Oh yes.... blogging... the ancient art of self-righteous, pseudo-intellectual babbling through the medium of the Internet... Before the invention of the Internet they used to have to attach their written nonsense to carrier foxes and such to spread their tripe about, scurrying the foxes throughout their local villages with their anecdotes attached... Though many a child contracted rabies from a rabid fox, many a laugh was shared amongst the people... these days it's as easy as me logging in and beginning writing. I hit "send" and the little man in the Internet runs really fast delivering it to all you good people....
I've recently begun watching the t.v. series 24, featuring a slightly pot-bellied, middle aged man with girl arms and a peculiar haircut by the name of Jack Bauer aka Kiefer Sutherland (the actor, not the haircut). He runs about fly-kicking "prime-of-their-lives" 22-30 year old bad guys and saving the world in 22 hours and 50 minutes (he stops for ad breaks just like the rest of us). Whilst I believe it is fairly far-fetched to see such an average man doing un-average feats, I still love it somewhat. I love all things action and adventure, badass heroes running around saving the day, but I particularly love superheroes.
Superheroes are where it's at. Caped crusaders such as Batman, Wolverine, Spiderman and The Phantom have all captured my imagine since I was a kid. Though I wish I had've dressed up more as Batman, I at least had the sense to dress up as Indiana Jones, Peter Pan or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles because I was so enamoured with heroes (as shown below).
I haven't included Superman as I do believe the guy is a hack... Don't get me started on this guy! His disguise is a pair of glasses? Not even one of those pairs with the nose and the plastic mustache? He's got it around the wrong way as well... Keep the glasses off in his regular job as a newspaper columnist, attract the women and have them swooning (including Lois Lane) where you can actually act on being awesomely muscular and attractive, then when you're fighting crime stick on the plastic kids outfit as your disguise and when criminals see him, they're distracted, they laugh, then BOOM he just melts their faces with his x-ray/supersonic "Cyclops-style" laser eyes. It'd be hilarious to see and a much more layered and deep story where he fights crime because he's self conscious about his outfit/dress sense (which he should be anyway because he wears his red underwear on the outside of his blue tights) and it's mainly bad guys and teenage girls who tease him, resulting in melted faces or just a good slapping for the bad guys.
Anyway, I recently helped out at my church's holiday program and the theme surrounding the week was in fact "superheroes". This excited me to no end as I got to lead a year 6/7 boys group, all of which were humongous nerds and loved superheroes as well. It was a nerd-fest as we all gathered around and talked about our superheroes, who we loved the most etc. But it made me realise how extremely serious I took my love of all things superhero. I wasn't about to get "out-knowledged" by an 11 or 12 year old kid about Spiderman! No way. I was ready to take one of them down if they begun bad mouthing Batman. A quick jab to the ribs to a 4 foot tall, prepubescent boy was exactly what I was prepared to dish out if he even said that Ben 10 could beat Wolverine in fisticuffs. "What have I become?" was the question I asked myself on several occasions during those few days and even now when it comes to how seriously I take my superheroes. Many of you would probably argue that I haven't "become" anything and had this insane nerdiness inside me the whole time.
Basically I want to BE a superhero. For those of you who don't know I had surgery on my left knee again, for the second time in a year two weeks ago and if I had the powers of Wolverine I would be healed from surgery by now and running around dicing up bad guys with my blades. If I was Batman even, at least I'd have the technology to be able to do things other than lie in bed all day watching episodes of 24 and blogging about superheroes.
Alas I am not. I have not been bitten by a radioactive spider or even had someone push me into a train heading to Hogwarts to take up my wizardry apprenticeship that, whilst it only paid $6.50 an hour (the standard rate for trade apprentices I think), would still be bringing in some income. I could fix plumbing, along with my knee in a single demonic curse just like that pagan Harry Potter.
I could do so much with superhero powers, but unluckily I'm just me, lying in bed enjoying watching The Dark Knight yet again for about the 20th time and hoping that one day I will either grow up, or develop superhero powers. The latter being the most likely thing to occur out of the two.
Blog-guy out.
