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so, you may have noticed i changed my twitter name from "redlefthand" to"real_j_doe". apparently someone swooped in and took "redlefthand" as soon as i was done with it. so don't think that's still me. "real_j_doe". that's me.

somebody else

hey friends.

so much happens on this planet that i am oblivious to, on a daily basis. i am trying to get better at being aware of the world around me. i watch the news almost every day, as depressing as it is most of the time. i check the internet throughout the day, to see what local news stories are popping up. i steer clear of reddit anymore, because i really don't give a shit anymore about how much some asshole loves bacon or what some other asshole's cat looks like.

it's not just in our world that i don't know what's going on, either. there are more worlds than these, i remember reading somewhere, and there's a lot of action going on there, too.

did you know thanos, my favorite comic book villain, is back from the dead? i didn't either, but at least i know who he is, jerk. i don't know how he came back from the dead, or who brought him back from the dead, but i'm looking forward to someday finding out, when i can afford to go buy some comics again.

my comic book collection is sadly out of date. not that a collection can be out of date, since a collection can span quite a long period of time. mine spans over fifty years, if you count my mother's comic books and the comic books my uncle left me (thanks guys, love you), plus the old daredevil books that were missing covers that the guy from Van's Comics talked me into buying (you know who you are, crafty salesman). by out of date i mean not current. so much has happened over the last few years, across all of the universes and multiverses, across marvel (mostly), DC and all of the others. hell, dark horse brought grendel back and i wasn't even there for it. and you all know i love me some grendel. batman has been somehow traveling through time. i don't even have an explanation for that one.

so where to from here? should i continue to harbor this collection, and care for it and love it but never let it grow? should i start selling it off so that i can replace it with more? the only stuff worth selling is the stuff i want to hold onto for my own store someday, and no one wants to buy the books that i think are valuable based on content.

all right, i'll hold onto it a bit longer. i do love these books so much. a lot of them hold sentimental value, not just monetary value. i can tell you where and when i got them, who i was with, and why i bought them.

for example. Thanos Quest 1 and 2. it was maybe 1990? i was at electric city comics. i was with aaron, one of my very best friends for all time. it was around my birthday. the books were $10 a piece, because thanos fucking rocks. he told me that he would buy me #1 for my birthday if i would buy #2. the stipulation was that i would have to let him read them. aaron was not much of a comics guy, but he loved some silver surfer.

well aaron and i don't talk anymore. i see him on twitter and facebook once in a while. he's married, has a son. they seem happy. i will always remember aaron as the first kids i knew who slept into until noon, and ate handfuls of salt. also he had a croquet set.

another example woud be grendel: 4 devils 1 hell. i bought that book with kris zimmer at a comic book store whose name escapes me. image was new, we were there for spawn and the maxx and pitt and everything else. i walked 4d1h #4 of 5 and thought how awesome that cover was. it was so much different from the other books that we were getting. kris wondered why i would be interested in that, when supreme something-or-other was out that week. i went for it, and it changed my view of comics forever. i don't talk to kris anymore. a mutual friend set like five of us up on conference call like two years ago, and he was miserable. he doesn't use facebook and he doesn't email me.

i promise, not all of my comic book memories are about people i don't talk to anymore.

well, it happened again. as usual, my passages start one way and end another. what started as a comment about the world around us has turned into a talk about comics and what they mean to me. when i sit down in front of my laptop (not as frequently as i would like) i usually have an idea of what i want to talk about, but at some point in the delivery, i want to talk about something else instead.

tired. thirsty. maybe more later. hope all are well.