Steve Likes to Curse Writing, comics and random thoughts from really a rather vulgar man. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 28 1566 106 10249

Articles from Steve Likes to Curse

Kill 'em and keep 'em dead 2007-07-23 15:19:55 Occasionally I’ll pick up a copy of Wizard magazine when I stop at Sheetz to get a sub or something to drink. This month’s issue lists the 50 greatest comic book deaths. I don’t have much to say about the list itself, but it got me thinking about how pointless the death of a major character has become in many genres of fiction, in film, on television, especially in comics. Is there ever any point to killing off a character when it’s a foregone conclusion he or she will be resurrected at some point and things will go on as though the original death never even happened? Of the top ten characters on Wizard’s greatest deaths list, seven were characters in an ongoing monthly series (the other three — Kid Miracleman, Rorschach, and the Invisible Man from League of Extraordinary Gentlemen — all starred in limited series). Of those seven, three are still dead: Milo Garret (100 Bullets), Ben Parker, and Barry Allen. The other four — Jean Grey, ...

My weekend laid Barre 2007-07-22 20:44:41 Friday afternoon I drove up to spend the weekend with my old pal Chris (Varjak of “‘s Center of Insanity and Death” fame). He lives about three hours from here, way the hell up in Pennsylvania. Traffic wasn’t so great, as apparently The Police were in Hershey Friday night. I’m not sure if they were even having a concert; it could’ve just been people showing up to follow them as they toured the chocolate factory. Speaking of The Police, think they’ll actually do any of their old songs on this tour, or will Sting bully the other two guys into performing shit from his solo career? Would “Desert Rose” be improved with Andy Summers on guitar? Could it possibly not be? Anyway, Chris lives near Wilkes-Barre, which is larger than Hagerstown and home to a more diverse variety of poverty, but otherwise very similar to my hometown. Like Hagerstown, Wilkes-Barre was once a major railroad hub that still bears a few scars from the sad death o ...

Pride and Patience, or, How I Spent My Saturday, by A.A. Shiveslove 2007-07-21 21:02:50 Well, well well. Old Steve-o is out of town this weekend, and he was gracious enough to request I blog in his place. So, I thought I’d write something about my experiences today at the illustrious event-o’-the-year in my library’s town: Smithsburg Pride Days. Ah, where to begin. Perhaps the crazy puppeteer? To tell that story, let me take you back about a year, when I first started at the library. One day, a man wearing coke-bottle eyeglasses and a huge Flava-Flav-style cross that looked as if it were carved out of lye soap wandered in and asked me where the ice cream social was. I told him that he missed it by about two days, and he instantly became enraged, yelling about how the apocalypse was going to be visited upon the town by God personally; the town was becoming incredibly degenerate, you see, for rescheduling ice cream parties to exclude him. Well, ladies and gents, turns out that our old soapy-cross bearing pal is a zealous childre ...

The Philosophy of David Brent 2007-07-20 07:20:30 Here, courtesy of YouTube, is one of my favorite moments from the original U.K. version of The Office. It's the final scene of series 2, episode 6, where David Brent, having just been fired as general manager at the Slough branch of Wernham-Hogg, explains his philosophy of life: ...

How Superman Met and Blew Off JFK 2007-07-19 17:02:20 ...

The difference between science and creationism 2007-07-18 13:21:02 I’ve written about this before, but we’re getting into evolution in my Bio class this week, so the subject is once again on my mind. I thought of a speech I saw Richard Dawkins give on C-Span last year, when a student from Liberty University told him that in their science building was a large display dedicated to the notion that humans lived side-by-side with dinosaurs; Dawkins told her in his blunt British way, “I advise you to quit immediately and attend a proper university.” Here in a nutshell is the difference between legitimate science and creationism — at proper scientific museums you will not find signs like this one out front: Accompanying the sign at the museum is the following advice, which tells you all you need to know about the scientific rigor of founder Ken Ham: Don’t Think, Just Listen and Believe. What an affront to reason and common sense. I found a nearly identical message in the front of a copy of the New Testament left in a shower by a trucker ...

Put a fucking shirt on 2007-07-17 15:56:45 So, it’s incredibly fucking hot. It’s also been a few weeks since we had a really good sustained rain, so on top of the heat it’s dry as hell. One thing about it being so hot and dry: everything’s dead. Come to Washington County and find me some green grass, I triple-dog-dare you. The grass around here abandoned photosynthesis for a lucrative career in hay some weeks ago. At this rate it won’t be until late autumn or early winter that the grass finally comes back to life, just in time for the first frost to kill it all over again. Another thing about this weather is that everyone walks around outside without a shirt on. What’s the deal with that? Weren’t we founded as a Christian nation? Shouldn’t our culture still carry some residual shame about our bare bodies? On the drive back from class this afternoon I saw a dude traipsing through Funkstown with nothing on but a pair of shorts and a backpack. I consider that o ...

Film Review: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 2007-07-16 17:48:35 Film Review:Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Can this really be the fifth Harry Potter film? I can think of no other film franchise so popular and at the same time so creatively accomplished. Superman got two great films before his series slid into mediocrity and irrelevance until very recently; Star Wars made it to three (arguably) before cannonballing into the deep end of an Olympic-sized shit pool; from a total of ten, Star Trek has three legitimately good entries and a few other watchable ones; Spidey’s got three and counting (though the third arguable to some); and poor Batman hasn’t even got one yet. But with the release of Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter’s got five excellent films in a row to his name. And this latest episode isn’t just adequate compared to its predecessors — it’s the best yet. Much has been said about how dark this one is, and it is definitely the darkest Potter flick to date. But I mean “dark” in a ... Film

Fun With the Church Sign Generator 2007-07-15 11:49:09 ...

An afternoon at the outlets and a night at the movies 2007-07-14 22:27:10 Ashley and I met her sister Greta this afternoon and went to Prime Outlets, ostensibly, to shop for a birthday present for their father. Not being much of a shopper, I don’t often go to the Outlets. I’d be a frequent visitor if I were more of a people watcher, since if there’s one thing the Outlets seem to have more than enough of, it’s people. It’s interesting to see which people go into which store. I never would have thought, for instance, that we’d find the same family of Mexican women in the Petite Sophisticates store (not a thing in there to fit me, by the way) that we’d seen earlier in the Black & Decker Outlet. Guess when you plug in that new toaster/egg cooker, you’ve gotta wear something.The other thing the Outlets have too much of is vending machines. I never even knew half of those existed until I visited the Outlets the first time. Soda machines, sure – seen it. But Pringles? Ice cream sandwiches? Walking the approximately 11,000 miles of sidewa ... Movies

Sir Ian McKellan: Actor 2007-07-13 07:14:05 The second series of Extras is out on DVD this week, so to mark the occasion here's one of my favorite moments from those episodes: Ian McKellan explains to Andy Millman (Ricky Gervais) just what makes him such a brilliant actor:   ...

On the benefits of galactic profiling 2007-07-12 13:50:57 While researching the article on the newly discovered gravity-lens galaxies I posted yesterday, I found an ingenious website called Galaxy Zoo that allows you to assist in classifying a millions galaxies by viewing photographs and sorting them into one of several possible categories. You register with a username and password, take a short tutorial to prove you know your ass from your elbow, and are then able to view unlimited pictures of galaxies and designate them as either elliptical or spiral galaxies, and — if they’re spirals — further, which direction they appear to be rotating: clockwise or counterclockwise. The purpose of the project is not only to sort the individual galaxies, but to accumulate data to determine whether there is more of one sort of galaxy than the other, or whether spiral galaxies prefer to rotate one way over the other, with the ultimate goal of discovering whether one galaxy type forms from the other, or if they’re related to one another at ...

Long-dead, newborn galaxies discovered at the edge of the universe 2007-07-11 15:03:04 Here’s the sort of science story I dig, one of those “holy shit!” discoveries that’s simultaneously ennobling and humbling. According to the story published yesterday on Yahoo, an international team of astronomers, using one of the massive 400-inch telescopes at the Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii, discovered six massive primordial galaxies approximately 13.2 billion light-years from Earth. Richard Ellis, who led the team, estimated that the galaxies must have formed within 500 million years of the Big Bang. That would make them not merely the most distant objects ever observed, but also the oldest. The light emanating from the galaxies that was observed through the Keck telescope traveled for 13.2 billion years to reach Earth; the stars comprising the galaxies themselves must have ceased to exist long ago. They are by far the most distant objects ever observed through an optical telescope, which was only possible through a technique called gr ...

The Fatcats Club: "Out For Lunch" 2007-07-10 16:02:40 There’s a little park not far from the Fox News studios in New York City where some of them go to relax from time to time during the week. Alan Colmes and Lefty, his producer, sat there at a picnic table one sun-soaked afternoon. Lefty patiently paged through a copy of the format for that night’s show. Colmes sipped at a bottle of green tea and drummed his fingers anxiously on the table. He held up his wrist and read his watch. He looked at Lefty and sighed. “What time did you tell him to be here?” “I told him 12:30,” Lefty said, still looking over the format. “It’s after 1:00,” Colmes said. “He’ll be along,” Lefty said. He’d no more than finished saying it when Sean Hannity appeared, running toward the table from the park’s front gate, his Liberality For All backpack slung over one shoulder, a half-empty box of Hi-C clutched in his hand. “Sean, good gracious, there you are!” said Lefty, putting ...

“Nigger” – c. 1619 – 2007, requiescat in pace 2007-07-09 15:04:23 This morning in Detroit at their annual convention, the NAACP held a funeral. There was a coffin, a long, slow horse-drawn procession from the church to the cemetery, pall bearers, mourners dressed in black, and speeches given in remembrance of the deceased. It was not a slain civil rights leader or a victim of a hate crime being laid to rest; it was “nigger,” the granddaddy of all racial epithets. The word. It all seems very silly to me, yet another sign that the NAACP, once the most important civil rights organization in the world, is now more interested in hollow publicity stunts than in actually trying to help people. Then again, I’ve never been called a nigger. Though hearing the word used pejoratively makes me angry and uncomfortable, I’ll never know what it feels like to have that slur directed at me. Maybe then I’d feel differently. As it stands, I can’t help thinking that the NAACP is attacking the symptom instead of the dise ...