The Most Important News Ever!

I totally wanted to put up some short fiction today, but everything I've written this week has been for "Crown of Pluto," and I'm just not ready to show it.  Even the Prologue has spoilers for the end of "Priest of Loki", and anyway, the entire project is very much a work-in-progress.  It's not that I don't want to show it to you so much as that I just don't think it's ready for the light of day just yet.

Are you guys interested in reading old comic scripts?  I could've totally put up something from back in the day that never got produced, but I'm under the impression that nobody would care.  So...

Anyway, without anything out of the archives to fall back on, I'm left with slapping something up today that may or may not catch your interest.  In this case, it's The Most Important News Ever.  Or, if you prefer, crap I found yesterday afternoon while flipping through Google News.

Starting with the most important thing ever:
Star Wars: Episode VII now has a script (Entertainmentwise.Com)
"Star Wars Episode VII may feel like light years away but in fact director JJ Abrams confirmed this week that it's "full steam ahead" for his reboot of the classic franchise. So what do we know so far?

The script's completed..."


Angry Bill Belichick calls out Wes Welker (Boston Globe)
Aqib Talib went out of the AFC Championship Game with a knee injury after what was, according to Patriots' coach Bill Belichick at least, an intentional clip during a pick-play run by Wes Welker.  I personally don't remember the play drawing a foul, but picks aren't legal in the NFL; the receiver has to try to get open.  Still, within five yards of the line of scrimmage, it's a grey area, and feeling sorry for Aqib Talib is a sucker's game.

Welker, of course, denies that he did anything wrong, but what's not in dispute is that the wheels came off the Pats' defense after Talib went out.  Well, that's probably why Welker shanked him.

This just in: NFL players hurt each other on purpose for competitive advantage.


Slate says "Timber" is this generation's "Cotton-Eyed Joe" (Slate.Com)
Why anyone at Slate is qualified to have an opinion on the matter is very much the kind of thing scholars everywhere ought to be debating daily.  Ke$ha looks awfully good in this video, though.

NFL Cornerbacks Can Be Thugs Who Get Fired Up After Big Games (Slate)

I personally loved Sherman's interview and can't understand why people assume that elite athletes are naturally nice people.  I mean, have you met many elite athletes?  They are--every single one of them--egocentric to the point of narcisism, and most of them have more than a little attitude.  How else do you dedicate so much effort to being the very best that you can be in something that ultimately isn't going to make one iota of difference to the future of the human race?

Answer: you don't.

Sherman was fired up, he clearly doesn't like anyone on the 49ers, and frankly, I found it refreshing and more than a little entertaining that he was ready to rub it in their damned faces.  I mean, I think everyone would like to be a gracious winner, but Sherman's response struck a chord with me.  Granted, his interview probably wasn't the most politically astute of moves, but it was a slice of life as it really is.  You'd like to be able to offer the other guy a helping hand up after the contest is over, but truth is, sometimes you'd rather kick dirt in his face and tell him to eat shit and like it.  At least, that's how I've felt on more than one occasion, anyway.

Truth is, these guys in the NFL aren't heroes, and we need to stop pretending that they are.  They're modern day gladiators, and I give Sherman credit for refusing to pretend to be anything but.  It's the rest of the world that needs to take NFL players down off their pedestal and realize that they are amazing athletes, yes, and we love watching them for what they can do.  They are amazing.  But that's it.  Football is not a metaphor for war, it doesn't make men into giants, and whatever other crap they want to feed you, jettison it.  Enjoy the game because it's a spectacle of magnificent physical acheivement--a worthy goal in its own right--but that's all.  Putting more into it than that is on the viewer and not the player on the field.

Also: don't ask a jerk for his opinion when he's still sweaty from the field of play unless you're ready to get a mouthful of nonsense.  Which makes sense when you say it like that, but it's funny as anything when the NFL's spin machine loses control of the process, and the ugly truth suddenly gets blasted out into the open.  Oops.