Wildlife alert!

Cincinnati's turkeys are in imminent danger, now that station WKRP is on the air for real.

What's the problem, you ask? Can't the turkeys just fly away to safety? No, that's the point...turkeys can't fly!!!!!

Can't Be, Officer, This Thing Won't Even Do Warp 2. . .

You know, when the Romulans can't destroy you with their plasma weapon, then they'll just nickel and dime you to death with traffic tickets (scroll down to the item slugged "The City of Romulus")...

(H/T Dustbury)

Holy Crap, Batman!

For everyone who ever thought that the George Clooney outing as the Caped Crusader, Batman and Robin, would be the dumbest Batman story ever told, longtime Batman writer Grant Morrison would like to prove you wrong. By the way, if you don't want this story spoiled -- even though I think it's got high enough levels of silly-toxin to be spoil-proof -- don't read on past the gap.




OK, still here? Well, according to this story, Bruce Wayne will lay down his cape and cowl, and thus "die" as Batman, after being shot by his father, Dr. Thomas Wayne. Yup, you know, the Thomas Wayne whose death when Bruce was nine caused the young man to develop an obsessive thirst for justice. That same thirst drove him to his double life as Batman. See, ol' Tom apparently faked his death and, well, who cares because this is beyond dumb, even when we consider we are not dealing with the most logically coherent of media, the comic book.

Of course, since we're talking about a comic book character, chances are good he'll come back. After all, Bruce Wayne has handed off his cape and cowl before, when he was badly injured by the criminal Bane in the Knightfall storyline. In the end, this is likely to be another so-called "stunt" story, like Knightfall or the Death of Superman tale from 1992. And again, in comic books as in soap operas, death is only temporary, so all of the "end of Bruce Wayne as Batman" talk coming from the publisher is very likely a lot of hooey.

But, whether it's "killed" or killed, the idea that Thomas Wayne is behind this ranks very high on the dumb-o-meter. Next we'll find out that Martha Wayne, Bruce's mom, didn't die either, and she sent herself forward in time to become Selina Kyle, the Catwoman. On the other hand, forget I said that. Morrison may go back to writing the title someday and it now seems likely he wouldn't understand it's a joke.

Back in Black

Back on black...

Maybe This Is Why We Call Them Hoseheads...

Another day, another Canadian university does something dumb.

Carleton University, in Ottawa, takes part a yearly charity fundraiser among Canadian colleges and universities called Shinearama. Up until this year, one of the benficiaries of Shinearama was the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. But because one of Carleton University's students learned that cystic fibrosis affects only white males, he moved at a student government meeting that Carleton drop the CCFF as a beneficiary.

Of course, cystic fibrosis affects people of both genders, and while it generally is more prevalent among people of Caucasian origin, that genetic classification includes folks from the Middle East, India and South America as well.

Members of the student association now want to reconsider their vote. If it wasn't for the fact that worthy charity that does a lot of good will lose out on money if they don't, I would be happy to have this group of maple-leaf mouth breathers stuck with the results of their decision. After all, they want to reconsider their action because they've learned CF can affect people other than white males, not because the idea that withholding donations to a charity because you want to play identity politics with who has the disease qualifies as an "idea" in only the loosest of fashions.

Ironies drench this little amorality play -- the student government president said that the real reason everyone voted the way they did was because the association would like to rotate its donations among several charities. I think she's got a future in politics. And the young man who brought the motion is a science student. I would submit that Carleton University be sure to stamp his diploma with the letters "B.S." as is traditional for students earning undergraduate degrees in the sciences. But I think it'll be obvious that in his case, those letters will revert to their more common meaning...

(H/T Erin O'Connor)

Rough indeed

Rough Weather is Robert B. Parker 36th novel featuring the tough as nails, tender on the inside private eye Spenser, who is as quick with wits and tongue as he is with fists and gun.

It opens with more excitement than Parker's put in a Spenser book in years, as Spenser and his ladylove Susan Silverman attend a ritzy wedding on an exclusive island. Spenser has been hired as a sort of bodyguard, and it's good that he is, because the wedding is interrupted by an elaborate kidnapping. The chief kidnapper is Spenser's nemesis Rugar, the Gray Man who once shot Spenser and nearly killed him.

Spenser has to use both his wits and his fists in order to make sure he's not dispatched by the Gray Man's thugs and also to get Susan out of harm's way. The sequence packs as much action as some of Parker's best work, recalling similar sequences from the series high points from the mid-70s through mid-80s. The "rough weather" of the title refers to the storm that keeps the kidnappers stranded on the island overnight, forcing Spenser to take on the kidnappers armed with little more than his bare hands. But then the motif, like the story, tension, action and most of the energy are abandoned as soon as the kidnappers leave the island and Spenser goes about trying to find the kidnapped bride and bring Rugar, the murderer of the groom, to justice.

Frankly, the rest of the book may be the laziest work Parker's ever turned out. It's little more than a series of one-on-ones with different people who might or might not be involved in the crime, divvied up by Spenser's encounters with some of his usual circle of legal and less-than-legal acquaintances. Any slight chance it has of hanging together as a narrative that leads somewhere is destroyed by the ending, a twist of events that's thin enough to make tissue paper look like Kevlar. It's nowhere near as bad as the absolutely awful finish of Hundred Dollar Baby, but coming on the heels of such a promising opening, it can seem almost worse.

Parker's published a couple of youth novels and a handful of westerns over the last few years and the move to new fields seems to have given him some new energy. It could be that the new arenas bring him some more creativity while he's more or less going through the motions with Spenser and his other two law-enforcement characters, Paradise, MA, police chief Jesse Stone and lady PI Sunny Randall. Whatever the reason, Rough Weather is about a quarter of a good book stuck inside three quarters of a mediocre one, pushed past its sell-by date with a stinker of an ending. We can all hope for some better sailing next time...

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends...

It's not the size of the gift that counts...