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Friday, March 13, 2015

5 Things on a Friday: Seeing Murdock's City

Happy Friday!

I'm in Albany this week, so odds are this is gonna be a short set of clips.  I guess we'll see.  You ready?
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1.  Daredevil looks awesome!


I like it.  A lot.  I love how they have--very clearly--made the Kingpin this series' co-protagonist.  I'd read that this was the plan, but you never know how it's gonna come off.  If the trailer's any indication, it looks like it's gonna come off pretty well.

From the over of Volume 2, Issue #45.
This is my favorite version of Daredevil.
I'll say this as well: I don't typically love grim & gritty comics, but Daredevil is the exception.  It has to be grim & gritty; that's pretty much the only way it ever works.  Matt Murdock's story is a tragedy that unfolds in slow-motion.  

This one may not have a happy ending.


Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday defended her exclusive use of a private email address during her time as secretary of state as a matter of “convenience,” saying that about 30,000 of her work-related emails would be made public, but that thousands more that she deemed personal had been deleted.

“I thought using one device would be simpler; obviously, it hasn’t worked out that way,” she said in her first public comments since the issue emerged last week.


That is the lamest excuse ever.  I've had seperate email accounts for personal and professional use since at least 1995.  Everyone who works for the government knows that this is the expectation.  The thing is, when you work for the public, your work is a matter of public record.  You don't own it; it's not yours.  Even if it's secret, it still belongs to the people of the United States of America.  You don't get to avoid scrutiny by having a private email server located physically inside your house, you don't get to decide for yourself what was and was not job-related years after the fact, and you don't get to edit the work you did to put yourself in the best possible light.  This is exactly what Secretary Clinton has done.

Look, I get that she was always planning to run for president, and that some of what she was doing could therefore be embarassing...  That's the whole point of the scandal!  We'll never know what she did or didn't do because she went to extraordinary lengths to hide it from us.

I don't care about the legality of it, but frankly, it shows exactly what to expect from her as president, and that expectation is not good.  She'll be secretive and evasive, and we've already had entirely too much of that.  Maybe you can accept that from your president, and maybe I'll have to, but I certainly won't vote for it.

Frankly, I think whoever the Republican nominee turns out to be, he'll have an excellent chance in the general because of this scandal.  Democrats see no choice but Hillary Clinton in 2016.  To quote the New York Times, Secretary Clinton has become "too big to fail."


3.  Friday Hair Metal: Home Sweet Home




I always find myself singing this in my head whenever I'm away from home.  I'm headed home in just a few hours now, so that makes it even more appropriate.


4.  Alabama investigates claim of elder abuse over Harper Lee novel: NY Times (Reuters)
Alabama investigators have responded to a claim of possible elder abuse related to the upcoming publication of the second novel by Harper Lee, the 88-year-old author of "To Kill a Mockingbird," the New York Times reported.


The Times, citing a source knowledgeable of the probe, said officials interviewed Lee in February as well as employees of her assisted living facility, named the Meadows, and some of her friends following an unspecified complaint tied to the publication of "Go Set a Watchman."

Probably not much choice under the circumstances.  It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.  One way or another, I suppose we'll all be able to rest a little easier once we've seen the investigtion's results.


5.  An American Fighting Against ISIS (NY Times)

Hard to see how that ends well, but I'll agree that real America--civilian America--is rarely the shining city on a hill that folks in the military want to believe that it is.

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Bonus Points:

Yes, we are.




Haven't caught it yet, but I'm sure I will when I (eventually) get home.


This is a terrific analysis of the Russian Army's performance in the invasion of Ukraine.  Bottom line: they're not doing very well.  But there's a lot more to it than that, which is why I wanted to re-share it.

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By the time you read this, I'll be on my way home--or close to it, anyway.  I don't mind traveling occasionally, but I don't see how folks do it on a day-to-day basis.  If I had to live like this all the time, I'd be a miserable son-of-a-bitch.  I miss my wife, and I miss my kids, and I've only been gone since Tuesday.  But that's my America.  They are what I think of when I think of what makes this country great.

On a totally seperate topic, there's a (very slight) revision of Sneakatara Boatman & the Priest of Loki out now on Amazon.com.  My friends have all liked the book, but I've not had a lot of luck getting other folks to read it.  You can help me change that, but first you have to give me a chance.  You have to let me entertain you.  At $2.99, I don't think that much of a barrier to entry.

Sneax!
If you do check out the book, let me know what you think!  I'm still waiting for someone to tell me that they hated it.  Just think... You could be the first!

That's all I've got.  Have a great weekend.

2 comments:

  1. That Daredevil series does look sooooo good. I'm progressing through House of Cards at a faster rate than I anticipated, and I wondered what I'd watch when that was done. Looks like Breaking Bad will take another backseat!

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    1. I couldn't get into Breaking Bad. I probably didn't give it enough time, but it never spoke to me. I've been watching Star Trek: Voyager when I do dishes and whatnot. It only really hits its stride in Season 4, but I like it a lot.

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