But if all he’s destroying is the power core, shouldn’t the immediate result just have been all the lights in the Death Star turning off?  Followed by the slow, torturous suffocation of all crew members over the next few hours.  And, presuming the core was based on some sort of nuclear power, all the air and metal surfaces on the ship becoming radioactive over the next few days/weeks.

Man, Luke was a dick.

Trope of the Day: This Index Has Balls – completely safe for work. This page… well, it’s funny in the reversed expectation way.

The title characters – Joe and Sam – start as kids and grow into major figures during the birth of the comics industry.  If I remember right, they’re cousins – but don’t hold me to that.  So far as I know, the characters are imagined.  The settings, however, are exceptionally real.

I’m trying to think what a list of keywords would include, and it’s pretty eclectic – comics, Jewish Americans, World War II, escape artist, golem, homosexuality (and, incidentally, this book is a better treatment on “homosexuality in an intolerant culture” than the movie Brokeback Mountain).

I enjoyed reading Kavalier & Clay, and the fact that it keeps coming back to me speaks well for it.  If you’re interested in the creative process or comics, or just good literature, you might want to check it out.

Trope of the Day: Iron Woobie – you know the guy you feel sorry for because life keeps dumping on them, but they nobly press on?  This is that guy.

Shocking, I know. Fortunately, nothing much came of it.

But I realized that in high school, when I read comics in the newspaper that were selected by an editor (probably a middle-aged dude trying desperately not to lose his audience of Midwestern retirees – how’s that working out for you, old media?), I read maybe a half-dozen strips every morning.  The rest just weren’t funny or interesting.  Some of the ones I read weren’t funny or interesting most of the time, but once every two or three weeks they came through.

Now, using Google reader and a handful of bookmarks and acting as my own gatekeeper, I read a few dozen strips every day.  Well, not on weekends, but so it goes.  And these strips are great – the ratio of funny/interesting to not has been reversed since the days when I was captive to the newspaper.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is, I love the Internet.

Trope of the Day: Badass Bookworm – you’ve got to love a trope that includes both Giles from Buffy and Dexter Morgan.

TiMER addresses both of these questions well, along with the implications of living in a world where these timers are as common as iPods (and, in a nice touch, sold in a very Apple Store environment).  It made me think about what I believe about soul mates, true love, destiny, and the like.

I’ve said in the past, and thought again today, that “I believe in true love for other people, just not for me.”  I believe that everyone has soul mates, but that this idea can and should exist separately from the idea of love (not to say that your lover shouldn’t be your soul mate, but that your soul mate doesn’t have to be your lover).  I told someone as recently as last week that when I begin to be interested in a girl, I play through the relationship in my mind, all the way through to things turning sour and the break up (I’ve been told this is a terrible mindset; it probably is, and it probably has something to do with why I don’t put much effort into getting into a relationship).

I believe that not all relationships end, that many turn into marriages that last till death.  I see examples of this in my immediate and extended family, and in several friends’ relationships.  I also see that at least half of all American marriages end in divorce, and way more than half of dating relationships end in break ups.  I’m not sure whether it’s cynicism or pessimism or something else, but for the past few years I’ve had trouble believing that I’ll ever find true love.

Which is probably why I haven’t.  If you don’t think something’s there, you don’t put much effort into looking for it, do you?

Anyways, go watch TiMER.  And then ask yourself questions about soul mates, one true love, and whether it’s good to know (or think you know) your destiny.

Trope of the Day: Flynning – classic swashbuckling action.