Recently I had the chance to sit down with a very special guest. You may know him as the Caped Crusader, the Darknight Detective, or even That Guy With The Rubber Nipples.

Under his watchful eye, Gotham City has seen a 14% decrease in crime and a 82% increase in giant, working props.

I met with him in his underground, guano-filled lair. I present to you The Batman.

Me: So, The Batman–

Batman: It’s just Batman. Does anyone call you The David?

Me: Well, my wife…

Batman: Anyhow, it’s a pleasure to talk to you, blah, blah, blah.

Me: Okay. First question. Why a bat?

Batman: Ah, I get asked that a lot. You see, it’s all about striking fear into the hearts of the underworld.

Me: Criminals can be a superstitious and cowardly lot.

Batman: Mostly they’re afraid that I’ll get caught in their hair.

Me: Can you respond to the charge that your presence in Gotham has only encouraged crooks to correspondingly ramp up their own outsized personas? I mean, you’ve got Alice in Wonderland-themed villains, even a guy who commits signal-based crimes. I mean, really, signals?

Batman: I can’t explain that one myself. I’m like, “Oooo, don’t hit me with that stop sign!”

But, to answer your question, I think it helps keep them occupied. All that time spent sewing costumes and building huge, papier-mâché birds is less time spent robbing and murdering.

Me: Fair enough. Switching gears, you are regularly seen in the company of a young boy–

Batman: Don’t. Even. Go. There.

Me: No, no, no. I’m just referring to the suggestion that the reason you dress that child in a bright, primary-colored leotard is to draw gunfire away from yourself.

Batman: Look, the kid’s a professional. He’s a natural athlete. That “leotard” is a carbon-fiber and Kevlar armored suit, augmented by my own Bat-technology.

Me: But aren’t you on your third or fourth Robin?

Batman: Hrm. Next question.

Me: Okay. Harley Quinn or Poison Ivy?

Batman: What do–

Me: You know what I mean.

Batman: Easy choice. Crazy clown girl or kill-you-with-her-poisoned-touch girl? Big Top every time, baby.

Besides, I’m more of a Catwoman man. There was this one time; she had me lashed down with that double-length cat-o’-nine-tails she carries–

Me: Too much information.

Batman: Sorry. Time for one final question.

Me: Boxers or briefs?

Batman: Are you kidding me? Dude, you’re looking at them right now.

Dave Comics Batman, interviews, Robin the Boy Wonder, underwear

Twitter, as you may have heard, is all the rage these days. And by “all the rage,” I mean that there are both a lot of people using it and a lot of people raging about the people using it. Oh, and also some people raging about the people raging about those other people. It’s the Internet, folks. It’s what we do.

An architecture blogger named Geoff Manaugh recently wrote a spirited defense of Twitter in which he tore through an entire platoon of snooty, literati straw men whose real objection is to the unwashed masses who use the application. He declares Twitter merely to be a “note-taking technology,” and likens it to a ball-point pen.

It’s a specious argument. Twitter isn’t a note-taking technology, it’s a note-sharing technology. You could use it to jot down notes for your personal use, but there are better ways to do that. By design, Twitter sends those notes to anyone who cares enough to follow them. It’s like a ball-point pen in which the ink clogs every couple of sentences, and the pen itself takes everything you wrote, puts it in an envelope and mails it to everyone you know, plus a lot of people you don’t.

Yes, I’m sure that some folks have come up with clever uses for Twitter. There’s always someone who can look at a dish of mold and see penicillin. In a recent meeting at work, we discussed the possibility of using it as an adjunct to our weather alert service. That’s neat.

You could even write a novel using Twitter, but it would be an act of sheer cussedness to do so. Sure,

I could express the exact same thoughts (complete with my obligatory parenthetical asides) by writing this blog 140 characters at a time, but

I think it would be kinda silly.

Manaugh argues “Twitter needs to be differentiated from what people write on Twitter. The fact that so many people now use Twitter as a public email system, or as a way to instant-message their friends in front of other people, is immaterial.” I disagree. I think that the reason so many people do that is because that’s what it’s designed to do.

Honestly, I think that a lot of the recent backlash against Twitter is due to the sudden embracing of it by so-called “old media.” One reason that I’ve cautioned my coworkers about jumping on the Tweet Wagon is because of the mockery other media outlets have endured by attempting to prove that they are hip, fresh or whatever the kids are saying these days.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M – Th 11p / 10c
Twitter Frenzy
thedailyshow.com

At the end of the day, I’m not against Twitter. I’m against me using Twitter. And it’s not as if not using Twitter is a choice that I’m allowed to make for myself. Because Twitter is now a must. Are you Twittering? Why aren’t you Twittering? Blogs are so 2004. If you’re not Twittering, you might as well be chiseling a stone tablet. Or dead.

Look, I’m not a Luddite. I maintain three blogs and a Facebook page. But for me, Twitter is just one more damned thing, one more beast that constantly needs to be fed or else people will stop caring whether I exist.

More to the point, Twitter smells like a fad. It’s the new, shiny thing that everyone can’t stop talking about until the next new, shiny thing comes along.

Besides, when Larry King begins Twittering, you know that the cool kids will soon be leaving the party.

Dave Rant internet b.s., Larry King, Twitter

Thanks, Savannah! Big heart to you too!

Dave General awwww, costumed characters

One of the benefits of my new blogging home is that now I get web stat reports. And my favorite feature is the list of search terms that brought folks to my humble page.

The current top term, with 20 hits, is “dave thiel.” “Tina fey” received eight hits. My recent post regarding the trailer for The Bike King and the Ten Commandments snagged another eight hits under different search permutations.

Other notable terms: “the watchmen blue penis” (two hits), “legion of super ticklish” (two more), and “the seven faces of dr lao hulu” (one hit).

But my favorite is the last one on the list, a completely inexplicable entry that reads: “star wars create your own jedi knight trained by obi won made from lego and play it not a video game and you can play it.”

So, to whomever it was who desperately searched the World Wide Web for “star wars create your own jedi knight trained by obi won made from lego and play it not a video game and you can play it” and wound up here, welcome. I hope that you found what you were looking for.

Dave Website blogs, penis, search terms, Tina Fey, Watchmen, WTF

Last week, Time magazine discovered zombies. Forty years after George Romero invented the modern variety. Columnist Lev Grossman wrote “Zombies Are the New Vampires,” in which he tries to relate the undead to the war, ecology, and the economy.

All very well, but I can tell you exactly why zombie flicks (28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead) and zombie games (Left 4 Dead, Resident Evil 1-5) have been so popular. It’s this:

Zombies look like people, and you can kill them.

You see, vampires are broody. You might even like them if you got to know them.

Zombies have no redeemable features, like personality or dress sense. The only relationship they desire is your sweet, sweet brain.

So, it’s okay. Slash ‘em, hack ‘em, shoot ‘em in the head. Feel no remorse. They certainly don’t.

Kill all you want. They’ll make more.

Dave Rant brains, duh, zombies

I think it’s worth mentioning again just how great Lost has been this season. Even though new questions are being posed, others are being answered at a rapid clip.

One thing that’s made me happy about Season Five is the reintroduction of the DHARMA Initiative. That was an intriguing piece of backstory that was tabled once we were introduced to the Others and the Freighter Folk. However, thanks to this year’s unstuck-in-time storyline, we’ve had lots of time among the DHARMA-ites in their prime. Turns out that they’re not entirely as benign a batch of hippie researchers as it first seemed.

Anyhow, I bring this up because last night’s episode paid off something I’d been hoping for ever since we learned that most of the cast had been transported to 1977. “Hmm,” I thought, “That means that Star Wars should be coming out any day now.” And, sure enough, last night we found out that in his spare time, Hurley has been writing the script to The Empire Strikes Back (with a few improvements) with the intention of saving George Lucas a little work. Cute!

Dave TV Chewbacca, geek stuff, Lost, Star Wars

The latest outrage: a brouhaha over a “sexualized” Burger King ad for a Spongebob Squarepants-themed meal, in which the fast-food chain’s creepy King character plays Sir Mix-a-Lot to a line of female dancers shaking their square booties. CBS’ Early Show interviewed Joe Kelly of the organization Humorless Scolds in Search of a Flag to Wave (possibly not its real name), who said that it “objectifies women and that’s an incredibly outrageous message to be sending to kids. I saw it, as did many, many other people during the final games of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, which is an event a lot of families watch together.” Oh yes, because women are never otherwise objectified during a “family” sports event. 

Look, I’d be more likely to agree with you if the dancers in question weren’t sporting ENORMOUS SQUARE ASSES. ‘Cause I gotta tell you, that pretty much ruins it for me. I don’t know, perhaps geometry teachers find rectangular hexahedrons a turn-on?

If so, here’s the full-length music video:

Dave Rant butts, manufactured outrage, oh shut up

On a recent trip to Borders, I was surprised to find Escape from Hell, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s newly published sequel to their 1976 novel Inferno. I had greatly enjoyed the original when I read it back in ’86 during my tumultuous year in Hollywood. I was taken with the tale of a science-fiction writer who found himself in a Hell patterned after the one described in Dante’s Divine Comedy. 

The notion of Hell has always fascinated me. At first it was something I feared, due in no small part to watching too many Twilight Zone episodes. Later I was obsessed with the dissonance of a loving, fatherly God meting out eternal punishment. I came to believe that no earthly sin, no matter how heinous, justified torture for all time. Yes, that includes Hitler.

Niven and Pournelle’s Inferno came to a similar conclusion, as its narrator encountered souls suffering horrible and cruelly ironic fates for what, in some cases, were relatively minor “sins”: for example, an FDA attorney doomed to an eternity of immobile obesity because she banned a sugar substitute. It was she who spoke the line echoed in Escape from Hell, “We’re in the hands of infinite power and infinite sadism.” Ultimately, Inferno suggested that Hell must be only temporary, and that even the worst of humanity could be redeemed. Indeed, at the conclusion of that novel, the protagonist watched a reformed Benito Mussolini climb his way out of the pit.

Escape from Hell seemed to promise that it might address some of the remaining questions from Inferno regarding the purpose and nature of Hell*, but opts instead for posing those questions a second time. In fact, it struck me as less sequel and more remake, with its hero being blown all the way back to the beginning and having to make the perilous journey a second time. In a recent interview Pournelle says that the reason he and Niven revisited the setting after so many years was that they “had a story.” I’m not entirely convinced of that. While there are hints of changes in Hell wrought not only by Mussolini’s escape but by real-world events such as the Vatican II council, these never quite boil into a full-fledged expansion of the plot.

What it does allow is for Niven and Pournelle to toss a whole new batch of sinners into the pitch, including Ken Lay, the Virginia Tech shooter, and Carl Sagan. I was disappointed by the book’s handling of Sagan. In the above-linked interview, Pournelle claims a relationship with the astronomer, so I won’t dispute the authors’ reasons for consigning him to the Inferno. I just felt that, pragmatist or not, Sagan came off as too quickly accepting of a Biblical Hell, and too willing to cooperate with its masters.

It also gets a bit talky at times, with the characters frequently digressing into philosophical discussions. Natural enough, I suppose, but I didn’t feel like they were saying much that hadn’t been covered in the first book. Plus, the authors presume that I have as much interest as they do in the life and work of Sylvia Plath. (The poet is a major character in the sequel.) I can assure them that I don’t.

That said, there were some clever bits in Escape from Hell. One of the most striking images is of a post-9/11 Ground Zero in which an endless series of proposed replacements for the Twin Towers rise, each in turn proving insubstantial and collapsing due to a lack of commitment. In moments such as those, Escape from Hell demonstrates that while it’s far from a necessary sequel, it at least has something new to say.

*In our own world, Hell appears to serve several purposes. The threat of eternal damnation is an inducement for “good” behavior. It’s one method by which religious leaders exert control over their flocks and influence over the rest of us. But I suspect that its most important purpose is to allow us some measure of satisfaction over the rampant injustice we see. We know damned well that–despite aphorisms such as “crime never pays”–horrible people do prosper, and all too often they are never held accountable. Hell allows us to believe that even those who go to their death on a pile of money and whores will meet their just punishment in the afterlife.

Dave Books books i've read, God, me of little faith, reviews, The Devil

Yesterday I attended the University of Illinois’ service recognition luncheon, where I was honored for surviving two decades on the job. Truth to tell, it won’t be twenty years until April 21, but at this point I’m pretty sure that I’m gonna make it.

It was a nice enough lunch, even it did involve one of those weirdo salads composed of leaves and lawn clippings. Over the years, I’ve been to my share of fancy luncheons, and they invariably involve a plate of foliage. I’ve found that while one typically has the option to order a vegetarian or kosher meal, no one ever asks if you would prefer iceberg lettuce and Thousand Island.

Anyhow, my table companions, most of whom had only reached the ten year mark, were eager to see what gift the twenty year inmates received. Given that one of my previous service awards was a U of I coffee mug, I was curious myself. Popping open the box, I was pleased to find a nice desktop notepad holder.

Exploring further, I found this curious-looking pen with what I presume to be a letter opener on the other end. A highly pointy letter opener. One which I am fairly certain could easily slip between a pair of ribs, possibly mine.

To add injury to potential further injury, I was amused to discover that the pen fits into the notepad holder thusly. With the stabby bit sticking up. Right at my eye.

Thank you, University of Illinois, for the shiny, new workplace hazard! If I avoid falling upon my pen over the next ten years, I eagerly await the commemorative straight razor!

Dave General stabby things, weirdo salads

Here’s a fun segment from the ’80s Twilight Zone: “I of Newton,” based on a short story by Joe Haldeman, is about a mathematician (Sherman Hemsley, The Jeffersons) who unwittingly summons a demon (Ron Glass, Firefly) and has to figure out a means of getting rid of him. Glass is especially fun in this, charming and more than a little bit menacing. (Pay attention to his T-shirt.) The writing is snappy and the conclusion is clever. It runs about eight minutes, so you can watch it while enjoying a snack. Might I suggest devil’s food cake?

Dave TV The Devil, The Twilight Zone