Another Year Over, And A New One Just Begun

I admit I'll be relieved to be seeing the back of 2006, a frustrating year for me in many respects (mostly job- and health-related). But for me it was also a year of hope.

My last round of job interviews went quite well and I almost found a position, and I already have an interview set up during my boss' next vacation period in January; although I haven't heard anything from the website startup in a couple weeks I'm still presuming it will happen soon which will mean at least a regular writing gig if not the possibility of a stay-at-home full-time position; and even if none of that works out I've been promised a raise for taking on another task at my current position (which would alleviate some other money worries even if I remain trapped there).

We took advantage of the health benefit my employer still has through March (when our carrier phases out our current plan and we move to goodness only knows what) to buy my blood-thinning and -pressure-reducing pills mail-order in 90-day increments (cheaper than monthly at the local pharmacy) as well as get new eyeglasses for us both and orthotics for me (my old ones were 10 years old and somewhat ratty and, I'm sure, contributed to my badly-sprained ankle a couple months back) at substantially reduced cost.

We're both still here and blissfully happy in our marriage and our apartment (although not as healthy as we should be, but if my job situation changes at all I'm convinced my overall health will improve and I'll get into better physical shape); my car is still running fine at 18,000 miles if a little more scuffed for wear (and daily parking in essentially a construction zone), the cats are each a year older with no signs of slowing down yet (although I wish the 14-year-old didn't keep playing havoc with our sleep cycles), and we're in frequent touch with friends and loved ones even when we can't see them in person. We know, for all our aches and worries, we're better off than the vast majority of folks in this world, and hope that this past November's election results will prove a positive step towards redressing at least some of that inequality and suffering.

And while we're on the subject of hope, I wish all my friends and readers the best of what they wish for at this turning of the year.

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 12/24/06 thru 12/30/06

I've just finished writing my year-end post, which I'll put up later today, but first I wanted to get to the last Liberal Coalition-and-bonus-non-LC-posts blogaround of 2006:

• A couple unexpected but welcome blogarounds this past week from Kathy and Lilith.

• Echidne expresses extreme skepticism over a male-created BBC quiz about how men and women think differently, opines about an illustration from a supposed NRA graphic novel in the works (I don't believe it for a minute - for one, the PDF that BoingBoing ran clearly shows it has no sequential art whatsoever, it's merely some sort of illustrated booklet), and reminds us that study findings can often be interpreted in different ways by different people to further different ends.

• Guy's just testing us. Nothing to see here, move along...

• Kathy tells a nice Christmas story, Steve G offers his O. Henry twist, and Moi catches up with the actress who played Zuzu Bailey. And Mustang Bobby delves into the origins of Boxing Day.

• Scrutiny Hooligans thought this US map quiz was a lot harder than I did.

• Steve G chooses his winners and losers from 2006, as well as the top 10 national stories of the year.

• Lastly, upyernoz has some very good advice for pundits who are easily surprised.

And a few bonus non-LC links:

• Milestone notes: Avedon celebrates a birthday; Frank Paynter talks about his tenth blogiversary, sort of; Billmon's Whiskey Bar would appear to be gone again (and thus off my blogroll) although he's been known to un-retire before; Rachel Barenblat is recovering from a couple minor strokes and appears to be shaken but okay; and Susie has a brand-new job as press secretary for a Philly mayoral candidate which will cut way down on her blogging (since she currently posts about 15-20 times a day this means she will become human rather than superhuman) and Suburban Guerilla will take on some guest bloggers. (Naturally as soon as she made this announcement her hosting company shut down her blog for crashing their server, leading to all sorts of speculation; the blog's back now.) She's celebrating by planning one heck of a social life over the next couple days.

• Atrios, who desperately needs the hits, presents his taxonomy of annoying people on "our" side of the political blogosphere. I'd add a few other categories mainly having to do with not criticizing the motes in other people's eyes until we acknowledge the logs in our own, but in the spirit of the season I think I'll pass.

• David Niewert's put up part four of his Eliminationism in America series.

• Tom Hilton writes on bogeymen old and new.

• Ragnell tries to head arguments about fan entitlement versus feminism off at the pass. Yea Lisa, good luck with that! In my experience, once a fan decides that fictional characters are more important than real people, there's no reasoning with them, and they'll go pretty far out of their way to cite examples that prove the points they set out to make, even when those examples are more probably, as the original poster opined, bad writing or bad art rather than ingrained misogyny. I try never to ascribe to malice what is more easily attributable to incompetence or rushed deadlines or too many cooks or other logical real-life considerations.

• David at Barista tells us about Marie Tharp and her plate tectonics map.

• Lindsay is delighting in posting lots of holiday pictures, many involving chocolate-covered kimchi. Which better not be in the next dessert she brings to the NYC blogger BBQ...

That's it for me until my last post of 2006!

Silly Site o' the Day

The news that George Lucas is going to be the Grand Marshall at tomorrow's Rose Parade (accompanied by, yes, "storm troopers" from the 501st Legion, whom I'd mock mercilessly except that they seem to do a lot of good charitable work) is the perfect lead-in to a series of YouTube videos to which upyernoz led me: Blame Society Productions' hilarious Chad Vader series.

Silly Site o' the Day

Today Carol and Graham - Carol is Rob's sister, as you may recall from our England trip in May - are celebrating their ruby (40th) anniversary with a huge family party at their place in Bexhill-on-Sea which we'd have loved to attend had we the money to take two overseas holidays this year. But as we cannot be there (although, just to let you know Carol, I'll have my MSN Messenger open all day in case anyone wants to say hi to us!), I wanted to send this present to them. Unfortunately, this is the most I'm able to embed it:



The generator in question is via Gerard, of course.

Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

Welcome to our Salute to the Tuxedo Kitty Who Won't Shut Up edition of FCB, this week starring guest kitties Cocteau and Seurat!



Cocteau (the boy) is on the left, Seurat (the girl) on the right (duh). They belong to Tom and Lili. I knew them briefly when they were kittens about a year or so ago.

Here's a recent shot of the One Who Won't Shut Up. File this under "turnabout is fair play," as I woke Datsa on Christmas just to take this photo.



He wouldn't stay with me in the living room this afternoon even when I paid him attention and fed him and petted him, so he lacked for nothing, but he still went into the bedroom to wake Robin, who wound up getting only about a 2-hour kip. We'd love any suggestions out there for what to do about cats who meow every couple of hours day and night and wake their owners, it's been at least a week and we're both going pretty batty.

Silly Site o' the Day

I got out of work super-early to start the long holiday weekend (allowed to leave at 1, finished up by 1:30) and was hoping for some afternoon shut-eye, but Datsa keeps meowing (he's done this night and day for at least a week; nothing seems to be wrong with him except for wanting attention but I wish there were s way we could stop it) so I'm laptopping in the living room to at least give Robin a chance at cat-free unconsciousness. Cat pictures coming later; in the meantime, how about a cute rendition of The Lion Sleeps Tonight courtesy of Bint Alshamsa? In fact, go on over to Bint's place and wish her a happy birthday - she's kicking chondrosarcoma in the ass and has turned 30 three years after her terminal diagnosis! Happy birthday, Bint!!

Dead Week

Strange commutes this week - deserted highways in the mornings, crazy and confused drivers in the evenings - but you know, people are still blogging even if they may not be traveling or working as usual. Here are some posts that have caught my eye since Christmas:

• Laura and hubby-Eric head off to the British store then the Japanese store to stock up after the windstorm. Sounds like stuff we do like every week or so. :)

• Tom Peyer has what I feel is the definitive caption to an old photo of the late Gerald Ford and a couple of his administration cronies. Had we known then what we know now, we would have vetted these guys a lot more carefully than the likes of Haldeman and Erlichman...

• Condolences to Grace on the loss of her Auntie Lily, who sounded like quite the woman, and congratulations to Lauren and Chef on their engagement and impending nuptials.

• What Russ said about Christmas. Especially the bit about it being a federal holiday, which is tautological proof positive of its secular nature!

• Asked and sort-of answered: Lance Mannion on how the Star Wars mythos is actually a retelling of King Arthur's Round Table, more or less. Which led me to answer Zuzu's question about why Chewie wasn't given a medal at the end of the first movie (aka fourth chapter) with the opinion that he was only a squire, not a full knight. (I also suspect the Fisher-Mayhew height differential may have had something to do with it, but they could have done an in-story bit of business with it had they really wanted that as a plot point.)

• Amanda knocks one out of the park with a discussion about the acolytes of Hef, and asks a bunch of silly nonsequitor questions.

• Siva respectfully declines Time's Person of the Year acknowledgement. See, pronoun trouble again! They didn't acknowledge Him, or Me, they acknowledged YOU! So only YOU can decline it! Only once you try to do so it becomes Me, and the acknowledgement no longer applies! My head hurts.

And with that, I've caught up on my blog-reading again, and am off to see about dinner...

Silly Site o' the Day

Happy 84th birthday to Stan Lee, or as the Peculiar Aristocratic Title generator calls him,

Baron Stan the Fifteenth of Frogging over Womble Click here for your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Generator first seen via Keith, although it's been making the rounds so I've seen it in lots of places by now.

Silly Site o' the Day

I can tell this is going to be one of those days when I'm glad of the home laptop; after the work day I've had, and considering I'm about to go pick up my orthotics and do a bit of food shopping afterwards, I don't think I'll make it out of the recliner this evening! Just now getting to posting at 5 PM. Let's all give ourselves a smile by watching Kiwi (via Will Shetterly), I could sure use one right about now (a smile, not a kiwi, although hey, if the price in the supermarket is decent who knows)...

Tagged Again, Grumble Grumble...

I spoke too soon, didn't I? But it's Elaine, and she's hard to resist. The game is, "Tell five things about you that no one knows."

And like I said, I have a hard time thinking of anything that I want folks to know that they don't already. So I'd have to modify the premise to something like "five things about you that you're pretty sure most of your blog readers don't know and that you wouldn't mind them learning." Anyway, here goes:

1) I used to play piano, flute and guitar. My paternal grandmother was a concert-level pianist, and my dad's cousin-once-removed still plays professionally in Europe, as far as I know. My own skill level? Not so good.

2) However, I do still occasionally hum to myself the melodies of songs I wrote in college. And I think I sing and harmonize pretty well. Alto, in case anyone's wondering. As I call it, "the Arty part (as in Art Garfunkel, not anything particularly artsy)"...

3) When I was younger I used to pretend there was always a camera on me, like in The Truman Show. I still do sometimes. The above-mentioned college-written songs are part of the soundtrack.

4) I have a few OCD-type habits, one of which is that, when climbing or descending stairs, I prefer to end on my left (dominant) foot. If I've miscounted and end on my right, it doesn't feel correct to me.

5) I get disproportionately frustrated when I forget a word I want to use, or when someone jokes with me and I don't pick up on it.

I am not, repeat NOT, going to "tag" anyone else with this game. I don't like tag, and it was hard enough for me to "play" as it was.

Silly Site o' the Day

Happy Boxing Day! Even though Christmas is over I'm sure plenty of people are still praying. Sometimes the answer is no; my boss' wife (for whom, you may recall, I act as unpaid servant personal assistant) is expected to drop by the office today, and he'll likely be around as well. Here are some more bad prayers, via Frank Paynter. Speaking of which, if you don't want any classic Christmas movies ruined for you, you might not wish to read either Mark Evanier's posts about White Christmas nor Scott Clevenger's hilarious take on It's A Wonderful Life...

Silly Sites o' the Day

A few of them saved up over the season: Via Steve Gerber, spend 10 Seconds with Jesus. Via Gerard, have a Christmas Text Generator. Also via Gerard, if you're feeling more naughty than nice, there's always the Evil Santa Generator.

Happy Christmas

To all our family and friends, and Pen-Elayne readers, commenters and lurkers, who celebrate the holiday. May it be everything you wish.

RIP James Brown

Damn.

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 12/17/06 thru 12/2316/06

It feels good to be getting back to the desktop again! I didn't miss the mouse as much as I thought I would, as I can do the tracking pad with my left hand and it gave my right hand a nice rest, but Firefox's Performancing add-on icon doesn't show on the MacBook and it takes about three steps to open it to the edit window so I can type. Not being able to just toggle it back and forth (and to use a mouse to quickly copy and paste URLs) plays havoc with any link-rich posts I want to do, like my weekly Liberal Coalition blogaround:

• The big LC news this week is the return of Lilith Devlin and her blog A Rational Animal. Lilith was the first LC blogger I ever met, I think before there even was a coalition, and I'm delighted she's back blogging again! Now that her feed is working properly, and Mike's switched Left is Right to the new Blogger so his Atom feed is working as well, I can finally read all the LC members' posts via my Bloglines subs, hoorah!

• Bora has a great Silly Site for the season: Conspiracy Carols, a generator that lets you insert a subversive backwards message of your choice into Jingle Bells! Very cute. Also, congrats are due to him for having gone through his entire blogrolling alphabet.

• Echidne is perplexed at the hyperbole inherent in American English.

• Apparently Jeff also believes "the reason for Christmas has little to do with Jesus." As I implied yesterday, the reason for the season may have little to do with Jesus and much to do with the winter solstice, but it still seems pretty clear that the celebration of the Christian savior's birth is indeed the reason for Christ-mas itself, right down to the name.

• Kathy has a great illustration of the power of love to transcend the nonsensical boundaries put up by organized religion. She also sings the praises of Scott Ritter's prophetic abilities.

• The coiner of NODWISH, MercuryX23, wishes us a happy merry one, and has hung out a branch for Wishy the NODWISH Owl.

• Michael bemoans the latest hockey gimmick. Me, I'm still pouty that brightly-colored baseballs aren't in vogue.

• Mustang Bobby's itchy dilemma leads to one of the most groan-inducing pun headlines I've read all year. Also, he's taking a poll on everyone's favorite movie musical. I guess I'd have to say Wizard of Oz, as that's my favorite all-time movie, but for pure music and dance and romance elements I want to go with Brigadoon. That Cyd Charisse, she's the Cyd Charissest!

• Norbizness is reviewing the year month by month. He got as far as July by yesterday.

• NTodd notes an anniversary.

• Steve G details why the proposed Atlantic Yards is a crappy plan ,

And a couple bonus non-LC links:

• I've moved Ornicus firmly into my Dynamic Duos section now, as David Niewert's co-blogger Sara Robinson appears here to stay and I thank goodness for that, she has had some outstanding writing. Must-reads this past week include her paeon to real citizen journalism and her 2006 roundup. For his part, David skewers Apocalypto from the POV of someone who actually knows something about Mayan culture (even I remembered enough from grade school to know the "primitive people scared of eclipse" characterization was bullshit, as these folks were pretty big on astronomy).

• Teresa reviews how to wrap a package. Some great advice!

Time to go knock on my downstairs neighbor's door to give her her Christmas gift (this)...

The Holly and the Latkes

A few more pictures from our seasonal celebrations:



There's a lovely holly tree on Riverdale Avenue right across from Mount St. Vincent College. I thought it appropriate.



I finally made latkes, on the last day of Chanukah! Here they are in the pan...



...and on the plates. I noticed a part was missing on our food processor (I no longer hand-grate, it just takes too much out of me), but the way I pulse-processed with the grating spinner on top and the usual mulcher blade on the bottom instead of the missing piece seemed to work fine. Also, I desperately need to buy cheesecloth. As G-d is my witness, I will never make latkes without cheesecloth again!



Here's the card-holder wreath we hang up annually in the hallway with this year's batches of cards. We got lots of nice emailed cards as well but I don't print those out, they always seem to look better on the screen.

Happy merry, everyone - Liberal Coalition blogaround coming next!

Silly Site o' the Day

May as well use up whatever Christmas-related bookmarks remain today and tomorrow. How about 24th, via Glenn Hauman? Even though it's Fox's own ad for its show, I think it's cute.

Mac Daddy

Today Robin opened our Christmas present to ourselves. For the first time in my life I have total shared custody of a brand-new MacBook. It will make its home in the living room for now. Wireless internet whilst watching TV. Video chatting! Good lord, I'm being moved kicking and screaming into the 21st century, aren't I? Still getting used to the keyboard and tracking pad, but so far it's really terrific to be able to sit here in my recliner and type!

Silly Site o' the Day

We plan on having a lovely three-day weekend, but in case you don't you can always play out a dark fantasy using this handy Christmas Disaster Generator (via Gerard). Beware though, the slot machine-like generator page features music that's kind of annoying.

Christmas Cheer

Robin decided the holiday table I'd photographed in this post looked a bit bare, and as I got out of work early today he wanted to stock up on "beer, crisps and chocolate" for the coming week's festivities. So we headed to Stew Leonard's, then to Food Emporium, then to Tierney (a local Irish food shop) and, um, another AYCE sushi dinner, and returned with, well, probably more than we had last year, particularly considering yesterday's sojourn to Garden Gourmet for clementines and red-fleshed oranges. But first, I had to light the candles:



The eighth day and I didn't set the curtains afire! On the other hand, I still haven't made latkes; probably tomorrow...

Okay, here's the spread now. As before, click on any picture to see it enlarged. This was one of my photos:



And this is one Robin took from the other angle:



He also snapped a photo of all the alcohol we bought, which we approximate will last us through the summer. At least that'll be the case with the red wine, which I'm told is a great antioxidant and should be good for keeping my blood pressure low, so I'm trying to develop a taste for it and learn exactly what type I like.



Lastly, Rob took a number of shots of the whole living room display as seen from our usual vantage point on the recliners. This is a panorama stitched together from two shots that more or less matched even though Robin hadn't intended them to when he took the photos.



I'd say at this point that we're ready for the holiday weekend!

Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

Our holiday table was looking a bit bare so we went shopping (see post above this) and brought back a lovely crinkly paper bag...



Remember kids, during this holiday time, you can't go wrong if you give the gift of Amy. It's the gift that keeps on meowing giving...

Orgasm for Peace

I suppose it's a nice concept, but for some people the tension-and-release often leads to muscle pain and that certainly doesn't provide a heck of a lot of peace, at least in those people's households. Just saying. Here's today's bookmark-closing blogaround:

• I can't think of any blogger who could use a little monetary Christmas cheer right now more than Shakespeare's Sister. Please consider foregoing donations to blog-beggers who want you to pay for their hobby (no matter how wonderfully they write) in favor of giving instead to someone who actually needs it for survival reasons.

• Speaking of A-listers, you know you're not among them when you had no idea Atrios' site was Bloggered yesterday. Perhaps this is a good sign that I'm getting a life again? (And again, no thanks Blogger, I'm not moving Pen-Elayne to your new beta site until I'm sure stuff like that won't happen to me...)

• Lots of cool Christmas cards have started to appear on blogs, and so far I think August's 6-pager is among my favorites. I'll probably put ours up on Monday.

• Lovely tributes to the late Joe Barbera from Mark Evanier and Paul Dini.

• PZ notes that some people just don't understand how to illustrate their points logically, and provides his own bonus diagram.

• Zuzu found a post by Sheila O'Malley that's just the shit! I wish I'd known about this place Sheila mentions when I was in Times Square yesterday.

• Amanda gives us more food for thought this holiday season with her revelation that people saying "I'll pray for you" is solidly in the concern-troll category. I guess any platitudes that make the speaker feel better than the listener is concern-troll fodder, right?

• Jessica and then Melissa on how mockery marginalizes feminism and catches us in a humor bind. I particularly love Melissa's suggestion that "every women's studies program at every university should include an introductory course called You're Dumb, Oversensitive, and Ugly, the objective of which is to explore the practical realities of being an active feminist in the world."

• Speaking of active feminists, Heidi asserts that "2006 was clearly a huge year for women in comics" and I heartily agree. She also recommends the new women's comics collective Women's Work, which I've just applied to join on the basis of whatever comics-related work I'm slated to do in 2007. Elsewhere in blogs by comics creators, Tamora Pierce is perplexed by people who don't give her husband Timothy Liebe the co-writing credit he deserves on White Tiger even though he clearly has a writing history as well (for Video magazine and Computer Game Entertainment), but mostly by folks - especially girls - who seem to be complaining that she doesn't write enough male heroes, which complaints both amaze and sadden me.

Lastly, I just want to say I'm grateful that nobody's tagged me with the "five things some people don't know about me" so-called "meme" game that's making at least its second blogospheric round this year. I can't think of anything that I want folks to know that they don't already. Now, back to finishing up a few things in preparation for early departure...

The Reason for the Season

For me it started, at least this year, with Will Shetterly's recent posts about the origins of various winter celebrations and the customs associated with them. He's rather specialized in that subject lately, so do peruse his entire December archives for posts about Chanukah and Christmas and Shab-e Cheleh/Yalda and Zoroastrians and Jesus' birth and World Week and much more. Then of course everyone started talking about the Krismas site. Then PZ Myers confesses that he and lots of other atheists celebrate Christmas (complete with a Seussian rhyme that rivals David Goldstein's How the Kvetch Stole Chanukah over at HuffPo), which just totally confused me as I've never but never thought of Christmas as a secular holiday. Winter solstice, sure, that's just nature and science and whatnot, I can understand celebrating the beginning of the return of daylight without ascribing that to any sort of god. But Christmas? Well, Amanda also follows up with her own essay wherein she declares "Christmas is a secular holiday," and ignites a fascinating exchange in the comments section among those who agree and disagree with her conclusion.

And I'm no longer sure where I stand on this.

I think it's because I was raised Jewish and still cling willingly to a lot of Jewish rituals (Chanukah candle lighting among them) that I find comforting and interesting. We were told in no uncertain terms that Christmas, like Hallowe'en, was something Christian kids did. But whereas I could shake off the "don't celebrate All Hallow's Eve" nonsense as I got older and realized the early Christians just pretty much swiped that from Samhain celebrations, I couldn't quite bring myself to embrace the same mindset regarding the winter solstice swiping because, to me, that can't really be separated from the fact that Christians are celebrating the birth of their Messiah and Judaism makes it quite clear that the Jewish Messiah has not yet arrived. I mean, I view that as the key defining difference between Jews and Christians - Jews don't yet have a Savior and Christians do. So days specifically designated to honor the Christian Savior, like Christmas and Good Friday and Easter, are tough to wrap my brain around to even consider as secular, no matter how many businesses are closed during those days. Thanksgiving, definitely secular. Hallowe'en, divorced enough from All Saints and All Hallow's that I can give that over to secular. Christ-Mas? Right there in the name? Not so much. Jesus may not be the reason for the season, but to my mind the celebration of the Christian savior's birth is the reason for the specific December 25 commemoration, and no amount of pagan-derived holly and mistletoe can sponge that away.

That said, I am married to a Christian and do in fact celebrate the winter solstice season, whatever folks like to call it (I'm partial to NODWISH), so the notion of whether Christmas is, or is becoming, a secular holiday rather than a religious one is more academic discussion than anything else. More and more, all families celebrate any holiday in their own way. I'm just curious as to what y'all consider Christmas - religious or secular? Please feel free to pontificate in the comments section!

And, as promised, another link to my Holy Trinity:

You Shall Be Upheld in More Than This

"So That's Where He Got the Crown of Thorns!"

I Hear People Singing, It Must Be Christmastime

Enjoy! I'll be home for Christmas, you can count on me (for blog posts throughout the weekend)...

Silly Site o' the Day

Much of Colorado is under a couple feet of snow, Seattle's still recovering from last week's windstorm, New Orleans is deluged with rain again, freezing fog shuts down Heathrow... nope, no global climate change here! Glad all I have to contend with are a few expected showers and continued general weariness. Yesterday was taken up with Manhattan-based errands which I wasn't able to combine into two trips, so Robin wound up meeting me at the bus terminus a block away, taking packages from me and giving me the medical records I needed for my cardiologist appointment, and I crossed the street and hopped right back on the same bus going southbound toward the hospital. Spent about twice as long travelling back and forth as I did at my respective destinations, and doubtless picked up at least one or two exotic illnesses from the seething masses... but the long and the short of it is, I wasn't home long enough to do any proper blog-reading or writing.

And I had a good post planned about the holiday season, which I'm going to attempt to do later today but will be too late to make Mustang Bobby's LC roundup. Oh well, nothing to be done about it now. The post will probably also do another pointer to my Christmas Post Trinity, which I thought of whilst reading this post from Mark Evanier which discusses Mike Nelson's current venture, Rifftrax. Seems Nelson has continued riffing on (or, as many of us call it, MSTing) movies and TV shows and whatnot for a relative pittance. For instance, he and fellow MST3K alumnus Kevin Murphy riff on the movie Firewall for a $2.99 download, and in the spirit of the season he offers his commentary on Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey (which I made Rob sit through the other day when I felt I really needed a Rankin/Bass fix) for 99 cents. Mark Evanier says that QuickStop Entertainment (a very neat site indeed) has it for free but the link on their end is no longer working...

Silly Site o' the Day

This is pretty cool - via Eszter, the last 5,000 years of religion condensed into a 90-second timeline:



I didn't realize Hinduism predated Judaism by that much.

Silly Site o' the Day

Billions and billions of bloggers are (or should be) paying tribute today to the late Carl Sagan, who left this earthly plane exactly ten years ago. I think Sagan spoke best for himself, so here's my contribution: Four billion years of evolution, animated.

Silly Site o' the Day

This is turning out to be the Week of Parties for this gal who keeps pouting about not having a social life any more! First Martha's wonderful get-together last Sunday, and of course the office holiday lunch today, and Rob's been invited to a comics-related fling tomorrow at which spouses are welcome as well - good job I'm taking the entire day off on Thursday (I was initially set to cut out early for an afternoon doctor's appointment, but my boss is out of town then so I might as well take all day)! Hoping to see a few industry friends tomorrow, at least one of whom I know will appreciate this (via Karen)...

Silly Site o' the Day

A lot blearier than I thought I'd be. We spent yesterday afternoon at a delightful holiday party with lots of lovely friends, including Mike & Linda Gold and Glenn & Brandy Hauman, and I was delighted to actually meet Kyle Baker & family for the first time as well. I've been to lots of the same events as Kyle, but this was the first time we'd formally met and had substantive conversations about all sorts of things for a lengthy period of time. He's a lot of fun, and although the kids do quite resemble his caricatures of them (both physically and in behavior), his wife Liz (who recognized my name from their blog's comment section) is a lot taller than I thought she'd be. (You do know about Kyle's delightful cartoons about his family, don't you?) Even though the do in the city was only about an hour's journey, it still wiped us out a lot (although that could have been the champagne). Still, I'm glad I didn't use the Holiday Party Excuse Generator (via Karen)! I wonder if I can use it to get out of tomorrow's office holiday lunch? Nah, I might as well take advantage of the free lunch and closing up shop for the afternoon... And by the way, unlike that Office Depot Elf Yourself-but-assign-us-the-rights-to-your-image crap, this is the proper method by which to advertise your company's services - free use of a really cute generator then a link to your site at the end that interested users can click. This was the first ad I've deliberately clicked on in months.

Silly Site o' the Day

Happy holidays from the Central Front in the War on Christmas! Via Avedon.

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 12/10/06 thru 12/16/06

As promised, here are the Liberal Coalition category posts that caught my eye from this past week, plus a few bonus non-LC posts that didn't fit in my last entry:

• Bryant's had it with his blog for the time being, as Blogger screwed up his archives. On a positive note, Horatio found the method by which to get Haloscan to work with Blogger's new beta template.

• Charles2 reminds us of one of the ways in which government regulation of industries is a very good thing.

• Chris has been reviewing his 20 favorite albums of 2006, and has started the final 10. Naturally, I haven't heard of most of them.

• Echidne examines truthiness and its foundation. When a gut feeling affects journalism to such an extent that Time is no longer able to name a single person who has affected the planet the most in a given year (and hasn't been since 2001, according to folks like Jonathan Larsen and Russell Shaw), something serious is amiss and has contributed mightily to the dumbing down of America.

• Please contribute to the Buy Jeff a Strobe Light of Atheism Fund, won't you?

• John's okay after the North Pacific windstorm, thank goodness. (So's Laura, who took pictures of her slightly battered car and surroundings before she and Eric hightailed it out to his parents' house.) John also examines the big-picture scare stories of the day, geographic illiteracy, AOL news' reductionism, and the discovery of a baby plesiosaur fossil.

• Kathy says it ain't war if Congress hasn't explicitly declared it so, and Bush has no legal standing to keep using "we're at war" as an excuse. But we already knew that.

• I get the feeling Keith didn't care for Apocalypto.

• Maru points out that public servants, especially those intent on depriving their bosses (citizens) of privacy, can't argue "unprecedented intrusion" when the federal judiciary seeks to investigate their obsessive secrecy and possible illegal activities. That moral high ground ship sailed long ago, and promptly sank.

• Michael might be in favor of the idea of impeachment, but he's against the process thereof.

• Scott has some good theatre talk about Evil Dead - The Musical and the long-awaited musical adaptation of Young Frankenstein I hope Playbill is right about Cloris Leachman reprising her role! She'd be just about the age of Frau Blucher (*neeeeeigh*) now, wouldn't she? Also, Scott wishes us all a very Maury Christmas, which is just so wrong.

• Steve G gives some very good reasons for not supporting blog awards, but in a world where Time magazine named You - yes, You! - their Person of the Year, I find them no more meaningless than any other recognitions.

And now the bonus links:

• Glenn Greenwald has an example of the mainstream media reporting a story correctly for a change.

• Donna reviews the liberal blogosphere's reaction and non-reaction to the Rosie O'Donnell "ching chong" matter, and reminds fellow travelers once again that we don't get to define how others will react to dumb stuff we say and do that's liable to hurt them.

• Will Shetterly quotes Rabbie Bradley at length about holiday traditions. Lots of interesting food for thought there, at least for me.

Silly Site o' the Day coming right up!

A Series of Fortunate Events

While people in other media who aren't Time's Person of the Year prepare their usual year-end retrospective lists, bloggers who apparently do constitute a portion of Time's Person [sic] of the Year (and was I the only one whose first thought when upon seeing the cover with the word "You" was the old Daffy Duck line "Ah, pronoun trouble!"? Also, what August said, it's not supposed to be an award. And Robin's reaction to Richard Stengel's explanation of why he rejected recognizing the impact of an individual like Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, "It just felt to me a little off selecting him," was "'It didn't feel right'? How Colbert can you get?") are doing some interesting serial work of late. I've bookmarked most of this for reading later today when we return from a Chanukah party we're attending in Manhattan.

• Colleen Doran has wrapped up "The Perils of Colleen" about the adventures and heartaches she's had as professional learning experiences. Here's the final chapter with links to all the others.

• David Niewert has started a new 8-part series on Eliminationism in America. Here's part three with links to the first two parts.

• Pissed Off Patricia's cat Fred introduces two more Friday Story Times, here and here. This is quickly becoming one of my favorite weekly reads.

• Speaking of Fridays, how long has TBogg been doing Friday Izzard Blogging? His two most recent are here and here.

• Speaking of Izzard, Teresa Nielsen Hayden finds a series of Izzard videos on YouTube which constitute a documentary called Mongrel Nation, "about how much quintessentially English culture comes from somewhere else."

• And speaking of actual serials, Scott Clevenger's take on the 1943 Batman serial by Columbia is up to Chapter 7 now.

Liberal Coalition blogaround coming shortly!

Comfy Cozy

One of my holiday-season (birthday/anniversary/Christmas) gifts to Robin was some picture lights to affix to his mum's paintings which are hanging in our living room, which we purchased last weekend at Ikea and which he put together earlier this week. He was hoping to have the fiber optic tree up around mid-week as well but discovered the bulb had blown out, and we didn't have a chance to buy a new one until today (it was only in the fourth place we looked). Now the living room is finally the way we want it for the holidays. I don't know how well you'll be able to see this movie I took with the digital camera (i.e., no sound) from my recliner, as it's by lamplight, but if it works (apparently things take awhile to process now on YouTube) I hope it gives you some idea of what things now look like in that part of our living room in the evenings when we draw the curtains.



Here's a still photo of the table o' plenty, which is actually a table o' biscuits and sweets.



My favorite juxtaposition is the plum pudding alongside the Pocky.

Silly Site o' the Day

The annual Playing of the Christmas Tunes has commenced at the Riggs Residence, this year made much easier by Rob's ability to hook up his iPod to places like the amp in the living room, with every single Christmas song he owns preprogrammed into its own category. And that's a lot of halls being decked! So he probably doesn't even need the Christmas Song Generator (via Keith). I'm actually partial to the one it generated for me:

O Umbrella of wonder, Umbrella of might,
Umbrella of royal beauty bright.

with apologies to We Three Kings Of Orient Are
from the Christmas Song Generator.

After all, an Englishman never goes anywhere without his brolly, or so I'm told...

Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

So yesterday was kind of exciting. A pipe underneath our kitchen sink wore through and started leaking a couple days ago, unbeknownst to us until last night when I went to get the corn starch out of the under-sink area and found it waterlogged. Fortunately, our landlord is pretty attentive and came 'round within the hour to repair/replace it. This was pretty much Datsa's position during the entire affair:







And to think, this is the same cat who used to run like lightning for a hiding place whenever the doorbell rang!

I'm Crushing You, I'm Crushing You All!

Via Bora, today is Reveal Your Blog Crush Day. On whom do you majorly crush? I love so many of you, but for sheer "oh my god I wish I were this blogger and we have so much in common and I really really want to meet them" ookiness, my vote has to go to Melissa at Shakespeare's Sister. Hey, the woman married a Brit and reminds me physically of my all-time favorite writer/friend Anna Ackner (someday maybe Anni will have a blog), what can I say...

Brilliant!

Aaah, the Chanukah candle, it burns, it burns!

• I totally surrender, Michael. You had me at "in-jokes get lonely too." Oh, and Chris' show trial is over, naturally, just as I was getting the hang of things.

• As Melissa reminds us, sometimes people are so sexist they don't even realize their putdowns don't make any sense as putdowns. I mean really, "nobody wants to rape you"? Great! I hope nobody wants to rob or mug me either! Also at Shakespeare's Sister, Paul the Spud points out an aspect of the Left Behind video game that nobody else has mentioned yet - the sexist nature of the careers that characters are allowed to have.

• What Bryan said. Although, even though I think it's a good idea to treat blogging as a hobby unless you're specifically hired to make money doing it, I also think it's annoying when stuff that used to work suddenly doesn't, so all this trouble with people's comment sections makes me happier than ever that I chose to stick with the "old" Blogger platform for now.

• Also, what Dave said. I wish people would stop confusing form with content. Saying "bloggers are evil" is like saying "comics are about guys in tights beating the crap out of each other." Comics is a storytelling medium, and what stories get told are entirely up to the people creating them. Blogs are a form of communication, and the ways in which bloggers choose to communicate are as varied as the writers themselves. Not everybody blogs about politics, or comics, or sushi, or cats, or travel. And some of us blog about all these things and more. If you're going to rail against the evils of "the bloggers," at least define your terms and clarify which specific kind of bloggers you mean.

Hey, the sun just came out! Aaah, it burns, it burns...

Silly Site o' the Day

Via my cousin Marc in email, it's the World Dreidel Tour at Jewlarious Video. Happy Chanukah (which begins at sundown tonight)!

The More You Tighten Your Grip...

"...the more star systems will slip through your fingers." This is the quote that springs to mind every single time I see yet another blogger begging people to vote for him or her in some weblog awards or other. Enough already, please! Two begging posts are at least one too many. The more times I see "please vote for me" the less inclined I am to vote for anyone at all.

Thanks to Michael Bérubé for being so gracious in the comments about that in-joke that has me in a pissy-against-lib-bloggers mood. My problem now becomes, I fear I'm not even up on the "Blogspats That Shall Not Be Named" that this show trial is supposedly parodying. I know all about the liberal bloggers that post stuff that other bloggers read as racist then get all bent out of shape when they're called on it, and lose credibility entirely when they then complain about other bloggers' sexist remarks and so on and so forth... but this We Are All Hezbollah Now stuff he's talking about, I think that's from some radical reactionary idiot and, hey, I don't read so-called conservative blogs, it's enough just to try to keep up with liberal ones!

Speaking of being in a pissy mood, is it true that industry professionals have to pay to attend next February's NY Comic Convention? That seems rather ingracious, considering just about every other comic con in the country does not charge pros to get in the door. Hardly seems worth spending $90 for me and Robin to squeeze into a too-crowded Javits Center hall just to see our friends. (We'd spring for the $45 for me, as I'm not the comics pro in the family, but no working professional should have to pay to get into a convention like that!) Maybe we could arrange to meet folks after the show instead? Chances are, whatever we do during or after, it won't be remotely like Chris Weston's description of what happened at the Granada Comics Festival. You must read it to believe it, and even then you won't.

Story of My Life

The holiday cards, 90 strong, are finally labelled and stamped, and Rob's taking them to the mailbox today. We are truly blessed to have so many friends and family members. Organizing the cards seemed to take way too much time this year, or maybe it was just general tiredness from my work day. I haven't even written a requested autobiographical synopsis for my columnist gig, I still have umpteen unread News+Views posts, and I've taken to creating a "Must Reads" Bloglines Playlist just to keep up with those folks I consider essential. Clearly my work time is cutting into my hobby time! At moments like this I can almost understand people wanting to Make Money Fast via blog-begging, although I like a steady paycheck too much to quit my day job, as draining as it may be. In any case, I desperately need to close out some read posts, many of which have been bookmarked for over a week:

• I don't get it, okay? I read Michael (I mean, how can you not, with posts like this), I read Chris, I read PZ, I read Amanda - heck, they're all on my Must Reads list! - and I know what a show trial is, but so much of this in-joke is going over my head (and, I would assume, the heads of less regular readers by extension) that it's not funny, it's just annoying and exclusionary and borderline mean. [Update: Jim Luepke was kind enough to try and explain some of it in email, the gist of which seems to amount to, if you don't read every single comment section attached to every single blog post you won't understand stuff. Obviously I hardly have the time to read blog posts themselves much less peruse comments sections, so now in-jokes like this only serve to remind me that even reading 700+ blogs isn't good enough.] This is doubtless one reason why I don't play well enough with other liberal bloggers to even be considered for a nomination in one of the many blog awards going around nowadays. Well, that and the fact that Pen-Elayne isn't specifically categorizable as a "political blog," and weblog awards don't care for stuff that they can't fit into neat little boxes. That we're supposed to, you know, think outside of.

• Heidi passes along that Titan Magazines is in hiring mode, seeking writers and artists for its expanded range of children's comics based on licensed properties. Goodness knows what their page rates are, the UK comics market is notoriously low-paying compared to the US one, but on the other hand the dollar really sucks lately against the pound so this might be worth considering.

• Thanks for noticing the art in your Manhunter #26 review, Heidi Meeley! Anyone else out there review the art in the book, or just the writing and plot? (Yes, I know this is one of my major pet peeves, but I'm amazed it still continues to such an extent. Seriously, comics reviewers, if you aren't going to talk about the art, just review prose books, okay?)

• Speaking of things that piss people off about comics, Kevin Church reiterates the oft-heard complaint that talking-heads scenes in superhero comics are really boring to look at. File it alongside "action does not have to equal fighting" and "if you want to write TV shows please write those and not comics, they're two different media with different staging considerations."

• Jenn is the go-to person for a comprehensive overview of and fallout from Rosie O'Donnell's injudicious remarks on The View that offended lots of Asian-Americans and others who understand that unintentionally racist remarks hurt people regardless of whether the person making those remarks meant to hurt them, and the gracious - and human - thing to do is say "I didn't realize what I said was hurtful, and I'm sorry I hurt you and I'll try not to do it again." I really don't understand why so many people get so defensive when it's pointed out to them that they've hurt others by saying something racially inappropriate or putting blackface on their blog or whatever, and their dismissive reactions wind up compounding the original offense until the situation spirals out of control. Is it somehow wrong to suggest that sensitivity towards others' feelings (i.e., etiquette) is a good thing and ought to be borne in mind before one opens one's mouth or sits down at one's keyboard?

• Via Budgie: The TV show House, in 12 Seconds. Not performed by bunnies.

• Awww. Mazel tov, Dave and Raina! Good choice of my birthday as your wedding day (and another good reason nobody responded to my party invite)...

• I dunno, Helen Smith doesn't even sound like a real name to me, why should I care what she thinks of her fellow double-x chromosomers? Or should I say, in Colbert style, feels about them, since as Amanda points out none of what she pontificates is backed up by any sort of factual evidence, it's just all let-me-find-samples-to-fit-my-premise crap. Can't we just pay these people less attention? And of course, I can hardly link to Amanda without also linking to Melissa, who passes along a great anecdote illustrating that "feminism is not something women use to find problems, but to address them." (Glad Tilsy is okay, Melissa!)

• Lastly, thanks to RJ Eskow for the name-check last week in the Huffington Post! I almost feel important now.

There, that ought to give Mustang Bobby something constructive to say about Pen-Elayne during his weekly blogaround tomorrow. :) Sorry I haven't been posting more, but it's just been one of those time periods...

Silly Site o' the Day

Is tomorrow Chanukah already? Man, I haven't even made my latkes yet. (I keep changing the way I grate and food-process the veggies because I forget what works best for me.) On the other hand, as Xeni at BoingBoing notes, maybe Peace Through Pork has a point and we'd all get along better if we stopped "the repression involved in denying oneself the joy of bacon." Of course, this is already known by NY Jews who frequent Chinese restaurants, particularly at Christmas, because that's the place to go for "safe treyf"...

RIP Peter Boyle

Damn.

Silly Site o' the Day

Hey Steve, click here for your animated birthday message! GeoGreeting via Gerard.

Silly Site o' the Day

Horny manatees, brought to you by NBC. It's just so wrong. Mark Evanier explains.

Maintenance Note

On the heels of my luncheon meeting with the start-up pop-culture website honchos, I've juggled my Bloglines subscriptions to emphasize Kultcha blogs over News+Views blogs. I won't be abandoning political blogging and blog-reading altogether, but I've been planning for awhile now to gravitate more towards my pop culture interests, and now that it looks like I'll be getting paid to do so (among other things) it makes sense to reflect that in my subs. More specifics about the website as we move closer to launch date (which is now slated to be in early January).

Silly Site o' the Day

Under the category of "Enjoy your 'elf, it's later than you think," OfficeMax wants you to put your face on this Elf Yourself Generator provided you sign over all the rights to them. That's the spirit of the season, provide 'net surfers with something fun to do for the primary purpose of pushing a DVD and the secondary purpose of owning their likenesses-as-elves. As Alfred said in Miracle on 34th Street, "A lot of bad 'isms' floating around this world... but one of the worst is commercialism. Make a buck. Make a buck. Even in Brooklyn, it's the same. Don't care what Christmas stands for. Just make a buck." Generator via Gerard, whose primary purpose, I'm pleased to say, does not appear to be "make a buck."

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 12/3/06 thru 12/10/06

Yesterday was fun but exhausting, as we used the GPS to trek to Ikea (I knew the way but wanted to see if the GPS did) then to Mitsuwa (my first time driving there and I'd have been lost without the GPS, which guided me to a location I suddenly remembered vividly from 20+ years ago when I used to drive there to get INSIDE JOKE printed up!) and probably did way too much walking. At this rate my foot will never completely heal! Today we're taking it easy and preparing our holiday cards (yes, "holiday" - most of my relatives and a lot of my friends don't celebrate Christmas), and after a week of being away-from-keyboard in the evenings reading the sixth Harry Potter book (conclusion: while I was fascinated for most of it, the ending disappointed me about as much as that of Empire Strikes Back in that it featured no resolution, it just sort of faded out with a last-chapter funeral scene and was all set-up for the final book including laying out the plot coupons therefore, plus the other title character's identity seemed pretty obvious to me at least 15 chapters before it was revealed) I hope to do some major bloggy catch-up, starting with the Liberal Coalition category and the posts that caught my eye from this past week:

• Bryant thinks there's probably a good reason viewers aren't flocking to the cinemas to see The Nativity Story as opposed to, say, an enjoyable and entertaining movie.

• Chris directs a Lefty's Three Questions post to specific folks, including me. My three:

What still excites you (other than that talented inker you keep around) about the comic book world?

Oh, lots of stuff. I still read and enjoy a good many stories, both from the Big Two and from other publishers. I'm very pleased by how women's participation (as creators and readers) is being taken more and more as a given in the industry, rather than an aberration. I love how community-driven comics still remains, ComicSpace being the latest example. And I'm happy about the mainstreaming of comics discussion into other entertainment media.

What issue or issues should the Dems really drive home when they officially take control of Congress next month?

Haven't thought much about it, but I believe an emphasis on competence and actually getting things done, with measurable results, never hurts. And American citizens are probably ready for a good historical reminder about how many times Democrats have had to clean up Republican messes in recent years, and that no real forward movement can begin until the backwards slide of our country is halted. Mostly I think they need to stress how little interest in governance the Republican faction that's been in power these last six years actually has.

Obama, Hillary, Edwards, Villsack...anyone in that group appeals to you, or there someone else you hope throws their hat into the ring?

Oh, I have no interest in horse races, particularly two years before the track is even readied. I think the eventual front-runner for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008 may very well be someone we aren't even thinking of now.

I have a question for you though, Chris - in that last question, why are all the males you mention surnames, whereas Senator Clinton is referred to by her first name? It's not like we don't know that Bill Clinton is no longer eligible to run.

• As most in the blogosphere know, Echidne has really been giving it to Chris Hitchens, who apparently believes women aren't funny because they don't think he's funny. I think he's confusing humor with stupidity, which is typical of men. [/Hitchens] Echidne's posts on Hitchens can be found here and here. Also of interest is this post from Steve G, as well as posts by non-LC member Melissa at Shakespeare's Sister, here and here.

• Horatio has switched to Blogger's new beta, which may be why I can finally see his posts again on Bloglines. Considering the problems the beta is still having, I think I'm sticking with the older version for the moment.

• Jeff provides a nice historical note about when there actually was a war on Christmas in this country.

• Ken asks about blond superheroes, and in the comments seems to regret his initial conclusion rather quickly...

• Moi recommends the ID Theft Secrets blog.

• Mustang Bobby examines the Queen's English. I think Her Maj has modulated her speech considerably over the years; when she ascended to the throne it was said her voice could cut glass. And, um, not in a good way.

• Norbizness imagines the War in Iraq as a breakfast encounter at Denny's, and examines the new American naturalization exam here and here.

• Steve G pretty much covers the many loves of Rudy Guiliani.

• Lastly, Uptown Ruler at Scrutiny Hooligans announces, sadly, that there is as of yet no space sushi. (Yes, Mitsuwa does have the best supermarket sushi I've ever tasted...)

Now off to the "warm room" (our landlord provides somewhat sporadic heat so we have a space heater set up in the bedroom) to catch a kip (yes, another 5:30 AM wake-up meowing from Datsa) and update my comics order list so I can place my order for last week's and this coming week's books. No, as a matter of fact I haven't started sorting the read comics into boxes yet, why do you ask? *sigh* Never enough hours in the day...

Silly Site o' the Day

'Tis the season, alas, when many people grossly conflate their mythologies, some Mammonites in order to make the almighty buck. Via Will Shetterly, the Sin Destroyers' video Gifts to the World cleverly mocks that whole mindset. "He died for your sins / so you can get presents" is probably my favorite line.

RIP Martin Nodell

First Carrie two years ago last April, and now Marty (although I always called him "Mr. Nodell"). What a gentleman. The comics convention circuit will never be the same again. I shall miss them both tremendously. Deepest condolences to Spence and the family.

Silly Site o' the Day

A more educational than silly site today. Via Marie Javins, how well can you score on this World Map country-location game? Rob got a pretty decent 57% score, whilst mine was only 32%. But hey, I'm an American. Good job we have a GPS for the car!

Networking

I've joined ComicSpace; if you have as well please let me know your user name so I can add you to the friends list. I expect I'll use this about as much as I use my LiveJournal. Which is to say, about once or twice a year when I remember.

David Perlmutter has put together a two-part online interactive survey designed to assess the state of political blogging post-US election. I've filled out my half; Pen-Elayne readers are invited to fill out your half. The survey will close on Monday, so if you want to fill it out please do so this weekend.

It's blog awards time again and, as an uncategorizable blogger who writes about politics and comics and posts pictures and does whatever else I feel like doing from day to day, plus someone who doesn't post obsessively even though I have new daily content, I expect I'll be completely shut out from any consideration for nominations once more. Sometimes it's frustrating to not fit into a definitive category.

Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

Amy has a new plinth:



That heart-shaped box is pretty darn tiny!

Imagine There's No Blog'round

It's easy if you try...

• The faux "War on Christmas" is heating up again, an annual tradition going all the way back to last year where the lunatic fringe tries to convince the flock that the country's dominant religion is somehow being attacked by the very notions of plurality, diversity, the desire for tolerance and peace on earth, etc. Scrooge and/or Orwell would be proud. The best defense against these offensive idiots is, of course, humor. Some of the most amusing posts I've seen lately include RJ Eskow's "opening salvo", Barbara Ehrenreich's exit strategy, Shari Zollinger's proportionate responses to strangers obviously dissing Christmas by not mentioning it with every breath they take, and the Krismas Homepage (via Will Shetterly).

• Obligatory Digby-must-read post: Does the current "Moon, bitches!" fever have anything to do with this administration's belligerent moves toward space hegemony?

• Patrick Nielsen-Hayden likes the new Beatles Love CD. So did we; we listened to it on our anniversary. Someday Patrick and Robin will have that long-promised Beatles trivia-off. Meanwhile, Teresa Nielsen-Hayden explains why she blogs - to help hold feet to the fire if those feet aren't moving in the right direction.

• I'm really happy Ken Jennings has a blog (although I wish it had a comments section!), he's a heck of a fun writer to read. Two good ones this week are about how some trivia buffs (like some comic fans) come up short in the social skills department and his year of living ice-cream-ly.

• Kath David writes towards the future as her daughter Caroline turns four.

• Heidi passes along Wonkette's version of the Iraq Study Group Report: The Comic and can't decide if she feels excitement or trepidation over the sale of Astroland and the new owners' plans for development.

• Not only do I think, as Laura points out, that "minx" is a rather harmless term meaning, roughly, a "female scamp," but I think it's fun to say. Like Blix. Is Hans Blix a minx? Even if he isn't, it's extremely fun to say "blix minx."

• The first rule of Misogyny Megaslam is, do not talk about Misogyny Megaslam.

Thus I make it through all my blog categories except the ones with the most posts, the News+Views Gals (241 unread), Guys (755) and Groups (583). That's what four days of busy job stuff during the days and Harry Potter novel reading in the evenings will do to one. Alas, no rest for the already-weary, as it's now on to the Riggs Residence Roundup writeup... hmm, that doesn't sound right...

Silly Site o' the Day

While it's not at all silly that John Lennon was assassinated 26 years ago today (leading, together with Reagan's election, to over a quarter-century-long backwards slide in this country, wiping out years of social progress that's only now starting to make a resurgence), I've always thought the Plastic Ono Band was a silly name. So I think Lennon would have appreciated the Jam Band Name Generator (via Scott Baron). Apparently if I had a jam band it would be called the Electric Grass String Band, so there you are.

Silly Site o' the Day

I love it when I can point to silly sites from folks on my Top Six list. Yesterday Neil Gaiman had some interesting things to say about Mary Poppins (never having read the Travers books I'll take his word for it) then passed along the Scary Mary viral video that every blogger seemed to be linking to. If that's a bit much for you, you can always lighten the mood a bit, go to Peter David's blog and watch this.

The Uncanny Dave Cockrum Hardcover

Press Release

Aardwolf Publishing will release The Uncanny Dave Cockrum Hardcover in February, 2007. This beautiful, prestige edition will include all of the articles and art tributes originally collected in the now-sold-out Uncanny Dave Cockrum Tribute (2004) but completely overhauled. In addition, new artists (like George Perez) and writers (Tom Spurgeon) have been added to the project, as well as more than 20 pages of never-before-seen Dave Cockrum art.

Participants on the project include: Neal Adams, Sergio Aragones, Dick Ayers, Mark Bagley, Randy Bowen, Travis Charist, Chris Claremont, Gene Colan, Peter David, Alan Davis, Diane Duane, Will Eisner, Harlan Ellison, Mark Evanier, Neil Gaiman, Dave Gibbons, Mike Grell, Tony Isabella, Joe Kubert, Bill Messner-Loebs, Steve Lieber, Jim Lee, Stan Lee, Pablo Marcus, Bob McLeod, Alan Moore, Jerry Ordway, Tom Palmer, George Perez, Joe Quesada, Robin Riggs, John Romita Sr., Joe Rubinstein, Marie Severin, Dave Sim, Walter and Louise Simonson, Tom Spurgeon, Roy Thomas, Herb Trimpe, Billy Tucci, Len Wein, and Marv Wolfman.

"Dave and Paty were looking forward to this book coming out in February and we're sticking to our commitment,"? said Clifford Meth, Cockrum's close friend and editor of the collection. "I'm sorry Dave won't get to hold the final product in his hands but his family will."

"Dave Cockrum was the best friend Aardwolf ever had," said Jim Reeber, Aardwolf Publishing's president and publisher. "When we launched the company in 1994, we never could have done it without Dave. We were proud to publish his Futurians and to work closely with Dave for the last dozen years."

226 special editions will include unique, ORIGINAL Dave Cockrum drawings bound into the book. These drawings were prepared specially for this project and took Dave Cockrum nearly a year to complete.

This book is being published in cooperation with the Dave Cockrum Estate.

Dave Cockrum passed away on November 26, 2006, at the age of 63.

To order the book or for more information, visit Aardwolf Publishing.

Silly Site o' the Day

From me to Robin, via Gerard at the Generator Blog, it's the Signbot Generator:



No, in point of fact I can't say it enough times, why do you ask?

45 RPM RMR

Today is Robin's 45th birthday. Happy birthday, my beloved soulmate!

It's also the day Manhunter #26 arrives in comic book stores. This is the first issue with Robin as regular inker (although some pages were done by an uncredited Rod Ramos - as Robin noted, inking on this issue is brought to you by the letters "RR"), and even though he'd get the same page rate whether 10,000 or 50,000 copies were sold, I'd like to urge comic book readers (particularly fans of well-written and well-drawn female characters) - as well as anyone who wants to give Robin a nice birthday gift - to pick up this book, as it's been given a reprieve from cancellation and if the sales rise appreciably it'll be around for awhile which means steady work for Robin which of course is in my best interest as well. And for the comic book reviewers out there, let me just repeat my pet peeve and beg you to consider actually reviewing the art as well as the writing. Both are integral parts of a comic book story; otherwise you might as well be reading and reviewing a prose book.

And lest I forget, happy birthdays as well to Leonard Kirk (and thanks again to Tom Spurgeon for remembering Rob's and Leonard's birthdays, this time with my favorite Supergirl cover), Paul Jenkins and David Ossman (who's celebrating #70 with a book signing here)!

Silly Site o' the Day

Busy busy busy busy, no time to even browse blogs much less write a blog post, here's a Robyn Hitchcock Album Name Generator, via Jim A. Light posting will continue until I can catch my breath.

Silly Site o' the Day

Eight years ago today, Robin and I got married. Happy anniversary, Rob! Here's one I think you'll like, via Maru: "How The Lord of the Rings SHOULD have ended"...