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What Actually Happened to Phil Coulson
I first read about Colonel Nick Fury, the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D, in Strange Tales #135 just before my tenth birthday in 1965. I know why the flying De Lorean in Back to the Future is an imitation of Lola, not the other way around, and I know why Agent Phil Coulson in Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. thinks he went to Tahiti after the Battle of ( Read more... ) -
Friends Mourn Man Fatally Assaulted in Possible Hate Crime
I may not always say anything, especially if the person wasn't someone I knew personally and could actually say something helpful about, but I mourn every time I see a death notice for one of "us". Fandom is a tribe, an extended family, even if we don't always get along with each other ( Read more... ) -
(Untitled)
Kevin woke me up. "Dad, Dad, there's a bird in the house!" I looked up, and there was one flitting around my overhead light fixture.
I said "Calm down. Get a broom and gently try to chivvy it to a window." He did and it landed where yugioh_boy could throw a towel over it, take it to the door and release it. It flew away, undamaged, leaving only one ( Read more... ) -
Steve Chapman: 'Moderate Muslim' is not an oxymoron | WashingtonExaminer.com
Steve Chapman: 'Moderate Muslim' is not an oxymoron | WashingtonExaminer.comI've been saying this for years. I live in a neighborhood full of displaced Bosnian Muslims. They bought a failed Savings & Loan stand-alone building and made it a mosque, rehabbing the building and increasing its property value. They've opened businesses to serve their ( Read more... ) -
This Is a Day of Miracles and Wonders
I normally don't think very well of Dr. Rand Paul. But today he is a hero. Today he is my hero. Today he is the Dutch boy blocking the leak in the dike with his finger. Today he stands with the Spartans at Thermopylae. Today he is standing in the path of the tanks in Tiananmen Square ( Read more... ) -
To Live and Die in L. Avenue
I woke up this morning from a dream within a dream -- I dreamed I woke up in the house a block east of here in which I spent my young boyhood, with a television going in the middle room where we didn't have one. I walked through the hallway to the living room, entered, and my mother was standing to my left ( Read more... ) -
The Perfect Knight
I cried today.
There are not one, but two statues of him outside the current Busch Stadium -- which is appropriate as he played his entire career two Busch Stadiums ago.
I met Stan Musial by accident -- our paths crossed in a hallway. My jaw dropped when I recognized him, and I stammered. He was friendly and gracious. I was 45 years old, yet ( Read more... ) -
Strait-Jacket
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058620/
This is another example of the Law of Conservation of Strange People.[TM]I was not quite 8-1/2 when this was released, and when it showed up at our neighborhood movie house (the late, lamented Avalon in south St. Louis), my mother -- who had a ( Read more... ) -
A Libertarian's Lament
Okay, we know that John Kennedy beat Richard Nixon in 1960 due to Kennedy getting Illinois through the vote from the Cook County Morgue. (There were also accusations of vote fraud in Texas.) Nixon chose to swallow the defeat ostensibly in order for the U. S. to not look weak in the cold war. I suspect that loss combined with the 300,000 vote ( Read more... ) -
The Problem of Pain: Rachel Weeps
It took me a while to be able to write about this. On several news programs last night, each with only part of the horror, it was said that a young woman from Staten Island, struggling in the storm surge of Hurricane Sandy, was trying to save herself and her two children, but they were torn from her arms into the water ( Read more... )