, but there’s no artistic merit to it nor any actual underlying message. It’s just the two most boring adults on Earth living their boring lives in front of everyone who never asked to see it.

“August is the traditional vacation time in much of Europe!” Not even the exclamation point can save such a miserably stilted sentence. And it only gets more dull from there! I’m going to have a goddamn heart attack if I keep writing about Arlo and Janis. I need my pills.

Heathcliff

Heathcliff, August 21, 2022

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Speaking of avantgarde art, Heathcliff is the best strip in the newspaper that you didn’t know was good. Helmets and gum and robots and Garbage Apes and poker with giraffes, every installment is a true masterpiece!

Never mind that Heathcliff is wearing a comical bee costume. Never mind that Heathcliff wears a constant visage of satisfaction. Never even mind that Heathcliff plays “Flight of the Bumblebee” flawlessly on his fife (which, I believe, is accurately notated here in the strip). I want to draw your attention to the second panel. No background. No speech. No actions. Just Heathcliff’s bee head on the bottom. Remarkable. Resplendent.

I would’ve made a joke about the Pied Piper instead, but if Heathcliff himself heard that I was naysaying he would have me smited to kingdom come! So I apologize, sir. My liege. I’ll never, ever again allow my thoughts to stray in such a manner.

Mallard Fillmore

Mallard Fillmore, August 21, 2022

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All the testimonials, the corroborating evidence, actually discovered evidence, and the consistency of the criminal activity among literally dozens upon dozens of individuals isn’t enough for your typical right-wing detached-from-reality lunatic like Loren Fishman. It’s all still speculation. It’s all still hearsay. And he’s going to stick it to all those liberal pieces of woke shit today by representing their kind as a well-dressed, neatly combed man with a giant butt chin! That’ll fucking show those lefty cucktards. *fart fart fart* There’s the democrat chin again, giving its opinions! *fart* *fart*

SATX2CCFL: “Hearsay and speculation is what drives the Leftists and Dem Trump haters. The Mueller Investigation, two impeachments and now Pelosi’s Selected committee. All based on hearsay and speculation. And now an FBI raid on MAL. ALL PARTISAN POLITICAL WITCH HUNTS. All perpetuated with a compliant and cooperative MSM.”

Strong words coming from a person whose username looks like a license plate! Zing!

What the…??: “Just got banned from the Times of San Diego for having an opinion of my own and sticking up for myself. I’ll admit I may have gone a bit overboard on a comment to another commenter but only after I was served up a plate of the other commenters disgusting drivel. I see this as a Badge of Honor. By the way, the ToSD is very left leaning…”

“Having an opinion of my own and sticking up for myself” usually means typing out a veritable colorful kaleidoscope of racist and sexist slurs while posting middle finger emojis and insisting that Anne Heche was right to plow her car into that house. And then wondering why people are so mad and mean to you about it on the Internet.

Dani: “Well folks, as much as this will enrage most liberals, to paraphrase the immortal words of Rush Limbaugh, I am heading out to my 15,000 gallon, in-ground pool to take a time out and enjoy the fruits of the obscene profits I have made throughout my hard-working life. Ta-ta!”

I thought Rush Limbaugh’s pool was filled with 15,000 gallons of Oxycontin and McDonald’s hamburgers.

Hey, that was fun! I’m looking forward to next Sunday already!


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American Horror Story, Season 1: Murder House – Vengeful Ghosts Be Hatin’

Through the Idiot Glass Disclaimer: There will be spoilers. If you’re even remotely interested in this show and you haven’t yet seen it, or if you’ll be mad if you accidentally read any possible spoilers about it, I’m going to chalk it up to “not my fucking problem”. You have been warned.
Discussion Subject: American Horror Story, Season 1 (2011) (FX)

American Horror Story - Season 1
I wanted to start watching this show for, literally, eleven years. Why did it take me so long? My wife and I used to watch almost everything together since we met: Six Feet Under, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Fargo, Game of Thrones, and many, many countless other shows with bleak and cynical messages. American Horror Story was always constantly on the backburner for no other reason than…there’s just so much out there to watch. She realized about two or three years ago (after having kids) that she can’t really stomach grim, grisly, violent, negative, and stark subject matter anymore. At least not at this point in her life. Especially when it comes to dangerous individuals with chaotic mental issues, the death or harm of children, and macabre subject matter of all kinds. And this show has all three in spades!

So, finally, after over a decade of having this show in the back of my mind, I watched it alone. There are a few close contenders, but I can firmly say that I loved Season 1 of American Horror Story more than any other season of a show I’ve watched in the last few years. And even though it’s often pretty over the top… yeah, my wife was better off. There’s some pretty disturbing shit going on here.

The Premise

The Harmon family is moving to a new house! Ben Harmon (Dylan McDermott) is a psychiatrist who fucked a woman who wasn’t his wife and he spends the whole season trying to atone for it. Vivien Harmon (Connie Britton) is the wifey victim of said affair who also had a recent miscarriage that didn’t help much with respect to mental health. Violet Harmon (Taissa Farmiga) is the sad-sack teenage daughter who spends lot of energy moping and crying. Here’s the catch: the new house is a Murder House!

American Horror Story - Season 1

Set yourself on fire, you doomed sack of meat. This is the Murder House!

It really doesn’t take them that long to figure out some serious shit is going on in the house, namely ghosts and people-who-may-be-ghosts but no one really finds that out until later. Ben does his work at home until he can get an office established, so many of his patients are just ghosts bound to the house, including his most troubling patient Tate (Even Peters). Tate spends the majority of the season making moves on Violet, which she is mind-boggling receptible to for a long while even though he finds it very difficult to avoid coming off as a complete fucking creep.

In real Breaking Bad fashion, the family can’t catch a break! And it’s pretty bad! Constant new stressors rear their ugly heads: money problems, Ben’s affair partner showing up to the house pregnant, a home invasion by serial killer enthusiasts, Vivien’s complications with her new pregnancy, an unidentified individual in a rubber BDSM suit terrorizin’ and rapin’, and many other insane and unpredictable circumstances.

Along the way, alive people with past connections to the house like Constance Langdon (Jessica Lange) and burny-faced Larry Harvey (Denis O’Hare) expend their energy manipulating the Harmons for their own selfish agendas. Constance believes that no matter who resides in the house, she is still Head Honcho! Mostly because half her family died there and she is still interested in keeping that line of communication open. Larry, being madly in love with Constance and, therefore, a complete lapdog, he tries to do what he can to get the house back for her. Much of this entails being a complete dickhead to Ben, which is funny.

The backstory of the house’s mystical, magical, ghostly powers begins in 1922 with its original owners: Charles Montgomery (Matt Ross), an ether-addled surgeon, and his wife Nora (Lily Rabe), an emotionally abusive socialite. There was some strife. Abortions were performed. Babies were murdered. It’s all pretty grim.

Anyway, eventually, the entire Harmon family dies one-by-one and are eternally bound to the house. The moral of the story (at least their story, which I found the most captivating as the biggest “victims” of the season even if they were the three worst characters) is that you can’t get any of your shit together until you’re dead. Then you lighten up a little bit. That’s good to know.

There are other characters. Other stuff happens too. Watch it yourself.

Oh yeah, and there’s an antichrist.

American Horror Story - Season 1

Little Damien’s gonna getcha. Don’t you know? This is the Murder House!

My Half-Baked Thoughts

Any random American Horror Story fan will give you a different season as their favorite, but I’ve seen Murder House near the top of many lists. I thought it was worth the 11-year wait, but it took me a few episodes to get a sense for what was actually going on. I was in my wary stage where I didn’t entirely trust the haphazard storytelling in the beginning, and I definitely didn’t connect with any of the characters for a while, but as the worldbuilding and plot threads started coming together it was obvious that I wasn’t going to end up being PISSED OFF and ANGRY and INCONSOLABLE.

American Horror Story - Season 1

This isn’t time to be giddy, Constance. This is the Murder House!

Here were the big two turning points for me:

1) The Westfield High massacre.
During the “Halloween” two-parter — the only day that the ghosts can leave the house and roam free to, like, go to Dairy Queen — Tate and Violet hang out at the beach during their little date. Violet doesn’t know Tate’s dead yet, but when five mangled and bleeding teenagers (good costumes guys, heh heh) show up to start harassing them, she starts suspecting something is a little off with her new beau.

This is the first moment of the season where I started to connect with Tate’s complexity as a character and stopped writing him off as a one-dimensional edgelord. The teens are revealed to be victims of Tate’s school shooting in 1994 and they’re all really pissed off at him. This is the first time I really noticed how he uses amnesia as an excuse to avoid confronting the horrible shit he did. Instead of, you know, actually having ghost-onset forgetfulness. You start to have mixed feelings about Tate going forward…

Which makes the opening scene of “Piggy Piggy” even more powerful. Almost as soon as the sympathy with Tate starts nudging you gently, a cold open flashes back to the horrendous mass murder. Shown in full. It’s the most suspenseful and chilling scene in the season, and it was my first real gut-wrenching “oh fuck” moment. The acting was brilliant. It was hard to watch.

2) Violet died four episodes ago.
This was the MAJOR moment. Leading up to the reveal of the corpse, as Tate was slowly taking (ghost-) Violet through the crawlspace, was admittedly a very predictable two minutes. We all knew what was coming. The writers knew when they were writing it that we were going to know what was coming! I know that the writers knew, while they were writing it, that that we were all going to know what was coming!

But it wasn’t about the reveal for me, it was the confirmation and the ensuing emotional aftermath.

American Horror Story - Season 1

Bug-infested corpses abound, my friends, for this is the Murder House!

The swirling, surreal panic that was overwhelming Violet from the moment she attempted to leave the property (only to suddenly reenter the house, over and over again), to the moment she was presented with her own decaying body was viscerally heartbreaking. Taissa Farmiga’s realistic, gasping cries just hit me, man. I can’t remember the last time I had felt this sorry for a TV character. Jesse Pinkman? Wile E. Coyote? Kevin after he spills all his chili?

Then you learn that Violet actually died four episodes earlier during her pill-popping suicide attempt. The only real clue was that Tate started acting differently toward her, almost out of pity. Not leaving the house? Not going to school? Not eating? Typical depression symptoms from the already-depressed teenager. I certainly didn’t notice.

Going forward from this moment, Violet’s arc becomes compelling to me because the ghost daughter needs to somehow get her parents out of the house without dishing out the super, terrible, awful, bad news. And then the thought of becoming eternally, ETERNALLY, stuck with Tate Langdon in a shitty ghost house quickly becomes an undesirable fate! The kid is weird.

Most of the end is surprisingly touching. Once Vivian dies she is reunited with her daughter. Ben contemplates suicide, but his family talks him into leaving the house with his new baby (and it almost happens, but he gets killed on his way out). And they all make it work anyway. The ghosts (the nicer ones, at least) all band together to scare the bejesus out of the new owners of the house on the first night, and they plan on doing the same to any new owners so that no one ever again is subjected to the same fate. They even have a Christmas! It’s all very bittersweet.

American Horror Story - Season 1

Disfigured faces and charred ghost wives? Did someone say MUUUUURDER HOUSE?!?!?!

Worth the Watch?

Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times yes. The nonlinear storytelling, the characterization, the range of emotions. I loved watching this, and I’m certain that a re-watch would give me a new perspective. Plus, I’d catch some of the stuff I missed the first time around.

I read that, while this may be an anthology series, there are threads of continuity throughout all of the seasons. Many of the same actors pop in to play new characters. That’s exciting! Oh wait, you already knew that? Because the show is already 11 years old? Well la dee da, Mr./Ms. “I-WATCH-TV-AS-IT-AIRS”. Go eat a candy-coated butt.


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Superman: Birthright, Issue #9

Superman: Birthright, Issue #9 – “Krypton Lives”

* Part 9 of 12 of the Superman: Birthright limited series *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Superman: Birthright, Issue #9 – “Krypton Lives”! In the previous installment, we get the entire full backstory of Lex’s falling out with Clark when they were teenagers. Lex never realizes Clark was always trying to be a friend. They’re both idiots.

Lex blows up his house and kills his father after trying to contact aliens.

Clark Kent rubs one out after feeling better from Kryptonite-sickness.

And the rest is history!

Superman: Birthright, Issue #9 [June, 2004]
Written by: Mark Waid
“Krypton Lives”

Superman: Birthright: Issue #9

Cover art looks boring. I do not give a damn about Krypton and its inhabitants, and fatty fat Mark Waid cannot make me. They all look so smug. La de da, look at us, we’re smart and dead. What a tragedy.

I feel like Clark should really just cut his losses at this point. He’s barely been Superman and now everyone’s all up his butt about it. Regroup, think of a new identity and a new costume. He can be Ultraman and then maybe put on a fucking mask.

But no, always forward! What else could possibly go wrong?

Lois Lane is on the scene of the aftermath of a huge building fire. The firefighter being questioned didn’t actually see Superman, per se, but “that water tower didn’t dump itself on this fire.”

Lois Lane is on the scene of the aftermath of a major hospital hazmat spill. The doctor being question didn’t actually see Superman, per se, but “some patients – mostly those on painkillers – claimed this ‘Superman’ contained it.”

Lois Lane is…yeah yeah yeah, you just missed him. He stopped the perpetrators and then took off like a rocket once informed that he, too, had warrants out for his arrest. Same old story.

That’s the ticket though! Get in and get out before bald megalomaniacs can spike you with kryptonite juice. You can squeak by this way for sure.

NEXT! Inexplicably, Lois Lane is on a mafia ship! The ship is full of mafia men! And these men want to kill Lois Lane because she has a lot of enemies in the Giacomo Family! And I’m like, what is going on, did I have a stroke just now? Are my Superman: Birthright Issue #9 pages all stuck together with a sticky white substance, spliced in with movie reel frames of the Godfather and Casino and Mafia!, the 1998 “comedy” movie?

Anyway, they start shooting a thousand bullets at her. Superman stops by in the nick of time, somehow.

Superman: Birthright, Issue #9

First question: you have the spunkiness of a Virgo, but is it true you’re actually…*checks Zodiac*… an Ophiuchus??

These 1920s Bugs Bunny gangsters stop in their tracks, eyes all bugged out, frowns curling around their massive, cartoonish underbites. “It’s him! Whoa! Whoa! Hold your fire! Superman, we have a message for y–”

ZAP! BZZZ! FLASH! HRRRRN!! SIZZLE! That’s his laser eyes cutting through the room. HEAT! FIITTZZZ!!

“What could you POSSIBLY have to say that I would want to hear?” Superman demands menacingly, eyes aglow with a dark, angry red hue, his adorable little spit curl dangling contemptuously over his brow.

Superman: Birthright, Issue #9

Boss likes to wine and dine! Fast friends, I guarantee it! Heh heh. Um

These mafia dudes are really shitting bricks now. They stammer and stutter their way through their offer: when the alien invasion happens, Superman’s people are likely going to need an operations network, right? Maybe some cash flow? Mister Giacomo has him covered; he wants to start an alliance with any and all slimy, tentacled alien-types! You dig?

He’s on the phone right now! Talk to him!

Hard pass.

I can’t tell exactly what happens next, but it looks like Superman picked up this entire ship and dropped it right into Mister Giacomo’s pool at his estate. Just destroying property left and right here. He’s got Lois in tow. She looks grateful!

“That’ll keep his fat fingers out of the Hob’s Bay area for a while,” Lois says triumphantly, like she had anything to do whatsoever with solving this problem. Getting involved with the mafia in the first place is a very, very big DIDN’T-HELP-ONE-BIT kind of situation.

Now that Superman is flying Lois around, she has plenty of time to ask him all those pressing questions she has at the ready. First of all, let’s catch the reader up: Lex Luthor claims that Superman is going to lead a race of alien warmongers to invade Earth, and since he is the so-called “smartest man at this Long John Silvers”, the whole world is running with it. Cops, feds, Department of Homeland Security, United Nations, Kathy Smingers from Pahrump, Nevada, everybody.

HOWEVER, I’m Lois Lane! And I don’t think you’re working on an alien invasion at all! Care to comment?

*tap tap* is this microphone on? Hello?

Superman: Birthright, Issue #9

So what? Everyone’s always trying to help everyone. That ain’t news. That’s 4:30am puff piece fodder!

Superman wonders why everyone is so eager to listen to Lex Luthor, even though Lois Lane literally JUST SAID that he’s smarter than everyone, so all the dumb people want to listen to the smart guy. I mean, I live on Earth and that’s definitely not how human beings work at all. We throw rocks at the smart guy here and try to push him down a well.

Everyone tries to do all sorts of manipulating for their own best interests, and Lex Luthor is just the loudest and most visible manipulator right now. After our brains get poisoned, it’s easier to be cynical than to trust someone as a knee-jerk reaction. So that’s why Lois Lane trusts Superman right now, at least, because she’s smart enough to draw her own conclusions at the moment based on the evidence she observes with her own senses.

I was just long-winded there, but it’s nothing compared to the amount of words they’ve packed into these panels. Holy Jesus.

What Lois is after is Superman’s side of the story. That way she can help filter out some of the noise from Lex Luthor. “If he’s lying, who are you? Are you an…an alien?” she hesitates, asking the big scary question to the guy who could drop her like a sack of moldy potatoes any second now if he really didn’t want to bone her so badly.

Superman says yes. But unfortunately, sister, he doesn’t know from WHERE or WHY HE’S HERE or anything else you want to know! Sucker! So you better start proving Luthor wrong some other way. For example, it ain’t fear that drives people. It’s…I’ll get back to you on that.

Superman: Birthright, Issue #9

That Walter White is getting sloppy.

So with even less answers than when she started, Superman drops her off on the Daily Planet building roof and flies away. Lois hurries down to the main office area, learns about someone trying to report on a “flying motor yacht” but Perry White’s gonna send that guy home! He’s drunk! Heh heh.

Clark looks like he’s been there all morning, all sippin’ his coffee and checkin’ his mail without even a bead of sweat on his slack-jawed face. Readin’ the goings-on from Ma and Pa back in Smallville! The townsfolk are getting all riled up about the alien invasion! Meanwhile, the Lex Luthor Troll Farm keeps pumping out doctored photos and evidence of Superman’s nefarious schemes! Wacky shit! What a crazy world we all live in!

Clark and Martha are instant messaging each other. Martha Kent is doing her own fact-checking mission against Luthor’s wave of fake news. The photos Luthor has obtained and/or manipulated are consistent with the types of photos discovered on Clark’s baby tablet, but no exact matches. He’s getting intel from somewhere, it’s not like he’s making up Kryptonian culture and technology out of thin air and then breaking out his Crayola crayons to draw what he dreams up.

Clark’s worried that he might possibly be on Earth to spy on earthlings and he doesn’t even know it! Who’s to say Luthor’s wrong? There must be some reason he’s here in the first place! Just seems weird that they haven’t tried contacting him again.

This is sort of an adopted-child-finding-his-birth-parents scenario. Jon and Martha were worried for years that someone would swoop down from the sky and take their son. They used to plan for it, figuring out ways to hide and stuff, but also wondering if it would’ve been best to let Clark go back if his original parents had wished it.

He tells her that the last thing Luthor was doing before he disappeared was trying to make contact with whatever planet that green meteorite came from. Who knows if he succeeded at the time? I do! And, arguably, he didn’t!

“My guess is that he finally completed it,” says Clark; “it” being the “making contact thingy”. “He and I need to have a TALK.”

He really pounds those Caps Lock letters! Gonna have a TALK all right! No ifs, ands, or BUTTS.

Superman: Birthright, Issue #9

You can kill two birds with stone here and just go see The Rock!

Lois is working in her cubicle. Jimmy stops by to gawk and fondle himself and whatever else he does that requires criminal court intervention in this scenario. She asks him how hard it would be to create fake photos of the type Luthor keeps piping to the media. “At that resolution? With that detail? It’d be like counterfeiting a twenty with a crayon,” he states. The whole photography department’s been going over them with a fine-tooth comb, and nothing looks amiss.

Lois isn’t convinced! And she’s probably right, because she’s always right. Even when it’s the mafia trying to kill her! So she asks Jimmy to get her some star charts and get that mirror off his shoe. She’s not even wearing a dress, you pervert.

Meanwhile, at the Echo Park Observatory, Lex is spending mucho dinero for government officials to scope out Superman. Good thing it doesn’t take long. They see him after Hour 2 streaking through the sky like a big blue and red cruise missile. Hurry, blow that fucker up before he gets away!

Speaking of cruise missiles, they launch a barrage of them at the blue/red streak. The blue/red streak dips down to the ground, causing the missiles to detonate near another stationed squad! They probably all died, too. Captain America would’ve never redirected missiles at military targets!

Lex is speaking with the army general about “alien incursion monitoring machines” and “wormhole technology” for the White House, which will surely help George W. Bush tee off from his toilet and land on the green from seven miles away.

They get rocked by the explosion, and everyone all but piles on top of the bald wimp. “Men, secure the site! Luthor must be protected at all costs! Go! Go!” HUT HUT HUT HUT HUT HUT HIKE!

Superman: Birthright, Issue #9

That cueball is so shiny and tempting, don’t you just want to get your hands on it and crush it like a goddamn egg?

Superman always gets what he wants, and in seven nanoseconds he’s face-to-face with the twerp. He ain’t even scared! “No witnesses?” Luthor growls with his bared teeth? Ha! Like an egg, sir. Like a goddamn egg. Time for that TALK.

Let’s get down to brass tacks: what’s your problem, dude?

“You mean Project: Krypton?” Luthor asks, amused.
“‘Krypton’? What is that? Some new weapon of yours?” Superman asks.

See, now look here, this is a classic ignorance tactic, except Superman is actually ignorant! That’s why it looks bad. You never want the opponent to think that you’re trying to make it look like you don’t know anything! Flimsy.

Except Luthor isn’t even smart enough to realize that Superman isn’t smart enough. Luthor really, truly, actually believes that Superman doesn’t know what Krypton is! But he should! I would.

Luthor starts cracking up at this. “Oh! OH! This is just the best day ever!” he cries with unbridled glee! Positively tickled!

“Krypton? A planet? Andromeda galaxy? Orbiting a Class M3 red star? Hello?” Luthor scoffs, “It’s your birthworld, Superman.”

Lex Luthor just cannot contain himself. Superman has no fucking clue. This is beautiful. He gets to be the bearer of bad news, right now, in person! He gets to see his dumb face! He gets to see him cry! He gets to see him take out his Superman Gun and shoot himself in his Superman Dome!

“Ready? Okay. Your homeworld…your race… your parents…? All dead. Gone. Scattered to the celestial winds. As far as the universe is concerned, Superman… you are completely and utterly alone.”

I’m reminded of my foray into the New 52 Supergirl, where one minute she was alive on Krypton with her family, and the next minute she found herself on Earth all alone. As a 16-year-old. THAT seems way more devastating to me. Not this entitled loser who has NO MEMORY of his fucking Kryptonian life. Why should he really care? It would be like me finding out right now, at age 34, that I was born on Betelgeuse VII. Why would I give a fucking shit? I have Malazan books to read.

But yes, as we all know, Superman finds this simply devastating. Go jump in a lake.

Superman: Birthright, Issue #9

I got this here mostly for the priceless artwork. It’s like Leinil Francis Yu had never seen a face before in his life.

Luthor goes on to explain his possession of Kryptonian photos. All captured through a quantum aperture in spacetime, so to speak. Georgi LaForge technobabble! These images are all from the past, over 25 years ago by his estimations. Luthor’s already getting pretty good at translating the Kryptonian language and understanding their technological advancements!

And then there’s you, Superman, the loser. Loser! You’re a loser! Go find that lake!

Superman’s getting pissed now. He bashes Luthor against the wall and demands to know where the receiver is from which he’s getting these transmissions. Lex Luthor pivots and cops to poisoning Superman with kryptonite during the bridge explosion, perhaps to agitate him further? As if he didn’t already know that and go home to whine to mommy and daddy about it.

“When Krypton went boom, the blast irradiated its fragments into something so far up the periodic table there’s no atomic number for it. I own a piece. It’s harmless…to earthlings,” Luthor taunts, expressing his weird, unwarranted earthling superiority. And this piece of kryptonite could be anywhere on these very premises, so don’t even try to do anything funny or else you’ll turn all green and snot will run down your nose and you’ll look uglier than you already are. If that’s even possible! Ha!

Superman: Birthright, Issue #9

Gordon Sumner? Now there’s a musical Sting.

So what if this is now government property? Lex Luthor wouldn’t dare just give this info to the government, displaying his intentions so brazenly. But for money? He’d do anything!

“Is that why you invented a hoax that’s causing worldwide panic? To line your pockets?” asks a fuming Superman.
“No. To discredit and destroy you. The money’s just a perk, you freak.”

And all this because Superman humiliated him during their first encounter. All this because he had the audacity to look at LEX FUCKING LUTHOR the way Lex looks at other human beings.

“You don’t get to do that. Period.”

So fuck you, hero. The entire human race is going to fear you, and the entire human race is going to thank Lex Luthor for saving and/or ridding the planet of alien scum like *shakes angry finger* THEE!

“You’ll never get people to believe that. I’ll win them over one at a time if I have to,” Superman says, verbally flailing at this point. Lex is gonna strap-on a kryptonite dildo and fuck him in the mouth soon if he doesn’t get out of there now.

Lex doesn’t even get a chance! The military busts in and trains their guns at where Superman is standing. “General! We’re in! We have the alien in our sights!”

But he’s already gone.

Headline news in the Metropolis Eagle!: “SUPERMAN ATTACKS; MILITARY SAVES LUTHOR. Scientist Claims Assault Final Proof of ‘Kryptonian Invasion’. Latest Polls: Majority of Metropolitans Fear ‘Man of Steel’.”

And then the issue ends with a Godzilla-sized robot bug terrorizing downtown.

“The Kryptonians! They’re here!”

Clark looks at the thing like “buh?”

Final Thoughts

That looks fake as shit! You can see the string attached! Boo! I want my money back!


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