Okay, I admit it. I'm not very good at coming up with blog posts. This is partly because I don't, as a rule, enjoy writing non-fiction, and aside from the manufactured ego problem and the short stories, most of the things I write about in this blog are 100% true. Or at least in the high-90s. So I guess I'll just briefly list a few things that have been on my mind lately.

EMPLOYMENT

I got a job recently, which means that I'm exchanging my life -force for money. It's not that much different than what I was doing before, except that it pays more and is slightly more humiliating. One thing that bothers me is the persistent “corporate lingo.” Example: They use words like “team member” and “team huddle” instead of “employee” or “meeting.”

Who, exactly, do they think they're fooling? And what's so wrong with the word “employee?” Maybe they're distancing themselves from the main stream: After all, having a job is no longer cool, now that a quarter of the people in the country are out on their asses.

BATMAN

I don't think about Batman as much as most people on the Internet do. He's a fictional character about as probable as a crime-fighting unicorn. I don't know about you, but from where I'm standing most of our billionaires lose all their sense of humility once they realize that owning your own helicopter is super awesome. I guess we've got a few philanthropist billionaires like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, but they'd look absolutely ridiculous wearing those bat-pajamas.

But that's not the thing, really. The thing is that Batman never kills people. I'm not exactly for the death-penalty but it seems like someone as criminally and incurably insane as the Joker not only can but will kill someone every time Batman fails to take him out for good is a special case. But he's Batman, and he doesn't kill people.

Except in Batman: Arkham City, where he totally does.

Twice.

[Spoiler] Batman removes two villains in that game from the Earth permanently. The first is Soloman Grundy, the gigantic hulking zombie. He's been reanimated from the grave with the help of his bright yellow pulsating heart, which Batman pulls clean from his chest. Sure he was a zombie, but he's still down and out forever.

The second villain he murders is Clayface, the shapeshifting wannabe actor. Batman freezes him solid, carves him up with a samurai sword, and tosses him into a pit of molten metal. Not even The Terminator could survive that shit. [/Spoiler]

So I guess the moral of the story is that if you're a regular-looking villain in the Batman universe, you'll be fine. If you're a deformed freak of nature, though, then God help you, because Batman sure won't.

TUITION

My girlfriend's little sister is looking to go to Arizona State University, the very university that expelled me unduly thanks to their despotic Zero Tolerance policy. When I went there, they projected that my four-year undergrad program would cost $60,000. Now? It costs $100,000.

One hundred thousand dollars! Per student! That's the cost of a house, people, and not even a small one.

What could they possibly need all that money for? Are they building another campus on the moon? A cafeteria made of bouncy castles? What is it? How can they justify charging the cost of a small mansion for a degree in Liberal Arts?

And I know it's not just to keep the school running. It reminds me of when the banks lost their ability to rob and exploit their customers with overdraft fees. They weren't using the $1000 plus a year that they were getting from their customers to keep the business running, they were using it to pay their executives enough to buy a new goddam house in the Cayman Islands every year. Then when the administration took their ability to con and cajole away, they got all whiny that they need that money or the business would fail. See, that's the thing, banks. You weren't being regulated because Obama is a secret socialist Muslim or whatever, you were being punished for wrongdoing. You exploited and swindled your customers, and now you can't do that anymore. You don't need that money, you just want to have your lavish lifestyles back. That you got by lying to your own customers.

Universities are next. Soon you won't be able to get away with charging the price of a square mile of tennis courts to each of your students, so don't get used to spending all that blood money.

I've got an idea. Instead of going to university, why not spend that $100,000 on a house, and build it on university property? It'll take only twenty students until the whole place is filled up. In addition, they'll be $100,000 dollars in debt and at least have a place to live. Plus they'll be able to house all the other student protestors when the campus security gets all pepper-sprayee. Now that's a protest I can get behind.

INSPECTO

Lastly, I've been working on a pretty neat comic idea, if I do say so myself. I know lots of people with comic ideas say that, but this is me we're talking about. I actually am that good, and I can make it happen.

Anyway, it always bothered me that in fictional universes where magic and monsters existed, people were still skeptical about the paranormal. I get why writers do that; it's because they're basing their world on ours. But that's the thing: In our world, there isn't magic and gods and monsters. When you've got vampires popping out of every orifice, it seems increasingly less probable or even practical that people would be skeptical about them.

So this comic is set in a world that is exactly the opposite of ours. Magic is the societal norm, and science is the fiction. Witches capture and burn scientists at the stake. The most advanced thing anyone has ever invented is the dragon-cart. This comic is about the world's only practicing scientist in a world full of wizards. Here's a little taste.

INSPECTO

Alchemist Steampunk Detective-Wizard

Christa Grubwood dreams of a world unlike her own: A place the gods live in the heavens instead of in the same neighborhood, where mankind has walked on one of the moons, and where people drive carts that can move on their own without needing to hitch dragons to them.

Unfortunately, Christa does not live in that world. She's failing her alchemy class and tires of praying to the god of cosmetics just to make sure her hair stays the same color and shape. Science has been little more than a fantasy since they started burning scientists at the stake.

But when a needlessly difficult homework spell goes wrong, she summons a mysterious, half-mad, eyeless man, instead of the pet cat she was supposed to bring to class. Christa soon learns that her new companion is the infamous INSPECTO, a man feared for his mysterious “Dark Science,” who had been rotting in jail for twenty years for a crime he insists he had only partially committed.

But Christa is not scared. She wants to know more about Inspecto's world. She wants to know about the gadgets he builds and how they work without casting spells, and the mysterious steam-engine explosion that had landed him in prison. Had it really been an accident? Was it sabotage? And what are these “physics” and “chemistry” things he keeps going on about?

Christa has the chance of a lifetime: Either she can continue her dull existence of day-to-day witchcraft and eye of newt, or she can join Inspecto in his mission to clear his name- and on the way discover that there's more to the world than what meets the third eye.

So that's that. That's what I've been up to. I shall see you next time! Whenever that will be.