Which super hero am I?

I took this little test and was pleased with the results:


Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 65% Iron Man 55% Superman 55% Wonder Woman 48% Green Lantern 45% The Flash 45% Robin 43% Supergirl 43% Catwoman 35% Batman 35% Hulk 25%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero am I?" quiz...

Alaska: Day 1, Part 2

After the Captain of the ship was tossed, the cruise finally begun. Being my first cruise, I was unaware of the procedures that are expected to be followed. One such requirement was an emergency drill. So, we are in the room waiting for the signal and then it happens. We run to the mustardation site assigned to us with our life jackets on. Life jackets, by the way, that were not made for someone of my magnitude. I wasn't even sure I would float with one of those things on me.

Nothing really exciting happened during the drill of interest, but I had an eerie feeling during it. For some reason, in my mind, I thought of the nazis lining up the Jews in Germany and just pushing them in massive graves. Not the best image to have when starting a trip, but I just couldn't help thinking how massive a grave the ocean is. That and I thought of the Pink Flyod movie "The Wall". You know the part where the kids are being dropped in the meat grinder? That one.

Then of course I thought of pirates. I thought of the pirate who goes into a bar with the steering wheel of his ship stuck in his pants. The bartender asks him if it hurts and the pirate responds, "Arrgghhh...its driving me nuts!!"

I thought alot about pirates. Not of pirates coming onto the cruise ship. I know the Alaskan cruises don't attract the pirates like the Islands might. No, I thought about me becoming a pirate and living out on the ocean, robbing cruise ships of their bountiful vitals and treasures. Man, I wish I was a pirate.

Alaska: day 1, Part 1.

Captain's Log: 14:00, 19/5/06.

The Firshed daze of da cruuushe. I love being the capshion of dish ship. Eyes can't wait to getch to the open shees. Better drinks more of thish shmirnoff bottled water though sho I shober upss quishly. I donsh wans ta shteer thish baby inta land whensh we shhhoove off.

Captain's Log: 16:00, 19/5/06.

Yo Ho and A BoTtLe oF rUM. Thatsh what I'm shingin. Give me a bott el and shwab up the deck, shlo-bo and a mottle of bum.

Whatsh thar shound I'm hearin now? Shomone ish snocking on missa door. Goes away. Imsha catman of thish veshel and your shnot. Hey, gets outta here. Who arshe yous guys. Why are you pussshhing me off the ssshhiip? I'm the catman! I'm the Capshion! I'm the cushion! Shhiitt.

A hard rain

For the last 9 months I have lived in the desert. Last night and this morning (continuing as I type this post), the skies have opened up and let loose for the first time. It has rained a few times for a few minutes since I have been here, and I have heard that it has rained a few times that I was out of town (it even snowed I heard), but this is the first I have seen.

I love the rain, especially when the day before it rains it is 95 degrees and the day after it is 65. Of course one draw back is power failures. Yesterday I lost power a total of 3 times. There is nothing more boring than not having electricity. I read by candlelight, but that became uncomfortable. I drained out the battery of my laptop watching a part of a movie. I listened to music on the i-pod. But even though it seems I had much to do, one thing was a constant reminder to me; every minute the power was off was another push in the temperature of my place. My usual fridge-like home slowly was turning into a sauna...and there was nothing I could do.

Realistically, it never got too bad, but in my mind it was horrible and I started getting warmer and warmer, silently pleading for the gods of electrical wires to do their thing. Alas, a few hours later all was well. The rain continued to reek havoc, but the comforting sound of air rushing through vents returned and I was free from the torment of waking hours.

I might have to change the name of the blog to something else due to the fact that starting Wednesday of next week, I don't think I will actually be in Roswell for a long time. I don't like posting this information publicly, but since I will have a house sitter at my place, I feel a bit safer sending this out.

It's the end of the semester. As I write this post, I have no more classes to teach until my online courses start in June. All that is left for me to do is attend graduation tonight and grade like a muthaf'er this weekend. The semester flew by, and I would be remiss if I didn't take a moment here to publicly thank all of the wonderful people in my department for making this a great first year of employment. Without them, I'd have gone batty by now. So, Bob, Bob, Jenni, Alan, Rick, Lloyd, Grace, Bill, Maureen, Annemarie, Kate, Sherry and Helen, thanks a million!

That being said, Wednesday I start my summer of teaching, researching the play and visiting. Alaska is first on the list. That's next week. Then, my friends in Dallas, I'm coming to you for two weeks. After that Mein Bruder, I will be heading out to So-Cal for your graduation and to visit. After a quick stop, I will be on my way to Philly for a large chunck of time starting June 23rd.

So...check in still cause I'll be updating as often as possible from wherever I am. See you soon!

Free Comic Book Day

Sorry it's been a few days since I have posted. It's the end of the semester and things are crazy busy here. Besides that, I was in Dallas for a few days (I guess that's how things end up crazy, huh?). Well...it'll all be over soon. I have three more classes to teach then a bunch of grading and then vacation time.

But enough about scheduling. I wanted to take a minute to thank Chris and Chris over at Madness Comics for having me in this past weekend. They put on the absolute best free comic book day event you could hope for. Their store looked more like a convention site on Saturday then a comic shop. From 10:00am and continuing throughout the day, people piled in to the shop.

Their were free comics, yes, but every store had free comics that day. The Chris's just know what they are doing, and that makes all the difference. One cool thing they did was to invite Stormtroopers and Darth Vader to stalk the vicinity of the store. They pulled people in off the street, took pictures with the kids and were just all around a major asset.

Inside the store, if you could see past the multitudes of customers, there was a panel of guests at tables talking to anyone interested. They had a couple local comic creators there who were young and talented and ready to take on the world (more on them in another post). They had Rick Hoberg and Steve Bennett, both whom I would have to say I learned alot from during the day. And somehow or another, there was me, sitting at the table as a guest, talking about comics and scholarship, or classical allusions in comics or whatever someone wanted to talk about.

Rick and Steve kick ass! They are both so unbelievably talented, but more then that they were such a wealth of information. And they were great with the fans. They talked to everyone who wanted to talk and for as long as the person stood there. They didn't rush anyone or shrug anyone off.

Overall, a great day for comic fans in Plano. Ciao.

Alaska revisited

So...I finalized the details for the trip to Alaska yesterday. I gotta tell you: I am an idiot. After spending most of the day on the phone with cruise "experts" only to find out that they only go online and do the same thing we can do, I decided to just book it myself.

You would think that when you type in the parameters for a computer search, the findings would be within those parameters. Nope. I accidently booked a cruise that left from Seward Alaska instead of Seattle. I didn't notice right away, but when I did, I panicked. For one thing, where the hell is Seward Alaska!?!? Sencondly, they don't give refunds on cruises this close to the cruise date. I thought I was screwsville (30 miles south, evidently, of Seward).

Luckily, the fine people of Ceebrity Cruises and Orbitz.com were nice enough to work with me so that I could break the rules and reschedule a cruise for the same week that leaves from Seattle. Thank goodness. And for that my friends...I give myself the first of a new segment here at All's Well that's Roswell:

The SUPER GENIUS Award!

From here on out, each month I will give this award to those befitting the title.

The 5th Wall

Saturday night I had the pleasure of EmCeeing ENMU-R's fund raiser for an art scholarship called "Unleashed." There were two really cool things about the evening. One is that the Comedy Improv troupe I have been working with for the last 3 months finally got a chance to be on stage.

There were moments since we began of triumph and failure. The imoprovers always work hard, but comedy, especially impromptu, is not an easy thing to pick up. I don't think if you are not funny then you never will be, but to train yourself to be funny? Most comedians will tell you they were little goofballs their whole life.

But The 5th Wall, Johnnie, Arnie, Chris, Monica, Bekha, Gigi and Loyce stole the show. They were funny and the audience loved them. So kudos to them for pulling off a tough task.

They had the stage for a half hour in which they did three skits. The first was a version of the dating game where one of the troupe left the building and the audience picked who the contestants would be: rock stars, morticians, sky divers, whatever they wanted. Then they brought the improver back in and his job was to figure out, by questioning, who each was.

The second was "the paper game." Before the night started, one of the troupe got audience members to write words and phrases on paper and fold them up. They were collected right before the improvers hit the stage. The audience then choose a profession and scenario and the improvers, each time a bell was rung, had to incorporate whatever was on the paper into their story. My favorites were: Tickle me elmo, poppycock, is that Frank Sinatra and googly-goo (you had to be there to know why). Anyway...that was hilarious.

The last skit was the toughest to pull of, but it worked well also. It was called "snapshot" and the troupe picked a couple from the audience and brought them on stage. They asked where their last vacation was and then the whole troupe and the two audience members struck poses while the lights went out. When the lights came back on, two of the troupe had to explain the vacation photos. There were about 6 snapshots explained and people loved it.

So all in all a success for The 5th Wall. Congrats to them. The rest of the night was so-so. There was a guy who played electric music which wasn't bad, but got tedious quick. Then there was a karate exposition that was more like a feel good lecture. That got old real quick. And last was a band called Fetish from Artesia whose fetish was obviously for bad, underpracticed and undertalented music.

I got to EmCee from the astral plane. I had a wireless mic and sat in the light booth of the theater and called the show. At first people had no idea what was going on when my voice boomed through the theater. It was funny.

Two more weeks then the semester is over. I'll be coming to a town near you.