I work alone.

I finally saw "The Incredibles" tonight. (I know, Josh, I know).

What can I say, it was a fucking great movie. As much as I wanted to resist liking one of these compu-animated movies, they finally made one for grown-ups. This movie was a blast. Great style, look, music, humor and action. Seriously I was surprised, the super-hero action is actually amazing in this flick. The final fight is a real supr-hero battle, something (that now that I've seen it) may only be truly possible in an animated movie. Watching Afrozone do his ice thing, and when Mr. Incredible hurls the remote to Dash - "Go long!" - fucking great!

Now that I am done summer classes, I've begun to devour some books. I am currently reading a collection of Robert E. Howard stories called "The coming of Conan the Cimmerian". What is cool about this collection is that it is the original 12 Conan stories arranged in the order Howard wrote them. For years the big contention among Howard "academics" is that the stories have always been heavily edited or arranged in a way to reflect the chronology of Conan's life.

I'm enjoying this collection because it is the first collection that shows Howard's progression as an author. Each story is stronger than the one before it, both story-wise and technical writing-wise

I'm also enjoying reading some some Conan stories that haven't been in print in about 50 years. For all the bad wrap the image of "Conan" has developed over the years with people, I wish more folks would read the original Robert E. Howard stories to see what a genius the guy was.

Originally posted on August 4, 2005 on Myspace.