MMORPG motivational posters

They made me laugh.

I have it on good authority that the kitten on the left plays an undead rogue in WoW.

6-year-old’s Make-A-Wish: Be a superhero for a day

From the Idaho Statesman:

Aubrey Matthews likes to swim, ride bikes and eat enchiladas. But the 6-year-old’s real passion is being a superhero.

The imagination of the Cole Elementary first-grader came to life Friday when the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Idaho, Windermere Real Estate and others orchestrated Aubrey’s wish to be a superhero for a day.

Aubrey, aka “Star,” has optic glioma, a brain tumor behind her eyes. But it didn’t stop her as she foiled crimes and chased her arch-nemesis, Black (named for the character on Neighborhood Watch signs), through the city of Boise, followed by a cavalcade of police cars.

With a determined look on her face, Aubrey used her super powers of X-ray vision, super strength, fast speed and blowing power to rescue a hostage from Black’s grip and tie the villain to the replica Liberty Bell in front of the Statehouse at about noon.

Hundreds of fans cheered her on.

“I’d like to thank you for your extreme bravery in capturing Black,” Mayor David Bieter said on the Statehouse steps after Black’s arrest.

“You have shown extraordinary crime-fighting skills,” Boise Police Chief Mike Masterson said before presenting her with a custom-made police uniform, badge and all.

Bieter proclaimed June 16 Make-A-Wish Day and Star Day, and swore her in as an honorary Boise police officer.

Aubrey also received a medal and pin from the city.

If you can read the whole story without tearing up, you’re clearly a supervillain.

More on Aubrey and her adventures as Star:

• Seattle Post-Intelligencer story
• Idaho Statesman story with photo

Occupational ringtones

So, I’m loving my new Treo 650 and, via the magic of the Ringo Pro shareware program, enjoying using ringtones for my different groups of contacts. (I know, I know, it’s very passé. I’m late.)

Although my regular ringtone is the instrumental portion of LL Cool J’s“Going Back to Cali” before he begins rapping, my news contacts cause my phone to ring with the Eagles’ “Dirty Laundry” when they call. (I never said it was particularly clever.)

But lest anyone think I’m unusually dorky (because of this, at least), when I was at a police “event” today (you’ll see what it was in tomorrow’s Daily Press and Tuesday’s Hesperia Star), I heard two separate police officials’ cell phones ring, and each had police/detective show theme songs as their ringtones. (I think they were the Rockford Files and Hill Street Blues, respectively, but they were the plinky MIDI versions and not totally identifiable.)

So it’s not just me.

The blogosphere loves/hates Scott McCloud

You know, just when I thought that blogs and blogging and all that were dying down (or at least finally morphing into noisy text lite MySpace pages and the like), I do a piece on Scott McCloud for CBR and 10,000 bloggers come out of the woodwork to talk about it.

• Lemondor
• lucy_anne
• Angry Zen Master
• ozarque
• mindrot
• superhappy
• The Ferrett (sic)
• _eric_m_
• Flight 3
• Comicon’s The Beat
• blog@newsarama
• Mad Ink Beard
• Tales from the Long Box
• La Cárcel de Papel
• Pop Culture Review

Who the hell knew that the Live Journal crowd was so ga-ga for McCloud?

Get sorted!

Not particularly timely, since as far as I know, there’s no hint of the final Harry Potter book on the horizon, but despite that …

I’m a Gryffindor!