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Superman: Secret Identity by

Impressions

Not quite reviews, I talk about books I read and enjoyed.

Superman: Secret Identity by Kurt Busiek and Stuart Immonen (Illustrator)  book is about an Earth where Superman is a comic book hero, and Clark Kent is a boy who grew up in Kansas hating Superman — because of the name, obviously.

I get it. I was born a Kent too. (According to one site I checked, Kent is the 778th most popular surname in the United States, so there are quite a lot of us.) I didn’t get nearly as much teasing as my brother (who is not named Clark), and certainly not as much as Clark Kent in this book gets — because his family all thought it was hilarious.

But just like every kid, I wondered if I was a superhero, or a mutant, or any of those things (It was a little too early to wonder if I was a wizard.) And I wish I’d had this book at 13 or 15 or even 25 to remind me that superheroes lives aren’t any easier, nor are they any harder, they’re just different. And ultimately, that somehow makes it all okay.

Update: It’s hard to capture in one post how much this story meant to me. Six months later, just thinking about it still makes my heart ache in a good way. Hopefully you’ll get as much out of it as I did.

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Day 262: Irrational Anger

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 262:

Still following this vein of ore. Still digging down.

Have you ever been irrationally angry at rock? Like just furiously, axe-breakingly angry? All I want is for this vein to finish so I can go back to the top and start digging up again, but no… no we’re going to just keep going down until there is no down any more and I come out the other side of this forsaken ball of dirt.

I. am.  so. angry!

 

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Day 261: I think I have a problem

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 261:

Remember when I said a few days ago that the whole goal here was to cut a new tunnel back to my home base so that I didn’t have to go up and down the steps so much to get home?

Yeah, I’ve now followed so many veins of ore that I’m, well, let’s call it 30 meters, below where I started.

Which, I mean, yay ore. But also, this is not getting my tunnel done efficiently.

And also also zombies keep falling on my head.

And I’m frightened of the fact that I’m 30 meters below where I started and there’s still a good 30 meter deep cavern somewhere nearby. Because if I fall in that hole, nobody in the universe is going to find me. Well, except the skeletons. But I don’t think they’re going to tell anyone.

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Day 260: adrenaline

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 260:

One nice part about the adrenaline rush you get when you’re literally standing on the precipice between you and certain death is that everything get suddenly louder. All the things you’re not normally paying attention to? Your body decides they are all noteworthy. Water dripping. Lava bubbling. Your own breathing. The breathing of the exploding giraffe corgi sneaking up on you from behind.

It’s been a rough week is what I’m saying.

Also, apparently the lake at the bottom of the chasm with the lava pouring into it is deep enough that the exploding giraffe corgi didn’t die on impact.

But that just gives me one more reason not to fall down into the chasm.

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Day 259: More good training

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 259:

Hey remember yesterday when I found that lava pit?

Turns out that it was a lava lake built into the side of a very deep chasm. Like a “I can see zombies and they look like tiny bugs” chasm.

So it’s really good that even though I thought I knew all of the local dangers and the edges of the lava pit, I continued to test the rock. Because while jumping into the lake below may or may not be safe had I fallen hundreds of meters down, the lava fall that pours down the side of the chasm into that lake may have made that an uncomfortable choice.

Also, why are there so many damn chasms here? Whole blasted planet’s just an air bubble with attitude.