Valentine’s Day Kards

The Stinkor Saga

I remember being given a toy by a teacher around my kindergarten years because she erroneously thought that it was mine. I wasn't about to argue, and its original owner was never found. But the bigger mystery was its identity. At least in retrospect, I'd come to believe that it was akin to some random, anonymous figure of the type that can be found on the fringes of pharmacy aisles. You know the kind. A few steps below the likes of Go-Bots. Big steps.

But then I came across this picture on a blog I'd been following and immediately recognised the character on the right from that hazy memory. I did a bit of research and discovered that he was actually an action figure in the He-Man franchise, ignored by most media because of the fact that his primary attribute, that of assault by odor, was too contemptible. Apparently, the toy was made to smell authentically bad to match this gimmick through the use of special oils that retain their fragrance for decades. This thing was made in 1985, and though I didn't discover it till the early 90s, I do seem to recall being warned off it by caretakers who feared that its stench, combined with its mysterious origins, betokened some manner of contamination.

You were called Stinkor, creature. Your name now joins your shape and scent in memory.

Best stink? 

Success! 

Though as my father fondly noted, the skunk's scent really isn't too bad either. Its stubbornness, in combination with notable potency, seems like a more fitting culprit for its infamy. 

My Friend Zone Rules Actually

So a guy who’s been my friend since 2015 just said that’s over because I won’t fuck him. Really great dude too. Apart from that, obviously.

This kind of thing has happened before, but the time from start to finish could usually be measured in minutes or hours instead of years. Has this ever happened to any of you across such a span of time?

Bonus Question!

Best zone?

Ternals!

Gnostic Vaccines

I see a lot of these anti-vaccine people say that they’re not actually against vaccines. They just refuse to get the COVID vaccine because they don’t believe it’s a real vaccine. They think it’s any or many of countless bizarre conspiracies. So don’t worry! They’re good people! They’re not actually against science! They believe in science! They just don’t believe that any inconvenient example of science is actually science.

It reminds me of something like Gnosticism, which seemed to be a way to get out of being religious without seeming like a total heretic in times when disbelief in the divine would have been dangerous. Those dudes claimed to believe in God, but they got out of actually doing anything with that belief by saying the real God completely hopped out of this reality. The supposed God that everyone actually worships is a false and corrupt one, and since any signs of piety wouldn’t be able to reach the real one, a good Gnostic might not have to be that distinguishable from a denouncer of God.

But yeah. Science. Vaccines. They’re good actually.

Afterlife Goals

I just overheard a cute conversation. A family on my street was putting up Halloween decorations, which happened to include an undead witch on a swing, and when the son asked why the witch was on a swing, the father scrambled for an origin story and landed around the idea that the witch never got a chance to ride a swing in life and chose to make that her post-mortem goal. And I like that. Sometimes people don’t get a chance to accomplish all their goals before they die, but occasionally, if the will is strong enough, they can make a go of it after death.

Bonus Question!

Best witch?

I don’t know right now, but it’s probably not the Worst Witch. I could be wrong though.

D(e)adiversary

Though I’d wish more, I cannot mourn

This life that glowed before ‘twas torn.

While the soul’s to darkness tossed,

All it’s left is never lost.

Hanging and Shanging

I just saw “Shang-Chi”! It was the first movie I’ve seen in theatres since I went to “Onward” on the last day cinemas were open before the pandemic. And it was the right one to go to. I was expecting some sort of crime intrigue adventure with martial arts and family drama. But yo! Vague spoilers? It was so much more! It veered hard into mystical wildness from the jump, and that was right in my jam. 

Like alright. Just going to say it. Dude rode a dragon. And that wasn’t even a clear contender for the most fabulous thing. 

And for real, everyone had such wonderful chemistry with each other. The whole swishy thing was joyous throughout. 

It just felt right to join some friends in seeing this film put the “cinema” back in “Marvel Cinematic Universe”. Watching “Black Widow” at home was fun, but that was a different thing. 

I heartily endorse all this big screen magic wuxia fantasy.

My Poetry in Magazines

Check out the newest 10th issue of the Culcha Shock magazine at sharetheshock.ca for some of my poetry and other great Canadian art content besides.

Mozzarella Sticks Are the Squirrels of Cheese

Many of the same people who love squirrels for their cuteness detest rats despite the fact that squirrels are basically just rats with a furry coating.

And while everyone seems to love mozzarella sticks, a lot of them look down on the cheese string kind of thing, which is just a mozzarella stick without the bready coating.

The mozzarella stick is the squirrel to a cheese string's rat.

Bonus Question! 

Best squirrel? 

Ratatosk, God Squirrel!

Soapy Surprise

I picked this one weekend to stay over at my girlfriend’s place for the first time, and after breakfast I point out this puddle of soapy water on the floor. Soapy. Not from her pets then. And it’s coming up from the baseboards. She calls her landlord and immediately after notices a rapidly expanding water bubble on her wall. It happens to be right above her shelves of prized books and collectibles, which we hasten to move. Landlord comes around with a plumber who knocks a big hole in her wall to drain it as the floor water gets sucked up. Apparently, the upstairs neighbour, who in the summer had been responsible for constant dripping on my girlfriend’s deck, didn’t notice that his sink pipe burst.

Anyway, the problem was summarily addressed, but it was an especially unexpected way to wake up at her apartment for the first time.

Bonus Question!

What was your first guess for the source of the soapy water?

Dishwasher ghost.

Black WidJo

I was just thinking about the new Black Widow movie in the context of a recent comic that featured the character’s return from the dead. In comics, unless you’re forgettable enough for your death and subsequent return to pass without much notice, there’s probably going to be a story about that. In this case, cloning was the answer. If I recall right, Black Widow died and came back in a cloned but otherwise unaltered body and fought against a bunch of other Black Widow clones that were under the control of the cloners. Probably the Red Room?

And now, since everyone’s predicting ways in which this prequel movie will have ramifications for the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I have this image in my head of a stinger where someone stumbles across this room with countless vats of Natasha clones to open the door for the return of Black WidScarJo. Maybe alongside the new blond one.

Bonus Question!

Best room of clone vats?

Shadows!

Delaying Legs

There’s this online store called Wild Bangarang that makes the best leggings. Among their many virtues is the fact that they fit with such perfect comfort on me. I don’t know if my buttocks are oddly shaped, but some other leggings slip down when I’m active at times. These don’t. And they’re shiny. Fabulous. So amazing.

In midsummer, I saw some grand new leggings in their Instagram story and was told it was a sneak peek at a future release. Several new releases came over the ensuing months, but those did not pop up. As Halloween approached, they released a holiday collection, which prompted me to take a deeper look at their site to see if there was any chance of my missing something. I doubted it, but that doubt was wrong. Somehow I was late by an order of weeks for those amazing leggings I’d seen so long ago. And there was another pair at a comparable level of grandeur! Got both. They’re here. I’m happy.

Bonus Question!

Absolute favourite leggins?

Still these.

Scooby Dreams

This dream I had. The first thing I vividly remember is crouching under a truck in a downtown street with the Scooby-Doo humans. But there was no supernatural threat? There was a businessman who said his company was replacing two miles of fuel lines under the street or something with a safer alternative? But it wasn’t safer at all. The entire area above that stretch of land was being made incredibly toxic, but the businessman had one guy at the corner to tell everyone it was safe. And I ran in to tell people the business was clearly lying, whereupon something happened that tells me even my subconscious might not really know what the phrase “toxic shock” actually refers too. There was this whole miasma in that poisoned area, and when I ran into it, it was like running into an electric barrier or something in a video game. There was this buzz and a flash, and I collapsed to the ground. But I actually felt it. It almost felt like a seizure. When I woke, I felt physically fine, but my mind needed to be convinced nothing bad actually happened.

I did look up toxic shock though. It is not in fact being electrocuted by poisonous air or whatever. I think it’s more like getting really sick really fast from a bad infection or something. Which sounds gross and worse. So whatever. But listen. If there were a 90s supervillain named Toxic Shock, I’m pretty sure their power would be to poison you with electric blasts.

The Warrior's Madness (And the Worrier's)

I’ve been reading some old Thor comics recently. From the 90s. The same era that had “Adventures in Babysitting” with that kid who was obsessed with Marvel’s Thor and the mechanic who looked like Thor and was played by the Kingpin from the Netflix Daredevil show.

And I came across this one issue that’s basically that Avengers story where Hank Pym literally goes crazy and develops an alternate personality that hits his wife in a way that was supposed to seem accidental but didn’t really play like that. Except Thor’s in place of Pym. And he has an imaginary girlfriend instead of an alternate personality. And it definitely wasn’t accidental because the wife he hit was intended to be the first death before he murdered the entire cosmos. Which actually treads close to Thanos territory too, but Death was nebulously real in a way that only seemed reminiscent of an imaginary friend.

Where am I going with this? That one slap Pym gave his wife coloured his entire character for decades to the point where wife beating became a significant aspect of his reputation. And this panel, which evokes the Pym slap even as it outweighs it in a story that’s like a mythically enlarged version of Hank’s ordeal, just makes me wonder why that stain clung to Hank so stubbornly while it seems to have slid off Thor’s back too fast for his big red cape to notice.

On an unrelated note, when I was first getting into comics, the Avengers were on my periphery, but Hank Pym and Thor were usually near the top of my list in that team because I related to Pym’s neuroses and Thor’s shininess. I’m pretty sure that those qualities don’t have significant comorbidity with spousal abuse. I’ve had a lot of bad relationships, but that particular issue never came up.

Anyway, I haven’t finished this story at the time of this writing, but I’m assuming Thor moves on from this particular manifestation of madness as Hank did, and the positive message I’ll probably seek in that is the worth of being allowed to change for the better and progress beyond one’s mistakes.

And on another unrelated note, I think Hank and Jan were better as a couple than Thor and Sif. That latter pair were better with a fraternal relationship, but Pym and Wasp were adorable at their best.

White and Blue

I wonder if Ahab was such an obsessive wretch about that white whale because his brother caught a blue one. It must be impossible to get out of the shadow cast by the biggest animal in history. It’d be like having an incredible medical career after your sibling cured cancer. You can save every life you touch, but your parent’s favourite saved every other life.

“Why can’t you be a doctor like your brother?”

“Mom, I’m a world-renowned surgeon.”

“I said ‘like your brother’.”

Best dude who’s dedicated his life to the hunt?

Kraven.

Coming Home to City of Heroes Homecoming

City of Heroes was the first MMORPG I played. After I found my online gaming home in World of Warcraft, I only dabbled in it briefly in 2008, and I never really went back before it closed around 2012 or whatever. But a year ago, the developers of a fan server worked with the original developers to bring it back. I finally gave that a try.

Alright. I installed it early in the day because I thought I could just let it do its thing while I went about my business, but it only took a few minutes. I suppose because it’s still essentially a game that was meant to run on low grade 2003 computers? I went to the character creation screen to see what was up before I reminded myself that I shouldn’t even give it the 15 minutes at that point in what was going to be a busy day.

I went on later in that night to make a character and realized that morning’s restraint was especially wise because the creation did not take 15 minutes. It was probably closer to an hour. I knew the customization system was deep, but I didn’t think it would take me that long. Satisfying though.

Then I played for a few minutes and chose the villain alignment purely because I like the Rogue Isles better than the early hero zones. But because my chaotic neutrality skews towards positive ends, I’ll switch later on because that’s an option now and enjoy the later game’s more interesting hero zones.

Whenever I actually decide to play. Not in a rush. A taste was fun.

Zak and George

I wasn’t anxiously anticipating the Snyder cut, but there was always a fairly good chance of my watching it.

Why not? And I do like when creators can just completely put themselves into the work. When he’s allowed, Zak Snyder is certainly good at that. Sometimes that works for me. Sometimes it doesn’t. His output is comparable to Tim Burton’s in my mind. Neither of them like to compromise, and that turns out wonderfully when they’re creating their own material or the subject matter they’re working with is already suited to their tastes. I like it less when they impose their tastes on something that’s not very compatible.

It’s why I love things like “Sucker Punch”, “Watchmen”, “Alice in Wonderland”, and “The Corpse Bride”. All of those were either created by their directors or adapted from works that clearly resonated with their psyches. It’s also why I think that Snyder and Burton were not the people to make movies about Superman and Batman respectively. They weren’t necessarily bad movies in an abstract way, but they weren’t great at focusing on those characters’ essential natures.

And while “Justice League” falls more into the ill fitting category for Snyder, he nonetheless made a gorgeous movie that flowed well, and even if I hadn’t enjoyed it more than I expected to, which wasn’t at a nadir to begin with, I would have supported the realization of that vision anyway.

In another sense, I could compare him with George Lucas. I legitimately love how that dude is such a rarity because he maintains is auteur nature even when he’s a vastly powerful figure in the Hollywood machine. Snyder has a bit of that, and both of them have been praised for things like concepts and visuals even by people who derogate their writing. I don’t think either of them is really bad at that, but part of the reason for which Lucas dwells deep in my heart where Snyder barely ever approaches is because I personally like Lucas’s inclinations more. That’s on me. But I still appreciate when those two and others of similar vision can realize their ideas to their full satisfaction.