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Last week, American media types of all sorts swooned over the tale of an Arkansas couple who had just given birth to their 16th child.
Mr. and Mrs. Duggar—Jim Bob and Michelle to their friends—told
reporters that they were looking forward to having a 17th child someday.
Now I will keep my comments brief on this because I certainly don’t
want to come across as being...mean-spirited. But was I the only
guy to read this story and suspect a hint of religious zealotry going
on? I found their family website via a quick Google search
(you’ll have to Google it yourselves, dear friends. I sure as
hell ain’t linking to this one...) and my suspicions were confirmed
pretty quickly. Go ahead and have a look. Weird, wild
stuff...
You can learn a lot about somebody by checking out what they link to
from their site. The Duggar family's site includes links to
cornerstones of the religious right, such as “Focus on the Family” and
“Family Research Council,” as well as a site called “Creation Science
Evangelism” (Incidentally, if you visit the “Creation Science
Evangelism” site, you’ll find that they are promoting something called “Defeat Darwin Month.”
I didn’t read the specifics about this, but I am willing to bet that it
involves digging up Darwin’s corpse and stoning it or something like
that.) All in all, my favorite link on the Duggar Family’s site
is for something called “WholesomeWear Modest Swimwear.”
According to the folks at WholesomeWear, “(t)he need for modesty in
swimwear is greatest and the supply is almost non-existant
(sic).” You have to admit that it is more than a little ironic
that the Duggars include this link on their site, isn’t it? I
mean, if Mrs. D. actually wore WholesomeWear clothing in the first
place, then chances are that she wouldn’t have ended up with 16 kids!
Spend
some time in your local comic book shops and you’ll probably understand
why the Simpsons character called “Comic Book Guy” is such a dead-on
satire of comic-fandom snobbery.
Last week, I finally took my coveted copy of The Incredible Hulk #181
to a local comic shop to get an official “grading” and to see if I
could work out a deal to sell the book to the shop’s proprietor.
I had talked on the phone with the fellow a few weeks prior and he
indicated he was interested in seeing and possibly purchasing my copy
of the book because it is an issue that is always in high demand.
The current Overstreet Price Guide
value for a mint condition copy is close to (if not over)
$1,000. (I don’t know for sure what the current value is because
Overstreet guides are $25 each and I don’t feel like shelling out the
cash for an up-to-date copy. So I have to be content with my 1999
edition for now). Anyway, I have always though my copy Hulk 181
was in respectable condition, so I was optimistic about its value
and I had been thinking on whether or not to part with it for some
time. Well, the comic dude made my decision pretty easy when he
graded it at F/VF and offered me a meager $150 cash ($200) in
trade. Meh. I wasn’t really too crazy about selling it
anyway.
The same day, I went to another comic shop to see if I could score a
cheaper price guide than the current Overstreet guide that I
mentioned above (Give me a little credit...at least I am persistent in
my search for a good deal...). I was a little surprised and
disappointed to find that the comic book magazine The Wizard
doesn’t publish an extensive monthly price guide any longer. I
had to get one of the shop's employees explain this to me. I guess
I am not quite as hip and “with-it” as I thought. On the way out
of the shop, I heard a lady asking one of the shop employees where she
could find some Walt Disney comics (Donald Duck, Goofy, etc.) She
explained that she wanted to mail some Disney comics to a young
relative in another country that was learning how to read. The
employee repeated her question quite loudly to his two coworkers (don’t
ask me why it takes 3 guys to operate a comic shop) and they all
started laughing at her. Maybe they were laughing out of
nervousness because they hadn’t interacted with an actual woman in a really
long time. Smooth, guys...Real smooth.
Finally, the other night I was back at the comic shop and I was trying
to convince my older daughter how cool it would be if she let me get a Battlestar Galactica
lunch box for her to take to school. One of the guys in the shop
(he wasn’t an employee, he was a friend of one of the employees and he
had apparently stopped in to hang out for a while) rolled his eyes at
me when he thought I wasn’t looking. Either he thought I was a really big geek or else he thought that I wasn't geeky enough to own a Battlestar Galactica lunch box. Either way, the guy was a jerk.
On a much more positive note, I recently picked up the first issue of DC's Infinite Crisis. I didn’t like everything about it, but the final page makes up for any shortcomings. Awesome, awesome, awesome.
Last week, I finally took my coveted copy of 
The same day, I went to another comic shop to see if I could score a
cheaper price guide than the current Overstreet guide that I
mentioned above (Give me a little credit...at least I am persistent in
my search for a good deal...). I was a little surprised and
disappointed to find that the comic book magazine 
