Super-Secret Pre-Valentine's Day Post!

I'm so excited, I just had to tell!

A while ago, my wife mentioned she really wanted this t-shirt:

But I did even better.  Because I love her SO much, I got her THIS:

 

Now who's the best husband ever?

Disney Acquires Marvel - Steamboat Willie Blasts Peg-Leg Pete with Plasma Burst

BREAKING NEWS!!!

From the Hollywood Reporter:

Disney to buy Marvel for $4 billion
Stock and cash deal to combine character library

By Georg Szalai and Paul Bond
Aug 31, 2009, 09:39 AM ET
Updated: Aug 31, 2009, 11:00 AM ET

Disney is purchasing Marvel for $4 billion. Disney said Monday that it will acquire the
superhero factory in a cash and stock transaction that values each share of Marvel at
$50, a 29% premium to where the stock closed Friday. Disney will discuss the proposed transaction [edit] later Monday, when the companies
will detail the fallout -- if any -- the merger will have on several films that Marvel's own
studio has in the works based on characters such as Iron Man, Thor and Captain
America. "We'll take a look and see, but the bottom line is we like what they've been doing so far,"
Disney studio head Richard Cook told The Hollywood Reporter. Disney acquires ownership of 5,000 Marvel characters to be overseen by Marvel CEO
Ike Perlmutter, who is charged with cherry-picking when and where they'll show up
within Disney's vast empire, including online and in video games. "Disney is the perfect home for Marvel's fantastic library of characters given its proven
ability to expand content creation and licensing businesses," Perlmutter said. "This is
an unparalleled opportunity for Marvel to build upon its vibrant brand and character
properties by accessing Disney's tremendous global organization and infrastructure
around the world."

From the CBR News Team:

When asked if there was potential for cross-polination between Marvel and Pixar, Disney said that Pixar’s John Lasseter has met with key Marvel creative executives recently and the group got “pretty excited, very fast.” Disney will look at all opportunities and thinks there are some exciting product that could come from this sort of partnership.

JoeQuesada(Marvel Comics Editor-In-Chief): G' morning, Marvel U! Welcome to this moment in history. Everyone relax, this is incredible news and all is well in the Marvel U.

While the above may be true from Joe's point of view, some changes have already been spotted in the Marvel Universe. . .

• The upcoming Amazing Spider-Man storyline begins Peter Parker's new relationship with a young singer from Tenessee whom he suspects of also leading a double life and a creepy-close relationship with her dad.
• The Wings on Thor's helmet are now made with circles of black felt.
• Wolverine has been seen acting a little Goofy.
• Fantastic Four now comprised of Huey, Dewey, Louie, and The Thing.
• Magneto is now spelled "Mag-Neat-O!"
• The new "Beauty and the Hulk" musical is prepping for Broadway. Hulk sings different genres of song depending on what color he is in the scene.
• The Mighty Avengers have replaced The Wasp with provisional member Tinkerbell.
• Iron Man has already begun his new gig as permanent host of Tomorrowland.
• Don't be surprised to find Ghost Rider sitting next to you on the Haunted Mansion ride, or when you see Gambit dealing Three-Card Monte in New Orleans Square.
• Daredevil now patrols Heck's Kitchen.
• Captain America Movie (The First Avenger) casting news: Zac Efron as Cap, Ashley Tisdale as his SHIELD secret-agent girlfriend, Agent 13.

• Ka-Zar and Zabu are evicted from the Savage Land and replaced by Mowgli and Bagheera. Meeting Shanna the She-Devil causes a strange mutation in Mowgli's loincloth.
• The Matterhorn now sports one howling Sasquatch and five Alpha Flight corpses.
• Suddenly, nobody can understand a damn thing said by Howard the Duck.

More to come soon, I'm sure, from the House of Mouse Ideas.

--Ian

*** A 6:21 PM update (8/31) because it was too good to not post. From Twitter: @craigmcnamara posts about Ant-Man in the It's a Small World ride;

@KevinBrettauer: Hulk Is Happiest One There Is! ;

@theblairbutler: Finding Namor.;

@Ursieb: a miscommunication leads to Galactus eating Pluto

*** That's all for this update.

I Miss The Person with the Cooking Skills

I am tired and cranky this morning, and there is no coffee. There is a coffeemaker, and I suspect the kitchen contains some of the powdery brown substance that smells like coffee, but alas, there is no coffee made.

This makes me sad. I have already checked the coffeemaker twice this morning, just to make sure it is as empty as it was yesterday when I poured the last half-cup from it into my airplane travel mug. It is still just that empty.

I can hear you. I hear you saying or thinking, "Well, Dipsh*t, sounds like it's time for you to get off your behind and make some coffee!" and if the world worked the way it ought to, I would.

But here's the thing: I don't like to drink bad coffee, therefore I do not participate in making the coffee. I regard coffee-making the same way I regard car repair or major surgery: If I want my brakes to function or my spleen to continue creating my fiery-hot anger (or whatever spleens do), then I let somebody qualified do the brake-repairing or spleen-surgery. Likewise, if I want to drink coffee that is drinkable, I have to wait for someone to make it for me.

I married a person just for this purpose. I remember the day in college when I decided to marry her. She walked into my class with a travel mug of coffee that smelled really enjoyable, and she proceeded to enjoy it with a relish I could only generate by hooking up with Teri Hatcher and Carre Otis at the same time (um, this was in 1991). I thought to myself, "Man, would I like to be that mug of coffee", and then I thought, "And also to drink some. Of the coffee. Before I become the mug of coffee," and then I thought, "Now I am confused and horny."

Anyway, I conned her into marrying me, and one of the very first items we picked out together when doing the bridal registry thing at Service Merchandise was . . . wait for it . . . an answering machine! And right afterward, the coffeemaker - the very same coffeemaker that sits empty right now in the kitchen, mockingly empty while I type.

The problem is that my coffee-making wife has gone to her parents' house in Upper Retiredsville, and she will not be back for a few days. And there is no coffee made.

I am no idiot. I am perfectly capable of following directions. But that doesn't help me in my cooking endeavors. I can follow coffee-making instructions to the letter, and it comes out as sock-strained dog water swill coffee every time. It's my own special brand of magic. I apply this magic to cooking and baking equally.

Someday I will be rich and famous because of this magic talent. When some cable channel (Food Network or Home and Garden or Animated Chatty People Who Cook and Decorate) holds an Improbably Bad Food Cookoff, I will be the champion, and then people will hire me to come to their event and cook a whole lot of embarrassingly inept food for their guests ("Dinner Inedible?").

Here's how it will work: each contestant will have a proctor assigned to them, to make sure we follow the recipe exactly. Which I always do. The contestants will have a possible point total of 500 for this part, and I will have a perfect score, because I always do exactly what the cookbook tells me to do.

Actual Directions:

Chop chicken and press through a sieve. Soak bread in milk. Press through sieve. Add melted butter, egg slightly beaten, chicken, seasonings and milk to make of the consistency to shape. Shape between two spoons and poach in boiling salted water. Stir until cool, pour into a mold wet with cold water and set in a cool place. Serve plain or with cold cream sauce or plain sweet cream.

Then the contestants will have their mess judged by a panel of Foodie-Channel judges who have pissed somebody off but still want a paycheck. They will award up to 500 points for all the usual categories: Unrecognizability, Forbidding Odor, Surprisingly Unwelcome Texture, Carbon Infiltration, Gag-Reflex Test, Aftertaste/Afterburn, and Gastric Unfriendliness.

I will be the first contestant to walk away with a perfect score of 1000, because this is what always happens when I cook something: 1) I do everything right; 2) my special magic talent renders the food inedible; 3) somebody else cooks something or (3.5) we send out for pizza.

I have already eaten all the available crackers and cereal in the pantry. I miss my wife. And I am still sleepy.

40% more OUTRAGE!

I got SO excited this morning! My wife bought

new mustard (in a highbrow, disgusted fashion she relented to bring home

normal mustard because the kids and I were sick to death of the Spicy Brown

Low Fat Great In Recipes Made with the Finest

Mustard Seed and Natural Ingredients Mustard), and I saw that in addition to the already fantastic no-mess-

sphincter applicator, our new mustard was now 40% MORE FRENCH!!!

Now, I took beginning French in High School (and then again in college), and I was totally looking forward to having a little multicultural exchange with my condiment while I made my lunch sandwich.

Then, with the first squeeze of the bright jaune ("yellow" for you regular Americans) bottle, I got . . .

. . . a whole lot of regular mustard experience. No "Bonjour!", no "Comment Allez-Vous", not even a rude noise (because of the no-mess sphincter).

Huh.

The bottle clearly says it is 40% more French!

I looked on the back, and found that my allegedly-multicultural mustard is made in Parsippany, NJ.

A quick search revealed

that Parsippany, NJ is located on the East Coast of the United States, to the left of Massachusetts but to the right of Ohio.

And it struck me - I was being duped! This New Jersey company had no intention of being any more multicultural than they already were! This whole thing was just a MATH SCAM!

40% more of zero percent French equals ZERO PERCENT FRENCH!

It's this kind of merde that makes me wish our truth in advertising laws had more teeth.

How Smart Should My Smartphone Be?

"(8:12 am) Testing TechNet's new Smart Facebook Mobile Updater!

Hey, Y'all!

Keep an eye out for some excellent strange status updates today - I'm trying out a gadget for TechNet that is supposed to update Facebook for me, based on what my brain activity is like!

I've got a tiny electrode glued to my skin right behind my ear, and it's connected to a bluetooth earpiece that I've paired to my phone (It's actually kind of cool, you can't even see the electrode once I'm wearing the earpiece - the challenge will be keeping it on at work, where it's not exactly standard equipment).  There's a piece of software installed on my phone that will (allegedly) tell everybody what my brain is doing.

If everything goes as planned, y'all should see some status updates like "Ian's hippocampus is being hammered by cortisol" while I'm fighting with folks at work, or "Ian's homeostasis has been restored" when I get back home to Casa de Reddoch.

Tell you all about it tonight!

--Ian"