It's Free Comic Book Day on Saturday!

You heard it here, folks. This is no hoax, no urban legend.

On Saturday, May 3, comic books across the USA will be giving out special freebie comic books. This is all an attempt to drum up business and show people that comic books aren't just juvenile literature.

And they aren't. A lot of them are written at a very mature and sophisticated level. To be sure, some of them are skill kinda dumb (a lot of the fanwankish Marvel stuff as of late, for example), but some of them are pretty darned good indeed.

Oh, and while we're on that topic, go ahead and pick up a copy of this week's "DC Universe #0." It only costs fifty cents, and it's well worth more than that.

An article recommendation

I just wanted to recommend this article on stock market investing. The article talks about how the best time to buy stocks for much less than they're worth is when the economy is down. Just to drive the point home, the author likens it to the way airfare was undervalued in the wake of 9/11. What's more, the flights were actually safer at that time. (As an aside, he could have mentioned that the flights would also have been extremely roomy -- but I guess that's not really an essential point to make.)

The economy is suffering right now, but that's actually a good thing if you're playing the stock market. It's a good time to make a potential killing later down the road.

Why I discontinued using my landscaper's services

Several things made me decide to discontinue his services.

Money was a bit tight, so I asked him to mow my lawn on a biweekly basis rather than weekly. He either forgot those instructions or conveniently ignored them though, since I saw him mowing my lawn on the second week after I hired him. (I decided to pay him for that anyway, but reiterated that I wanted biweekly mowings.)

When I received my second bill, he had crossed out the name of his company and asked me to make the check out to his name. In other words, it looked like he was trying to avoid paying taxes on this service. Mind you, I don't mind having an informal gentleman's agreement, but I wasn't thrilled that he did this without consulting me first.

Finally, after a few weeks, his bills were marked "Due immediately" instead of "Due in 15 days." Again, this sudden change did not sit well with me. Don't get me wrong; I could afford the money. I wasn't thrilled that he decided to spring this on his customers without advance notice, though.

Now, I know what you're thinking. It sounds like money was getting a bit tight for this fella. If that was the case, and if he had simply explained the situation, I would have been happy to help him out. Instead though, he tried to slip these changes past his customers, and that did not sit well with me.

Movie princesses in "Enchanted"

Judy Kuhn and Paige O’Hara both had brief roles in Disney’s neo-classic movie, Enchanted. You may remember them from the exquisite vocals that they provided for Pocahontas and Belle, respectively. Disney's Ariel, Jodi Benson, had a longer and more significant role, possibly due to her closer association with the mighty mouse factory. These were all in-jokes (Easter eggs?) that they producers provided for astute viewers to pick up. Her character, the eponymous lead, was a princess of sorts, so I guess that’s kinda appropriate.

It would have been great if they could have gotten Lea Salonga, Linda Larkin, or Susan Egan to appear as well. Still, this was a real treat.

Remembering "Herman's Head"

Herman's Head was, without a doubt, one of the quirkiest and most original sitcoms of the 1990s. Too bad it wasn't one of the funniest as well.

The premise was certainly offbeat. The show centered on its protagonist, Herman, and the voices in his head (so to speak). That is, it allowed the audience to glimpse the thought processes within Herman's cranium, as represented by four different aspects: intellect, fear, love, and lust. These four aspects were depicted by four different characters with suitable nicknames: Genius, Wimp, Angel, and Pig.

There were definitely times when I would bust a gut laughing. On the whole though, it just wasn't that funny.

Dang it! Windows Vista should rot in heck!

Okay, that does it. I am sick and tired of Windows Vista. Windows in general sucks quite a bit, but Windows Vista in particular stinks. It's a horrible piece of bloatware, and whoever conceived it must have been pretty clueless. This has all the earmarks of some corporate bigwig saying "Hey, here are a whole bunch of nifty features that'd be nice to have. Let's use them!" without much regard for performance.

I'm oversimplifying a little, I'll admit. For example, the Windows Aero interface prudently foists a lot of graphics processing off onto the graphics card, as it should. Some of the UI annoyances have been improved as well. There's just way too much bloatware though, and I can't stand using a resource hog.

I dread booting my computer nowadays. The wait is agonizing. It especially stinks that Internet Explorer remains unresponsive for a minute or two after it starts. I can type a URL into its address bar, but because Vista takes forever to connect to a network, IE simply returns an error message instead of doing as it's told. Blast it.

Get rid of Vista. It's a piece of junk.

More on "The Brave and The Bold"

In my previous posting, I raved about Mark Waid's writing on the first twelve issues of "The Brave and the Bold." Now I want to talk about the artwork.

George Perez did his usual amazing job with the first few issues. If you need someone who can depict a wide array of comic book characters, while simultaneously giving them dynamism and expression, then George is your man. That's why it was so unfortunate when he had to stop doing the interior art.

Having said that, Jerry Ordway was a worthy and logical successor. He's one of the few guys who can even come close to touching Perez's work. Like Perez, he injects realism and dynamis into his art, which is one reason why I loved his old work on "The Power of Shazam" so much.

Great job, gents. Great job.

Just finished the latest "Brave and the Bold"

I just finished reading the latest issue of "The Brave and The Bold," written by Mark Waid. This is wonderful stuff! Waid has done a much better job in twelve issues than was covered in decades of the old Batman-centric B&B series.

Having this story arc center on the Challenges of the Unknown was a brilliant touch. What's more, the final scenes were absolutely touching. Waid has this uncanny ability to ask logical questions, such as "How does June Robbins fit into the Challengers, as the only member who has not miraculously cheated death?" The characterization that he provides is absolutely spot on, and the way he resolves this storyline is positively poetic.

As a testimony to Waid's genius, I never realized that the artifacts which Megistus had been creating all had transformative properties (well, except for the power battery, but that was clearly necessary for other reasons). I also loved how he worked in the likes of Firestorm and Metamorpho, both of whom were transmuters. If he could only have included Element Lad somehow...

Mark Waid, you're amazing.

More on Asians as leading men

Western society -- and the USA in particular -- isn't generally receptive to the notion of an Asian leading man. That's why in those rare instances where an Asian fella is the leading man, he still maintains a distant and chaste relationship with the female lead. (The King and I, anyone?) Asian male actors usually get portrayed as either chaste action heroes (Jackie Chan), nerds (Hiro!), or (more recently, as on 24) shadowy agents of various Asian countries.

Then there's Jet Li in Unleashed. They hint around at him and the female lead (I'm forgetting her name) having feelings for each other, but nothing happens. Jet Li is considered to be one of the more physically attractive of the Asian leading men, but even he is treated like a eunuch. Ditto for Chow Yun Fat. And of course, neither one is regarded as a Hollywood heartthrob of any sort.

Asians as leading men

Some people point to Dean Cain and Keanu Reeves as "proof" that Asian men are in demand as romantic leads. However, these guys are actually Eurasian, and their Caucasian features clearly dominate. In fact, a lot of people are surprised to learn that they do have some Asian blood in them.

Unlike, say, Tia Carrere, whose part-Asian origins are fairly obvious.

Financial planning

I'm looking for a new financial advisor.

Here's the story. I signed up with Ameriprise a while back; however, I became dissatisfied with their responsiveness after my advisor left their company. (I suspect that he was laid off, but I'm not sure.) I think I'd like to find another company to help with my financial planning.

I'll be meeting with two financial advisors at the end of the month, and maybe even a third. Wachovia handles my company Simple IRA, and our contact person there has always been pretty responsive. I like they way they handle my accounts.

As an aside, one of my colleagues found out about some guy named Keith whose credentials she liked. She was trying to pressure me to switch to this fella, as our financial officer only wants to have one person handling all the CTL retirement accounts at each investment firm. I thought this was kinda silly, of course, especially for something as simple as a retirement account. Naturally, I refused. :)

Besides, she had panicked when she found out that her retirement account lost money this year. That was just foolish.

Rancic's Lemonade Stand

I just checked out a cop of Bill Rancic's book, Beyond the Lemonade Stad, from the public library. I was disappointed to find out that it's actually a children's book. Still well-written (at least, based on some cursory skimming), but not quite what I was looking for.

Wish I had read a book like this when I was seven years old. I was much more into science than finance or business, but still... it's the sort of thing that would have helped broaden my horizons.