A Lazy Saturday

I'm just chilling today. Did some weeding and then had an enkai last night. Things here are consistently weird. I had an undoukai, which is basically just a track meet last week. I was just watching and cheering, not running. I've got another one coming up tomorrow, too. It should be fun.

What is not fun kafunshou, which we call hayfever. Some days I basically can't even see because my eyes itch and hurt so bad. I think I'm allergic to cedar pollen, because that's been suggested a couple of times as the culprit. I don't know, but there's really nothing I can do, regardless of what particular flower is causing the problems.

Tom Waits has still been rocking my world musically. His Small Change is pretty darned good, especially Tom Traubert's Blues, which seems like it should be titled Waltzing Matilda, but that's just how Tom rolls, I guess. I've been reading comic books lately. Specifically, the Marvel Ultimate stuff. It's basically just an alternate universe in the Marvel multiverse which is modern and edgy or something. There are four main books, I think, and I've been reading three of them: The Ultimates, Ultimate Spiderman, and Ultimate Fantastic Four. I haven't been reading Ultimate X-Men because I tried reading that before when I saw it sitting around a friend's room, and it was so terrible I couldn't continue. While the others are obvious, I suppose I should explain that The Ultimates is basically Ultimate Avengers, but with a better name. Ultimate Fantastic Four is a hilariously stupid name, I think.

The Ultimates is awesome, but I've only been able to read the first volume and a little more. I'm addicted to it now, so I need my fix. I just got to the point where Captain America gets arrested, if anybody else out there has read this stuff. It's pretty awesome overall, but I think it's kind of weird how I find myself rooting for Hank Pym (aka Giant Man aka Ant Man) even though he is a terrible person, really, and I can't get behind Captain America despite being the really good guy (this isn't a case of a perfect character being boring or anything, he's just not likeable, but in a good way).

Ultimate Spiderman is good for what it is. I think it was really aimed at getting new young readers. It makes sense to use Spiderman for this, since he's the awkward teenager of the Marvel Universe, and they really do play up that angle in the book. He's basically a moron when it comes to a lot of things, and he almost gets himself killed multiple times by doing stuff that is just idiotic. It's nice to see that he didn't immediately become awesome when bitten by a spider. There are some annoying things, and I kind of wish the art were more like that of The Ultimates because it's supposedly the same universe and that kind of thing annoys me, but the art's not bad. It's just done in a way that really makes it obvious the book is for kids.

Ultimate Fantastic Four is just kind of meh. I never cared that much for the original four, so making them younger and changing their origin a bit doesn't really fascinate me.

Alright, that's enough blathering.