Eight random line items!

1. My bike is ready to go, and now I just need the weather to cooperate a bit more. Been listening to my headphones a bit more lately, as well, in preperation. Fun fact: I'm just about convinced that I am in fact invulnerable, as long as Helmet's Unsung is playing.

2. Via Topless Robot, I've been introduced to Deadliest Warrior, which I enjoyed quite a bit, even if it's dismaying on multiple levels. The first episode particularly: some people thought the taunting between the Apache and gladiator teams sounded scripted and fake, but watching on the computer, I thought there was a better than average chance of them maybe testing a move or two on each other. It's just a short matter of time until there's a C.S.I. episode based on When Deadliest Warrior Goes Bad.

That, and sometimes it's just a little depressing to realize how quickly you, as a person, could just be done. Shot in the eye by an arrow, head split open by a broadsword, disemboweled by a samurai...remind me to invest in some chainmail. And a moat. Who said, "The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man dies but one"? Obviously someone with no imagination, or lacking access to high-tech testing facillities, ballistic gelatin, and forensic scientists.

3. I keep hearing Alice in Chains' "Rooster" on the radio. Excessively. I shouldn't complain too much: whoever decided an alt-pop-metal bastardization of Wham's "Careless Whisper" was a good idea...it wasn't. Really, Seether? Really?

4. Barring that disaster I'm always on about, I'll finally be taking the kids to Coraline at the cheapo theatre tonight or this weekend. I'm surprisingly enthusiastic to see Crank 2, but obviously, can't take the kids to that. Have to take my mom. She loved the first one.

5. Finally got that haircut. Looking good, except at least twice I've felt around my head for my hat. Unfortunate.

6. I'm actually incredibly frustrated with a bunch of stuff lately, but this has sidetracked me. Rest assured, everything does suck; but my attention span is such that I can get distracted by something else, good or bad, before getting too worked up about it.

I've been a little worried lately, since for years, I had no family medical history of anything: when a relative died, it was because they were older and smoked. Now I've got a family history of depression and Alzheimer's. Yay. I'm pretty scatterbrained the best of times--it's one of the main reasons I have this damn blog, so I can refer back to it when I'm old and completely gone--but now occasionally I've been second-guessing myself: am I depressed? Or just annoyed?

The Onion headline, "Study shows, Depression Strikes Losers Hardest" springs to mind. And there's an ad on the radio for depression that tries to show that it's a serious medical problem like any other: "You wouldn't say: It's only cancer." I always answer: yeah, I would! Suck it up, nancy! Man up, diabetics! Quit your bellyaching, depressives! Now, I'm not saying this to make light of anyone else's problems or condition: for me, I have to put depression (and/or any other medical problems) in their place by laughing at them.

So, short answer, I'm not depressed, and I'm not going to get depressed worrying about depression. I'll get depressed when I can't find that damn DCUC Big Barda variant...

7. There are weird holes in my pop culture knowledge. "Captain Planet" just came up: a co-worker claimed to have the theme song for it stuck in his head. I've never seen an episode. I thought he was referring to the Robot Chicken episode where Ted Turner paints himself blue, and busts up polluters while screaming "Cap-TAIN PLAN-et!"

In the same vein, since I'm older, toys of the eighties? I had just about none of them. No Transformers. No 3 3/4" inch G.I. Joes. No He-Man, no Thundercats, no M.A.S.K., no Ninja Turtles, none of 'em. I had Star Wars guys pretty much through Empire, and then that was it. I probably didn't get another toy until I bought a Robocop figure, a seven or eight year stretch without action figures.

Of course, that was the first time around: since then I've picked up somewhere between 'some' and 'a pile' of figures for most of those lines. Well, maybe not Thundercats or M.A.S.K., but you get my point.

8. Man, kind of a downer those last couple. Better go out on a high note. Um...hmm...well...how about this: I already said the Star Trek random panels would continue until the movie came out, OK. Right now, the plan is for the week Wolverine: Origins opens, we'll have a new homemade strip every day! Probably without Wolverine. Yeah, funny how that works out...I don't think I have anything funny to do with him. Do I? Probably not, but we'll see.