????

I’m not a particularly smart person, and I’ll be the first to admit. A lot of that comes from laziness, I could probably understand a lot more things I actually tried to. But, still, even when I do try, there are a few things that just…boggle me.

List time.

Things I Just Don’t Get

~DC Comic’s Crisis of Infinite Earths~

If you’re a simple guy like me and you look at the above image, you probably think something along the lines of WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON. As knowledgeable as I (would like you to think) am with comics, I couldn’t tell you. For the life of me, I can’t wrap around it.

There’s this guy named Anti-Monitor who…like…wanted to rule all the realities and stuff. And there were more than one Superman, and…like…he came to Earth-One, and Earth-Two…and there’s different versions of all the heroes…and…gah.

It’s not hard to find information about the Crisis, but every time I look it up, it’s this huge block of text with a dozen links that reads like a school report. If memory serves, they did all this to bring the different universes together, since they had some major continuity issues with the storylines and…eh, whatever. It’s better off forgotten…except, we can’t forget it, because they just had to bring it up again with the recent Infinite Crisis and the One Year Later stuff, where they’re skipping ahead a year in the timeline, because…eh, I won’t get into it.

At least Power Girl came out of all that mess (I think)

I like Power Girl.

~The Attraction to Angelina Jolie~

She can’t act worth a damn, and she never could. Tomb Raider? Alexander? That crap-piece with Brad Pitt? I can’t even remember her in a role where she did not suck out loud. She has no talent. None. And I could understand that looks have more to do with movies than talent these days, but damn, she’s not even hot. People make fun of me and my love of manly women, but damn, Jolie looks like some one hit her upside the head with a blunt object. Repeatedly. Hard. I see her mug everywhere; I can’t turn on the TV without seeing her adopt (some might say ‘kidnap’) some kid from some third-world country, I can’t go to Food Lion without seeing a dozen magazines tell me about how she’s with Brad Pitt/cheating on Brad Pitt/hitting Brad Pitt. Who cares?

~Genj, Sportsman, and Boob’s taste in music~

I don’t know, I just can’t get down with the indie stuff. I’ve tried. Listened to that Death Cab for Cutie stuff, Artic Monkey or whatever, a couple other bands with weird names. It just feels…fluffy to me. VM sends me some metal every once in a while, and some of it’s good, but most of the time…well, to me, it sounds like a bunch of guys randomly hitting stuff and screaming, which I get plenty of at college. And weird, disturbed lyrics. I’ll listen to the stuff, but I feel the need to listen to something comprehensible and good immediately after (usually Johnny Cash)

~African American Representation in Video Games~

I’ll admit, given the way my parents raised me, I might have the tendency to blow this out of proportion. But when I see games like 187: Ride of Die and 50 Cent: Bulletproof, and when I see characters like Barrett (above) who are just blatant stereotypes, I can’t help but feel…eh. I realize there are demographics and things that company’s have to appeal to, but is it too much to ask for a black guy in a videogame who doesn’t:

A) use dancing as a fighting style
B) play basketball
C) belong to a gang
D) carry semi-automatic weapons
E) have a horrible grasp of the English language.

Yeah, I play the race card; it’s not like the argument holds any less water than the stereotypical women debate. Though, being fair, there have been some notable black characters recently: Raven (Tekken 5) and Zasalamel (Soul Calibur III), so I’ll at least give Namco some credit. But not much.