Shards and Phractures

Very often, I seem to be catching flack from people who disagree with my opinions on vaccinating my kids.    The school seems to think I'm exposing my kids to dangerous germs.  Other parents believe that by not vaccinating my kids I'm somehow endangering theirs--an argument that makes absolutely no sense, because if the vaccine works, and their kids are vaccinated, then vaccinating my kids would be completely irrelevant to the health of theirs.   Granted, there are quite a few disagreements over certain vaccines and their effects on people:   1.  Thimerasol (mercury):  Depending on who you ask, this is either a deadly toxin or "such a small dose as to be absolutely harmless."  Many parents blame this additive for autism.  I'm not taking sides in this debate, but I have a problem with injecting any amount of mercury into a child's body for any reason whatsoever.   2.  Side effects (Swine Flu, 1976):  How do you ensure that the v...

Note: This is an entry into this week's Friday Challenge . The assignment: "What I Did on my Summer Vacation only make up something cool." ---------- Thirty years ago, an evil sorcerer cast a spell on the Earth. Under it's influence, humans can no longer recognize magic; vampire slayings become "teen runaways," magical storms and disasters are "freak unseasonal storms." Even history isn't immune; show a human a picture of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, with the wizard robes and auto-writing quills moving, and they'll see a bunch of stuffy white men in the style of the 1700s standing around, powdered wigs and all. Magic just doesn't register on human senses, and even if it does, it's instantly rationalized away. But there was a glitch in the spell, a mis-spoken word in a long forgotten language...a loophole, if you will, in a spell that was supposed to be eternal law. The spell only works on adults. And so, the...

It's all Jerri's fault. Jerri read something I wrote , and declared "I'm impressed. You can write funny; I can't do that." Now, Jerri is a "real" writer, with over a dozen tech books under her belt; I'm strictly amateur, with a handful of unpublished and mostly unread short stories and poems. To have impressed someone I admire as much as Jerri had an impact on me. Thus was NickelAtATime born. The concept is simple (and right there in the EULA, and everyone reads those, right...?). If you laugh at a joke, you pull up your Paypal account and send in a nickel. You can send more if you like, but the MSRP of these jokes is exactly five cents. It started out as a mailing list, but the job I was working at the time went away shortly after I sent out the first issue, and it...kinda died. Once life stabilized again, I turned it into a blog, and lately, I've been trying to bring it completely to life--and pack it full of fun and humor. Why am I w...

Note: This is an entry in The Friday Challenge, which can be found here. This week's challenge? Explain how Hollywood would screw up a perfectly good comic book--the independent Southern Knights. -=ad=- Nickolas Geekzinski, NYT Movie Critic Southern Knights Rocks. Honestly, I can't say it any clearer than that. From the opening scene with the giant robots, to the final fight featuring magical lighting against superhero lightning, this movie keeps you on the edge of your seat. I'll try to keep the spoilers to a minimum, but there are so many cool things to say about this cool movie that some things are just going to leak out. Whenever you take a book or comic book to the screen, there's a lot of baggage that comes with. Superhero movies have to acknowledge the things that came before. One of the funniest quotes in movies comes from Scott Summers/Cyclops in the first X-Men movie: "Would you prefer yellow spandex?" For a new Superman or Batman movie, t...