Silly Site o' the Day

The back's getting a little better, to the point where I think taking pills and getting rest will do more for me than going to my orthopedist and having him tell me that I should rest and take pills. I've reluctantly started downing two ibuprofen in the morning and two more at night; I don't like to overdo ibuprofen because it plays a weird game with the alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels in my liver, and considering that Leah died of liver complications that spread to the rest of her body that's not really the path I care to tread. On the other hand, if I moderate my dosage to only four a day I should be able to stop taking them as the pain lessened (which it's already started to do, at least when work isn't stressing me out). In any case, a good night's sleep (only two interruptions) certainly helped, so I'd like to think I'm on my way to recovery. We'll see how I feel after Rob and I do the food shopping tonight. In the meantime, how about another web game? Here's Tilox, recommended by Augie.

Ready for Estrogen Month?

My third weekly column, The Female Gaze, has been posted at ComicMix. (My column, It's All Good (named for one of Leah's favorite expressions), runs every Wednesday there.) I wanted to call particular attention to it here because it gets a bit more political than the first two, and is certainly more explicitly feminist. I thought it fitting, since tomorrow begins Estrogen Month.

As I've had to stretch myself a bit thinner of late what with working through Leah's death and the ComicMix assignments and jobligations and physical pain, and thus haven't had the time nor energy to post more than the daily Silly Sites here, I want to try to make up for it a bit during March by doing a few Estrogen Month posts -- this year spotlighting some new (to me) pop culture-oriented blogs by women, in keeping with my shift in sensibilities from the echo-chamber of the liberal political blogosphere more towards the lighter stuff which, frankly, doesn't wear me out as much. My goal, as it was during the first time I did Estrogen Month, is to add at least one new pop-cult female-written blog per week to my sidebar blogroll, and to have y'all vote on which blogs those should be as well as nominating your own choices.

Silly Site o' the Day

The back problems aren't letting me sleep. But at least I'm trying to be productive in the wee hours. I'm finally catching up on ComicMix stuff, but I have a long way to go before I'm caught up with my regular blog-reading. Although I just read on Merle Kessler's blog about Conservapedia, which is touted on its own home page as "a much-needed alternative to Wikipedia, which is increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American. On Wikipedia, many of the dates are provided in the anti-Christian 'C.E.' instead of 'A.D.,' which Conservapedia uses. Christianity receives no credit for the great advances and discoveries it inspired, such as those of the Renaissance." Oh man, where to begin? Merle picks out some of his favorites. Who says conservatives aren't funny? This stuff is almost up there with Jack Chick for unintentional humor content! I hope Colbert picks up on this with some comment like "Wikiality is still too close to actual reality, which as we all know has a well-known liberal bias..." Update: It's been BoingBoing'ed, and August does a comic about it. Toldja I was behind in my reading...

Silly Site o' the Day

Convention, then Oscars, then severe sciatica (at least that's what I think the back pain is) and now eye problems (possibly a stye), combined with my boss being in the office today. Suffice it to say it hasn't been a good day for blogging, either here or on ComicMix. Still searching for that elusive equilibrium. Or Librium®, I forget which. Am I the last person on earth to plug the Chuck Norris Random Fact Generator? Gerard was no doubt one of the first. Today's random fact: "The most honorable way of dying is taking a bullet for Chuck Norris. This amuses Chuck Norris because he is bulletproof."

Silly Site o' the Day

My back is getting progressively worse. I really need a day of lying down, but I won't get that until next Saturday so it's going to keep getting worse despite the pills and ointment and heating pad. Off to day 3 of the comic con, too exhausted to say anything clever about Will It Blend? (first seen via Lindsay)...

Silly Site o' the Day

Dag, I forgot how exhausting a convention is, particularly when one has a job to do during it. That's the first time I've skipped Friday Cat Blogging in a loooong time. Sorry about that! Long day yesterday, starting when we woke up about 24 hours ago in order to be sure to get to the convention hall well before the 10 AM opening and get settled into our rented conference room with the laptops (turns out I'll be using Glenn's anyway so we don't have to schlep ours in again today and tomorrow) and t-shirts and business cards and game plan. I only made one panel yesterday, the one about comics blogging, which I'll probably discuss when this is all over. Anyway, it was still relatively early when we returned home (around 8 PM) but we're just not used to that much walking about, so it was all we could do to order out a pizza and stay awake until we'd eaten it.

Anyway, still in comics mode, obviously, so here, have some more fun with Project: Cartoon (via Lis Riba). See you on the other side.

Silly Site o' the Day

Off to the convention. Have fun with the Scott McCloud Expression Generator, via Heidi, whom I hope to be seeing in a few hours.

Silly Site o' the Day

Gearing up for the New York Comic Con the next three days, where I'll be attending with ComicMix (no booth, just freelance wandering) and, of course, Robin, so I don't think I'll have time for much posting here the next few days. At least my medications finally arrived, over a week after I ordered the refills and the last possible day before my supply ran out. I have to stop cutting it so close. At least I'm better off than this Insurance Coverage Generator (via Gerard) would warrant...

Column the Second

My second weekly column for ComicMix is now up. News items to follow as soon as I catch up on my reading. And don't forget the Birds of Prey TPB with lots of Robin's inks goes on sale in comic stores today as well. T-minus 2 days to the New York Comic Con clusterf*ck! I'm oddly psyched. I actually think I have a good chance of getting in the doors this year.

Silly Site o' the Day

Via Xeni at BoingBoing, it's Bjorkdiddy. You must watch, now.

Silly Site o' the Day

Boss in office, light posting continues both here and on ComicMix (my blogging helpers there are AFK and I just don't have the time with my current day-job workload). It's definitely Haloscan spamming your RSS readers with ads on the bottom of all Pen-Elayne comments (and reposting many of those comments two and three times just so you see the pointless ad crap). I've asked on their Forum what I can do to eliminate the ads, but have gotten no response yet. Continued apologies for something beyond my control. I'm so pissed I could curse, but instead I'll cursor. Gerard found a Cursor Generator; have fun!

The Sorkin Sunset

Studio 60 live-blogging all done. Night all!

Presidents Day Specials

Kyle Baker celebrates both Presidents Day and Black History Month by pointing to this part of Dick Gregory's site revealing that a black man (a Moor) was actually our country's first President. I'm 49 years old and until this day I had no idea there were any Presidents before George Washington!

John Rogers brilliantly skewers why Fox's so-called right-wing comedy show doesn't work. Operative paragraph:

Comedy is truth, truth is reality, and if "Reality has a well-known liberal bias" for now, anyway, you just have to suck that up if your job is the funny. One party has boring, earnest junior Senators with competing health plans running for President. The other party has the guy in charge of fighting child pornography online soliciting minors online, a Senator who talked about "man on dog" action, a State Representative who doesn't believe the Earth revolves around the Sun, and a Vice-President who won on an anti-gay platform with a gay daughter who's pregnant with another woman's child, which may be why he shot a dude in the face. Nobody's fault Fate stacked dealt one player the "goofy" cards for the last few hands.

And speaking of teevee, I will be guest-blogging tonight at Lance Mannion's place, which I totally can't believe I'm worthy of doing when I read brilliant pieces like this one ostensibly reviewing Bridge to Terabithia but actually about so much more. Anyway, the reason I'll be there is that Lance has graciously invited me to live-blog possibly the last-aired episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, so viewers are invited to join me between 10 and 11 PM Eastern and leave appropriately snarky remarks and Aaron Sorkin World drinking game suggestions in the comments.

The Collected Robin

The TPB collection of stories on which Robin worked for much of 2006, Birds of Prey: Perfect Pitch, arrives in stores on Wednesday, February 21. The official solicitation says "Art by Joe Bennett, Paulo Siqueira and Various" but Various' wife assures one and all that his name actually appears on the front cover, and we will make sure he has his signing pens when we attend the New York Comic Con on February 23-25 in case y'all want to flag us down. Not sure how much time, if any, Robin will be spending at the DC booth. I will most likely be flitting about in my capacity as News Director for ComicMix. I would tentatively like to have a Leah Adezio Memorial Sushi Dinner on Friday night, but the convention promises to be so hectic that at this point I'm going to play it by ear. Con-goers should remember that, unless you're pro or press or exhibitor, you can't get in on Friday prior to 4 PM, which makes me wonder why they scheduled so many panels for the "press only" hours, including all the women-oriented ones...

Silly Site o' the Day

I just read the feed for my recent Haloscan comments on Bloglines, and they have ads underneath them (for a bank I hate, no less). I can't find any ad-turn-off mechanisms on either Bloglines or Haloscan, so I have no idea how the little buggers got there, but I wanted to assure one and all that this is not my doing; Pen-Elayne remains a no-ads blog. Nonetheless, I'm feeling mean now - here's How to Prank a Telemarketer, via Moi at Bloggg.

Milestone Notes

Happy birthdays to Lauren, Atrios and Elaine's mother.

Reading Roundup

Haven't felt that much like doing a linkfest lately, but there were a few bits I came across this past week which I feel merit passing on to y'all:

• Looks like the Edwards for President campaign's loss is the blogosphere's gain, as Amanda (Pandagon) Marcotte and Melissa (Shakespeare's Sister) McEwan have been busy bees since their resignation announcements. Melissa discusses her Guardian comment piece, and Amanda's got an article in Salon, a piece up on HuffPo, and will be on Blog Talk Radio with Melissa and on TPM Cafe. (Bear with Pandagon whilst it undergoes a server change.) Joe at American Leftist probably has the best explanation I've seen so far for why the Edwards campaign didn't support Amanda and Melissa and dismiss their detractors more vigorously - "liberal" and "leftist" aren't the same thing. Most mainstream Democrats just aren't as progressive as many bloggers are, and we keep forgetting this to our continued disappointment (and, among others, Michael at Musing's Musings expresses that disappointment eloquently).

• Liberal racism rears its ugly head again. Surely folks can see how not cleaning up our own act lowers our credibility and moral high ground that much more when dealing with racists on the other end of the political spectrum! MB Williams has some choice words for John Aravosis regarding his reaction to the retirement of the University of Illinois mascot, Chief Illiniwek. It still amazes me how many folks can't see the difference between having a state or or place name derived from the people who inhabited that place and adopting the idea of those people into mascots (side by side with, you know, animals and suchlike). More from Chris Clarke and Jill at Feministe, who also has a good post on a band which suddenly realized - upon prompting by NYU students - that their name was racist. And Ann over at Feministing talks about a commercial campaign aired in India for a skin lightening cream, "where they help perpetuate the idea that whiter skin = more respect = success in life."

• Kenneth Quinnell compiles an impressive list of Republican-led voter suppression and dirty tricks from 2006. Makes it even more amazing that so many Democrats won, doesn't it? Ken also does an exhaustive analysis of plagiarism in stand-up comedy, but he's lost quite a bit of my respect for liking Carlos Mencia.

• Chris remembers Zeke and I cry all over again. And Morgaine paints her memory of Rhiannon, in case you're in the market for something to put on your wall. At one time I wanted to name all my cats after Fleetwood Mac songs, but for whatever reason that stopped after Gypsy as Phredd and Datsa came pre-named, and Amy didn't answer to anything but "Amy."

• Must-read celeb post on Huffington - Tim Robbins on our collective souls in the recent past and the foreseeable future.

• New rules, new rules! There haven't been any rule changes in major league baseball in over 10 years.

• For pity's sake, these nitwits are worried about giving kids a vocabulary lesson? Here you go, "it's the part of a boy dog that hangs down in the back." It's not brain surgery. They're there for all the world to see whether or not you talk about them.

Time to do some news-scouring for ComicMix items. (By the way, if you have any comics news use the "Contact Us" form linked to at the bottom of the ComicMix page.)

Silly Site o' the Day

It's the lunar New Year!



Today begins the year of DingHai, and the year 4704 by the Chinese calendar. The lunar new year is celebrated throughout Asia. Naturally this American thinks in clichés so I'm dying for some Asian food today. Maybe if I spin the Wheel of Food (via Lis first) I can figure out which local Asian restaurant to patronize (because, you know, as an American I'm probably nothing if not patronizing)...

Silly Site o' the Day

Not nearly through blog catch-up, had to do some ComicMix catch-up first and I'm still not done with that. Mostly I wanted to make sure my car was okay; I managed to drive it off the ice sheet it's on, maneuver it so it went back into the spot trunk-first and I can just take off on Tuesday, and scraped the ice out of the wheel wells so it won't make that awful crunching sound any more whenever I do a right turn. Got all the way to the auto body shop when I realized I didn't have the right coupon, so I took that as an omen and I'll bring the car in next time it's a nice Saturday and I'm not doing anything else. Oh, also, slept a bit, did the washing-up, and planned dinner, which will not include this:



Custom tin can label generator via Gerard, of course. Back to blog-reading!

Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

Every day is Valentine's Day for Amy, as long as she has something velvety to the touch that used to hold chocolate.



The heart-shaped box in the computer room, which now holds loose coins, is one of her favorite plinths.



"Plinths" doesn't sound right. "Plinthim" is much better.

Silly Sites o' the Day

Because it's Friday Cat Blogging day, via Sheila Lennon, Tim Mahoney's Cat Head Theatre presents Act II, Scene 2 of Hamlet:



And by now just about everyone's seen Nora, the Piano Playing Cat:



But David Malki's taken that one step further in his latest Wondermark comic strip.

"...But You're Coming Back -- A Star!!"

My first regular column is now up at ComicMix. Since I'm the news editor my name's up there all over the place, but this column is more in the style of my blogginess than the news items are. Unfortunately, due to some scheduling miscommunication (since resolved), it appears on page 2 of the main site (all fixed now). And I have no idea how Glenn manipulated the eyes in my photo, I don't think they've ever been quite that dilated. :)

Silly Site o' the Day

I think TrueNuff's Mac/PC ad parodies (via Eva Whitley) are really good, but Rob had trouble loading it onto both the desktop Mac and the iBook. I could see it just fine on my work PC yesterday. Is that ironic?

Sick of Ice Day

I had a very harrowing drive home yesterday afternoon via amazingly unmaintained interstates (I mean, you don't salt I-95? What's up with that?) that were probably still better going than the smaller highways. As it turns out I arrived home just in time, as about an hour later a FedEx truck got stuck trying to exit our U-shaped driveway and eventually had to be towed back onto the street. An unsettled evening followed, and I decided my nerves couldn't take another risky commute this morning even if I could have gotten out of the driveway; Lillian decided to carpool with someone else so I couldn't swing 'round the empty spot where her car would have been, and the basement neighbor parked along the fence directly in back of my car, and there's no maneuverability on the ice that remains even though the plow apparently came through last night and skimmed off some of it. Besides which, I've been in the "reading room" about a half dozen times so far. So it's a rare 75%-of-pay sick day for me, trying to finish my blogroll catch-up and glean stories for ComicMix (my first column is in the queue to post but hasn't done so yet; I'm curious to see what magic Glenn's done with the photos I've sent him) and mostly do data-entry stuff for my paying job, when I'm not running back and forth to the porcelain throne. Oh yeah, and I'm Spartacus too,



but you knew that because I've already mentioned how I feel about Melissa.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion

That's the first sentence fragment from the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. The founders of our democracy apparently thought it was important enough to place first among the additions to that beloved document. The people who forced Pandagon to shut down for a bit (it's back up now and, while Kevin Hayden recommended we all repro Amanda's post about her hate mail in support of her, the way things move in internet time that ship has sailed) want to establish a religion. They are therefore anti-Constitution, anti-Bill of Rights and anti-American. I do not want their version of religion forced upon me. Belief is a personal matter between a believer and his or her deity, and anyone who tries to impose it from without will have as much success as, say, those who try to impose democracy on another country (particularly from the barrel of a gun). I'm saddened that I have to explain this at all.

Silly Site o' the Day

I'm afraid I'm not feeling very silly. Not only has Melissa McEwan also resigned from her part-time position as a technical advisor to the Edwards campaign, but there's a nasty ice storm around NYC, worst it seems around the Bronx and lower Westchester County where I commute. My morning journey took me 45 minutes and was probably the most dangerous I've ever had, and I'm not looking forward to going back. I'm hoping to get out of here after the salter trucks have been through and before the wind picks up, and likely I'll be taking Interstate 95 to the Deegan Expressway to go home so I don't have to deal with any local roads until I'm on home turf. At times like this I prefer to hide in the realm of fantasy, so I herewith present the Random Anime Plot Generator (via Gerard). Mine said, "In a hellish future world a young brooding hero travels on an eternal quest, acquiring one/two loyal companions while seeking wealth and fortune and does battle with evil demon psychic overlord and his lieutenants and triumphing, moves on to the next installment. The End" See? Nothing about ice storms.

Silly Site o' the Day

I knew I shouldn't have gone back to read the Amanda-gone-from-Edwards-campaign thread after I posted to it. Lots of very angry faux-"religious" people getting their hate on, just like Jesus would have wanted I'm sure. But what can one expect from a modern "followers" of a religion that started out spreading lots of good ideas (love thy neighbor, care for the poorest among us, peace on earth) and has devolved into, well...



The sadly ironic thing in all of this is that, out of all the declared Democratic candidates, Edwards seems to be doing the most to care for the poorest among us, i.e., to follow part of Jesus' original message. Do catch Amanda's follow-up post, if you're so inclined. Pope Benedict Says Generator via Gerard, of course.

Amanda Quits the Edwards Campaign

Announcement at Pandagon.

Silly Site o' the Day

Boss day, light blogging (even at ComicMix), you know the drill. Here's a 3D Ambigram Generator, via Gerard.

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 1/28/07 through 2/11/07

This is probably going to be my last Liberal Coalition blogaround for awhile, as a group discussion on reorganization is currently taking place on the LC mailing list, but mostly because of my ComicMix responsibilities. My LC blogroll remains on my sidebar but no longer constitutes a separate section in my Bloglines reading, which is actually good as it means I'll be incorporating LC members into my existing sections there and their posts into my regular blogarounds when I get, er, around to 'em. Here we go:

• Some great comments on the Edwards campaign blogging saga from Bora, Kathy (who reproes the message she sent to the Edwards campaign to help ensure they did the right thing by their blogging hires), Michael and Mustang Bobby.

• Bora's looking for a few good recipes, and wondering how he gets through his blogging day sometimes.

• Bryant finds someone who thought Prince was too cutting-edge for the Superbowl halftime show.

• Echidne had as little problem switching to New Coke Blogger as I did, but I still can't see her headers when I read via Bloglines. John recommends it as well; labels are indeed a neat thing! Mustang Bobby also reports success (on the second try).

• Jeff doesn't agree with me that hate speech is a crime, or at least that it's being as vigorously and even-handedly prosecuted as it should be.



• As I mentioned last Sunday, Ken live-blogged the Superbowl and ads as well. Here's the first quarter, second quarter, third quarter and fourth quarter.

• Lilith points the finger at shameful greed by the Salvation Army.

• Maru passes along a positively hilarious "Dear Abby Normal" letter!

• Wow Mike, thanks so much for finding that link to the Muppet Show on which Peter Sellers appeared! That's going to be fun to watch.

• Norbizness founds his own religion, sort of, and has some nifty zoo photos.

• NTodd reports on a promising medical advance developed by the Defense Department, which created the need to fill in the first place.

Off to do catch up on some more ComicMix work (did you notice the new button on my sidebar?)!

Clearing Out the Links, Clearing Out the Links...

We shall come rejoicing, clearing out the links!

• How cool is a guest post by Anthony Bourdain (on Michael Ruhlman's blog) reviewing the Food Network? Very cool, if you ask me. I read it aloud to Robin right after we watched the most recent DVR'ed episode of No Reservations, so we had his voice down in our heads.

• Both Gary Sassaman and Ken Levine claim to be the father of the late Anna Nicole Smith's daughter. Like the kid isn't going to be screwed up enough.

• CJ Finis passes along some good news about Senator Johnson.

• In case you want to read more good thoughts about the Edwards campaign blogger saga, I'd like to recommend Ilyka's Why I Support Amanda and Melissa; Kevin's Bloggers and Candidates; Minstrel Boy's We Haven't Come All That Far, Have We? over at Big Brass Blog; Chris' Tolerance for me and not for thee and of course the post from Pam and accompanying comments on Pandagon.

• Is this satire? If so, is it just so clumsily done as to lose any bite it might have had coming from, say, a female writer, or somehow so clever that we little ol' gals are not yet evolved enough to truly appreciate it (i.e., lie back and enjoy it)? And don't miss Zuzu's follow-up, From the Department of Non-Apologies.

• Lastly, one of the best limericks I've ever seen from MadKane concerns the A-listers so-called Blogroll Amnesty Day, in which they unilaterally declared amnesty for themselves from previous blogroll obligations.

Now to the LC blogaround!

Contact Note

Yahoo Answers fora from all over are noting users' problems with receiving email. One woman in Canada wrote, "This is my only link to my husband in Iraq and it is not working. I have not received any emails, or junk mail, since Friday. He called to make sure I was okay because I had not answered his emails." This is a big, big problem. Fortunately I have a secondary email account over at Google, which came in handy when I switched to New Coke Blogger. If you need to contact me via email, please use my Gmail address for the time being. Sidebar updated accordingly.

Silly Site o' the Day

ComicMix is finally live, doo-dah, doo-dah, ComicMix is finally live, and what's up with my mail? Seriously, I haven't gotten any new email all weekend, even spam, and for Yahoo that's very unusual to say the least. But I don't have time to worry about it now that ComicMix has sprung into action! So have this (male) action figure generator (via Gerard) as a celebration!

Maintenance Note and Workaround

I still have no complaints at all about my migration to New Coke Blogger. Well, a little one, but you know when you have a computer problem and then the IT guy comes in and all of a sudden everything is working fine? That's what happened with my edit window's search function; it functioned again not more than 10 seconds after I wrote to Blogger Support. So I was able to search by "Silly Site" and "Friday Cat Blogging" and all sorts of other things and now labels have been applied to all the FCBs and Silly Sites and LC blogarounds and suchlike going all the way back to when I started doing those types of posts. By the way, there were over 1000 Silly Sites to label, and I found a workaround to the edit window's only showing 50 posts at a time beyond the first 300 and reverting to the most recent posts only showing "&numPosts=50" every time after I checked off the label thing on, say, the oldest posts. What I did was copy the URL which had a page number at the end of it, pasted it back into my address bar and just changed the end number so it went to the next page. Made things go a lot more quickly! Next up, all the family-related and photo posts. I don't think I'll label every single post going back to when I started on 9/7/02, but at least the stuff I want to look for the most will all have labels. Yes yes, I get the irony of a fairly uncategorizable blog having labels. :) But it gives me something to do whilst the ComicMix "web-orcs" continue to work out their technical difficulties...

Silly Site o' the Day

I've gone through and labeled my most recent 300 posts, but beyond that Blogger only lets me see 50 posts at a time, and whenever I label something it reverts to the 50 most recent (i.e., it doesn't stay on the same page) so it's a real pain to keep flipping backward in order to check off a few posts at a time. Plus, the search engine still doesn't work so I can't, say, call up any posts with the word "England" in them. Eventually I'd like to label all the Silly Sites, Friday Cat Blogging and other photos, and family stuff; everything else beyond that will probably be labeled randomly when I need to do so (like comics-related posts or reviews or the like). This is far more labor-intensive than it needs to be, and I have too many other things I need to do. Like go back to sleep. Especially after trying to view the 3D Stereogram ASCII image (via Gerard) - that just made my eyes hurt.

Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

Okay, here goes, my first post on Blogger 2.0! So far everything looks okay, the template and archives and even comments sections ported over just fine, but the Search function in my Edit Posts window isn't working so it's going to be a bitch to retroactively apply labels, even working 300 at a time. Ah well, at least I have a relatively healthy cat now. Datsa was feeling poorly yesterday, so we gave the burlap catnip bags another shake in the plastic bag with the loose catnip, and let him go to town:







Amy doesn't have that much interest in catnip, she'll sniff it a little...



...but on the whole she doesn't seem to go crazy over it like he does.

Maintenance Note

Well, I've backed up my blog template (although not my archives, as it's way too much effort for me to go through 4+ years, so I'm crossing my fingers) and will now be taking the plunge into Blogger Version 2.0. Assuming this works okay, anyone reading this via RSS like Bloglines should be forewarned that a whole bunch of recent posts will make a reappearance in their newsreader. Sorry about that! Wish me luck! If all goes well I'll come out the other side with some cat blogging.

Banned on Blogdom?

My fellow Liberal Coalition member Steve Gilliard has just banned me from posting comments on his blog, for reasons unknown. Steve, you want to elaborate or are you just going to continue acting like an apparent prick? I'm more than happy to eliminate you from my further reading and my weekly LC blogarounds, the way I've done with Firedoglake, but I'd at least like to know why I'm suddenly shunned. Update: Steve has elucidated his reasons on his blog, half of which are fair and true. He has also lashed out at me on the LC mailing list as "not a good or decent person," which grieves me as I've always tried to be just that. It's true that I've made no secret how I feel about blog-begging, and perhaps that just hit too close to home and wounded Steve far more than was ever intended. Ironically, after my conversation with the lovely Jenonymous (not "grilling," I've never grilled anyone in my life and if that's how she described it to him I cop to a serious misjudgment of her character as a good and honest person and a true friend to Steve) I was much more inclined to give him slack in this department, as I learned probably more than I wanted to know about his personal circumstances. Regardless, I regret that it's come to this - I have many friends whose blog-begging drives me up the wall, and we're still friends - and, even though he's treated his personal opinions as fact and that tends to damage credibility (probably the most powerful currency available to bloggers), I do still urge fans of Steve's political writing to continue reading Steve's blog, which often contains some of the best insights around on the national and particularly local (NYC) level. I live in hope that someday Steve and I will be able to patch things up, perhaps through our many mutual friends.

Silly Site o' the Day

Wow, the next Hallmark Holiday is less than a week away! Where has the time gone? If you want to be as fake as the holiday, here's a Love Poem Generator (via Gerard) you can use in place of, you know, actual romance and suchlike. Here's what it generated for me:

I wrote this letter especially for you
To prove that my love for you is true
Never shall I kiss someone else's lips
Never will we make any boring trips

Robin, you are unbelievably beautiful
When I am near you my heart goes like a raging bull
Words cannot express
What I felt when you said 'yes'

Robin, you mean so much to me
I never knew this could be
You are my sweetheart day by day
I hope you will never go away

These trousers are for you, I hope you will like it
I am dying to see your reaction, that I will admit
This poem has come to an end
There are many more I would like to send

It's Vogon-level, isn't it? Honestly, it would be a totally revolting celebration were it not for the chocolate. I loves me my chocolate.

Callooh! Callay!

Barbara reports "John Edwards has released a statement saying that, although Amanda and Melissa have written things on their blogs that offend him, he is not going to fire them from his campaign." Liza confirms and has the link. And here are the apology posts from Amanda and from Melissa on Edwards' blog. While (ironically) I do take exception to the wording of Edwards' post via a vis being personally offended by some of what the Pandagal and the Pink Petulance have written in the past, and I'm saddened that they were apparently pressured (however gently) into apologizing for essentially other people being assholes, I'm very happy to see his people didn't totally cave in to the "swiftboating" thuggery of a bunch of nutjobs.

Silly Site o' the Day

In solidarity with Melissa and Amanda, I present one of my favorite Silly Sites that I found on Shakespeare's Sister: Googly Eyes! I would have tried it with a picture of me, but I can't find one in which my eyes are prominent enough to make it work. By the way, speaking of the current situation of the Pandagal and the Pink Petulance, don't miss this excellent analysis by Sara Robinson over at Ornicus. (Also Victoria Marinelli, who's kind enough to include a quote from me.)

Rethinking Edwards

If this is true - if the Edwards people have caved in to reactionary nutcases and fired Amanda and Melissa, two of my favorite people in the entire virtual world - I have no interest in supporting their candidate. As Peter Stone wrote, "It's a revolution, dammit! We're going to have to offend somebody!" Pam has more, including something I hope everyone will bear in mind: "There are a lot of mouths on both the left and right that shoot off indiscriminately, if passionately, about politics -- and that has no bearing on the ability to write well in a professional capacity, which is why the two were hired to begin with. Melissa has written as a journalist for Raw Story, for example. Her work there in no way reflects her writing style on her personal blog." Yes, if you someone to blog for pay it usually means you like their style, their passion, their voice, but that doesn't mean you expect them to write the same things in their personal blog as they do in their for-pay blog. My style here and on ComicMix will be similar enough that folks will probably recognize the voice in each as belonging to me, but by and large I'm not going to be blogging there about the same things I blog about here. Just like I talk differently on the phone at work than I do at home. I'm really disappointed that this needs to be explained to folks with such little brain (not talking about the Edwards campaign, but the reactionary idiots who manufactured a problem here where there was none to begin with).

Bit of a Blogaround

As promised, and to get myself through a morning when the building's boilers have shut off:

• Bob Harris manages to tie in the Moominites-in-Boston scare story with recent political propaganda. Bemoaning the fact that the phrase "bomb hoax" is still being used by the press and prosecutors despite the fact that neither hoax nor bomb were ever involved, Harris observes,

Consider: this is what happens when local officials briefly utter nonsense about a single, simple, and domestic issue that is immediately debunked. The horseshit still takes weeks to filter out.

Now imagine the case when powerful national officials repeatedly utter manipulated half-truths about multiple, complex, overseas concerns that are later debunked....And then, years later, the reality-based community wonders why millions of Americans still don’t understand basic stuff like Iraq’s lack of connection to 9-11. We wonder how Bush can get away with blurring Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda in the recent State of the Union address. But maybe it’s no wonder at all.

Something to remember amidst all the current propaganda about Iran.

• A couple good posts from Cheryl Lynn, A tip for artists about how to draw clothing on women and a Warning about some salty/peppery language in a realization that, if something's not being created to your satisfaction, you may just need to create it yourself.

• Some cherce navel-gazing going on of late; I think we go inside because it's too cold to go outside. Kevin Church has a good blogging tutorial up, and Pen-Elayne techie friend Laura Gjovaag (who again strongly advised on the phone last night that I make the darn switch to "new Blogger" already, which I'll probably do this weekend) adds in some advice of her own.

• Meanwhile in the political 'sphere, two big stories are consuming bloggers who enjoy talking about themselves and each other. The first involves the reactionary smear machine against beloved blogger Amanda Marcotte (now being expanded to include Melissa McEwen) for daring to be interesting and forthright and not an echo chamber automoton, all valuable qualities that the John Edwards for President campaign obviously admired enough to hire her to oversee their blog. Seems like what we have here are some very jealous folks desirous of publicity seeking to pump themselves up (as their influence decreases commensurate with the power of the current administration) by putting someone else down and offering unnecessary advice to a politician they don't like anyway. (Chicago Dyke at CorrenteWire has some good advice to Edwards, and Sheelzebub speaks to the reactionaries.) And since they can't dispute factual (and actual) citizen journalism, they resort to semantic nitpicking and accusations of incivility. I think the best commentary on this is by Glenn Greenwald's Angry, uncivil liberal bloggers. "Somewhere along the way it was decided that the most egregious act of 'incivility' is not spewing vile ideas or violence-inciting rhetoric, but instead, the absolute worst injury to our body politic, the most disturbing sign of 'anger,' is the use of naughty words."

• The other internal, and perhaps eternal, dilemma among those who care about such things concerns the reaction to Atrios' Blogroll Amnesty Day, with his misuse of the word "amnesty" the way others misuse "meme." It seems Jon Swift got the ball rolling with an uncharacteristically non-satirical statement of his blogrolling policy (basically reciprocal, same as most of us). Then skippy got in on the act, here and here and here (skippy has always had the most open and welcoming blogrolling policy of anyone I've seen in "our" side of blogtopia, a word which, yes, he coined) and PZ clarified his position and yadda yadda. (CE Petro has a nice roundup.) Now, as mentioned before I've dropped from mammal to marsupial on NZ Bear's ecosystem, but them's the breaks. This is my personal blog, not the money-making one. The blogging goals I set for myself were long since met, and have nothing to do with comparative popularity. If I don't post enough, or have enough focused posts, to stay on Atrios' blogroll or be noticed by Markos or any of the other male A-list bloggers, that's the way it goes. As for my blogroll, I update it regularly when I know an URL has changed or someone's stopped blogging; it takes maybe an hour to do a fairly thorough maintenance update, so I'm not sure what the whining is about, except the elitist angle. If you're going to broadcast that you're dropping folks for no other reason than you've decided not to read them, that just doesn't look good. I read everyone on my blogroll via Bloglines, so if I chose not to read someone who's still posting regularly I'd take them off Bloglines, not my sidebar. Having an outdated sidebar is sloppy; having one that doesn't necessarily jibe with one's regular reading habits, particularly after four years, is par for the course.

• There's also a little fallout from last Sunday's Superbowl ads. I'm not going to talk about the Snickers controversy, as that's already been dealt with by far better bloggers. No, what intrigued me was this chart by Quiddity on the level of cartoony violence in the ads. He asks, "Is it just a random phenomenon, or is it an indicator, however weak, of a change in the modes of thought in this nation? You could get political and argue that ever since the Iraq war got started, this nation, or at least a significant portion, has moved towards a more confrontational attitude in all things. Or maybe it's less the war, and simply a derivitave of the fierce competition that's been on display in television shows like Survivor, Big Brother, Fear Factor, et al. Or maybe it doesn't mean anything at all." And Bernie at PopPolitics remains skeptical about the "absent presence" of women in many of the ads.

• The atrocities continue. Your Must-Ready Digby for the week is about Dick Cheney setting himself up as a fourth (and superior) branch of government; all the more reason to work for his impeachment/resignation before Bush's. Melanie spots a new ballot initiative proposal in WA regarding a certificate of marital procreation; say what? And Kathy Flake takes a local gander at the Bernard Matthews factory farm.

Oh, thank goodness, it's finally warmed up again. Of such things are winter colds born.

Silly Site o' the Day

Bit of a blogaround coming shortly. I didn't sleep well last night at all. In this kind of weather one's either too cold (being outside at all, inadequate heating indoors) or too warm (when the indoor heat isn't regulated well enough). Yesterday was a "too warm" day both at work and home. Even sleeping with the window open didn't help. On the other hand, one of the dreams I remember involved Leah's spirit coming to me and telling me everything was okay, "it's all good" and like that, and I remember waking up at around 6 AM with a tremendous sense of peace. Alas, ComicMix doesn't appear to have worked out the kinks yet, but I'm still feeding news items to the beast so I'm sure they'll appear sooner or later.



Thanks for your patience! Catalog card generator via Gerard, natch.

Aaaaand We're Off! (Er, Kinda)

The pop-culture site for which I'm blogging and writing a column is called ComicMix. Bookmark it now, then come back later to see what's behind the placeholder. I know I will.

Here's the Publishers Weekly article about us. (I believe I'm allowed to be presumptuous in this case and use the first person plural.) Here's the breaking news from Pop Thought. Check out the first paragraph. I'm extremely psyched to be working with these people, some of whom can very accurately be described as comics legends.

You want official? Okie-doke, here's the press release:

COMICMIX.COM LAUNCHES POP CULTURE’S NEW WAVE
Everything You Need to Know About Today’s Hot Topics

February 6, 2007 – Starting today, there’s a new hotspot on the internet. ComicMix.com is the best place for news about comics, movies, television, music, games and more, plus columns and blogs from Dennis O'Neil, Michael Davis, Elayne Riggs, Bob Greenberger, Gwen! David, Glenn Hauman, John Ostrander and many others.

ComicMix.com editor in chief, Mike Gold, said, "With one click, our readers can check up on the latest talking points in the entertainment universe. We’ve assembled the best, the brightest and the snarkiest to bring the newest rumors, gossip, opinions and facts to one convenient site."

"And," he added, "This is just Stage One. In a few weeks, we open up the next frontier of ComicMix. It will change the way you read comics in every conceivable way." Each day, hints and clues as to the nature of Stage Two will be posted at ComicMix.com.

ComicMix.com is the new site for readers who enjoy all types of fantastic media, from comic books television and movies to video games and more. Every day, visitors find news, facts, reviews, commentary, columns and a community environment that reaches across the globe, across decades and into the future.

For more information, contact Martha Thomases.

Dang. I still love that my name is in there with those others. That's bloody amazing to me. I'm having a ball, and we're only just revving up!

Silly Site o' the Day

Official press release for new pop-culture website to come later today. Meanwhile light blogging continues while I finish at least the current stage of the major project I've been doing for my boss over the past month or so, which he actually remembered to ask about yesterday so I can't really put it off any more. So that's my priority for the day. In a more perfect world the pop-cult site would be my priority. This is not a more perfect world. Yet. Here, go play with some online Lite Brite (via Tild~), all the cool kids are doing it.

Lying Whom Into War?

Four years ago today, Colin Powell knowingly lied repeatedly to the United Nations, thus irrevocably damaging not only his heretofore stellar personal reputation but that of the United States to this day. Justin has set up his Day of Shame project to commemmorate this.

As my contribution I wanted to repro most of my post from February 6, 2003, which I'm pretty sure was in response to the Powell propaganda:

Heaven knows there's enough propaganda of all sorts floating about this society to make just about all of us susceptible to some of it some of the time. And this particular administration (as many administrations before it) has a lot of veterans who excel at obfuscation and outright lies, buddies who own the media to reinforce those lies, etc. So no, you can't really blame a heck of a lot of Joe and Jane Q. Publics out there for believing what's fed to them. Not many people have the time or inclination to seek out information. And many of them are comfortable believing what they believe, and don't like their mindset challenged...

But it's the nature of many-to-many discussion that people with differing beliefs will encounter one another, so if you are one of those "my country right or wrong" folks and you find yourself in a discussion with a "the world isn't all black and white" person, it can appear to be an "ignorant versus informed" deal when actually it's probably more like a "provincial versus big picture" one. I don't think of provincialism as ignorance at all, I think of it as a comfort zone into which people retreat. It's like folks who "find religion" later on in life, I don't consider them suddenly delusional and irrational but just ordinary folks seeking comfort. It is a scary world out there, and it helps many people to believe Big Brother or God only has their best interests at heart or represents Truth. Provincial? Sure. Ignorant? I wouldn't say so.

So I think that's worth considering when throwing about "you should have known better" accusations at bloggers or candidates or whomever.

One of the better responses to the project comes from D. at Lawyers, Guns and Money.

Silly Site o' the Day

Ugh. Cold. Is it morning yet? No no, wait. Vanna?



Thanks Vanna. Word puzzle generator via Gerard.

Superbowl Ad Live-Blogging

My first time doing this, so bear with me. All times PM and EST:

6:00 - Pregame hype show starting and, wow, I can't tell the difference between that and a commercial.

6:03 - I can see it's going to be real hard to shut out the crap spewed by the announcer guys.

6:06 - First ad. Ford truck. Yawn. Then stuff I've seen before, for diamonds, credit cards, movies, TV shows. Although I like the exchange "Peru is nice." "I'm sure it's nice but we're in Ecuador."

6:10 - "...meet the new boss, same as the old boss..." I'm guessing Pete Townshend's raking it in from the Colts using Won't Get Fooled Again as their intro music.

6:12 - Wait, was that a time-delay bleep from the sound on the Bears sideline? Ah no, it's just sound problems...

6:14 - Aww, kids. Mickey D's loves kids. They want you to know that... Another stupid Ford truck teaser. How can I already be sick of that?... Heh, unexpected cameos from David Beckham and Martha Stewart in an NFL Access ad. My mind can't wrap around that one.

6:18 - You know you're in the big-time when not only is Billy Joel doing the Star-Spangled Banner but his interpreter-for-the-deaf is Marlee Matlin.

6:24 - Ford's putting together trucks by telekenesis. Considering how many folks they've let go I guess they'd have to.

6:27 - Wow, a 92-yard opening kickoff return for a touchdown. Even I have to admit that's damn exciting. First ever for a Superbowl. I feel badly for people tuning in late. It even happened too early for the program to go to commercial, and that's saying something.

6:34 - Bears interception. I guess the Colts would in fact be fooled again.

6:35 - Bud Light's up first: "I took paper." "I threw a rock." I laughed and felt kinda bad about laughing.

Okay, I'll give the tortilla chip ad credit; both the guy and the gal are clumsy idiots, and it's nice to see that kind of parity.

Blockbuster's "mouse click" ad was cute. "We forgot to plug it in." "Don't even think about it!" Snicker.

6:39 - The "beard-combover" guy appears in like every other commercial on TV, doesn't he? I call him the Philip Seymour Hoffman lookalike.

6:41 - There he is again in the second ad of the Sierra Mist bracket.

6:44 - Surfing the blogs I discover Peter David is doing this live-ad-blogging thing as well. With a pro on the case I may quit early. :)

6:47 - Ooh, you don't see a missed snap on an extra-point try very often.

6:48 - I don't want trucks going from 40 to 70, particularly during my commute.

What's the squirrel doing in the moon-base office?

6:49 - The auctioneer wedding took about as long as my marriage ceremony with Robin. (He just observed the same thing.)

6:50 - Colts recover a fumble. Geez, even Robin's watching the game now.

6:51 - And right back at 'em as the wet ball's fumbled again and recovered by the Bears. Someone get a towel or two for this Superbowl!

6:52 - A 52-yard run; Bears on the Colts' 5-yard line. Dang, I actually didn't plan on watching the game, just the ads!

6:53 - "Booger McFarland"? I don't want to know.

6:55 - Snickers man-love, excellent. I know it plays off homophobia, but I didn't consider it to be mean-spirited.

I'm sorry Schick, four blades is still a damn stupid and borderline dangerous idea.

6:58 - Am I supposed to recognize any of these "singers" in the Chevy ad?

6:59 - You know, I've studiously avoided Carlos Mencia up until now, and I can see by the creepily xenophobic punchline of this Bud Lite ad that this was the right move.

7:00 - Best ad so far, Letterman and Oprah at home on the couch. In-jokey, sure, but enough folks probably get the gag so that it works.

7:15 - Oh ick, GoDaddy's still being a bunch of sexist assholes. Grow the hell up.

7:16 - If Grand Theft Nonsense were as cool as this Coke ad, I'd actually play it.

7:17 - "Who Are You" playing as the background music for CBS' TV lineup ad. Yep, Townshend's pockets are going jingle-jingle, I'm sure.

7:23 - Bud doggie. All I could think of was what irresponsible owner left that poor, gentle-tempered dog alone.

7:24 - Garmin commercial gets lots of geek points, very Power Rangers. Part of me hopes Peter missed that ad...

7:25 - I love it when even the insipid announcers recognize how many folks watch this just for the ads.

7:28 - Careerbuilder's office-in-the-jungle. Fun. "You forgot to sign out." I'd still take that rainforest over my current position.

7:29 - Dorito's check-out cashier isn't thin but she's teh sexy anyway! I wonder if this was the fan-made ad. Ohh, did I grin.

And male strippers aplenty in the Chevy ad, to the delight (and embarrassment) of the passengers in the car. That's three in a row that made me smile. GoDaddy, take note!

7:35 - Slappy-face Bud Light. Squarely in the "Idiots Use Our Product" category.

7:36 - That heart-guy is really, erm, taking a beating. I'm very glad I remember to take my daily meds to keep the BP down and blood thinned. Which is exactly what the folks at King Pharmaceuticals are hoping for, I'm sure.

7:38 - GM fires a machine. 'Cause they ran out of people to fire? Oh ick, 'bots apparently don't dream of electric sheep, but about making Quality gas-guzzlers that people can no longer afford to buy. Maybe its next daydream will be to marry one of the cars it puts together; we can but hope.

7:39 - Coke celebrates black history with a red bottle.

7:46 - Liked the wordplay in Sprint's Connectile Dysfunction ad.

How I Met Your Mother 2007 plotline = Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? circa-1972 plotline.

7:50 - Robin: "Nobody in the park is capable of holding the ball at the moment." Seriously, a towel, please?

7:52 - The Doritos folks recall that it's Black History Month as well. Should paying homage to BHM be like a drinking game this evening? No, I'd probably never get through this post.

7:54 - Rob saw that "what else haven't I done?" Coke ad before, but it was a first for me. Hmm, what other ads haven't I seen?

7:56 - Can they just put David Spade and, say, Carlos Mencia in a show together, and give Warburton his own sitcom? That way it would be easy to avoid one altogether and to give the other a try.

7:58 - I don't get the basketball team with the bubbles.

7:59 - That Dunkin' Donuts sandwich sounds good. I can feel my arteries hardening as they speak.

Foot Locker ad with pro basketball player - eh. Honda truck ad - eh. I think I'll take a break for awhile.

Halftime - Prince singing in the purple rain. That marching band must be soaked to the skin. Nicely-done show, and goodness can he play guitar. Glad he finally took the handkerchief off his head.

8:19 - The TV show promos hurt my eyes. Too much camera movement. Are they trying to induce fits or something?

8:20 - Katie Couric tells us all about the Ameri-Can-Do Spirit. Because apparently "good people doing great things" is news now, rather than the sort of thing one should expect all the time.

8:21 - Oh yay, the Police leading off the Grammys. Me happy.

8:22 - Acura uses Supertramp. I loved Supertramp back in college.

PNC just wants to help you turn your dreams into their profit reality...

Toyota trucks have guts, says the deep-voiced guy who sounds a lot like John Goodman. Talk about "a ton of whatever."

8:23 - Oh god, help me, another Carlos Mencia ad. Who told Bud that this fellow was remotely funny?

8:30 - Ken's live-blogging the Superbowl and ads too. I can't figure out if this is all cool or just sad.

8:39 - Promo for Disney's animated movie Meet the Robinsons - Looks promising, I like that they seem to make fun of their own theme parks.

E-trade bank robbery "inside job" ad is slightly creepy and makes me uncomfortable.

8:40 - Coke Rube Goldberg-type fantasyland ad - man, you see where the money goes. Great animation.

8:42 - Gorillas in the midst of Bud Light. Apparently Idiot Gorillas Use Our Product as well.

8:43 - Oh my goodness, Revlon forced Sheryl Crow to use their product! Those monsters! This is so fakey from start to end.

8:47 - The second Careerbuilder "it's a jungle" ad. Not as surprising (and therefore fun) as the first one, but still okay.

8:48 - Taco Bell's talking lions are cuter than Bud Light's talking gorillas. Was that actually Ricardo Montalban doing the voiceover?

8:49 - Some guys just know how to walk backwards through their day before putting on their Van Heusens.

8:55 - Truck guys again. Yawn.

8:56 - "...some say Robert Goulet appears and messes with your stuff..." Another great bit of absurdity from Emerald Nuts.

8:57 - Old T-Mobile ad, and I still don't know either of these football players.

8:58 - FedEx - "Well said, Mr. Turkeyneck." Okay punchline, but I was hoping for something a bit more.

8:59 - The somewhat-eagerly-anticipated Kevin Federline-in-a-fast-food-joint ad for Nationwide. Robin laughed.

"He has Bud Light." "And an axe!" The chainsaw line at the end was the best. Reminded me of the building-upon structure of a Tex Avery cartoon.

9:11 - Mercedes "owners" insist, "You get what you pay for." I'll bet.

9:12 - Wow, PNC wants to uncomplicate my life, just because that's the kind of big faceless corporation they are! I'm so grateful.

9:13 - Pleasant Toshiba copter-flying stunt ad. Good parity between the male and female characters.

9:15 - Bud-worshipping crabs. "The Bud is our master, the Bud decides who will stay and who will go." I can hear Leah doing this in my head.

9:16 - The hunka hunka burning Honda SUV ad hurt my eyes. And ears.

9:25 - Nice HP ad, good use of the product they're trying to sell.

9:26 - Izod on ice? Mmm, tasty, but rather... I dunno, white. Good CG work. Also nice CG stuff on the football "board game" Bud Select ad.

9:34 - Old Flomax ad. I think all the good ones have already aired. A comparatively weak showing this year, yes?

9:35 - Hey E-Trade, wanna see what I can do with one finger? Oh no, wait, ever since I married Robin I've been using two fingers for that gesture.

9:39 - Next time, Hannibal the Zygote.

Third Careerbuilder ad in the series. I think I'm going to like these on repeated viewings.

9:49 - Okay the fan-made ad hasn't yet aired, apparently it's coming with the 2-minute warning.

9:52 - The Snapple "EGCG" ad - is that fan-made? Looks too expensive, but it seems to be the only one that fits the description and aired in the 2-minute warning break.

The NFL's promo for itself, with people saying goodbye to football for the year, was cute. I think the tune was "Saint James Infirmary," which means I'm going to have to watch that old Betty Boop cartoon again.

Aaaand that's it for the game, and my post. Fun time, but a little limiting physically. Gonna stretch my legs now.

A Shameful Anniversary

Justin emails to say, "For the next week, I'm running a site called "Day of Shame." To my mind, the media's embrace of Colin Powell's vaporous UN presentation was "ground zero" for the debasement of our news establishment. I've started the site with a simple post, and it will fill in with further thoughts about the tragedy that was unleashed that day. Perhaps most importantly, there's a log that invites people to join in and share their recollections and – I hope – solutions, so we never go down such a path again." I don't know, I think our press' shame started long before that, but nonetheless it's a worthy endeavor.

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 1/21/07 through 1/27/07

Caught up on blog-skimming again, so let's take a look at some Liberal Coalition members' posts, plus a few others that caught my eye from this past week:

• Bora has a new hobby and wants us all to know about the Beagle Project. Sounds very cool! He's also happy that Parliament's not screwing about with Greenwich Time; as someone who's stood on the Greenwich meridian marker in Lewes, I quite concur.

• Bryant helps explain why leaving off the last syllable of "Democratic" is considered a deliberate and calculated insult ("calculated" in part because of how it allows Republicans to mock Democrats as grammatical nitpickers so they get to be insulted twice and can't fight back). Mustang Bobby relates this bitch-slap to his own situation, noting that "Common courtesy dictates that you address a person or an entity by the name they prefer, and if you persist in making the mistake, you come across as a boor." So what else is new with these radical reactionaries?

• Chris Brown takes us through Lefty's Musical Evolution.

• Echidne examines how some women claim other women vote and view politics, how some politicians view women as machines, and how to build a better mousetrap whilst at the same time worrying about orange snow in Siberia.

• Tena finally posts again at First Draft, relating a grim story about an immigration holding facility and some of its non-criminal residents.

• Congratulations on the new job, Guy!

• Please send some embarrassing stories to John so he'll feel better about his confession.

• Jude is also quite enamored of John Edwards, as if you couldn't tell by the photo on her blog.

• Kathy relates yet another reading comprehension problem among reactionary media types, as well as peeking at their myth-accusation machine. Can we doubt by now that some of these folks are being deliberately obtuse?) And NTodd examines some actual continuing mythmaking on the part of our current leaders.

• Ken passes along some welcome news about Billy Joel.

• Michael goes somewhat against the grain in his analysis of the Mooninites in Boston. I still don't get what makes Boston different from the other dozen or so cities that hosted this viral marketing campaign and didn't have a panic reaction.

• Steve G lets loose with some sarky commentary on what Biden said about Obama.

• Trish reports that NYC is getting ready to launch an official city condom. I hope it's not Snapple.

And here are some notables from non-LC members:

• As threatened, yesterday was Atrios' Blogroll Amnesty Day, wherein he wiped his entire blogroll then started re-adding only the blogs he now reads. This will undoubtedly bring down my blog ranking (I've already sunk from Large Mammal to Marauding Marsupial on the TTLB ecosystem chart), which would upset me greatly if such things mattered to me.

• Congratulations to Lindsay for being chosen as the newest group blogger at This Modern World! And congratulations to Oliver on the surprising improvement in his sight.

• Sarah Dyer passes along an interesting idea about moving the start of one's New Year's resolutions to Groundhog Day instead.

• I know what I'm doing in between Superbowl commercials - watching Ricky Gervais interviewing Larry David, Chris Guest and Garry Shandling for Channel 4, and reading Ken Plume's interview with Mike Nelson. Speaking of which, Sheila Lennon reports that Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett have formed a new MTS3K'ish clique called Film Crew Online to comment snarkily on DVDs.

• I was concerned when I heard about the "ruling by decree" thing going on in Venezuela, but Eli provides a lot of information about this that the mainstream media conveniently left out; apparently this power is valid under their constitution, which even the US assistant secretary for hemisphere affairs knows and acknowledges.

• CE Petro analyzes Texas governor Perry's decision to make Gardasil vaccinations against HPV mandatory for schoolgirls. Turns out it's a battle between two evils, with capitalism triumphing over religious fundamentalism. Apparently the pharmaceutical giant "Merck is bankrolling efforts to pass state laws across the country mandating Gardasil" because they stand to make billions from it. "What we have here," concludes Petro, "is a situation of greed vs saving women from a horrible disease. It is this huge price tag, that Merck has placed on Gardasil that is outrageous. This is what people should be screaming about." Jersey Cynic weighs in at Big Brass Blog with her concerns (she mentions Merck's ties to Perry), particularly about a vaccine whose long-term side effects are not yet known.

• The News Writer pens an open letter to Mary Cheney.

• Donna doesn't get why Democrats (and many liberal bloggers) keep demotivating an important voting bloc. Me neither.

• Christopher at After School Snack reports on an economist's proposal to rebase the penny.

• Once again, Ilyka has been on a roll this past week. Read the whole blog if you can, but particularly This is Me, Flecking You with Much Spittle (directed at a conservative blogger), Moment (about the willful ignorance of Ugly Americans) and The Rollback Stops Here (about, among other things, the power of words). She also has a good one up at Pandagon about cronyism.

• Over at the Huffington Post, my more famous namesake (even though I'm pretty sure Elayne Boosler is older than me) has at the "women president" questions with a very pointed world history lesson; Dave Johnson suggests more liberals use "because" and discuss why radical reactionary policies are bad for most people in this country; and Steve Young begins his campaign to recognize every August 8 as a Day of Satire in the blogosphere in honor of the late Molly Ivins.

• Melissa is sputtering over the extreme inability of a conservative blogger to understand the difference between making the world a better place by one's own definition and murdering people in the name of God, to the point where he actually equates the two.

• How many other people thought of Avedon when they saw this post on BoingBoing?

• Lastly, a personal remembrance of Molly Ivins from her friend SivaVaidhyanathan.

Well, Rob's awake now, so time to see about breakfast and posting to That Other Blog (still in its test stage but I need the practice)...

Silly Site o' the Day

I understand there's some sort of sports event this afternoon, so I looked it up:



The Gooogle-with-three-o's No-Matches Generator, designed somewhere in the UK apparently, is via Gerard. If I finish my "homework" for the about-to-launch website as planned, I hope to live-blog the Stupor Bowl ads.

On Professional Blogging

One of the big news items in the liberal blogosphere this past week was the announcement that beloved A-list bloggers Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan (two of my personal favorites) have been hired by the John Edwards for President folks to run his campaign blog (Amanda will be the blogmeister and Melissa the netroots coordinator). My deep esteem for these women and their writing and passion has caused me to root much harder than I did before for Edwards to get the nom; if Amanda and Melissa vouch for him, that's good enough for me. And I'm delighted that they've put their credibility and time and effort into this and are getting paid for it. (Meanwhile, Pandagon is busier than ever with new group bloggers Sheelzebub, Ilyka, Auguste, Chris Clarke, and of course Roxanne.)

Glenn Greenwald has announced he too is turning pro, as Unclaimed Territory moves to Salon.com beginning on February 8. Congratulations, Glenn!

With those announcements passed along, and given the quotations from past Pen-Elayne posts I've just amassed below, I think you know what might be coming next. But I'm going to prolong the suspense just long enough to say that I still stand by all my words. Unless one is specifically hired to blog for pay, I believe blogging to be a hobby and, no matter how well you write, it's bad netiquette to ask people to pay for your hobby, particularly when you don't have to lay out any money to do so (and having your blog hosted by Blogger is one of many ways to blog for free), and most particularly when you're well-off enough that what your blog-begging is essentially doing is asking people to give you presents because they like you, which is just plain tacky.

That said: I have been hired to blog for pay.

I will be blogging at a website that is scheduled to launch next Tuesday, February 6. I will post more information about it as soon as I am given the go-ahead. I will also be writing a regular column for this site, as I've hinted at recently. It is not a political site but one about pop culture, specifically comics (where I have a certain amount of credibility and expertise amassed over the last couple decades). As the blog is targeted rather than an uncategorizable mishmash like Pen-Elayne is, and as the other folks involved in it are some pretty well-known industry names with lots of professionalism and creativity and energy (some of whom will be depending on me and trust that I will do the job for which I am being hired) who are sure to garner a huge readership, I will understandably be giving that professional writing some priority over this hobby.

Mostly, though, I hope Pen-Elayne readers won't be able to tell the difference. I am still at my current day job (with the website blogging/column writing constituting a secondary income, although I hope that may change soon), and you know how little I tend to post sometimes during the week. But I still plan to give y'all at least one bit of new content (a Silly Site) every day, as I have for the last few years. And I'm still going to try to keep up with all the 800 or so blogs on my Bloglines blogroll, although I may have to skim a lot more and read a lot less than before since my time will now be split between hobby-reading and reading-for-paying-purposes. And while the pop-culture site is a money-making venture and thus will certainly have ads, Pen-Elayne will continue to be ad-free. I intend to link to my paid gig from my sidebar (just as I have a link to Robin's pages-for-sale) but, on the off-chance I'm offered money for that link, all proceeds will go to the same place where my column-writing proceeds will go - to Leah's orphaned sons.

More information as I'm allowed to divulge it. Stay tuned!

Prelude - Blogging as a Hobby

I have a point to make, which I'll do in my next post, but first let's travel through memory lane.

From Monday for Hobbies and Your Checks for Free, 9/1/03:

I guess I've always spent money on hobbies. I lost track of how many stamps I used to buy back when they were 6¢ each and I had 150 penpals. Back in my INSIDE JOKE days I'd budget X-amount every six weeks for printing and mailing 200 copies of 32 tiny-type pages that I knew I'd never begin to recoup with the nominal $1.50 subscription I charged. I've thrown cash after apazines, videotapes, comics, all the stuff I like doing. Because that's what you do with disposable income, you spend it on things that give you personal satisfaction, without expectation of reimbursement. In my opinion, hobbies are for fun, not for making money.

Now, that's not to say people don't make money from their hobbies. I'm told there are folks who turn profits on all sorts of writing I've done for free, from comics reviews to, yes, blogging. Hey, if they can find people willing to pay them to do what readers can get elsewhere for nothing, on the basis of their experience or unique voice or whatever, more power to them. If someone wants to pay to publish me, that's cool. And if you happen like my writing here and in your undying gratitude you want to shower me with gifts, that's cool too. Weird, but cool.

But asking folks to pay for my favorite years-long hobby, writing in a one-to-many venue, when at long last I'm able to do so without spending a penny? Heck no... I will continue to tsk-tsk at bloggers who blatantly request their readers to monetarily support their hobbies, no matter how politely. Even people I otherwise respect and admire. Nobody's making us blog, nobody's pressing us into hard labor. We blog for the love of it, for the ego boost, because we want to share, because maybe we'll go bonkers if we don't, any number of reasons. And if we choose to go with a service that isn't free, that's our choice and our responsibility to allot the necessary funds, not the responsibility of our readers.

From Sidebar Maintenance Notes, 11/15/03:

Also took my various wish lists off the sidebar and put them into personal bookmarks, as I've gotten less and less comfortable with the idea of bloggers (particularly left-leaning ones) using this type of forum to ask readers to send them money and gifts. Someone reads this, sees my resume, and wants to offer me a job, that's one thing; someone wants to give me a pressie because I happen to entertain or inform them through my hobby, they can certainly approach me in e-mail with a wishlist query.

From Rambling Maintenance Note, 12/10/03:

I'm also considering putting dollar signs next to everyone on my blogroll who engages in cyber-begging (one dollar sign for passive stuff like Amazon kick-back links and PayPal buttons, two for active fundraising appeals and three for bloggers who beg for money even though they have more than most of us do) but, again, I don't want to piss off friends, so I guess I'll continue to blindly hope they'll come to their senses and someday realize the inappropriateness of their actions. (Note, this condemnation doesn't apply to people who actually need the dough to pay rent and food and such, as do a number of unemployed folks on the roll - just those who persist in asking others to help pay for their blogging, a hobby that requires no money to pursue.)

From Crying Wolf, 9/26/04:

While some bloggers are breathless about the NY Times Magazine acknowledging our existence... and revving readers up about how a few people at the top of the food chain are able to make a living from blogging, thus creating the dual false impressions that money is the main reason to blog and anyone can profit from something that's essentially a hobby and isn't supposed to be about making money or begging your readers for same, others keep their eyes focused outward, doing what blogs do best - pointing out items of interest around our world and in our media...

From An Outsider's View, 1/15/05:

But at the same time, it seems to me that it becomes more difficult to objectively distance yourself from political goings-on when you become a willing part of those proceedings, via taking any money from any politicians (including accepting ads from them) whilst being a political blogger. If it's not right when They do it, it's certainly not right when We do it. Yet another reason to stay away from the idea of Making Money Through Blogging - as long as one can blog for free via Blogger or MSN Spaces or whatever, there's no need (other than personal greed) to accept or request money from anyone for blogging. And thus, no possible conflicts of interest can arise. But hey, what do I know, I'm just one of those unnoticed outsider-type political-and-cultural bloggers who does this as a hobby.

From Pandathon 2005, 6/10/05:

I confess I still come down pretty squarely against the idea of blog-begging or putting ads on one's blog site in order to raise money to pay for said site - and I suspect I will as long as the option exists to blog and post comments and even upload pictures for free (I'm proud to say I've yet to spend a single penny to blog and it's going on three years now!).

From Milestone Note, 1/25/06:

With so many bloggers "going pro" and getting paid for their hobby, I expect to see a lot less blog-begging in the near future, which is good for all of us.

From Haggling Over the Price, 1/27/06:

I'm proud to be a member of the No Ads ring hub. As far as I know, all the buttons on my sidebar are for free stuff (mostly services and informational resources), the only exception being my husband's artwork. I was very pleased when Blogger scrapped its banner ads in favor of top-bar search tools, even though it had been plain that bloggers like me who didn't want to pay money for their hobby weren't actually endorsing any of the banner ads. I've never solicited nor succumbed to any entity wanting to advertise on Pen-Elayne; why should I? We'd pay for internet access whether or not I had a blog, and both Blogger and Haloscan are free, so the only "expense" I've ever put into this is my time. Which, yes, is valuable, but it's just as valuable when I read or go to restaurants or play with my cats, and I don't ask for money to support those hobbies either...

From Making Your Money Count(ess), 5/30/06:

As many Pen-Elayne readers know, I have very little patience for blog-begging. I find it irritating and arrogant when bloggers who are not being forced nor hired to write seem to expect monetary compensation as their gods-given due, particularly if they're well off and have already expressed their intention to use the money to buy frivolities and techie toys. We're blessed to live in an age when, aside from the basic costs of being online which one would need anyway for email and such, you never need spend a single cent to blog, so no money ought to be expected or requested of readers to support your hobby until and unless you're hired to do it professionally, in which case it's no longer a hobby.

From Wonkdom, 9/1706:

I'd never ask anyone else to financially support a personal hobby that I've never laid out any money to pursue, and to which I give my time voluntarily and happily without expectation of reward. It's not just the idea of independence, it's the fact that, if I write a really out-of-line post, my conscience is the only thing I need answer to for it. My idea of blog-begging will continue to be "please let me know of any executive assistant jobs available in the NYC area." Because I believe, to the extent that I will ever pay for anything having to do with blogging, that should come from my income, not yours and not some corporation's ads. And it's all to the good if bloggy connections can lead me to a better day job. Because to me that's what blogs are about - not advertising, not making money, not even "turning pro," but strengthening a sense of community.

From Spam Bloggers and Spamming Bloggers, 9/28/06:

Look down my sidebar a bit and you'll see the little icon indicating that this is a no-ads blog. I don't know what you've been told, but not everyone is interested in making money blogging. As I have written time and again, this is a hobby for me; I don't shell out a single cent to blog, I give of my valuable time willingly because I enjoy it, and I have no intention of ever asking anyone else to pay for my hobby. Kindly look elsewhere for greedier people. I'm sure you can find them, even in liberal circles there are tons of blogging hobbyists begging their readers for money. I'm not one of them.

From my Major Mega Meta Post, 10/21/06:

First of all, I have always believed that blogs are not vehicles whereby one should expect to make money. Not just a profit, but any money. That's not what blogs are designed for. Blogs are what you make of them, but essentially they're software tools which make it easy for anybody to become a one-to-many writer with a potentially humongous readership... If you never spend any money for a domain to host your blog, not only do you not have to hold ridiculous fundraisers or ever ask your readers to pay for your hobby (if nobody's hired you to blog and you're doing it because you feel a calling or intrinsic need or just for the heck of it, it's not a profession, it's a hobby)...

From Story of My Life, 12/14/06:

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.

From Brilliant!, 12/15/06:

I think it's a good idea to treat blogging as a hobby unless you're specifically hired to make money doing it...

From Orgasm for Peace, 12/22/06

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.

That's a pretty comprehensive and (I think) fairly consistent set of quotations from me on this subject. Just bear it in mind.