Friday
End of the week.
Not much to report about the day.

Coffee was a relatively small affair tonight. I also discovered something: I don’t really care how many people show up, I simply enjoy passing the evening with friends. The randomness of the conversation apparently doesn’t depend on how many people show up, either.

News
Day to Day: Slate’s Big Idea: Who Should Be Considered a Journalist?
Day to Day: Bruce Willis: A Life in Film and a New Movie
All Things Considered: Genital Mutilation Can Be Grounds for Asylum Status
All Things Considered: Photographers Help Foster Children Find Homes

Random Access

Midday light, the earth jump started
lying in a bed
No burning arms, no shivering back
there’s nothing in my head
The world revolves so fast around
don’t let it in the way
The gift that morning light has brought me is
just another day
     “Judas” by emmet swimming (from “Dark When the Snow Falls”)

I found a review of the collected Marvel miniseries, Powerless, on Broken Frontier earlier. I found the following passage particularly interesting and thought that it made a good follow-up to my post about “Capes” a couple of weeks back:

Powerless asks us if heroes would still be heroes without their powers. In this imagined scenario, Peter Parker is a reluctant hero of sorts, while Logan is sadly wasted. But Matt Murdock? His story demonstrates why people love heroes in the first place. We all want to believe that there are people out there who will risk every imaginable consequence to do what is morally right. Even as a superhero, Daredevil has never been very powerful. He’s a handicapped gymnast who knows martial arts. But when you strip him of even those meager skills, when you reduce him to being just another attorney, a blind one at that, you realize that the idea of anyone actually being powerless is ludicrous.

We are all powerful, and super talents and extraordinary gifts have nothing to do with it. We can make choices, we can stand up for what we believe in, we can fight far beyond the point when others would admit defeat. We don’t need powers to accomplish miracles, and we don’t need costumes to inspire hope.

Can you imagine how… “powerful”… people could/would be if only they realized this in their everyday lives? Leaping over tall buildings in a single bound? No problem. Change the course of mighty rivers? Sure… and without breaking a sweat. Bending steel in their bare hands? Do you want that in a pretzel or just a U-shape?

Take the real-world example of Ray Charles. He started going blind at the age of five. Despite this, he became one of the most prolific musicians… no, “entertainers,” of our time. He didn’t let his blindness stop him from doing things that most of us take for granted as sighted people:

  • He learned to write music in Braille.
  • He learned to play piano, clarinet, sax, trumpet and organ.
  • He learned to ride a bike at 10.
  • He later learned to ride a motorcycle, drive a car and fly a plane.
  • He was an avid chess and poker player.

Yes, he had his shortcomings (his storied drug addictions and womanizing come to mind); he was human, after all. But, he didn’t let his blindness cripple him. He found a way to rise above and beyond it. And in the final analysis, I would say that the world was made a little more rich with him in it.

Unfortunately, too many people get it in their heads that there’s nothing that they can do to pull themselves out of the mire, real or imagined. And so, they just waste away until all that’s left is a shell of the person that we once thought we knew so well. Or they retreat into a cave and watch the rest of the world pass them by and wonder why there doesn’t seem to be a place for them in it.

There is. All that they have to do is step outside.

And fly.

Stray Toasters

  • While we were eating dinner, a song by Mariah Carey came on the music system. I admitted – before God, country and a tableful of people – that I own one of her CDs. I got a couple of amused (and maybe even “slightly pitying”) looks. *shrug* I’m not embarrassed by it. Nor of any other CD in my collection. Not even the M.C. Hammer’s Greatest Hits one.
  • As if hearing the Borg on your comlink wasn’t bad enough, I think that this would be enough to make even Captain James T. Kirk have to change his scivvies.
  • Having mentioned Bruce Willis above, I’ll use this space to point you in the direction of
  • : I know that you’re still a bit puckered about the upcoming Loonatics cartoon. Would this help ease the pain any?
  • “What makes you think I give a shit about your needs as a consumer?”

  • pointed out Hurra Torpedo’s video, with their rendition of Total Eclipse of the Heart. It’s one of the most bizarre, yet oddly captivating, things that I’ve seen in a while. : I am not sure whether this video counts as your superpower at work, but consider yourself duly warned. (Broadband recommended.)

Namaste.