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Being scared is when you imagine that a shadow passes by the other side of the shower curtain, after watching a re-run of Psycho – but then again, I can scare myself pretty good just by stepping out of the shower and catching a glimpse in the mirror. |
Rules can be scary. It occurred to me that something was hauntingly wrong when I heard a news story about a first grader who was suspended for 45 days for bringing his new nifty boy scout knife to grade school. |
Apparently, he just received the new gadget that also serves as a spoon and fork. All he wanted to do was eat lunch with his new utensil. A 45-day suspension – get real. |
He’s a first grader and a Boy Scout and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t planning on taking revenge on the world, at least not until after he had his afternoon nap. |
Being sick is scary. Having the flu is serious business but scaring everyone into hibernation is just plain ole’ wicked. |
I want to avoid germs just like the next guy, but if I can’t feel safe breathing the air around me while picking up a gallon of milk, then I probably should just buy a cow. The real monster here could be called the media who is trying to frighten us by giving out too much information, too often. |
Clothing can be scary. I’m far from being a fashion queen or even close to being trendy, but it’s kinda creepy to see people who insist on wearing clothes that don’t come close to fitting. |
I suggest that if you can’t find a belt to hold up your jeans, try using a pair of suspenders. |
No one wants or needs to see decorative boxer shorts and when one of your hands is needed to hold up the pants, it’s worrisome what may happen if you were attacked by bats and had to let go. |
Not believing in Santa Claus is scary. |
When the jolly old man quit delivering presents it meant that for the next two months, the most wonderful time of the year, is turned into days of worry – who to buy for, what to buy and most importantly, how to buy gifts that no one really needs or wants. |
Driving a car can be scary – especially if accidentally cut in front of someone on the highway and it causes them to go wacko and turn into a vampire, looking for blood. |
Pulling into a drive-thru car wash and not being able to get your tires lined up correctly so the red light will come on and say “stop” is scary. Backing up and then pulling back in 10 times before the nice man comes over to direct me can be very spooky. |
Happy Halloween and good luck avoiding the monsters because I found out that their favorite kind of bean – is a human being. |
Liverpool are grateful for small mercies these days. Their players may crave the brighter lights of the Champions League rather than the second round of the Uefa Cup as here but, in the context of mediocre domestic form, they will surely take European progress even as unconvincing as this any way they can. |
The Romanians, pesky and impressive opponents, were dismissed with more huff and puff than panache last night but they were at least defeated and Liverpool earned their place in the third round. |
"This win means we will be in Europe in February," said the Liverpool manager Gérard Houllier. By then his side's realistic ambitions from a season that has stalled early will be clearer. |
That this second leg ended in excruciating tension - and with Michael Owen hobbling away with a thigh strain that will need a scan this morning - did little for the locals' own stalled hopes and frayed nerves. |
Steaua had cause to feel aggrieved in departing the competition, their endeavour wrecked four minutes after the interval as the irrepressible Steven Gerrard burst to the byline to put over a cross that was deflected kindly for Harry Kewell, leaping above Pompiliu Stoica, to head down and into the far corner. |
Prior to that the visitors had been the slicker and more adventurous side, as the first-leg 1-1 draw on a mud patch in Bucharest demanded. They might have led within three minutes when Claudiu Raducanu, a nuisance throughout, wriggled on to Falemi Nana's pass while jaws dropped in the Liverpool defence. The striker's l... |
Marian Aliuta's shot, scuttling wide of the far post, prompted further rumbling discontent among the home partisans. |
"We made mistakes at times but the team worked for each other," stressed Houllier afterwards. "You could feel the sense of togetherness and the desire to keep the run in Europe going. We had a gutsy performance over there, here we had a disciplined display." |
It came not least from the stewards. Last night, for the first time, discontent in the current regime's perceived under-achievement spilled visibly on to the terraces. The banner - "Not good enough LFC: time to go Houllier" draped in the Anfield Road end - was snatched down by officials and the offenders harshly thrown... |
Disillusion was justifiable at times. Liverpool's play was initially over-intricate in areas of the pitch best avoided altogether, their attacking threat too sporadic for comfort even if it suggested reward. Gerrard skipped on to Kewell's free-kick only to head straight at a grateful Vasili Khamutovski. Owen, making on... |
Gerrard promptly skidded a 30-yard free-kick towards the corner for Khamutovski to claim, with Owen prodding wide and then into the side-netting when he might have expected to score. That profligacy briefly threatened to derail Scouse progress as Raducanu, Florentin Dumitru and Laurentiu Dinita all spurned chances to f... |
"It could have been more comfortable but, over the two games, we deserved to win" was Houllier's summing up. "The early rounds of a competition like this are always tricky and difficult but we kept our shape and discipline throughout the game. Job done." |
Liverpool (4-1-3-2): Kirkland; Diao, Hyypia, Biscan, Traore; Hamann; Diouf (Smicer, 69), Gerrard, Kewell; Sinama-Pongolle (Heskey, 69), Owen (Murphy, 89). |
Steaua Bucharest (4-5-1): Khamutovski; Radoi, Rachita, Mutica, Stoica; Dumitru, Nana (Pitu, 80), Aliuta (Paraschiv, 59), Bostina, Oprita (Dinita, 80); Raducanu. |
Can Apple Stock Keep Going After Last Week's 11% Pop? |
Apple shares rose 2.2%, 2.4%, 3.5%, and 3.3%, respectively in each of the past week's first four trading days. The Cupertino titan is a market darling again. |
We don't know how many iPhones Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is selling this weekend, but we do know that investors were all over the stock leading up to Friday's release of the latest generation of its iconic smartphone. Shares of Apple moved 11.4% higher last week, fueled by bullish analyst notes, aggressive U.S. carrier promo... |
Apple's rally -- namely, its 12.1% pop from Monday to Thursday before taking a small step back on Friday -- was its heartiest four-day spike in more than two years. The gains during that four-day run were consistent, up 2.2%, 2.4%, 3.5%, and 3.3%, respectively. |
There's excitement building for the updated device that improves the included storage, battery life, camera, and processor of last year's model. The controversial move to eliminate the headphone jack -- a necessary evil to make it dust- and water-resistant -- is turning heads and apparently getting folks to consider re... |
Three of the four leading U.S. carriers chimed in to say that pre-orders of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus were running ahead of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus a year earlier. On Thursday, Apple announced that the initial supply of the iPhone 7 Plus and the jet-black iPhone 7 model had sold out worldwide. |
There were some field reports that lines at Apple stores weren't as long on Friday morning as in years past, but bullish analysts dismissed the relevance. With carriers doing a better job of reaching out to existing customers and the growing popularity of online ordering, there's no longer the dire urgency to camp out ... |
Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster, one of the more vocal Apple bulls over the years, pointed out that the launch line at Apple's signature store in New York City's 5th Avenue was just 400 patrons deep, down from the 650 it counted at last year's iPhone 6s rollout and the prior year's 1,880 who queued up for the iPhone 6. We... |
Other analysts also checked in last week, pushing their price targets higher. There may have been some initial concerns with the elimination of the headphone jack, but that isn't getting in the way of early adopters from upgrading. The Apple Watch Series 2 that the tech giant also unveiled earlier this month won't be a... |
Throw in the success that Apple is having outside hardware -- from the growing acceptance of ApplePay as a payment platform to iCloud storage to the Apple Music streaming platform with 17 million premium subscribers -- and the stock is a market darling again. It may not have any fresh numbers to reveal tomorrow, the wa... |
The European Central Bank, as expected, left interest rates unchanged Thursday. Policy makers, meeting in Malta, left the interest rate on the bank's main refinancing operation at 0.05%, while the rate on the ECB's marginal lending facility stands at 0.3% and the rate paid on deposits parked overnight at the bank remai... |
I’m not much of a Venom guy, so normally I wouldn’t have picked this one up. But Donny Cates’ name attracted me to it. He writes Babyteeth over at Aftershock, which I’ve really enjoyed. So I’m giving this one a whirl for him. |
I’m not the world’s biggest Scott Snyder fan. He’s hit or miss with me. But the Justice League portion of DC Nation #0 piqued my interest. Plus, James Tynion IV and Joshua Williamson are attached, and I dig both of them. Francis Manapul is also an artistic deity. This has been proven. |
James Tynion IV is my favorite modern Batman writer. The fact that he’s bringing back all this ’90s and early ’00s stuff is a just a bonus. |
I don’t normally pick up these Star Wars movie adaptations from Marvel. But the preview for this one caught my eye. A portion of it is done through Luke’s point of view, which is a nice little added hook. |
In recent months, I’ve slept on The Walking Dead a little bit. It was partially intentional, and partially cost-related. I’m intrigued by the new direction they’ve taken things, but they obviously didn’t grab me hard enough to keep me buying month to month. Here’s hoping the combined effort of these two issues will cha... |
I’ve had to hold back on Darth Vader as well. This one was strictly a cost thing. Like issue #14, this one might be a candidate for “Epic Covers.” For some reason, part of me is always surprised when someone uses a lightsaber underwater. Luke just did that in Star Wars #48. Did they work that way in the “Legends” conti... |
This entry was posted in Comic Books/Graphic Novels and tagged Darth Vader, Darth Vader #15 (2018), DC Comics, Detective Comics #980 (2018), Donny Cates, Francis Manapul, Image Comics, James Tynion IV, Justice League, Justice League: No Justice, Justice League: No Justice #1 (2018), lightsaber, Marvel, Rob Siebert, Sco... |
I feel like every time I review something Scott Snyder writes I have to go through the same spiel: I generally like his stuff, but he does certain things that make me mad as hell. As such, it’s difficult for me to look at Dark Knights: Metal in an unbiased manner. |
I commend Snyder for weaving classic DC Comics elements into the fabric of Metal. Not just the perennially under-appreciated Hawkman, but the Challengers of the Unknown and the Metal Men as well. We even get little nods to places like Dinosaur Island. The League even travels to Blackhawk Island for briefing. It makes t... |
It’s great to see Greg Capullo back in the DC Universe. He, inker Jonathan Glapion, and colorist FCD Plascencia give us an opening sequence with the League in a battle arena on a new Warworld. Naturally, it’s ruled by Mongul. Capullo puts our heroes in armor that is ironically attuned to their weaknesses. Thus, they’re... |
My two favorite pages in the issue are back-to-back. The first is when we see Red Tornado attack the League on Blackhawk Island. Capullo’s take on the character’s cyclone powers are interesting, as they engulf the entire scene. Then on the very next page, we get a shot of Batman riding a dinosaur off the island (shown ... |
Alright, now I get to poo-poo the Snyder party like I always do. Let’s talk about robots, shall we? |
Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo have a thing about big (sometimes giant) Batman robots. I’ve talked at length about this before. They just can’t help themselves. So it really should have come as no surprise that in the Warworld arena, the Justice League is fighting a bunch of giant robots attuned to their specific abilit... |
On it’s own, this is fine. A little stupid for my tastes (And that’s coming from a Power Rangers geek!), but fine. But when you take in to account how much these guys have used big awful Batman robots before, it’s actually laughable. Honestly, did we have to go with the giant robots again? I understand the story is cal... |
My second big complaint with the Metal story overall has to do with Batman and the “chosen one” narrative. In all fairness, this is a problem that goes beyond Snyder and Capullo. I’ve called it “over-Baturation.” On Blackhawk Island, Kendra warns of a beast as old as the universe itself, Barbatos, arriving from the Dar... |
Metal is meant to be Batman-centric. Yet another milking of DC’s biggest cash cow. As a DC reader, I’m used to that by now. I just wish they didn’t have to portray Batman and the Wayne family as a cosmic centerpiece to so many things. From an in-story perspective, it makes him more prominent than he should be. Even as ... |
Hell, why is it that the Dark Multiverse creatures we’ve glimpsed all seem to be twisted and evil amalgamations of Batman and various Justice League characters? (For instance, the spin-off Batman: The Murder Machine is about an evil Batman/Cyborg blend. Batman: The Red Death is Batman/The Flash, etc.) For that matter, ... |
Does everything have to be a giant Batman circle jerk? |
*whew* Okay. I’m done. No, seriously. I am. |
In the end, I’m sure DC will make decent bank on Metal, and I’m sure there’ll be a lot of cool creativity on display. The heavy metal inspired tonality is something fairly different for a superhero event comic. Greg Capullo’s art may be worth the price of admission on its own. But as far as I’m concerned, for better or... |
This entry was posted in Wrestling and tagged Aquaman, Batman, Batman comics, Blackhawk Island, Blackhawks (DC Comics), Challengers of the Unknown, comic book reviews, comic books, Cyborg (DC Comics), Dark Multiverse, Dark Nights: Metal, Dark Nights: Metal #1, DC Comics, DC Multiverse, Dinosaur Island, event comics, FC... |
Surprising revelations about surveillance methods, a fake Twitter account and racial elements of the case. |
A lawsuit forced Memphis Police Department officials to walk into federal court this past week and start spilling secrets about surveillance methods. |
Many things came out during three-and-a-half days of testimony that started on Monday. Here's what you need to know. |
1. The city has lots of ways to watch people. |
The trial showed the MPD has a powerful surveillance apparatus that includes plainclothes police, social media monitoring and more than 1,000 surveillance cameras posted throughout the city. |
The ACLU of Tennessee had argued the city used that power to monitor Black Lives Matter and other protest movements, breaking a 1978 consent decree that barred the city from gathering "political intelligence" on non-criminals. |
U.S. Judge Jon McCalla ruled on August 10 that the city violated the 1978 consent decree, but he allowed a bench trial to go forward as he considered other issues, including whether or not to appoint a monitor to enforce the decree. |
2. The true identity of Bob Smith was revealed. On Facebook, a person named Bob Smith made friends with numerous activists. By "friending" them, he got past privacy restrictions. |
On Day 1 of the trial, "Bob Smith" was unmasked. The primary police officer running the undercover social media account was Sgt. Timothy Reynolds, an officer who wore a pinstriped suit and glasses in court. |
Reynolds described opening the undercover account in 2009 or 2010, then beginning to focus on activists right around the time of protests over zoo parking in May 2016. |
The account was active until last month and made contacts with hundreds of people, Reynolds testified. |
Like many other city officials in the case, he said the point of gathering information on protests is to learn about big gatherings that might spiral out of control and lead to violence. He said he did not care about the content of the speech. |
The police department repeatedly cited the July 10, 2016 takeover of the Hernando de Soto bridge as an example. |
Aerial video of the bridge protest showed the sheer physical danger of the moment: People walked into traffic with a few police cars nearby trying to stop vehicles from running them over. The crowd and the police remained in a standoff for hours high above a potentially deadly drop. In the end, police leader Michael Ra... |
The other side argues the city is going too far in trying to head off such events and aims to suppress dissent. |
3. The identify of the fake Michael Rallings Twitter account was revealed, too. |
In 2016, someone created a Twitter account that supposedly came from Memphis Police Director Michael Rallings. |
The real Michael Rallings was not amused. In court, he said he doesn't use social media, and feared the fake account would post something inflammatory, causing the city to erupt. Rallings ordered a criminal investigation and said on the stand that he still wants the person responsible to face criminal charges. |
Later that day, Paul Garner of the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center took the stand and acknowledged he ran the account, which he said was a satire or parody. In an interview Friday, he said the fake Rallings account had a small number of followers and little attention until the police department started denouncing it... |
"They're creating fake accounts and I think what they were doing was a lot more dangerous," he said. |
To date, Garner has not faced criminal charges. He said criminally charging him would represent a doubling down on the suppression of speech that's alleged in the trial. "I don't think it would be the most politically wise thing to do." |
4. High-level police officials had little knowledge of the 1978 consent decree. |
“Prior to the lawsuit, I had a vague knowledge of the consent decree,” Rallings said on the stand. |
He said he didn't know what new police recruits were learning about the 1978 decree, that he wasn't aware of any ongoing training given to existing officers and that he couldn’t remember receiving training in the consent decree himself. |
Lt. Col. Eddie Bass was asked if he had an understanding of the decree: "Vaguely. Again, it's from 1978." |
The decree says police can't take pictures of people at a protest or meeting for identification purposes. The MPD was doing that, according to testimony and emails. |
That's just one example. The consent decree also says the police director must approve any criminal investigations that might affect First Amendment rights. |
Testimony during the trial suggests that in recent years, police officers at lower levels were deciding what steps to take about free speech events, not the director. |
Major Lambert Ross formerly ran the Real Time Crime Center, which monitors the city's surveillance cameras and does other data analysis. He said center employees sometimes identified social media posts about peaceful events, then sent them to police precinct commanders. |
The judge spoke directly to the witness. "So a precinct commander could make a decision about what to do on a peaceful event?" |
5. The conflict between Memphis activists and the police is sometimes strangely intimate. |
The police director described sharing a water bottle with activist Keedran Franklin as they walked off the Hernando de Soto bridge together following protesters' takeover of the span in July 2016. |
As Rallings left the courtroom, he passed Franklin sitting outside and said, "Mr. Keedran, you're still looking sharp." |
Franklin said Friday that he has Rallings' personal cell phone number and that even though they're adversaries on some issues, they still talk. Franklin said he called Rallings that very morning after police officers showed up at a community garden he helps run. |
At a break in the trial, Franklin also exchanged a lengthy handshake and warm greetings with Ross, the police major. Franklin told Ross, "I just want to live." |
He explained later what he meant. "How much of this do you think you would be able to take, a full police force pointed at you?" |
Franklin had said in court testimony that the police frequently follow him, that it's taken an emotional toll and hurt his relationships with friends and family. |
He has a trial coming up Sept. 13 related to an April arrest during an immigration protest. |
6. In this conflict, race plays out in surprising ways. |
The history of political intelligence in Memphis has strong racial overtones. For instance, white-dominated law enforcement spied extensively on Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement in the 1960s. |
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