Elayne Riggs' Journal (for Leah)

Friday, April 10, 2009

To Mom's House We Go Blogaround

I wonder how the roads will be on Good Friday. Ah well, not leaving for awhile, so let's tackle all my saved posts, shall we? But first, a public service announcement via Matt Tobey at Comedy Central's blog:


Thank you. Onward!

• Michael Davis finds he needs to be cruel to be kind to some email scammers.

• Colleen Doran has, to my mind, a very reasonable fanfic policy. Likewise, if you're going to violate copyright by posting a complete comic book on the web, Bully shows you how to do it right.

• I can't help but wonder if Wizard bought the Big Apple Con -- which will be in October (if Allan Rosenberg is still handling tables, we should be there even though the Pier 94 venue is a bit less convenient than the hall across the street from Penn Station) and may conflict next year with Reed Exhibitions' NY Comic Con -- in response to Reed putting on the Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo in 2010 opposite Wizard's Chicago Comic Con. Just saying.

• Mom just called to let us know we'll have no TV at her place, so we'll be bringing the laptop with us, and maybe I can finally catch up on all the April Fool's sites Heidi listed.

• If you're as big a Torvald fan as I am, you'll be delighted that Laura has now posted 92 new pictures of him with all sorts of folks from last weekend's Emerald City Con.

• I may no longer be called "Waid Girl" in comics circles (or, heck, even thought of that much in comics circles), but I still adore Mark's writing, and his essays about writing are pretty good as well. I got a lot of out of his "characters need to surprise you" post, and his musings about how the three qualifications for making good in comics have now changed was not terribly welcome news but it's hard to argue with his logic.

• My dear old friend Vinnie Bartilucci is also a must-read, and I was very moved by this lovely post about fathers, written very close to the second anniversary of my own Dad's passing.

• If you missed it the first time around, Scott has posted a rerun of his screamingly funny Zardoz review from a few years ago.

• Natalie Davis writes about the Blessing of the Sun, but I'm still confused as to how one is supposed to be able to calculate the exact position of the sun "when God created the world." Do they mean 5769 years ago? Because that's doable nowadays, what with computers and all. But that would mean Jews have become as literal about these things as Christians, and that just wasn't what I was raised to believe. (For instance, the way I recall the whole "created the world in 6 days" thing being taught to me was that the English equivalent of "yom" -- "day" in Hebrew -- could mean "eon," and who can accurately calculate six eons?) It's just one of those things that, to me, seems as wacky as magical Jewish string theory.

• Will wonders never cease? Bourdain thanking Rachael Ray, in public? I love this sort of thing, it's a great glimpse into how fakey the TV game can be, how made-up these silly rivalries are.

• Thomas Dolby sings the praises of Mark Knopfler, and deservedly so.

• Sheila Lennon has a link to some video from the Radio City concert we couldn't afford to go to, which featured lots of McCartney and Starr. And John Farr at HuffPo catches up with Macca and daughter at a recent benefit.

• Meanwhile, Bora's lucky enough to see Topol reprise his role as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof.

• I had no idea that Autism Speaks didn't include any autistic folks until I read this post from Cara.

• Cathie thinks the computer liberated women from being secretaries. As a secretary I both agree and disagree; even though the advent of PCs spelled the death knell for my first long-term job back in the late '80s/early '90s, no way can any of my bosses type as fast as me. A hundred words a minute still gets you in many doors come job-interview time. On the other hand, I do admit that typing for my bosses takes up much less a percentage of my job nowadays than organizing their stuff. Fortunately, I'm also very good at organizing.

• Speaking of my job, Erica Barnett at Shakespeare's Sister seems confused about a New Orleans business called The Occasional Wife. I agree that the name is awful, and presupposes that women don't also use personal assistants, but it's a sad fact that a lot of PAs are referred to that way; in my last job my boss' actual wife occasionally referred to me as his "office mommy."

• If you're gonna resign, and you're on good speaking terms with your employer and all, you could do a lot worse than to submit your resignation letter on a cake.

• Amanda Marcotte has a bone to pick about movie soundtracks taking the place of actual story. She also talks about a Nice Guy® who's all kinds of wrong.

• I hope this post from Jesse is for real, rather than a parody of the Ann Althouse engagement announcement, because I really, really want to congratulate Jesse. Love is the coolest thing there is, period.

• What Digby Said, about how self-deluded some MSNBC blowhards are. I swear, I will never even completely trust Rachel Maddow until she stops letting Mrs. Alan "Helped Create This Economic Mess" Greenspan substitute for her and be her on-air BFF. Every time Andrea Mitchell appears on any NBC show, it frustrates the hell out of me that there's not a bold disclaimer stated right at the top concerning her obvious conflict of interest in reporting on national events. Speaking of Howard Fineman (another reporter in MSNBC's pocket), County Fair's Jameson Foser notes how he speaks for the Establishment rather than for actual citizens/viewers.

• Eric Boehlert brings up a very reasonable question about making up radio ratings when nobody knows the actual numbers.

• August believes that pissing off liberals is many right wingers' prime directive, but frankly I don't think they really give that much of a hoot about people who don't agree with them, and believing they do is kind of self-centered. Then again, I'm the kind of person who doesn't believe anyone ever thinks about me when I'm not around.

• Karl Frisch at County Fair has started a regular Red Scare Index, the result of a TVeyes.com power search for terms like "socialist" and "Marxist" on various networks. Here were the numbers when he started, and here's where they're at as of last Wednesday.

• Jeff Fecke tries hard not to laugh at the stupidity of Michael Steele, and seems to fail.

• I agree with KTK at Lean Left -- the main purpose of Twitter is to read Christopher Walken's entries. And Karen Salmansohn at HuffPo covers deliberately comedic Facebook status updates.

• Hilzoy notes that a number of religious fanatics seem to be clueness about the concept of appropriate venue, and has a great take on Going Galt.

• Your must-reads from Melissa McEwen: What's up with modern movies believing that stalking is acceptable or desired romantic behavior? And another brilliant post on language and gender and humor. And of course, more News from Shakes Manor.

Finally, from Tintin at Sadly, No!:



And this mashup via Pam Spaulding:



And with that, it's time to get ready to leave. Of course we'll be taking the laptop with us...

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