Alas! Edward Norton

Apparently, at some point in the past, Marvel figured out that they could get more mileage (money) from their fan base by recombining existing superheroes into a superhero gang. Thus did Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, and some other incidental characters included for franchise convenience, combine forces to become The Avengers in 1963. I am not a comic book aficionado, so now I willfully elide and ignore the vast, rich intervening history of Marvel fandom and the Avengers. And now, nearly fifty years later, this sad and wrung-out merchandising ploy is being resurrected as a live-action film by the unimaginative executives of today.

Thus do we arrive at The Avengers movie.

A universe in which the extremely scientific and engineering-centric Tony Stark coincides with the Norse god Thor who has magical hammer powers makes no meaningful, consistent sense. (Mjöllnir!) I continuously wondered throughout this trailer whether the super-science field would cancel the super-mythological field and render them both as pitifully over-muscled, emotionally immature men. Shouting at each other in a giant crater of their own inability to come to terms with life.

All this absurdity could be overlooked, but for one fact: Edward Norton is no longer the Hulk. I am appalled and disappointed; I enjoyed [mocking] Edward Norton-as-the-Hulk's origin movie, and Edward Norton is a favorite of mine. Now there's some other guy playing the Hulk, and he is frankly much less Edward-Norton-ish than I'd prefer.


This post's theme word is snite, "to blow your nose." I snite at you, you so-called Arthur King, you and all your silly reboots of franchise movies!

A proper leap day

Today is February 29, leap day. Blogs, newspapers, commenters, and people all across this calendrically-unified planet have been blathering all day about how today is "extra." Sure, this year will have 366 days, but today was not particularly extra -- it is a Thursday, preceded by a Wednesday and followed by a Friday. All this leap day meant to me was that, in January, all the events I anticipate (birthdays, thanksgiving, Christmas) were one day further away than usual.

I propose that leap day should be an extra-calendrical event. Yesterday was Wednesday, February 28, and tomorrow would be Thursday, March 1. Leap day would simply be inserted between, a truly additional day.


This post's theme word is sniglet, "any word that doesn't appear in the dictionary, but should." Leap day is a reverse-sniglet of the calendar: it does appear, but shouldn't.