Bad Ideas

I just caught up to the ending of Who Wants to Be a Superhero? the other night and I was marvelling at how a show can take 20 minutes of actual content and stretch it out to an hour-long format. Now that’s a superpower!

I was remarking at how insanely similar the winner, Feedback, was to Cyclops, one of Stan Lee’s famous creations… or at least, the Chris Claremont-era Cyke — the overly intense, gotta-prove-himself, loyal to his mentor hero. Instead of finding a father figure in Professor X, Feedback has Stan Lee himself.

But let’s be serious here, which would make a better comic book and movie: “Feedback”, or “Fat Momma”? We all liked Fat Momma, and would be proud of her as the winner, but she’s just not as sell-able of a superhero as someone who at least designed in some cool powers to go with the persona. We’d like her fictional character like we liked Snakes on a Plane — a ton at first until we had to live with it for a while and realize it really wasn’t all that good to being with.

If I went on WWTBAS?, it would be my generation-x duty to go on with as satirical and cynical a character as possible. I would modify up a suit made with camoflague into a post-modern marksman’s outfit, but instead go as “The Marxman” — that is, I would use the teachings of Karl Marx to help people in crisis. My superpower would be the Aquaman-like ability to command proletariats into action. My battle cry as I swing on a cable high above the streets: “Workers of the world unite!” — even if that is a bit Wonder Twins-esque. I would show all those that need rescue that, in fact, only they can rescue themselves from the tyrannys of fire, runaway trains and rabid dogs.

But of course, shaving off the beard would remove my powers.

Someone get the Sci-Fi channel on the phone!

As I mentioned on the spicy opml roll: “It’s almost making me reconsider where I keep my ‘regular’ blog. Flip-flopping — it’s not just for politicians anymore.” I guess you can call me John Kerry, then.

As much as I enjoy using the OPML Editor, I feel way too locked-in to the opml.org servers — especially when they start acting up. I can change where it upstreams, but I can only do so over FTP?! As in, send-my-password-as-plaintext FTP? As in, “the protocol so insecure my ISP doesn’t even offer it as a service anymore” FTP?

Bah, I say. Flock has quickly become my Windows browser of choice, and the immediacy of blogging through it now rivals the immediacy I found in the OPML Editor. I really like the things Dave is doing with the app, but the whole vibe of following it and using it makes it feel like the blogging equivalent of Amaya — it’s mostly a testbed for Dave to show off his new ideas for formats and applications. Trying to use it everyday, however, reveals how limited it really is once you get past the proof-of-concept layer and start trying to do real work in real environments.

So the “trifecta” experiment ends about one month after it started. In internet time, that’s like a year, isn’t it? Still, the goal hasn’t changed, however. I still aim to keep this causal and off-the-cuff. Keeping notes and having fun. The linkblog is still the focus — because that activity happens far more often than the blogging — but the weblog supplements all of that. And most of all: teradome.com is my home. After a month of opml.org, I felt like exactly what I was — a guest in someone else’s house. Ah, it’s good to be back.

As part Teradome’s continuing evolution into the pseudo-static Noah-tracker, I’ve decided to use my OPML Editor blog as a place to throw my rants out to the wind, without worrying too much about context…or making sense, for that matter.

I’ve linked to the spicy opml roll before, but this time — in a week or so — I will actively redirect the Teradome.com RSS feeds to the spicy opml roll feed. This way this “switch” should happen transparently.

Since Uncabled is where focus, subject and discussion will live, the spicy opml roll will be where the train-of-thought will live…uncluttered by headlines, categories or comments.

I thought I could live without it — I thought wrong.

Hope to see you there!

Transformers 2: Cyberspace

the Autobots’ enemies attempt to take over the online world by unleashing the deadly Emoticons who transform from robots into smiley faces.

This Netflix new release just has to go in the Bad Ideas category, even if it doesn’t fit with what I wanted Bad Ideas to be. Consider it a genesis of the category. I present to you: “Vampiyaz.” I dare you to rent it.

Memento 2: The Palm Pilot.

He must solve a murder, but every three minutes, his organizer resets.