Silly Site o' the Day
Yep, time for my daily after-midnight vacation almost-week update. All the DCU comics are now ready to be shelved, but Rob's dental problems have prevented him from working so for now they're staying in their longboxes while he catches up. I've started moving the Other (non-Marvel, non-DC) comics (currently packed in moving boxes) out of the studio into longboxes in the living room, but I can only do a few more of those before running out of room and, besides, with Robin working tomorrow later today I'm loath to disturb him. Did some food shopping and lots of recyclable-trash tossing (we do accumulate boxes!), must have gone up and down our two flights of stairs at least a half dozen times. So I'm taking it easy tomorrow later today, doing some financial stuff to wrap up the end of the month and maybe a bit of ironing, but mostly (I hope) sleeping and reading before my mandatory office day on Wednesday. To my great surprise I've actually skimmed most of my News+Views blogs, I just need to go through Da Guys a bit. I'll leave you for now with a timely site I got from Laura Gjovaag, the latest in disclaimer stickers for modern science textbooks. Given that discussion is still raging in my comment section from last week about Neal Adams' science project, I shall refrain from further comment on the plate tectonics disclaimer...
Silly Site o' the Day
Still in laziness mode, being on vacation and all, so I only sorted all the DCU comics through "L" (and the ones through about "G" are now on shelves); most importantly I got to the point where we could unstack the remaining boxes and put Amy's dry food back up atop the living room bookcase where she can jump to it but Datsa can't. He had been sneaking up there via the stacked boxes to munch on the dry, and the expected physical discomfort followed, and of course being a cat he's not bright enough to connect the two, but (we hope) it's now a moot point. The "bad" news is, I haven't been reading any News+Views blogs, just the Kultcha ones, because I can't read comics and file comics and relax and do bloggy stuff as well so something had to give. I'm about to do another "mark read" purge. Once the comics are out of the way I'll probably return to normal posting/reading levels, whatever those are. Till then, I'll do things like my Silly Site o' the Day posts before I've gone to bed. So, have you taken the Trebuchet Challenge yet? Via Augie De Blieck.
Silly Site o' the Day
Spent much of the day sorting DC comics, which are now alphabetized and ready to combine with the main longboxes for shelving, so naturally our DC comp box arrived this afternoon. It's Sisyphusian, but in a good way. After these are all done (and I'm in major comics-reading mode now as opposed to blog-reading mode so I imagine it'll be finished fairly soon) I start on the indies, speaking of which I just read this (via Tom Spurgeon's blog) and wish the He-Man guys luck even though Robin will never see his $1300 as he's not an MV person so my cheerleading is somewhat limited in its enthusiasm. (Do a search on "Pen-Elayne" and "Crossgen" for previous posts, I'm too tired to look for them now. I mean honestly, 3½ hours as it is and I'm expected to sit through the long version in a couple weeks?) So, before to bed, here's a site found by Julia, who browses eBay far better than me: It's Hello Kitty Grilled Cheese on Toast. Me, I consider it a minor miracle that I hard-boiled four eggs perfectly today, so there you are.
Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)
Well, we had a little bit of excitement at the Riggs Residence today, as our downstairs neighbors inadvertently burned some food and set off all sorts of smoke alarms. Fortunately ours didn't go off, it's a bit of a pain to disable, but smoke and its accompanying smell does tend to waft upwards, so after we made sure everything was all right and they didn't need any help (and took advantage of our downstairs trip to get rid of our excess trash) we went around opening up our own windows for more ventilation, and Robin made sure the cats were calm:
Oh yeah, they're calm, all they need is a sunbeam and they silhouette themselves nicely...
A far cry from yesterday's rainy-then-windy mess. The Thanksgiving weather pretty much did in the rest of the foliage around us...
Sense Stories
"There are bearable and acceptable trade-offs and there are epically bad and deleterious trade-offs," says Mark Morford, and (observes Robin) he gets to decide which is which because he's the bloke writing this column. Still, I agree with him about the general uselessness and utter absurdity of air fresheners you have to plug in or play like CDs. Do you know, I can hardly find those lovely, practical stick-up air freshener disks any more? Home Depot no longer carries them, for instance. Neither does my local CVS. Any air freshener that requires electricity is, in my eyes, immediately suspect.
Silly Site o' the Day
Via Dean Landsman comes a little film that I'm calling silly because it posits all sorts of things that will happen between now and the year 2014 (including the Death of Journalism As We Know It) involving companies like Amazon and Google and other online places we never heard of ten years ago, and I think these corporations don't necessarily determine whether we become a more Orwellian society, as it's likelier a whole new set of corporations will come into play that we can scarcely imagine at this point in time. Still, it's a well-produced 8 minutes at any rate, and didn't hurt my eyes the way stuff like Bladerunner can.
Winds of Change
We had Thanksgiving at my brother Jay's house today. Here's the plate with all the goodies sis-in-law Kara created:
The blurriness isn't deliberate but I like the softening effect. Clockwise from upper left, that's three colors of roasted potatoes (including purple!), sweet potato, mashed cauliflower, stuffing, turkey with gravy, jellied cranberry sauce and green beans. Silly/exhausted me, I forgot to bring the cranberry/mandarin orange mix, but I don't think it was missed all that much.
Afterwards some of us retired to the game room in the basement, where Jay and Robin had a go with the electronic dart board:
Kara's dad had stumbled prior to our arrival and his leg was feeling poorly so we had a bit of excitement with the EMT people coming in to take him to the hospital for x-rays. Not the ideal end to the day, but it's always great seeing Jay and Kara, and now that I have a car they're only an hour away (on days with little traffic; the trip over was about an hour and a half) via all those cute interstates with numbers like 78 and 95 and 87. Of course, it rained for much of the afternoon, in keeping with Robin's Rule of New Jersey (except for a trip or two to Newark Airport, every time he sets foot in the state it rains), but it was lovely and clear and full-moon'ish and windy on the drive home, and for some reason most of the highway streetlamps were off or set real low so it made for an interesting, somewhat white-knuckled drive home. It's almost like nature is saying "Okay, you've had your autumn, let's blow this joint and bring in winter." Just in time for my vacation daze...
Silly Site o' the Day
Happy Thanksgiving!
Turkeys are inherently silly creatures, so here's a somewhat inspired and manic Turkey Drop game. To those celebrating Thanksgiving today (pretty much just us in the US), have a save and happy holiday and don't forget to gather the folks 'round the hi-fi and listen to Pass the Indian Please again and again...
Silly Site o' the Day
Far be it for me to make fun of either religion or "furries," but when you put the two of them together, well, that's skirting the realm of fair game. Via Arthur Hlavaty, ladies and gentlemen: Molatar's Castle, "dedicated to spreading the Gospel in the werewolf and furry communities." Thank goodness it doesn't include the vampire community, those crosses would be murder.
Silly Site o' the Day
Robin's pretty happy that our landlord and his staff are Irish, as their accents are far easier for him to understand than many of the other dialects you find in the city. So I figured he'd appreciate this new product brought to my attention by Hanan Levin. Sure an' it's Paddy O'Connell's Irish Accent Mouth Spray! Why the flavour is spearmint rather than Guinness is anybody's guess.
Purged!
I couldn't take it any more. I realized I'd never catch up, and I have other things I want to do with my vacation days next week. Forgive me, friends, I've marked you all "read" on my Bloglines homepage even though I haven't read most of you listed in my News+Views sections.
Silly Site o' the Day
I'm beyond burnt out, with much blog-reading catch-up to do that probably won't happen until Thanksgiving. Can you believe we're already into the holiday buying and advertising season? More about that later, I suspect, but for now consider the Orphanage of Cast-Off Mascots. Via Trevor at Pleasant.
He Blinded Me With Science!
Day Three of the National was a lot mellower than Day Two, as comic con Sundays are wont to be. Between the still-gloomy weather and the exhaustion from yesterday we barely dragged ourselves to the express bus by 10, and it took some strong Dunkin' Donuts coffee (for Robin) and hot chocolate (for me) to get us into presentable shape by 11:15 or so. There were a lot of kids, so I was happy I'd brought extra copies of a Justice League Adventures issue Rob had inked to give away. I just wish I'd tracked down the little kid dressed as Robin, who passed close to our table twice but never stopped there; the issue in question featured Robin, and of course I would have wanted the kid to meet a "real" Robin as well. :)
But like I said, somewhat mellow. Rob did a few more sketches, I actually chatted up someone about my (okay, our) Sheagle story in Broad Appeal, and I got a brilliant addition to my sketchbook from Jim Salicrup, who decided he'd draw a crowd shot featuring as many characters from previous pages in the sketchbook as he could. What a clever idea! That's why he hangs out with the Joker:
I mean, would you have the audacity to dance with the devil in the pale moonlight? Particularly when he moonlights as convention head honcho Michael Carbonaro?
Jim told me he was also the mover and shaker behind organizing the convention's spotlight panel, Frank Miller "interviewing" Neal Adams, which actually turned into a conversation between the two gents with lucky attendees listening in. Lots of solid history of Adams' comic industry activism and some really great practical advice for current freelancers. A very worthwhile panel, but in my opinion the one that followed was even better.
Sorry that photo's so grainy; something weird seems to happen to my camera every time I try to take a picture of Neal Adams. I suspect that his sheer force of will is just too much to be captured digitally or something. A handful of us stuck around while Adams debuted a 1-hour version of his long-labored-upon Science Project.
I don't want to get into too much detail about the Project before the graphic novel and accompanying DVD come onto the market (whenever that is), but in essence Adams theorizes (based on decades of study) that, among other things: the Big Bang Theory is incorrect; the Pangaean model is deeply flawed inssofar as how it posits one relatively compact land mass all crowded together on one side of a mostly-liquid planet; dinosaurs weren't wiped out by some cataclysmic event like a comet but died off because their migratory patterns were disrupted by... and this is the big one... the Earth's expansion. Yes, it's that simple and elegant: like pretty much all the "star stuff" in our universe, the Earth is in expansion mode and has been ever since its inception. The Pangaean land mass didn't drift along oceans, it took up most if not all of a much smaller planet with less gravity, then split along tectonic weak points as the planet expanded, and the continents continue to do so to this day.
What struck me most about the "Earth is growing and has always been growing" theory is that I found it a very logical way of looking at things. Instead of coming up with a theory and then manipulating the evidence to suit it (or, more prevalently nowadays, to explain away things that don't fit neatly into other received-wisdom theories), Adams did what artists do best - he observed the universe around him. Then he spent years educating himself in all manner of sciences to better articulate his observations, and put together a cohesive and entertaining package to present to the scientific community as a way of establishing this dialogue. He doesn't claim to have all the answers, just a bunch of intriguing questions that form a coherent theory in which he has yet to find any holes.
Of course, as one can imagine, science doesn't cotton to laypeople questioning received wisdom, no matter how many theories have been disproven over the centuries. So Adams has gotten a lot of "as a theorist he makes a great comic book artist" snide comments. But he's not shoving this theory in people's faces as a be-all and end-all unification - just as the start of a dialogue in which way too many academic and grant-hungry scientists seem unwilling to participate.
And I, too, have a theory-- as to why.
The Big Bang, the Great Cosmic Comet Cataclysmic Catastrophe, the raw power inherent in theories like subduction and India moving about and crashing into Asia... it's all very action-oriented and, well, a very male way of thinking about things, isn't it? I mean, generally speaking, women seem far less interested in violence as a process (whether social or scientific) and much more amenable to the idea of gestation, growth, logical if glacial progression, that sort of thing. But that isn't as visually exciting, is it? Doesn't get the old testosterone racing much, does it? And if science is to remain a (relatively) no-girls-allowed zone, we can't have girlish-sounding, gentle-logical-progression theories muddying up clear-cut, cool-looking explosions and natural disasters that Could Happen Again And Wipe Us All Out and create the kind of fear that'll have us running to Big Daddy Scientist to help us out of it, can we? I mean, this stereotypical male thinking, even among the bookish set, is all about destruction, not construction! They don't want to hear about how things grow and are built up unless they can explain it with a... you know, big bang!!
Anyway, it was a very cool two hours spent, at the end of which the con only had an hour to go anyway so we decided to call it a night. We met up with Heidi again outside the panel room, and I stopped her from going into a toilet paper-less WC:
And we talked blogs for a bit as well, before Rob and I went sush'ing down at Monster. After a subway-and-bus ride back home, I spent about ten minutes clearing wet leaves off my car, less time than that bitching to my parents on the phone, and probably way too much time on this blog entry. Hope y'all enjoyed it. And seriously, check out Adams' science project page, you won't be sorry. Unless you're a guy who's into, like, explosions and stuff.
Hello to Feminist Blog Readers!
I just realized all my blog posts are now being automatically cross-posted to and syndicated by Feminist Blogs. Thanks, gals! Here's their Atom feed. I'll endeavor to try to increase my feminist content, but just to let new readers know I blog about pretty much whatever strikes my fancy at the moment so I'm not terribly a one-topic blogger I'm afraid. Today's feminist note is from a conversation I had with Dave yesterday about women involved in indie comics; he agreed with me that, at least from anecdotal observation, the independent comics field seems to be at about a 50/50 gender split at the moment. The mainstream US comics market (i.e., Marvel and DC and the few other companies that afford writers and artists a living wage) is still, of course, heavily male-dominated, which is why it amuses me when any of the few women who've made it seem surprised or angered at interviewers who ask them gender-specific questions. Frustrated, sure - how many times has the "but there are no female political bloggers" thing come up? (Answer: About every three months, pretty much like clockwork, since blogs began.) But surprised? Par for the course. Anyway, just as with What She Said, Feminist Blogs is sure to be a great visibility-booster. And given my "herstory" of working towards women's visibility, I'm all for that.
For the Love of Cream and Comics...
I've been remiss in mentioning that I've added Jim Lee and his Gelatometti crew to my blogroll, and I'm somewhat abashed that I seem to have convinced him to start Friday cat-blogging (™ Kevin Drum). Gelatometti is turning out to be a first-class photoblog (and artblog), well worth your time!
Silly Site o' the Day
Susan Mainzer e-mailed me and lots of others a poem from Adam Wasson called "My State is Blue," but since it's a mass e-mail I figure someone else probably reproed it so I'm going to plug Adam's Self-Destruction Handbook instead. I wonder if he knows about this guy.
Photoblogging the Con
Today was the first chance I had to accompany Robin to the National, but I misread the express bus schedule and we waited a bit for the bus to come. Not a problem, though. It's still lovely around our area, with many trees hanging valiantly onto their foliage:
This is the house on our corner.
And this tree is a few houses up along our block.
When we arrived at the Penn Pavilion, we were relieved to see so many Homeland Security troops hard at work protecting the area around Madison Square Garden:
It was a good day to catch up with friends; I chatted with fellow bloggers Glenn and Heidi and Dave (sharing a table with Raina and John) and neighbors Keith (whose blog URL I finally have!) and Alex; and saw Jamal and Rodney and Steve S and Rachel and Scott (who it turns out is also a Firesign fan and gave me a surprise sketch to pass on to Phil) and Adam and Allison and met inker Mark Morales for the first time (what a great guy!) and greeted a whole bunch of Yahoo comicart group listers and spotted lots of other folks but at this point I'm blanking a bit, sorry. These things do go rather quickly sometimes. And then there were the luminaries I just don't tend to see at these things any more, like Walt Simonson, chatting here with Danny Fingeroth while Ken Gale listens in (that's Mark Bodé in the foreground):
I took some of Robin's sketch money and bought a pressie for Leah from Ramona Fradon, sitting across the aisle from us, right by Tom Palmer and Howard Chaykin. Then up strolled Mike Netzer - shorn!:
Yep, no more beard and long hair. Michael has embarked on a journey to completely mesh comic books (actually, comic creators) and politics by founding the Comic Book Creators Party, and since those happen to be two of my much-discussed topics here on this blog naturally I'm interested (and thank you for the nice plug on the index page, Mike!). He's selling some original art to help finance the Party's creation and solidify its platform. But first, he's flying back to Israel in two days' time to be with his family once more, so I asked if he could do me a "goodbye/see you later" sketch, and he did! It's a lovely Batman drawing, and if he says it's okay I'll share it with y'all at another time.
But Michael's not the only one leaving New York. Very shortly Joe Rubinstein will be taking off as well for the Left Coast. So I was able to talk him into a "see you later" sketch too; here he is next to Robin, working on my sketch as Robin inks his contribution to tomorrow's ACTOR auction:
Aaah, the glare! As if that weren't enough, Joe got to talking with Walt and then I spotted John Ostrander whom I hadn't seen in ages and it was like this weird Old Home Week to which Robin and I were inexplicably a party to due to our proximity and Rob's there going "but see, Michael and Joe worked on this issue of Challengers of the Unknown and Bernie inked one panel of it and it's my favorite comics panel ever and that issue was such an influence on me" and I'm going "geez, shut up, you're inking Alan Davis blueline pencils, get some perspective."
So he did, and drew a sketch for the Man with the Bullseye Leg Tattoo:
Yes, the Man with the Bullseye Leg Tattoo. Next up: Arthur Frampton, the Man with Three Buttocks.
Michael came by again to pick up his brolly then changed his mind (not much call for umbrellas in the Negev) and gave it to me, for which I was very grateful as we arrived home in the pouring rain. We'll be back again tomorrow, God help us. I doubt we'll be able to get into the Frank Miller/ Neal Adams interview but I'm sure someone or other will tape it...
Silly Site o' the Day
Robin tells me it's a bit noisy in the Penn Plaza Pavilion where the National is being held (10-7 today, 10-6 tomorrow), so I'll be bringing earplugs today. Don't worry, I'll remove them for conversations. :) Speaking of which, you may also want to turn down the sound on your computer before playing this fascinating yet disturbing ASCII animation. Via BoingBoing.
Social Note
Robin's leaving shortly for the first day of the Big Apple National Convention. I'll be there with him tomorrow and Sunday. Other comics bloggers will doubtless make an appearance as well, including Dave Roman. Come on by and say hello! I'll try to do some photoblogging of the event.
Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)
An imagined conversation with my cat...
Datsa, get off my chair...
"But Ma, I'm famous now, I can hang wherever I want!"
What are you talking about, you pushy cat?
"That e-mail you just got from Mike Stanfill!"
Stanfill... where do I know that name...
"Maaaa! Remember the Infinite Cat project that I posed for back in February?"
Oh yeah, the Infinite Cat guy. Now I recall, you were #14 or something, right back when it was getting rolling. So?
"So he's now come out with a 2005 wall calendar featuring all the first 365 kitties! And I'm right there on the first page! And as Mike said, all profits are donated to Dog & Kitty City, a no-kill pet shelter in Dallas, Texas (his home town) so you can help some homeless animals with every calendar you buy!"
Okay fine, I'm sold. I'll get a whole bunch, even at Café Press prices. Now please get off my chair.
"Feed me first."
Sometimes it's an exercise in imagined futility.
Silly Site o' the Day
Gah, I slept badly. Hope I'm not too bleary-eyed to drive. Via e-mail from Carolyn Ibis, these optical illusions are probably not going to help. Robin, you have been warned.
Silly Site o' the Day
With any luck our phones and internet connection will be back by the time I get to work, and maybe I can once again tackle the 1000+ blog posts I haven't read this week. Or maybe I'll just click them off "mark as read" and give up again. I need a vacation, I think. Gotta get back my perspective. Speaking of which, via Barista comes this lovely collection of NASA images of Earth from 300 or so miles up, which makes up for no longer being able to go to La Terre Vue de Ciel (found by Teresa Nielsen-Hayden a couple months back, and presumably taken down due to either copyright violation or bandwidth issues).
Silly Site o' the Day
Via BoingBoing, it's the Grey Video. As Cory suggests, "Go download it now before the lawsuits start." For a brief history of the Grey Album start here. On a far less silly note, via Robin, you may wish to educate yourself about the proposed Intellectual Property Protection Act, designed in part to eliminate "fair use."
Silly Site o' the Day
My boss is out today and Thursday, so I might finally catch up on blog-reading... oh no wait, I'll be spending the next few days catching up on job stuff that I can't do when he's around 'cause he always sidetracks me into doing five other things... Ah well, as I've said before, more sparse posting ahead. Doesn't mean I don't love y'all, doesn't mean I don't want to blog, it just means more Bullshit Bingo (via Hanan Levin).
Milestone Note
A very happy birthday to Heidi MacDonald, who had the beat long before she had The Beat!
Shelved!
Okay, not as restful a weekend as I'd hoped, but at least I got a couple pictures for Kathy 'cause I know she likes my photoblogging. We did our food shopping yesterday, first at Stew Leonard's then at ShopRite, as I wanted to hit both places and see what they had in terms of Thanksgiving stuff, and I found out that Saturday is (at least yesterday was) the day when Stew's gives out free food samples all over the place, so that was fun and yummy. Their sweet potato mousse is to die for but it's packaged way too large for only two people. Oh, and of course it being the holiday season and all you have to have poor, doubtless underpaid employees in costumes:
But most of the weekend has been taken up with finally getting the Marvel comics shelved. Here they are, two entire bookcases' worth:
This is nothing compared to the DC collection, thanks to our monthly comp boxes. I still have to sort the contents of about 15 long boxes and fold them into the other (already-sorted) 15 boxes before we can even consider shelving them. That should take me at least through Thanksgiving. Then I tackle Other Companies, then we see if we have any room left at all to shelve the 8+ long boxes worth of comps Robin has of his own work (I have a feeling those will wind up in the studio). The magazine boxes are all done and put away (you can see bits of some of them atop the bookcases in the above picture), and Robin even had enough energy to store most of the now-empty boxes and lids up in the loft. So I could have used the rest, but it's pretty satisfying to have accomplished this much in any case. I even got to read a few of the blasted pamphlets during my downtime!
Silly Site o' the Day
Via Robin, enter the world of Odd Todd. Flash animations, games, etc. from yet another of Bush's unemployment casualties.
Silly Site o' the Day
The sun is shining now, but Robin tells me when he woke up earlier this morning it was snowing. I'm not mentally ready for snow yet! Then again, I'm not mentally ready for coherent conversation after the last couple of workdays I've had. In any case, thinking of Robin and the oncoming cold weather has me musing about Smittens™. Yes, Smittens™. Via Peggy at A Moveable Beast.
Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)
Datsa has started poking around the longboxes in the living room. 
Unfortunately, this steps up our goal to sort and shelve the rest of our Marvel and DC comics - a huge undertaking as I haven't yet sorted about 10 boxes' worth of DCs, but the urgency has grown because, as Robin reported to me yesterday, Datsa has figured out how to climb our stacked boxes to get to Amy's dry food atop the living room bookcases. Which is a bad thing, as his system can no longer process dry food correctly...
Milestone Notes
Happy birthday to the Space Waitress, happy second blogiversary to Wampum, and happy belated blogiversary to Mustang Bobby. Still struggling to catch up on my blog reading, so happy whatevers to anyone I've missed...
Silly Site o' the Day
Via Laura Gjovaag and lots of others, have you seen my frog? Him name is Hopkin Green Frog. Click on the pictures to go through the lot. It looks like a few have been added since the last time I clicked through.
In Flanders Fields the Poppies Blow
Why Fi?
So Robin was rummaging around and he found an old processor for his laptop, on which we'd given up long ago. Turns out it worked, and the old laptop started up for the first time in years. So he decided to get a wifi card for it. I'm currently sitting in the living room typing on it. The browser doesn't give me any options beyond straight text, and it processes my typing at about 20wpm, but for a machine that was all but dead until today, that still seems pretty remarkable to me. [Edited later for formatting, 'cause I'm kinda anal about that...]
Silly Site o' the Day
Horrid day at work yesterday, tear-inducingly hard, and I'm not expecting it to get better soon. Sparse posting continues. A very happy birthday to Neil Gaiman. Just for him, the Pseudo-Elizabethan Place Name Generator. Last night I dreamt I was in East Sussex, and I wouldn't be surprised if half the words on this page were street names in my dream... Via Hanan Levin.
Howard Keel RIP
Damn, I've been so out of things I didn't even realize he'd gone till I read it at Julia's.
Silly Site o' the Day
Continued sparse posting ahead, as my boss comes up with more things for me to do during the day and I collapse in the evenings. I can't even think straight enough to figure out which Silly Site to pick today. How about... eeny meeny miny... Spider-Man reviewing crayons? Via lots of comics bloggers but I first saw it at Leigh Ann Wilson's place.
Damn You, Food Network
Could I have lived without knowing about Tur-Duc-Hen? I think so, yes.
Silly Site o' the Day
Via Arthur Hlavaty, it's a Spam Name Generator! I'm sure the inspiration for the senders of a lot of stuff in my home in-box must have originated here. Just yesterday I cleaned out spam from Collies Mercator, Porthole T. Wearily, Everett Killer, Foregone F. Remounted, Hugh Quick, Scrumptious, Offertories Twilled, Slosh Conferrer, Blowsier B. Domineering and Camouflaged G. Handout. The generator gave me the spam name of Collector G. Byronism...
Silly Site o' the Day
Well, it may be "so pre-November 2nd," but I think it's a cute news parody page anyway. Via Susie Madrak, check out The Washington Pox.
Sorry Mom...
...but it seems I once again find myself married to a bearded man, although he's not sure how long it's going to last...
We went to see The Incredibles today, by the way, and every good thing all the other blogs are saying about it is absolutely true. A real treat.
Silly Site o' the Day
Around here the holiday season appears to be starting in earnest - I mean, honestly, Hallowe'en lights? - and along with the decorated malls (now that we have a car we hope to check out Woodbury Common next Saturday and, God help us, Palisades Center the weekend after Thanksgiving) I'm starting to get annual catalogs in my mailbox. My favorites so far are from Seva and Heifer International, but for sheer sentimental value you can't beat good old Acme. Via Tony Collett.
Gunpowder, Treason and Plot This one's just for Robin, as his old hometown is having their 150th more-or-less annual Bonfire Night right about now. I think we might have some baked potatoes tonight in solidarity. Between this week's election here and Blair's standing in Britain, I wonder which effigy will be the most popular one this year. (Heh, I beat Neil to the header by about an hour...)
Mapping It
Well, there's this...
...and this...
...and this...
But you know, I prefer either this...
...or better yet this...
...as a truer indicator of the current American mindset. It's the very opposite of a mandate, folks - according to an already-suspect voting process including unaccountable, no-paper-trail "black box" machines owned by Republican supporters, a slim majority voted one way and almost as many voted the other way. We are as divided a nation as we've been since September 10 '01, perhaps even more. Maps courtesy of The Poor Man, Andrea Eastman (who also has up the Pre-Civil War Free vs. Slave States comparison map with the Election Results one) Bob Goodsell, BoingBoing (finally added to the News+Views Groups section of my blogroll!) and Robert J. Vanderbei.
Update 1: From a more international perspective, this one, via Bob Harris, is cute too:
Update 2: Over at the Blogging of the President, Barry Ritholtz has gone map crazy!
Update 3: Via Will Shetterly, have some fun with cartograms!
Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)
Amy loves watching the leaves fall, now that we're in a place with so many trees around us... 
...but she does tend to get the wind up her tail, and isn't all that fond of the oncoming cold weather.
Bam!
Love me some Food Network. What with the baseball and the elections and the Hey Lady!, I had no idea that my local cable system finally added this channel onto its offerings until yesterday. You must understand, I'm the kind of person who craves all those PBS cooking shows during the weekends because I've been Food Network-deprived for so long. There's just something about the culinary arts that fascinate and inspire me. If it didn't involve so much standing and sous-cheffery and, oh yeah, some sort of innate talent for it, I might have gone into that career myself. As it is I can follow recipes pretty well but am usually too tired or ill-equipped to do terribly much beyond an entree and perhaps thawing a frozen veg or two. Still, I'm trying to think of a good 3-minute video pitch for their Be The Next Food Network Star contest. The Two Fat Ladies already took the jolly-portly angle, so I'm thinking of going with "essentially lazy but practical and stream-of-consciousness but probably only borderline telegenic" but it needs work. "Okay look, here's how you do this, and you need the right tools and stuff which is a mistake a lot of beginning cooks make, and if you can have your husband or maybe your cat dice the garlic and ginger it would help a lot 'cause then all you have to do is slather it on..." Hmm, this may require a little more thought. In any case, it's just neat to have the network at last, and of course my TV will be tuned to it constantly until I get bored of it, which I guess will probably be in a couple of weeks when I start seeing reruns. Until then, scusa but I have to watch more Iron Chef! Tonight - eel!! (Yes, we did "sush" this evening, why do you ask?)
Traffic Jam
Enough of politics for now. Yeah yeah, as that Morning Sedition caller whines, "Talk about the issues, we're fighting for our lives here!", but honestly, my interest in "fighting" (i.e., blog posting) about issues on behalf of others far more affected by them than I am has taken up way too much of my time and interest lately disproportionate to the rest of my life - comics, cats, sushi, etc. Not that I'll never touch political stuff again, I just need a little more balance.
One of the things I've wanted to do for awhile is to start photoblogging more often. So, here are some photos of my morning commute, because I was stuck in a bit of a traffic jam and needed to stay alert and I couldn't call Robin on my nifty new portable bluetooth speaker because he's on deadline (which means, yes, sushi tonight!):
So yeah, this was the traffic jam, as a portion of the Cross County Expressway is being worked on so they closed off not one, not two, but three of the four lanes right before my exit, naturally backing up traffic for about half the length of my highway commute (usually about 15 minutes total out of my half-hour journey).
Not that I'm complaining, I mean honestly, when I can look out my driver's side window and see this. Have I mentioned how much I love fall foliage?
But the delays weren't over; the hard-working DOT folks are paving a major road in New Rochelle that I turn onto when I leave the highway, so in the second traffic stoppage I took this shot of the new asphalt. Yum, tar smell at 8:30 AM!
Total commuting time today was nearly an hour, about what it used to take me to get into Manhattan on the subway...
Milestone Note
Backup Brain celebrates its fifth blogiversary today. Most of us never heard the term "blog" five years ago! And Dori's taking stock. I love her four-word suggestion for a straightforward message that should come from the Democratic Party, only I'd probably change "evil" to "scary" or "threatening" or "anti-freedom" or somesuch.
Silly Site o' the Day
How can one believe liberals, who strive to expand freedom for everyone and include all views in a debate, are the "hate-filled" ones in our political spectrum, after seeing even one minute of Zell Miller's rant at the Republican National Convention? How can one be so contemptuous of liberal "elites" and not conservative ones? How can what you do with your own body and whom you love - love - be considered a worse sin than war, the death penalty, or anything else that violates the Ten Commandments? Maybe obedience is the key. Via Scaramouche, it's Obedient Republicans, hitching their wagons to the Death Star...
The First Post-Election Blog Fatality
Damn, Tristero, I'm going to miss you. But I can't say as I blame you or any other lefty blogger for being burnt out at this point.
Silly Site o' the Day
Yeah, I know, between the outcome of the election and Blogger's bugginess today I'm finding it hard to smile too, but press on we must. As Roxanne puts it, " This won't alleviate all the pain, but it may make you feel a little better for a minute or two."
That Old-Time Religion
Sorry I've been away, but Blogger wouldn't let me into my edit function until just now. No telling how long this situation will last, so I'm grabbing a little posting time while I can.
So, now that Kerry has conceded, can we please get back on track with the impeachment proceedings?
Something a coworker said to me this morning still reverberates in my brain. A Bush voter, she found it fascinating how the country broke out this time into the red and blue states, with the Northeast and West Coast going for Kerry and - and these are her exact words - the "real Americans" voting for Bush. I made a halfhearted attempt at being glib and immediately responded, "Well, as a member of the reality-based community I believe I take great offense at not being thought of as real," but in a way she's right. These are God-fearing people in every sense of the word (emphasis on both "God" and "fearing"), and once one concedes that fact it's not hard to see how Bush won their popular vote. It's like Mark Morford noted in his column today: People want to believe. They want to trust their leaders, even against all screaming, neon-lit evidence and stack upon stack of flagrant, impeachment-grade lie. They simply cannot allow that Dubya might really be an utter boob and that they are being treated like an abused, beaten housewife who keeps coming back for more, insisting her drunk husband didn't mean it, that she probably had it coming, that the cuts and bruises and blood and broken bones are all for her own good. We have underestimated evangelical fervor at our peril. People want to believe so much they'll willingly put blinders on and vote against their best interests because God (through Bush) told them to, you see. And the more things fall apart around them, the more stubborn they get about clinging to those beliefs, even if the people they believe in are the ones causing stuff to fall apart.
We are seeing the merging of church and state, and along with it the institutionalization of state-sanctioned bigotry. Welcome to the Fourth Reich. God help us all.
Temporary Anxiety Relief
God bless the Daily Show. But, you already knew that.
It's Morning in America
The street off which I live, taken on my way back home from voting.
It was extraordinary. I've been voting since 1976, even in relatively dinky elections like primaries and off-year stuff where nobody much seems to care. And I've never, ever seen a polling place this abuzz. Absolutely electric! Even at 7:15 AM or so there was a bit of a queue to get in, mostly because only one of the double doors into the school gymnasium was propped open. Once I got to the section where my Election District was there was only one person ahead of me, but there were dozens of folks all around in the queues for the other EDs! I was thinking about taking a picture for posterity but then reasoned that it would probably freak a lot of folks out (not to mention I have no idea of the legalities) so I refrained. But the snapshot in my memory will last for a long time. I actually teared up. It was so amazingly great seeing everyone being so passionate about exercising their franchise! So anyway, there's one more lever pulled for Kerry, and I can now head off to my job and concentrate on whatever work my boss throws at me and try not to think about anything else until this evening (which won't be easy as I'll have my eye on the other blogs as time permits). Folks, if you haven't voted yet and you're eligible, please get out there!!
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