I’m back from my little hiatus here to represent a little frustration on the part of my Southern brethren. Having just read the above-linked AP article which put me in quite the mood, I need to vent some frustration. The article, titled “Obama Election Spurs Race Crimes Around the Country,” is distressing to no end, not simply for the obvious reason, but also for the way in which it’s covered.

I generally give the benefit of the doubt to any article that gets filtered through the Associated Press, and I always read the news keeping in mind Chuck Klosterman’s essay, “All I Know Is What I Read In the Papers,” where he essentially says that perceived bias in newspapers is usually the result of having to meet deadline before the other side of the story has returned your phone call. That said, I feel the Associated Press gave a little too much attention to Atlanta.

I think it’s safe to declare at this point in my life that I am not a racist, and I have tried to represent the South as a place where we can evolve beyond past prejudice. With that in mind, I have always been annoyed when racism is expressed in media with a southern accent. As the article attests, it is a nation-wide problem.

Hateful, racist, anti-Obama acts have been committed all over the country including in places like California, New Jersey and New York state, yet for some reason this article only quotes victims in the state of Georgia. They highlight harassment in public schools and vandalism of private property to illustrate how people have been victimized.

But while I applaud the quote from a white Southern Poverty Law Center representative who masterfully sums up the grievance that these racists have with the Obama victory, I feel the impact of a cogent thought from an informed white person (one of many who voted for Obama in the South) is completely diminished by this quote from another southern white person: “I believe our nation is ruined and has been for several decades and the election of Obama is merely the culmination of the change. If you had real change it would involve all the members of (Obama’s) church being deported.”

Look, I know the rules of journalism say that you have to get a quote from some member of the ignorant fringe on a story like this, but is it that hard to find one of these guys in Jersey or Maine? Obama only lost Georgia by less than 200,000 votes. Yes, the South-Eastern United States was the center of a number of racist and horrible acts (not to mention slavery) for a long time, but we’re constantly working to improve the situation. Until we start seriously approaching this problem as one we all share, racism is a cancer that will never be cured.

Note: The people who wrote this article were probably working for a southern publication, but I’m still disappointed that we couldn’t have a broader view of the situation.

I know I’ve been neglecting the bloggings of late. I’ve been somewhat distracted readjusting to life in Egypt and dealing with a few internet problems. I have lots of stuff to share, though, so hang in there!

I am proud to admit that I do from time to time take great pleasure in watching the videos created by the Angry Video Game Nerd, formerly known as the Angry Nintendo Nerd. His rants and slurs echo my own frustrations with video games, most notably those that capitalized on my own vulnerability to the merchandising of super heroes. That said, here’s his take on the “Spider-Man” games.

Take note that Spidey drinks Yuengling, my favorite domestic lager.

“Ah, Cairo! City of the living! A paradise on Earth!” -Sallah, “Raiders of the Lost Ark”

Here I am, kids! Having made my triumphant return to Cairo, I’m returning to the blogging. With all the travel preparations (and going away parties) it became difficult to spend enough time to build an attractive and informative post between my other responsibilities.

Apparently Delta recently made Cairo a direct flight destination, because I was able to book a flight this time from Atlanta to New York and then direct to Cairo. The only snag was having to transfer from La Guardia to JFK, however the New York Port Authority directed me to the airport express bus, which cost all of $13 to get me there in less than 45 minutes. The flight from New York to Cairo, however is torturous. While I appreciate that it’s much easier to handle a flight transfer in New York than say, Frankfurt (In German Cairo is spelled with a ‘K’), the roughly 13 hours of travel are much easier to take when broken up in segments of 8 and 5 hours. 11 hours cruising across the least interesting part of the Western Hemisphere had me ready to gouge my eyes out toward the end (it was either that or the fact that the movies started repeating in the last 3 hours). Fortunately, a nice Egyptian student by the name of Ahmed kept the conversation interesting.

Needless to say, arrival was a relief, but was immediately followed by customs (which is easy, but tedious). I passed the time by giving the two girls ahead of me in line a little advice on not getting ripped off in Egypt. Then I realized they were on some backpacking tour and would be more or less insulated from the actual travel experience. Anyway, baggage claim was made simple by the fact that waiting in line at customs gave them plenty of time to unload my stuff, and then I was free to go. Of course, my special lady was there to pick me up.

The rest of the day was a blur of video games, McDonald’s delivery, and getting reacquainted after 9 months of physical separation. Needless to say, after dinner at Sequoya and a few levels of “Lego Indiana Jones,” I was ready for bed.

So here I am again. Maggie and I are talking about hitting Coptic Cairo today, but we may just say in. There’s no telling.  More in a bit.

It was with a sad heart I received the news that the Wikipedia article on Bob Sacamano was deleted. Sacamano is a character on “Seinfeld” whom Kramer often references as a friend of his who has some odd qualities, like having synapses too large to be affected by electroshock treatment. The best thing is that Sacamano may have the most impact on the “Seinfeld” cast of any of the characters often mentioned, but never seen. The runner-up would be Jerry’s cousin Jeffrey, whom we never see but know he must look something like a horse.

Sacamano’s greatest moment for me is in the episode “The Chicken Roaster” where a neon-red sign bathes Kramer’s apartment in crimson glow until he finally convinces Jerry to trade apartments with him. Over the course of the episode, Jerry becomes more like Kramer and Kramer becomes more like Jerry. Until Elaine finds herself in the position of needing a Russian sable hat and Jerry pipes up with:
“Y’know my friend, Bob Sacamano?”

Elaine replies, “Isn’t that Kramer’s friend?”

Jerry says, “Yeah, but he called last night at 2 AM, we talked for 4 hours. Anyway, he sells knock-off sable hats in Battery Park.”

Of course we find out later that these knock-off hats are made from rat hair. Elaine has to go to the Burmese (or Myanmar) jungle to get J. Peterman to sign off on it, which leads to a fantastic “Apocalypse Now” spoof.

That said, Lifehacker.com has turned me onto deletionpedia. It’s a website that features all of the articles that Wikipedia deletes. Now there’s a place where you can still look up things like obscure unseen sitcom characters and minor Star Wars bounty hunters (however you can still find that on Wookiepedia). Have some fun, kids. The free sharing of information won’t be stopped by the anal-retentive bureaucrats at Wikipedia anymore!*

*I have no illusions that Wikipedia will ever give me my own article.

“The Daily Show” pretty much hammers this stuff out on a daily basis, but this one is especially beautiful. I’m going to go ahead and get the no-prize though for saying that the only reason Bill O’Reilly doesn’t call the Palins “pinheads” is because you don’t want to be throwing around accusations of microcephaly at people who already have a kid with Down’s.

My good friend, Jessica, who lost her mother to breast cancer a few years ago, is participating in the Breast Cancer 3-Day. The participants in this event walk 60 miles over the course of 3 days in order to raise money for breast cancer research, education, treatment, and screening. Jess is more than half-way to her minimum pledge of $2200, however she set a personal goal for herself at $3000. Anyone who knows me knows I have a special place in my heart for breasts, but not a whole lot of money, so scrape some pennies up from under the couch cushions and under your car seat, click on the ribbon up there and make sure Jessica hasn’t been training in vain for the last 7 months. Good luck, Jess!

I noted yesterday while talking with some friends that no one’s made enough of a fuss over the weird names Sarah Palin’s giving her kids. Then I found this name generator (click the picture above). In another world, my name might have been Shank Piston Palin (and I would have been born to an unwedded teenage mother). It’s not bad, but it isn’t as good as Seven or Soda Costanza.

I have always been a fan of Deadpool. I came of age during the aforementioned “big shoulders, big guns” craze of 90s comics, and Deadpool was always sure to be carrying big guns. His costume looked like a rip-off of Spider-Man, but I was willing to overlook this because you never saw Spider-Man carrying a rocket launcher. A friend of mine turned me onto the first Deadpool ongoing series which was written by Joe Kelly and illustrated by Ed McGuinness, whose genius lay not only in bringing an unparalleled degree of humor to the series, but also in building up Deadpool’s cast of supporting characters and nemeses.

I was disappointed when Kelly left the book, however Christopher Priest’s run took the series to new territory in the marvel universe while keeping the same degree of humor, however the book seemed to go downhill afterward. The stories and plots got more and more convoluted, and the wisecracks got more and more hackneyed. “Cable & Deadpool” seemed like a stupid marketing ploy to me, though Fabian Nicieza did a great job with it while trying to sort out some of the continuity gaffes which now plagued the character.

Fortunately, that’s all over. Daniel Way takes on the character fresh off a guest arc in “Wolverine: Origins” with an unofficial Secret Invasion tie-in. True to form, Deadpool takes on an entire Skrull mother ship complete with one Super-Skrull inside a baseball stadium while wearing a stupid mascot costume. Paco Medina’s art is perfectly suited to both the humor and action which come hand-in-hand with a good Deadpool story. As an added bonus the end of the book has a biography of the Merc with a Mouth. Defnitely worth picking up.

Marvel.com ran this article on the many armors of Iron Man which have been introduced over the years, from the “Golden Avenger” costume up to his present day Extremis model. You should have fun watching how the expectations of the armor’s capability grew as real world technology advanced. Iron Man’s greatest asset as a character is the fact that he could change his costume in any given issue. I think that’s why he seemed most popular during the early 90s when comics went through that big shoulders, big guns phase where War Machine was the coolest thing you’d ever seen. Anyway, it’s lots of fun to go back and look at the history of the character now that the movie’s coming out on DVD.