5/29/05 1:55 AM: Two quotes to start off this time ...

"We write songs about wrong, 'cause it's hard to see right." -- Common

"All things truly wicked start from innocence." -- Ernest Hemingway

WEATHER WITH YOU: I'm often awake around 6AM, and being an information junkie, I often turn on the morning news as background noise. After living here since 1991, somehow I'm still amazed at how weather can be the lead story on the news. When it's raining, it's almost understandable, because it doesn't rain very much here (although, according to reports, this was pretty much the wettest winter on record, and I personally remember it raining for something like twenty seven hundred consecutive days).

But when I turn on the news, and the lead story is the heat ... well, that's ... okay. Look, Los Angeles is situated in a desert. If you don't already know this, deserts get hot. Los Angeles is hot a lot -- the day I left for winter break in 1991, it was a balmy 87 degrees at the airport. When I landed at Sea-Tac airport in Washington, it was an inhuman 37 degrees. I'm not even kidding. Heat is (or, I thought should be, but don't get me started on "should") no big deal here, and during the recent "heat wave," I don't believe temperatures never even cracked 90 in the basin. Dat ain't hot. It was a bit toasty -- I opened up all the windows in my apartment, and even sat here in no shirt and my underwear some nights as the thermostat read almost 90 degrees -- but come on.

I spent much of a day at Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, behind the Orange Curtain. Even for me, who has what many consider a superhuman tolerance to heat, I thought it was a little tropical, with direct sunlight on me and the puke-soaked concrete underneath Camp Snoopy radiating heat like a stolen lime green Humvee with a Lojack system on it. But things are back to "normal" now (I think it's a little grim, overcast most of the week, temps down in the low seventies as highs). But the news has logos and graphics all ready for "Heat Watch 2005" or whatever they think is next. Morons.

CRANKY PANTS: Yes, I am in a bad mood right now, what of it?

WRITE NOW: So I haven't written as much as I would like to. I've been working a lot of extra shifts at my karaoke hosting job, for reasons I'm not at liberty to disclose here. I've jotted down some new poetry, with "Crusader" being a current favorite, but not much else. This displeases me. I've got a ton of ideas for Book Three of the Crown, I've gotten four people (all women, strangely enough) emailing me and wondering what happens after the end of "Proud Military Wife" (which makes me think maybe I should continue it -- give people what they want, you know?) and I am anxiously awaiting both new pages back from my dawg Jamar on the twelve-page convention ashcan we're gonna do and the release of my book, which will also be ready by 'con season.

But overall, I'm not feeling creative enough, and it's showing in my lack of blogging.

And the photo to the here was taken by Crazy Liz of the PV Players. Just FYI.

NEW COMICS DAY: In theory, I have a comic book coming out on Speakeasy Comics. Originally, it was supposed to come out in July. Then it was pushed back to September. Then November. Now probably January.

Guess who's not happy about that? This guy, uh huh, this guy right here.

WE HATE IT WHEN OUR FRIENDS BECOME SUCCESSFUL: The suave cat on the left here is Mike ... you know, I don't actually know Mike's last name. Whatever, that doesn't matter. Anyway, to the right is my dear, dear friend Dana Walker. Dana and Mike have been dating for some time, and they care very much for each other. That's just swell.

Their relationship has made me think about a few things. First, due to a renewed interest in church (Mike is fairly involved religiously), Dana has started becoming more of a "normal" person. Normal i.e. she's spending fewer late nights out, up more during the day, and so on. Which is cool. I, however, miss seeing her as often (there's now virtually no chance she'll show up for my Friday show, and I work during her shows on Sunday). I am glad she's happy, and I've seen this sort of thing before. Heck, I've played a party to it -- you're really into somebody, they're close enough to touch, so you spend every spare second with them. Dana and Mike live close, they are completely into one another, so they spen a lot of time together on a virtually daily basis. But Friday night breakfasts are less funny without her, and so on, et cetera, et cetera. I don't grudge her it, but I do miss her (and yes, I've told her).

But you gotta admit -- they look great together.

CLOSING THE CIRCLE: I was going to post my thoughts on the last installment of the Star Wars saga, but it started to get away from me. Soon. I may watch it again, just to get the details down. But it's coming.

FILI-BUSTA RHYMES: Speaking of political upheavals, according to reports (and no, I don't care about linkrot anymore, bugger it all), there was a big to-do over three pseudo-extremist judicial nominees in the Senate, which led to the ruling party threatening to legally abolish the use of the filibuster in their procedings. Most people don't care. To be wholly honest, my ability to care is deeply mitigated by a lack of sex (don't ask), being extremely busy working on no fewer than two of my jobs, and not really being involved.

Anyhoo, I watch TV every so often, and I see more and more signs of a slide from the sham of republic into the honesty of empire. The filibuster has been used by minority political perspectives since the times of powdered wigs to keep an empowered majority from doing ridiculous things as excesses of power. There's currently enough of a majority in the senate for them to enact what's been called a "nuclear" option, and eradicate the use of the filibuster at any time. Only a lingering sense of tradition and an unwillingness to admit the real lust for power (and some cockamamie compromise) kept the change from steamrollering through.

I am a fan of Amerikkkan history and politics in the same way that I am a fan of, say, Keifer Sutherland's 24 -- I know the backstory, I know a lot of the characters, I know the various plot twists and story turns. So I watched this with some vague interest, and remembered to stock up on supplies and stay ready. There is actually a possibility that things will go to guns in my lifetime, and that the "republic of the people, by the people and for the people" shall indeed "perish from this earth." What makes it even funnier is how many concerns and ideological conceits I could be said to share with bearded militiamen in Montana and turbaned troublemakers in the desert. Strange bedfellows indeed ...

THE VILLAIN OF THE STORY: I was watching some interview on a late night talk show, and an actor was talking about how much he enjoyed playing the role of a villain. I've seen actors say that before, but he added that it was such a release, in comparison to his everyday life, that it felt good to be bad.

Now, partially because I don't want to be indicted again, and partially because I don't want the people I'm screwing over to know, but suffice it to say that I am not a nice person. I'm insanely nice to people who I've deemed profitable, and I'm very helpful for people who consistently do things I'm pleased with. But I'm really an evil businessman -- it's all based on the bottom line. I'm just as happy to slice somebody off at the knees (metaphorically, of course ... right ...), "slice 'em down the back and throw salt on the wound."

You know what that's meant for me? That -- on a consistent basis -- I'm the happiest person most people know. I'm almost always in a great mood. Even when I hear something I really don't wanna hear, within a little while I can either find a way to twist it to my benefit, or find somebody to deliver some suffering to, in order to make me feel better.

Best of all, unlike most villains, I don't actually have an arch enemy. "There'll be no one to stop us this time." There's virtually no one to oppose me, largely because most of the evil I do is kept secret (and, well, because it's funnier that way, plus it makes people more comfortable to be around me if they don't know the truth). If you had any idea of the horrible things I did to people just inside the city limits of Pasadena today, it'd knock your socks off through your shoes. I couldn't be more pleased with it. Heh.

DON'T FRONT, YOU READ THE DOSSIER: Speaking of the truth (and I earlier mentioned 24), I finally got to watch the season finale (and I have Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy and Enterprise still to go), and got really angry at the female characters. First, Michelle Dessler decides she wants Tony back. Now, at the end of the last season, Tony allowed a terrorist to escape in order to save Michelle's life, placing her life above national security and his own job. He was fired, imprisoned, and discredited, which drove him to drink and self-pity. How did she repay his loyalty? The selfish c**t left him. But now that he's pulled himself back together through force of will and facing a crisis, ooh, now he's good enough for her again. As somebody who's been left when he's down, this really chafed my behind. So every second she's on screen, I want her to get hit by a double decker bus.

Then there's Audrey Raines. She was dating Jack while separated from her husband. Okay, whatever, everybody's grown and knew what they were doing. Jack worked for her dad, the Secretary of Defense. Now, Jack isn't exactly an unknown quantity -- he whacked a team of Eastern Europeans who tried to kill the first Black presidential candidate, stopped a dirty bomb, and circumvented a chemical attack. Most of this has had his name on TV, and his dossier (which, as an assistant to the Secretary of Defense, she'd have had access to) would show all the dirty, black ops stuff Jack did and was capable of. So when her hubby came under suspicion, and Jack very clinically tortured him within in inch of his life, oh, all of a sudden Jack's a bad guy. When a Chinese nuclear technician with crucial intel was bleeding internally, and the only doctor who could save him happened to be working on Audrey's husband, Jack makes him switch patients at gunpoint and hubby dies. Boo hoo, that makes him a bad person. So she dumps him, which I saw coming.

I'm yelling at the TV, "you knew who he was, b**ch! He's a freakin' professional killer! Jack was doing his job, you selfish whore!" I was infuriated. I mean, Jack was for her -- he personally saved her from terrorist kidnappers, saved her dad, brought in the last of the data to stop a nuclear missile from hitting Los Angeles, and so much more. But does she stand by him and give him the love he deserves? Nooooo -- she toddles off on a military transport to bury her dead, and possibly still criminally liable, husband. It did more to set back the image of women than a whole season of watching Wanda's shoe-hoarding, kid-dodging, triflin' a$$ on The Bernie Mac Show.

I think she chose not to know, she chose to ignore the truth about who he was until it was right in her face, even though there was little reason for it to ever enter her life again. I think many women -- including my friend's ex-wife (even to the detriment of his kids) -- do the same. I know some guys who've done the same. It sickens me.

RIDDLE ME THAT: Frank Gorshin died recently (if you read my CBR column The Comic Reel you probably remember me mentioning when). When I was growing up, I wanted nothing more than a black pinstripe suit with white question marks on it, and a black bowler with a white band, and a black cane shaped like a question mark. He never made a mark as big as he did playing Edward Nigma as an antagonist for Adam West, and that bothered him somewhat, but sometimes that's how it is. Anedge hirak Frank Gorshin, and thanks for the laughs.

IDOLATRY: I'm going to make John Layman eat his own hamstrings, marinated in rubbing alcohol. I'm going to write a sestina on his charred skin in his own blood. I'm going to make a pie out of a steak and his kidneys.

Just so it won't be a surprise, when it happens.

SNUFFALUPAGUS: ... and I'm out, with this ...

"A kiss is the Christmas Eve of sex" -- Alan Shore, Boston Legal