Rom A Bad Hair Day.

Ok, so the Dove chocolate wrapper I opened read "Rock a bad hair day", but I have no problem with analyzing a threat (or more accurately FOR a threat), neutralizing said threat, and translating what I did into something all around me will understand if they choose to. And if the Greatest of the Spaceknights -- when Marvel had the literary rights to Rom, the tall silver-armored guy seemed to say this of himself a little, if not considerably more, than others said that of him I note -- can make it through two hundred plus years of planet-by-planet war against shape shifting Dire Wraiths, then I'm sure one human, non-augmented life like mine can, by the grace of God, handle whatever I deal with.


I just can't summon my weapons from subspace.


Now lest you think this is just me waxing 80s nostalgia, this past Saturday with Free Comic Book Day I got introduced to IDW Publishing's iteration of Rom. Now Hasbro still gets credit for ROM Spaceknight as the original toy the series (serieses? seri?) branched off of, but the likeness is slightly different. Instead of the Energy Analyzer, Neutralizer, and Translator (yes, it's caps in the original)being separate hand-held objects, the analyzer's built into Rom's wrists, the neutralizer's differently-shaped but still comes out of subspace with evidently only one setting -- kill, and the translator is built into his armor, along with the rocket pack.

There's still Dire Wraiths and they're still sorcerous and shape-shifters too.


But we'll have to see how that progresses when the ROM series comes out beginning in July. Among other things, catching Sunday night's episode of Once Upon A Time, "Last Rites", with our daughter Sarah (Jeffrey still watches it, but usually at the tail end of his iPad use) before Martha came home to watch it herself. In Sarah's one-word description, "creepy". Not really in a horror film kind of way, but with three major characters dying (one from season four, one this half of season five, and one regular cast member) I did wonder at one point whether fan riots would break out because someone's favorite character ... um, bit the dust. Ten minutes later, my issue was resolved. For now.


Some people just don't deal with death like normal people do.


And while I'm speaking of Sarah, it's allergy season where I am. Between her asthma and all the dust in the area thrown up from construction in nearly double-digit different places in Minot, she's been getting crust on her right eye that almost swells it half-shut. Between that and her sneezing crazily -- heck, I'd be in a bad mood too. I just don't need her and Jeffrey engaging in regular swatting and shouting matches in or out of school, which ends for them in two weeks! I'm guessing the school year ends before Memorial Day (yay!) because we didn't have any snow days this year -- oh, we had snow, but nothing heavy enough or slick enough to close school for!

And now for a book nearly eight centuries in the making.


750 Years In Paris, the debut novel by Vincent Mahé (ISBN 9781907704932) may not meet the strictest definition of being a novel, but it will still make a great coffee table book! The dates are on the left, the building as of that year in the capital of France is on the right and it's amazing to see the world and detail the author's put into the people and events he depicts from the years 1265 to 2015. Yes, the illustrations are simple, but not so simple I would want to duplicate the effort! Yet. It's like watching that montage from The Time Machine but you slowed down and took a look around. Building rise and fall and burn, people die and march, the je ne sais quoi is just there!

Once in a while, we all need those good and quick reads. THEN we think.


David