Presents

Kieron Gillen, writer of the Brit-pop eulogy Phonogram, and Charity Larrison, whose work is new to me, produced this amazing graphic novel, Busted Wonder. It's available online, for free, in its entirety, thanks to the Colleen Doran grant. Read it.

Sitting in Pittsburgh International Airport, getting ready to fly to Pensacola via Atlanta for the week. The plan is to pick up my car, which has inexplicably appeared there instead of Pittsburgh, where I left it, and drive back to the 'Burgh next weekend.

I'll be picking up books while I'm down there. The complete Preacher, Y: The Last Man, 100 Bullets, Lucifer, Fables, Sandman, The Invisibles, that sort of thing. In addition, I may grab a box or two of prose books I've read and am hoarding and open up an eBay store to try to recoup the cost of being a hardcore bibliophile. 
Purchasing prose books seems to be a losing proposition these days. 300 pages of text for $15 isn't exactly a winning equation, as that's only almost 3 hours worth of reading. I demand a higher ratio of cost to entertainment for the media I consume, and a book is a much larger time investment than renting a movie.
The other problem the book industry faces with me is the library. A good library has everything I want to read. Northland and Pittsburgh Public pick up just about every new novel that comes out. I honestly think Northland has a better selection than most of the libraries I looked at in Brooklyn. That leaves me renting movies and borrowing books. The only media I really expend money on anymore are comics and video games.
Comics are kind of a strange beast when it comes to purchases. The market depends on monthly sales, and titles with low monthly sales often don't get collected into trades. As such, I'm inclined to buy singles, but I prefer trades. They contain complete stories and look great on my bookshelf. I am more likely to re-read titles I own in trade than I am titles I own as single issues. I've re-read Sandman and Preacher multiple times. I read each issue of The Walking Dead when it comes out and file it away in a box. Granted, an argument could be made in that example that Sandman and Preacher reward multiple readings while The Walking Dead is pulp-horror, but I'm not making an argument based on content. 
Usually, the only singles I re-read are self-contained in and of themselves. Issues of Fell are frequent revisits for me, because every issue is its own story. Same with this last arc of Criminal. The most curious aspect of comic-collecting, for me, anyhow, is the idea of purchasing collections of runs you already own. For instance, I own all the singles of Criminal, but purchase the trades the day they come out. Often my argument for this has been that I want other people to read these books, and I'm far more likely to get back a trade in good condition than a stack of single issues. Either way, I seem to have no qualms paying double for something, though I'm sometimes receiving less. Criminal and Casanova publish essays and supplemental artwork in their backpages which don't make the transition to the trades. Is this a reward system that encourages me to purchase the singles? If so, it's working.

A Goodbye Letter

In 2007, I had challenged myself to sample 100 different beers before I graduated college, not counting standard brews such as Budweiser, Coors, etc. I reached the goal shortly after graduation, writing mini-reviews of each beer, and posting them as Facebook notes. Since then, I've tried a veritable cornucopia of new beers during my (now-defunct) stay in New York. The proximity of the Brooklyn Brewery enabled (definitely the word to use) me to sample all of their wares, and an immense array of beer-bars with craft beers on tap allowed me to experience a fresh poured range that would make any hop-head jealous.

As such, now that I have relocated, beers are becoming, as cookies did for a certain monster overly fond of them, a sometimes food. Gone are the days of drinking five or six different beers at ReBar a night, or racing to drink a gallon at Fette Sau before realizing I'm competing alone. Now, we'll be looking at, at most, one bottle of a craft beer a week. I'll be posting regular reviews, as though some of you don't care, it will give the blog a certain regularity previously only achieved with fiber.

As for my reading, I'm three weeks behind, and even further on reviews. I haven't given up, and am fortunate enough to be taking a flight Monday morning, on which I'm sure I can kill two Hard Case Crime books. Did I tell you? I found my first one I'm unimpressed with. More on that coming soon.

Tonight's beer:

Palo Santo Marron by the Dogfish Head Brewing Company

Long one of my favorite brewing companies, the people at Dogfish Head are Adventurers first, brewers second. Or also first, as second makes it seem like they are less successful on that front. Never content to rest on their laurels, these guys continually pump out new product, some of it so limited that if you miss it, you're not going to see it again (or, if you're lucky, you may see it the following year). They're the guys who make the 60-minute IPA, the 90-minute IPA, and that disgustingly sweet, amazingly hoppy, ridiculously alcoholic beast of a beer, the 120-minute IPA. They have seasonals such as Raison D'etre, Aprihop, and their delicious New Orleans-inspired Chicory Stout. In addition, they like to innovate, and occasionally discover new (and old) ways to brew beverages, and instead of writing about them on their blog and saying, "How interesting, the ancient Chinese malted these herbs," or, "The Babylonians apparently used Honey in this recipe," they actually go ahead and do it. Sometimes the results are spectacular (Jiahu), sometimes, less so (Midas Touch), but they're always trying, and they're always getting me to try with them.

This latest release from them is a dark brown ale aged in the largest wooden barrels made since before Prohibition (10,000 gallons). The wood, however, is what's special. It's a South American wood traditionally used in winemaking, and it imparts a complex vanilla bean and burnt sugar flavor to the beer. It must sit in there awhile being fed sugar, because it also weighs in at 12%ABV. At $5.00 per bottle, it's not easy on the wallet, but it's not meant to be. It's a sipping beer, in the way there are sipping bourbons, and you're not going to want more than one, unless you're a defeatist. If you see it, pick up a bottle. You won't regret it.

Next Week: Dogfish Head Immort Ale (the store had all new Dogfish seasonals, how could I pass up? If they disappear, they're often gone forever!)

Thank God Science is Kept On A Leash

I don't want to upset anybody needlessly, but I've seen the future, and we're not in it.

I'm not one of those paranoid techno-phobes who can't stand the fact that science makes our food tastier, our water dirtier (and then cleaner!) and our children taller and more big-breasted at an earlier age, but there is one arm of science I live in fear of, and that's robotics. The robot featured here is named QRIO, which is robot-ese for, "I taste your nightmares", and it's a prototype that God saw fit to strike down, Babel style, before it could tear the similarly adorable Japanese people to pieces.

I think the most frightening aspect of QRIO, besides it's obvious thirst for the blood of the innocent, is the way it appears to be a poet-philosopher. It has cataloged the likes and dislikes of puppies, cats and hawks, but isn't satisfied with this knowledge. It analyzes systems and emergent behavior, demanding an answer to the age-old question, "The forest looked up and what did it say?" You really think a robot that has already learned (or clearly, is still learning) to understand a forest is going to be satisfied writing haikus for the rest of its unnatural life? I contend it is not, and that we have only one hope. Bomb the room containing the QRIO and those brave children. Their deaths will be quicker by our hand than by the unfeeling metallic pincers that have a grip on their future.

"The forest looked up and what did it say?" is the launch-code for SkyNet, I guarantee it.

I just watched it again, and I think it scares me more every time. It said, "I want lots of friends."

It doesn't take a degree in Robot Psychology to know the words, "to adorn my walls as trophies," were the unspoken postscript to that sentence.

I'll buy he might be cute and cuddly now, (I have, after all, seen him dance) but after a few years of being treated like someone's toy? He's going to have a chip on his shoulder that's spelled ICBM