Internet radio shout-out

Check out my favorite internet radio station, A Fistful of Soundtracks. The most recent episode, "Show Me the Fever," which will play on Thanksgiving at 4am, 9am, 2pm, and 7pm, is a request show with tons of "Andrew from Eugene" requests. I had written in asking him to do a show of songs a score cues from training montage scenes in various movies, so he plays nine of them in this show.

I got promoted...yes, again.

The rumors are true...I've been promoted again. (For those of you just joining us, this is like the third time this year.)

To recap: our Senior Director of several years, we'll call him S., left here for greener pastures several months ago. I had hoped that the next-most-senior director, let's call him B., would get promoted so that I could get B.'s job. Unfortunately, instead they hired this schmo H., and promoted him to Senior Director instantly even though he was the least-skilled director of us all.

Well, as it turned out, H. couldn't take the pressure and walked out in a huff one day -- no two-weeks-notice or anything. We expect our fresh-out-of-high-school minimum wage slaves to suddenly quit on us with no notice, but not our 60+-year-old senior directors. So that was weird. And lest you think it was totally my fault, well, I was in Vegas when it happened.

So anyway, this time around they did indeed promote B. to Senior Director. He'll be directing our flagship show, the hour-long 6pm; I'm in his old position, directing the half-hour 5pm and 11pm weekday shows. (This also means my Friday now coincides with the rest of the world's Fridays -- I get weekends off. Or, rather, I get paid overtime when I do work those days, which will probably be often.

Also, B. is having a baby within the next few weeks. When he goes away on paternity leave, I'll be acting senior director, apparently. I'll still get paid the same, of course. But at least for a few weeks I'll have gone from completely-lowly-peon to ruler of all directors. Bwa!

This blog entry: Dead on arrival

I was just about to blog about how wrong this article is for suggesting that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray (the new hi-def formats poised to replace DVDs) are doomed to fail because of downloadable hi-def movies. My argument: people like to own things physically. Even Scott McCloud probably realizes at this point that his prediction of a future filled with paper-free comic books fell short.

Then I realized that I have about 173GB worth of comic books and music to back up the article's argument. Ouch.

Well, I'm still skeptical. I mean, I only downloaded the complete Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos because I'd never care enough or have enough money to buy the originals. (Or even the reprints, for that matter.) So...I guess it's a complicated issue...

...move along...

This is how I learned the words "ichor" and "talon"

Remember those Lone Wolf gamebooks? How could you forget anything with such awesome covers?

Well, it was kind of like Choose Your Own Adventure, but a great deal more violent, and like 500 pages instead of 60. (Somehow those CYOA books packed just as many sudden-death scenarios into 60 pages, though. And when you kept your finger on the previous page, you were right to feel guilty, cheater. You suck.)

The bad news is that those books are now out of print (or as they say on the internet, OOP!) and stupidly expensive. (Mom, did you give away my old books? Ouch.)

The good news is that a dedicated team of nerd-o's has transcribed the books to HTML. Unfortunately, there's no snappy java applet to help you keep track of your items and whatnot, but you could print out the Action Chart page, I guess. (Having not completed the previous four adventures, I was stuck with only five Kai disciplines for the course of this one. I'm sure I don't have to tell you what a perilous journey that was! Snort!)

They've even reproduced the Random Number Tables from the back of the books -- a helpful invention that saved you from having to buy a 10-sided die and admitting to all the world that you were a virgin. You were supposed to, with your eyes closed, put the eraser-end of your pencil somewhere on that page, and the number you came up with was "random," except that you totally knew where the pencil was going to end up, cheater. Also this meant that much of the middle of that page was substantially faded and sometimes completely erased due to multiple playings. So don't worry, mom, if you did throw those books away, I probably abused them too much anyway.

And for you perfectionists out there, you can check out all the times the Nerd Squad changed any little thing in each book. "Replaced 'suspiciously, but' with 'suspiciously but'" -- wow, thanks guys. Or should I say "...wow, thanks guys.' I had a nagging suspicion that there was a comma in the original text. Now I can sleep at night.

My brother: The greatest

I'm stuck at work on election day, with no dinner break. And, unlike previous years, my employers are not providing food.

Well, let me tell you from experience that there are few pizzas tastier than the one sent long-distance by a sympathetic brother.

Hippie Olsen's Hate-In

I recently downloaded all 163 issues of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen, a notoriously bizarre comic book that ran for 20 years starting in 1954. Looking for some light reading material just now, but unsure where to start, I used the Random Olsen Generator located at the bottom-left of your Furdell.com main page.

I came up with issue #121, "Jimmy Olsen's Death Trick," in which Jimmy exaggerates a fever in order to convince Superman to reveal his secret idenity privately. Unsure at first what to do, Jimmy overhears Superman telling the president of the Jimmy Olsen Fan Club (yeah, right) that he can be Superman's new pal, and that the Superman-That Guy team will be way better than the Superman-Olsen team. Jimmy at first resolves to reveal Superman's secret identity on television, but convinces himself at the last second that Superman was merely under the effects of red kryptonite and therefore totally delirious when he said someone else would make a better pal. (This was not the case.)

Anyway, as pulse-pounding as that story was, I've discovered that the best part of a Jimmy Olsen comic is the letters page. Sample opening sentence: "'Hippie Olsen's Hate-In' was one of your better stories." Ouch.

Here's my favorite letter, in its entirety. Notice how it starts out as a thoughtful critique of the comic book, and then quickly devolves, not unlike Jimmy Olsen himself in the story in question.

Dear Editor:
In your recent story "The Gorilla Reporter," when Jimmy was in a gorilla's body, Perry White put a sign on him saying he was tame, so no one would panic. Frankly, no such thing would reassure me, because I'm certain there's really no such thing as a tame gorilla. All real gorillas are vicious killers.
-- Brad Ellis, Louisville, Ky.