Under Duress

OKAY! Jeez, I'll update... You people are SO demanding!

Well, I suppose I have been procrastinating a bit, but I was also busy, so I have some excuse.

In fact, I was in DISNEYLAND!!!!!!

My Mom and Sister and I went on a little vacation to CA to visit the Happiest Place on Earth. And boy, was it ever!

I have lots of pictures, and will be posting them whether Mom and Liz like it or not.

We rode rides until we were exhausted and then rode them some more. I even went on the Twilight Zone Tower o' Terror!



This is one of those Drop-You-From-Really-High-Up kind of rides. Normally, I can't stand those. In fact, I'm terrified of them. This one is set up as an elevator in an old hotel that was struck by lightening and is now a doorway to the Twilight Zone. You get into this box and strap yourself in, then go up to the top, the doors open so you can see out over the park (and realize just how high up you are) and then it drops you. I watched a program about it on the Travel channel once that said the ride was connected to a computer which randomly creates the number of times you drop, how many floors you drop at any time, whether the lights are on, how often the doors open, how long it waits until it drops...you get the idea. Every time you ride it, you get a different experience.
I was forced to go on it, and made a solemn oath before witnesses that I would go on it one time, and one time ONLY. Just goes to show that you sometimes have to eat your words.

I could, however, never quite match the sheer, blinding terror of that first ride. Honestly, after we were strapped in and watching the little story about the night the tower was struck by lightening and how we were going to recreate that night and see what happens, blah blah blah, I was nearly in tears, already holding on for dear life, my head down, eyes squeezed shut, wishing I could just get off. Then we went up. And up. But it was fast, not a slow climb, and then the doors opened (I could tell because daylight seeped through my tightly clamped eyelids) and I think I mumbled, "No, I don't like this, I don't like this, I don't liAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!"

That first drop was bad enough, but it doesn't even let your spleen catch up with the rest of your organs before you are being rocketed upwards again. This time it only drops a few floors at a time in a start and stop. "AAAAHHH!" sigh "AAAAAHHHH!" sigh "AAAAHHH!" Then all the way to the top again for another big drop.

I'm senseless with fear by now, so I have no idea how many times we actually go through this. Finally, it drops for the final time, and, shaking from head to foot, I stagger off.

We enter a room where you can view pictures of your ride. I think they must take it right before that first drop. We ought to have gotten it, because I look hysterical. Now, I had some good photos on this trip (in fact, for almost every ride I have the exact same look of trying to smile but really just looking terrified) but this one was the best. I actually looked like I thought I was going to die.

I think we rode it about 4 or 5 times more during the course of the vacation.

Let me show you the one ride I DIDN'T go on.



That's right, the Ferris Wheel. They frighten me. I am frightened of Ferris Wheels. And not in the good way. Not in the, "I'm scared because being scared is fun, so I let my imagination run wild and scream until I'm blue in the face" kind of frightened. Mom and Liz went on it, and I waited and took pictures. I know it doesn't make sense, but, hey, no one ever said fear was logical.

That's all I'll post for now, but there are more pictures and more stories to come!

Later,
Jules

Happy Mother's Day!

The Curious Blogging Habits of an Urban Woman

The Julia is a strange and fascinating creature, whose ability to procrastinate from Blogging far out-does any other creature which Blogs.

Even when she has a day which is chock full of good Blogging material, as opposed to her regularly mundane life, she postpones the writing of said Blog in several ways.

First, she composes parts of the entry in her head, which she is unable to write because she is not near the all-essential computer. Then, having reached typing-distance of Blake, the Julia declares that she can only Blog in the early morning or very late at night. Since she is trying to go to sleep at a more reasonable hour these days, she decides to get up at 9:00am the next morning and complete the Blog, knowing full well that she will never get up at 9:00am unless there is a fire. Her capacity for deceiving herself is one of the strangest and most fascinating features of this unusual creature.

Indeed, the Julia sleeps in until 10:30am. While this still gives her several hours to compose her Blog, she instead insists that her whole schedule is thrown off, and she simply cannot type a single word. (The Julia is a sensitive creature, whose creative energies can be thrown off by the slightest misstep.) She cleans her room instead.

"There," the Julia says to herself, "I'm still doing something productive...it's just not Blog-writing."

She resolves to write the following morning, and again sets her alarm for 9:00am. When it goes off, she hits Snooze, though she also pulls open one curtain to allow daylight into her habitat. This, the Julia believes, will wake her gradually each time the Snooze alarm goes off, until she can finally get out of bed.

This plan, while clever, is weakened by the complete lack of sunshine. The day is overcast and gloomy, and hardly brighter than the dead of night.

The Julia sleeps until 10:30am.

Cursing her inability to awaken at the proper time, the Julia stumbles up the winding stairs, and puts on the essential pot of coffee. While it brews, she reads Robin McKinley's Blog for inspiration.

"See," the Julia says to herself, "she can write an entry EVERY DAY! And it is always interesting. Of course...she IS a professional WRITER."

The Julia sips at her first cup, and her brain begins to thaw. She is not yet ready to write, and so continues to read.

As she drains the last of that cup, the Julia begins to look as though she is ready to Blog. She fortifies herself with another cup of coffee, and sits confidently in front of Blake.

"My day off," she begins, but she is halted by another distraction. While preparing to write this Blog, the Julia's narrator has been chattering non-stop inside her head. He is insisting that she write his observations of her. The Julia throws the last of the coffee down her throat in an attempt to drown him (or, perhaps, just to shut him up long enough so she can write what she intended to write), but it does no good. Soon, the Julia looks up to find that her fingers have typed an entire entry that has nothing to do with her day off (in which she did many exciting, Blog-worthy things)!

And now, it is too late. The Julia must begin to think about getting ready for work.

Still, she forces the narrator aside for a moment, and types desperately...

"I loved Iron Man!!!! Everyone must go see it!!!!"

Exhausted from this small effort, the Julia reaches again for her coffee cup, but finds it empty. This Blogging has come to a close.

Perhaps next time, she will be capable of more.

Farewell.

Countdown

I'm sure all of you are sick of hearing about comic books, but I haven't mentioned them in a while, and I happened to finish a particular series that I wanted to talk about.

I've been reading Countdown which began a year ago. It started with issue 51, and counted down to issue 0. It was a weekly comic, which is HIGHLY unusual, though it is the second time DC comics has done one. I missed the first weekly comic which was called 52, but I was given it for Christmas in collected paperback form, so I could catch up. Honestly, I think 52 is slightly better than Countdown, but I enjoyed both. Both involved the entire DC universe. We're talking from Pied Piper (an ex-Flash-villain, who reformed, sort of...) to Superman. And everyone in between. It was touted as the most important book to pick up every week, so I decided to start with it.

That's really what this is about. Countdown was the first comic book I ever bought from an actual comic book store. My friend, Phil, brought a magazine to AMDA one day that had an article about it. He's primarily a Marvel guy, but he thought it looked interesting and wanted to read it when it came out. He had me read the article, and told me I should read Countdown too.

"But comic book stores," I whined, "they're scary!"

"They're not scary," Phil insisted. "As long as you go in there knowing what you want, you'll do fine."

So, when Countdown made it's first appearance, I went online to find my nearest comic book store, and headed out. I only got the one comic book (Countdown issue #51) and had to ask for help to find it, which made me feel like an idiot, but once I had it in my hands, I knew there was something special about it.
This is the cover of that first issue.


What, you might ask, was Countdown counting down to? That would be the next big thing to hit the DC universe: Final Crisis. Apparently, there were two other crises before (I read Infinite Crisis in novel form, though I can't say I understood half of it. Trying to remove the pictures from a comic book story is basically like cutting out half the plot) and now this will be the last. A crisis is defined as something so big and catastrophic, it requires every hero in the universe to put a stop to it and save the world. It's also apparently a tradition to kill a Flash in every crisis, though this one seems to be starting off by resurrecting a Flash.

Anyway, I've gone into this more than I intended. The point is that Countdown is finished. Actually, it finished a few weeks ago, but I only just got around to reading issues 6-0 last night. I would buy them every week, but then they would go on a pile next to my bed. See, I lost the thread of the story a bit, and had to go back and re-read, and I figured if I was going to do that, I might as well re-read the whole thing from the beginning, which took a while. It's hard, sometimes, keeping track of all these story-lines. Since starting Countdown, I have picked up 23 other titles. Oh, don't give me that shocked look. Most of them are limited runs, only 6-8 issues. See, Countdown also spawned Countdown to Mystery and Countdown: The Search for Ray Palmer, which were miniseries in which the main people in Countdown get a little more room to tell their story. There's a lot of story to tell, you can't just shove it all in one book. Only 13 of the titles I'm reading are long-running series which only come out once a month. Remember, Countdown is unique in it's weekly-ness. Most titles are monthly, and they don't all come out on the same day. Wednesday is new comic book day, and I typically pick up about 5 comic books every Wednesday. Sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.

So, there you have it. Countdown. Undoubtedly coming to a book store near you in convenient, collected form. Though if you want to pick one up, I would start with 52, which is a truly fantastic book. 52 documents a year when Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman all took off to "reassess" their position as heroes in the world. They had become jaded, paranoid, and had forgotten why they were heroes in the first place. Batman went off to train with some monks; Superman (having lost his powers in the previous crisis) spent time recuperating with his wife, Lois; and Wonder Woman grappled with the fact that she killed a man. A very evil man, but still.
But the great thing about 52 is that it's not about them. It's about everyone else trying to deal with the fact that the world's greatest heroes have gone missing, and the world is going to Hell in a handbag. "...A world without it's three greatest champions: Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. But it was not a world without heroes."

All right, all right. I've rambled on for long enough. And, anyway, I have to get ready for work.

Later,
Jules