You Know the Drill. DC Challenger #9

"Don't patronize me! Why cannot you guardians and your stop this Green Lantern Corps stop this Bork?"

"Beware, all! I sense that those grotesque demons below are not of this Earth!"

"Thank the stars some of Adam's friends from Earth showed up, father, to help us defeat these last remnatns of Bork's hordes!"

Random Lines, DC Challenge #8

"The Batman hasn't been seen in 10 years, but something happens and the 50-year-old crimefighter goes back into action."
(The solicit for Dark Knight Returns #1. Okay, here's three real ones.)

"Bork must be found, project X must be halted. The fastest, simplest way to accomplish this is through the conquest of Earth."

"Hi there. Know where I can find a good mechanic?"

"Do not be afraid, human. Orion, Adopted son of Izaya, shall not let you fall."

Random Lines, DC Challenge #7

"So sue me! Ah-ah, goosestepper...you stay down! Besides, stupid or not...it worked, didn't it?"

"<Yes, Yes! I want those men--whoever they are...and I want them now!>"

"Sounds Serious...and Earth is my home......so I'll do it--on the house! Besides, Earth's just a short hop from here for Space Cabby!"

24: Not so much about yesterday's show...

...which was sort of meh. We'll see if the new new archvillian works out, I guess.

Anyhow, I'll use this space to outline what Day Six would be like, if I ran the zoo...

First: the last scene of the last episode of Day Five is some Chinese Embassy analyst looking at a newscast from sometime in the day, freezing the frame, zooming in and refining the image. He then picks up his phone, calls someone up, and says (in Chinese with subtitles) "Jack Bauer is alive."

Not sure what I'd do with the Preview on the Day Five DVDs.

Anyhow, On to the first two hours. We start with Jack walking into CTU cold, telling them he's learned of a major threat for that day against the government, and gets the squad of the day to support him in chasing down a Chinese national in LA, a biochemist who he says is working on a biological weapon.

During those two hours, Jack's methods start off at the top of the extreme scale and get worse and worse...kneecapping and/or torturing people who aren't even remotely guilty of anything other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. With about five minutes to go in the episode, they find the guy, and then, instead of taking him in, Jack shoots him. Curtis barely has time to say 'What the hell' before Jack shoots him, too.

Then, in the final scene of the premere, we go to that prison near the border with Siberia that was mentioned in Season 4, where we see, being tortured by a nasty Chinese interrogator...Jack Bauer.

The second two hours, aired the next day if the last few seasons are a guide, mostly follow the real Jack Bauer in said prison. There's an ex-general of the People's Liberation Army Navy in there, too, and he's staging a breakout, which sweeps Jack up: the general wants some of Jack's codes and passwords. We find out that Faux-Jack managed to salt Kim away as a hostage, so Jack has to cooperate for now. By the end of the episode, he's on a jet plane on it's way to meet a small fleet of submarines. Meanwhile, Faux-Jack has managed to blame Curtis' death on bad guys, but eventually tips Chloe and company off that he's not on their side, but not before uploading a virus into the Navy's networks, stopping them from communicating with their own submarines.

I have vague ideas on the rest of the day, but that's enough for now, I think.

Random Lines. DC Challenge #6

"Why bother? Rann is doomed! There is nothing we can do!"

"Flux? Such vords from a boy!"

"Look at the United Naitons building! Swastikas! All over the place! Something is very, very wrong here!"

Random Lines from DC Challenge #5

"Blast it, Tabu, I said it, and I mean it! I'm never putting that costume on again! Civilization has made its bed--now let it lie in it! I'm through with it!"

"Pathetic Humans! You gather 'neath that guady cloth, as though it will offer some protection...This is how much protection it affords!"

"Bueno. Bueno. She eat all her farina today."

(Sure, another cheat from an ad from a much better comic. But this is Mike W. Barr's issue, and he didn't go over the top as much as the other writers.)

Random lines from DC Challenge #4

"You didn't think we'd ignore out leader's summons, did you, cutie? Besides, I haven't been to Egypt for years and the sight-seeing's great!"

"That's idiotic--how can some nuclear weapons be working simply because they're being used at night?"

"I'm with you, Olsen--hopelessly confused--but with youuuuu..."

Random Lines from DC Challenger #3

"The appelation is Cuthbert J. McGonigle."

"Turn on your friends and yourself with Elvira, the Hottest Hostess of Macabre!"

"Great Thanagar! Look! There's a tiny man trapped inside this shard!"

Sing for the president sing for the terrorists sing

(Left as an exercise to the increasingly hypothetical reader whether this post is about 24, Yes Virginia, or both.

Tax Day Special

Thought I'd get around to the whole 'reasons why taxing income is a bad idea in the first place' post. So here it is.

1. If part of the entire tax concept is to do some redistribution of wealth, then why not tax wealth, rather than income. Taxing income just gives an advantage to old, ossified money (which, in sufficient quantities, can provide more than enough tax-free income to live extravagently on) over new money.

2. General economics says that taxing anything will get you less of it. But we really want income-generating economic activity, considerably more than we want, say, wealth, or consumption, being the other possible candidates for revenue taxation.

3. Really, the government has no business knowing how much money any given person makes. So getting rid of a system that requires it to be that fantastically nosy about everyone would be a massive blow for privacy.

Random Lines from DC Challenge #2

"Poor Benjamin Franklin! If he'd but known the trouble his discovery would one day cause us..."

"Ah jest Gota stop drinkin' thet cheap rotgut on an empty--"

"Last time I saw him he was chasing a smurf"

Random Lines From DC Challenge #1

"It says here it has something to do with the phases of the moon...which is as good a place as any for my next stop."

"J. Wilbur Wolfingham has sold the Earth!"

"A graphic novel set on an earth with a dying human race and a man with a mission!"

(Okay, the last two were from the DC Check List. But anything it the book is fair game for this 'feature')

One more Hugo Nominees Thought

...now that I've finished Learning the World:

Neil Gaiman was robbed. [Twice, actually, since Mirrormask didn't get nominated either.]

Not that Learning the World (and, for that matter, Old Man's War) were remotely bad books; this was a very strong year in general. It's just that Anansi Boys was without doubt better than either of those and in close competition with the rest of the field.

Man, those Hugo Nominators sure don't like comedy, do they? (To Say Nothing of the Dog is the only comedic book ever to win one, and one of the few ever to be nomiated. Douglas Adams never got a best novel nomination.)

On Learning the World: An interesting book, certainly. The ending struck me as a bit odd, leading me to wonder if it's the naivety of the characters or the author at play here: a universe selected for cosmogenic star-drives isn't particularly likely to have bunches and bunches of intelligent life coming into being at the same time; all it really needs is one, maybe one per galaxy. The universes where life evolves intelligence at roughly the same time in fairly close, cosmically speaking, proximity, is one that's been selected for (even more efficiently?) cosmogenic weapons.

24: New Worst Plan Ever...

Well, it looks like last year's "Hold up the gas station to delay the suspect" plan now has competition in the "Worst Plan Ever" department, with "Call in a few dozen LAPD to walk right into an ambush to provide you with a diversion."

Apparently absent this season: strong motifs, the Chinese, a bad-guy plan that makes any kind of sense. And Mandy.

Blogroll Addition: Asking the Wrong Questions

Discovered by way of locus online, the newest blog on my 'roll: Asking the Wrong Questions. Click and keep reading back through the archives until you're sated.

Return to Television/DVD blogging: Time Warps

Fairly recently finished off Stargate SG-1 Season 8, which managed to be fairly comprehensible despite the fact that I've only seen a tiny smattering of Atlantis episodes to this date, with the pilot not among them. A very good season. And ending in an excellent two-parter, Möbius, which would work so well as a series finale that it's almost disappointing that there are at least two more seasons beyond it. Except that, after using the 'abortive crossover' intro twice, leaving that undone would be fairly criminal.

Also starting to watch Scrubs, which is extremely funny but seems to exist in a very odd time-warp, since the characters exist in the present day, are considerably younger than I am, and yet seem to exist in a pop-culture world that's slightly older than mine...

...And a little more Infinite Crisis #6

Okay, so Earth-154 isn't Generations-Earth as such, but rather the Super-son's earth, which debuts in World's Finest #154. Earth-97 is the Tangent Universe, which was published in 1997. Earth-247 is, of course, Legion Earth.

Earth-898 is still a bit unclear. 1898 was the year of the Spanish-American war on our Earth, of course, but Mexico was independent by then and so to have a battle at the ruined Alamo as part of that conflict (with all of the DC western characters present) requires a bit of historical finagling. I guess that's what's going down, though, with the guy on the horse being Zorro most likely...

And that leaves Earth-462, with the Teen Titans fighting Nazis, possibly in Washington DC. Still not sure what the number means there. Adventure 462 was the Death of the Earth-2 Batman; the other books that reached 462 didn't having anything of note happen in that issue.

Minor Infinite Crisis #6 Geekery

Earth-247. Heh. I approve.

But is there a similar in-joke connecting John Byrne's Generations Earth to the number 154?

Any IDs for Earth-97 (Female versions of main heroes), Earth-898 (Western characters havinga Crisis at the Alamo) or Earth-462 (Which appears to be an Earth-X scenario-WWII still being fought in modern times, that is-but with analogs of the JLA, or maybe the Teen Titans, instead of a Freedom Force). Earths -0 annd -S are, of course, easy.

Wonder how many search hits these Earth names will end up getting me...

UPDATE
Oh, and the "New Earth" page is muy interesting. If these shards are all elements going into the new Earth...well, we have Superman having adventures of some kind when he was a boy. We have Phantom Zone Criminals. We have a white-hair-sideburns Superman involved somehow. We have Joe Chill known to be the Waynes' killer from the very beginning. We have Wonder Woman as afounding member of the JLA, and possibly Batman as well. Which would come awful close to fixing all of the mistakes made in making the first New Earth back at the end of the first Crisis...

This better be good...(24 Tuesday)

I mean, even I, master rationalizer that I am, haven't been about to figure out a talkaround to get me to just what the hell Logan stands to gain through this entire exercise...

The Armies of Memory, with spoilers

Okay, well, first things first: I was mainly right in my Merchants of Souls comments. Not completely, of course, but mainly. I was certainly right that there was a posthuman civilization out there, even if I was wrong about where it was. I was right about some of the genetic engineering business being conspicuously absent, although that one got more papered over than addressed head-on. (There's still the question of why there isn't a full-out extropian movement going on on the fringes, but that's not nearly as glaring.)

Strongly, strongly hope that the marketing people are wrong and A Far Cry will still eventually exist. Because the story isn't over.

Barnes' other main sequence of books is, one notes, in close to the same position: there's a big, big battle just over the horizon in which the white hats are making a last stand of unknown but not-all-that-good odds. It will be interesting, eventually, to see how he does the actual climactic conclusion thing. So far, though, no sign of what he has coming next, whether it'll be A Far Cry, more Meme Wars, or something else entirely. (Igitatur!?) No sign at any of the usual suspects right now...