What the hell is LinkedIn?

I know what LinkedIn wants to be. It wants to be the amalgamation of Facebook and Monster.com. A place where you can network online without the cocktail party. It lets peers see your resume and recommend it and you to prospective employers. In theory, this is a workable idea, but in practice it's akin to cutting your bare chest with glass in order to get noticed at a club.

LinkedIn wants to be the professional Facebook even though Facebook already is the professional Facebook. Every company is thinking about how to incorporate Facebook and Twitter into their marketing and publicity. Everybody my age and up has a Facebook account and edits it because they know it's the online face they present to their employers both real and imagined. If you Google yourself and you aren't famous, your Facebook comes up in the top five search results. Privacy settings aside, you don't put anything on Facebook you don't want floating around at your job. You're probably friends with your coworkers, and if you have clients/authors/musicians to represent/edit/produce then you probably have a Facebook connection with them. Drunk photos of you whipping out your sexual organs at a drug deal turned wacky are not going on your Facebook.

This doesn't mean that you can't relax on Facebook; you just have to decide how much of yourself goes into it unedited. You can still relax by tagging funny photos of moving into a new apartment or Halloween costumes that make you look slightly more interesting than Business Casual Friday. LinkedIn offers no opportunity to relax. Every step you take on LinkedIn is measured by a completeness percent that includes uploading your resume, getting recommendations from peers, writing objective statements, and outlining your specialties. It's all about building the perfect sales pitch masquerading as a social networking profile. For those looking for work, every step is a desperate attempt for someone to notice and employ you. The flip side is that it's a great way to brag about your success to people who will never, ever take the time to be impressed by your profile.

It wants to be a more social and relaxed Monster.com, but all the pressure of creating a profile has just made it socially dysfunctional. LinkedIn drags out the awkward feeling of trying to network at a professional open bar over the course of days thanks to all the profiles you have to connect to, recommend, and get recommended by. It's socialization marred by the implication that you're only here because you want something. You're on LinkedIn because you need a job or you need to show off what you have. The worst part is that LinkedIn rarely gets any worthwhile job opportunities out there. The anxious hours you spend crafting your useless LinkedIn profile probably will get you nothing in return. The ten minutes you spend uploading a resume to Monster.com or Indeed.com will at least get lots of positions to apply to. A website dedicated to careers should be able to deliver jobs to the user at a rate higher than the average rainfall in Arizona. You could use LinkedIn instead of Monster.com, but that would be like a hospital using leeches instead of an MRI.

I've found the perfect gun.

Despite this having nothing to do with the Punisher, I think this may be the perfect weapon. I found this on Neatorama. It is an axe with a flint lock pistol built into the handle so that even after being fired, it's still a weapon. I know what question you're about to ask. "If this isn't for the Punisher, who deserves the perfect weapon?" He's steam punk, and he's a Grant Morrison creation brought to life by artist Doug Mahnke. Frankenstein will shoot you in the chest with this pistol, and then he'll chop off your head. The cherry on the murder sundae is that he'll be quoting Milton's Paradise Lose at the same time.

The NYT should look in the mirror

because it's got something brown on it's nose.

I was amazed to see, in the book, your original handwritten lyrics to “My Freeze Ray,” which contain no crossed-out words, changes or even misspellings. Did all the songs emerge from your head fully-formed like Athena?
- an interview with Joss Whedon by Dave Itkoff

I like Joss Whedon. I'm sure you like Joss Whedon, and Dave definitely likes Joss Whedon. That's great because Joss is funny, talented, and keeps making things that we can all enjoy.* I'm also certain that this kiss ass "Athena" question is intended as jokingly over the top admiration. It's just there is a problem when you're making a joke; the reader is supposed to laugh. My eyes rolled so hard that I have whiplash. It might just work better spoken aloud where inflection can give more depth than "I love your genius so much that it borders on religion". I'm certain that Joss could make that joke work, but that's the problem with trying to be whedonesque. We all like Joss because he's better at what he does than we'll ever be.

*I am excluding most of Buffy Season 8 from this statement.

I don't need drugs when I have BAXTER/REXTAB.

I would like to congratulate Dan Slott and Javier Pulido for making my eyes hurt. In Amazing Spider-man #658, Spidey and the FF travel forward in time to when the super science types of that era have built the future version of the Baxter Building, "Baxter/Rextab, the first ever palindromical architecture." Just look at it. It's beautiful.
The part of my brain that's been forever altered by ten years of reading Grant Morrison instantly fell in love with it.

DC just caught up to 2009

Remember Might Muggs? Yes, these adorable but slightly fetus-like collectable homunculi were all over the place . They may not be as popular as they once were, but guess what? DC Comics has there own knock off Mighty Mugs coming out from Mezco! They're called Mez-Itz, and I'm sure you can't wait to get one!Or maybe DC missed the peak of this collector's fad by almost two years. Many collector's realized vinyl figures like Muggs (and therefore Mez Itz) were a black hole for money that wasn't something you could rationalize in this economy. Hasbro doesn't even make Mighty Muggs anymore. They look nice, but lots of nerds have already sold off their Muggs to pay for last year's convention tickets. Unless they plan on releasing these backwards through time; I don't see much demand.

What I'm Reading 4/13/11

Amazing Spider-man #658
Writer: Dan Slott
Art: Javier Pulido
Colors: Muntsa Vicente & Javier Rodriguez

I'm enjoying the direction that Slott has taken with Spider-man. Peter Parker used to try desperately to keep up with his many responsibilities, but he always struggled to get ahead in life while juggling his career, his family, his friends, and being Spider-man. His new research job is more than enough to fix all of the problems you'd find in Parker's life normally. This new, successful Pete could live comfortably because Slott's created a impossibly perfect dream job. Peter can come and go as he pleases, and his office even comes with private storage space for his costume. Peter's new girlfriend even works with the police so she keeps hours as strange as his. They even leave to investigate crimes at the same time.

I would accuse Slott of trying too hard to make Pete's life too easy, but instead this has become an excellent example of how Peter is his own worst enemy. Instead of taking it easy, Peter's sense of responsibility motivates him to do as much as humanly possible with his new resources. He's joining a second super team, loosing a super power, and being more aggressive about his Spider-man duties. Slott's take on Spider-man is a man that will always push himself to the breaking point. He doesn't know how to relax, and I enjoy watching Peter make trouble for himself. He would never neglect a responsibility to make his life easier, and out of his friendship with the deceased Human Torch, he joins the Fantastic Four this issue. Javier Pulido goes from personal, to cosmic, to comedy, and back again with skill and ease; I'm very impressed with his ability to draw both Spider-man's NYC and the FF's cosmic world so well. I also love how cute he makes some of the characters. Slott and Pulido create a series of bizarre little sci-fi problems for the team to solve, and it ends with Peter screwing up his personal life. It's all Pete's fault, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Rating: 7/10

PunisherMAX #12
Writer: Jason Aaron
Art: Steve Dillon
Colors: Matt Hollingsworth

Jason Aaron (writes Scalped, and you should read it) has done an amazing job of following Garth Ennis' character defining run on the title. He's kept the dark humor, but moved into a much more personal and long term story for Frank Castle. The Punisher has been at war with the Kingpin and Bullseye for over a year in publishing time, and the fight has left Frank Castle physically and mentally broken. The only thing keeping Frank alive is his reputation; he's not even interested in defending himself anymore.

We don't see or even hear about the antagonists that have been troubling Frank for so long because he's main interest is his past. In the previous issue, Bullseye finally made the Punisher realize the kind of man he really was to his family. Trapped in traction, Castle keeps flashing back to his family life after the war, and he's finally aware of how much he failed as a father and a husband due to his time in Vietnam. The perfect family life that he lost is a lie he's been telling himself, and I think we're going to get some dark issues centered around PTSD. I'd expect this from the man that dedicated several issues of his Vertigo book to parallel plots involving abortion and heroin addiction. That arc made Scalped the feel good read of 2010.

This issue is a big change of pace from the previous twelve, but thankfully Steve Dillon is on art. He's great with action, but subtle, emotional, conversation scenes are his greatest strengths. I still look back at Preacher and marvel at how well he handles the long conversations and vast range of emotions in that title. The real downside is that this is four dollars for twenty-two pages, and it's part one of a larger arc. I have faith in Aaron's ability to make this a great arc, but it's still a slow expensive start. The upside is that the more I read it, the more I like it.

Rating: 8/10

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #6
Writer: Nick Spencer
Pencils: CAFU
Inks: BIT
Colors: Santiago Arcas

I'm really enjoying T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, and I recommend that you pick up the collected edition when it hits stores. It doesn't matter if you never heard of this property before; everything you need to know is in this ongoing. The UN has its own superheroes, but their artificial super powers slowly kill them. The art and writing have been wonderful, and I just know that the trade will make a great read.

However, this issue is little on the light side, and it feels even less eventful than PunisherMax despite having much more action. It's an epilogue to the first story arc, and it repeats a few things that the reader already knows. The second half introduces some new elements for the next plot, but the issue just reads too quickly. I complained about Punisher being four dollars, but even at the lower price of three dollars, I blew threw this too quickly, in less than ten minutes. It's a shame because I loved the previous issues.

Rating: 6/10

I don't need drugs when I have Adventure Time

I know it just looks like an elephant wearing Bollywood Tron cosplay, but
it's so much more than that.
It's the Ancient Psychic Tandem War Elephant.
It flies, and its tusks are rifles.