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• 2006
• 2007, Janurary-June
• 2007, July-December
• 2008

As I continue on with my Games Review project, I’m noticing something. Basically, ever since I first went to Point Loma, I’ve lived with a certain amount of my things kept in boxes, sometimes more than others, so when I first sat down and did my games list that I am basing this off of, it didn’t include my NES, SNES or PlayStation games (or PC games from that era) unless I happened to know where they were off hand. This project is reminding me of some of those early entries, so I’m getting additions put in that were simply always missing rather than anything I’ve acquired. The general clue here is that really, the only games I’m picking up here are PS3 games. Other than those, if you see a new add, it’s a makeup.

Anyhoo, on with the show:

Fire Pro Wrestling Returns – PS2:

This is a game that was sold at a budget price, and yet I’ve still seen jealousy expressed by those whose systems list does not include a PS2. The Fire Pro Wrestling series dates back to the SNES in Japan, and although it’s always had simple sprite-based graphics and fairly simple gameplay, it’s always been loved due to a character creator that was incredibly robust and years ahead of its time. This is one of the rare US releases in the series, and while it keeps the same graphics and gameplay, puts a lot of presentation around it. It’s the only wrestling video game I’ve seen that supports 8 people on screen simultaneously other than the first PS2 version of the SmackDown series. The only drawback is that character creation is extremely long and involved, and even if you’re copying a formula from a website, said formulas rarely involve movesets. Though I have designed a John Cena from scratch that I think is pretty good. This would do great as a PS3 and Xbox 360 release so that people could download wrestlers and events easily.

Flight Simulator 2002 – PC:

Microsoft Flight Simulator is a pretty legendary PC franchise. This series prides itself on realistic flight simulation, so much so that to get maximum enjoyment from the title, you need to get special joysticks and study the manual pretty intricately. I got this version on sale because it was older. It’s fairly infamous because it was scheduled to release on September 12^th, 2001, and they had to do a last minute recall to remove the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks, especially given that later rumors insisted that the terrorists trained on how to fly using this franchise (which is a bit silly, and even if there was any truth to it, it’s not like Microsoft is even remotely responsible for the tragedy.)

Ford Racing 3 – PS2:

I mentioned back in the review of ATV Offroad Fury 2 that I had gotten it in a 3 game pack based on racing. At the same time, I picked up another 3 game pack for half the price and probably a tenth of the value. This game was the best of a bad lot, though I gave it some nostalgia sympathy due to being a spiritual successor of Ford Simulator, a franchise that lasted through 5 games back in the pre-Windows days, essentially Ford marketing through giving away free games. In this game, you can race famous Ford models, from current models all the way back to the Model T. Handling is very unrealistic, and damage doesn’t exist because real life car companies don’t want to show their cars damaged. But there’s still fun to be had here.

Fracture – PS3:

I just got Fracture, and I haven’t played it yet. I mainly got it because it was in a cheap “2 for 1” offer with another game. Basically, it’s a First Person Shooter with a gimmick. In this case, the gimmick is that you have a special gun that can raise or lower terrain, essentially either creating or destroying land instantly. Penny Arcade even got in a good question on this game, since if you can create land, why would you ever need to fight anyone… over land? If you doubt how handy this power would be, check out the Superman movies. Both the original movie and Returns were about how Lex Luthor knew that land couldn’t be created.

Garfield: Lasagna World Tour – PS2:

I have a few games on this list that defy the old trope about how licensed games are horrible. This is not one of them. I got this one in another Wal-Mart discount three pack mainly because I just wanted one of the other games in it (Pinball Hall of Fame which I will get to), and this and another piece of garbage came with it. It’s a 3-D platformer based on Garfield and is as goofy as all get out. I think even the biggest Garfield fan kids would be disappointed at this transparent cash in.

Gauntlet Legends – N64:

Back in the arcade day, I used to love Gauntlet. I first played it in the mid/late 80s at Disneyland and actually adopted the online name Wizard based on that being the only available character to play (since the Wizard kinda sucked without the support of the others), which I would keep until I went to Point Loma (where of course I replaced it with the handle of Boffo97 eventually). Gauntlet thrived in the arcades because of the fact that one could only play it so much, so you only got small doses. Being brought to the home consoles killed Gauntlet because it’s just an endless dungeon crawl and it that gets boring. Subsequent attempts at revival never completely got away from that. This inherited game is one of those attempts. It isn’t very high rated by critics.

The Getaway – PS2:

The Getaway was a moderately successful Grand Theft Auto Clone based in London. The mob has killed your wife and kidnapped your son, and thus forces you to do various jobs for them until you get a chance to get your son safely back and get your revenge. One failing of the game though is that unlike GTA’s attitude of letting you safely ignore the game at times and go on various rampages, The Getaway curtails your ability to do so (for example, your gun will only auto lock on enemies, not civilians). Worth at least one play-through. At times, it was a little frustrating because I’d keep trying to drive on the right side of the road through force of habit, and having head on collisions. One odd thing in the game: You can actually steal Federal Express trucks that look just like the genuine article. That’s one weird bit of product placement.

God of War – PS2:

This is a famous game that spawned a lot of imitators. When I got it, it ended up being the first clue that I needed to replace my venerable old PS2 because it only played once on the system even though certain other games played fine. Apparently, it’s a double layered DVD and older PS2s have issues with those. It plays fine on the new PS2, but I never really got into it as much since I got the new PS2 over here, and it was quickly overshadowed by the Wii and the PS3.

Goldeneye 007 – N64:

Modern gamers probably have THE game that they played a lot of going through college. For younger folk today, it might be World of Warcraft or Call of Duty. For me, it was Quake, early Madden, or Goldeneye. I never had the game myself during college, but spent many a time in unitmates’ rooms in 4 player deathmatches.

This game, when I did get it, would become part of a very cherished memory for me. In 2005, for my birthday, my mother took me out to lunch and then took me to the local Gamestop, telling me to look around and pick out a few games for myself. I browsed in the discounted N64 games section and found a copy of Madden 2000 that I picked up for giggles. That got mom looking in there too, and she picked out a game saying “Why not get this one? I like James Bond. I might play this.” Yeah, mom, totally twist my arm and make me get arguably the best game that ever came out for the console. Unfortunately for mom, she had smaller hands and felt that the N64 controller was too big for her. But her generosity here was typified by this game. I lost her a little more than a year after this, but I will always connect this game to that memory.

Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec – PS2:

I never did quite figure out why this game had the A-Spec modifier to the title as there were never any more GT3 games. It’s a very competently done and fun racer. Unfortunately, the disc stopped working for me early on. This entry also reminded me that I had the original GT for PS1 back in the day. I’m not going to do a separate entry on that as it would be very similar. A friend of mine might remember and still be sore at me for the time in that game where I managed to bump him just right and send him crashing headlong into a wall just to the right of a tunnel opening, and send me bouncing right to the middle of the road for the easy victory through bad sportsmanship.

That wraps us up for this time. Next time, the franchise curse strikes again as I’ll be hitting the Grand Theft Auto series, covering The Director’s Cut, III, Vice City, San Andreas, and IV. I’ll also be covering Hexen, Jeopardy!, Kahoots, Karaoke Revolution and Killer Instinct Gold. See you then.

As I continue with the games project, I have realized something. With my membership in PlayStation Plus, the pay network plan for PlayStation Network, I have been receiving games, and since I legally obtained them, they would go here. The only difference between these games and regular games is that the games are only licensed for as long as I remain a PlayStation Plus member, but that’s until late October 2011, and even then, it’s pretty easy to imagine them changing this policy by then.

So here are some bonus games in the name of catching up:

Age of Zombies – PSP:

Here’s one of the oddities of PlayStation Plus. Some of the free games are registered as PS3 and PSP compatible or only PSP compatible, and yet still play on PS3. I do not own a PSP, but the game works. Anyway, Age of Zombies is a game a lot like Smash TV in which you run around from a top down perspective (or actually ¾ perspective, but same thing) shooting zombies in each of the 8 primary directions. Each stage is a different time period (5 in all), and the game is played as a parody. Some naughty language ruins the appeal for kids.

Fieldrunners – PSP:

Another top down game. Here, you build various towers to help defend your field as various forces run across it. There’s strategy involved because various forces that run across are countered by individual weapons better. For example, if you build nothing but heavy weapons, the heavy artillery that rolls across will be taken out, but individual soldiers will get through due to low rate of fire. Money is also a constant concern. You lose the game once 20 individual troops (any type) make it through the field. Oddly, I did better my first time when I went in with no strategy than I have in subsequent plays.

I believe that catches us up to today so we can continue.

F-Zero X – N64:

This is an advanced sequel to the SNES game F-Zero, this one’s a 3D racer and definitely worth some play if you like racers. These days, you can get it off the Nintendo network for Wii for $10.

FIFA Soccer 08 – PS3:

One thing I immediately don’t like about this one is that there seems to be no team creator as there was in PC versions of this game from previous years, and there’s a limit on how many stats I can give my created player (why even have a created player if you can’t make him good enough to start?) It also seems a bit harder than previous games, which makes it a bit more realistic, but so far, I have liked previous versions of this game better.

FIFA Street 3 – PS3:

I picked this one up because I really liked the NBA and NFL Street series. I haven’t played it much, but in my first playthrough, I wasn’t overly impressed because it seemed like you could never score until one team got the Gamebreaker, then could score at will. Maybe I’ll have more fun with this one later.

Fight Night Round 3 – PS2:

Actually a lot of fun, and one I might pick up for the PS3 someday. This one has all the punches controlled through the analog sticks and the control scheme really works once you get the hang of it. Awesome graphics, even on the PS2. One favorite activity of mine was to create Jack Thompson, as ugly as possible and with no stats and either beat him senseless in the 1^st round or punch him illegally (if you get my drift) until he “won”. Great career mode here, and after I retired, one of my frequent opponents became my “legendary feud” for the ESPN Classic mode.

Final Fantasy Tactics – PS:

Here we go into the increasingly misnamed Final Fantasy series. This one is a ¾ perspective tactical RPG. In combat, you move each character around the battlefield when it’s their turn, making the combat very strategic compared to the main series’ concept at the time of “everyone stand in a line facing each other and attack when it’s your turn”. The plot involves a young noble being the only one standing up for the forces of good when it seems everyone around him in power is becoming corrupt and trying to let out demons that will control the planet. This one is available for $10 on PSN and I highly recommend it. Just ignore the fact that no one has a nose.

Final Fantasy VII – PS:

This game is arguably the killer ap of the PlayStation 1 and very arguably the most famous Final Fantasy of all time. If you haven’t played it, it’s also available on PSN, but do everything you can to avoid spoilers. Trust me. One of my best memories is when a friend of mine (one of those who hosts my website as a matter of fact) played through this one while I was briefly living with him and he was on a break due to wisdom tooth removal, so he did a marathon playthrough. Another friend and I talked about how if Smash Brothers needed one more character to be complete, it’d be either Cloud Strife or Sephiroth.

Final Fantasy X – PS2:

This is the series’ debut onto the PS2, and while some people take issue with it, I like it. It’s pretty much the last appearance of the “Red Rover” style combat I mentioned above, and it’s one of the classic love stories in video game history. A lot of Crowning Moments of Awesome here.

Final Fantasy X-2 – PS2:

The first direct sequel to a Final Fantasy game. One pleasant memory I have is finding this one at a local used games, DVDs and CD store while it was still pretty new for $21. And apparently due to the low price, someone had hidden it misfiled under anime DVDs, and I guess I ruined their day. While I could do without the Grrl Power vibe, and the ATB combat system really rendered most attacks except plain “Hit guy with weapon” inpractical, this one had its moments. Though it was a pain in the butt to get the happy ending.

Final Fantasy XII – PS2:

This one is not to be confused with the last one. This one is Twelve, and the last one is Ten Two. Kind of interesting for a Final Fantasy game that there’s no love story, although romantic tension can definitely be projected between various characters. Epic ending to this one, and those who want to be computer programmers will like the combat system as you essentially make a computer program to control your characters’ combat AI.

Final Fantasy XIII – PS3:

In an issue I’m kind of surprised not to run into more often over here, my playing of this one is a bit curtailed because it’s not in English. It doesn’t sound Korean, so I’m assuming it’s the native Japanese. While some people would say this is thus my only REAL Final Fantasy game, it’s going to end up a project to actually try to play this one.

That wraps up the Final Fantasies and thus this installment. Tune in next time for Fire Pro Wrestling Returns, Flight Simulator 2002, Ford Racing 3, Fracture, Garfield: Lasagna World Tour, Gauntlet Legends, The Getaway, God of War, Goldeneye 007 and Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec.

As I speak, I’ve finished up the summer school campaign and am currently taking two weeks off to recover from a very hectic and eventful semester. So let’s go ahead and hop back into the games talk.

Diddy Kong Racing- N64:

This is another one of my inherited games. Didn’t play it much, but from all indications, it was inferior to Super Mario Kart. That said, there is a DS version of this now.

Doom 64 – N64:

Another inherited game I didn’t play much. Didn’t get very good reviews. It was a Nintendo 64 port of the classic Id Software shooter Doom.

ESPN College Hoops 2K5 – PS2:

2005 was a banner year in sports games as Sega decided to sell all their current titles in the 2K series for $20 new. So I picked this one up along with all the others. Like most NCAA based games, real names could not be used, but this game contained the option of giving all players random names so you didn’t just play with numbers (although oddly in some cases the numbers were wrong anyway). This had create a school, but for the franchise mode, you could only start out with a substandard team. I played with Dartmouth as I used to have a friend from that area. I actually got them to the Final Four… and my save file corrupted. Fun game.

ESPN NBA 2K5 – PS2:

This is another $20 title. Very good game. I would have played it more but sports games tend to clog memory cards, and up until recently, I only had 2 8MB memory cards for a very large PS2 collection. Very good Create modes, and an interesting side mode called 24/7.

ESPN NFL 2K5 – PS2:

This is pretty much the last non-EA NFL game produced and a lot of people think it’s better than Madden to this day. It had a very good announce team and side modes. One thing I liked that Madden has yet to put in is the ability to choose exactly what aspect of a play you’re challenging. Suppose in Madden you’re convinced that after a computer reception for the first down, the refs got the spot wrong, so you hit Challenge. Well, it turns out you can challenge ONLY whether or not the catch was completed, which you’re not arguing.  Still worth playing today.

ESPN NHL 2K5 – PS2:

I need an update for this series as it’s a very fun hockey game. Plus it’s one of the few games that can recognize and say the word Hines, and that’s a fun little bit of immersion that other games (including other games by this same publisher) don’t offer me.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: Game of the Year Edition – PC:

A modern western RPG done very well. It clocks in at over 200 hours of game play with just the core pack alone. This edition comes with two of the DLC included (the two biggest ones). It’s a little bit of false advertising because if you were to buy the DLC, you’d get smaller bits of DLC included (such as the infamous Horse Armor) but those smaller bits are not here. Very compelling game, definitely worth the $20 I paid.

Elite Beat Agents – DS:

A very quirky music based game for the DS. This one is heavily inspired by a Japanese game, and EBA just remakes the game with American songs (or at least covers thereof). Basically, as an Elite Beat Agent, you help use music and dancing to solve various problems, and to keep dancing in time and win the game, you have to hit circles in time with the rhythm. The covers are decent, and the stories are actually somewhat amusing. This game helped me discover a few songs I liked. It is worth noting that on the level designed around Good Charlotte’s “The Anthem”, the story completely misses the point of the song, as it deliberately sounds like a rah-rah anthem, but the point of the song is that the singer does NOT want to be like the hypocrite he is singing about.

Extreme Warfare Revenge – PC:

A freeware wrestling federation simulator. You play as the head booker for a wrestling federation. You need to sign wrestlers and other talent, give everyone gimmicks, plan feuds, and put on good shows, while dealing with varying talent levels, backstage cancers, injuries and other real life worries. It has a minimal text based interface and you have to use your imagination for stories, but it is a fun game for any wrestling fanatic. The author has since moved on to a pay version of the game that I never really got into. But EWR is still available and still very fun. If you look, you can find data files with updated information on today’s wrestlers.

Eye Toy: Play – PS2:

To be honest, I only got this game because it came packaged with an Eye Toy (a PS2 webcam) for $10, meaning I got a discounted webcam of high quality (for which there are drivers on the net to use as a PC webcam) and the game for free. This is a collection of minigames using the camera. Basically you see yourself like in a mirror and you move to accomplish various things in the game. It’s a random diversion, and I have used it to keep kids occupied when roped into babysitting duty before, but I’m glad I didn’t pay more for it.

That wraps us up. When I pick up the project, we’ll look at F-Zero X, FIFA Soccer 08, FIFA Street 3, Fight Night Round 3, and the various Final Fantasy games in my possession: Tactics, VII, X, X-2, XII and XIII.

For those of you actually reading this on my blog, you'll notice that I specify Pacific time on the timestamp for this entry, and there's a good reason for it. This is going to be the last entry made from the United States for the conceivable future.

After desperately trying for this for a year and a half, emotions are running high for this. It's almost a dream position. The only drawbacks are that I'll be in a very small town and that I'll be sharing an apartment (though thankfully not a room). But on the positive side, being at a Christian school and being able to teach in my major (presumedly) are big pluses I was never anticipating. Due to the Saudi Arabia false alarm and other close calls, it probably won't completely sink in until I'm on the plane... but as my room gets more and more bare as more and more goes into storage, I find myself more and more excited.

The next time I contact you will be from South Korea, so for the final entry of this chapter of my blog and life, I'd like to go back to an old gimmick and share a song with you.

If you want to hear the song, you can go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryEjm3k6uY0

This looks familiar
Vaguely familiar
Almost unreal yet
It's too soon to feel yet
Close to my soul and yet so far away
I'm going to go back there some day.

Sunrises, nightfalls
Sometimes the sky calls
Is that a song there?
Then do I belong there?
I've never been there but I know the way
I'm going to go back there some day.

Come and go with me
It's more fun to share
We'll both be completely at home in midair
We're flying, not walking, on featherless wings
We can hold on to love like invisible strings.

There's not a word yet for old friends
Who've just met
Part heaven, part space
Or have I found my place?
You can just visit, but I plan to stay.

I'm going to go back there some day
I'm going to go back there some day 

Suddenly.

It's one of the strongest words in the English language. It means an immediate (or shortly pending) change from one state to another, usually a radical one.

In September, I was told I was hired for a job in Saudi Arabia, only to see that job's departure date pushed back further and further, only to be ultimately told that because none of the companies involved did their research on what exactly was required for a Work Visa in Saudi Arabia, that I did not have the job. In retrospect, I probably should have been very suspicious when I was told that supposedly 139 teachers were hired without interview based on a company's recommendation. Of course, no one took that kind of responsibility to say that they dropped the ball, but it's what happened. It isn't like I was dishonest about what my qualifications were and what they were not.

In December, my recruitment company dropped me after 2 months of not even trying to find me a teaching job. The implication was that they no longer believed that I was hirable, but I think there was some dramatic behind the scenes politics going on. At first, I was disappointed, but then I realized that it was better they pulled this BEFORE I was hired by a school they recommended as this kind of behavior would indicate that since they weren't trustworthy, the schools they worked with could very well not be either, and I could be stuck in a very bad situation with no help from them.

And yet, one month after they rejected me... essentially throwing the money they would have gotten for me being hired away.... I got hired. And within 2 months of this, I will be in South Korea teaching.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to officially announce to the general public that you are reading the blog of one of the newest teachers at Global Vision Christian School in Eumseong, North Chungcheong, South Korea. It's been a long and sometimes rocky road getting here, but it's FINALLY here. For those who had faith in me all along that I'd make it, thank you. For those who didn't... oh well. Can't always be right, you know.

The last two words of my new employer's name is what makes this even more intriguing than just the idea of South Korea itself would be normally. A Christian School. The last time I was associated with that phrase was back in my days at Point Loma Nazarene College/University. I admit that I might be a little more stuck on those days than most people, especially having reconnected with so many of my old friends on Facebook and other services. Out of 150+ friends on Facebook alone, I'd say close to 90% of them are old Point Loma friends. And I'll be quick to remember good old days with them. I'll refer to the leaders of my old councils as "boss" and jokingly attempt to give orders to members of my old councils (which are always ignored). And some people go with it, including my ex-R.A. who constantly attempts to fine me for imagined offenses. Some people don't go with it, and may even be a bit nonplussed by it.

The reasons I think about those old days a lot is simple... it was very arguably the best time of my life. And then only near the end and afterwards did I begin a slow fall and crash both in terms of life success and spiritually. As I said in a recent entry, some of this was me. Some of it was just bad luck. And some of it relates to the fact that my back has felt like a pincushion for various daggers at times. My mother's passing alone was devastating to me, and yet it seems that God has used it to accomplish so much good. The only one of these factors I can affect is myself, and I'd like to think I've learned how to handle adversity better through all this.

But coming in at GVCS makes things feel like they've come full circle. And the absolutely scariest notion about it occurred to me the other day. There were quite a few individuals of the faculty at Point Loma who ended up being Christian role models for me. I treasured knowing them, and felt they made my life and my Point Loma experience better. And there were at least a couple that... well... failed at that. And now, it's going to be me who is going to fill one of those roles. It's not part of the job description, and unlike Point Loma, GVCS isn't an institution of any specific church as far as I know, but it's there. As a sub, it's really easy to not think about the influence I have in young lives. Most of my classes, I'm only there for one day, and am probably easily forgotten by most of the kids I teach. There are some classes where I've been specifically requested to return, including one where the teacher reported to me that the class asked her "Why didn't you have Mr. Hines come back?" when they had another substitute they didn't like. There are kids I'm going to be seeing day after day after day, and I will be a factor in their spiritual walk, whether a major or a minor one.

I don't know if I'm ready for that. If I had to give that question a definitive answer, I'd say that no, I'm not ready for that.

But I'd better get ready. I promised myself that after the Saudi Arabia false alarm, I wouldn't get excited about another supposed job until I got flight information, since the date couldn't keep being pushed back at that point. And that's happened. I'll be leaving Lompoc for at least a year (assuming I'm competent enough to not be fired) on the 9th, catching a flight at 12:30 AM on the 10th. That's just a week from Tuesday/Wednesday. And that's hard to even consider at this point. 12 days. Then I take my two suitcases and carry on and go live in another country for a year, a quarter of the world away from my family and friends.

Certain things are going with me. A stuffed dog that I won from the Carrows grabbing machine that will remind me of my awesome friends from karaoke, a Rams mini helmet that should look wicked cool sitting on MY desk, and a picture of me and my mother from a 2001 trip to Sea World. She'd be going crazy with pride right about now. Hey, ma. I made it. Top of the world.

In so many ways, it seems a circle is completing and that after a long cold lonely decade, I'm reaching heights I haven't for years. It feels like God is pushing me in the directions he wants to go and I've seen Him work before by closing every door but one for me, and leaving the one He wanted me to go through completely wide open.

Let's go.

This week, I have been yet again put into a situation which has become distressingly way too familiar in past years, that of having to take a stand on principles, even if that stand means that I have to forfeit either a friendship, or membership in a community. Typically, this means continued presence would either mean an eternal unresolvable argument, or acceptance of a status quo which I would find completely unacceptable. I don't want to get into the specifics of those situations because that's not my point here.

What is my point? Simply this: when one has been in way too many of these situations, a rational person has to ask themselves if they are slipping into self-righteousness, a term that's hard to define (I read one dictionary site list its definition as merely thinking that one is right, which would make one self righteous for absolutely believing that the sun is hot). I tend to define it as thinking that one is right because one is right, and that's the only possibility. Clearly, I or any rational person would want to avoid that, since that is the essence of being an irrational person.

First off, as long as both sides are being rational, it is quite possible that an impasse will still be reached. This often results from a difference of opinion where true proof is either impossible or exceedingly impractical to obtain. I have non-Christian friends. I see no purpose in being a jerk to them about my faith and attempting to push Christ unwanted upon them or attempting to assert moral superiority. Indeed, either behavior would be contradictory to Christ's instruction. So we are left at an impasse should matters of faith come up. The best rational people can do then is for both to agree not to be jerks about each other's faith or try to push their beliefs onto each other, essentially agreeing to disagree since neither side can be proven wrong (Certainly, I believe the proof will be evident upon the occasion of the Second Coming, but that is unfortunately something that I cannot produce on demand.)

So, what makes a person right and another person wrong? I notice that when I've had to take a stand on principle, the opposing arguments had one or more factors in common:

* Opposing arguer persists in an argument that can be and has been shown to be demonstrably false. There's an old computer expression abbreviated as GIGO. This stands for "Garbage In, Garbage Out". In other words, if you start with erroneous premises, you will all but assuredly arrive at erroneous conclusions. When a premise is simply false, that's one thing. When a premise is demonstrably false, only an irrational person will stick by it. In a variation, a person might have a premise proven false and seemingly accept it, yet not alter their argument in the slightest. This one, I can be guilty of sometimes, but it's contingent upon the rational person to demonstrate why the argument still works. This is often tied into the next factor...

* Arguer refuses to grant that the opposing argument is a valid point of view to possess, and possible. Unless we're dealing with obvious completely objective statements (like "The sun is hot" again), there is always a possibility that an opposing viewpoint may be the correct one. If I believe point A is correct, and someone else believes opposing point B, I might make great strides in the argument by assuming B is true and then proving that B leads to an impossible or irrational conclusion. An irrational arguer for point B will not grant that point A is valid and possibly correct, and therefore will, rather than argue, lecture from a point of self-assured superiority. If arguments you know are valid aren't making a difference or immediately twisted back on you without consideration, you know this is what's going on. Longer term, this leads to the perception that the arguer is not admitting that the other person is right solely because they do not wish the other person to be right. Also, a rational person's views will evolve over time on certain subjects because when they face a superior argument, they will admit that their thesis was false and adjust it. Someone who thinks they are always right will never allow correction of their viewpoints and thus can easily become to believe the most errant nonsense, defending it as vigorously as they would gospel truth.

* Often meshed with the above is when an opposing arguer gets angry, insults you or even threatens you rather than rationally answer your argument. When I see this, it appears to me as if the person knows that your point is correct, but wants to continue on their current course anyway since dealing with you rationally may result in partial or total compromise. Usually, this happens when granting that your point is correct means that they'll have to do something they'd rather not do. I experienced a variation on this once, where the person I was arguing with answered every point with "Well, that sounds good, but you need to understand how the real world works." Details about how the "real world "supposedly" worked" were, of course, not forthcoming. The only thing I've done similar to this is conclude that the person I was dealing with was literally insane to some degree. I wasn't the only person to reach this conclusion, but rather than attempt to use this as an arguing tool, I immediately ended the relationship and wasn't alone in that.

* When an arguer tells you that you "set them off", or "set off" someone they're representing in their argument, and therefore any bad behavior is either excused or blamed on you. In every case I've seen of this tactic being used, the person refuses to make any allowances for the person they're arguing against being "set off" and your behavior is expected to be perfect no matter what. As with above, this is a distraction tactic (at least subconsciously) as dealing with the argument may lead to compromise, but making the argument about "you made me angry" (or someone else) completely distracts attention. The rational arguer knows that any unpleasant behavior they exhibit is completely their fault and no one else's. We all make choices. Most of us hopefully choose to remain mature and rational even given heavy provocation not to be. The irrational person will not only allow themselves to be set off at light provocation, but may also cross the line into deliberately getting upset to distract away from an argument they can't answer.

I've seen these things way too many times. I do a lot of examination over these situations to determine if I have done them (ask Sutton if you don't believe me) and am fairly confident that I do not. It seems those who I've had issue with do no such examination. If I find fault on myself, I correct it. Like I've done my best to put situations right where I had a valid grievance but was taking it out on the wrong person, usually only to find out that they weren't anywhere near as bothered by my actions as I was.

I do think there can be a good side to this. Some people, the way they choose to act at the current time, there's just no healthiness in any relation with them. A good relationship is one you can count on. A bad relationship will only seem good until the chips are down. And sometimes a person can flat out change and become someone that the person they used to be would be flat out horrified by, and thus a good relationship changes into a bad one. No good comes from staying in a bad relationship, a bad friendship, a bad association, or what have you.

Obviously, I might expect more loyalty out of an actual friend over someone I met on a message board and never really talked to personally, but all healthy relationships, you need to be able to trust that the other person will act rationally. Sometimes, I've failed in that, I have to admit. But I'm open to the idea as long as the other party is also open, and I can admit when I'm wrong. I have several times.

I can hope that I'll be able to stop taking these stands on principle sometime soon. But I'll never accept being told that I have to say I'm wrong when I'm not. And if you're using irrational tactics to get me to say such... then I'm not. How can I be sure that you're wrong and I'm right? Others are doing these things. I am not.

Simple as that.

It's been a while, and I have to admit I'm mainly posting tonight just so the year doesn't end on the analysis of the Presidency in comics.

Facebook is a real eye opener. Of all my friends on there, I'd have to say 90% of them are from college, where I cut quite a swath. Before a service like Facebook, a lot of times you wouldn't hear from the vast majority of your college friends again unless you made a dedicated two way effort to maintain communication or attended a reunion down the line. Without meaning to, it's easy to make assumptions as to where people will end up.

Some of the romances I thought would last forever have. Some have not. Some of the girls I was attracted to (or who, in retrospect, were attracted to me) are quite happily married now, making conversations with them somewhat awkward, but at least there's a friendship there.

The point is a lot of my friends aren't where I thought they'd be. And I'm not quite where I wanted to be either. (And by the by, if anyone's wondering, I'd still talk about video games and comics even if I was a millionaire with a supermodel wife and 2.3 children. Most likely I'd talk about the virtual version of us in The Sims.)

College was really a "high" time in my life (and no, that's not a drug reference). Part of why my online nickname has a 97 in it is because it was such a great year for me (the other half is because that was the first year I started using it and it had such a nice ring to it that I wanted to keep it even after that year). 1995-1996, I was on a couple of great councils and had lots of fun as a DJ, 1997-1998, I was on ASB, and 1998-1999, I was a well respected opinion columnist for the school paper. 2000-2001, I had an awesome apartment in San Diego.

After that, things kind of crashed. 2002, I had to move back to my hometown due to lack of work, and have a couple of relationships end disastrously. 2004, I got sick and was actually unable to work for a few years (and I am firmly convinced that I received healing for that, in addition to making changes in my life to lessen the symptoms).2008, I finally made some long overdue reconciliation that I had very little choice to make, but I think it was all part of God's plan. Just recently I've had the company I was working with to place me in a job in South Korea decide to stop trying to do so.

In short, I've gotten by. And while you don't die doing that, you don't really live as you should. Part of the reason for that is my fault. I can't not say that. But contrary to the line of thinking that says that unless you take complete responsibility, you're denying any responsibility, it's not all on me. I'm not going to dwell on it, but certain people I counted on stabbed me in the back. And even more than that, this town that I'm in can be a real trap for people wanting to improve their living situation. As just one example, I made significantly more per day of work in 2001 in San Diego than I do now, and I work in the same position, not even counting the inflation since then, which is absurd. Unfortunately, this town is mainly a living area for those working at the nearby Air Force base and prison or nearby towns and very little lucrative work is available here.

This year, that situation ends. This year is when I get back on the horse and charting my own destiny. I don't want to comment too much publicly at this point, but I've been told that an employer is VERY interested in interviewing me for a very lucrative job opening that seems almost tailor fit to my experience and credentials. Pray for me, and if you don't believe in that, cross your fingers.

I'm not where I want to be right now. That does not mean that I'll never get there.

2010, watch out. I'm coming for you.

As regular readers (nonexistent as they are) know, my mind tends to go strange places. I've been considering comic books and the Presidency of the United States lately.

Typically, in comic books, the Presidency of the United States is occupied by the same person in the various mainstream comics universes as in real life. The older members of the Justice Society of America have fond memories of working with Franklin Delano Roosevelt (in fact, Magog is supposedly a descendant of FDR). The excellent Generations miniseries (which had the premise that heroes debuted in the year they were first published and aged normally after that) had a scene where Richard Nixon asked superheroes to go stop the Vietnam War and the heroes refused due to moral issues. And I believe an extended Nixon presidency was a plot point of either Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns. John F. Kennedy appeared in a "lost" Teen Titans Annual.

When Booster Gold debuted, he saved Ronald Reagan from an assassination attempt (yes, he's been around that long). Reagan also had a meeting with Superman when the Justice League was about to become an International organization. George H. W. Bush (the elder) lectured Amanda Waller about her violations of policy. Bill and Hillary Clinton spoke at Superman's "funeral".

Then DC did something odd. In the DC Universe, George W. Bush did NOT win the Presidency. Lex Luthor did, with Superman's childhood friend Pete Ross as a running mate. I've known people who might think this was an improvement. The Luthor/Ross ticket would go on to ignominy as it ended up proven that Lex was still activel committing felonies, causing him to be impeached and removed from office in absentia, going from President of the United States to fugitive felon. Pete Ross served out the rest of his term, and became historically ignominious as well as Lana Lang, his wife, would divorce him, which I'm not sure has ever happened with any in-office First Lady.

There is some lack of realism here as Pete has gone back to Smallville and is operating a General Store, and Lana is working for the Daily Planet, and sheltering Supergirl in her apartment, in defiance of the "No Kryptonians on Earth except Superman" edict currently in force (I presume Kon-El is excluded as well, since he's known to be a clone). And neither has any trace of either Secret Service or the Press around them. This is extremely unrealistic given how often one hears about Sarah Palin these days on the news, and these two would be much more newsworthy. A different fake President was in charge during Amazons Attack, and stupidly placed innocent women into concentration camps for being affiliated with the Amazons, which some say was supposed to be a commentary on Guantanamo Bay, but it was a really stupid one if that was the case.

Recently, DC ran a critically panned mini called Decisions, involving the Presidential elections, and starring expies of John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Obama's expy won and is now President Sanchez. While a bit odd and potentially confusing for newer readers, this does allow for the possibility of the President doing something that a real President shouldn't be portrayed as doing. (Whatever your feelings about Obama, a comic book Obama should not commit outright treason for example.)

Marvel has not gone this way. The only time I've seen George W. Bush was during The Ultimates, which is of course not in the mainstream Marvel continuity, but Obama was actually featured in an issue of Amazing Spider-Man, which has already caused a huge problem that no one's addressing.

The Secret Invasion and subsequent appointment of Norman Osborne to the head of the Initiative was solely on Obama's watch. One would presume that this is all going to eventually come crashing down around Osborne, and when it does, the person who appointed him should take a hit as well... maybe even be charged as an accomplice, because one lucky kill shot does NOT make appointing a (supposedly) former super villain to this position a smart move.... at all.

Plus, it actually makes Marvel Universe Obama out to be a hypocrite. In their fun little story, Obama basically palled around with Spider-Man who foiled a really not researched well plan by the Chameleon to get sworn in in Obama's stead, which Chameleon thought would make him irretractably the President. But as comic readers might remember, Spidey switched sides during the Civil War, and is currently a fugitive from programs that Obama's administration is enforcing.

One wonders if Marvel has truly thought this through, if Mark Millar's reported stance of "If you thought about it, being pro registration was the only smart choice" is indiciative of opinion over there.

It is truly a sad weekend here at my blog. For the foreseeable future, karaoke has been cancelled. From the word I'm getting, it's unclear as to exactly WHY it's been canceled, but they're hoping that it will be "only" a month. This is a crime against Dave, and it must be redressed.

I should be getting back into World of Warcraft fairly soon, which will be cool, since I'll apparently need something to do now (given that I don't drink, and that's about all that's left to do in this town). I did find out that the fledgling guild I joined on the Alliance side of my main server apparently collapsed in my absence, which is a bummer. Unlike the hardcore raiders, I join a guild just for people to talk to/amuse with my stream of consciousness babble. Without a guild, there's only the Trade Chat channel to amuse, and that requires true desperation.

Special thanks and shoutout go to Matt Sutton, as he was nice enough to send me for free my very own copy of The Rise and Fall of WCW DVD set. Matt apparently bought the DVD for himself, and then attended a recent ECW/SmackDown taping (fans may have seen his "Was Being Green Fun?" sign, as he and I are a LITTLE obsessed with Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie) and found a deal of a T-Shirt he wanted and the DVD sold as a package deal. So he bought it, and sent me the extra DVD copy. I've sent him a few things in the past that I had extra copies of for various reasons, but nothing brand new like this. This was cool.

I wanted to put my on again/off again Legion project on hold for a bit longer as I talk today about Shiny Pokemon. In Pokemon Pearl, I've not only beaten the game, but caught all the Pokemon (even if I needed a bit of help with the Legendaries). I know my Roster page doesn't reflect that, but it hasn't been updated in well over a year. In any event, capturing all the Pokemon gives you very little left to do in the game (especially if you can get help in leveling via the Action Replay DS that I used to cheat up the last three Legendary Pokemon). When I fool around with Pearl now, it's mainly in the interest of combing the Global Trade Station (a location in the game that lets you trade Pokemon over the Internet) looking primarily for Shiny Pokemon.

What are Shiny Pokemon? Shiny Pokemon are Pokemon with an alternate color scheme, as well a "shiny explosion" effect upon coming out of their Pokeball. There's a complicated mathematical formula listed at Bulbapedia (the Pokemon Wiki) for determining whether a Pokemon is shiny or not, but the main gist is that the odds of getting a Shiny Pokemon are 1 in 8,192. I've played three distinct Pokemon games and never got one naturally. Luckily, the odds are a bit better in the GTS, as people, for whatever reason, routinely post Shinies for trade. Here's the ones I've gotten:

Charizard is the third stage evolution* of the first generation Fire type starter Pokemon Charmander. A regular Charizard is orange with black underwings. My shiny Charizard is black with red underwings. It's probably one of the better looking Shinies out there.

(*Pokemon is controversial with some due to the concept of evolution, leading some to say it promotes evolution over creationism, and some would argue over Christianity as well. However, the term evolution is really a misnomer here, as the process in the games involves an individual being changing to a different form. According to theory, evolution works via, essentially, desirable birth defects. Individuals do not evolve. The process is actually a metamorphosis, akin to a caterpillar becoming a butterfly, or a tadpole becoming a frog, both of which are represented in Pokemon "evolutionary" lines.)

Psyduck is a Water type that eventually evolves into Golduck. Its regular form is that of a cartoonish yellow duck, but the shiny form is blue instead. I've kept my shiny Psyduck unevolved because the shiny form of Golduck is simply a slightly deeper blue, and I prefer the larger change for the Psyduck.

Gyrados is a Water type that evolves from Magikarp. Gyrados is a blue sea monster and is one of the larger and more powerful Pokemon, as opposed to the near useless Magikarp, whose trademark attack of Splash literally does nothing. Magikarp is even depicted as a fish helplessly flopping around in the Pokemon console games as opposed to other fish Pokemon, which float in place even out of water. The shiny Gyrados is red, like Magikarp. It may soon become obsolete as Pokemon Gold and Silver both had a Shiny Gyrados appear as part of the story, and this may be repeated in the remakes Heart Gold & Soul Silver.

Mewtwo is a Psychic Pokemon. One was the antagonist in the first Pokemon movie. It's supposed to be a clone of Mew, but in game, there is no connection between the two other than vague physical resemblance. A regular Mewtwo is grey with a purple undercarriage and tail. The shiny Mewtwo has a green undercarriage and tail instead.

Mew completes that miniset. A regular Mew is cotton candy pink, whereas the shiny is pastel blue. Unfortunately, one rumor I heard ended up untrue. Supposedly, a shiny Pokemon that had the ability Transform (lets you shapeshift into another Pokemon present. Signature and only ability of Ditto, and Mew is the only other one who has it) would transform into shiny versions of other Pokemon when it used Transform even if the opposing Pokemon was non shiny. This has turned out not to be the case.

Ho-Oh is my only 2nd generation shiny. Ho-Oh was the cover Pokemon for the game Pokemon Gold (and will be repeating in that role for Pokemon Heart Gold). The normal version of this legendary Fire type is pink with white plumage. The shiny is orange with red plumage.

Sceptile is the third stage evolution of the third generation Grass type starter Treecko. The regular Sceptile is forest green, and the shiny is a light blue, perhaps being a visual pun on the word "bluegrass".

Blaziken is the third stage evolution of the third generation Fire type starter Torchic. It keeps the same basic orange, yellow and white coloration when it's shiny, though the shiny coloration is slightly darker. The shiny coloration makes the regular coloration look almost washed out, so this was a good deal. I think I got this one mainly because it's not easy to tell it from the non shiny one.

Wailord is a water type that evolves from Wailmer and is based on a blue whale, making ti the biggest Pokemon in the game in terms of width. The normal version is blue (fittingly), but the shiny version is purple. I should also note that Wailord is part of one of the games' most persistent injokes. Wailord can be bred with Skitty, a Pokemon based on and about the size of a small housecat. Due to the ridiculousness of such breeding, someone coined the term "Hot Skitty On Wailord Action" and it stuck.

(For those wondering, Pokemon are bred by leaving the male and female together at a daycare center. If they are compatible, then eventually, the employees will find an egg, even though the actual breeding has apparently never been witness by humans. Also, there is evidence that even the Legendaries and other Pokemon who won't breed at a center and are treated as gender neutral do lay eggs.)

Groudon is a third generation Legendary Ground type who resembles, essentially, Godzilla. It was the cover Pokemon for the game Pokemon Ruby, befitting its normal red coloration. The shiny version is a pretty jarring yellow.

Deoxys is a third generation Legendary Psychic Pokemon said to be part alien. It's noteworthy for being able to transform from its base form into an Attack Form, a Defense Form or a Speed Form, emphasizing those attributes. Like Groudon, it is usually colored red, but the shiny is colored yellow.

Torterra is the third stage evolution of the fourth generation grass starter Turtwig. It's a turtle with a tree on its back. A normal Torterra is forest green and brown. The shiny is tan, blue green and light green.

Garchomp is a Dragon/Ground Pokemon evolving from Gible and Gabite. I call it my pointless shiny, as it's only a very slight bit bluer than the normal Garchomp, so much so that it's hard to tell the difference looking at the two side by side. This Garchomp is interesting because while trying to see if Shininess was transferred by breeding (it's not), I found out that its four moves of Dragon Claw, Dig, Crunch and Dragon Rush all passed on if Garchomp was bred with a female in the Charmander line, resulting in level 1 Charmanders with those 4 unique moves.

Dialga is a fourth generation Steel/Dragon Legendary and the cover Pokemon for the game Pokemon Diamond. It's normally colored dark blue and white, but in its shiny form, the dark blue becomes more of an aqua.

And last, and arguably least...

Palkia is a fourth generation Water/Dragon Legendary and the cover Pokemon for the game Pokemon Pearl. It is normally white with purple trim, but in the shiny version becomes pink with purple trim, which makes the, shall we say, questionable shape of its head and neck even more wrong.... and if you don't know what I'm talking about, I'd prefer not to be the one to tell you.

So there we have it, I currently have a total of 15 shiny Pokemon. Enough to put 2 1/2 teams together.

Man, I'm a nerd.

More later.

Enough about fallen through job opportunities. There'll be others. Let's get back to geeky comics projects.

Legion of 3 Worlds has now concluded, and like everything Geoff Johns has touched lately, it's gold. Certain aspects of today's entry will have to be considered spoilers, but since the final issue came out a few months back, at this point, I have to conclude that either you've already read the series, or you're not going to anyway, so here we go with....

Superboy (aka Superman)
Name: Kal-El of Krypton (secret identity: Clark Kent of Earth)
Source of Powers: Native abilities of Kryptonians
Romantic Ties: Lois Lane (future wife), Lana Lang, others

New Earth (formerly known as Continuity 1): It has been confirmed that the classic Legion continuity up until approximately Crisis on Infinite Earths is the future for the main DC Earth, aka New Earth or Earth-1 (Not to be confused with the Pre-Crisis Earth 1, where all the Silver Age comics happened, though they are fairly similar). In this universe, an infant was sent from the doomed planet Krypton to Earth as the (supposed) last survivor of his race. Under Earth's yellow sun, he developed super powers you should already be quite aware of. Due to the need to hide these powers, he was an outcast as a boy (being a high school football hero seems to have been retconned) and very lonely until he met three visitors from the future. The Legion founders Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad brought him back to the 30th Century where he was made an honorary Legion member. Recently, the Legion has re-entered Superman's life.

5 Year Gap (formerly known as Continuity 1.5): After the Crisis, it was revealed that the Superboy the Legion knew was from a "pocket dimension" created by the Time Trapper. Shortly after this revelation, this Superboy died saving his universe. After Mon-El attacked the Time Trapper to prevent the Trapper from using Mon-El's body to return to life, history rebooted and Superboy's role in continuity was assumed by Valor, as Mon-El was now known.

Superboy
Name: Kon-El of Earth (secret identity: Conner Kent of Earth)
Source of Powers: Cloned from Kryptonian and Human DNA
Romantic Ties: Tana Moon (girlfriend, deceased), Wonder Girl (aka Cassie Sandsmark, girlfriend)

Earth-247 (formerly known as Continuity 2): This Legion's adventures took place on an alternate Earth dubbed Earth-247. It was destroyed during Infinite Crisis, but most of this Legion was lost between universes at the time and thus survived. Kon-El was created by the cloning laboratory known as the Cadmus Project as a potential replacement for Superman, who had apparently just been killed by Doomsday. Cadmus was unable to fully scan Superman's DNA and filled in the gaps with human DNA. Originally, said human DNA was thought to belong to Paul Westfield, the head of Cadmus, but was later revealed to belong to Lex Luthor, making Conner essentially the son of Superman and Luthor, which sounds like a Smallville slashfic gone horribly wrong.

Originally, Conner lacked most of Superman's super powers, and instead possessed a "tactile telekinesis" which he used for flight and super strength. He has since developed Kryptonian powers as he has matured and recently stated he had the full set of Kryptonian abilities except for super breath. He was one of the founding members of the teen superhero group Young Justice, and went from there into the Teen Titans. During his tenure in the Titans, he was pulled into the future of Earth-247 where he became a member of the Legion of Super Heroes for 6 months (though he had been an honorary member before when this Legion was stranded in our time and world). Returning to just a few seconds after he left, he chose to remain with the Titans. Shortly thereafter, he was apparently killed by Superboy Prime while attacking a device that would have been used to end his Earth's existence.

Due to the actions of Starman (formerly the Legion's Star Boy) and Braniac 5 (New Earth), Conner was eventually placed into a regeneration chamber, similar to the one used to revive Superman after his battle with Doomsday. Conner was brought back to life in the year 3009, and returned to our time, rejoining the Teen Titans.

Superboy-Prime
Name: Clark Kent of Earth (also Kal-El of Krypton in all probability)
Source of Powers: Native abilities of Kryptonians
Romantic Ties: Laurie (last name unknown, former girlfriend) (No, I'm not listing Alexander Luthor)

Earth-Prime (formerly known as Continuity 3): The third Legion has been established as being from the future of Earth Prime. Earth Prime was a pre-Crisis world where, similar to our Earth, superheros only exist in comic books. It was destroyed during Crisis on Infinite Earths, but recreated during the Infinite Crisis. It is speculated to be our Earth, despite producing Superboy and one other known super powered being.

Superboy-Prime was found abandoned in a forest by Jerry and Naomi Kent after being teleported from the dying world of Krypton. They adopted the baby, naming him Clark, despite that being the secret identity of a fictional superhero. Clark grew to be a teenager before discovering he had superpowers. Within minutes of this discovery, he met the Earth-1 Superman and left with him to fight the Anti-Monitor during the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Unfortunately, Earth Prime was one of the worlds destroyed and Clark went into a "paradise dimension" with the Alexander Luthor of Earth 3 and the Superman and Lois Lane of Earth 2.

There, Clark was unable to deal with the trauma of losing his entire world, and having Superman's ability and only a teenager's maturity. At Alexander Luthor's urging, he began to punch the walls of their refuge, which was said to cause changes in DC Universe history, most notably Jason Todd's return to life. Clark and Luthor eventually convinced Superman-2 and Lois Lane-2 that the singular DC Universe was corrupt and that they needed to bring back a different universe.

Clark confronted Conner Kent, demanding that Conner relinquish the title of Superboy. When Conner refused, Clark began to throw a superhuman temper tantrum, needing the combined efforts of the Teen Titans, Justice Society and Doom Patrol to stop. Clark ended up being imprisoned in the Speed Force by Wally West and Bart Allen, but broke out thanks to solar energy collecting armor fashioned after the armor of the Anti-Monitor. He killed both Conner (who got better) and Superman-2 (who didn't) before finally being stopped. He was imprisoned within a baby Sun-Eater by the Guardians but was liberated by the Sinestro Corps. He fought with them in the Sinestro Corps War before ultimately turning on him to kill the Anti-Monitor, who he blamed (in one of Clark's rare fair examples of blaming) for destroying his world. Clark also killed a Guardian of the Universe, and the released energies propelled him into the multiverse and temporarily aged him.

Then he was in Countdown, which we are all pretending did not happen. Otherwise, he'll kill us. He'll kill us to death.

He was recovered from the multiverse by the Time Trapper (whose identity was revealed to periodically shift, and who at that time WAS Superboy Prime). Distraught at learning that he was considered a loser who didn't matter much in Superman's history, he gathered together all of the Legion's nemeses to form a huge Legion of Super-Villains, causing the New Earth Legion to transport Legion-247 and Legion Prime to their universe, as well as recruiting Green Lantern Sodam Yat, and resurrecting Bart Allen and Conner Kent. During this battle, Clark personally killed Rond Vidar (New Earth), Sun Boy-Prime and Element Lad-Prime. With Brainiac 5's instruction, the Legion transports the Time Trapper to Clark's location. Clark is unable to accept his future self, and punches him, causing a time paradox returning him to the reborn New Earth.

When Clark enters his home, his parents and girlfriend have a collection of comics featuring him and are horrified by his actions. In a bit of metafiction, Clark ends up directly taunting the reader that he'll survive and be back, as he indulges in his new hobby... trolling the DCComics.com message board. This is not a joke. The 3rd Legion is then confirmed to be from Earth Prime and promises to keep an eye on him.

As of this writing, Superboy Prime is NOT and has not ever been actually affiliated with a Legion of Super Heroes. He was included here for completeness.

So whew, that's it for the Superboys. Next up is the somewhat similar Chameleon Boy.

I fell victim to one of the classic blunders! I assumed when I received a job offer, that I had been offered a job, and that when I accepted said job offer, that I had a job.

Unfortunately, the Saudi Arabia job offer has fallen through. I could take the wimpy way out and simply kill the last entry, but I decided to explain just what happened to all my non-existent readers, at least as far as I understood it.

It was a new program they were installing in SA, bringing in 135 teachers all at once to teach English in universities in Medinah and Jeddah. They then lost a huge number of those teachers when, just after I posted my last entry, they became aware of restrictions in Saudi policies on getting a work visa to teach in a university. Specifically, you have to meet one of four very stringent requirements. I only had a chance at one of them, and that was if my substitute teaching experience was counted as teaching experience, something I could see arguments both pro and con for.

I've spent the last week or so in a state of limbo, as to whether or not I actually had this job. I jokingly called it Schrödinger's Job, for those who understand nerdy references, and for those who don't....

Anyway, for the moment, I'm still in the US, as sub jobs are thankfully starting to take off again, but I've already applied for a couple more South Korea jobs, returning my focus back there, and relegating the data I had been rapidly assimilating on Saudi life to being the interesting trivia.

Don't get me wrong, the Saudi job was pretty rewarding both in pay and prestige, and I would have been glad to have it, but there were worries I had with the situation. My safety was the foremost worry, both from the religious police and anyone over there who hated Americans. I'd have to have some random roommate who could very well be a jerk, something that shouldn't be an issue with South Korea. Even though I wouldn't have had to deal with the dress codes and other restrictions for women, I still wouldn't have been able to associate with any woman who wasn't my wife or a relative in public over there, so meeting anyone would have been very difficult. And the big thing is that my practice of Christianity would be very restricted over there, to the point where I could be arrested if they thought I was attempting to proselytize (convincing another person to become a Christian), I could be arrested, and there was a good possibility that any Bible I would bring, even for personal use, would be confiscated and shredded, or otherwise defiled.

So, yeah. There was a lot of good and bad, and I still don't know whether or not it had entirely sunk in yet that I was going, largely because I didn't have a contract in my hand yet (as opposed to one South Korea job I did get, but couldn't take due to lack of prepaid airfare and other concerns where they had the contract sent along with the job offer). So I'm actually fairly at peace with it.

For some reason, I'm reminded a lot right now of my attempts to become ASB Director of Activities back in college. The first time I ran, it was actually my first year there (as I was a transfer student), and in retrospect, I couldn't have and shouldn't have won. But it got my name out there. The second time, I ran against three other people and didn't even make the runoffs. The third time, I was running against two others, and was really running just so I knew I had done everything I could to pursue this. I was possibly the most shocked person on campus that I won. But even then, I only won because the school's ASB (Associated Student Body) Constitution required that an ASB officer win their position by majority vote, and that there had to be runoffs if no candidate had one. I actually lost the first election by 7 votes and wouldn't have been in ASB if the Constitution allowed for a plurality vote to get a candidate into office.

God has reasons for these things. While I wish He would hurry up and let me know these reasons, I have trust that he's there.

After all, he's taken me this far.

OK, so I haven't posted anything in QUITE a long time. I did get involved in some other writing projects briefly, including an attempt to improve part of this website. I will let you know when that's done.

In the meantime, there's lots of news. Here's the big bombshell. I have gotten an overseas teaching job, as I've been trying to do for just over a year now. However, the plans to go to South Korea have not worked out.

How can both these things be true? Because the job is in Saudi Arabia.

It actually worked out a little weirdly. I went ahead and renewed my credential to substitute teach here, and let Footprints (the recruiting company I used) know about it on the off chance that it could matter to an employer. And my contact at Footprints mailed me back asking if I would be interested in a job in Saudi Arabia as a new opportunity just popped up. I replied that I was interested, and just a few days later, there was a job offer in my e-mail.

I was a little confused as I hadn't even interviewed with the position, but it turned out that 134 other teachers are all being hired at the same time. Footprints set up a private little message board for us, so I'm getting to meet them, which is good given that half of them are going to be my neighbors, and one of them will be my new roommate.

It's really a sudden change that hasn't quite sunk in yet, as all the research I did into South Korean culture now becomes merely interesting trivia, and I had to go look into the customs of a completely different country. It will take some time to adjusting to not being able to do certain things that I'm free to do in America, notably associating with women in public (given that I'm not married and none of my family would be there) and speaking publically about my faith. I will definitely have to make sure not to say anything bad about Islam, Saudi Arabia or especially the Saudi royal family on here, so this page doesn't end up being banned by Saudi Internet.

The nice side of this is that I'll be teaching at a university, which is an awesome thing to be able to say. Also, the job pays $2,000 a month (and there's no income tax in Saudi Arabia), airfare is provided, housing is provided (with a roommate unfortunately, which I've had bad luck with, especially when I don't know the person, but there's always hope), health care is provided, and there's a paid vacation in 11 months, not to mention that Saudi holidays are paid (like a 3 month break in January).

Given the lack of nightlife in Saudi Arabia, it appears that most of our entertainment will come from each other in our apartment complex. I'm planning to bring a lot of my video games over, and video game stores are reportedly very common over there. I'm still holding out hope that we'll be in a compound rather than a complex, as a compound might actually have karaoke. Since otherwise, it seems like The Voice will be silenced, and that'd just be tragic all around.

After I get there, I'll probably not be able to update this page for a while because it's just really not feasible to bring my desktop computer. I'll have to use Internet cafes and/or access from work just to check e-mail and such until my first check comes in and I can get a laptop, and due to the way I update this page, I really need a computer I own to do it.

If all goes well, then I'll be in either Jeddah or Medina (which is NOT funky cold) within 2 weeks. The signs right now are pointing towards Medina. And then, assuming I did well at the job, I'd be there until late August 2010, which is a little insane and hasn't quite sunk in yet. I will keep you posted.

Beyond this, Friday Night karaoke did return since my previous post, but due to my impending departure, this next weekend should be my last for a while, and that's going to be one of the few things I miss about this town.

I really miss karaoke. The Friday night local karaoke has been cancelled indefinitely (and with my luck, will probably be restored just after I leave), and last Saturday, it was cancelled as well due to the holiday. Hopefully, they'll have it tomorrow night.

In the meantime, I've wandered over to another of my on-hand games (there's a lot of fun to be had in discounted games sometimes... after all, they're new to you)  to work on it some more. Fight Night Round 3 is kind of an odd duck. All the punching takes place through motions of the right analog stick, with the harder punches requiring a more complex motion, somewhat similar to Street Fighter in that respect. Random flailing usually works for me, as I tend to employ a straightforward power style that the game calls "bully fighting". For giggles, I designed a Jack Thompson boxer in the game and sometimes go through either annihilating him in one round, or punching him in the groin until I get disqualified. Which I'm sure he'll take as a threat against him, even though I've put friends in as CAWs in SmackDown games and fought them with no inclination to do so in real life.

I've also played around some more with Fire Pro Wrestling Returns, actually playing the game rather than letting the computer do it for me. The workings of the game take some getting used to, but once you do get used to it, it's a fairly nice system, even if you deal with occassional ludicrosity like the smallest female wrestler in the game suplexing Andre the Giant. I've experimented with some of the goofier moves in the game, like blowing fire and poison mist at your opponent (unfortunately, it's near impossible to hit them and takes so much out of you that in one match, I was so "blown up" that I could only throw one punch and then was unable to move), as well as a goofy move where I apparently "cast a spell" on my opponent causing their hand to raise in the air. The game has a UFC-esque octagon cage mode in it, and you really destroy believability in that mode by busting out that move or "The Worm". If you are so inclined, after a match, the game gives you a chance to attack your beaten opponent.

Let me go ahead and continue my project now.

Triplicate Girl (aka Duo Damsel, Triad)
Name: Luornu Durgo of Cargg
Source of Power: Native ability of Carggites
Romantic Ties: 1, 1.5: Bouncing Boy (husband), Superboy (Crush), 1.5: Karate Kid (implied romatic feelings), 3: Sun Boy, Element Lad, Ultra Boy (dated)

Luornu Durgo (later Luornu Durgo Taine in 1 and 1.5) has the ability to split herself into three identical women. This ability got her into the Legion Espionage Squad due to her ability to enter a stealth situation and then split up so that one duplicate can stay with the group to avoid suspicion.

In continuity 1, one of her biggest subplots was that she had a crush on Superboy. Since she knew that was already written by history to be impossible, she later shifted her focus to Chuck Taine, also known as Bouncing Boy. Tragedy struck during her Legion membership as one of her selves was killed by an invention of Brainiac 5's. The loss of one duplicate typically kills Carggites, but Luornu survived, taking the new name of Duo Damsel. She married Bouncing Boy and due to then current terms of the Legion constitution forbidding married members, she resigned, taking up leadership of the Legion Academy with Bouncing Boy, and remaining a reserve member.

(A quick aside here: The issue where Duo Damsel and Bouncing Boy married was drawn by late Legion artist Dave Cockrum. Cockrum requested the return of his original artwork of this two page spread. DC refused on the basis of having a policy against the returning of original artwork. Due to this, Cockrum left DC and went to Marvel comics, taking with him his new idea for a Legion member. That idea ended up becoming the X-Man Nightcrawler.)

In the modern continuation of continuity 1, one of Triplicate Girl's selves, calling herself Una, came back to our time at the end of The Lightning Saga to tell Karate Kid that he could not travel back to the future (no Michael J. Fox jokes please). Togehter, the two were part of one of the major "story arcs" in Countdown. Unfortunately, Una was infected with OMAC Nanites, and later died alongside Karate Kid at the hands of semi-sentient rats on Earth-51. This either leaves Luornu left with either one body or dead depending on if the below attack happened in continuity 1. However, Starman in our time recently predicted "Don't worry about Luornu...Triplicate! Duo! Una! Wait until you see what happens to her!" implying some kind of happy end for Luornu.

When continuity 1.5 started, the Superboy known to the Legion was revealed to come from a "pocket dimension" created by the Time Trapper. That Superboy ended up dying to protect his Earth from destruction (though it was sadly destroyed later in a story that has been retconned since because it involved Superman executing the three Kryptonian criminals responsible). Due to her crush, Duo Damsel joined in on a conspiracy to kill the Time Trapper. In the resulting attack, the Time Trapper killed one of her two remaining selves. As a result, Brainiac 5 gave Luornu his force field belt (and as it turned out later actual forcefield powers). Soon, the whole thing was rendered pointless due to the retcon replacing the Time Trapper with Glorith. The conspiracy was now in response to Glorith destroying the population of Daxam, and Luornu's motivation became unclear. However, it was later revealed that Glorith didn't kill Luornu's second body, but took her prisoner. The Legion later recovered her, and Bouncing Boy pondered the implications of having a wife who could split into two women again. Seriously. The two Luornus as well as the three bodies of her time duplicate self all sacrificed their lives to save/reboot the universe at Zero Hour.

In continuity 2, Luornu was an assistant of R.J. Brande's when the Legion was founded. The element was introduced that her three selves had differing personalities. Triad-Orange was outgoing and somewhat aggressive, Triad-Purple was shy and Triad-Neutral was the middle ground. She actually lost fellow Legion member Ferro as a friend when it came out that Orange, and thus part of Triad, thought he was stupid. This actually caused Purple and Neutral to deck Orange, bringing a whole new meaning to self loathing.

In continuity 3, another plot twist was introduced. On the planet Cargg, a naked girl gained consciousness with no memory only to find herself as the only person on the planet, despite the presence of cities and other trappings of civilization. She found that she could split herself up into enough duplicates to repopulate the planet. When the Legion formed, three of the Luornus were sent to Earth, becoming Triad. She faces the unique obstacle that when she splits, her Legion Flight Ring does not split with her, and in continuity 3, Flight Rings are notoriously expensive, so there are not enough resources to give her three of them. She also faces the sad fate that her other selves back on Cargg consider her to be so changed by her experiences that they no longer wish to remerge with her, exiling her from not only her home, but herself. In early issues of this continuity, Cosmic Boy and Brainiac 5 were in a struggle for leadership, and Triad acted as a spy for Cosmic Boy, dating Sun Boy, Element Lad and Ultra Boy simultaneously in order to report to Cosmic Boy whose side they were on.

Whew, and I though that this would be a short entry. Next up.... Superboy. And this one will be covering 3, or arguably 4 individuals.

Another entry, another long break since the entry, as I'm stuck in limbo towards getting a job. I'm in the recruiting company's program and they're sure they'll find me a good job, it's just a matter of getting hired after the interview on a job that's actually workable.

You might notice my menu looks a little tighter. I went ahead and downgraded back to Netscape Composer 4.7, which is what I'm familiar with using. I've also gone ahead and added my profile on DVD Afficionado. It doesn't have all the nicities of my old DVD online catalog, but at least it's there and free. I did kludge a little bit though. In the past few months, I've gotten a lot of "double features", two movies in one case, and a lot of the time, those double features aren't in the site's catalog. So I registered as getting the two movies separately.

Matt got me addicted to the Atop The 4th Wall series of comic video reviews done by Linkara. I've moved on from the reviews to his recent Let's Play of Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, which inspired me to play that game again (though I had the PS2 version rather than Linkara's PC version) and I finished it. I actually hadn't played the game (at least enough to save my game) for over 3 years, leaving off in a frustrating sewer area. During the rest of the game, I learned that I hate Tuvok, so much so that I need to shoot him in his ugly Tuvok-y face.

So I did. The crew of the Voyager didn't take kindly to this and if they manage to capture me, the "brig visit" cutscenes are hilarious.

In the meantime, I've dug out my CD collection and started reripping it, trying to restore my song collection after the great Dave Hard Drive Failure of Late 2008. Ripping a CD makes my computer otherwise useless because it takes up so much processing capacity, so I decided to blog in the interim.

And I suppose I should continue my project from last time.

Phantom Girl (aka Apparation and Phase [kinda sorta])
Name: Tinya Wazzo of Bgztl
Source of Power: Native Ability of Bgztlians.
Romantic Ties: Ultra Boy (1, 1.5, 2, and beginning in 3)

Phantom Girl is the first non founder member of the Legion. Due to her home planet being in another dimension (one related to the Phantom Zone), she can make parts or all of her incorporeal, enabling her to walk through walls and such. She also has the power to return to her home dimension or the Phantom Zone at will. She is really only known during the 1 Continuity for two things mainly. First off, because of her powers, she's a member of a subgroup of the Legion known as the Legion Espionage Squad, which deals with missions that require stealth. Secondly, she's part of one of the Legion's classic couples with Ultra Boy. She was a very stabilizing force to the Legion's "dumb jock", Ultra Boy.

Starting with the now defunct 1.5 Continuity, Tinya had a much larger role in a matter of speaking. It turns out that Ultra Boy's whole dumb jock routine is just an act, meant to covertly influence Mordru and Glorith (the continuity 1.5 replacement for the Time Trapper) into fighting each other, and thus making sure that neither can ever conquer the universe. Glorith manages to learn this, and thinks that the best revenge is by hurting Tinya, so she makes it look like the ship Tinya was on blew up, but really sent Tinya back in time to the modern day group L.E.G.I.O.N., where she became known as Phase. When Ultra Boy learns that time travel had something to do with her disappearance, Mon-El (who was a member of L.E.G.I.O.N.) says that he knew a member back then who looked just like Tinya. Ultra Boy borrows a Time Bubble to go check but learns that Phase is actually a forgotten identical cousin to Tinya. However, he is reunited with the real Tinya during Zero Hour just before reality collapses, leading us to 2 Continuity.

In 2 Continuity, Tinya has a much larger goal because her mother Winema is a very influential politician who objects to the Legion because she feels they're endangering children like her daughter. Things don't get much better after Tinya apparently dies. However, for some odd reason, her spirit or some such was absorbed into Ultra Boy. She eventually gets out, but is left as a phantom that at first only Ultra Boy can see, but this gets fixed. Eventually, this Legion ends up on present day Earth and Phase feels an urge to come to Earth (it's complicated and a little lame). It turns out that now Phase IS Tinya... kind of. Tinya is now half Carggite (Triplicate Girl's people), and thus Phase is one of Tinya's other bodies. There's apparently a third one out there somewhere as well, but we never meet her. Tinya ends up in a body again later.

In 3 Continuity, Phantom Girl is not connected to Ultra Boy. She's otherwise essentially the same character except she has a real love of comic books. In the final arc of the book, she is attacked by Princess Projectra for reasons I'll get into in that entry. This plot is left unresolved in the last issue of the series as the writer had planned out at least two more issues to resolve plotlines. In Legion of 3 Worlds, she is brought by Phantom Girl 1 to help Ultra Boy 1 along with the other Phantom Girls and Ultra Boys. As the three Phantom Girls watch the three Ultra Boys in action, she comments "Ultra Man is hot!" (Phantom Girl 1 corrects her), indicating that she might end up with her Ultra Boy as well.

I'll try handling entries one at a time from here on in, hopefully this will keep me more on task.

OK, let's start covering some of the members of these various Legions running around. As shorthand, I will append the continuity number (from my last entry) to a name if I'm speaking specifically about that hero from that continuity. For example, Cosmic Boy-1 is the Cosmic Boy from continuity 1, whereas Phantom Girl-3 is the Phantom Girl from continuity 3. Sound easy? OK, here we go.

Cosmic Boy (aka Polestar 1.5)
Name: Rokk Krinn of Braal
Source of Power: Native ability of Braalians*
Romantic Ties: Night Girl (1, 1.5), Saturn Girl (2, false pretenses)

Cosmic Boy is one of the founders of the Legion and invariably its first leader. Similar to the X-Men villain Magneto, he controls magnetism. Typically, he's a champion at the sport of Magno-Ball and is on his way to Earth to make money for his family when he helps stop the assassination attempt on R.J. Brande. In continuity 1, he would move his family to Earth and they would end up the victims of a "fireballing", which is a protection racket using nuclear weapons against those who refuse to pay. His mother perished and his father and brother were both severely injured, but recovered. Cosmic Boy-1's brother would end up joining the Legion as Magnetic Kid (when Rokk stepped into an advisory role) and ended up sacrificing himself to help the Legion triumph in the event known as the Magic Wars just prior to the 5 Year Gap. This event may or may not have occurred in continuity 1, as we see no evidence that Magnetic Kid joined the Legion. On another sad note, in Lo3W #1, he tells Lightning Lad that he has given up his relationships to help protect the Legion, so Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl would not have to. He says this right in front of Night Girl.

In 1.5 continuity, Rokk married Night Girl and had a son, Pol. He lost his powers as a result of a war between Braal and Shrinking Violet's home planet of Imsk. He ended up regaining them (but temporarily becoming insane) with the help of an invention of Brainiac 5. In attempting to stop a plot by Glorith and Mordru, he ends up becoming the Time Trapper and aids the Legion in sacrificing themselves to save existence during Zero Hour. Early on, Rokk did have a Crowning Moment of Awesome (tm TVTropes) when, powerless, he accompanies some of the Legionnaires to retrieve the White Witch from Mordru, and manages to be the one who stares down Mordru during a dinner and convinces him to let them take her (through the veiled threat of a war).

In continuity 2, Rokk is the initial leader of the Legion until the UP mandates that Leviathan (Colossal Boy) take over. Leviathan ends up botching leadership and turning it back over to Rokk after one mission. A group of Legionnaires would end up stuck in our time, with Rokk acting as their leader. He almost marries Saturn Girl until it's revealed that he's actually in a coma, and Saturn Girl's expanding powers are controlling him.

In continuity 3, Rokk is again leader of the Legion, having to play all sorts of political games to fend off usurpation attempts by Brainiac 5. The Legion ends up fairly split between the two of them until they have to make peace to fend off a universal threat. Shortly thereafter, Rokk is approached by a group claiming to be from the 41st century wanting to recruit him just as the Legion recruited Superboy and Supergirl from our time. He goes with them and has not been seen since. Cosmic Boy-3 is thus far not a part of Lo3W and at this point seems unlikely to be seen again.

*Native abilities happen a lot with the Legion. In the first continuity, they were being explained as evolved traits to help the inhabitants survive such and such a peril on their homeworld (even though in real life, people on that planet would die before Natural Selection could be that much of a help). In the 2nd continuity, most of these planets are inhabited by humans who had various powers granted to them by Dominion experiments, and who were settled on these worlds by Valor as a buffer zone protecting Earth from further invasion.

Lightning Lad (aka Livewire 1.5, 2)
Name: Garth Ranzz of Winath
Source of Power: Attacked by "lightning beasts" on the planet Korbal
Romantic Ties: Saturn Girl (1, 1.5, 2, 3)

Lightning Lad, as you may have guessed from the name, generates and shoots lightning. He shares this power with his twin sister and fellow Legionnaire Ayla (aka Lightning Lass) and older brother Mekt (aka Lightning Lord). Typically, he's on his way to Earth to search for Mekt when he helps stop the assassination attempt on R.J. Brande. Garth would fall in love with and later marry fellow Legionnaire Saturn Girl. At one point, Lightning Lad was killed by Zaryan the Conquerer, but was brought back when Proty (a shapeshifting alien kept as a pet to that point by the Legion) sacrificed his life for Garth's. This event is referenced in the JLA/JSA/Legion crossover The Lightning Saga with the Legionnaires all holding up lightning rods (though thankfully no one died in that event). He would also lose an arm for a time to "the super Moby Dick of space" (classic comics are weird sometimes), earning him a reputation as the unluckiest Legionnaire.

One of the earliest events in continuity 1.5 seemingly not included in continuity 1 is fathering twins with Saturn Girl only to have one of the twins abducted by Darkseid and transformed into the supervillain Validus, given that Validus is still active in continuity 1 despite being transformed back in 1.5. He would also go on to have a second set of twins with Saturn Girl. Due to his various injuries, he is retired as a hero, and runs a farm on his home planet of Winath with Saturn Girl, his sister and his rehabilitated brother. In an unpopular twist, it was revealed that Lightning Lad was never resurrected at all, but Proty assumed his form rather than sacrifice himself for him.

In continuity 2, he adopted the name Live Wire (which was used for his time duplicate in 1.5) and was typically brash and hotheaded. He was paranoid about Cosmic Boy stealing Saturn Girl from him. He again lost his arm, though this time, it was vaporized by his brother Mekt. During a battle with an insane Element Lad, he is killed and resurrected in Element Lad's body. During Lo3W, his transmutation powers are strengthened enough to let him transform his own body back to normal (though he keeps his artificial arm for some reason).

In continuity 3, he makes an effective group member, but after becoming leader following the disappearances of both Cosmic Boy and Supergirl, he is way over his head. He is the one who agrees to have the Legion adopted as an official arm of the United Planets, and the Legion nearly goes bankrupt until a boy with the "super power" of management skills shows up and handles day to day affairs. The series ends just as Garth is beginning to get a handle on his responsibilities.

Saturn Girl
Name: Imra Ardeen of Titan (one of Saturn's moons)
Source of Power: Native ability of Titanians
Romantic Ties: Lightning Lad (1, 1.5, 2, 3), Cosmic Boy (2, false pretenses), Ultra Boy (3, one encounter)

Imra Ardeen was on her way to Earth in order to apply to join the Science Police when she "overheard" two would be assassins plotting to kill R.J. Brande. When she shouted out a warning, two of her fellow passengers stopped the assassins with their powers. She then went on to be one of the founding members of the Legion of Super Heroes and fell in love with fellow founder Lightning Lad. At one point, she received a prophetic warning that a Legionnaire would die in an upcoming fight with Zaryan the Conquerer so she used her powers to win the election for leader of the group and then abused her leadership to suspend every other member of the group so that she would be the only possible member to die. However, Lightning Lad disobeyed her orders and was killed instead (he got better, though only kinda sorta in 1.5). She would go on to legitimate terms of leadership and even saved the Earth when her powers enabled her to overcome Universo's attempt to hypnotize the entire planet.

In 1.5, she lives with her husband Garth in semi-retirement as a hero running a farm. She ends up with a total of four children, but is able as ever when called into battle.

During continuity 2, her usage of power became somewhat suspect, as she would unconsciously manipulate the comatose Cosmic Boy into almost marrying her while stranded in our time (she was only stopped by the realization that she loved Garth seemingly transforming Rokk into Garth), and as leader, she would knowingly create an illusion of Apparition (Phantom Girl) in order to keep Ultra Boy calm during a crisis.

In continuity 3, Imra and all Titanians are actually physically mute due to exclusively using telepathy to communicate (which causes a real issue when she briefly loses her powers). Later, when the burdens of Legion leadership are causing Lighting Lad to neglect her, (that sentence has too many L words), she has a brief and mostly telepathic affair with Ultra Boy. This plotline was largely left unresolved at the end of the series.

Whew. I think I'm going to cut down to 3 a day. So next up (I'm going in order of Wikipedia mention), Triplicate Girl, Phantom Girl and Superboy.

If you're lost, you can look and you will find me
time after time

If you haven't been keeping up with the excellent series Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds, you're simply either not a comic fan, or you're really missing out. That's all there is to it.

But a friend let me know that he hadn't really read Legion of Super-Heroes, so he was a little lost as to who all these characters were, and what was going on. So I'm going to take it upon myself to explain all the shenanigans and goings on.

First off, as you see by the title, we're dealing with three worlds here, or at least three continuities. So I'm going to start with a little crash course on them.

Continuity 1 is the classic Legion continuity, ranging from 1958-1986 or so in terms of publishing dates as the version we're dealing with here stops with the Crisis on Infinite Earths. This continuity has been established as the future of the mainline DC Earth (also called New Earth or Earth-1, not to be confused with the Pre-Crisis Earth-1, which I may talk about someday). Most of what you've heard about Legion continuity likely happened here. The Legion began when Rokk Krinn (later known as Cosmic Boy, possessing magnetic powers), Imra Ardeen (Saturn Girl, telepathy) and Garth Ranzz (Lightning Lad, shoots lightning) were all on their way to Earth and stopped an assassination attempt on R.J. Brande, typically considered to be the richest man in the universe. He suggested that the three take inspiration from Superboy and become heroes. And thanks to this idea and his financing, the Legion of Super-Heroes was founded. Applicants were accepted who had at least one useful power not possessed by any current Legion members, were able to control said power and (it was revealed) passed a telepathic check from Saturn Girl to make sure that they were good people. It is worth noting that some developments from the comics of the time, even before the next continuity I'll speak about, have been retconned away, notably the supervillain Validus being a child of Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad stolen and transformed by Darkseid. However, the death of Karate Kid (he briefly got better) and Princess Projectra's change to the Sensor Girl identity did happen. These will be covered more when I talk about the individuals.

Continuity 1.5 isn't represented in this series, but bears talking about. This is the continuity retconned away by dropping out the post-Crisis continuity of #1. Here, we're talking about comics published between 1996-1994. After about a year or so, a 5 year gap was put in place to establish a new continuity. The Legion was dissolved and its members scattered to various worlds, and Earth's government was under the control of the alien species known as the Dominators. The Legion would be reformed (and in fact a SECOND younger Legion would be found that ended up being time duplicates), and Earth would be freed from the Dominators and then destroyed, with only about 100 cities surviving as linked bubbles. The main plot developments during this phase however concerned DC's edict at the time that Clark Kent was never Superboy (and was the only survivor of Krypton). Given that Superboy was the inspiration to the Legion, there was a void that needed to be filled. First, it was established that the Superboy that the Legion knew came from a "pocket dimension" created by the Time Trapper. Pocket-Superboy ended up sacrificing his life to save that dimension. The same pocket dimension was also where the Matrix-Supergirl came from, and where Superman ended up having to execute three Kryptonian criminals who destroyed that Earth. The entire pocket dimension thing has been retconned out pretty thoroughly, so both those developments are in limbo, as is the Eradicator, since Superman encountered the Eradicator while exiling himself from Earth due to guilt from the three executions.

Shortly before the 5 Year Gap, members of the Legion attacked and seemingly killed the Time Trapper in retribution for the death of Superboy (this was later changed, but that's a whole other story). However, part of the Trapper's essence survived locked in Mon-El's brain (...yeah) and Mon-El ended up destroying it. However, without a Time Trapper, Mordru took over the universe, so a woman named Glorith had to assume the Trapper's role. In the process, Mon-El got a retcon where he had a brief 20th Century run as the hero Valor, and ended up himself being the inspiration for the Legion. As you can tell from even this brief glossover, this all got pretty confusing and one of the purposes of the Zero Hour event was to fix problems from CoIE, including the Legion.

That leads us to Continuity 2, which was revealed to mainly take place on the now destroyed Earth-247, and lasted from 1994-2004. The Legion again started with Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad saving R.J. Brande from an assassination attempt. Here, Brande went to the United Planets government for help financing the Legion, which caused all sorts of meddling. The government instituted a policy where members were "drafted" into Legion service (despite the Legion's or the member's wishes on the subject) and only one member could come from any given world (Lightning Lad was actually forced out when his home planet of Winath drafted his sister, Lightning Lass). By exposing the president of the UP as corrupt, the Legion eventually came free of these restrictions. Beginning back in 1.5, there were two Legion series, Legion of Super-Heroes and Legionnaires (the latter of which covered the adventures of the younger time-duplicate Legion). The two series persisted into this continuity, and so the Legion was divided twice. In the first division, half of the Legion was trapped in our time and played a major role in the Final Night event. (In Lo3W, Brainiac 5 of continuity 1, hereafter dubbed Brainiac 5-1, stated that time travel could often also involve dimensional travel, explaining this and why Legion-3 could have Earth-1's Supergirl as a member). Later, the titles were divided into the Legionnaires stationed on Earth and the Legionnaires stationed on an orbital base. This continuity persisted until the Teen Titans/Legion Special, where this Legion ended up recruiting the Teen Titans to help fight the Fatal Five.... Hundred, which consisted of the Fatal Five and their counterparts from 99 different Earths. As a result of this conflict, the Titans were sent back home (except for a minor side trip 10 years into their future) and the Legion-2 were lost in limbo.

Continuity-3 lasts from 2004-2009. Here, the Legion's origins are never explained, but the Legion is a social movement rebelling against a status quo that shuns personal contact. The Legion considers anyone who shares their ideals to be a member, and thus the Legion is about 20,000 members strong. However, the core team is limited by the number of Flight Rings that Brainiac 5 can produce, and they are extremely expensive. Later, the Legion is adopted as a formal arm of the government, and much of this premise is lost. This Legion's stories apparently stop when their series is cancelled at issue #50, but as Lo3W had already started before then, certain plot developments may be excluded, and it's hard to tell exactly when the Legion-3 is brought over in their continuity.

So there's some material to chew on for now. Next time, I'll try to start covering the various members, 5 at a time.

Whew.

You might think it's an April Fool's joke, but sometimes I actually do complete a project.

Quite a while back, I promised a revamp of my Wrestling Match Database in order to improve readability. I took forever on the project, then when my Hard Drive failed, I lost all the work anyway.

I trimmed back some of the work I had planned as unnecessary, and managed to do all the work in one day. It actually went up last night, but I forgot to include one of the discs I got since I last updated. I included the Tagged Classics PPVs I got from 2003 that I've discussed here previously, as well as the Best of Saturday Night's Main Event set I got yesterday. (I should note that if I suddenly disappear, then Matt Sutton needs to go to JAIL. Jealousy is a horrible thing, Matt.) But I forgot to include Wrestlemania XXIV. For some fun, check my archives for 2006 or so and see my database from when I first started it.

Maybe I can now eventually finish some of my other projects, such as that Hogan Anthology review now a bit more than TWO YEARS late.

But I suppose that's a faraway dream...

In addition to needing to update my blog more often, it seems like I need to update the way I update as well.

I use Netscape Composer for my updates (and I'll let all my tech oriented friends get in their laughter now). Netscape Composer is pretty much a dead program, as it was removed from the Netscape suite even before Netscape itself died, but it was, amongst free programs, what I was most used to and what fit my needs the best. Remember, this isn't like Blogspot or other programs. Since my page and blog are integrated and I don't have fancy schmancy PHP apps or anything like that, I'm updating the page itself with the new entry, uploading the revised page to my server, then C&Ping the entry to MySpace, which automatically propogates it to Google Reader and FaceBook through RSS feed. Got that? Good. There will be a quiz later.

After the great Dave's Hard Disk Death of Late 2008, I wanted to reprocure Composer and got the last version of Netscape it came with. It was higher than the version I was used to and some things functioned a bit different.

One of the odd things I can't figure out is just why this resulted in my last entry getting so oddly and randomly spaced when I C&Ped it to MySpace, Google Reader and Facebook. But to combat this, I am writing my entries up in WordPad and then C&Ping to both my blog and MySpace from there.

I've been playing some more in The Sims 2 lately. I decided to settle down and start a family. I failed to join the PTA, and buy some sensible shoes and a Chevrolet, but that's another story. I got married to a made up Sim (no, not based on any girls I know in real life), and we went about the baby having business. We had a boy and I figured to have one more child so that when they get old enough for College, I could choose one of them to continue play with. Plus, it'd be keeping with the whole Zero Population Growth thing that some people swear is important.

A number of real life couples can probably predict what happened... when you absolutely only want one more child, you have twins.

In The Sims 2, having one child can be enough of a handful. Babies are eating, pooping and especially crying machines. Toddlers just add the dimension of pure unadulterated chaos. I still laugh remembering a toddler in one of my games who had a fondness for finding the toilet and gleefully splashing water everywhere. Now we had two babies and a toddler. I think if we didn't have a butler and a nanny around at various times, we would have died, or at least lost one of the kids to a Social Worker. Oftentimes, I was locked in a cycle where my dead tired Sims went to bed, and one of the kids started crying, which woke both Sims up to take care of the various eating and pooping needs, only to fall asleep again and be woken up a second later again.

This goes without even mentioning my Cat sim who somehow managed to completely reduce a brand new single bed to lumber scraps by scratching on it. Perhaps he was angry that I colored him neon green with rainbow stars with the unlockable options for pets.

I reached the point where the twin babies became toddlers and the toddler became a child (and thus much more self sufficient and less randomly destructive) and unfortunately my game crashed shortly thereafter. My last save was when the oldest was still a baby and the twins were still in the fictional wife's womb. So I get to do this all again! Yay?

I'm still considering the possibility of real life fatherhood someday... and I'm hoping it's a lot less hectic than that.

"It's raining inside my house!"

Of all the sentences I never expected to read, that has to be on at least the top 100.

But in a recent game of The Sims 2, my Sim started freaking out when it was raining. Even when I cancelled the sudden freakouts, my Sim generated more in his planned action list.

So, obviously, something was up. What kind of game designer would make my Sim freak out simply because it was raining.

So I investigated.

I switched to an upper story view of my house only discover that on my home that I had built from scratch neglected a vital element. I put in walls, I put in floors... I simply neglected to include a roof.

I suppose my roofless house was quite fun until  inclement weather hit. Like camping or something.

Fortunately, none of my nice things were ruined by being rained on, and as soon as I constructed a roof, my Sim stopped freaking out.

I suppose there is a moral to this narrative, but I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader.

More later.

There's this one online program that I'm a part of wherein you're sent surveys every once in a while, and for each survey you do, you build up a little bit of credit. With that credit, you can claim various rewards once you've built up enough. I won't plug  them directly, but I bet you can find them if you look (or if you ask me). The only reward I personally find worth having is a $25 Gamestop card, which oddly requires $50 worth of credit with the program. I've just claimed my second card from them.

Back in September, I used a card to pick up Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney : Justice for All for the DS, and Madden 2005, NHL 2004 and MLB 2004 for the PS2. Sports games are dirt cheap once they get older. Wright is interesting, but in a game that is about being a lawyer, the idea that your closest allies are spirit channelers is really not necessary. It's really disturbing when the 10 year old channels her really buxom cousin (especially given that this spirit channeling makes the channeler take on the appearance of the channeled person.)

I have long had the far superior ESPN NFL 2K5. The only reason I'm playing Madden 2005 now is that  it has a corresponding NCAA Football game that I also have. It's really cool to see a player come through the created Pt. Loma Nazarene football team I created and get drafted onto my Rams team.

I've just gotten the second card, and I used that to pick up Fire Pro Wrestling Returns, Rumble Roses and Robotech: Invasion.

Fire Pro is a descendant of games released in Japan dating all the way back to the Super Nintendo system. It's a little simplistic in that the wrestlers are sprites rather than 3D polygon models, but the character creation is unrivalled in its depth and you can create up to 500 characters. You also get to put the characters in matches like where the ring is surrounded by electrified barbed wire instead of ropes, and at a certain point in the match, the ring explodes, knocking down everyone in it. I don't see SmackDown ever including that.

Rumble Roses is an all female wrestling game made by Yuke's who also develop the SmackDown games. Its gimmick is essentially improbably built and scantily clad ladies wrestling, but the wrestling is pretty solid. In fact, I'd even place it above Def Jam Vendetta in terms of being the best non-WWE wrestling game out there play wise. It has a feature that you can "vow" to do certain things before a match that make you more of a face or more of a heel. If someone does enough heel things as a face or vice versa, they actually "turn" and unlock their alternate persona, which is a feature I wish WWE games would have, but I bet we'll never see.

For the last one, I almost went with Ultimate Wrestling featuring MUSCLE to complete the theme, but instead decided to complete the collection of Robotech related games on the PS2 (all two of them). Robotech: Invasion is set, appropriately enough, in the Invid Invasion portion of the series, which is the final of the three series that were put together to make Robotech. You ride a Cyclone, and the game is essentially a first person shooter where you can transform part of your armor to a motorcycle. However, the motorcycle is really only useful to move quickly between the various missions, and the game won't even let you transform in enclosed areas like caves.

All in all, not bad for just filling out surveys in my free time.

In the meantime, I'd like to restart an old tradition I had on the blog here. Using Google Analytics, here's the visitation figures for December, 2008.

I ended up with 59 visits outside of my home county for the month. Way down, but given the lack of updatery, not surprising. Since December has 31 days, that amounts to 1.31 vists a day. This includes visitors from 17 states and 12 countries. The only continents I blank on are South America and the typically absent Africa, given that Antarctica doesn't count.

In any event, you may notice that this page is a lot shorter. 2008 has been offficially moved to its own archive page, and the archive pages got a little work to make sure their menus sync up with this one.

Happy 2009, everyone!