Holy Terror ... Batman? A writing Blog.

Frank Miller is a name you might be familiar with.  He wrote the comic books that would spawn the movies 300, Sin City, several Batman titles, including the annoyingly omnipresent Batman: Year One, and he had a very popular run on Daredevil, and even created the character of Elektra, the assassin with father issues.  Miller was also the director on The Spirit-- and has a small lynch mob after him for that, I'm sure.



So, Miller gets around.



Several years and a few lifetimes ago, Frank Miller said he wanted to write a graphic novel called "Holy Terror, Batman!" a play on a line from the 1960s Batman TV show with Adam West.



Miller has debuted his Holy Terror and ...



It doesn't have Batman.



Miller decided to work with a new hero, it wouldn't be a DC comics project, etc, etc.



On the one hand, I can understand that Frank Miller has had issues lately with DC.  His All Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder was, as I understand it, universally panned by reviewers, except for those who seem to want Frank Miller's baby. They weren't pretty, either way.

Miller's version: it was more Dirty Harry than Batman. It just didn't work with Batman.....

Really?

I guess Miller has a bit of a point. After all, why would al-Qaeda want to blow up Gotham city? Aside from the fact that it's a major metropolitan area, high-population density, the potential for massive body counts if they did it right .....

Oh wait, that would make Gotham a perfect target.

My friend Jason said that it wouldn't work because the larger DC universe would make it impossible for al-Qaeda to exist. After all, there's "The Society," Lex Luthor, Ra's al-Ghul, and a whole bunch of others who operate on an international scale.  It's like the problem someone had with Straczynski's Amazing Spider Man 9-11 issue, where he wrote that even the villains like Doctor Doom were offended by 9-11 .... to which someone replied online that "If Doctor Doom were offended by al-Qaeda, they'd be dead within 48 hours. All of them."

However, I must disagree with Jason in one respect -- this is Frank Miller, the continuity of the DC universe means about as much to him as it would to Franz Kafka.  He plays fast and loose with the universes as he pleases. The only hard and fast rule he would have to adhere to would be the layout and rules of engagement of Gotham city....

At which point, that becomes one of my short stories.... It would take too long to explain here, but for the Gotham universe, an al-Qaeda attack would probably go as follows.

Within the week, they would be out of money .... Catwoman would have robbed them. Repeatedly.

The first time they blew up a building with any amount of plants ... Poison Ivy would hunt them down and feed them to her vegetable garden.

The Joker would probably meet up with al-Qaeda .... for about five minutes. And then he would gas them because he didn't like their sense of humor, since, from what I can tell, they don't seem to have one.

And then, after the Joker starts killing them en mass, the organized crime outfits of Gotham would machine-gun the rest on the principle that al-Qaeda was muscling in on their territory.

Then, if al-Qaeda was really lucky, Batman would arrest whoever was still alive.

So, I guess I could see Frank Miller's problem. Gotham city would eat the terrorists....

And now that I've suggested it, I'm fairly certain that someone is already starting to write the fan fiction (If that's true, then I ask you to please link to the blog. Other than that, have fun.)

Right now, I'm just hoping that Miller's writing ability hasn't completely failed him. Because if he puts out another piece of quality work like The Spirit, I think the lynch mob after him might get larger.

The week in the Blog. Halo 4, Discworld, JMS, Thor, Love, and Music

This week was rather eventful. Eight blogs, no waiting. A little review.

Monday: The first major music blog went over rather well, if the blog stats are to be believed. With Winterborn, March of Cambreadth, a little Nightwish, and a historical military tune, it had a good reception.  Monday also had the first "Inspiring Authors" article with J. Michael Straczynski, the man behind the story of the film Thor, and one of the best authors that Marvel ever screwed over.



And, for a follow up, the day ended with Spoiler Alert ... for a Video game? where we had a very brief discussion of the awesome and epic writing ever seen in a first person shooter video game -- the story arc of Halo. It was mostly in celebration of the release of the new teaser-trailer for the upcoming Halo 4 video game.



Tuesday was a brief discussion about writing a love story, using an example from, of all things, my own love life. Lord help us all.



Tuesday also saw the next music blog. Which just proves that my taste in music is deeply, deeply schizophrenic. It had the Our Father in German, This is War, by 30 Seconds to Mars, and Dragonforce's Through the Fire and the Flames, a favorite of Guitar Hero fans.



Wednesday had a small sample of the works of Terry Pratchett -- and I mean a very small sample. Oh, and some Neil Gaiman too.



The music selection was one part Doctor Who (sort of), another part Nightwish, and how to condense Greek Mythology into five minutes of music.



And Thursday ... Thursday, I got lazy. I didn't feel like doing more than posting the theme to Halo, Final Fantasy VII's One Winged Angel for orchestra, and some epic commercial music from Two Steps from Hell.



Next week, I hope to do a little better. To start with, I have a new job that involves teaching you how to kick ass and take names .... okay, basic self-defense maneuvers.  I suspect it's going to turn into a weekly roundup of interesting stuff on this blog. Once I figure out the mechanics.

Music: Blog like it's the end of the world.

I didn't have anything else to blog about today, so I figured I'd just throw a music blog in here ....

First up, Tom Smith .... describing what this job feels like some days.

So, what would happen if you, one day, became a Jedi?

Come to the dark side, we have cookies.

Music Blog: Domino Death, Still Alive, Let the bodies hit the floor.

This one is just going to be pure strange. You may want to run.

First,a song from Tom Smith .... Have you ever had problems with your pizza delivery?




The end of the video game Portal was done by Jonathan Coulton; as sung by the evil computer that's been trying to kill you throughout the entire video game.  By this point, it had been broken to pieces, and incinerated in order to disable it's ability to flood the installation with nerve gas.

Johnathan Coulton's "Still Alive"





And after the break is the closest thing to "normal" .... the song that I play when I have a bad day.... a really bad day.

Tom Smith, Doctor Who, Cruxshadows,

By now, you might have a bit of a pattern going.  Monday to Wednesday will have two blogs a day, one of which is a music blog.  Thursday is just a music blog, and Friday is a week in review.

And They Say I've Got Talent


Tom Smith: Operation Desert Storm. ..

Hint; this has nothing to do with Iraq





And a neat little Two Steps from Hell cinimatic.








Cruxshadows ... Remember a while ago, I posted a music video to a song called Winterborn? Well, this  is a surprisingly different version, from Fortress in Flames.

 

And, because I like it, the Doctor Who theme.

 

 

 

Spoiler Alert for ... a video game? Halo.

Some people may have noticed that I'm a little wierd. I'm also a bit of a nerd, as my DragonCon reports and my JMS blog of today might tell you.



However, I want to discuss a little bit about one of the most epic bits of science fiction storytelling I've seen outside of Baen publishing.



The Halo video game franchise.



Yup. Video games can have epic writing.



If most of you are thinking "Thanks. We've seen Super Mario Brothers, there is no writing," I respectfully suggest you get your head out of the 80s. And parts of the 90s.



I've only recently been brought back into the world of video games by my friend Jason. He started by giving me a video game called Halo. It was a "first person shooter," which I always figured was short for "a game with no plot, but you get to shoot up anyhthing that gets in your way, or blow them up if you have grenades."



Then I started playing it.



It had a story. It had supporting characters with personalities. It had witty chapter titles and sarcastic one-liners. It was a space-sprawling epic played out on something that resembled Larry Niven's Ringworld -- an artificially designed planet called Halo.



The premise was simple enough: alien jihadists called the Covenant have discovered humans, and they really, really don't like us. The game starts with the player's ship on the run from an alien armada, and runs into Halo, a world that turns out to be a sacred artifact to the jihadists. The player's character is a bioengineered super soldier called a Spartan-II, and wears a Mjolnir battle suit (yes, it's named after the hammer of Thor). The humans get the bright idea to take over Halo before the Covenant do -- this artificial ring world is a moon-sized weapon, after all.



And then, the humans wake something up. Not quite an eldritch horror from beyond time and space, but good enough for government work. Let's just say that they're called The Flood and leave it there. They have a tendency to devour, well, everything.



After waking up said horror, another side to this little war comes up. The artificial intelligence of the Halo ring discovers that, "Hmm, the Flood creatures have been let loose. We have to stop them."



It turns out that the eldritch horror isn't from beyond time and space, but from one hundred million years ago. The Halo rings were built to stop them. But, the people fighting the flood back then decided to hold on to a few samples for research, and so the species wouldn't die out (I always knew rabid environmentalists would be the ruin of us).



All goes perfectly well until the player discovers how the Halo rings kill the flood-- by erradicating all life bigger than a microbe. The flood starve. End of problem. When the Spartan-II and his sidekick object to this plan, the AI that has been chattering at you for a whole level of the game turns nasty.



Did I mention that the AI is insane?



Soon, the game becomes a four-sided battle. Alien jihadists are still trying to kill you. The flood are trying to kill everyone. And the AI that you've pissed off has his own army of flying, laser-wielding drones who are also out to kill you, the flood, the jihadists, and everything else in its way.



And that's just the first game.



The Halo universe is so dense in background and in story, they've written at least half a dozen novels worth of material, and they're making more.  Comic book and Star Trek favorite Peter David has written a comic book volume from the Halo-verse, as has William C. Dietz, another author with his own writing credits -- though the first author to be offered the job was Timothy Zahn.

SPOILER ALERT.

There might be one or two people upset by the end of Halo 3.  The third game sought to wipe out the Flood, end the war with the alien jihadists, and  finally end the threat of the Halo rings.   By and large, they succeeded.

However, the character you play, the Spartan-II, is last seen drifting in space in half a starship -- bad things happen when a wormhole closes and the ship is only halfway through it.

Since Halo 3, several Halo games have been released -- prequels, side-stories, and tales that never answered the simple question: Whatever happened to Master Chief, Spartan 117

Halo Fans will be happy to know that the trail for Halo 4 starts where Halo 3 leaves off.

Guest Blog: Karina Fabian on Writing Science Fiction.

Once upon a time, very long ago (okay, April), we had a guest blogger -- Karina Fabian, author of .... a whole lot of novels, and editor of Infinite Space, Infinite God II.

Guess what: she's back, with a new book, Mind Over Mind, a science fiction / fantasy piece (and there are reasons it's a bit of both), so I decided to keep her blog topic simple.

I asked her to blog "On the joys and wonders of writing SF."

She gave me a top ten list.

Here we go.....

Top Ten Reasons to Love Reading or
Writing Science Fiction

From the Home Office in FabianSpace

1. Explore Strange New Worlds.

Whether it's traveling to another planet, exploring the future, or
even seeing how the past would change if you altered some aspect
like, say sticking a small West Virginia town in the middle of the
Black Forest in 1632, you will find something completely new.

2. To seek out new life. This doesn't have to mean alien life, either. A science fiction setting can give
new life to an old plot, or a new way at looking at our own society.
Recently, I revisited an old favorite, ALIEN NATION. A sci-fi cop
show from the 90s, it was really more about racial issues in a big
city.

3. To boldly go! It's sometimes easier as a writer to explore a controversial issue in a way that
will make people think when you put it in a setting that's removed
from the present day society. Science fiction also gives you a means
to take chances. Nichelle Nicols (Uhura from Star Trek) was one of
the first black women on television to have a substantial role, and
was as a result a role model for thousands of women and Blacks.

4. Because it's part of our culture.
How many of you recognized the lines from the first three reasons?
We know without an explanation what someone means by warp speed. Ray
guns, transporters, aliens, time travel--none of these are unknown
concepts, even when they aren't everyday objects.

5. To explore the impossible. Or at least the impossible right now. Did you know a lot of technology we
take for granted and are developing right now was first suggested in
science fiction? We have 3-D faxes--replicators! Arthur C. Clark
first talked about satellite communications years before we launched
our satellites. NASA is working on VASIMR drives for spaceships, and
Japan recently launched its first solar sail craft--ideas made known
in science fiction stories while still far-off theories in scientific
journals.

6. To explore ideas. How would humans act if a plague knocked out 90 percent of the population? What if we always fought wars through computers? What if humans could live forever? What if you could go back in time--but only for eleven minutes a shot? Some ideas can only be examined in a science fiction setting.

7. You can learn a lot while enjoying the adventure. Science fiction writers often have to do a lot of
research into everything from physics to genetics to animal sciences in order to craft convincing stories. Writing is a great way to learn things--but many times, much of that information comes out in the text, too, and not in a boring "just the facts" manner of a textbook.

8. We are a technological, forward-thinking society. Why shouldn't our literature reflect that?

9. Resistance is futile. You will be
assimilated. Science fiction and fantasy are a big genre. Eighty
percent of the top grossing movies in the US are science fiction or
fantasy (source: http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10131),
and the number of books--and readers-continues to grow.

10. It's sheer escapist fun. 'Nuff said! 

****************************

About the Author: Karina Fabian

After being a straight-A student, Karina now cultivates Fs: Family, Faith, Fiction and Fun. From an order of nuns working in space to a down-and-out faerie dragon working off a geas from St. George, her stories surprise with their twists of clichés and incorporation of modern day foibles in an otherworld setting. Her quirky twists and crazy characters have won awards, including the INDIE book award for best fantasy (Magic, Mensa and Mayhem), and a Mensa Owl for best fiction (World Gathering). In May 2010, her writing took a right turn with a devotional, Why God Matters, which she co-wrote with her father. Mrs. Fabian is former President of the Catholic Writer’s Guild and also teaches writing and book marketing seminars online.

Music blog: Tom Smith; Cheap Cyborg, Fake it better, Granito.

Some music....

First, ever wonder what would happen in the future? Ever consider that technology would enable you to have laser beams and stuff?  Well, the future is here ... what happened?

One Mr. Rob Granito is a liar, a thief, and an art forger -- only what he does is steal other people's comic book artwork and claim it as his own.

This song is rated R for language -- the only language strong enough to adequately describe the little punk.

The week in review: Casting, Video Games, Romance, and Music.

This is the second week of the "new" blog for A Pius Man.  While the new posting schedule is not even a whole two weeks old, the blog has already had over six hundred views thus far.

Which means that these two weeks have seen more blog views than all but two months of the blog's entire run.

So, something's going right.

Check out Dies Irae. Seriously

The first blog entry was a suggestion that, given the technology and the writing of video games nowadays, maybe I should try pitching A Pius Man as one. Okay, maybe not.  In music that day, there was the heavy electric guitar of Dragonforce, with the game soundtrack for Halo, followed by.... Mozart?

Yes, Mozart.

Did I mention that my music posts were going to be a little schizophrenic? No? Sorry about that.

Tuesday's primary blog was a list of my cast, and who should probably play them if the book was ever a) published and b) ever made into a movie.

I was especially interested the more I examined the prospect of Summer Glau as Maureen McGrail.  Dang, that woman can move. Why she hasn't been allowed to really dance since Serenity is beyond me.

That music blog was an introduction to the world of filk with Tom Smith, some more Halo, a bit more Dragonforce, and a heavily violin piece in Cruxshadow's Dragonfly.

And then I discussed more books I read .... Romance? Really? Yes.

But, since this is me, the romance novels I read involve automatic weapons, murder mysteries .... they boil down into novels that have romantic elements, but have been doomed into the romance sections because of lousy, flowery artwork and editors with an inability to give the novels halfway decent names.

Though I am reluctant to argue with a book title like No Mercy.

Wednesday's music blog was a little easier: Two Steps from Hell, a song about the world's first hyper beer, some more Halo and a touch more Dragonforce.

Thursday was almost a recap, musicwise. Tom Smith's Operation: Desert Storm, a new version of an old song, the theme from Doctor Who, and a movie someone made to a Two Steps from Hell piece.

All in all, it was a fun week.  I'll see what I can do about keeping it alive a little longer. The pace isn't too strenuous just yet.

However, I should mention a few things.

At Examiner.com, I did a "how to" article on escaping an arm grab, using attitude as self defense, and an article on my favorite fighting style.

Sex, DC Comics, and ... wtf?

Long term readers know my opinion on sex in writing.  I'd say my opinion on sex in general is very Catholic, but since no one understand that, I'm not even going to bother.



However, I can sum up my thoughts on sex in fiction very easily: who needs it?



As Rebekah says, we all know the mechanics. What possible reason is there for a blow by blow description? Pardon the pun, but you know what I mean.



Since my first article on sex, I've written a few sex scenes .... by few I mean two, and they were in the same book.  However, the "sex scene" was in someone's dream, and the protagonist was having a conversation with his dead wife through most of it. The sex was incidental, and mostly has to do with the fact that she was killed on their honeymoon.  The second sex scene was so vague, any less detail would be as clear as a Salvatore Dali painting, only with words.



Yes, I brought in Dali to an article on sex. I'm weird. However, there is a point.


Even during these scenes, there's no blow by blow description. (I'm going to stop apologizing for that phrase, just roll with it.).  It's not necessary, unless someone's writing porn.  Even something as intimate as noticing a tattoo on someone during sex doesn't necessitate that much detail -- the audience does not need to know what specific act the individual was doing when s/he noticed the tattoo.  It's sex. Nudity happens.  Next chapter.

So, what prompted today's rant?

DC Comics seems to be going back to the 1990s, where the artistic style was summarized by my friend Jason as "Big boobs, big guns."

The current version seems to focus on women and sexuality, with an overemphasis on the sex.

I've no problem with sexuality, or with women -- look at my model for Manana Shushurin if you don't believe me --  it's that it's bad writing.

Starfire, in costume

Take, for example, the character of Starfire.  She's an alien with red hair, green eyes (and I don't mean with two green irises, I mean the entire eye is green), orange skin, with measurements somewhere in the 36 DD battery range.

Normally, I would stop reading at green-eyed redhead (I grew up with a crush on the female lead in Riverdance, leave me alone).  The character has always been sexually relaxed, it was mostly a cultural thing.  And, for the most part, it was used properly -- as comedy.  For example, in the classic Crisis on Infinite Earths, Starfire walks in with Nightwing, meets an old friend, and introduces him as "This is Nightwing, my lover."


Nightwing's reaction is such that you suspect he's glad that he has to go and face the end of the world.

And that was it.  One panel. Move on.

I look at this and think ...Ow! My back!

In their recent reboot, DC spent far, far too long on having Starfire posing.  And by posing, I don't mean "for seducing the guy she's targeted for seduction." I mean in weird, contortionist-like ways that are only useful for modeling.  Modeling what, I'm not entirely certain, but, still ....



What was the point of that scene?  Aside from "we're pandering to hormonal males who can't buy Playboy"?  Anyone? Anyone at all? Bueller?  Bueller?

DC has landed in

Baywatch territory

Starfire is a woman who can quite literally level city blocks.  And DC decided to dedicate a whole page to her trying to jump someone's bones, with another page dedicated to "Gee, she looks good in a bikini."  Really? They couldn't think of something she could blow up?

Someone ran out of room for a plot in this issue, didn't they?

Notice I have not pointed out her barely there costume.  The "reasoning" is that she absorbs solar energy through her skin, and the less she wears, the more surface area is used.....

Funny, twenty years ago, when Superman just came back from the dead and needed an enhanced recharge from the sun, he had to wear a form-fitting black suit to increase his solar intake.  But then, that was before 300 and chiseled, CGI generates 8-pack abs were "in."

Also strange: she needs to bear more skin for more solar energy absorption, but she wears thigh-high boots, covering a lot of that surface area. If her powers honestly worked like that, it's time to invest in sandals.

So, to recap: Does this entire setup tell us anything about the character? Nothing new.  Does it add anything to the plot?  Is it amusing? No and no.

If we're lucky, comic books last 32 pages, without counting the ads.  If we're not, it's more like 25 or 27. But they'll blow anywhere from 6%-10% of the book having Sunfire posing?  Who the hell is writing this crap?

Anne Hathaway as

Catwoman

And, then, there's Catwoman. Yup, the one in the really tight-fitting outfit.  As opposed to Halle Berry, the one in no outfit ... that was more CatHouseWoman than anything else.

Granted, in some ways, I think Catwoman's outfit is more practical than Batman's -- there's no loose fitting articles of clothing to be caught on nails, screws, the vents she crawls around in, etc.  And, leather is good in knife fights (I read weird articles. I also write them). Batman's outfit seems to have only recently made the cape practical, but I don't keep up with these things.

The cat burglar and antihero has had an on again, off again relationship with Batman since Julie Newmar played her in the 1960s Batman tv show.  Maybe longer.

Green Skin? Really?

But, no, decades of jumping Batman -- sometimes literally -- is apparently, too subtle.

Let's have a full-on sex scene!!!!

Really?

Then again, I have a problem; I look at these images, and my first thought is "Why is her skin green? Has she been hanging out with Poison Ivy too much, or is it really odd mood lighting?"

So, what, exactly, does this entire sex scene add?  Another two to three pages eaten up by something that could probably be implied in one panel, and -- oh, yeah -- the next issue is called .... wait for it .... The Morning After.  Nope, still too subtle.

What do these pages add?  Oh gee, Catwoman is taking his gloves off with her teeth. She's a little frisky .... um, she dresses up in skintight leather and carries a whip, I think we got that part.

Really?

A whole splash page?

So .... what was the point of this exercise? Obviously, they're going to continue this as a story line into the next issue.  Good for them. So what? Why did they need two or three pages on this? Any one of you out there, reading this article right now, could have come up with a way to tell the audience that, yes, they are copulating. I suspect you could have done it in ... what, half a page? With some internal monologue?

That a "professional author" has done it this pathetic.

Obviously, someone at DC has decided that its readers are either (a) functionally retarded, and subtlety would go over their heads, (b) too young to get legal access to get this stuff on their own or (c) the author used to write fan fiction before this.

The author, Judd Winick, is the mastermind behind resurrecting Robin #2, Jason Todd -- a punk kid who was so despised, DC took a poll of fans, and the fans wanted him half beaten to death, and blown to kingdom come.  Winick's brilliant idea: resurrect Todd, and make him crazy. So, I suspect we can't expect too much from this guy.

In short: this is no way to treat halfway decent characters. Catwoman has had a long run by dancing on both sides of the law, and living in a gray area that makes her more interesting than Batman at times .... and more sane (I think Batman was on his fourth nervous breakdown, last I checked).  Starfire, for all the oversexed portions of her nature, has been entertaining for reasons other than that -- she had a run on Infinite Heroes, where she had some great character moments, and anytime the oversexed nudist part of her came out, it was a source of quick entertainment, and then we moved onto the plot.

You want to see a great example of using female superheroes?  Take Rebekah's latest chapter of Masks. Technically, it's a fight scene with three women -- fully clothed women who are quite intent on pursuit and capture, or escape and evasion.

There are no tight-fitting, slinky costumes, no mostly-nude women ... there's not even a mud wrestling joke -- because the moment the pursuers get close enough to grapple with our heroine, it's game over.

So, DC Comics, it's time for you to start taking some notes.  Because you've got a super powered alien, a martial artist cat burglar, and Rebekah Hendershot kicked your asses with a novice, teenage superhero who has no powers whatsoever.  There is a lesson to be learned here.

DADT, Gay Marriage: Who cares?

Last week wasn't very good as far as blog posts went. And I'm sorry for that. This week, I've got three posts already written.  This one is considered "timely," as my Examiner.com editors like to say.



A while ago, I wrote an article about gay marriage in New York.  It was entitled: Gay Marriage, so what?  I suspect you can guess what my general conclusions were.



I collect all sorts of weird articles, and magazines.  On the one hand, I could read Guns and Ammo, then the Spring catalog for a major publisher, then Time Magazine (until they went anti-Semite), the list goes on.



One such magazine is Salute, the magazine of the archdiocese for the military services, USA.



Yes, the military has their own archdiocese -- their Cardinal is the Cardinal of New York City.



In their Summer, 2011 issue, there was a statement from Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, the Archbishop for USA military services. (An Archbishop is more hands on.)



His statement was two pages long, and here's an excerpt ...

"The church is unwavering in her commitment to the pastoral care of all persons in need, regardless of sexual inclination or anything else.  All people in need are served by Catholc Chaplains with zeal and passion for bringing the reality of the Risen Lord to all.  Whether Don't ask don't tell persists or not is immaterial to that bedrock principle.  The faithful .... must never forget that those with a homosexual inclination must be treated with the respect worthy of their human dignity."  [Typed by hand, any typos are mine]

In short: that's nice, we don't care if they're outed, it doesn't matter to us.



The message then cited Federal law (1 USC subection 7)... which I believe is commonly known as the defense of marriage act (DOMA).



So, "yes, you have DADT repealed. Who cares? We don't like it, but we're not going to marry gays, and you're not going to make us. We can continue, business as usual."  Everyone can move on.



Which is pretty much what I said the first time about gay marriage.



It's so nice when the Catholic Church listens to me.

[More below the break]



Then, on September 30th, the Pentagon issued an order allowing all military clergy to perform gay marriage ceremonies ....



The response of Broglio?  It's pretty much the same. Not to mention, there is still DOMA.  It's a federal law.  How can a federal agency allow the existence of something that, legally, does not exist at the federal level?



And, come April, 2012, what will happen when all of the gay married couples file joint income tax? The IRS cannot acknowledge them -- the IRS is a federal agency.  Accountant friends (and relative) are already saying that the IRS will not accept joint filings from any of the new marriages from New York (et al) between two men, or two women.



Not to mention .... the military has bases all over the 50 states. Gay marriage is only passed in about ... Five? (CA, VT, MA, NY, HI).  Isn't that a bit of a problem? And arguing that they are federal institutions is a problem, when you consider that, again, DOMA is federal law. State laws do not matter in this instance.



Is it just me, or did someone not think this through?



As I said the first time: I'll start to care about gay marriage when someone comes after religion in its name.



I don't care just yet. Initial reports of this story said that "military chaplains are being forced to marry homosexual couples."  I cared for about five minutes, then I looked for more footnotes.



However, now that I found that it "allowed" gay marriage, instead of "requiring" clergy to perform them, I'm back to not caring. Though the legal situation is going to be hilarious.

Mozart, Halo (again)

Yup, I'm posting another music blog. Muwhahaha.



Did I ever mention that I'm a fan of classical music?

I've mentioned the Halo franchise of video games already during these music blogs. Well, here are two more. They're short, but I think they're worth it.

Music Blog: John Williams marches

I figured that this was going to be one of two items today: another character filling in another survey, or a music blog.

You're in luck: music.

First: the march of the Wedding Party at one of my friend's wedding last year .....

The theme to Superman....

Mainly because his wife forbade Star Wars. Otherwise, it would have been the Imperial March






And, speaking of Star Wars ...

The Imperial March.