In Chile, day three, 23.May.2006

Tuesday.
Today they told us everything.

(Interlude)

Meanwhile, back in the present...
Have my sneakers ready and will get the hell out of the office by 18hs00 today; we´re back on track & will resume running as of now .

Told you I was gonna heal, even getting hurt is part of a grander scheme...


Well, sorta.

In Chile, day two, 22.May.2006

Monday.
Waking up bare naked at 07:30am after a ten-hour sleep then getting to work at 09:00am on foot (after a hot shower and a shave!) and leaving at 06:00pm without having answered a single phonecall…?
I have died & went straight to Heaven, right?

On a totally unrelated sidenote there´s a p*rn flick on late-night TV right now and I actually know the name of the actress. I scare the sh*t out of me in times like these, I think I´m becoming mankind´s depository for useless information.
…Kind of for when the aliens come down on earth and pretty much vanquish all of humanity and there´s just this small group of people left we´ll have to start civilization all over again and hey I´m gonna be the guy in charge of all p*rnography, at least to make sure they do it right: Less stuff with batteries, more fresh fruit & handcuffs. Also, is it called s*d*my too when it´s male on female? We should have more of that as well.

It´s midnight and there´s this gorgeous blonde outside at the corner just below my bedroom window and I´m wondering what would it take to get her up here, and how much it would cost.
Of course I automatically assume all pretty girls to be a bit of a h**ker, alright.

Tagline for men: We are not free.

In Chile, day one, 21.May.2006

Okay, we´re back.
I´m gonna post daily the travel log of crap I got to write down while in Santiago last week:

- - - - - - - - - -

The whole notion of it finally sinks in as I set my foot aboard the A-320 and all of a sudden I´m back to being a kid a kid in Christmas morning; I manage to pull through sheer incredulity and make my smile even wider.
Liftoff is the closest thing to Paradise that I´ve ever felt and I hadn´t felt that in a while. To be honest I was pretty sure I wouldn´t feel it again so soon but what do you know.
The earphones are plugged in I´m begging the DJ for Berlin´s Take my breath away or the overture to Richard Wagner´s Parsifal. It´s U2´s Pride instead with Bono taking the chorus through its usual exciting 1980s crescendo- in the name of love and all that- And it reminds me that all of this is about, because of and for love. Was in love with this girl a few years back, were gonna move in together etc, only it didn´t quite work out because of something called life that got in the way… so here I am soaring over South America heading west to sunny Santiago, Chile… Jailbreak has gone international as planned but I still can´t believe it´s working…
It is the coolest thing ever:

“Como se llama esto?” – this is me in mock-Spanish asking the lady next to me about the breakfast omelet. Turns out it´s called just that in Spanish too.

“Pudo mirar esto un rato por favor?” – this is me in something quite like Spanish, if spoken by a seven year-old from Mars, to her husband, asking for a peek at his Chilean newspaper so I can get the current exchange rate for the Dollar.

The other guy from the office is a few seats ahead and I´m thinking of going over for some gum. Some people always carry gum with them, you know?
--the view from the window over the starboard wing takes my breath away; I´d forgotten how cool flying really was.
The Wallflowers start singing One headlight and I´m thinking what the hell I´m doing here. Because all of this? It´s about love, you see.


PS: You´re not going to believe this but some kid has just forgotten a toy Batmobile in the bathroom over the washing basin. It´s probably Batman´s way of bidding me godspeed & telling me it´s gonna be alright. I´ll take it as a good omen if any.

- - - - - - - - - -

Sunday evening in Santiago, a haiku:

Watching brown leaves fall,
Pizza Hut then Picasso
-Autumn in Chile.

Here today, gone mañana

It´s the coolest thing ever, they are sending me out to Chile, to sunny Santiago as of next Sunday; will work there for a week on this Customer Service-related Oracle-based platform, all very sub-rosa so far, not too many details to go around. I hope I survive. I don´t speak any Spanish.

And when I return I´m probably relieved of my duties, no more vessels to watch over, no more mental calculations in twenty-feet units to perform, no more arguing with money-crazy NVOCCs over fifty bucks lost in an e-mail misunderstanding with the Carrier, no more talking with Deb the lady from the Houston branch with the sexiest accent I´ve ever heard; let Robin the Boy Wonder mind the store now, I´m off to a brand-new beginning here and I guess some changes are in order after all.
Maybe I´ll just crash-burn and return to my previous gig in a month or maybe this is the big jackpot that will see me through life. I don´t know. Still, the outcome changes very little if any, bottom line is, it´s the coolest thing ever, they are sending me out to Chile, et. al.

I just hope the working hours get even longer. I began with eight-a-day but all of a sudden it wasn´t nearly enough and started pulling ten until a twelve-hour day with no lunch break felt like a stroll in the park.
There´s no easy way of putting it, I think I´m one of those dangerous people with the dangerous need of proving something to themselves. In part it´s because I want the world to know that I can take it, I want the world to know that when all hell breaks loose and everybody is down I´m gonna be the one who will shudder but never falter, the one with a crooked half-smile telling you It´s gonna be alright buddy, trust me on this one… But in part I think I was born flawed & what I really want is, I want the world to tell me what my limit really is.

I need proof that I´m alive so I can feel something, so I can feel anything at all.

Driven

This one´s totally uncalled for but since it´s coming straight from the heart please do read it with great care—

…

In a crazy kind of way it´s like waiting for the dice to roll double sixes so your green army can march freely into Mongolia. It´s so unlike chess; there is no illusion for control and the bottom-line is clearly defined by the boundaries of occupied territory.
Or, it´s there if you can take it.

…

Things had been pretty rough for them by 2002 so every time she asked him out on a Saturday evening he kind of shuddered and that night was no exception. It was not that he wasn´t a good kid (but he really wasn´t, so there), it´s just that money was a little tight and there was no way he could afford dinner for two at a McDonald´s.
Life has a funny way of evening things out unilaterally so of course McDonald´s ended up bringing back some long-gone burger after a period of absence and she was most thrilled, she loved that burger, she had dreams about that burger, he just shuddered. They took his father´s car out and went right in on the very first Saturday once the word was out.
It went like, “Burgers and a coke and no, no fries with those (thank god) what about you, hon, watcher having?”
“Naww nothing for me, I´m good.”
“Really? Come on, I thought you loved that burger.”
“Naww I´m good, really.”
“Okay.”
“I think I´ll just nibble at yours.”
“No way!,” she protested angrily. “It´s my sandwich and I´m not giving you any of it. You want to eat, you eat your own.”
So the kid paid for her meal (she was his girlfriend after all) and they passed through the door and sat down at a table just by the deserted playground outside. They talked, she ate, they laughed, maybe kissed, they left.

Back at his parents´- and they were out for the night probably at an uncle´s- they sat down in front of the TV and E.R. was on, she was going through that medical-wannabe phase that all girls go through during their mid-20s (it´s just the maternal instinct thing kicking in, you know) and silence had to reign supreme. “I can only presume”, he thought, “that it really isn´t that unlike watching TV with Joseph Stalin, only the smell is better with her.”
Given the girl´s utter absorption into the show he stood up and went for a glass of water- you want some?, No thanks, not thirsty, and shhh! I´m watching the show.
Only she ended up hearing the wet noise, the chewing noise and got up and headed for the kitchen- how odd, she must have thought, for it was unlit.
Her boyfriend stood under the moonlight by the refrigerator, caught red-handed wolfing a cold plate of chicken leftovers from lunch.
And she went,

“What are you doing?”
“Munching.”
“I thought you were not hungry.”
“Not really.”
“You should´ve eaten at the McDonald´s.”
“Yes.”
“You never said…”- she hesitated for a bit- “you didn´t have the money.”
“Well…”
“Come on, you could´ve told me.”
“I guess.”
“So why didn´t you tell me?,” she asked with eyes now reddening. “It´s not that bad, is it?”
“Naww, just a day in the life,” he replied very matter-of-factly, very nonchalantly, “Just a drop in the ocean.”
“C´mon…,” fell the first tear, “If I knew it I would never…”
“Hey. Look. Don´t bother.”
“…We could´ve stayed home instead…”
“Hey, really. Just forget it.”
“Please tell me it´s gonna be okay,” she begged, crying, and hugged him.
The boy, not letting go of the chicken, hugged her back but never cried but not because he didn´t want to but because to this day (so he tells me) he thinks he can´t.

…

Three months earlier:
“Why don´t we move in together?” asked the kid rubbing his eyes as his girlfriend began dressing up for work.
“Are you out of your mind?,” she replied with a sneer.
“For real.”
“Whoa.” She stopped fidgeting with her boots & looked up at him standing in front of her by the bed. “Come on, we don´t have the money, you know that.”
“I´ll figure something out.”
“Look, it´s not that easy.”
“It is for me,” he smiled. “C´mon, for the Nth time, I l-o-v-e you. I want to move in together with you.”
“Don´t take this the wrong way, but it´s strictly wishful thinking on your part.”
“Don´t you want to, then?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then let´s!”
“As soon as we have the money, baby, we will,” she patted him on his thigh.
“I said I´ll come up with something…”
“You´re not as smart as you would like to be, honey,” she smiled. “And besides, this sudden burst of self-confidence this late into the game will not change anything for us.”

…

Later that night as they lay in bed after the bit with the chicken was settled he couldn´t get to sleep for the life of him- she snored gently by his side. “This is no life,” he thought. “There must some way to escape this mediocrity.”
So he came up with a plan & he would follow it through and I kindly ask for the reader´s suspension of belief now.
It was foolproof, it considered & accounted for every single roll of the dice, both luck and reason were dealt with, Mongolia stood a few years away into the horizon but still it was there and he could almost taste it in the air, it was like Shangri-la or Brigadoon or Atlantis- a castle up in the sky- It was there if he could take it.

“Two things first,” he announced to himself. “First and foremost, the sheepskin is mandatory.”
“It´s gonna be a cinch- it´s just College,” he replied to himself. “Consider it done within a year if I push myself justa bit. What else?”
“You will have to start considering traveling light now.”

He didn´t answer that one. It was all silence all through the night from then on, followed by some heavy breathing in the dark, then silence again & morning.

…

So don´t bother, okay?
I´m not crazy, I´m not obsessed, I can stop it anytime I want, only I won´t.
Bottom line is, it brings Jack a paycheck.

…

We close this one with a Paul Simon song:
”Faith? Faith is an island in the setting sun--
But proof? Proof is the bottom line for everyone.”

Gotterdammerung for the New Wave one-hit wonders

In conversation, nine years ago…

FRIEND: Hey, remember that guy who sang Tarzan Boy?
ME: That big fagg*t?
FRIEND: Yep.
ME: Baltimora.
FRIEND: Yeah. Turns out he died of some Aids-related disease. I just read about it the other day...
ME (sarcastic): No sh*t...
FRIEND: No kidding.
ME: Tarzan Boy was cool...
FRIEND: Tell me about it. Anyway, remember that other guy, the one with the big hairdo and the eyepatch? [Author´s note: We were probably talking about Kajagoogoo or someone similar]
ME: Yeah, yeah, sure do. Don´t tell me he O.D.´ed or something?
FRIEND: Quite worse. Guy checked in for a nosejob and turns out some doctor butchered him up, wrecked his face, guy never showed up in public again...
ME: You´d say those New Wave dudes were all cursed... like the Poltergeist actors, you know?
FRIEND: Go figure...
ME: Hey, what about that other broad... Cyndi Lauper? [Author´s note: Correct spelling for the ´Y´] don´t tell me she ended up pregnant?
FRIEND: How do you know?!
ME: I know stuff...
FRIEND: But being pregnant isn´t a curse...
ME: Well, tell that to her son once he reaches puberty.
FRIEND: Point taken.
ME: And what about the guy from The Cure? Robert Smith?
FRIEND: What about him?
ME: You know, you do look like him...
FRIEND: So?
ME: Maybe you´re cursed too...

Punchline is:
And somewhere on the British Isles, Shane MacGowan is still alive...

Life during wartime (day one?)

Best part of living under siege is that I´m wearing sneakers at the office, got my tie off, and nobody seems to notice. Also, I got into a great conversation with this terrific blonde as we went for the train (buses were out today).

Will try to ask her out for ice-cream or something if the city survives.

The "I shall become a bat" post

Know who´s cool?
Batman is cool: Guy brings home a Phantom F-4 jet fighter and customizes it so that its wings now have scalloped edges just like a bat´s, then paints it dark blue and parks it beneath his mansion, just because.
Best part about being a playboy billionaire- and single- is all the Cold War surplus you get to buy with the fortune you would be squandering away on kitchenware for the missus instead.

…And that´s why I´m not getting married, you know? Because of Batman; Batman told me not to. “You´re just a billion dollars short of becoming a playboy billionaire, chum,” he said. “Then you too shall become a bat”.

Flawed

F. Scott Fitzgerald´s The Great Gatsby opens with the following piece, In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”.
It´s kinda hard then to open up a blog entry with a truism- especially when you borrow somebody else´s, and the audience is basically twisting your arm so you get to the punchline quick enough. People read this at their jobs, you know? And you´re a grade-A prick yourself. And which is more- that´s you talking in my head- you don´t even like The Great Gatsby to begin with, you told me once over croissants and sodas a few years back in College while skipping class, what right do you have throwing this at us like that?
Right. Point taken. But maybe I do, maybe a do have a point there myself, maybe I do have the right.

The first piece of text I ever wrote- I was seven years old- I think it was in March or April, 1987 at school. Half the class did not know how to properly read or write, I did. There´s this bit my grandmother tells me, me being very young trying to read the morning paper at her place after lunch, sitting on the floor with the paper all spread out over the carpet around me, some 1970s cartoon re-running on TV for the Nth time, not being able for the life of me to read aloud some starlet´s name, a foreign one, grandma making fun of me but then helping out.
The composition I wrote was titled- and this is going to kill you- it was called “The search for the golden cobra” or something to that effect. It had to do with me and my friends- everybody´s earliest pieces at school were about themselves. That´s Primeval Blogging 101 for you people- gathering up to go on this crazy adventure after some mysterious golden statue, all very Raiders of the Lost Ark (it was the best of times, after all, if you wanna get Dickensian on me) but then in the end- by line 30 or thereabouts- it turned out one of the kids was daydreaming in the doctor´s office. Shades of Alice Through the Looking Glass and one hell of a cliché, but hey, okay for this 07 years old. The teacher liked, everybody liked.
A few months later this other kid comes up with a text of his own, aptly named “The search for the golden cobra” or something to that effect, with a plot very similar to my own, sans the tricky ending. Boy was I outraged.
That´s one major character flaw right there, isn´t it? A seven year old´s supposed to be so innocent, so pure- it was a homage, the teacher told me- yet I never bought it because I think I was born flawed.
My father has called me a Natural-born killer on occasion in a sense (negative) that I don´t care about other people´s feelings. My ex-girlfriend said something to that effect once or twice or fourteen times as well, and I´ve been deemed Mr. Freeze by a rather compromising number of people too (friends? girls?). My father and I are pretty close but we have been drifting apart for a few years now mostly due to politics; he is hopeful of people yet skeptical for the world, whereas I´m mostly hopeful for the world yet skeptical of people. I think it´s because I was born flawed. But I digress again.

Ten years later.
It was late ´97 and we were all very, very drunk at this party in a nightclub in my hometown, just a few months short of getting the hell out of High School forever (thank god), and that same kid from the composition ripoff a decade earlier turns up to me and says he wants to talk, there´s this thing he wants to tell me for a long time, “Shoot,” I say, and he´s going all like why I´m friends with everybody and say & do cool stuff with everybody but with him? “We´ve known each other for what,” he asks, “Ten years now?”, but when it comes down to him I´ve always been lukewarm at best. So guy wants to know, in a nutshell, why. The classic “What have I done to deserve this” thing.
I wanted to tell him right then & there that it´s not his fault; it was all because he became flawed (blame it on the very society that spawned you for all I care) and everybody comes from a different place & from a different upbringing with different perspectives but I just don´t get it maybe because I´m immature or maybe because I was born flawed, and to hell with you kid for I couldn´t care less if you died right now or opened a bar by the river in five years, see? Can this blue-collar hedonism you got going, people like us, we were born flawed to be salarimen for life, white-collar slaves for the machine, that bit about the composition back in First Grade was just a symptom and you are just a symptom yourself.

I did not tell him that, of course. I was not that drunk.

“Naww,” I looked down & back to him. “Just your imagination,” then turned my back on him- just like that- and mingled into the thronging dance floor below.

Things I think on Saturdays, pt. 01

"Maybe I should grow a moustache..."

A few good links

Currently on the Address Bar on my IE 6.0 at work for quick access:

Text: Blog
Title: Currently Engineering a Jailbreak
Description: My own blog, this one you´re reading right now.
URL:
http://freemanattheoffice.blogspot.com/

Text: Dic
Title: Dicionário
Description: The company´s own online multi-language dictionary, because my Spanish sucks.
URL:
[local intranet]

Text: Encarta
Title: Dictionary MSN - Encarta
Description: MSN´s Encarta English dictionary, best one there is!
URL:
http://encarta.msn.com/

Text: Factbook
Title: CIA – The World Factbook
Description: Tons of organized, indexed information about individual countries (very useful when some lazy manager comes up to you asking the area code for say, Bhuthan)
URL:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/

Text: Metrics
Title: Online metric conversion calculator
Description: Multi-function conversion (weight, distance, temperature, etc)
URL:
http://www.metric-conversions.org/

Text: Wiki
Title: Wikipedia
Description: Online encyclopedia (heaven on Earth!!)
URL: http:
//www.wikipedia.org/

Text: NVOCCs
Title: NVOs listing
Description: List of FMC-registered Non Vessel Operating Common Carriers. It´s all a bit technical, you see…
URL:
http://www2.fmc.gov/oti/nvos_listing.asp

Text: Zip
Title: Zip Codes and Postal Codes of the world
Description: Links to the Post Offices of many nations, very useful for say, finding a ZIP Code in Bhutan or something.
URL:
http://www.embassyworld.com/data/Zip_Codes.html

Text: Phantom
Title: Seattle Post Intelligencer - The Phantom
Description: Lee Falk´s The Phantom´s daily newspaper strip, currently penciled by The Flash-alumnus Paul Ryan.
URL:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/fun/phantom.asp

Text: Time
Title: The World Clock meeting planner
Description: Just so I don´t get late for conferences with a foreign branch or something…
URL:
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html

Text: Science
Title: Ask a Scientist – Archive directory
Description: An assorted collection of simple and complex questions about science in general (allegedly) explained by professionals.
URL:
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/archive.htm

20th-century boy

Did not go to see V for Vendetta last Wednesday. Went, instead, to see Basic Instinct 2, which was not very different from Top Gun in a sense that both are utterly plotless (and pointless!), yet Top Gun has stood the test of time due to the sheer strength of its characters. Not that “Maverick” is a Green Lantern or something, but heck it beats the living crap out of Sharon Stone when it comes down to motivation.
Sharon Stone is a lot cuter, though.

Speaking of Green Lantern (and V for Vendetta) there´s this recurring Alan Moore story nesting in the back of my head. It´s “Tygers” from a 1986 Green Lantern Annual, named for the William Blake poem. It´s a possible-future situation that foresees the destruction of the Green Lanterns, etc, and there´s this Green Lantern which is hailed as the Ultimate Green Lantern of all, he´s called Sodam Yat and he´s a Daxamite, which basically means he´s as powerful as a Kryptonian- ergo, a Superman with a Power Ring.
Sodam Yat was destined to kill Superman in an unpublished late-1980s story, also by Alan Moore.
Moore was the writer for the V for Vendetta comic book that inspired the movie, which everybody loves but me, I just feel it reads like a half-assed Nineteen Eighty-Four ripoff. Poor George Orwell, y´know?

(It has dawned upon me, on occasion, that Sodam Yat sounds way too much like sod*mite. Go figure.)

Which brings me back to William Blake´s The Tyger, which is also the tile of an episode from Batman: The Animated Series TV show from the early 1990s. The story per se is very weird, in a bad way, but you have Batman quoting Blake in the end, that deep Kevin Conroy voice going Tyger, Tyger, burning bright in the forests of the night, etc.

Oddly enough, The Tyger is probably the most often-quoted poem in comic books. I think Garth Ennis wrote a Punisher story with that name, the poem was also used in Grant Morrison´s British superhero epic Zenith, etc.

I mean, you can´t beat that bit that goes all Paradise Lost-like,
When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

If it were a song it would have been one of those 1980s “Wagnerian Rock songs” produced by Jim Steinman. He did the best parts in the soundtrack for Streets of Fire movie with Fire, Inc.

Does anybody still remember Streets of Fire?
Willem DaFoe- that ugly SOB- played the villain.

Pretend it´s Autumn

Thought about writing of you without even knowing your name- a name is a good thing for starters and we are all absolute beginners here, our (key)strokes are too broad, too wide, too blunt, too coarse- but you were dressed in a periwinkle-blue sweater made either of cotton or fleece, it´s not that I didn´t look straight it´s just that I´m not too good with clothing.
You carried your weight around the mall with grace and probably have a PhD or three. Everything about you as seen from a glance over my spaghetti swamped in camper berries smelled of post-grad. Which, oddly enough, kind of turns me on- I think it´s just the perpetual Academic underachiever in me. Got this close to dropping out of College, only I didn´t, because a special friend I respected a lot back then (still do) told me not to, “We´re halfway there,” etc.
But I digress.

I wonder about her perfume, the way she smells like early in the morning upon waking up; suppose it´s Saturday just before breakfast. Purring lazily, hair a mess, eyes still red, sand on the pillow, periwinkle-blue sweater folded neatly over a chair by the bed, the whole day beckoning ahead of us.

Miss Autumn, 2006.

Jimmy Olsen´s blues

Okay. Just so that we lighten up the blog, here´s one page from last year´s 120-pages long “Batwoman” daily serial. It was page one from issue three, in which Catwoman had led the Secret Society of Super-Villains- Please do bear with me here. The idea was indeed to add together a silly plot & silly characters with a more sophisticated narrative, just to see if I could make it work, just for fun -in raiding the Justice League Satellite. Green Arrow was the only hero present at the orbiting HQs at the time and was taken down by surprise, but not before he managed to signal Superman for help…

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
PAGE 1.

Panel 1.
Partial view of the planet Earth to the lower-left section of the panel, surrounded by the nothingness of the star-filled void.

1 CAPTION: Something microscopic at this distance shoots upwards through the skyline of a vast urban spread on a great metropolitan center somewhere on North America´s Eastern shore. It is exactly 04:36:03 am, less than two minutes since Green Arrow signaled for help.

2 CAPTION: It is clocked at over four times the speed of sound by land-based radar stations, and accelerating.

Panel 2.
Pull back to reveal the pointy tip of one of the JLA satellite´s pylon antennae, shining in the sunlight.

3 CAPTION: A split-second elapses as the air scorches red-hot on its trail as it gains sovereignty over the lower atmosphere.

4 CAPTION: The Satellite´s onboard scanners compensate for electromagnetic interference from the surrounding environment and track the projectile with extreme precision.

Panel 3.
Pull back further, so now we can see most of the left segment of the JLA Satellite´s outer rim in the shot, with two of its pylons in full view. Below, a shinning point of light comes off Earth´s atmosphere.

5 CAPTION: A mind capable of solving equations using whole star-systems instead of numeric algorithms calculates trajectory and thrust…

6 CAPTION: …Its uncanny eyesight not bothered by the lightwaves shifting deeper into the blue spectrum as their lengths are compressed under a speed never dreamed of.

Panel 4.
The point of light becomes a thin white line shooting off the Earth en route to the Satellite.

7 CAPTION: The Satellite´s electronic mind fire streams of binary information through lengths of cables and wires scattered throughout its radiation-proofed structure…

8 CAPTION: …Crawling deeply, spiderlike into the transistorized bulkheads of its lower levels below the main deck…

Panel 5.
The white line becomes a blue-red-yellow blur, now only a few hundred feet away from the Satellite.

9 CAPTION: Bright primary colors drop off the speed of light.

10 CAPTION: The displacement of gravitons in its presence slightly warps space around the orbital station… the fact does not go unnoticed by its nigh-omniscient recording devices.

Panel 6.
A rather large, bold panel.
An extreme close-up of a porthole inside the Trophy Room inside the Satellite, looking out to space. The porthole, to the left of the panel, takes almost two-thirds of the shot, whereas the darkened, inert head of Amazo the Amazing Android (seen here from the neck up, just his head) lies against the wall, facing the reader.
The main event, however, is what we see through the porthole: The full-bodied figure of SUPERMAN drops off lightspeed, like an angry god. He is mad, every muscle flexed, fists closed shut and arms bent below & outwards, bursting with raw power.
OBS: I don´t care what the rest of the free-world thinks, but this is Alex Ross´ middle-aged, badass, adult Superman. This is NOT the eternally-29 fashion-model teenage superstar post-Crisis Super-wimp. This guy should look like a 45-year-old blue-collar “dad” right out of a 1930s Depression-era America, built like a damn tractor, with a receding hairline, thin lips, blue eyes perpetually squinting, skin like granite, raw power bursting at the seams at every move.

11 CAPTION: 04:36:06 am. An angry god re-enters Reality, only to see his temple defiled and family threatened.

12 CAPTION: Superman´s commands are unheard in the void, but his message is clear: Get out.

13 CAPTION: Within the Trophy Room, a dead Android bears silent witness to the scene.

Panel 7.
A small panel.
Extreme close-up on Amazo´s darkened face from the previous shot, his eyes now open wide in a red glow.

14 CAPTION: Within the Trophy Room, a mockup of the powers and abilities of the entire Justice League comes alive as Amazo awakens after a deep slumber.

15 CAPTION: His thoughts are clear. His mission is clear. One word flashes through its artificial brain: Kill.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Sang the Spin Doctors in their 1991 album “Pocket Full of Kryptonite”: He’s leaping buildings in a single bound / I’m reading Shakespeare at my place downtown / Come on downtown and make love to me / I’m Jimmy Olsen not a Titan, you see.

Guy sitting next to me here at the office just downloaded the new Superman Returns trailer, looks good, got me in the mood for some Kryptonite after all…

I mean, everybody likes Superman, right?

Well, I am afraid of her (Reading list for Apr.06)

Here´s my reading list for last month, just because:

Title: The Hours
Author: Michael Cunningham
Publisher: Don´t remember
What: Book about these three ladies, their stories being in told in parallel each in their time period. There´s the bit about Virginia Woolf (the author) in the 1920s, there´s the bit about some crazy housewife during the 1950s, and there´s the bit about the. Ah. Some other woman in the 1990s. The stories come together at a certain point in the book. Or is that spoiling the end?!
Comments while reading: Mmm good writing - Oh, here´s an awkward gay bit - Mmm more good writing - Hey, another awkward gay bit - Hey, the writing is terrific! - never mind that other awkward gay bit - et. al.
Verdict: Very solid plot, terrific writing, highly recommended- and this coming from a demographically-challenged audience, I guess.

Title: Less Than Zero
Author: Bret Easton Ellis
Publisher: Don´t remember
What: Book about this rich kid in the early 1980s coming home for Christmas, lots of sex and drugs ensuing.
Comments while reading: Whoa - That´s disgusting - Whoa - That´s gotta hurt - WHOA!- That´s gotta hurt AND is disgusting!
Verdict: Hey, I think this is one of the best books I´ve ever read. No kidding. One of the best portrayals of the late 20th century in literature that comes to mind right now. I mean, guy nails down the zeitgeist y´know...

Title: Superman: Daily Planet
Author: (various)
Publisher: DC Comics
What: Comic book; a collection of Daily Planet-themed stories from the 50s to the 00s.
Comments while reading: Daaamn! The Kurt Schaffenberger, early-1960s version of Lois Lane is the hottest girl in all comicdom, period.
Verdict: Pre-1986 Superman stories are always welcome.

Title: Mrs. Dalloway
Author: Virginia Woolf
Publisher: Penguin Popular Classics (means, it´s really cheap)
What: Good question. Book about a day in the life of this lady in London in the 1920s, I guess. Haven´t finished reading it yet.
Comments while reading: What the hell is this b---- talking about, anyway?!
Verdict: Pending. So far it´s that Mrs. Woolf must´ve been one heck of a messed-up skirt, that´s for sure.