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Woodworking Wednesday

My spontaneously deconstructed deck is just about back in perfect condition again. Ran out of battery yesterday while sawing, so I’ve got to finish the finer bits this afternoon.

Reconstructed

Housework can’t kill you, but why take a chance? ~Phyllis Diller

As I said before:

I’m getting too old for this 💩

The hard bit was having to pick the darn thing up in order to get it into the newly installed brackets.

Boy was I sore after that. Fortunately, that was not something that had to happen a lot.

Only one corner was compromised, so getting it back together wasn’t as cumbersome as I had envisioned.

Thank God for small favors.

The last few times the thing needed to be picked up, Kelly and the kids were there to get the job done.

Yes, I actually can pick up an 8′ x 8′ deck all by myself.

I can even do it a few times if needed.

What I can’t do is pick it up and steer it into little metal brackets all by myself, so thank God for helping hands when needed.

Is it done the way a professional contractor would? No. It’s more of a feat of dad-engineering.

Even so, it should last a good long while as currently reconstructed.

Hopefully, whenever it needs to be worked on again, I’ll be making enough to pay somebody to handle the rough stuff.

After Dark

Film Theory: The R-Rated Avengers Are COMING!

One of the features of the Golden Age of Comics was a broad variety of genres.

It gave us some of the most iconic superheroes such as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Captain America.

It also gave us horror, war, western, detective stories and some stuff that was just a bit kinky.

As the saying goes, all good things must end.

Not only did superheroes lose popularity in the wake of WWII, but the surviving titles were considered to be a bit much for the younger audiences.

As the presenter in the video above mentioned, the Comics Code Authority was set up in response to the anti-comic book frenzy that was stirred up by Frederic Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent.

This gave us the campy Silver Age. Everything was being geared to a younger audience and the scary or the sketchy were mothballed.

Thing is, the kids who grew up reading their favorite Silver Age heroes and teams, well, they grew up.

More mature readers deserved more mature themes and the comic book publishers didn’t want to give up a loyal fandom.

As also mentioned in the video, the Comics Code Authority was quietly mothballed. In the 70’s, monsters made a comeback.

With them, the comics began to explore more mature and complex themes.

However you feel about that, people weren’t going to go for silly, improbable villains for much longer.

As the first twenty-odd MCU movies and Disney+ series demonstrated, you can dance around the darkness and still keep your PG-13 ratings.

Even so, having acknowledged that darkness, it’s only a matter of time before some of us venture bravely in.

If you don’t care for things getting dark, there’s plenty of material for you to choose from.

For those of us who don’t mind getting grim or gritty, there’s a lot of that to delve as well.

Power, Man

What the power structure is afraid of is that we’re going to learn to recognize the truth when we hear it. ~Daniel Keys Moran

That’s where The Conclave resides, deep in the darkness.

What they did to Mary Christmas is definitely not PG-13.

The Sentinels intended to be a PG-13 organization but as special consultants to the ECPD, it’s hard to stay that way.

They have two basic missions. One is to be an inspiration to kids. The other is to assist the police as special consultants.

When they came on the scene in the early 90’s, they helped rescue some police officers who were caught in the middle of a gang war shootout.

Founders, Lucius “Lucky” Deagle and Tim “Foxfire” Wisler, had gone through an extensive process of establishing a relationship with the city’s police force to ensure that they’d be deployed as needed.

There was an understandable skepticism and initial resistance, but the Sentinels eventually won over even the most stringent critics.

How did The Conclave react? They play the long game.

The Sentinels were considered to be a flash in the pan.

Captain Freedom might seem to be immortal in his own way, but Deagle and Wisler were not.

The Conclave believed the Sentinels would disband after the founders aged out.

Frankly, Lucky and Tim were afraid that would be the case unless more superheroes turned up.

Until that point, the only superhumans in the world were Foxfire, Captain Freedom and Mary Christmas.

As far as they could tell, that’s how it was likely to stay.

Tim was pushing 50 and he knew he couldn’t keep the superhero thing going indefinitely.

Along came Tanda.

Why?

How?