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I love the rain. The gloomy weather. The cold smugness of my bed. Whenever it’s raining, I get the urge to stay in my bed and indulge in my guilty pleasures like watching a DVD movie and its extras, reading comic books or graphic novels, and being alone. Yes, being alone in my cold bed during a downpour is one of my guilty pleasures. That’s why I love the rain.

Yesterday, it was raining a lot. I would have stayed all day in my bed, but I had something else that needed to be done. I had to canvass for a private resort in Pansol for our team building on Saturday. It’s probably our last team building with our current team leader. It has to be special. So we’re going all out on food, alcohol, amenities, alcohol, food, and alcohol. Hehe.

I went to Alabang first to purchase some stuff for my rainy day lovefest with myself. I got a copy of the latest issue of DC Comic’s 52 (a weekly comic book!), a copy of Y: The Last Man: Cycles (the 2nd collected edition of the Y: The Last Man comic book series which I totally dig right now), a copy of the Kami nAPO Muna tribute album to the APO Hiking Society, and a DVD of George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead (zombies are frickin’ awesome!). I’m going to write reviews on these purchases in the near future because they’re so frickin’ cool.

On the way to Pansol, I listened to my new CD. I fell in love with Imago. Awesome rendition of “Ewan”. Anyway, listening to the whole album made me want to go straight to UPLB and start a moni session with my brods and sisses at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. As I canvassed Miramonte for 3 private resorts with clean comfort rooms (a requirement by my team lead. hahaha!), I decided not to go to LB and just go home to commence my rainy day lovefest with myself. 2 pm moni sessions will have to wait for another time.

After eating lunch, I was supposed to watch Land of the Dead, but I saw they were showing 50 First Dates on HBO. I decided to watch it first (for the 1,396,150th time!) before I wet myself with Mr. Romero’s zombiefest. I read the Y: The Last Man graphic novel during the movie because it was making me want to hold somebody, and that’s not good if you’re alone during a rainy day. After the Sandler-Barrymore movie, I went straight to the gory masterpiece of Mr. Romero. And after that, I watched all the DVD extras. The rainy day lovefest with myself was a success!

I can enjoy a rainy day with friends and loads of alcohol. I can enjoy it cuddling with someone under the bed sheets. I can enjoy it by myself with all my guilty pleasures. Whatever I’m doing and whomever I’m doing it with, I can enjoy the gloom of a rainy day. That’s why I love it. If only I can will it to rain whenever I feel like it, that’ll be orgasmic.

This past week has been a very nice week for my brain and eyes, and a very bad one for my wallet. I went to Powerbooks in ATC once, and to ComicQuest in Festival Mall twice. Twice! All for the love of comic books. Yeah. It�s my disease. Some people have an addiction with shoes. Some with textmates. Some with pirated DVDs. Some with useless trinkets. Mine is with the wonderful combination of dynamic artwork and great literature of sequential art. Here�s my review (if you can call it that) of this week’s acquisitions:

Daily Bugle Civil War Newspaper Special #1: Yeah. It’s not in the traditional comic book format. It’s in the form of a fictional newspaper. For those who are not familiar with Spider-Man (what, you haven’t even seen the movies?!), The Daily Bugle newspaper is where Peter Parker worked as a freelance photographer. This “newspaper” chronicles some of the major storylines revolving around Marvel Comics’ Civil War event, which has gained so much US media attention, especially when Spider-Man unmasked himself in public. I really liked how the writers executed this as a “real” newspaper. It gives you the feeling that you’re living in the fictional world of Marvel. It’s like you’re really reading about real-world current events. Plus, it’s only Php 20.00. Hehe.Brave New World: Basically, it’s a preview of six new titles (Uncle Sam & The Freedom Fighters, OMAC, Martian Manhunter, The Trials of Shazam!, The All-New Atom, and The Creeper) from DC Comics. Out of the six preview stories, only the one featuring Captain Marvel was interesting for me. The others were just blah. And there’s also a “surprise” on the last page, but I didn’t give a shit.

52 #10 and #11: The only weekly comics in the US. Some plot points are dull, but the weekly frequency gives me the satisfaction of reading the story without waiting for a whole freakin’ month before the next issue comes. For these 2 issues, it was awesome to see Clark Kent (I swear, I’ll poke your eyes if you don’t know the dude) being a kick-ass reporter and a new Batwoman on the scene. By the way, Batwoman is lesbian. A really hot, athletic, and sophisticated red-haired lesbian. God, I love comics.

Ghost Rider #1: Come on. You have to admit that a dude with a flaming skull as a head riding on a flaming motorcycle looks freakin’ cool. I’ve never been a fan of comic books starring a single character, but I think I�ll be sticking with Ghost Rider for the foreseeable future. The pacing of the story is nice, not to mention the art by Mark Texeira who was one of my early favorite artists because of his work on Marvel trading cards.

X-Men #188 and Uncanny X-Men #476: I’ve given up on these titles a couple of years ago since I got tired of repeating storylines and shallow characterizations. Now, these titles have new creative teams, so I decided to give them another try. And I’ve fallen in love with the 2 X-books again. Sabretooth is one of my favorite characters because he kicks so much ass, and it’s good to see he�s on the X-Men. Rogue is also a fave character (the movies ruined her!) of mine and it’s great that she�s now front and center of the adjectiveless X-Men team. Over on “Uncanny”, I’m digging Warpath. I never found him interesting before. Now, he’s badass. Props also go to Billy Tan as the “Uncanny” artist. He draws a wonderful Polaris and a yummy Marvel Girl. Hehe.

Cable & Deadpool #30: I gave this title a try because of a review I read on a website somewhere. It�s also a tie-in to Civil War, so what the heck. And I found it completely satisfying. This is probably the funniest comic book I’ve read. Ever. Deadpool not immediately realizing that he doesn’t have an internal monologue? Pure genius! This was the first time I laughed (not really that loud, of course) on almost every page of a comic book. It’s now part of my monthly pull-list.

X-Factor #9: It’s funny. It’s amusing. The dialogue is superb. The art is moody. The face-off between X-Factor and the Astonishing X-Men didn’t contain much action, but it was kickass! Who knew that Madrox the Multiple Man would be so interesting? And that Layla kid is so creepy. She knows stuff.

Justice League of America #0: It’s a set-up for the #1 issue next month, but it’s more than that. It gives you the most interesting points in the JLA�s history, and more interesting points in its possible future. Brad Meltzer, the writer who also gave us Identity Crisis (one of my favorite comic book stories of all time), gives Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman personalities. Real personalities. I particularly liked how he presented Batman and Wonder Woman’s reactions to Superman’s “death”. It was heart-wrenching.

Civil War #3: The lines are drawn here. It’s super-hero versus super-hero. Brother against brother. Clash of ideas and beliefs. I would have liked it more if Mark Millar, the writer, decompressed the story more. Sure, Steve McNiven’s art looks absolutely gorgeous, but it was full of “widescreen moments”. Nevertheless, each and every page cracks with excitement over the bigger battle that is imminent. The last page would have been so much cooler if it wasn’t spoiled to me by online assholes. Pfft.

Ultimate Fantastic Four: The Fantastic: Collecting Ultimate Fantastic Four issues 1-6, this trade gives us a fresh look into the First Family of comics, the Fantastic Four. It reads like a movie, and it�s actually better than the movie in terms of writing and concept. Well, at least for me. I still love the movie because of Jessica Alba. Hehe. Anyway, this collection didn’t impress me enough to think seriously about getting the second collection, but it amused me enough to consider it.

Y: The Last Man: Unmanned: I saw Y: The Last Man trade paperbacks in the “Graphic Novels” section of Powerbooks and I decided to give it a try. This one is volume 1, and it collects issues 1-5. I�m a super-hero comic guy, but I do try something else once in a while. And I’m glad I did with “Y”. I enjoyed each and every twist of the story, and the characters are well-defined. The concept (mammals with a Y chromosome instantly dies all at the same time, save for a dude named Yorrick Brown and his pet monkey, Ampersand) alone makes the story so interesting and stimulating. Brian K. Vaughan is now one of my favorite writers. He’s awesome. Kudos also to Pia Guerra for the seemingly innocent artwork, which gives the gruesome scenes a more disturbing feel.

Sorry, wallet. I promise I won’t hurt you this much next time. Let’s both give thanks to my employer for giving us the ammo to get this much loot in a week’s time. Hehe.

I’m back in the strange and sick world of the Blogosphere. I’ve been blogless (new word!) for a month now. This is not the first time. Before, it was voluntary. I shut down my past blogs or simply abandoned them for a short period of time just because I was having my tantrums about life. Silly, I know. But this time, I’ve been blogless because of elements beyond my control. My previous host did a data and server migration, apparently for a couple of days only. But the “couple of days” turned into a week. Then a couple of weeks. And next thing you know, I’m creating another blog because my Consolidated Crap blog is lost in server-migration limbo. Enough of the sad intro. Time for the real origin story.

I have more funds now for my comic book geekity (new word!). I’m now visiting my favorite comic book shop almost every week, whereas before, it was just a monthly deal. And comic books, basically, is the inspiration for this new blog. Stupid, yes. But it’s my blog. So, piss off! Anyway, a longbox is… well… a long box where I keep my most valuable comic book issues. Long story short, this blog is where I keep my personal issues about life and all whatevers inherent to it. Brilliant, eh? Mwehehe.

Now, for a brief recap of the past month (excluding the afformentioned host fiasco):

• I saw the third installment of the X-Men movie franchise. Twice. Just because of that scene after the credits. Bwahaha! The critics slaughtered the movie, but I absolutely love it! And just for the record, Movie Kitty Pryde is so adorably cute! Not hot, but cute nonetheless.
• With all the big comic book events last month like the end of DC Comics’ Infinite Crisis and the start of Marvel Comics’ Civil War, it’s a good time to be a comic book geek. I’ve also started reading DC’s 52 series (weekly!). I’m a very geeky comic book freak right now. And I won’t have it any other way.
• I set up a personal webserver on my PC. Yup. I successfully installed the latest versions of Apache, PHP, MySQL, and PHPMyAdmin on my PC. I am now playing around with the latest versions of content management systems like Xoops, Joomla, and PHP-Fusion, and also WordPress. I’m also remotely debugging and testing yUPieLBi.com. Together with the latest versions of Photoshop and Dreamweaver, I have my very own web development workshop in my room. I guess I’m trying to keep my ComSci spirit alive. Not using it much in my job.
• I went to the beach for the second time this year for our company outing. I don’t know why, but Laiya, Batangas holds a very special place in my cholesterol-ravaged heart. After the outing, I unfortunately got sick. It caused me to miss work for three days. And since I didn’t get a medical certificate for those three days, my salary will get a significant beating this month.
• Being the impatient prick that I am, several weeks of not publishing these stupid stories and experiences was torture. So I came up with a brilliant idea: make a new blog! Genius!

And that’s it for this blog’s stupid origin story. Baddie, out!