"...and, The Return of The OLD"

In the news today, Turner (broadcasting) is going thru over 1000 hours of classic cartoons to clip and eliminate any scenes of the characters using tobacco (smoking) with the only exception being to any villians smoking cigars. Good to eliminate this from the eyes of children; Bad because of the dreaded word of cencorship once again, and the destruction of any classic material. Allowing this is just another step in letting others choose what we want to watch in this country, and just another reason not to solicite them. Remember that it's not a choice of political correctness, but a statement about removing one's rights. (It's also saying that only bad people smoke.)

I don't want to sound all Dale Gribble about this, but I do grow weary of people telling us we have the right to choose what we watch on t.v., then eliminating our choices because "they" control the subject matter. Which brings up the subject of what NEXT "those in charge" will decide what we can or cannot watch? Will our choices finally be reduced to either turning On the set, or turning it Off, or popping in some prerecorded material we actually want to watch? I find this particularly disturbing considering Turner is always sounding off about restoring all of their classic movies and including any deleted scenes, showing them in "wide-screen" original format, etc., but they want to be hypocritical and clip "other" film material. (Will they start eliminating scenes of Bogart with a cigarette next?)


And you may have noticed that my New Look isn't on this blog post. To be honest, nobody commented about the change one way or the other (so the hell with that idea). I'm still just going to post about twice a month, and it'll pretty much be just like it always was...just not as often. Over on the link I posted that says, "My Unpublished Work", I'll still change that art from time-to-time. (You'll just have to check it off and on to see if it's something different.)


And I noticed that this is my "e-Birthday", that is to say, the anniversary of the date I registered as a member on eBay. Currently I have 651 "unique" pos' FBs. I tried to average 100 FBs a year, but sometimes I buy from the same dealers I've learned to trust. It's a good policy; keeps one from getting "ripped-off". Otherwise had I gotten FBs that counted from everytime one was left for me, it'd be around 1,100.


Well I'm glad to see that the weather here of late in South Central, KY. has given us a bit of a break. The humidity is down, as well as the temperatures. Today it's in the 80s and I was able to mow the back yard and rake all of that without fear of getting over-heated. Thankfully it won't be too much longer until the mowing season's over with (of course, then it'll be RAKING season...*sigh*).


Got in a pretty nice silver-age comic yesterday: The Brave & The Bold #34 from 1961). It's the 3rd. silver-age app. of "Hawkman", and the first app. and origin of "The Shadow Thief", featuring a classic Joe Kubert cover and great interior art by him, and, of course, written by Gardner Fox. This was the issue chosen for the U.S. DC Super-Hero Stamp for Hawkman as well. Also in was a copy of All Star #60 (1976), which is the 3rd. app. of "Power Girl", with some great artwork by the team of Keith Giffen & the wonderful ("late") Wally Wood.


Another comic that I've just won is a copy of Batman #78 (a pre-code comic from 1953). This is the first app. of "The Manhunter from Mars". What? You say that was in Detective 225(1955) instead? Well..."J'onn J'onzz" did indeed have his first app. in 'Tec, but a good 2 years before that there was this story in Batman about a green-skinned lawman from Mars named "Roh Kar", and was the first DC app. of a lawman from The Red Planet; a proto-type of a character later to come, or perhaps, inspiration.


Also in yesterday's mail was a freebee copy of the Fall issue of the SCIFI Channel Magazine. It wasn't the one that was advertised (with the review of "Superman Returns"), but still it had several interesting tidbits. Such as how the "Aquaman" t.v. pilot got snubbed by the networks (just as well, since it'd probably been another "Man from Atlantis" series), how the new "Hellboy" animated series sets him trapped in another dimension full of Japanese folklore where he's constantly battling various monsters (wheee....), and, speaking of Mignola creations, there's a full page of artwork by him depicting various Dark Horse characters which may or not have been published elsewhere. Also a "thumbs up" review of "V for Vendetta", a review for the new series "Heroes" plus other reviews of the new Fall shows on that channel.

Interesting enough rag; but probably not worth subscribing to (unless you're just a big fan/viewer of that channel).


'Funny. I thought the heating element was going out in the clothes dryer as I've had to re-dry loads of laundry numberous times. Sometimes after trying it 4 or five times to dry a load, I'd even have to take the clothes out of the dryer and hang them up to air-dry. A buddy told me to check the exhast hose, and sure enough, it was completely clogged up with, of all things, a bird's nest! They must have built it just within the past couple months. Anyway,m we'll see how well it works now.