I’m a huge fan of Randy Milholland’s Something Positive. It’s a comic that has a tendency to go just a bit over the line, and it’s often a bit crude, but the characterization is top notch.

Case in point, the recent “Holy Ghost Stories” storyline. Fred, Davan’s father, goes out on Halloween to visit a haunted house, only to discover it’s a Christian “Hell House”, run by a Christian group trying to scare people into accepting Christ. After a series of scenes in which these “Christians” attempt to frighten Fred, he finds himself at the end of the house, where they tell him he has to tell them that he’s accepted Christ as his Savior, or they won’t let him leave. Fred’s response? He sits down and refuses to move, which leads to encounters with others who get to the last room and refuse to leave and, eventually, the cops.

The storyline starts here, but while I certainly enjoyed the whole thing, I think that this is the only way that the storyline could’ve ended, and if you’re only going to read one of these strips, you should read that one.

See, Fred is a Christian. If that fact was one that had just been revealed for this storyline, it wouldn’t have had quite the impact (though the point about the self-righteousness that seems to be present in many Christians would have still been well made), but it’s something that we’ve known for a while, and it’s always colored Fred’s characterization.

Unrelated tidbit: I know I haven’t posted about Heroes yet. I wanted to rewatch it on the DVR I just got from the cable company before writing anything, and I haven’t found time yet tonight. Maybe tomorrow… or maybe I’ll just skip writing about it this week.

I’ve not played much of Ultimate Alliance yet, but I think I can explain, with a quick quote from Wikipedia, why it is a great game:

An IGN playtest featured a preview of various heroes’ alternate costumes, where Beta Ray Bill was confirmed as a costume for Thor, and that Scarlet Spider would be one of Spider-Man’s available costumes. In interviews with the developer, it was remarked that Spider-Man will also have the black Symbiote costume. It was also noted that all the characters will have at least four skins. Many of these costumes have been released on the VIP site.

Emphasis mine.

Excuse me while I go dig up a cheat code. (Really, I’m not wasting time unlocking that costume when I could be playing with it right now!)

[Update: Do not use cheat codes if you like the achievements on Xbox Live. For obvious reasons, using cheat codes disables your ability to earn achievements. For unobvious reasons, it is absolutely impossible to turn off a cheat code on Ultimate Alliance. I have deleted my save games, deleted my gamer profile, and done everything I could think of short of reformatting my Xbox 360 hard drive. The extra costumes I unlocked are still there, and I can't earn achievements.]

Reading through a recent post on this site, I noticed an example of something that really, really irritates me (probably a lot more than it should).  It was in the following quote:

I guess the best way to win an argument with your ex-girlfriend is to make it a subplot on your multimillion dollar television show and clearly paint you in the right and she in the wrong.

First off, how many people see anything wrong with this quote?  For those of you who don’t, let me help you out a little.  It should really read, “I guess the best way to win an argument with your ex-girlfriend is to make it a subplot on your multimillion dollar television show and clearly paint you in the right and HER in the wrong.”

One wouldn’t think that something that small would or should bother me that much.  However, this goes hand-in-hand with the usage of me and I.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone in a movie or on television pick the wrong one.  And in most instances, they choose I.  Even when it is not the right choice.  “Did you hear what happened between Bobby and I?”  “You can’t take that from she and I.”  I just sit there and cringe.

I believe the whole backlash against me started not too long ago.  I remember when the big grammatical mistake was using me in the subject of a sentence.  “Mark and me are leaving” instead of ”Mark and I are leaving.”  It was preached to use I.  Over and over, that’s all you heard.  And apparently, people were listening.  They just weren’t listening to the whole lesson.

Just in case you don’t believe me, I asked an english teacher to give me the english teacher version of why this is wrong.  Here’s what I got:

The objective case is used for direct objects, indirect objects, objects of prepositions, and objects of verbals.  Me, you, him, her, it, us, and them are the personal pronouns in the objective case.  In the sentence quoted, paint is the verb and the direct object would be her instead of she.  She is sometimes used incorrectly in the attempt to make the speaker sound more intelligent but instead does just the opposite.

Now I’m not saying that the original author of the quote in question was trying to sound intelligent, but in most cases I couldn’t agree more.  I’m not saying that I’m perfect either (although those of you that know me may find that hard to believe), but this is just one thing that really gets to me.  I just can’t help it that I react to it like fingernails being scratched down a chalkboard.

…but I’ll field a few of these questions for him.

First, the question from the post itself (quoted in its entirity only because I don’t quite know what could be left out):

Mr. President: Peter David from www.peterdavid.net. In the past you have repeatedly criticized “activist judges” who have been, in your opinion, playing fast and loose with the Constitution in order to further their own agendas. Yet you, who twice took an oath to protect the Constitution, signed into law a historic curtailing of habeas corpus that many are decrying as blatantly unconstitutional. Would it therefore be reasonable to accuse you of being an “activist president?”

PAD

The term “activist judges” is typically used to describe judges who, rather than simply make decisions on the cases in front of them, try to use the cases in front of them to actually write laws. This isn’t “playing fast and loose” with the Constitution, it’s a deliberate overstepping of the bounds of their jobs and into the purview of legislators. On the other hand, signing a bill into law is pretty much the center of the role of the President. If many are decrying the law as unconstitutional, they should take it to the courts, who will rule whether or not it violates the Constitution… that, not legislating from the bench, is their role.

Posted by: Aaron Thall at October 22, 2006 12:06 PM

How do you respond to accusations that you are the worst president in the entire history of the united states?

A follow up: There are rumors you resemble a chimpanzee in a suit. Your response?

Jimmy Carter.

It’s better than a mouse in a suit, right?

Posted by: KindKit at October 22, 2006 12:49 PM

Mr. President: Your predecessor, Bill Clinton, was impeached for lying about a consensual sexual relationship. Your Republican colleagues, at that time, said that a president who lied was unworthy of office. You lied about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, and in so doing led the country into a bloody and costly war that has made the U.S. less safe, not more. Isn’t it, therefore, your moral duty as a Republican to resign?

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Posted by: Aaron Thall at October 22, 2006 01:15 PM

Mr. President, Aaron Thall from the Reynoldsburg Gazette… Your policy of “staying the course” in Iraq is clear, but I was wondering if it extends to the soldiers on the ground walking directly into mine fields.

If that is the case, is there anything you wish to say to the families of soldiers kileld ina ction, or are you merely waiting for their extra lives to kick in so they can fight once again?

Every American, myself included, should have nothing but gratitude to the soldiers who fight for us, and we’re all saddened when one of these men dies in the line of duty. To the families of those soldiers who’ve paid the highest price, America offers her thanks and her sympathies, as well as the assurance that these men died doing something that needed to be done.

Seriously, there are so many ways that one could criticize this administration without resorting to lies and childish insults, I can’t understand why so many of the questions offered in Peter’s comments resort to these things. The few that don’t happen to be insulting or misleading are pretty simplistic.

Eric Burns, of Websnark, has a rather exhaustive look at the problems he has with Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. I enjoy Studio 60, but I can still see Eric’s side of a lot of what he has to say. Except for this part:

So. Matt Albie and Harriet Hayes are ex-lovers, driven apart because she’s a Christian who actually recorded a Christian album and promoted it on the 700 club, and he’s an agnostic Jew who thinks that Pat Robertson is evil and hypocritical. (Which she agrees with, but she still appeared on the show). Which would be a great point of romantic tension on the show, if we could ignore the fact that Aaron Sorkin used to go out with West Wing alumna Kristin Chenoweth, a self described liberal Christian comedian, television and broadway star who recorded an album of Christian music which she promoted on the 700 Club. I guess the best way to win an argument with your ex-girlfriend is to make it a subplot on your multimillion dollar television show and clearly paint you in the right and she in the wrong. Oh, wait, I don’t mean ‘best way to win an argument.’ I mean ‘most self-indulgent and moderately creepy way to perpetuate an argument.’ My mistake.

Sorry, but I can’t believe Eric’s watching the same show I am, because other than the fact that she gave him a bat that had another guy’s phone number on it, there’s absolutely no way that Harriet’s the one who’s in the wrong in the Matt/Harriet relationship. Maybe Sorkin means to portray it the way that Eric says, but if so, he’s failing. Miserably.

One quick note about tonight’s episode. When Tom’s dad blew up at him about the fact that, in the grand scheme of things, Tom’s job is pretty trivial compared to what his brother’s doing, I really expected that they were going to play it to make Tom’s dad look like an idiot, or, at least, a bad father. I was really pleased that they went the other way.