My thoughts on DLC

Right around the middle of the last console generation(Ps3 and Xbox 360) there was the advent of a NEW process/product DownLoadable Content. At first what it meant was that if there was a bug found in a game since most systems were online not only compatible but connected that the publisher would kick out a small patch to fix whatever was going wrong in the game. Then, as a way of increasing replay value, companies started pushing out new maps and skins FIRST for free and then for a small fee. In the beginning it was a "meh, whatever I'll see what it is and deal with it later" type of experience. Depending on what type of gamer you were once you beat the game you beat the game, or if you are like me once you got used to the games mechanics it was all about the online play so you weren't worried about some new level.

As micro transactions started to take hold there was a NEW "Invention" the season pass. Now what pray tell is a season pass, well for a fee of anywhere from 10.99(I think that's what the first set of season passes I ever saw cost) to then 29.99 and now 39.99 or 49.99 depending on the game you can get constant software updates. Not patches but new areas, maps, weapons, skins, missions, characters, vehicles, and almost a whole new game. Depending on who you ask you are either buying an unfinished game at full price and are then paying them to finish it with a loan of anywhere from half to 3/4's of the games initial price or else you are paying constant new ip added to your favorite game going forward. This is not to say that you can ONLY get these new accessories by buying the season pass, no you can purchase them a la carte later but then it gets a lot more expensive. I remember when I bought Call of Duty: Ghosts and didn't purchase the season pass(didn't know how much I was gonna be playing it going forward) I could buy the maps for like 10 bucks(if I just wanted the maps) and the guns/dogs for like 5 later on. So yes I paid full price for the initial game, then when I saw what maps were out, I decided if I wanted them and if I wanted the accessories that came out with them or just the maps and paid the 10.99 or 14.99.

My favorite trailers of 2016

2016 was an interesting year for movies, we had a lot of blockbuster I believe 2016 was a record breaking year for the movie industry(I know Disney made it to 1 billion faster than anyone else, granted they did have Zootopia and Civil War to start out the year with), it also saw some monumental flops, as well as the first flop that technically made money, but disappointed almost everyone who watched it. As such you know what interests some people in a movie: A mean trailer, like if you can sell your movie in a trailer that might lead you to a decent opening weekend. My favorite trailers technically weren't in 2016, they were the Deadpool trailers and 90% of those were dropped in 2015. We also had an interesting trailer war going on between Marvel and DC, I think Marvel won the MOVIE war this year, I definitely know Disney did, Civil War, Finding Dory, Zootopia, Rogue One and I am sure I missed a few(Since everybody has under studios that count towards their year) but I think DC had a few good trailers too, especially for Suicide Squad.

Now to do this list I am not just going to talk about every trailer I saw, that would be too easy. I am going to go through the trailers that I saw in theater of course you are going to wonder, "how is he going to remember all of those movies?" Well for those who have been reading this blog for a while you will remember my method for doing the trailer blog before the reviews I text myself the trailers for each movie I see during the year. So I am going to go through each movie text, rewatch the trailers and then decide which were my fav's for the year. And yes I will do them just like I usually do the trailer blog by linking you to said trailer. Now it may or may not be the first trailer but I will try and give you the one that really got me hyped for the movie.

The problems of Batman v Superman

Okay, it's been a month. If you WANTED to see Batman v Superman you already have, if you haven't spoilers mean nothing to you, and on top of that enough people have ranted about this movie on youtube, tumblr, and various other social media outlets that mean going off on it here won't be a shocker. This isn't wordpress so I will keep the expletives out of it, but yes there will be an expletive filled one later. Now, the disclaimers:

1. I am a Die Hard Marvel fan
2. I wasn't fond of Man of Steel
3. While I have read a decent amount of the New 52, I thought it was short sighted
4. I actually know where Metropolis and Gotham are located
5. I have read most of Wonder Woman's origin stories
6. I know how bad guys in comics and movies act

And yes 4,5, and 6 are important because they are part of the biggest problems with this movie, because it seemed like for whatever reason to give us those BEAUTIFUL visuals Zack Snyder ignored so much about the DCU. Now I know that DC is about to do another reboot titled "rebirth" I will read them when it starts, but I would hope that they won't base it on whatever Zack Snyder's DC universe is because NO! I'm not saying that this is the Last Airbender, Dragonball evolution, or even Bloodrayne (I'm not honestly). I am saying that what this movie and Man of Steel did with the source material and the characters is shameful because I wouldn't look up to these characters, I wouldn't be inspired by these characters. Enough dawdling lets get to it

Deadpool, the Misunderstood Game Changer

This post came to me while I was riding in the car earlier, Now that Deadpool is on it's way to becoming the second highest grossing comic book origin story ever I think it is time to look at the lessons that SHOULD be learned, vs the lessons that are probably going to be learned. I say this hoping that I am wrong, because with what we got out of Deadpool and how long it took for us to get it, as well as the colossal risks that were taken to get it to us I am extremely happy with the end results. 700 million dollars for what many thought was an unknown, niche, too small for the big screen character "stick that in your pipe and smoke it." The funny thing is, the reason why Deadpool was thought to be dead in the water and a bum character was the very reason why we were so ravenous for the character to get a stand alone movie: X-men Origins Wolverine. In casting Ryan Reynolds to play Wade Wilson Fox gave us everything we never knew we wanted. I mean it had been a running joke for a while(there is a famous comic panel where Deadpool says "I look like Ryan Reynolds crossed with a Sharpe'), as well as if you look at most of Ryan Reynolds roles he plays a charismatic, cocky, roguish imp, who has way to much fun with his fellow on screen participants and sometimes the audience and it was a match in heaven, and then Fox sewed Deadpoo... I'm sorry Barrackapool's mouth shut for the final giant fight scene.

Seriously, talk about tone deaf. Fox decided that the best way to give comic book fans the MERC WITH THE MOUTH was without his free wheeling swords, or his guns, or his FREAKING MOUTH, walk with me here kiddies. Deadpool is known to run verbal harassment circles around his victims, enemies, fellow combatants, and the fourth wall so in a stroke of GENIUS Fox studios decided that not only did we NOT want the costume, but we didn't want to hear Deadpool talk either.

Why Amazing Spider-man 2 failed

Talking to my friend BeLauriette earlier about all this amazingly painful "BvS Rants" that we stumbled upon yesterday got us to talking about comic book movies, reboots, and the myriad reasons why people think some of these movies succeeded or failed. And in the conversation we got to one of my favorite comic book characters Spider-man and the back story of how Spider-man went from just Spidey, to being Amazing. Let's be clear, I actually liked Amazing Spider-man 2. They got the characterizations of almost everyone used perfect, but it failed and it forced Sony to turn make a deal with Marvel to share the web head's rights but for a movie franchise that has made so many billions of dollars I think we all agree that Sony was forced into that decision. The question is why. And the answer is quite simple, impatience.

Spider-man 3 came out, and it was going to be Sam Raimi's last movie with the Spider-man cast. He had a good run, had a multi billion dollar franchise under his belt and COULD have rode off into the sunset not unlike Christopher Nolan when Dark Knight Rises rolled the closing credits. The problem is Raimi didn't want to leave, Spider-man was his baby and he wanted to stay on board. So he did the most petty thing in movie history, he killed off not only a good future villain, but the next potential franchise inn the same movie. I am a Spider-man fan with over 35+ years under my belt(yes I fully admit to owning Spidey PJ's and Underoos), I have seen MANY iterations of the wall crawler, his villains, and many art styles. I have seen him animated many different ways, Saw Tom Hammond don those awful tights, and even watched a few live performance versions of Spidey at the mall.

Everything wrong with "Green Lantern"

It all starts with an oath, an announcement of a calling, a drive, a determination. Their power is will, and with this they proclaim it's power, is unwavering discipline, and the brotherhood of which they have sworn their allegance.

In brightest day in blackest night No evil shall escape my sight.Let those who worship evil's might Beware my power, Green Lantern's light!!!

They are the core, the Green Lantern core warriors who defend the 3600 sectors of the known(or at least considered under the jurisdiction of The Guardians of Oa) Universe. Now the name of this blog is "everything wrong with" and it was hinted at in my "We are the Core" throwback blog that was lost to some weird technological fluke. The sad part about Green Lantern is that the movie would have been just fine if somebody didn't decide the rush in the last 30 minutes. This movie was like a tall show cake or a sugar sculpture, it took its time, it had a vision, and it was trying to come on down to the presentation.... And somebody got antsy. I will cover a lot of what was right or at least serviceable first, while I haven't seen the movie in years the problems that it had still haunt me to this day. Because I really wanted this movie to work, even though this movie was delaying my ability to get a Deadpool movie(which, have you seen it DUDE when you get it right you get it right) it had the right actor, it had the potential to open up DC's movie universe to include other characters that Superman and Batman(which is sorely needed) and it would give more people a look into a pretty cool comic book character, and then the last 30 minutes happened. So lets get on in to it

I don't know what you heard about me

But ya can't get a

I'm not actually listening to PIMP by fiddy but it is going through my mind right now. New year, same ol me, same attitude, same stable convictions, and damn sure the same guy who used to run his mouth a lot on this here blog. Things I don't do though are New years resolutions, I mean if you ask me I can whip up a list of things and CALL them new years resolutions but they are really just plans that I already had in the works. I am not downing anybody who makes new years resolution, I have plenty of friends who do and they seem to be pretty good at keeping up with them.

My thing is since I do tend to thing to much I always go along with the whole "if plan a-d or whatever letter I got to didn't work let's start with the next one." I feel that each new year is a new chapter in your old book, not a completely new book and as such I were to completely start over I would get lost. I mean how the hell did I get to where I currently am? Am I lost, or am I late for some appointment, how did the last book end? So yeah new chapter and whats up with this chapter hmm let's see

Thankful

I give thanks for:

Morning Dew
Baby Smiles
Brotherly Laughs and Hugs
Friends with senses of humor
Friends who know when I've gone to far but love me even after they have told me so
Parents who have seen almost 4 decades together
Stealing 20 years from extinction(and still counting)
Having the courage to stand my ground
Getting up after being knocked to it
Laughing in the face of end of the world predictions
Understanding that sooner or later one of them will get it right
Science that has made the world I live in easier than even that of my parents
The knowledge that we do not yet know all so there is still much to do and learn
Another day to go back on that work out plan I gave up on who knows how many months ago
Another chance to reconnect with old friends before I or they don't get another morning
The ability to see family in the best of times
The chance to be there for them in the worst
A chance to share a meal with many of those I love, and a hope to add more to the table next time.
an achy back, creaky joints and sore bones: memories of a life well lived
a cluttered mind, teary eyes and a furrowed brow:castaways of a head full of thought
Meeting many people who have added such joy to my life
The chance to meet even more tomorrow.

I am especially thankful for a moment, for no two are a like and each one has another chance to take your breath away.

late to the Party again

Okay sooo as I readied myself for bed last night checking up on an annoying PC that I am still in the process of finishing, bad hard drive as well as every reboot requires an f1 hit, I happened to catch the pilot episode of Fringe. Now before you say it, yes I have friends who are addicted to Fringe and have talked about how great a show it is which is all well and good. My thing was as I hadn't seen the pilot or any of the early episodes it was a lot of heavy lifting to try and catch up all at once to whatever season it is on now especially since I had no clue what the ORIGINAL driving factors are for characters. Even if you miss a few shows if you catch the first few and can get the starts of a lot of the back drop and back stories, at least in my mind, I believe you can follow along and kind of plug yourself in until you can go back and find whatever episode you are missing. I've also started a new new Anime(Don't know if I discussed Fairy Tail yet so if I haven't that is the old new one) called Soul Eater which looks like a sillier chibi version of Bleach, it's hilarious. I got a heads up to that one from Kitsune's  Dragon Ball Z Kai DVD's they had ads for it on there so I decided to check it out, looked like it had plenty of action and comedy in it.

Afternoon Ponderers

Seems like I have been getting a nice amount of traffic lately and I want to thank all who are coming through. I know I disappeared again but lets just say I had other things on my mind besides blogging. I know I talk about whatever but some days you just want to keep it moving and not get too deep into the details. So that's what I did, let's see what I have noticed lately welp my Eagles are sucking right now, I'm talking Dyson sucking, 3 quarter Car Wash sucking. It would be okay if the offense was stalling a little since you know Mike Vick is out and all, but our defense has forgotten what the word meant. We let RG3 slice us up, a rookie I mean come on Rookies used to hate having to play Philadelphia because their main view was gonna be turf. I understand that yeah maybe Juan Castillo wasn't aggressive enough for some people but he's been gone for a couple of weeks now, whats the new guys excuse. This is Philly you want us to give you some breathing room:Blitz, Blitz some more, Blitz one more time and if the so happen to get the first down, Blitz them again. They have a mobile quatertback let's see how fast he really is. Let's see how accurate he can be after he has been sucking wind for a quarter trying to evade the blitz.

Tick, tock, tick tock

One of the lasting images of "Election day 2012" will of course be the outrageously long lines. I remember 2008, I think I waited in line for an hour and a half or possibly two to vote. It was a proud time, usually I go off to vote by myself but I was able to vote with both of my brothers and my parents. It was a fun time, granted we had waited til election day so of course we were forced to wait in those long lines to make sure our votes counted. This time around we were a little more spread out, so while me and my parents went off to vote together my brothers were still at a job site somewhere.

My father currently signed up to get a knee replacement was allowed to go first since he did have proof of his disability. Me and my mother on the other hand waited in the Vorgon's cue a never ending serpentine of people. We went to pick up my mother slightly after 5 pm, and within 15 minutes got to a polling place, this year we decided to early vote just in case something was incorrect. By the time we finished it was well after 7 pm because they had required us to file through a room in the church building that housed the voted machines so that they could TRY and shut the doors. It was a futile attempt, people had been pulling up in cars ever since we got there and it was a good sized line(longer then we realized) when we got there. For a while me and my mother thought we were getting close when we made it into the hallway, little did we know it was more subway tunnel then it was foyer. we started joking after hour two because there was nothing else to do, we refused to get out of line we had toughed it out that long and if there is one thing I know I came by my stubbornness honestly. I believe when my father was finally able to retrieve us it was somewhere around 8 pm(might have even been 9 pm, I guess I could check my tweets from that night). And I was happy I had done my civic duty, added my voice to the masses and was prepared to wait til election day to see how it had worked out.

Men by nature are Pro choice

Yes I said it, now I am sure right now I am getting a bunch of people coming over here to tell me how wrong I am. Well since you are here, let me explain it to you. You ain got to agree but when I get done you may still disagree but I am pretty sure I will make a damn good case.

First and fore most one of the greatest male privileges of all is that we can choose WHO to pursue, I mean yes in this day and age some women may ask the guy first but usually the guy chooses to either leap to the highest heights or else dive in to the deepest depths. Doesn't matter my size, my shape, hair style, clothes, intelligence level. It doesn't matter if I am a 2 or a 10 I can walk up and try to talk to whoever I want to. Yes the woman can reject me but even if some may say I had no chance I will get points for even attempting it. You know that lovely thing about being the under dog and having heart, taking a swing, being the little guy, or the loveable loser. Yeah there are a bunch of cartoons about that type of dude, save Velma on Scooby Doo(and even Velma Dinkly has fans as well as has gotten a sexy make over in pop culture as of late) how many completely useless, non hottie cookie cutter, super intelligent, main female characters have we had? Now yes as women begin to take an even larger role in the creation of pop culture(or guys who have great friends who do not fit the normal stereotype start adding their friends to it) that will most likely change. Granted this probably doesn't seem like a strong case for me saying guys are by nature pro choice huh, let me keep going though follow along.

It doesn't take a Genius when you have 30 of the Top 50

In having a conversation with a friend about the NBA of the recent past I realize something, David stern gets a lot of credit for being lucky not smart. Hear me out.

David Stern is the commisioner of the league in a time perioed where Doctor J, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Charles Barkely, Micheal Jordan, Reggie Miller, Tim Hardaway, Hakeem Olajuwon, Dennis Rodman, Chris Mullins, Detlef Shrempf, Allen Iverson, Shaquille O'neal, Kobe Bryant(I may not like him, but I will respect his work ethic.), Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnet, Gary Payton, Karl Malone, John Stockton I mean do you see a pattern here? Save Doc the beginning of that list is the damn dream team(minus Patrick Ewing who I did not mean to omit but hell once you add his name it becomes even worse). How can you NOT be successful with players of that caliber out on the world stage?

Maybe your favorite player isn't up there(I have more in mind some tired guy, this dude who collected rifles I think, hyper aggressive man, some angry rocket, somebodies granny but seriously it's like the list that never ends the 80's and 90's were basketball gold) which is why they make a comments section, but Stern had all these great players. Then he was around for the video game revolution, I remember when Lakers vs Celtics dropped, and NBA JAM that was so much exposure. And he had balance, High flyers, shooters, imposing low post presences. Now it's like everybody wants to shoot the ball.

Actions speak louder than words

As we all know due to some idiots movie trailer that makes fun of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad and portray him in some pretty disgusting ways there were protests and attacks at a few US diplomatic buildings in the middle east and north Africa. Due to these attacks and some spotty response from a few leaders it lead President Obama to state on Telemundo that he "Does not see Egypt as an Ally or an Enemy." While I have heard there has been some walk back on that Bobby Ghosh seemed to be extremely shocked that the POTUS would not see the people of Egypt as a friend anymore due to this incident and a lack luster response from Egypt's current President Morsi.

Here is my take on it, Mr. Ghosh in looking at all the film that was shown of the Protest in Egypt, I didn't see Morsi climbing those walls, I saw the EGYPTIAN PEOPLE. I saw them attacking our Embassy in Cairo, burning OUR FLAG and celebrating a victory over the ignorance of a few people at the cost of the safety of those in our diplomatic core. Now far be it for me to tell you the PROPER way to protest, but don't act like seeing a people come at you in a violent fashion shouldn't cause you to rethink your relationship with them. Yes I heard you speak about how the last more dictatorial regime would have resorted to beatings before the protests even got that bad so some of this may have been the Egyptian people enjoying the freedom to express themselves in a way they are not yet used to. The problem is just like you can condemn the acts of the idiot who organized the trailer(especially if some of the actor interviews are to be believed that the audio was dubbed over and the movie they made had nothing to do with Mohammad at all), he and we all can look at Egypt and say you attacked us we aren't going to be as chummy with you until you explain what the hell you were thinking and why.

Comic book movies I want to see made Marvel: X-men Pt. 2

The Why:

Everybody takes their bumps and bruises in the hero game, X-men actually takes the time to try and train the NEXT generation. They show young kids having to go through school, dealing with normal kid behavior, while sometimes enjoying throwing their powers around. One of the oft repeated panels are various games of baseball, where in the rules it's supposed to be POWER FREE and yet somehow somebody always catches a snowball, a shock, sometimes a psychic flutter. You also get to see the X-men being normal without having to wonder which one is the mask. I mean Cyclops wears red sunglasses when he doesn't have his visor on but no matter what he is Scott Summers he has a code name but he always has his powers, Wolverine/Logan/James Howlett III always has that adamantium skeleton and healing factor. Kurt Wagner is always blue with a tail, I know in one of the shows they gave him a holographic projector(and yes he has had one from time to time built by Forge the mutant with a power that lets him invent almost anything he puts his mind to) but around the team he is who he is tail and all, hell wolverine calls him a blue Elf half the time(which is hilarious since wolverine is shorter than Nightcrawler when he stands to full height instead of doing his demonic/gargoyle crouch). You also see that for the most part the Mutants at Xavier's school for Gifted Children accept each other for who they are, disembodied brains, blue furred beasts, demonic looking priests, Bugs, lizards, whatever if you are a mutant all are welcome and if somebody dares tease a fellow mutant for their mutation somebody comes to their aid.

Movies I want to See DC: Justice League pt 2

The why in my mind isn't so much simple as it is awesome. While these guys are all Alphas(not to be mixed up with the Syfy show) they seem to find a way for everybody to become a well oiled machine, using each others strong suits to get the job done. They may not be happy with each other afterwards depending on how things went down, but while they are going down once they figure out what you are doing, why and where the focal point is, look out. These guys are the Top Dogs in their city, their may be other heroes(especially in Metropolis and Gotham) but these are the guys who everybody else makes room for when they step through the door. And rarely do they need or ask for help, I mean Superman is nigh invulnerable, has moved asteroids to planetoids, can fly, run almost as fast as the Flash(technical comic book rule I will get to in a second), has super hearing, X-ray vision, heat vision, super breath of various kinds and has a 1 percentile intelligence when called upon(depending on storyline). Wonder Woman is an Amazon, look unless you lived under a rock for most of the 90's you saw Xena Warrior princess, you saw what many at the time called an Ancient Wonder Woman.

A fierce and fearless female warrior, unflinching in her cause, rarely matched in her skill. While blogging wasn't really that big in my life at the time if it would have been I would have said then "DC comics needs to stop whatever they are doing and tell the people at WB to sign her(Lucy Lawless) to a movie deal quickly and just put out a half decent popcorn Wonder Woman flick just to have SOMEBODY besides the big two on the silver screen." Because in all honestly all they have is Superman and Batman, which while they are great when your competitor has 5 block buster movies, one that is a Household name that just has a hard time living up to expectations(Hulk) but folks still

Movies I want to see made: Justice League

This one was obvious. The reason is also obvious I want to see the Best vs the Best. No their powers are not all the same, though some are similar, no their stories are not all the same (DC has a penchant for Orphans, while Marvel seems to prefer tortured souls out of place in either time or society), Their enemies aren't the same nor do they all live in the same place. But they are they best of the best at each of their respective companies.

The Justice league is pretty much every major DC hero(just like the avengers is pretty much every major Marvel hero) plus cameos of folks who either can't or don't regularly keep their own title running. The thing is though, while Marvel is a bunch of guys saving the world and then hanging out afterwards to enjoy each others company for MOST of my time watching Justice League on TV or reading the comics, for DC it's all about the job. I have often said one of the most brilliant things Marvel did was pretty much house all of it's heroes(save a few) in or around the city of New York, and if they aren't in one of the five boroughs they are inside the Empire State. Spider-man trips over The Human Torch, trips over Iron Man, trips over Captain America, trips over Wolverine/Luke Cage. You get in a big brouhaha and knock somebody through the wrong wall and you could go from being one up on a hero who's skills don't match up to well against you, to getting double teamed by guys bouncing around you and hitting you from both sides making you wish you hadn't got out of bed. So yeah I love the casualness of Marvels team ups/crossovers.

Comic Book movies I would like to see made.

Doing my little rant about all those DC fans Screaming "Young Justice" as an answer to Disney Marvel's the Avengers got me to thinking, "exactly which comics would I like to see translated into future movies from EACH company?" And you know what that is a valid question, not only is it a valid question but it is an excuse to release the entirety of my Comic Geekdom just for the out and out hell of it. Now I am saying BOTH but I may add in Image, Dark Horse and Top Cow comics as well. But much later down the line because there are PLENTY of DC and Marvel characters I think can do well on the big screen.

Okay so I'm saying I want to do it right, next is the how. The how will be a post on each comic, for each company and possibly on or at the start of a certain story line. In certain cases say like New Mutants/Xforce and Teen Titans/Young Justice (or even X-factor 1 and 2) I may do a couple of posts because I would like to see a sequel of movies. Also in the case of young Justice and X-force since there are a few iterations of each I also plan to make a case for each iteration. Now some may know about the Young Justice Cartoon having a different line up then the comic. But how many remember that the ORIGINAL X-force was not Cyclops' personal black ops team but Cable's mutant soldiers in training. Which is kind of funny since Cyclops is Cable's dad, whew the drama in that family I tell ya.

NFL Week 2

These are my thoughts and my thoughts only.

First off on my Eagles, that loss Sunday night was hard to take. We were kicking Atlanta's tail and we let them off the hook, the coach admitted it, the players knew it, and if ANYBODY starts talking how over rated and overblown our team is I can't wait to play yours. We had a guy with NO regular season NFL snaps in the game and I wonder if the coach would have taken the leash off earlier if we wouldn't be talking about the 2-0 Eagles instead of the gritty 1-1 Falcons. We need to tackle better, it wasn't just Casey Matthews while everyone wants to blame him, even on the last drive there were at least 4 missed tackles before he crossed the 50.  As for the Offense, if we can cut down on the dropsies, that 4th quarter doesn't even matter. I also think Andy Reid needs to fall out of love with some of those gadget plays, one gadget play cost us field position(that lead to the first fumble), and the other one made a 3rd and 3 a 4th and 4.  We have the backs to run screen plays, we are the Philadelphia Eagles in the Andy Reid era we have been known as the "screen kings" why not let Dion Lewis or Shady Mccoy who had been eating Atlanta up all game long have a go at them, get it to a 4th and one maybe or even the first. Hell do a play action and get Kafka to stop being so focused on Maclin, and give Djax a chance in the open field(unless his arm injury was so severe that he was really just a decoy out there).

Defenses

I think we are gonna see quite a few new Defensive Coordinators at the end of the year, it may be good for the league to see games coming down to the wire and things being so run and gun, but I think I saw at least 4 games this weekend and possibly 5 last where the team with the lead through 3 quarters wasn't the team who won the game. Talking to my dad he thinks that defense was hurt by the lockout, I think that with all the turnover we had when free agency began a lot of teams are playing looser since they have an excuse no OTA, two a days, and fewer 10-10-10's if you start slow you have a ready made excuse. This is bringing a lot of parity to the league and making a lot of teams wake up and stop hitting cruise control like they have some kind of edge just because they brought back a strong team from last year.

I should be ashamed

I who read either ""Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix(870 pages) or ""Harry Potter and the half blood Prince(672 pages) in one night, a perfectly happy passenger in J.K. Rowlings latest installment of what was to be her 7 part epic(obviously it is over now, the final movie coming out within the next 30 days) took the better part of a week to finish The Elements of Style (95 pages including all introductions, forwards, prologues and acknowledgements).  Now some might say I deserve a little forgiveness because of course Elements is more of a text book than it is some sort of fanciful tale geared to grab my imagination, I say that is cold comfort. I selected the book, I checked it out, I read a few pages realizing it was more grammatically intense than it was comical lecture or humorous chiding and I still picked it up.


It was a case of not being able to get the book I wanted so I took a book it had recommended,  29 Common Writing Mistakes, I went into the library with hopes of borrowing the title so that I might finish it and do some of the exercises. Within the first 34 pages two titles stuck out at me the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (which my brother still owned a copy of from high school and it was readily available) and the previously mentioned Elements of style. As I would like to become a better writer I decided hey the first step in ANY journey is always the most important, if you would like to write better read about writing(granted writing at all would also help but I will chastise myself about that later). Anyone who knows me personally (especially my tumultuous time from 4th to 12th grade, my my my how many times was I stuck at the front of the class) knows how much I LOATHE HOMEWORK, to say I think it evil is somewhat overstated, I think it's unnecessary. I tend to learn things quickly or not at all so if in my initial reading of the textbook I didn't get everything I needed, I wasn't going to get anything. And as my test scores would often show, I tend to retain a lot I just can't stand repetitively doing it over and over and over, practice may make perfect but if you continuously stir the bowl you will either beat out all texture or else create so much gluten as to make it a chewy inedible mess. So for me to be basically signing up for *groan* homework would probably make some check the temperature in hell, hold on there bessy I'm not sitting here doing exercises I'm reading something I actually like to do.

Upon first blush it seems me and Elements are going to be at odds, it is a book built upon the foundation of BREVITY and me be brief, do I not extole on how I will say what I want for as long as I want and to the extent that I want? I warn people at least a few times a year about the fact that I will ramble on, randomisity train isn't this what I call my fine friend here. So to ask me to be brief, why I should put it down immediately shouldn't I and yet I was intrigued by the challenge. And to make matters worse why this book suggest I don't add words to the English language, THE UNMITIGATED NERVE. How dare some dusty tome from a bygone age tell me NOT to amend the English language as I see fit, though to be fair I don't do it as often as I would claim so honestly that one isn't that hard to go along with, brevity though yeah thats gonna stick in my craw. It also suggested breaking long sentences up into shorter ones and abstaining from heavy handed prose, now see that last bit I do need to work on. It suggested making sentences stronger by removing unnecessary qualifiers for example:why say something is LIKE a thing, if you feel it's a thing take a stand and call it a thing(you may have noticed that if I did a cloud of this blog over the last week or so the word LIKE is showing up a lot less). See I may be stubborn, bullheaded, and set in my ways but I don't mind a good well intentioned debate or discussion on a topic or technique. And like I said I always want to get better, being less timid in my language is actually something that I want to do, the fact that I have banned "Colorful Metaphors" from this blog means at times I have rambled on to say something that a quick two word sentence might have been employed for on wordpress or multiply.

Now of course this would not be a book on grammar or writing if punctuation did not rear it's vile head, what can I say I BARELY put my commas in the right place, and if I really wanted to be better I would let a more grammatically gifted friend edit me before I posted. That is what I wanted though: ideas, suggestions and directions upon which to better improve the quality of my writing and thus the presentation of my blog. And the Elements of Style while stern in its call for less digital diarrhea isn't so cruel as to say it's his way or the highway, just that when you look at a few well chosen examples isn't less more? Isn't being direct and forthright with your imagery and thoughts a better usage of your time and page space. I say yes, so while I will still write long and lengthy blogs they will be long not because I wasted 10 words to figure out how to say 5 but because I found the right  5 words to get my point across and expounded upon that thought in a more connected nature.






































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