Belated Friday Cat Blogging*

Yeah, every now and then I still remember about FCB. Here's one Robin took last night of Datsa actually more or less looking into the camera (we had to trick him into doing so) and Amy being cute.



*(Friday Cat Blogging is ™ Kevin Drum)

First Foliage of Spring

So I've snapped a few photos of the spring blossoms here and there with my smartphone, and didn't want to be bothered emailing them to myself and going through all that bother, and Robin suggested I unplug the USB cord from my recharger and just plug it into the computer. And I didn't even realize my recharger came apart into two sections. So there you go, and here you are:


That's out on the main street leading up to where I get the bus in the morning.


It's been real foggy a couple days this week, and I think I was able to capture that in this photo, taken from the landing of our house.


Blossoms in front of the row of four houses wherein we reside; our house is the farthest to the right.


I love this one, because the magnolia petals in the foreground almost make our U-shaped driveway look like a country lane. This is the same tree that stood out in the fog above.

Silly Site o' the Day

Via Robin, From Me To You takes still photos and animates just one piece of them, to different effects - some lovely, some a bit creepy, all fascinating.

Silly Site o' the Day

Whew, longest day in awhile at work. At least I got a car service home. Relaxing in bed now, but I wouldn't mind relaxing on one of these ugly couches. Am I the only one who thinks they aren't all that hideous? Via BoingBoing.

Silly Site o' the Day

Here's a wonderfully silly graph:



Via Arthur.

Silly Site o' the Day

What to do with all those leftover Cadbury Creme Eggs? The University of Nottingham has some scientific experiments in mind:



Or you can build a Rube Goldberg-like contraption to smash them:



Both via The Mary Sue, here and here. Happy Easter Monday!

Silly Site o' the Day

Unfortunately, the 200-mile trip to and from Mom's with a cold coming on turned out not to be the best idea. I wouldn't have done anything differently, it was great seeing Mom again after six months, but boy am I paying for it today! So let's all have a bit of Muppet madness to make us feel better...



Via Mark Evanier. Nothing like the healing power of Beaker!

Silly Site o' the Day

Spring has sprung for Simon's Cat:



Via Laura. Off to Mom's in a few hours!

Silly Site o' the Day

Wait, is this Charlie Sheen Catch Phrase Generator still relevant? Isn't everyone talking about other nonsense now, like royal weddings and whatnot? On the other hand, Robin and I did use the word "Winning!" in a Sheen-esque manner earlier this evening, so one never knows.

Silly Site o' the Day

Via The Mary Sue:



Still not necessarily going to see the movie, but I love this ad/ad parody.

Silly Site o' the Day

Apparently, the kids out there say there's something significant about the day 4/20, so I herewith present Garfunkel and Oates trying to score a medical marijuana card:



Via BoingBoing. I really ought to be far more into G&O, I've liked Kate Micucci since she was on Scrubs.

Silly Site o' the Day

Will I ever stop posting Silly Sites having to do with Angry Birds? No, I don't think so, not yet at any rate. Via The Mary Sue, here's a Nerdalicious roundup of edible ABs.

Silly Site o' the Day

Via Steven Scharff on Facebook:



Happy Passover, y'all!

Silly Site o' the Day

Soon. (Via BoingBoing.)

Long Overdue MoCCA Fest Photos

Robin and I took in the annual MoCCA Fest last Saturday for about an hour or so, pretty much our limit for one large crowded room with no seating and an inability to get into either of two over-capacity panel rooms. I decided to take photos of "Robin And" this time, so here they are:



Robin (on the right) with sf author Esther Friesner and my ComicMix buddy and longtime friend Glenn Hauman. It was a real pleasure meeting Esther, six of whose books I've owned for a couple decades now (I just put seven more in my Amazon shopping cart), and whose sense of humor on the page was also very evident in person. She was ebullient and full of recommendations, the first of which was Barry's Hereville, so I got to text Barry (who, alas, didn't respond until that evening) passing along her admiration. Barry, you definitely need to invite Esther to the next FOB (Friends of Barry) NYC gathering when you're here in October! Esther hopes to make it to the NYCC, but is anticipating the birth of a grandchild right around then so we'll see how the timing works out. Glenn invited me back to my old columnar digs at ComicMix, albeit for exactly what the Huffington Post pays most of its bloggers, but unfortunately I don't even have enough time and energy nowadays to post more than daily Silly Sites here, so I gave him a polite "we'll see" and, well, we'll see.



Robin and Kevin Tinsley, author of the Stonehaven graphic novels, which I look forward to reading after I finish all the Dresden Files books a friend has loaned me (I've put all comics reading aside for that, but I keep hearing the call of the smartphone apps so it's been slow going). They look as though they may be close enough to Dresden in tone, so I'm psyched.



Robin and Spike Trotman, whom I totally adore because every time I see her I buy another volume of Templar, Arizona even though I get the RSS feed of her page-a-day. Much easier to read in paperback format. The problem is, the list I carry around on my smartphone of "graphic novels I have or have read" so I don't buy duplicates is somewhat incomplete, so I repurchased Volume 3 as well as getting Volume 4. But it's Spike, so I don't care, I love supporting her.



This just struck me as a cool booth so I took a photo of it. Lots of booths had very clever eye-catching things to entice people over, which I loved.

I also said hello to Liora Codor, co-writer of The Joyous Haggadah, and while the book itself (highly recommended by Esther) seemed aimed at a much younger set, I loved the postcards she was selling of the Four Sons interpreted as the Marx Brothers, so I bought that (click to embiggen) plus a couple of buttons with Groucho and Harpo that I'm going to wear during Passover this coming week. Cute stuff!

And I saw Jane Irwin, whose Clockwork Game currently updates online every Thursday. As usual, MoCCA was easily half female, always encouraging in a culture that insists on asking the same question every three months like, you should pardon the expression, clockwork for as long as I can remember (say, the last three decades or so?): "Where are all the women bloggers?" "Where are all the women doing comics?" (the impetus behind the Women Doing Comics page I maintained for years at the Friends of Lulu site) "Who knew women went to movies?" "Who knew women liked fantasy TV?" "Wait, women are gamers too?" etc. etc. Honestly, it's enough to drive one to distraction, were there not so many distractions already. I keep waiting for "Women play Angry Birds and use other smartphone apps?"

But I digress. A fun if somewhat exhausting day, and I look forward to seeing some of the same folks in October at NYCC.

Silly Site o' the Day

You know, back in the day you could pop a quarter in and step inside one of those little booths to have a few photos taken. I think I have an old one of Robin done that way. Things have gotten so much more complicated these days!



Via BoingBoing. Gosh, why didn't they just use the cameras on their smartphones?

Friday Cat Blogging*

I have just enough time and energy left to finally post the cat photo I've had for a couple weeks:



More to come, if I have the energy after coming home from work tomorrow (what, you think I had the whole weekend off?).

*(Friday Cat Blogging is ™ Kevin Drum)

Silly Site o' the Day

Via Budgie, who's back posting on his LiveJournal:



Also, this.

Silly Site o' the Day

From the guys on Firesign Chat, which is going on as I write, comes the Icelandic Phallus Museum. Because you know there had to be at least one of these. Thanks, Principal Poop!

Silly Site o' the Day

Passover is soon upon us, and it could use a bit of modern updating. My brother sent me this via email:



It reminds me of the Christmas 2.0 video that I used as a Silly Site last year.

Silly Site o' the Day

Still no time nor energy to blog about MoCCA or anything else much, but I will show you this website of famous writers photographed with their cats, via Sheila Lennon. Hey, where's Neil? Oh, there he is.

Silly Site o' the Day

Via Susie, it's time to make some cool music!

Silly Site o' the Day

I wish I could say that today was productive, but pretty much all I did was snack and watch sports and DVR'ed programs. So no photo uploads yet from yesterday's trip to MoCCA, I'm afraid. Nor any Friday Cat Blogging. But for you? Always a Silly Site. Like these album titles re-imagined as book covers, via BoingBoing.

Silly Site o' the Day

As we're planning on taking on the MoCCA Fest today, let's get into the spirit of Team Comics (even though MoCCA participants tend to feature other genres besides superheroes) by checking out George Takei's audition for the Spider-Man musical:



Via pretty much everywhere. I think this is a very clever way to get the word out about Takei's actual Broadway-bound show, and I should only do so well when I'm a septuagenarian!

Silly Site o' the Day

I'm really psyched that Robin and I are going to the MoCCA Art Fest tomorrow, mostly because it's our first "comics family" event with our new smartphones and I want to see how various apps work in that environment (i.e., whether I can find people via texting or Foursquare or whatever I haven't thought of yet). Just this past couple of days I've gotten lots more communication accomplished that I just couldn't do before, so it should be fun! Oh, and there will be comics too. But in the meantime, there are graphs! I love clever graphs. GraphJam has tons of them. Via I Can Has Cheezburger.

Silly Site o' the Day

Via Robin, this latest from Funny or Die is cute, although I would warn you that there's a cameo by rapist Mike Tyson. Other than that, I love it:



The cast list includes Billy Crystal, Helen Mirren, Rob Reiner, Adam Scott, Mike Tyson, Mike OMalley, Rob Riggle, Maya Rudolph, Lindsay Crystal, Jennifer Crystal Foley, Howie Miller, Michael Foley, Dustin Bowser, Josh Fadem, Samantha Sprecher, and Andrew Elvis Miller.

Silly Site o' the Day

Via BoingBoing, this "teaser" proves that Sir Richard Branson can afford only the best CGI:



I tend to be extremely skeptical of stuff like this, as the first thing I always think of is, "if undersea stuff is this easy, how come nobody can come up with a permanent solution to stop undersea oil rigs from leaking?"

Silly Site o' the Day

Well, this is an interesting mash-up of Angry Birds, the Three Little Pigs and current events:



Although I don't know if that third pig is going down as illustrated. Via Susie.

Silly Site o' the Day

It's supposed to rain on and off all week. Do you have your Vibrella? Another cool April Fools' site found by The Mary Sue.

Silly Site o' the Day

The thing about April Fools' jokes on the 'net is they can get old or disappear very fast, so my window of opportunity is kinda slim. That said, I really hope this Bryn Mawr intergalactic alliance page stays up for a long, long time. Via The Mary Sue, bless their hearts.

Silly Site o' the Day

Every now and then nostalgia just washes over me. Here is the original and brilliant Mike Jittlov short The Wizard of Speed and Time:



Via Steven Scharff on Facebook, whose post sort of became an INSIDE JOKE mini-klatsch.

Friday Cat Blogging*

On April 1 we always celebrate Amy's birthday. I can't believe it's been 14 years since I got her! Here she is, in all her 14-year-old glory:



Alas, Datsa still treats her with contempt much of the time, preferring to walk away from her as he did earlier this week:



Okay, to be fair, he was trying to lead us all to his food dish then...

*(Friday Cat Blogging is ™ Kevin Drum)

Silly Site o' the Day

White Rabbits, happy April Fools' Day, and it's also the day on which we celebrate Amy's birthday. The now-14-year-old cat will be featured in Friday Cat Blogging a bit later on because, of course, she can't not be photogenically cute. But for now, have a bit of Gmail Motion:



And it's 100 years ago on YouTube:



These online gems and many others are featured in this year's April Fools' Day on the Web.