I remember Peter Bergman once critiquing my Four-Alarm FIRESIGNal newsletter as derivative, encouraging me to branch out into my own creativity rather than leeching off that of others. (Of course, the fact that I was also self-publishing INSIDE JOKE at the time rather mitigated that criticism.) Lately I haven't felt that creative; in fact, another Purim has come and gone and
Megillat Vashti is no closer to completion than last year. Likewise, I have tons of posts bookmarked going back at least a half a year, but haven't blogged about them because, well, Facebook games (Playdom in particular has hooked me with their Gardens of Time and now Blackwood & Bell) and work and the desire "just finish reading everyone else's blog posts before doing one of my own" which, of course, never happens. Do you know, it's actually been over a year since my last official blogaround? No wonder my readership has dwindled, even though I mostly do this blog for me and a few relatives and close friends. Well, let's clean up 2011 and try to make a fresh start towards 2012's creativity, shall we?
• A long, LONG overdue
mazel tov to John and Randi on their nuptials!
• Did you know that THE
Tony Isabella is blogging? Well, he is. He's been doing it since last August, in fact. I much prefer his Blogger site to the last place he was on, which was terribly user-unfriendly, at least to me. Oh, and this
non-FAQ is a great way to keep up with Budgie in his relatively new Budgie's Perch.
• Also, did you know
about Ctrl-F? I didn't. I should have, I use Ctrl-P all the time, and if "P" is for Print it stands to reason that "F" is for Find.
• How do you fix the
so-called male literary crisis? Via
Ladies Making Comics, here's
a suggestion that never seems to get old. Or, via
Bookslut, just
respond to the faulty premise. And PZ Myers wonders, how do you fix
the feral otaku?
• Also
via LMC, an interesting article on
breaking media stereotypes.
• I love Regretsy proprietor April Winchell's anecdotes about the cartoon voice work industry, and
this is a great example of why.
• I also love Mark Evanier's anecdotes about his encounters with recalcitrant folks on the other end of the phone, like
this one.• The lip service on the
10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks has long since come and gone, but I still think Keith Olbermann's
essay about 9/11 and baseball is worth reading and remembering. So are PZ's musings about how the "war on terror" has
made us all more afraid, thus achieving the exact opposite of what it purports to do.
• What Cheryl Lynn
said about Amanda Waller, a character I used to like (and about whom I've been asked how to draw, as both a fat woman and the wife of someone who's drawn her for DC). Also, what she said
about the new Starfire. More often than not nowadays, I get angrier at what happens to real women than fictional ones, but I also recognize it's all about the attitudes of real people towards storytelling, and I still think how we craft our modern myths matters, so I'm glad Cheryl and
Heidi and lots of others are still fighting the good fight.
• Melissa has a great dissection of the
devolution of the Republican Party, now reaping what it's sown to its own detriment.
• What Jill said about how
it's all just a game to some people (namely, those who aren't affected by it). Reminds me of a CNN broadcast I glimpsed yesterday at the auto shop, where the discussion was "the politics of jobs" or somesuch, and all the participants in the particular discussion were employed. But hey, we live in a world where women aren't consulted or allowed to participate in discussions about women's bodies, so why is it a surprise that people with no skin in the game talk about everything like it's a game?
• The Mary Sue posted a nice round-up of
seven funny women we should get to know better. Sarah Haskins is one of them (yay!), Kristen Schaal is another (she's still growing on me but I think she'll do a better job on 30 Rock than I thought she did on The Daily Show). TMS also provides details of the
female firefighters at Pearl Harbor.
• I mentioned being somewhat addicted to Playdom games on Facebook. Not to the point of actually paying for them yet, but that's a big "yet" and I realize it's only still there because of
exposés like this (via
BoingBoing).
• Russell Brand goes
slumming with the Occupy Movement, shortly before he becomes even more of the 1% with the Katy Perry divorce money. Sarcasm aside, I really don't have a problem with those folks in the 1% who actually seek to understand and illuminate what's going on with those less fortunate than themselves (i.e., the rest of us). It used to be called basic humanity, but it does seem in shorter supply nowadays. And speaking of Occupy, if someone starts arguing that they still don't know what the movement stands for, have them read
this Matt Taibbi column for a good start. The movement isn't ant-capitalist as much as against a rigged, unjust, broken and unsustainable economic system. Again, this used to be called common sense. Susie sees
hope for newer media in all this, and also of note are the Rude Pundit's observations about
public spheres.
• Lance Mannion delves into
the mystery of Marlowe and the
pitiable Puritans so plentiful nowadays.
And there's all my saved bookmarks from last year. Time to take a break and get back to Facebook, or perhaps more comics reading. So many choices, so little time in a 23-hour day...
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