As if you needed to know that thousands of Marvel comics are available in an awesome flash viewer online for $60/year in a thing called Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited.  DC doesn’t seem to have anything similar. Not that I’m shelling out right now. Still, it’s a drooly rabbit hole for days when you don’t have anything pressing, except for a rainy swine flu afternoon.

Wow. I’ve had a lot of praise for the Amazon Kindle, and I love love love Amazon generally, but this is crazy awesome.

The nook ereader seems pretty cool. It lets you easily read pdfs, fast becoming the mobile standard for docs. It lets you expand the memory with SD/microSD chips, listen to music, annotate with a touch screen navigation system, and it has a neat color/eink separation going on with no keyboard (which I kind of like, though). Adding content to stores to drive traffic and letting you preview whole books in store (with an overpriced coffee) is also a big help.

I’m totally enjoying this and can’t wait to see the display at the store. In case you doubt that it started as a real company, read the wikipedia page. It really was dudes called Barnes & Noble. I’m an Amazon Prime member, so I love them too and haven’t really had much use for B&N online, but enjoy the store as much as I can. Spokanites will always have a great spot for Aunties, but far out in the county and needing online conent and home delivery, the others will usually eke out ahead on everything except experience.

You could blame me for some coaching mistakes (like starting Steve Smith’s goose egg instead of Sims-Walker’s 14 points) but in the end, there was no way to catch up to the Brady/Moss buzz-saw. It was just too much in the end. Two girls took a 1 point projection win and turned it into a total blowout. Next week is full of byes for me, so the matchup looks to be a crazy one where we’re both hoping against hope to catch up to 60 points. Cool.

Well, it’s better late than never. Mr. Auburn kicked my ass as Mike Sims-Walker committed some mystery “itinerary violation” (which I take to mean: post-curfew hooker run, in the absence of other explaination) and Chris Cooley was called on to play as a lineman.

With those goose eggs laid, the 3 points from league leading rusher Johnson and the 1 point from usually stalwart Janakowski just helped my lameness become more apparent. And I don’t even want to talk about Washington rushing all over Jones but Jones getting the two TDs. It only made me drink more Monday night (fast becoming a tradition).

More hope for Week 6. Everyone will come back, I just know it!

Tonight, Keith Olberman did an hour-long “Special Comment” on health care. You can find it in chunks here if you haven’t seen it. If you haven’t seen it, you need to take a look. This isn’t a casual clip, it’s an hour long essay about health care, modern health care politics, and Olberman’s personal story. It’s sad, angry, cathartic, and all the rest, but perhaps the most important thing is that it is powerful.

It’s not powerful in the way a Michael Moore movie is, or in the way an Obama speech is. It’s in the way that a political former sportscaster can start talking about how he is helping his Dad fight kidney problems, and how he feels guilty about being able to afford health care other people won’t get, and without which other people not as well off will die.

But it’s the sad dark poetry of his words at the beginning about how health care is, in essense, a fight against death. A fight for life against death, and how we’re all in this together. And how we owe it to one another to go in together on doctors. Amazingly powerful and something that you should watch. Even if you’re a Republican or against Obama, watch this and leave me a comment of why he’s wrong. If I was a smarter man, I would have said this all sooner. But I know that I can’t say it better. Please, watch it.

Yikes! 0.05 points decided my matchup this week. I’m sure glad Kyle Orton completed those last few passes and put me over the top in this intense fractional matchup that, once again, came down to Monday Night Football. I haven’t followed sports or cared this much in a long, long time, so this is fun and interesting. A chance to chat with people, do a little lighthearted/semi-funny smack talk, and watch a little football makes it all worthwhile. Sorry to YakisPats for the devastating fractional victory, I’m sure I’d've been crying in my Bud Lime had I lost such a short game yesterday.

As Chris Farley wisely said: Schnikes!

The whole dust up over Acorn helping a pimp and lady do their taxes  (Daily Show link is best funny news way to summarize this situation if you haven’t heard about it) reminded me of a new report from a while ago that most big corporations pay no taxes.

So we’re supposed to be all upset over some expose that Acron helped a pimp get ready for tax season, perhaps hiding a low level criminal offense and skating on a few bucks in taxes. While major corporations have armies of lawyers advising them on how to avoid taxes, and accountants trying to explain why companies that, for all intents and purpsoes, are American and do their primary business in America, are really headquartered or legally incorporated in Grand Cayman, Switzerland, or some other tax friendly locale.

I accidently clicked on this video of a barefoot running guru, and I thought it was very interesting. Apparently barefoot running is better for you, and kind of a fad in running right now. I’m not a runner (or much of an exerciser at all, though I should be) but even I was intrigued by this short report.

It’s fall. It’s time for the Cougs and the Giants (San Francisco) to start The Swoon.

The Swoon is the traditional fall from grace, what some call “Couging It” and not in a good way. That whole “Couging it in a good way” was lame. The Swoon is when there appears to be some hope, some small light at the end of the tunnel, som possibility, and then it is snuffed out with pure hopelessness and the same level of mediocrity as you’e used to over the years.

When your teams are the SF Giants, Forty Niners, Golden State Warriors, Cougs, and your backup teams are Seattle Mariners and Seahawks, you’re very much someone who knows the Swoon. So as the weather turns, embrace the cool weather and the sheer sense of sports hopelessness that will chill you until the optimism next spring. Of course, I hope I’m wrong.