Not Some Kind of Sage

The stars have exploded and I have more material.

At the end of Mass Effect 2, so maybe I can crank that review out next week.

Bought a significant amount of comics for the first time in several years. Hey, how often do you find a booth with everything 50% off AND a good selection? Rarely, and the last place I expected was in the swamp of Metropolis, Illinois. I got every Hellboy trade I didn't have except for one and a BPRD trade. Mondo Mignola.

The only thing I watched this week was Ichi the Killer. Well, I thought for a majority of the film that it was satire and absolutely brilliant, but then towards the end that wavered. There's some duality going on that reshaped what I was thinking. Enjoyable nevertheless. For sure: no one can do pain mixed with...sexual grime or something, quite like Asians.

In HIS 403 we looked at the aftermath of World War II.. Plenty of stuff in there about the Cold War not being a certainty until around 1948 and how Stalin and the other Allies went from a relative consensus to complete opposition. We also talked about De-Nazification and overall punishment towards collaborators, which was basically the Nuremberg Trials...and we're done, Hitler is still a BAMF. The political makeup mirrors the overall relations between the powers. Stalin is all about this Popular Front strategy...until the countries in the east are still so scared of Germany they're like, "Yes, please protect us Russia, communism is gold" and the countries in the west think Stalin sucks. Then it's Blockade time, but America shuts that down in a Berlin minute or a year, take your pick. Stalin wants time to recover, some cooperation, and a ton of territory everywhere. The West has some problems there and so it's time to party like it's 1949 in West Germany. Unlike consumer goods, Stalin wants his own Germany, so it's East Germany to the rescue soon enough. The people in the east get to watch the Social Democratic Party and German Communist party do the authoritarian fusion dance into the SED and we're set for approximately forty years of fun.

Upset central at WEC 47 this past Saturday. I thought people were underestimating Joseph Benavidez, especially with Torres coming off a brutal loss, but even I would've picked the mulleted Mexicano. Torres seemed docile on the feet and while he didn't take much damage on the mat he still got dominated. Jens Pulver may have had a badass walkout shirt, but that couldn't save him from the submission firestorm of Javier Vazquez. Pulver is a legend no matter how many fights he keeps losing but time passed him by long ago. It would've been great to see him get a win and just disappear, but that seems ever more unlikely. In the main event, Brian Bowles never really got anything going against Dominick Cruz, who has some of the most unorthodox striking I've seen. Bowles broke his hand with the first punch he threw, which certainly affected him. I'm assuming Benavidez will get the next shot at Cruz and the 135 belt, in what from here looks like a very interesting matchup between two young guys now at the top of the division.