Silly Site o' the Day

Paw! Zap! LOL! Batman fights internet memes! Via io9.

Silly Site o' the Day

Via Robin, this is a real thing in the world:



Gives "sex with my hat" a whole new meaning...

Silly Site o' the Day

Via Heidi comes this hilarious rant from Eric Powell and the Creators Front for Diversity in Comics:



Which is all well and good, but unlike the situations in Egypt, Tunisia, etc. it seems unlikely that change in comics will occur from the bottom up. Until we have more "mega-corporations" willing to pay creators top dollar to make non-superhero comics, Marvel and DC will continue to dominate the market. (This complaint is nothing new, by the way, and the one big creator-owned success story in all the decades people have been bemoaning the superhero comic dominance was Image, which was primarily superheroes.) By the way, loath as some creators may be to admit it, DC has lots of non-superhero books; I've been tearing through our DC comp boxes during my sick leave so it's pretty fresh in my mind. But I'm biased; Robin has had three job offers in the past month, and of them all the DC work has paid far and away the best page rate. He's currently working on half an issue of DC Universe Legacies, about as close to the video's characterization of "your grandparents' comics" as it gets. Guess what? It's written by Len Wein, and it's fun. Also biased here, I like Len and have known him a number of years. And I'm old enough to be a grandmother. But I also buy and read all kinds of comics from all kinds of genres (whose creators don't make a living from them), and have for years, so I somewhat question the point of preaching primarily to the end user. Even so, the video is amusing.

Friday Cat Blogging*

I'm home from work again, as the cold slowly (too slowly) fades, with Robin starting to feel a few vestigal effects - not as badly as what I went through, thank goodness, because he has more work coming. And he tends to doze in the easy chair whilst waiting for the FedEx truck to brave the snows and deliver pages:



Awww. But why is he in "my" chair?



Ah, I see. The FedEx truck did arrive, but it was a ground delivery - another comp box, so I'd best mosey off and try to get through some more comics now...

*(Friday Cat Blogging is ™ Kevin Drum)

Silly Site o' the Day

Today is my cousin Marc's birthday, so I wanted to get him a Silly Site he'd like. I hope it's The Oatmeal (via Arthur), home to such gems as How to Make Your (Online) Shopping Cart Suck Less and How my handwriting has changed since kindergarten. Enjoy, Marc!

Silly Site o' the Day

Between my lingering cold and the foot of snow dumped outside it doesn't appear I'll be moving for awhile, but as our offices are open I'll have to take another paid-time-off day. Dang, it's only January and my PTO is racking up already! Ah well, can't be helped. At least I'm in time for the Oatmeal's annual State of the Web address.

Silly Site o' the Day

One of the only things I haven't started doing yet on my smartphone is downloading comics, but I figure it's only a matter of time (maybe when I finally catch up on the print comics in my to-read pile!). In the meantime, there are plenty on the internets, like this cute Sexy Batman series of strips by Kate Beaton on her Hark, A Vagrant site (via io9).

Silly Site o' the Day

Ladies and gentlemen, definitely not your next Mayor of Chicago, Rahmen Emanuel (via Xeni at BoingBoing). Oh, and for the record, I still feel lousy (dizziness, cough, etc.) but am venturing into work today.

Silly Site o' the Day

Doing somewhat better today, but the sub-freezing temps outside ensured I wasn't about to venture outward and risk a major relapse, so a PTO (paid time off) day it is! Still essentially sick, which rhymes with Chick, whose tracts are parodied here:



Via io9.

Silly Site o' the Day

Ugh, still sick. Maybe I can write myself a miracle cure prescription:



There, I hope that does it. Prescription maker via Gerard.

Belated Friday Cat Blogging*

It's a Peekaboo weekend, with kitty heads popping up from around places:





As ever, you can check out my Flickr "pool" for larger versions.

*(Friday Cat Blogging is ™ Kevin Drum)

Foggy Mountain Blogaround

Listen, my head might be in a fog from this cold, but I have over 50 open bookmarks since last September!, so it's well past time I step into the Wayback Machine to pass them along:

• Sayeth PZ Myers, regarding burning Korans and "improper" disposition of communion wafers, "The problem isn't the desecrators. The problem is the people who have an unwarranted sense of privilege, that their beliefs will not be questioned or criticized, ever, by anyone." I agree up to a point, that point being incitement to or participation in violent hate crimes. For instance, I'd say the perpetrators of Kristallnacht were pretty much the problem, not their victims.

• Ted Rall points out that the Afghanistan invasion/occupation will continue as long as we keep telling ourselves and believing lies.

• Patrick Nielsen-Hayden is right, moderation isn't where effective change comes from, and there's no virtue in softening horrible truths to the point where they become no big deal.

• While I'm frustrated that we won't have Keith Olbermann's show to kick around look forward to any more, I'm kind of relieved he's being silent over the matter, since basically he's doing okay at $7 mill a year and he probably knows it. Contrast that with, for instance, Ben Stein, about whom Digby notes, "regardless of where you come down in the moral argument, I think there's little debate among decent people that it's just plain tacky for people in the upper one percent to publicly complain" about losing a little percentage of that when so many others in this country are hurting. It's why I thank good fortune every day that I have a roof over my head, a job with health insurance and free yearly flu shots (I imagine this current bout would have been a lot worse had it been a full-blown flu), a husband who loves me, healthy pets, a family from whom I can get financial support if needed, etc. etc. I tend to complain about small, silly stuff, for which I also thank providence.

• Amanda reminds us that "healthy lifestyles take effort" and are also, for many people, an unaffordable luxury. I tend to buy lots of low-cal frozen dinners because I don't have the time to cook (as much as I might want to) during the workweek, and I don't have the wherewithal to cook for the entire week on a weekend; that's when I rest. I can't imagine how people with jobs and kids do it. Also see Amanda's essay on Red Food, Blue Food.

• Why aren't more people repeating what Paul Krugman says, that running any public service "like a business" is wrong? Unless you're talking about a not-for-profit, the point of a business is to make money, not to help people. The point of government should never, ever to be to turn a profit. I will eternally be in favor of the separation of the Church of Mammon and state. Especially when profit-worshippers mislabel multi-billion dollar corporations as "small businesses" to get more government perks.

• I'm still only up to September, but I look back fondly on Susie's "hippie punching" moment (historical background care of Digby, memory jogger here and here), which of course turned out prescient, as the White House chose to attack their base instead of the real problem, and people voted for the enemy of their enemy.

• Lance Mannion had a pretty cogent analysis of the late and not-lamented-by-me George Steinbrenner.

• On Friday's Real Time, I once again heard a Republican kool-aid drinker defend our healthcare by saying "Why do all these Canadians come down here for care?" which of course they don't, only the rich ones who need specialized care. I'm the first to agree that we have really, really good health care for the rich; not so much for everybody else. For Sara Robinson, this and other uniquely modern American attitudes were kind of a culture shock when she moved back to this country.

• What Digby said, that "many conservatives are conservatives because they deeply resent the government (and the greater society) forcing them to stop being bigots."

• All this talk about bowdlerizing Huck Finn reminds me of this old essay by Lance Mannion about the original Oompa-Loompas. And I agree with him, when I was younger I slogged through all the Loftig Dr. Doolittle books every few years, and the older I got the more reprehensible the racism. While you can't necessarily blame people for not being ahead of their time, it does seem like teacher-supplied context is needed for a lot of this stuff, which I think is a good indication of how far we've come.

• Jill's brain is always talking. Mine too, but not to such an extent.

• I don't read the Huffington Post any more, it's filled with writers I don't care that much about, but I had to laugh at this pass-along from the Awl of Huffington's guest-post on the Daily Beast all about how she and her good friend Tina Brown secretly hate each other, as all pairs of powerful women are supposed to.

• On to October and the Chilean miner miracle, which isn't even a minor miracle, as Roger Ebert reminds us. It's called competence, fortitude and skill, which I think is more reason to celebrate than "God's will." Of course, as Flory points out, when our country has naught but crumbling infrastructure compared to other countries completing amazing engineering feats, trusting in God is all that many people have left, short of government actually, you know, governing.

• Has it really been that long since Cat visited and we spotted a pig?

• Martha Thomases comes out in favor of elitism, as opposed to those fighting a war against intelligence.

• Lance Mannion examines the famous characters Martin Freeman has played.

• And we're up to November, and Melissa McEwan taking issue with Jon Stewart's false equivalency which, alas, seems to continue to this day. She revisits this dilemma with a post addressing Stewart's appearance on Rachel Maddow's show. Also from Liss, a list of reasons married feminists might wish to take their husband's surnames (like her, I'll cite #4 as one reason, but for me, a big consideration was that his "Riggs" is short and easy to spell, as opposed to "Wechsler-Chaput" which nobody could pronounce or spell anyway); and a eulogy for Mary "Maud" Quinn.

• Roger Ebert hit a very tender nerve with his essay on loneliness.

• Someday I hope to meet Jill's clever kitties, who provide a LOLCat "Guide 2 Kat Fud - 4 Fuchur Retireez."

• Great post from Cara regarding women and self-perception about weight. The money quote: "in a society where fat is almost universally vilified, a woman proclaiming that she does not view herself as overweight may indeed be doing nothing more than making a statement of self-confidence...Further, the fact is that some of these women who don’t 'realize' they’re fat might not be fat at all. Fat is socially a pretty subjective concept to begin with..." Nice stuff.

• Here's Lisa Fortuner to filmmakers on why many movies suck: "because you've decided your lead isn't a human being."

• December at last, which brings us Jim McDonald's definitive post on how to get published. And Lance examines Truth and Beauty in the Movies, parts one and two, with part three yet to come unless I missed it. Although I found much beauty in him talking about the difference between his tearing up and John Boehner's.

• Carla at Snap Judgments suggests people improve their parenting skills and stop blaming products for being too difficult.

• I think this might be the definitive article on why foie gras isn't unethical nor cruel. I've still never eaten the stuff, as it's expensive.

• Another day, another terrific examination by Kate Smurthwaite of the Daily Mail's journalistic failures.

• And we've arrived at January, which is where I'm at in my reading. Still not caught up, but I can't let that stop me from passing along what I've bookmarked so far, like Mark Evanier's observation that sometimes all it takes for freelancers to become employed it that one phone call. Here at the Riggs Residence we have a great sense of identification with that circumstance!

• Maria Bustillos at The Awl reviews a brief history of the gender-neutral pronoun. I tend to come down on the side of "agreement in subject rather than number," and use the third person plural ("they" and "their" and "them").

• Thank you, BoingBoing, I never heard of Arcimboldo before, now I have a book of his collected works in my Amazon wish list.

• Fake Steve Jobs, before he closed down his blog, reminded us what news (both online and in "old media") is all about - profits before journalism.

• "This is not for you, GO AWAY." And then they wonder why more women don't buy "mainstream" superhero comics.

• The Women in Comics wiki sounds tailor-made for Trina Robbins and other such herstorians! Reminds me of an expanded version of the Women Doing Comics page I used to maintain on the Friends of Lulu site.

• Lastly, Melissa dreaming of sunlit sidewalks is heartbreaking and beautiful.

Okay, there's the coughing and sneezing again, back to the real world of cold care.

Silly Site o' the Day

The cold seems to have migrated both upwards and downwards. The porcelain throne is still my best friend and, while it doesn't hurt as much to swallow as it did yesterday, my head is all stuffed up. So I'm sucking down the liquids, both hot (tea, Theraflu) and cold (water) and trying to keep it together by not leaving the apartment. Robin, on the other hand, is being interviewed as we speak for Alex Simmons' series on comic creators - of course, I'll post the link both here and on Facebook when it's up. I think Rob makes a good interview subject, but he had me at the accent. That's my theory, anyway; perhaps you have a film school thesis of your own (via Wonder Tonic).

Silly Site o' the Day

Well, I have no plans for this weekend except to recover from this awful cold-sore throat-whatever, so maybe I'll actually catch up on blog reading. Yeah, right. I did read through enough of Budgie's blog to pass along this cool video that he pointed to:



A bit shaky but pretty nice!

Silly Site o' the Day

Well, this is a nasty turn of events. It appears I'm getting my first full-blown cold of the season. Symptoms this time are a very sore throat and lots of stomach trouble. No fever, though. Surprised it took this long. Anyway, I need something to make me feel better. Take me away, Kanye + Comics (via Heidi)!

Silly Site o' the Day

My first Silly Site recommendation via Facebook! Unfortunately it evokes Hitler, but I suppose it can't be helped, as the site is called the Daily Hitler. Thanks Brian W, see you on Firesign chat tomorrow!

Silly Site o' the Day

You know, not for nothing, but sitting next to people you don't like is something you learn how to do civilly in elementary school, so I'm not sure why it's that big a deal if Congress decides to mingle during the State of the Union speech. It's not like they don't mingle in the restaurants and bars in the first place. Remember, it's not a left-right divide, but a rich-poor one. They're all rich, the media pundits who cover them are all rich, even the cable comedy show hosts are rich. You can tell the not-rich ones because we're less likely to have TV shows. Not that I'm stereotyping. You want to see stereotyping, here's a whole map of prejudice, via Arthur. Also,, via Leigh Dragoon, the US according to someone's racist aunt. And lastly, via BoingBoing, the world according to San Francisco. Now that's some cherce stereotyping!

Silly Site o' the Day

My boss is back, but thanks to my self-improvement work (and a very encouraging evaluation from my supervisor) I seem better able to take the stress that dealing with him can sometimes trigger. I'm making enough headway on my blog reading that a blogaround before month's end isn't entirely out of the question. I'm even attempting to plow through all my unread comics; I'm up to X-Factor now, then the Marvels are out of the way, with only a handful of "indies" (non-Big Two) before I get back to my DC pile. Oh, speaking of Marvel, one of the reasons I didn't take the bait when Billy tried to get me interested in comics back in college was that I didn't care for the time and commitment required to follow soap operas (never watched the stuff myself), and I knew comics required that level of keeping-track-of-things plus you had to pay for it too. This chart via io9 only confirms those suspicions. The sad thing is, I fear I actually recognize most of the faceless icons (most of whom have back stories I never bothered to learn)...

Silly Site o' the Day

So busy today, errands and Robin and such, that I almost forgot to blog. As we just finished watching the Golden Globes (there really ought to be a drinking game where you chug every time a presenter essentially points out that Ricky Gervais is acting like a prick), I thought I'd pass along a link via the Comedy Central blog to share the sad news that you can no longer Bieberfy anything. And he seemed like such a nice kid on the Globes. Ah well, guess his lawyers aren't as nice.

Silly Site o' the Day

So this Angry Birds thing. It requires more processing speed than our smartphones have, so we downloaded two $5 versions from the Apple Store, and have both been playing it. And I get the appeal. So I thought you would like this bit from the Israeli comedy show Eretz Nehederet (A Wonderful Country):



This stuff is way too addictive, I fear.

Silly Site o' the Day

I keep reminding myself to point to these posts from Facebook, and I keep forgetting. Today I'll remember, because it's a flowchart all about posting to the internet, and that's just too meta not to post. Via BoingBoing, meta-cubed.

Silly Site o' the Day

I'm really tired of winter already. Let's look at pretty stuff instead, like these three pages from Thomas Allen of old-timey pulp paperback book covers gone 3D, via io9. There, now I feel better.

Silly Site o' the Day

Happy I am that I work for a company which believes its employees are better safe than sorry. Working from home on this snow day, getting ready to shovel the stuff off the car this afternoon when it "warms up" to around the freezing mark, and secure in the knowledge that Manhattan has already dug itself out and the Bronx will probably do the same by day's end so tomorrow's commute shouldn't be too much of a headache. Speaking of the Big Apple, via CBR's Robot 6 comes a new blog that takes New Yorker cartoons literally, entitled The Monkeys You Ordered. As everyone knows, recaptioning New Yorker comic panels almost always improves them.

Silly Site o' the Day

Looks to be another snow day tomorrow. For no reason whatsoever, here are some illustrations of animals wearing top hats (via Arthur).

Silly Site o' the Day

On this rather cold morning it was nice to come across this link from Mark Evanier as my first reading of the day:



Robin was delighted. And I knew Corbett but not Enfield. Thanks Mark!

Silly Site o' the Day

My Dad would have been 80 years old today. To the extent that anyone thinks of me as "quirky" or "a real character," that's probably due to him. I shouldn't wonder that some of it had to do with him not being born in this country, and having to learn English himself, in the days before bilingual classes and such, from watching TV and conversation and the like. I wonder what he'd make of "Where Are Your Keys?"



Via BoingBoing. I dare say, using this method, Dad may have had a more than even chance of actually teaching me Romanian. He may have driven me crazy upon numerous occasions, but I really miss him.

Belated Friday Cat Blogging*

Speaking of starting the new year off right (in my case, this new addition is already helping me tremendously), I've just updated the cat pictures on my iPhoto to read "Kitty Photos 1999-2011." Here are the first two of the new year, featuring Datsa and Amy all snuggled and settled after a morning's hard work being kitties:





Amy burrowing between the pillows made us both laugh out loud. As ever, you can see them bigger at my Flickr site, where I now upload pretty much all my photos since discovering Blogger's upper storage limit.

*(Friday Cat Blogging is ™ Kevin Drum)

Silly Site o' the Day

This morning I took down the card wreath, and I anticipate Robin will be putting away the fiber-optic tree shortly. So it's goodbye to the holiday season!



A last holiday hurrah from BoingBoing (which is getting weirder than usual of late, what with their Radical Natural Living series interspersed with their many, many posts drooling over CES porn).

Silly Site o' the Day

Well, that week seemed a bit longer than usual! And on this chilly morn a woman came up to me at the bus stop asking if I wanted to talk to her about something from the Bible. I responded, "No thanks, I have enough fairy tales in my life." Which is true, being with Rob is kinda like a happily-ever-after, so there you are. In any case, PZ Myers and others pointed to a flow chart illustrating the pointlessness of debating people with a fixed worldview, and when I saw it I thought a lot more of Congressional Republicans than of people like that nice harmless Jesus lady this mornig, who actually laughed pleasantly at my response.

Silly Site o' the Day

I did not know salads were such happy food. Via BoingBoing, here are many Women Laughing Alone with Salad. And via the Comedy Central blog, let's have some Men Laughing Alone with Fruit Salad.

Silly Site o' the Day

You know, it's probably a good idea not to try to convince someone to eat mini-muffins if you are, in fact, a mini-muffin yourself. I'm just sayin'.



Via Robyn at Serious Eats.

Silly Site o' the Day

Nice to have the both of us working at the moment, even though I wish Rob's assignments were steadier and my job didn't include 11-hour days like today. Still, as long as we're both enjoying what we're doing, no complaints! I'm sure Andrew Horner isn't complaining after his reverse job application worked as well. Via Sheila Lennon.

Silly Site o' the Day

The temperature's dipped again, which probably means two pairs of socks again for today's commute. Naturally, for the countless idiots who can't tell the difference between weather and climate, aided by the mistake climate change scientists and scholars made in the first place when they assumed intelligence on the part of a stubborn populace (many of whom still don't get that "the theory of evolution" doesn't mean theory-as-in-unproven-and-therefore-not-factual), everyone who goes around with "global warming" on his or her mocking lips ought to be boiled in the planet's ever-rising average temperature and buried with a gasoline emissions pipe through his or her heart. Not that I have an opinion on the matter. Via Matt Bors, someone has gathered stupid editorial cartoons catering to these stupid people into a blog called If Global Warming Is Real Then Why Is It Cold?. More info on climate change here, where the difference between climate and weather is literally made so easy a child can grasp it.

Silly Site o' the Day

And my short vacation ends, with me having gotten maybe 75% of what I wanted done this past few days, which for me is pretty good. I'm optimistic for the year ahead. I'm even hopeful about the guy in the country's top office...



...but we'll see. (Via Susie.)

Silly Site o' the Day

White Rabbits, and happy new year! Can we now dispense with the "two thousand and [number]" system and just start saying "twenty [number]" instead? We all ought to have been doing it in Twenty-Ten anyway. If you're looking for something marathon-ish to do today, you probably can't go wrong with Bully's guest posting at DBBurrough's "Unseen Films" blog, hosting the MST3K-homaged Unseen Turkey Day. Bully's a fit blog-based successor to the mantle of Joel and Mike, in my opinion; who else would be devoting an entire year week to "the Guy Freaking Out On the Cover of Action Comics #1"?