Listen: I have come unstuck in time.

I think about super powers a lot. Probably more than a 29 year old man should. I don't feel bad about it.

Today, I'm thinking about a show from my childhood called "Out Of This World," remember it?

The plot was like this: Teenage girl who has never known her father and grew up with her single mother learns that her father (voiced by Burt Reynolds) is actually an alien that starts communicating with her through a large crystal night-light. He was apparently on Earth just long enough to knock up her mom and take off back to Gallifrey or wherever the hell.


Anyway, the girl (named Evie) starts developing alien powers on her 13th (I think) birthday. The first, and best, of these is an ability to touch her pointer fingers together and freeze time. Of course, she is unstuck in time and free to move around while everyone, and ostensibly everything, else is frozen in the moment. If she touched you, then you also become unstuck, or she could just place her palms together and release the hold in its entirety.


This is the best power anyone could ever have. This is better than anything Superman, or anyone in the Justice League have. Sure, flying is great, but it's second fiddle to this.

My biggest problem with existing is that time is not infinite, and I am not ageless. Now, I don't know if Evie was ageless while time was frozen, and that's something that would really determine the frivolity with which you would employ this power. You wouldn't want to age faster than your friends because you were popping out of the time stream too casually. However, if you did remain ageless during these moments, then the possibilities are endless.

I would never sleep, or rather, you would never see me sleep. Any time I was tired, I would just touch my fingers together, slap some gloves on (to prevent accidental time release) and catch some z's. I would be the most well rested man to be awake all the time.
Any time there was busy work to do, POP, Time Freeze, y'all, and no one loses any of our precious daylight.

There's just not enough hours in the day, but if I could freeze time, there would be.

Another question is whether or not machines are functional while time is frozen. If they were, then this last Quiet Company record wouldn't have taken nearly as long. Also I think I'd watch a lot of movies and play a lot of video games while time was frozen. Basically, anything that I'd like to do but is not something I'll regret not doing more of on my deathbed, would be done inside a Time Freeze. I could spend all my actual time with my family and friends and making music, and still have time to watch as many movies, play as many games, read as many (comic)books, and sleep as much as I want.

Also, you could steal things if you were so inclined.

On why I would be a great superhero, or a really bad one, depending on your perspective.

I've been watching Smallville a lot lately. It's one of those shows that I always wanted to get into, and thought I would probably like, but never got around to. So now, I'm playing catch-up with the DVDs. I like the show a lot, but all the back and forth, will they/won't they between Clark and Lana gets a little maddening. It got me thinking about what I would do if I had super powers.

First off, I'd tell everyone. Well, not everyone, but several people. The whole idea of a secret identity keeping your family safe is kind of bullshit if you think about it. As long as you keep your inner circle small, you'll be alright. Just don't get caught by strangers doing super shit. But if there was a girl I really liked, I'd probably tell her the first time it became a problem. "Oh yeah, I know it was weird when I inexplicably ran out on our date the other night, but the reason is that I'm actually an alien and I have super powers as a result of your planet having a yellow sun and my home planet having a red one, and some people needed some super help. You understand right?" Or, "Oh yeah, I know I was a total dick to you the other day, but what had happened was that I'm actually an alien from another planet and as a result of the radiation from your yellow sun on my cells for all these years, different colored pieces of my home world, called 'Kryptonite,' affect me differently, and someone slipped me some of the 'red' and I just lost my shit." And maybe at some point, you could do the reasonable thing and say, "Hey friends of mine, who I've saved on countless occasions and all owe me a life debt or two, could you all please make a point to find and destroy as much Kryptonite as you can, as there seems to be a disproportionately large amount of it lying around? Thanks, it seriously harshes my mellow."

Here in the real world, to really be a good guy, you'd have to be willing to get your hands dirty. How easy would it be for Superman to fix a lot of the worlds big problems? First, I'd make a bunch of big, brightly colored, hand lettered signs that all said something along the lines of "Be nice or Superman will mess your shit up!!! :-)" and place them all around. And then I would proceed to kill all terrorists and warlords. Totalitarian? Kind of. Fascist? Maybe a little. Everyone thanking me later? You bet your sweet ass. The question you have to ask yourself is this: "Is it really noble of Batman to spare the Joker's life, knowing full well that the prison won't hold him forever, and it's only a matter of time before countless innocents will pay the price for Bats' nobility?" The answer is "no." The truly moral thing to do is to kill the Joker at the first opportunity.

One of the reasons I've wanted to get into Smallville is that one of my favorite heroes is now on the show.

Green Arrow is a badass, but when you think about it, only in a comic book could someone get away with being Green Arrow. Now, if some kid in New York got bit by a radioactive spider, developed spider powers, and started using those powers to fight crime, then we'd all think "Ok that person is crazy, albeit good intentioned." Because dressing up as a spider and swinging around on webs and beating up baddies with your bare hands is quirky and endearing.

Green Arrow's M.O. is to shoot people with a bow and arrow. Usually not even "trick" arrows. Just regular ol', "assault with a deadly weapon," arrows. Now, Batman may break several of the bones in your body and hospitalize you indefinitely, but he won't stab you! He won't shoot you in the arm! He won't run you through with anything!

...Green Arrow will, though. I don't know, just seems....well, it seems like Assault With A Deadly Weapon.

Looking forward to seeing him in Smallville, but I'm only on season 3. I can't see him and Clark getting along, somehow.

Where do the weekends go?

Leah and I planned to get out a little bit this weekend, but it didn't pan out the way we thought. Leah started feeling sick and we figured that she had caught something from our friends, the Davis family, but it turned out to be a breast infection. Thankfully, the antibiotics the doctor prescribed started working pretty quickly.

So this weekend pretty much just included hanging out at the house, getting my hair cut off, watching both Toy Story movies, and a Spectacular Spider-Man marathon on the Disney XD channel (which was excellent). I've also taken a liking to the newest Batman show called "Batman: the Brave & the Bold." Every episode includes Batman teaming up with another hero, usually a b-lister like Green Arrow or the Outsiders. Its a lot of fun.

I like to read but I hate it when it takes forever to get through a book. A friend of mine raves about The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, so I've been reading it, partly to satisfy him. I'm a little over halfway done and its not that I dislike it, I don't. He's a very elegant writer and pretty easy to understand, even though he's dealing with complex ideas. I guess its one of those that takes a little more effort to grasp everything he says so its taking longer. Last year I read the Harry Potter series all the way through about 4 times. Its literally all I read last year. I miss it now, and for my money, Harry Potter is the greatest work of fiction in the history of recorded story telling. After my year of Potter, I read the His Dark Materials trilogy (You know, the one with The Golden Compass. They made a movie out of it.) by Phillip Pullman. I thought the first book was definitely the strongest but the whole series is top notch, full of likable characters and a well developed plot. Its a little bit messed up at times, though, so maybe its not one for the kids as much.

I think this blog is pretty boring, and I apologize. Hopefully, someone will at least want to talk about books.