Less is More: The Truly Great Superheroes.

Everyone knows Batman, Superman, Spiderman, the X-men. The great superheroes--those with their names in the papers, their powers on display. The merest 5-year-old can tell you what Superman can do, and what his weakness is.

This isn't so good. Part of the requirement of herodom is secrecy. You appear to have no identity outside of your costume--you are a terrifying mystery, outside the bounds of normal society and therefore a threat to those who try to break the rules of normal society to their advantage.

I want to argue that these well-known superheroes fail, no matter how spectacular they are, simply because we know them. And that we are overlooking the major superheroes completely. Heroes who play the game successfully, never let us know they have secret identities, or powers, or weaknesses.

I'll prove it. The other thing that heroes have is a look. A costume that only changes with serious plot enhancement.

Now there are also people in the comics who have a look. Jonah Jameson. Commissioner Gordon. These people are normal, right?

Right?

There you go. Jim Gordon is the best superhero ever. We don't even know he has powers.

New Direction

I'm going to take this blog in a new direction. We're going to focus a bit more on writing, words, and language, and less on personal experiences--though those may come into play anyway as they arise. (Who has personal experiences everyday, anyway?)

I mean, the blog is called 'Word-Fu', is it not?

Strange Friends

Got an email today. Was a little odd. Came from a friend of mine named putput@centurytel.net. The ever-mysterious putput said:

Hi there
Hey where have you been recently ? I could not get any news from you for a long time. Anyway, I found a decent pharmacy store from google last week. I decided to give a shot because it was Canada Licensed Drugstore. Well the prices were % 65 cheaper than the local pharmacies in my region. So I took a chance. I took my medicines in my hand 3 days after i ordered and they were packed very well as they claimed that they provide full anonymity. Needless to say medicines are legit and they give me what i want :) If you need any medicine without any prescription, give it a try until the discount ends.
Take care of yourself. I included the url below. See you later.

My friends are strange. They email out of the blue after months without contact just to tell me about a 'decent pharmacy store from google'. This is the generosity of my friends.

Moreover, I am a good friend, because I am not going to correct my friend's English. Nor even point out his or maybe her mistakes.

President Ninja

Does this mean he has been trained as one?

Maybe if you trained hard you could follow in his footsteps. Work from the ground up, you know. Start by getting a job here.

Not convinced? You should go here.

Happy Birthday, Seamus Heaney!

It's his birthday today, and lots of people are celebrating.

UPDATE: Here is his Nobel lecture, too.

Lemon graph, very pretty

Correlation may not imply causation, but it's sure fun to pretend.

Cultural...Similarities?

Until this week, I have never felt so fulfilled by eating cheese.

For awhile, when people asked me what I wanted from the US, I said 'peanut butter' because, while not impossible to find here, it can be difficult and it is invariably more expensive than at home, and often all you can find are jars of Skippy (filled with hydrogenated oils) or cans--cans--of the stuff. Peanut butter in a can must be undead. Or similarly horrible.

Peanut butter is one of the classic American foods here.

But recently I discovered that there is a food I love (I didn't even know this until I was absent from it) that one simply cannot find in Paris, save peut-être at British or American specialty stores. This godly nectar is known in English-speaking countries as "cheddar", and lately, I cannot get enough of it. I recently brought back from London an extra extra strong (No. 7) variant that was quite good...

I've watched Virginia crave and get a lot of satisfaction out of buying and devouring slabs of the strange soft or goopy, slightly malodorous cheeses that one finds here, and intellectually, I've understood that she grew up eating it, she likes it a lot, and sometimes she just wants it. (I've heard other people describe cheese as a 'bonheur'.) But now I think I have a real, experiential appreciation for the French love of cheese.

Good God, does it hit the spot!

Differences

The thing about cultural differences, at least between France and the US, is that they are often rather subtle. Things like how formally you dress for work, how late you eat dinner, what you do with the bread that you have with dinner. Or, for instance, how you converse or argue. One that I discovered recently has to do with toilet etiquette.

See, I was taught throughout my childhood that it's polite to knock on the (closed) door of a bathroom or stall before you enter, in case someone is inside. Sure, occupants should lock the door, but sometimes people forget, so you knock. And, to my best knowledge, I think that's the general rule in the US. There are occasional times when it doesn't happen, but usually...

Anyway, totally not the case here. After noticing a certain pattern at work, and hearing about one of a colleague's several reasons for not using the teachers' bathroom much anymore, I asked Virginia about it. Seems that the logic in France is that the door to the bathroom should be closed and locked if you're in it, so there's no need for anyone to knock. They just yank on the door.

I'm sitting on the toilet at work and I hear someone enter the room. I listen to the person's footsteps approach the small room with the toilet. I expect a polite rap on the door. Instead, there is a boom as the door is nearly yanked off it's hinges (or so it seems to me) in the process of being tested, and then the retreating footsteps of the culprit, followed by silence as I wonder why no one bothers to ask. I'm nice. I'd respond, honest.