This is Felicity, your eye on wildlife. The local wildlife watch for the last week:
Wednesday: 2 deer (2 does)
Thursday: 1 deer (1 buck)
Friday: 4 deer (1 doe, 3 bucks)
Monday: 2 black cats (1 longhair, 1 shorthair)
Tuesday to date: 1 deer (1 buck)

SQUIRRELS DO NOT COUNT.

More through good luck and good friends than good management, most of the Whelan hoard is in the Whelan home. Saturday’s business concluded - my sister dispatched to Seattle with 16 yards of aqua silk dupiouni and copies of Vogue pattern 2429 in every size for her Bevy o’ Bridesmaids - we rented a U-Haul and spent Sunday in the throes of moving. It is really quite remarkable when you think about it that two people so young should have so much STUFF. I suppose I am probably the main offender, but Matthew does have a great deal as well.

At any rate, now I am living in the house, and dealing with the discomfited displacement that entails - how odd not to be able to blame the little pops and sighs and mysterious noises on upstairs neighbors! How different to peer through the blinds at night and see the moonlight glinting off our own yard instead of rows of cars, and stop to look in the mirror only to be caught by a flight of blackbirds off a marsh tree over my shoulder. My only real complaint is that my brain will not be still - it must be sanding the light celadon-chartreuse off the bedroom walls or scrubbing the hardwood floors, and I can only silence it by closing my eyes. I love my house, but I love my projects, too.

No, I have not gone mad, as some may have guessed from the title, snatched from an actual sign in the labs at my new place of employment; nor have I simply gone, as some may have guessed from my long silence. Between the relocation of the family brood of computers to our new house and my relocation to my new job, I only just now checked my e-mail for the first time since Monday - and of course blogging, however dear an activity, falls second to the lifesblood that is e-mail.

The house is, as indicated, quite smuggifying. Currently it is furnished in the “two chairs and a lot of boxes style,” which is a bold decor unsuited to human habitation - we shan’t actually move in until this weekend, when our furniture can be feasibly introduced into its new habitat. Until then, we content ourselves with hooking up computers huddled together on the floor, and stocking the built-in bookshelves with books.

My new job, which I experienced for the first time today, promises to be quite good. As I had rather hoped, it seems that my previous job, with several bosses making huge demands, no pre-existing systems, and approximately 2 reams of paper passing through my hands everyday, always to be recalled three months later by an impatient superior, was an ordeal by fire. If things progress as I expect, my current job consists of three bosses making reasonable demands, sometimes leaving me alone, and four times a year piling on the work. This is well within my scope, and, indeed, exactly what I had hoped. The campus is beautiful - deer graze there! - and the people are friendly and helpful. Change, I currently believe, is good.

Yesterday I gave this trade paperback a second read, and I can’t say it changed my first impressions. As a Bat-fan, I picked up the book because it contains an important moment in Bat history, central to the story of a character I care about. Batman: The Killing Joke is the storyline in which the Joker paralyzed Barbara Gordon, former Batgirl—a constraint that eventually led to her becoming überdecker to the hero world, Oracle.

I’ve bought some fairly cheesy trade paperbacks in the name of Bat history lessons—Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying, for example, is the story of how Tim Drake becomes Robin, and it’s dripping with cheese and earnestness. I can cope with cheese (see my enjoyment of 70’s X-Men) but there’s something about The Killing Joke that really rubs me the wrong way. It was written by Alan Moore, one of the two “dark” writers of the 80’s, who shocked the comics world out of its idyllic 70’s fluff and into grittiness. The other was Frank Miller. And while it’s obvious that Frank Miller has dark thoughts and muses far too much on sex with Wonder Woman, it’s equally obvious that Frank Miller loves superhero comics. Alan Moore, I have read and I now believe, hates superhero comics.

The plot of The Killing Joke goes a little something like this: (don’t worry, I’m not spoiling anything good) Batman goes to Arkham to talk to Joker about stopping the eternal struggle that will eventually kill one or both of them. Joker has busted out, leaving some guy (they never explain who) in white makeup and a green wig in his cell. Joker buys an abandoned amusement park. Joker shoots Babs in the spine and has his lackeys carry off her father. Joker undresses Babs and takes pictures of her writhing in her own blood. Joker puts Gordon through a funhouse ride of horror, with huge flat-screen displays showing psychadelic nonsense; his own face as he harangues Gordon with very facile logic about how he, Gordon, ought to go insane; and pictures of Gordon’s daughter naked and writhing in her own blood. Batman easily figures out where Joker and Gordon are. Gordon is not insane, just very sad, and determined that he and Batman should “show Joker our way works”—“bring him in by the book.” Batman pursues Joker through the funhouse (yawn). Batman catches the Joker. Batman tries to convince the Joker that he can help him if he wants to be helped. Joker tells Batman a mediocre joke and they laugh together.

Are you bored yet? The only thing that enlivens the very twistless story is the counterpoint of a possible creation story for the Joker, where he’s a loser stand-up artist who can’t get a gig, tries one night of crime to support his pregnant wife, etc. The creation story is a little more interesting than the rest of it, but it’s a little more set in stone, a little more definitive, then I’ve ever seen DC let anyone do for a Joker story. He’s SUPPOSED to be mysterious—an image of the madness that can be birthed without reason from man. Except for “he fell in a chemical vat”, there is no bottom line on this man.

The story lacks emotional punch where it needs it – the crippling of a major ongoing character, for chrissakes; Gordon finding the resolve not to snap in the face of this coughstupidcough sophisticated psychological torture – and, in fact, seems emotionally illogical. Gordon doesn’t ask Batman whether Babs is ALIVE when he’s rescued. The fiercely protective Batman, after never laughing at a single thing the Joker has ever said (I mean, that’s part of why Mr. J hates him!), laughs at a mediocre joke he tells after nearly killing Batgirl. Are these human beings? No, they aren’t. They’re mouthpieces for Moore’s shallow conceits – one bad day makes people insane, in different ways, and the world is so awful you just have to laugh – and the only thing they show any commitment to is debating those overblown theories.

On top of that, the story makes no LOGICAL sense, something I am more than happy to overlook in a comic book, provided something else – emotional punch or comedic value – fills the void. Who was the guy in the Joker suit in Arkham? Where did the Joker get the money to buy the amusement park, or, for that matter, to outfit it with vast flat-screen displays and deadly traps within a few days? Where did the Joker find so many sideshow freaks who like to hurt people? And finally, when did bondage midget minions (who lead a naked Gordon around by a leash) become part of Joker’s schtick? Joker is, Jack Nicholson aside, an asexual villain (please see Harley Quinn’s sexual frustration for details.) Stripping Babs for the pictures, while probably a humiliation for the character, is Alan Moore saying, “Ooh, I’m so BAD!” NOT anything the Joker would do.

In short, I do believe Alan Moore hates superhero comics. And as Lana said on Smallville yesterday, “If you hate your job so much, why don’t you just quit?”

Bottom line:
Pretentiously “meaningful” and pretentiously dark, not to mention painfully 80’s. Characterization shallow and perfunctory, story trite and unexciting. Pictures okay—a few very good Joker portraits. 2 out of 10

So, my dear husband greeted me last night with the sheepish expression of a man who has changed network providers without asking his wife. He has signed us up for speakeasy dsl at our new house, which shall give us twice the bandwidth and nifty low-ping features for Quaking and a shaking—however, it will not be up and running when we move in. In fact, we won’t have a network connexion, he estimates, for a week.

So does anyone have a static IP address they aren’t using and want to keep my site alive during that week? Otherwise, I shall be forced to go on hiatus and not blog during the newsful and doubtless hilarious process of moving in. Anyone? Anyone?

Life makes me like a kid in a candy store. When I stop baking up a storm and start sewing again, I spread out my patterns and stare in bewonderment at them—look at all the things I could do! And when I pause in my mad construction of Hallow’s Eve garb and look up treats to make for that happy day, the same madness takes me. Spiderweb cookies! Jack-o-lantern tarts! Pumpkin cookies! Fanciful treats of all sorts and sizes! Would that I could call in sick a’Friday and bake all the day long!

So just now I had to take several packages down to my friendly local FedEx drop box. The lovely world of the morning had slowly subsided into a frown, but no rain was in evidence as I plodded down the sidewalk. Imagine my surprise, then, when a large wet drop thumped into my cheek and ricocheted PLOP onto my shirt. There were no other drops, and so it was with a prophetic soul that I drew my shirt away from my collarbone to inspect it. Indeed, the god-benighted pigeons, whose filth bespatters the weary world, had fouled me with their excrement.

How I wished I had the mighty powers we touch in dreams and fantasies, that the Portland Police might have responded trepidatiously to a report that a madwoman was shooting every pigeon in Southwest with a glowing golden bow. I wanted to scream, and rail in tongues, and pelt the foul fowls with packages and business proposals bound for Eastern parts. However, I am not imbued with powers far beyond those of mortal ken, and am, I admit, concerned in some small way with not being arrested or suspected of violent lunatism. So I merely scowled, scrubbed my face with a coupon for Starbucks ice cream, and stumped off to the FedEx box.

Matthew, please make poultry tonight.

And in the autumn who will come, when ink tricks down the sharp-edged trees?
When life clings death and warmth to winter
who shall fly him out to sea?

I have no meaning art or sense—I only feel and feeling move. Words
my shards,
and dripping glue, hands mosaic more
than this let fall for you.

It’s a very odd time, just now. The impassioned pleas of my current employer convinced me to ask my employer-to-be for more time than the requisite two weeks. Using the fact that I am moving the weekend before, I squeezed out two more days. So here I am for two and a half weeks!

I’m sure it is a very common workplace situation, but it’s passing strange for me. You see, I have temped, which is pretty much Brrrrring! Can you be in Tigard in an hour to fill in at Such-and-So?, and my first permanent full-time position was here - where I was temping. The transition period was pretty much “Now your paycheck comes monthly from us instead of weekly from the temp agency.” So this “notice” period is rather bewildering. I’m excited to work at OHSU! Whenever I see OHSU (often, since I currently work on Macadam), its shuttles, publications, et cetera, I think, “Wow! I work there now! Umm, or will.” I have this oddly disjoint loyalty feeling. Especially during the “asking for more time” portion of events - I want to start my new job as soon as may be, OHSU wants me to start as soon as may be, but my current supervisor wants more time, and I still have feelings of loyalty and a sort of guilt towards her.

So I was watching Angel on DVD t’other day, and this line occurred - to my merriment, bien sûr -

CORDELIA: I’ll have you know that Pierce has a lot more than money. He has a home in Montecito, he has a Mercedes CLK-320 and a place in the hills with a lap pool.

Later on, of course, we see her date in his silver convertible. It was, indeed, a Mercedes CLK-320. And it occurred to me to wonder—from whence did this silvered chariot come? Are there rental car agencies in Hollywood just for studios? Good morning, Movie Motors, we now have a special on explosion insurance and fake blood cleaning… I’m sure that movies have expansive budgets that laugh the cost of a Mercedes to scorn. But what about all of Lex’s hot cars on Smallville? Or do the studios own them? That must be quite an expense, having a fleet of cars available for whenever a director wants the Kents to buy a shiny new truck (in Clark’s farmboy dreams), or Cordie to date a futures trader, or, for that matter, for Xander to try to be cool by getting a vintage car.

As well as killing two stoplights’ worth of sitting time, this question has intrigued me. Does anyone know?