In which someone gets their little weenie snipped off...

Hello and welcome to Hoopla!

I just finished watching the Iron Man movie; I gotta say, it was pretty darn good. That Robert Downey Jr. ... he makes a mighty fine Tony Stark.

Normally, I hate comic-book based movies... they tend to rely too heavily on that god-awful CGI animation that movie directors in Hollywood think looks really cool but which everyone else in the world has noticed looks incredibly fake... and, yes, they tend to be aimed at the lowest common denominator... much like John McCain's vice-presidential selection...

"Say it ain't so, Joe..."

She's a saucy little scamp, ain't she? Actually, since we're all living here on non sequiter island, let me quickly toss in a quote I just read from Ms. "I'm a hockey mom" Palin...

"Our opponent though is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough that he is palling around with terrorists who would target their own country," Palin said of Obama, also calling him an embarrassment.

Yup... thats' the high-minded politics that I look to McCain and Palin for... I'm glad they're not indulging in those petty, mud-slinging tactics that the voters have all grown so weary of... after all, like John said, this is not the time for that ridiculous partisan posturing. Now is the time to really, uh, focus on the issues and... uh... lie. A lot.

Anyway... Iron Man. Very good movie. Very enjoyable. Yes, there is some CGI stuff toward the end, but it's relatively brief.

So, you may consider that a recommendation, my friend...

Meanwhile...

The past couple of nights my new roommate and fellow comic-book reviewer, Rocky the cat, has been keeping me up from about 8pm to 6am with an incessant meowing/yowling noise that seems to spring up from within him from the moment that the sun sets, lasting until it rises again...

Of course, I am sympathetic. He's a young cat, used to living on his own, and he wants to be outside, showing the ladies a good time...

Hey, I get it. I was young and feline too, once upon a time.

But... I didn't want him going out until we had the little fella "fixed" because I believe in responsible sex... and since I'm not actually having any sex at all right now, I'm acting out my need for responsible sex by preventing Rocky from fathering any kittens that I know he is neither financially nor emotionally prepared to care for...

Anyway, so I didn't get much sleep. At all. And then today, Rocky went on a little adventure...

snip. snip.

So, now he's very groggy and not in such a great mood, and I'm exhausted from lack of sleep, and we're both just kind of hanging out together, finding some small comfort in each other's company...

And yet, ironically, even as we commiserate over life's difficulties, I remain poignantly aware that we are each directly responsible for the misery and exhaustion that the other is experiencing...



Is this what it's like being married?

- Paul