Click this pig to enlarge. Artist Jock revealed today the cover to Daredevil: Reborn #1, and it’s a gorgeous son of a bitch. If you haven’t been following Daredevil, you’re a fool! And I’m not going to waste my time explaining to you why you are missing one of the best character arcs of the best ten years or so. Just fix it!

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Hello. My name is Ian Drinkwater and I blog quite a lot. I churn out thousands of words a day. Sometimes I enjoy them. Sometimes I don’t. I meet deadlines and I churn out more. For fun. For non-profit. Mostly to share that which I dubeth dope. Interesting. Intriguing. It’s a hell of a universe out there. It’s a hell of planet right here.

Monday Morning Commute. Every Monday I’m going to detail the various things I’m either currently or will be watching, reading, playing, and listening to in the next seven days. It’s Monday. You’ve got a long week of school, work, or compulsive masturbation to get through. Tell me what you’re diggin’ on to get through the drudgery.

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Dear Eric Northman, if you die, I will be inconsolable. Somehow, I haven’t tired of your brooding nature, or your staccato bursts of malaise. Nor your continuous pining for Sookie Stackhouse, despite the fact that you’re far too good for her hillbilly ass. No seriously, if you are reduced to cinders and eulogies next episode, I am going to be one seriously sad dudebro.

And so the writers of True Blood have me hooked like it’s the good ole days. Yeah, you know, back in 2008. When I loved True Blood. I know I do a lot of hatin’ about True Blood, but it’s based out of pure emotional response and not some sort of agenda. So I can say I was pretty stoked with last night’s episode.

For the first time since the middle of season two, I was totally aggravated that the show was over. I have to wait two goddamn weeks to find out what happens to my beloved Eric? Fucking Labor Day! Do you know what I’ll be doing next Sunday? Probably sitting on my fat ass! Why can’t I do that while watchin’ the season finale? Son of a bitch.

But it’s a good aggravation, the sort of interest that stems from wanting to know what happens next. This is in contrast to almost this entire season, where my mind was a river of profanity and hate following an episode. I was a river of confusion, wondering what the fuck I loved about the show so much in the first place, and how it had run so far off course.

Last night reminded me.

Bill and Sookie In: Of Mice And Men
A good portion of the episode was dedicated to Bill and Sookie cruisin’ the swamp-ass roads of Louisiana, dreaming of what their life would be like if they could start over. Just to prove that I’m not just fickle, but also an overly emotional dude, I actually dug on those scenes. It was all Of Mice & Men & Vampires & Fairies, as they detailed the impossibilities they’d love to indulge in.

Plus, with those gap-teeth and that tendency to embark on the hopelessly stupid, Sookie can totally be the Bon Temps’ version of Lennie.

It was enjoyable though, to see the couple actually interacting for almost like three minutes without someone’s life at stake. Sure it goes to shit pretty quickly, but before Russell totally upends their dumb car, they actually come off like the rest of us couples; fucked up, trying to make it work, and hopelessly in love with the idea of their relationship.

Jason In: No Country For Old Stackhouse
Leave it to True Blood to drag in some commentary on the state of modern sports. Poor Jason Stackhouse strives to legitimize his career in the face of his spiritual successor as the High School Jock Top Shit. Motherfuckers.

Jason’s always been one of my favorite characters, because of his hopelessly retarded antics. But underneath all that bullshit, I’ve enjoyed the times when they’ve attempted to humanize him. Give him a few flourishes to go alone with his boneheaded statements and his nintety-three pack abs.

I feel for the dude. Stuck in a back road town, one of his only claims to fame seemingly about to be obliterated by a cheater, it’s got to be depressing as fuck for the guy. Even more so since I think Jason feels that there’s a good chance this kid will make it.

There’s probably some ethical dilemma here for more people, but I hope Jason blasts that kid’s stupid arm off with a shotgun and then dances in his blood.

Jason actually comes off like the rest of us humans; fearful of being outmoded in the face of newer, superior versions of ourselves. Quicker, faster, their potential not yet wasted, or withered, or perhaps worst of all, close to being actually actualized.

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Yo! I know you’re sitting around wondering how you can define yourself through external expressive motions! How about by buying a really fucking expensive sweater, featuring Super Mario? Not sold, well how about if it’s through the website from the dude who created Earthbound?

Destructoid:

Shigesato Itoi, the man who created Earthbound, has an online store where he sells things that are rad. His store just released its “1st Season” catalog for 2010 and it features some really cool stuff. The most relevant to a gaming site is a really sweet wool sweater featuring Mario and Luigi.

The sweaters are 100 percent wool and made by hand. It’s all licensed and official too. Here’s the kicker, though: they cost ¥36,000 (US$435), and that isn’t even adding in whatever the shipping costs would be to get it out of Japan. I’m all for high fashion, but I’d rather just buy every Mario game ever and then find a Mario sticker and slap it on an old sweater.

Man, this shit ain’t for a nerd like me. For starters, I’m fucking poor. Also, I’m a man-child, which means within nine minutes of owning this sweater, it’d be covered in accidental salsa blasts and crumbs from a variety of things. But if you’re affluent, and chic, be a total douchebag and indulge in this sweater. Then send me pictures so I can simultaneously find you ridiculous/be fatally jealous of you.

[This! Is! Mad Men! recaps the newest developments of Don Draper and his ragtag group of cohorts. In the spirit of the show, it will often be sexist and drunk. Apologies ahead of time.]

I’m worried about Don Draper. He’s always bent the elbow liberally, but never before has alcohol been such a destructive force in his life. Sure, there’ve been plenty of drunks in Mad Men — Freddy Rumsen and Duck Philips spring to mind — but Don’s supposed to be the exception to the rule!

Isn’t he?

When we first learnt of Don’s exploits in season one, there was a certain charm to them. He drinks? He philanders? He steals identities? All right…That’s not too cool but I guess I can see where he’s coming from. He was sympathetic – coming from nothing, he sought solace in the pursuit of the American dream. And just like Gatsby and Willy Loman and Hunter S. Thompson, Don Draper found out the hard way that the dream is dead.

How do know that that Don Draper has hit rock bottom? He gave away his secret identity.

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In my sci-fi travels, I span the cosmos. Sometimes, I’m a near-omniscient hero named Totally Omniscient guy. And in those travels, in my mind, within my dreams, I can do totally cool stuff. Like give an entire nebula shaped like a rose to Mrs. Caffeine Powered. She fawns, and faints, and then gives me quite a pleasant kiss on the cheek.

Behold the Rosette Nebula:

io9:

The Rosette Nebula is located between 4,500 and 5,000 light-years away in the constellation of Monoceros, which translates to the Unicorn. The nebula’s less flowery name is NGC 2237, and it’s home to one of the brightest star clusters in the night sky. NASA explains:

At the center of the flower is a cluster of young stars called NGC 2244. The most massive stars produce huge amounts of ultraviolet radiation, and blow strong winds that erode away the nearby gas and dust, creating a large, central hole. The radiation also strips electrons from the surrounding hydrogen gas, ionizing it and creating what astronomers call an HII region.

A rose-shaped nebula? God damn. Pretty romantical, innit? We see what we want to see, us humans. And sometimes, nestled within something as pretty as the cosmos, we see roses.

Source: Merlyn_One / Enlarge.

As you may or may not know, yesterday was Read Comics In Public Day. It was a joyous day, filled with geeks strutting their geeky stuff in front of the masses. Mrs. Caffeine Power and I saw to it that we outed ourselves as geeks. Well, at least that she outed herself.

I was the big clunky kid wearing the Star Wars t-shirt, I don’t think I could have made it anymore obvious.

We kicked off the day by hitting up the fair streets of Salem, Massachusetts. And in a more rapturous moment, I finally, finally, finally found the first trade paperback of Jeff Lemire’s Sweet Tooth. It was at a comic book shop far from the confines of my regular Nerd Hovel that I frequent every Wednesday. After acquiring said trade paperback, we decided to nerd up a few spot locations throughout Salem. Basically, it’s just me looking stupid and the Future Wife looking beautiful and obliging to my nerd proclivities.

Hit the jump to see how dorky we are.

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And a good god damn. I knew that I was going to love Fallout: New Vegas. I just didn’t realize that it was going to cater to someone as warped and depraved as myself. Like, seriously. This game is going to feature (suggestions only, unfortunately) robotic fisting? You have to be god damn kidding me.

ESRB Rating via Destructoid:

There is also an extended sequence suggesting (no depiction) sexual activity with a robot (e.g., “Fisto reporting for duty . . . Please assume the position,” “I suppose I should test you out . . . Servos active!” and “Something wrong with someone if they got to f**k a machine.”).

Fucking stupendous. I wish I could describe to you how funny I find the suggestion of getting fucked by a robot, or more properly, fisted by one. And the fact that this is being featured in a big market game makes me hopeful that someday when the world of overrun by the robot apocalypse, they shall spare a whole legion of people like me, who were way ahead of the curve on the idea of Robot-Human fluid-based interfacting.