The "Silly Site o' the Day" Challenge

Until such time as Leah decides to get her own blog, I hope she won't mind me swiping her Link o' Silliness idea. I've decided I like the thought of it so much - just Something Cool and Weird to Tell Folks About that doesn't have to be world-shaking or anything serious - that I'm going to try to institute it as a daily feature herein as of 2004. And I figure, hey, I have around 200 readers give or take, if every one of those readers had just two Silly Sites they wanted other folks to know about, that'd set me for the year and give them all sorts of good plugs too! So send your Silly Site Suggestions to me via e-mail please (so they're not "spoilered" in the comments section) and I'll try to ready the segment for running by January 1! I think this might be a fun little group project.

Today's Silly Site o' the Day comes from Trish Wilson's blog - it's Zagat's Unfit to Print, "outtakes" from the restaurant reviews submitted by their surveyors.

The Certainty of Conviction

You know the quote from Hamlet "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy"? Has that fallen out of favor in the Internet age? Via Anne Zook comes a very interesting essay by Hal Hildebrand entitled Why Smart People Believe Weird Stupid Things. It's all about something called Confirmation Bias, "a type of selective thinking whereby one tends to notice and to look for what confirms one's beliefs, and to ignore, not look for, or undervalue the relevance of what contradicts one's beliefs." I think anyone heavily involved in Internet socializing (no, that's not an oxymoron) has come across this phenomenon, and many of us practice it quite religiously ourselves. I also think it has its good side and its bad side. On the one hand, confirmation bias tends to put more roadblocks in the way of substantive debate and exchange of ideas than agreeing to disagree. (At least with the latter, a form of discourse I use quite often, ideas have been exchanged before the debaters realize they're at an impasse, and they recognize that civility and friendship are more important to them than their differences.) On the other hand, when you fail to see your personal philosophies achieve the level where anyone in the major mass media is even discussing them, seeking out and finding other like-minded souls is a godsend, and it's perfectly understandable to want to spend your limited online hours socializing with those souls. There are hundreds of thousands of blogs out there, most political ones still probably lean to the right, and my time is precious to me. Most days I can't even get through my must-read blogroll, let alone have any desire to confront bloggers who echo the same opinions I can get from the vast majority of American TV stations and newspapers. So I see confirmation bias as neither good nor evil, but just a tool like any other. I don't totally ignore the pervasive media, I don't think most Americans are able to, but I'd still rather get my headlines from Euronews or the Beeb. And I don't devalue opinions that don't agree with mine (heck, you can't be a 46-year-old Jewish woman who reads comics and believe that your tastes are the only ones that should count!) but neither do I seek to go out of my way to confront their unpleasantness. Overall, I like to think of myself as open-minded but also mindful of my blood pressure. :) How about you? P.S. Also via Anne, "That devilish, dastardly Doctor of Spin!"

Out of the Inkwell

I wanted to welcome inker Drew Geraci to the blogosphere. So if his website is considered news, maybe it's time to make up a press release for Soulmate Productions. ;)

RIP Thomas Brick

For most of us around my neighborhood, it was just a pain-in-the-ass inconvenience to our subway commute home yesterday. For one brave young firefighter, it was his life. Kinda puts things in perspective.

Today's Milestones

It's Marla's 33rd birthday, and to celebrate she reminds us that it's also the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' first flight. Click on the Google image below to search on Wright Brothers stuff.

Happy birthday, Marla - hope you're flying high as well!

I Didn't Know the "G" in "GWB" Stood for "Gollum"!

Via Kriselda Jarnsaxa, today's Silly Site o' the Day is the very timely Flash movielet Lord of the Right Wing. Is it just me, or do a couple of those voices sound very Firesignian? I'll have to find out at tomorrow night's chat.

Wasn't This in a William Gibson Novel?

Or maybe Phil Dick? Via Jenny at little red cookbook, it's Neuromarketing! "It seeks to find a buy button inside the skull." Ewww... It's been going on in England and Canada too; wonder if Kalle Lasn knows about it?

Curiouser and Curiouser

Not that I'm given to conspiracy theories, but these are really good questions. (Via Cyndy Roy.) Reminds me a bit of the questions Michael Moore asked of Bush vis a vis Osama bin Laden.

Get Well Wishes

All best wishes going out to comics and sf legend Julius Schwartz, who is currently hospitalized due to pneumonia.

Blogger Block Exchange

Maru Soze notes in one of the comment sections below that she has writer's block, but geez, you wouldn't know it to look at her blog. Still, ever since I've been blogging I've always thought it'd be a cool idea if those bloggers who seem to be "in the zone" could send some mojo to those who could use it to get over a bit of a hump. Therefore, I would like to act as Mojo Facilitator today and offer some of Anne Zook's excess blog-energy to Maru. Check out this excerpt, for instance:

Let me just suggest that any sufficiently strongly held opinion can be indistinguishable from "religious fervor" to those who don't share the same belief system and that those casting that particular stone might want to take a good look at their own glass houses from time to time.

I mean, honestly, the woman has had four long posts up since I checked out her blog yesterday, and they're all "cherce" stuff! You're making us all look bad, Anne. ;)

Also of note, Mary Beth Williams and Dwight Meredith are now sharing mojo and energy, as Dwight is now officially MB's co-blogger at Wampum. Blogroll adjusted accordingly!

To Life, To Life, L'Chaim!

A few years ago I toyed with an idea that still rattles around the back of my brain, writing a series of comic book stories from the point of view of women mentioned in the Bible (like the story of Purim [i.e., the Book of Esther] from the POV of Vashti's ghost, or a shorter version of Anita Diamant's The Red Tent about Dina). I was active at the time on the Usenet rec.arts.comics newsgroups, and an artist I "met" there by the name of Mike Netzer (formerly Nasser) said he'd be interested in illustrating such stories.

Well, life getting in the way as it does, I never got around to writing those stories (maybe my next job and living space will afford me the peace of mind and lack of stress to take them up again) and Mike and I lost touch. A few days ago, Charlie Boatner mentioned on the Friends of Lulu mailing list that the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan will be having a couple events next month entitled The People of the Comic Book: Superheroes and Jewish Culture, and their Ma'yan division wanted to contribute by presenting a women and comics panel. If it comes to pass I hope to be a part of it, but what really caught my eye was that the events are co-sponsored by a website called Jewish SuperHero.com, which apparently exists to promote a series of comic "books" on CD, and there was something about the art that caught my eye... they were drawn by Mike! Then I went onto the Jews in Comics Yahoo group and, sure enough, not only is there another plug for the JCC events but it seems that Mike has resurfaced to start a Yahoo group of his own. It's called The New Comic Book of Life, and the description reads as follows:

The notion that humanity is nearing an end to its long held social, political and economic hierarchies, is no longer a fear-instilled speculation in this troubled and stormy age. It is now becoming increasingly clear to so many that the cries of war have deafened our calls for peace - and that the suffering has taken its toll on the souls of this once noble civilization.

How do we begin the long journey back to the remembrance that we've all come from One Source? How do we begin our journey back to Peace through Unity?

Within the myriad of communications and education systems, divided and scattered upon the face of world cultures, one small beleaguered industry remains faithful to the message of hope and Salvation. An industry and an art form that have fermented the greatest creative minds and the strongest and brightest hope for saving a dying world.

Comic book writers, artists, editors and publishers will soon emerge as the Real Superheroes on the world's socio-political stage.

To this end, we the comic book creators - and you, the precious citizens of the world - must join hands together on this forum, in order to teach and thus remember what it takes to nourish the rose of hope from beneath the mudslides of futility which humanity has so bitterly sunken into.

This is Michael Netzer's THE NEW COMIC BOOK OF LIFE, striding toward a glorious reunion of our civilization's peoples and faiths under The One Creator of the Heavens and the Earth. Commencing with the unification of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam along with all other spiritual and moral belief systems, culminating in the sojourn of mankind into the outer reaches of space - the planting of the seed of humanity into the New Garden, awaiting us on the not so distant TITAN, the curiously Earthlike satellite of the ringed planet Saturn.

Let's get the show on the road with a good creative spirit, one and all.

So, you know, I couldn't help but join up. Particularly when I saw the picture Mike put up of himself, very Alan Moore-ish! A lot of the New Agey-sounding stuff reads similar to Neal Adams' Science project (scroll to the bottom of the page), and I think that's deliberate as one of Mike's first posts to the list is an open apology to Adams regarding their past differences. Mike responded to my first post (where I asked permission to mention the group herein) by saying, "Yes, write about it everywhere you want. The first 5 posts on this forum give some background to the thrust of the discussions. Everything is open for the grabbing. You might want to have a look in the files section. A few comic book stories, a couple of manuscripts. Unpublished stuff." So while I'm not packing my bags for Titan just yet, I might force myself to finally pen that Vashti script now...

It Was Easy... Too Easy

Interesting comment section in response to Billmon's musings on the capture of Saddam Hussein. Says one commenter,

am I the only one who smells a rat?
Here was an operation involving 600 soldiers going after a tip on saddam hussein, and NOT A SHOT WAS FIRED???
That tells me they knew that not a shot would be fired at them.
Saddam was found disoriented in a hole in the ground with a gun and a couple of local goons, not his own men.
I think this was a hand-off. Someone has had him on ice for a couple weeks, he got too hot, so they sold him to the US for concessions to be paid at a later date. Some war-lord turned him over to the US.

And another opines, "I saw this story today and my bullshit detectors went off! I mean they stage manage everything else from the SCOTUS acclamation of Bush to the yellow cake to the flight deck to the turkey...why not this!?" Why not, indeed. Remember, one can be glad of the tyrant's capture whilst at the same time maintaining a healthy skepticism and wondering what's actually going on that we don't know about (like, for instance, the LaHood connection?)...

Update: Just about through my blogroll, and out of all the Hussein-captured musings I've read so far I think I like Jeff/Emma's the most.

It Was the Best of Tims, It Was the Worst of Tims

Yep, been catching the various versions of A Christmas Carol again as they come on my local cable system, so it's time to break out my wholly trinity of Christmas-media-culture-related essays from last year:

You Shall Be Upheld in More Than This

“So That’s Where He Got the Crown of Thorns!”

I Hear People Singing, It Must Be Christmastime

I hope you enjoy them. And remember, the bad part of public domain is that anyone can learn to love muck it up, but the good part is that anyone can access the original.

Wizbang/Koufax Update

While the Koufax awards nomination process is underway, it's the last day to vote at the Wizbang awards - polls close at 5 PM Eastern time. I'm actually mentioned in the latter, and would like to thank the 22 other people who voted for me (my total shows 23 at the moment, which pleases Eris). I also want to thank Trish for nominating me for a Koufax. When you're as little-known in the blogosphere as I am, it really is "an honor just to be nominated."

"The Tyrant is a Prisoner"

Well, one of them, at any rate.

Guess this book won't be selling as well now.

Window Shopping

Interesting local filler program tonight on NYC holiday window displays, presented by the former early-AM anchor I don't miss at all. I could have done without her but the program itself was pretty well put together; it featured a trip through Spaeth Design (which I had no idea did the actual crafting work for almost all the major department store window displays) as well as plugs for this book and this one, interviews with just about every major designer (99% gay men, it seems, but the one who won the DDI judges' Platinum Award is female, Bergdorf Goodman designer Linda Fargo) and a segment following the FIT contest to design the window in Bed Bath & Beyond's Chelsea store. Based on the special I'd like to see the windows at Saks and Bergdorf Goodman, but I'm not overwhelmed by most of the others, even though I have a greater appreciation for the crafting behind them.

Oh, and speaking of the holiday season: that honeymoon scene in It's A Wonderful Life where Mary confesses that "this is what I wished for?" Robin wants to remind everyone that she whispers that into George's deaf ear. Just so's ya know.

LC Saturday

Time for my weekly overview of what's going on at the blogs of my fellow Liberal Coalition members, even though Mustang Bobby already beat me to it with his Pen-Elayne-free Saturday Surfing...

Over at Corrente, the Farmer echoes Digby in putting left-wing bloggers' voices in perspective. I'm kind of used to being a small-to-medium fish in a miniscule pond, a subset of a subset to infinite regression, but it's nice to see others being self-aware about this.

LC leader N. Todd Pritsky reports on new rules enabling the FBI to continue its increased wiretaps, searches and other privacy invasions subject to oversight by a secret intelligence court rather than publicly-accountable criminal courts. All in the name of fighting "terrorism," which is of course whatever the people in power say it is. Lovely.

My neighbor to the west and frequent commenter, Scott from Gamer's Nook, is undoubtedly inspired by the latest Jack Chick parody making the blog rounds, and links to A Very Cthulhu Christmas. That's A Very Cthulhu NODWISH to you, Scott!

Everyone wish T. Rex and the proprietor of Invisible Library well on their finals! Dang, I can't believe my college years took place half a life ago... And get well soon to Chris Brown, felled (as have been so many of us) by the Dreaded Lurgy...

Mustang Bobby's found that some Austrians are more equal than other Austrians...

Lilith Devlin is in the process of moving to Albuquerque, but I'm sure when she returns to blogging she'll have a report on our meeting this past Wednesday. :)

Jeff at Speedkill has way more patience with homophobic letter writers than I ever would.

Scout at And Then... has another '60s flashback. Tanned, rested and ready!

Left is Right takes a look at Imad Khadduri's attic - actually, the Guardian's examination of Khadduri's new book, Iraq's Nuclear Mirage.

Clonecone at It's Craptastic! recommends a post from fellow LC member Peter at Kick the Leftist entitled Big Corporate vs. 13 y/o girl (and the RIAA hits keep on coming!) for the upcoming week's New Blog Showcase.

Guy Andrew Hall at Rook's Rant bids a fond farewell to Cowboy Kahlil, as Kevin Hayden makes 51 Reasons Why Americans Should Elect Howard Dean his last post before starting up a new weblog sometime in early '04...

Jesse at The Gotham City 13 gives us some Weekend Funnies, including the burning question "What Do the Stars Think About Al Gore?"

Charles2 at The Fulcrum asks the Wall Street Journal, "Why go Boom?"

Tao of Dowingba would like the US to fucking lay off Canada, eh.

Alex at Sooner Thought passes along an article about Connecticut legislators calling for Governor John Rowland's resignation after his admission that, yeah, a state contractor and others helped pay for work on his summer home after all (contrary to his earlier denials).

Mercury23's permalinks are still bloggered or I'd take you right to his post on Bushco vs. Nature, but at the moment it's right at the top of his blog so it's not hard to find. (Hey Mercury23, republishing the entire site usually works for me in fixing bloggered links...)

Upyernoz at Rubber Hose wonders whether he needs to make excuses for when he doesn't blog. Sure you do, everyone knows when you do meta-posts (i.e., blogging about blogging) you always get more response in the comments section!

Run away! Edwardpig has found a way cool optical illusion-type design that will totally make your eyes cross!

Amy (who doesn't seem to have permalinks) points to this news article entitled Pic Of Naked Canadian Mayor Stolen From Computer that didn't actually come from Mark Morford!

Stradiotto's photo scares me.

Lastly, just wanted to note that two of my favorite blogroll folks, Steve Bates and Maru Soze, are now contributors to the Liberal Coalition blog. Yay!

Visually Assaulted

One can't help but notice quite the little eyesore at the southwest corner of 23rd Street and 7th Avenue. Almost put me off my sushi last night. Apparently people elsewhere in the city are fighting back against this further encroachment upon their residential lives by corporations selling out to other corporations against citizens' will, but it'll probably be an uphill battle. My hope is that some enterprising hackers will take the opportunity to do a bit of electronic culture jamming...

McMysticism

Via Tristero, apparently a lot of goyim are still on that Kabbalah kick. I considered studying Kabbalah when I was a teenager, but I've never been all that good with numbers.

Husband the First

A very happy birthday to Steve Chaput, my ex-husband, fellow blogger, and good friend for over 20 years.

The Strange Audit on the Corner

My guest-blogger and tech-support person and friend Laura Gjovaag, who's done a magnificent job on Bloggity-Blog-Blog-Blog covering the Marysville teachers strike, has brought another very important situation to the blogosphere's attention. Her local comic shop owner, Paige Gifford of Corner Comics, is in the midst of an IRS "compliance audit" - Laura picks up the story here:

The brand-spankin new agent they had put on her case didn't believe she could make a living selling comics. Once she was able to prove that she was in compliance, and not selling something on the side, and that yes, she did make a living selling comic books, the agent went after her inventory. He said that he knew how much baseball cards are worth, and so old comics must be worth a lot of money. He estimated how much her backstock was worth (based on his own bizarre calculation). He then told her that she hadn't paid taxes on her inventory, and that she owed $14,000 in taxes. She's a small business owner. $14,000 is a lot of money.

So she got some help. At times the thing seemed almost resolved. But the IRS is determined to run her out of business. Within the last week she was told that she cannot have any backstock of comics. She has to destroy her backstock - shred or burn every comic book - by December 31st in order to get out of the debt. And she needs a receipt to prove that she destroyed the comics. Otherwise, she owes the IRS $14,000, and will owe the IRS an inventory tax every year from here on out. Even though her lawyer and accountant are convinced that she's completely in compliance with every pertainable law.

I don't know about you, but if this audit is applied equally and across the board on all small-business owners, I don't think there will be any bookstores or comic book stores left that are locally owned. You cannot have a decent comic shop without backstock, and according to the IRS, backstock is NOT ALLOWED.

Read the follow ups here and here in Paige's own words and here and here. Maybe economist types like Max are more up on this type of stuff than me, but this doesn't sound like any audit I've ever known about, it just sounds like plain and simple harassment, and it ought not be legal.

(Belated) Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

The cats have been keeping me company lately as I type. Datsa seems to like the monitor; Amy enjoys hiding herself in the recessed shelf.

"I Don't Know, I've Never Kippled"

Via Susie Madrak, it's Gunga Dean by Stephen at To the Barricades.

Long Attention Span Theatre

Via Maru Soze, there are apparently 12 different "endings" to the third Lord of the Rings movie, and Peter Jackson's shown them all. The sucker clocks in at 3 hours 20, and that's just the theatrical release! Put the inevitable extended-sequence DVD together with the last two extended ones and that's at least a sleepover in the winter of '04...

How You Know Your Ad Is Effective

Eric Blumrich found out the hard way, after the Kucinich campaign started using his Mission Accomplished animation on their site (via Laura Poyneer, they're hoping to air it on Iowa TV as well). Apparently he's being majorly harrassed by a bunch of wingnuts. The full story is laid out at BushFlash. Update: Tristero has more.

Perfect Crimes

Following up on her strong posts I mentioned last Saturday, Jeanne D'Orleans wrote a fascinating essay yesterday on The Doctrine of American Infallibility, comparing the various "we are perfect, and therefore the blame lies everywhere other than with us" excuses for US forces having killed all those Afghani children this past week with the sorts of excuses the Catholic Church has used over the years to explain away institutionalized anti-Semitism, sexism and the like. Really nice work, Jeanne.

A Long Time Ago, In A Galaxy Made of Typewriter Symbols...

I really need to revive Leah's "Silly Site of the Day" suggestion. I always get a good one from the Thursday night Firesign Chats. This week's: Star Wars done entirely in ASCII Animation. Last scene added (Han and Luke enter the detention block) was on April 20th so I'm not sure we can expect more any time soon, but I think it's amazing someone got this far to begin with...

Calling Julia Out

Okay, here's the choice. This or this (thanks to Linkmeister for the link). I'm leaning towards the latter. Give me a call (I'm in the book) when Her Majesty is all better (get well soon, HM!) and we'll meet and like that. Hey, let's invite Scott too, and any other NYC-area bloggers we know, why not. Preference is the weekend of December 20-21 'cause I want to sleep this coming weekend...

Pavement Pounding Update

My interview here went pretty well. Half an hour, which seems to me the optimal amount of time for a preliminary interview. And the sky has cleared up, and I have less than two hours to go at the office, and I'm feeling much more relaxed now so maybe I'll sleep well tonight.

Never Mind the Wizbangs, Here Come the Koufaxes

It's that time of year. The opening of nominations for the annual Koufax Awards has just been announced over at Wampum. Says Dwight Meredith: "This is the second year of the awards. In the fast moving world of blogs, that qualifies them as a tradition. The purpose of the awards is to recognize and applaud the best of the left. It is supposed to be fun for us and for you. Please take the awards in the spirit in which they are offered. Mary Beth [Williams] and I will be accepting nominations during the month of December. Nominations may be submitted either by comment to this post or by email to either of us. The email addresses are at the right. Each week for the next few, we will attempt to post links to nominated posts and blogs so that we may have an informed electorate." My lousy short-term memory makes me kinda sucky at awards voting, and as I'm not even on MB's blogroll I have no illusions about being nominated (I see where the nomination process for Wizbang!'s 2003 weblog awards, which doesn't even have me anywhere near their radar, seems to be closed in so many categories already), but there are so many great left-leaning blogs out there that deserve recognition, so if you're so inclined this is your chance to show your appreciation for them.

A Very Betsy Birthday

Happy 57th birthday to Betsy Devine, who uses the occasion to tell us the story of her three extraordinary "aunts" and leave us a lovely moral to contemplate. And Seth informs us that it's also John Kerry's birthday. (And darn it, I missed Margaret Cho's birthday last week... someday I'll reorganize the blogroll so that all the blogs I feel like I really need to get to are in the same place...)

When Bloggers Collide

I'm so jazzed! I just got off the phone with Lilith Devlin, who's in NYC today doing some interview thangs (there's a lot of that going around!). So I'm off to the Grand Central area once more for drinks with her in about an hour and a half, if all goes well (i.e., if we actually recognize each other at the bar, never having met - is the Internet amazing or what?!). Yes, we'll be talking about you. All of you, mwahaha. Yes, I brought my digital camera (no, I didn't happen to mention that to her, mwahaha). Evil, we're all so eeeevil.... Update: Well, it was terrific! We got to talking like old friends for over an hour, I took probably the world's worst photo of her (note to self, next time turn on the close-up feature!) so I'm not even going to post the blurry thing, we mentioned you and you and yes even you, and she was finally able to retrieve her coat (long story, I'll let her tell it if she wants to)! I highly recommend more blogger-type meet-ups like this, it was peachy!

Babelfishing

Perhaps I'm just punchier I thought, but in case I'm not the only one I thought I'd pass along that the "Ozzie" option on Nick Donaldson's Universal Translater does not in fact "translate" your website into Ozzy Osbourne-speak, but just adds mock Australian. I tend to prefer the one that adds Cockney Rhyming Slang anyway, as that part of my vocab could always use a bit of a Bertie booster.

Voting Early and Often

In case NZ Bear reads this: I already voted for Echidne's New Blog Showcase entry Sigh on Monday, with honorable mention to Clonecone's What is the Point?, but now I see from the Liberal Coalition blog that another LC member, Peter from Kick the Leftist, has entered his post The U.N. Bites Back as well. An embarrassment of progressive riches! But Echidne's entry was my idea (um, not the entry itself, but the encouragement to enter the contest), so please count my vote for her, NZ, even though I've just plugged all three entries again. :)

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

So I read where Laura says that I don't like useless stats, and that's not technically true - I like 'em on occasion but I just don't take them that seriously. Unfortunately, when it comes to many real-life stats, like how one does on various employment-related tests, there are folks who take them very seriously indeed. Which I guess is understandable, as how else are you really going to measure someone's competency prior to hiring them? So today I went to the first employment agency that's bothered to test me, a fairly prestigious one (I hope), and overall I'm pretty pleased with how I did, although I can't for the life of me figure out how these computer tests are graded. I got tested in MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and scored an 86, 66 and 60 respectively. Maybe that's a percentage of the 30 task questions answered correctly by performing the task precisely as the computer expects me to (with Microsoft programs there are often a dozen different ways to accomplish any one task), I dunno. I probably could have done better, oh well. I did get 104 wpm on my typing test, which I thought was damned good for as under-the-weather as I'm still feeling. The actual "pre-employment assessment" (i.e., in-person screening) was only a few minutes, as I'd suspected it would be, but the total visit put me out of the office for 2½ hours including the crosstown commute. Fortunately, my away-from-office boss didn't call in during that time, and I met with our HR person afterwards to report on things and she suggested I ask my boss for a salary increase commensurate with the company move so I can afford the extra commute out of NYC. They really do seem to want to keep me, it'd be hard to find someone else to jump the hoops I've jumped these past 6½ years I guess. I'm not holding out any hope, though - if he'd intended to pay me more he would have done so in the last 2+ years (I haven't had a raise since before 9-11). Besides, it's not - it never was - just a matter of money. More to come, I suppose.

Rambling Maintenance Note

My, people come and go so quickly here! Even though Tom Tomorrow's still officially on hiatus (thus the strikeout through his name on my sidebar's blogroll) he posted a brief bit today, as did his occasional co-conspirator Bob Harris who's got a (temporary) travel page set up on This Modern World. And Priest is back blogging; he's in the Kultcha section for now. I'm considering, as I do every so often, changing the "Top Six" to "Top Reads" and rotating into that section the weblogs I simply cannot do without checking every day, but I keep rejecting the idea for fear that I'll upset someone. 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.) Besides, it's just too much energy to rearrange things at the moment, particularly when I haven't yet shaken the after-effects of last weekend's illness (sleep cycle still shot despite the now-quiet apartment) and have to contend with an employment agency screening today and an actual job interview tomorrow...

Cunning Linguists

So I tuned in to Lingo tonight for the first time in awhile (see previous post), only to see they've changed the sets completely, added stupid music and, worst of all, brought in a ditsy Britsy cohost. Way to "fix" what wasn't broken, guys. Looks like Chuckles has either had work done or lost his bloat (rehab, mayhap?), but the show is so "Who Wants To Be A Show That Hurts My Eyes" now that I don't think I'll be tuning in again. See, what I think made it the network's most popular show was, you know, its simplicity.

Life Without Earplugs

As mentioned previously, our formerly-upstairs neighbors have now finished the bulk of their move to the flat below us, implicitly threatening, now that the tables are supposedly turned, to give us the kind of grief they've apparently "suffered" every time we've justifiably complained about their flouting of house rules due to lack of carpeting and consideration. Alas, since we are possessed of both, and aren't given to moving furniture across bare floors on weekends and in the evenings or dropping shoes and heavy boxes or allowing five-year-old boys to run around indoors and throw their toys about, they are apt to find their day-to-day living as blissfully quiet as we now do (of course, we can still hear door-slamming and other banging coming from downstairs but it isn't nearly as bad as all that plus the stomping going on right over our heads). Now that I can hear myself think again, and considering the flat above us isn't likely to receive new tenants for at least another month (maybe longer; I think the lawsuit resulted in the landlord having to sell vacated apartments rather than rent them, and there aren't a lot of buyers in that price range in this economy), I'm considering catching up on some TV shows I couldn't watch before due to noise interference.

So, what I'd like from y'all are suggestions on where I could go online to get up to speed on night-time supernatural soaps, specifically Angel and Smallville. Bear in mind I haven't seen the former since the middle of last season so I didn't watch the season-ending-cliffhangy-thingy either. I don't want websites that specialize in analysis and speculation, just plain and simple plot synopses. Thanks in advance!

The Late Great Johnny Ace

Half a lifetime ago, on this very day, I went to sleep in my bedroom on the second floor of my parents' house after hearing the news on my little B&W TV that John Lennon had been shot, praying fervently that he would pull through. About an hour later I awoke violently from a death dream, and knew he was gone. It was like I'd felt his spirit leave, and it was that moment, combined with the election of Ronald Reagan only a month earlier, that convinced me more than anything else that the world was headed for a seriously downward spiral from which we've yet to recover.

Natalie Davis has her remembrance here. Update: And here are some words from Jeanne, and some from Julia H, who uses a quote from her eponymous Lennon-McCartney song as a header.

Too Big for One's Britches

Christine Cupaiuolo at Ms. Musings has been on a real tear since she returned from her recent access-problem-imposed hiatus. This entry intrigued me quite a bit - it's about women who have their feet medically mutilated in order to fit into the latest trendy shoes. What creeps me out the most are the quotes from Dr. Suzanne Levine, a staunch advocate of these procedures which net her big bucks to perform. "Some of these women invest more in their shoes than they do in the stock market...Take your average woman and give her heels instead of flats, and she'll suddenly get whistles on the street. I do everything I can to get them back into their shoes." I'm sorry, is getting whistles on the street suddenly a welcome occurrence?

The article is probably pretty graphically shocking but, sadly, nothing terribly new in our culture. They briefly mention the AOFAS Council on Women's Footwear survey which found "almost 90 percent wore shoes too small for feet and that about 80 percent had foot problems. Most women wear shoes a width to two width sizes too small. As a result, many suffer from bunions, hammertoes, bunionettes, corns and other disabling foot problems." But to me, this is symptomatic of a much wider problem, one that has every bit as much to do with female self-image and fear of fat as it does with the contempt many fashion designers and retailers have for the actual human body. I'm sure it happens with men as well, but my guess is that it's far more pervasive with women - after all, part of male socialization is acceptance of "bigger equals stronger equals good" whereas female socialization is usually the opposite (the more petite and diminuitive and childlike the better). There have been all sorts of surveys - here's one from Australia, for instance - done on body shapes and dress/underwear sizes that have found an alarming percentage of women wearing clothing too small for them. In an age when you think we'd have left corsets behind, far too many women still wear clothes that restrict their breathing! As the AOFAS survey page says, the only real solution to this sort of thing is to make, sell and buy comfortable, sensible and roomy clothing, which requires the cooperation of manufacturers, sellers and buyers. Unfortunately, for the moment it seems as though all three sides of this eternal triangle are cooperating to the detriment of women's health.

Update: More from Echidne, my favorite new goddess-blogger (thanks for telling us about her, Ampersand!) and, in my opinion (and pun unintended), a shoo-in for this week's New Blog Showcase for her December 4 post (link currently Bloggered, you may have to scroll down) skewering this article. Although she is up against clonecone at It's Craptastic for his What is the Point? entry, and the Clonester is a fellow Liberal Coalition member... hmm, maybe you should wait a week, Echidne. ;) Me, I'm hedging my bets, as you can see, since I've just voted for/linked to both. ;)

A Lose-Lose Situation

Yay, back! Haven't done a lot of blog reading today as, every time I came across something I wanted to mention, it frustrated me more that I couldn't get onto Blogger to write about it. At least the majority of the upstairs-to-downstairs neighbor move seems complete. I'm suppressing any and all "now you'll see what it's like having people rudely move furniture on top of your head at all hours!" revenge fantasies; not even sure they're fully out of the upstairs flat yet, although we don't believe they slept there last night and we heard lots of drilling up there today (who knows?). Besides, it's not in our nature to be as thoughtless and self-centered as they turned out. For one, we have carpeting.

Anyway, Rob spotted two articles in the NY Times this morning on the move of the Etch-A-Sketch factory from Bryan, Ohio to China, both written by Joseph Kahn. Here's the Ohio-based perspective in the National section, and here's the Chinese angle in the International one, where the workers claim they make even less than the pittance the company insists it pays them. Is it coincidence that an article entitled Who Wins and Who Loses as Jobs Move Overseas? also appears in today's Business section, and is it just me who thinks that the Times has answered its own question (i.e., nobody wins if you're talking about actual people) with Kahn's two articles?

Have You Made Your Snowflake Yet?

Hey c'mon, it's NODWISH (™ Mercury23), what are you waiting for? G'wan, give that Javascript a workout... Via the birthday boy sitting a few feet away from me, who got it from the John Byrne message board.

Other Birthday Greetings

Robin thinks the world might implode if there were a Marvel or DC book featuring Paul Jenkins writing, Leonard Kirk on pencils and Robin inking over Leonard, as all three gents share a birthday - plus, two are ex-pat Brits living in America and one's an ex-pat American living in Canada. My brain hurts now. Happy birthday, Paul and Leonard! It was lovely seeing you both again in Ohio (even if we didn't get to down a Guinness or 3 together, Paul)!

Faith-Based Initiative

Perhaps it's just NODWISH (™ Mercury23) season making me notice these things, but there's a series of good religious-themed posts over at Jeanne's Body and Soul blog, including today's on Democrats and Religion, as well as musings on Tom Friedman's prediction that the Iraqi post-occupation government might be as Islamic Republic; and yesterday's discussing the opinions of "Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly known as the Inquisition)" regarding Islam mixing politics and religion too much. Update: I also wanted to make note of a very interesting comment section to Laura Poyneer's post on vailed4allah about France's moves to ban Muslim girls from wearing the hijab.

LC Saturday

The Liberal Coalition is currently up to 16 members - not yet enough to sponsor the New Blog Showcase but growing pretty steadily. (If you're interested in being a part of a friendly and honest group "founded to raise the visibility of left-leaning blogs in the Ecosystem and help enhance the liberal/progressive message in the blogosphere," why not drop N. Todd Pritsky a line?) Here's what members are up to as of this afternoon:

Leah at Corrente examines attempts at spousal smearing by people who always make me wonder what skeletons they're hiding in their own marital boudoirs.

N. Todd wishes everyone a happy St. Nick's Day. Due to it also being Robin's birthday, it's pretty much the start of our holiday season too...

T. Rex's Guide to Life rounds up the list of other countries who've seen "their citizens slaughtered in Iraq" these last few days because of us. Oh, by the way, T. Rex? That story about sisters Patricia VanLester and Linda Ellzey and the $29 DVD player at Wal-Mart? You might want to read this (via Anne Zook). I'm not sure I'd call the sisters "injury-prone" as much as "litigation-prone."

Jeff at Speedkill is looking for feedback on the inherent contradiction he senses re: feminism both supporting and decrying the right of women to be exploited or exploit themselves. Don't ask me, my biases are showing. I generally have no use for anyone who makes a conscious choice to cheapen themselves and then blames or credits outside influences...

Please wish Lilith Devlin luck, everyone, on her meeting this coming week with someone who might fund her venue when she moves to Albuquerque.

Scout has a jpg of the Student Behavior Contract that 7-year-old Marcus McLaurin had to fill out after he offended his idiot teacher with what she thought was a bad word. Especially heartbreaking is his answer to "What I Should Have Done." That's America nowadays, kid. (Actually, I'm given a lot of hope by looking at that picture of Marcus and one of his moms; the kid looks very happy and well-adjusted, and I think the celebrity caused by this incident might turn out more fun than traumatic for him when all is said and done.)

Mustang Bobby has his Site Meter up (you're quite welcome!) and is off and running with some great link posts, including a lighthearted one to the Bush Administration Ferengi Rules of Acquisition. Once again, folks: like 1984, aspects of Star Trek are allegory or satire, not a bloody instruction manual.

Over at It's Craptastic, clonecone passes along the interesting news that, hello! Grover Norquist, Nancy Reagan doesn't want her husband's picture on the dime, thank you very much. For me this sickening spiral began long ago with the renaming of National Airport for the man who fired striking air traffic controllers. The Clonester also mentions that Iowa NBC affiliates won't be showing SNL this week when Al Sharpton hosts, which makes sense until you remember (as he or she points out) that Leno shilled mightily for his buddy Ahnuld (and of course presidential candidates have been showing up on all the talk shows lately anyway), so this line seems to be drawn pretty arbitrarily.

At the Fulcrum, Charles2 passes along a bit I'd missed from Atrios (yeah, like y'all catch all of them) about a 7th grade Maine social studies teacher who's sued his district for violating his First Amendment rights by barring him from teaching about non-Christian civilizations. Well, duh, you call them furrin' non-Christian civilizations social? [/sarcasm]

Amy has a pretty picture up of her Boston-area neighborhood in the snow. Here's the view from my window:

Yeah, in some ways I'll miss living on a hill across the street from a park when we finally get out of this noisy tinderbox. Upyernoz likes the snow too. Sure, it's pretty as long as you don't have to travel in it...

Mercury23 concludes that Bush is scared of Dean based on their latest scare-tactics ad aimed at NH and IA voters. He also wishes everyone a Happy Merry NODWISH. Both posts are also reproed on the LC blog.

Stradiotto nicely dissects the "moral obligation" argument vis a vis our invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Keith Kisser's latest Dispatch from an Alternate America is about President Gore's Mission to the Moon. (Although that should read "credit where it's due..." unless they spell it "do" in the alternate America...)

Lastly, Edwardpig continues to be pissed about how badly this Administration is treating its active-duty personnel and veterans. Aw, c'mon, Ed, he brung the soljers turkey, what more can you ask?

Life, the Universe, and Robin

Today is my wonderful husband's 42nd birthday. It will be spent working, watching the falling snow outside, and tolerating the increasingly-horrid upstairs neighbors as they make tons of noise presumably moving (yes, once again breaking house rules which forbid such weekend activity) into the apartment below us, as they revealed the last time he paid them a "please stop moving bedroom furniture at 9 PM" visit. With any luck, his wife will be well enough and the streets clear enough by this evening for delivery of a sushi dinner. Happy birthday, darling.

Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

Been sick, almost forgot. Here's one by which to snuggle during this (if you're in NY) snowy winter's night:

Leaping Liberals

I wasn't going to blog about this, as it's all rather inside and meta-bloggish and I know blogosphere self-proctology can get pretty boring, but what the hell. My fever's still raging and they're still making noise upstairs and I don't seem to have the head for anything more substantial anyway.

So, once upon a time there was this website called The Truth Laid Bear, whose purpose is to chart the popularity of various blogs by reading their Site Meter statistics of incoming links and site visits and all that, as well as to showcase new blog entries of note. And then there started to be alliances among like-minded bloggers for, I guess, the purpose of mutual support and coalition building and friendship and upping site stats and all that.

Now, I'll digress by saying that this is where things start to get fuzzy for me. I have three site counters on my sidebar - the aforementioned Site Meter, plus OneStat plus eXTReMe Tracking, and I'm afraid I can't make heads or tails out of most of their info. I check them now and again to see who's visiting the site, whether there are any frequent guests whose blogs I should add, things like that. But mostly they're pretty and decorative blog-related buttons, the same as all the ones above them. I just don't have it in me to obsess over statistics. When I started Pen-Elayne on the Web, I guess my goal was to eventually have about as many daily readers as the number of INSIDE JOKE subscribers I had in the '80s. And I've done that; I used to print 200 copies of IJ every six weeks, which meant right around 175 readers or so, and that's about the daily average for this blog - although TTLB has me at 249 at present, probably a result of recent skewing due to my Mid-Ohio Con report and news about Alan Davis. I'll never have the concentrated, explosive readership that an all-one-subject blog will get, and that's okay, because my life isn't all one subject and I'm not much for being pigeonholed anyway. So I'm pretty amazed that I've even gotten to the range of Large Mammal in TTLB's Ecosystem, and yeah, there's a part of me that looks at some of the Playful Primates and Mortal Humans and says "Wouldn't that be cool to be in the Top 100 of something?" but I don't really lose sleep over it.

So anyway, during the time I was away in Ohio, there was a TLB flap involving the League of Liberals, a left-leaning blogger alliance of which I've been a member. TTLB's front page has the unfolding story, here then here and finally here. Now, I don't pretend to understand half this techie stuff, but what it seems to amount to is that LoL leader Barry Bozeman was running four different weblogs under four different pseudonyms and putting up multiple Site Meters on each of them, or something like that. The idea of multiple weblogs astounds me in the first place, I can hardly keep up with one, so already this practice lost me. I think it might have something to do with what I said above, the more specifically-focused your weblog is the likelier it is to get visits from people zeroed in only on that subject. But I must admit I felt kinda duped finding out that Barry is actually also Savage Cruel Bigot and Annthrax Coultergeist and especially Hal Burton Cheney, because Hell for Halliburton was one of those blogs up for a New Blog Showcase vote back when the LoL was just picking up steam, and it doesn't seem fair for an apparently veteran blogger to start a new blog and then nominate himself for the Showcase. A lot of what was going on suddenly seemed like cheating.

And the LoL mailing list erupted as well. I came back on Monday to almost 200 posts, which took me until Wednesday to even get through. The way things shook out was that a few folks left and N. Todd Pritsky has now set up the Liberal Coalition as another bloc. Me, I've been fence-sitting, mostly because I didn't even know about the Coalition until just this morning. (Told you I was behind in my blogroll reading!) NZ Bear says he'd prefer a minimum membership (looks like it'll be 20) in order for the new group to be eligible to sponsor the Showcase competition, and as of this morning their membership was still in the single-digits. They have a suggestion for their first vote, which was actually my recommendation to the LoL list on Wednesday but to which nobody there has yet responded. I wrote, "My suggestion for this week's LoL vote is Mustang Bobby's 'Bark Bark Woof Woof' site, specifically his comparison of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore with Sir Thomas More in a post entitled, More On Moore, Who Is No More. It's a couple weeks outdated but I found it a fanciful and original idea." So I've now registered my vote, although on behalf of which coalition will depend, I suspect, on a lot of that techie stuff I don't quite grasp.

Todd tells me via e-mail, "TTLB only allows membership in one alliance, so you would have to choose allegiance in that regard." I hate choices like this. As I say I feel a bit duped by Barry, but he seems like a nice guy anyway. And I like Todd a lot too, and like he says, "We recognize that the TTLB ranking system is just a game, but all games have rules, and circumventing, bending or abusing those rules makes the game no fun for anybody." So as I do need to make a choice, and as I tend to lean towards propriety in cases like this, I've decided to drop my official membership in LoL and go over to LC. However, both blogs will remain on my blogroll under "Da Groups."

Update: As they say, the thick plottens. Here's Barry's latest post on LoL, announcing his hiatus from blogging (I've removed him from the blogroll) for personal reasons, as well as containing more accusations (this time against N. Todd) having to do with the number games around which I can't wrap my brain, but which reads to me like little more than sour grapes. I'm beginning to think sngrfxz's observation in the comment section below is spot-on... Meanwhile, Tom Burka has his own unique take on the situation.

Febrile

Temperature was 101.3° at last check. Hope the Davises don't catch it, there were goodbye hugs going on. Crappy way for our anniversary to wind down, Robin having to take care of me like this. With the nor'easter expected and my boss out of town, I doubt I'll be up and about tomorrow.

"I've Got A Golden Haggis..."

Via Barbara O'Brien at the Mahablog - it's the Haggis Hunt! And on a completely unrelated note, Brooke Biggs directs us to the finer points of pig-sticking in India.

A Share of Sadness

Sayed Razavi has closed down Blogshares. I had a lot of fun on this, at least when the server was working right, and I can't blame him for moving on since I imagine it must have been pretty high maintenance. Thanks for a bit of fun, Sayed.

Soulmates

Happy anniversary, Robin.

(Five years and counting!)

Heebie Jeebies

Belated congrats to Jonathan Edelstein, the Head Heeb, who celebrated his first blogiversary yesterday. Jonathan's blog is so weighty and substantial that I honestly thought it had been around much longer. Sorry I didn't get to this yesterday, but I'm still way behind on blogroll reading and probably won't really catch up until the weekend...

Marcus Has Two Mommies

Via Neil Gaiman's blog - the ACLU tells of a 7-year-old boy in Louisiana punished because he explained what "gay" meant to a classmate who asked him about his parents (who are lesbians).

Upon hearing this, Marcus’s teacher scolded him in front of his classmates, telling him that “gay” is a bad word and he should never say it at school, then sent him to the principal’s office instead of letting him go to recess. The following week the school required Marcus to attend a special behavioral clinic at 6:45 in the morning, where he was forced to repeatedly write “I will never use the word ‘gay’ in school again.”

I echo Neil's disgust with this when he says, "I keep finding this disturbing in a variety of different ways." Update: Ms. D has the story too, as well as a link to the Yahoo news item about it. And Atrios picked up on the same story in Salon.

Hail Eris, Take Two

I just realized, I've now reached the point in my life where inside (the "me" in my head) I'm exactly half the age of what I am outside (actual number of years lived). And that age is 23 vs. twice 23 (Discordia's number), and that's kinda cool. See you tomorrow.

Birfday Din

Thanks to everyone for their lovely comment-section wishes and e-cards. Turns out I got out of work at the regular time (it pays to actually ask my boss "Do you need me after 5:30 or can I go home?", should have tried that years ago), met Rob uptown where we bought each other birthday and anniversary cards, and passed by a sushi place displaying little bobble-head porcelain-like chibi dolls in their window, which they were selling for $5 each. And I just had to have the adorable maneki neko for my collection, so that became my birthday present from Rob. We then met up again with Alan and Heather Davis for my birthday dinner here. Then after stopping at a newsstand where Alan excitedly picked up a few packs of these for Heather (he insisted on giving me a pack but I'm afraid I find them just as unappealing as I remember them being from my childhood) it was back to their hotel for another couple hours of conversation, none of which even remotely touched on the news I reported yesterday about Alan pencilling Uncanny X-Men. 'Cause, you know, we tend not to talk specifics when we socialize. But he did give me Laura's thank-you gift, which is about as gorgeous as you'd imagine, Laura (and then some - definitely in the Garth mode). And I got cards and phone messages from Mom & Dad and brother Jay, so it was a bit of all right! Sorry to sound so self-absorbed, but I'm still way behind in blogrolling, news reading, etc. and besides, if I can't be this way on my birthday there's just nothing for it.

Forty-Six

And feeling every year of it. I woke up on my birthday at about 5 AM, then again at 5:45 AM thanks to the upstairs neighbors, then an hour later thanks to them once more. Who needs an alarm when you have thoughtless apartment dwellers? Here's hoping that I don't have to wear earplugs each morning by the time I reach my 47th birthday.

Home Again, Home Again - Mid-Ohio Con '03 Wrap-Up

White Rabbits! Before I get to my overview of the weekend in Ohio, I wanted to again thank the wonderful Laura Gjovaag for her guest-blogging stint during my computer-less absence - I've just gone through her entries and can hardly wait to start clicking on all those cool links from Saturday! Laura, I don't have your thank-you gift yet, as it was a fairly busy working weekend, we'll be seeing the Davises again in NY this week, and Alan wants to make sure his work is worthy of posting in your Saturday Night Sketch series. :) Please feel free to drop in any time with whatever entries you'd care to make to the blog!

Now then, on to my convention report, such as it is, including the official confirmation of Alan Davis' next project for Marvel Comics, which he broke at the panel I moderated yesterday. But I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, so let's start at the beginning...

Friday, November 28 - Not really a con day, although the annual Laughing Ogre welcome party (which we didn't attend) was held in the evening. The plane we took from Newark to Columbus was, I believe, an ERJ-135, which seats 37, and if you've ever flown in a smaller plane you know you're more likely to feel full-force turbulence than in a larger one. The weather being cloudy and crappy for the entire journey, this naturally meant fairly frequent turbulence, so I was a bit shaken by the time we arrived in a city easily 15° colder than the one we'd left, not including the wind chill factor which made for a fairly chilly 45-minute heel-cooling (okay, heel freezing) at the outdoor Non-Airport Hotel shuttle area. The protracted wait for a shuttle which was supposed to arrive every half hour should have clued us in to the kind of weekend we were likely to have insofar as hotel amenities, but at the time we thought it a fluke.

We arrived at the hotel around 3 and proceeded to thaw, ringing up Alan's room to see if he and his wife Heather were around, which they weren't. My only definite plan for the evening was to go food-shopping with Heather and Stacie Ponder for my planned Saturday night room party, as Stacie's a local and has a car. She called to tell me she was picking up a friend at the airport at 4, so I suggested she call when they were on their way to the hotel and we'd take off from there, and if I found Heather in the meantime so be it. As luck would have it, we ran into Alan and Heather as we were in the lobby waiting for Stacie, who arrived with two friends unexpectedly in tow. So, leaving "the boys" behind, Heather and I squeezed into the back seat for catch-up chatting during what seemed like a half-hour journey to the supermarket, where I naturally proceeded to over-buy like crazy. (Not to worry, Stacie took home all the extra food and drink yesterday.) Fortunately, one of Stacie's friends was also a local and had a store card so I guess I saved a lot of money...

Aside from the shuttle situation and our hotel room not having a mini-bar or fridge (apparently none of them did, not even on the "prestigious" 7th floor where Alan and Heather were), my other big disappointment that day was finding out that the lovely Easton Town Center, which began across the street from the hotel, was a mostly outdoor area. I guess I should have checked out the maps more carefully. Maybe a third of it consisted of an indoor 2-level mall, but the rest consisted of about a half dozen charming and decorated shop-lined streets. Which would have been great had it not been raining and snowing all day so, after having a few drinks in the hotel bar area (where Alan introduced us to Mike Barr and got to talking with Adam Hughes and his girlfriend Allison Sohn), we opted to stay inside for the evening and partake of the hotel restaurant's Friday Night Seafood Buffet, featuring all-you-can-eat sushi, a nice lox-whitefish platter, clam chowder, hot seafood dishes, and a lovely dessert bar. It was weird how they set up the buffet itself in the hallway outside the restaurant, anyone could have walked by and swiped food if they'd wanted to, but I will say in the hotel's favor that the buffet was absolutely wonderful. That's kind of the only thing I'll say in the hotel's favor.

Saturday, November 29 - It had stopped snowing but was still pretty windy and frigid, and I hadn't really brought any winter clothes with me, thinking the Town Center would be mostly indoors. So, after leaving Alan and Robin to sort out convention stuff, Heather's and my first stop was a place to buy me a warm sweater ("jumper" to you Brits) so I could deal with the rest of the walk. The bad news is, we went out at 9 and almost all the stores didn't open till 10. The good news is, the Gap seemed to be the exception to the rule and I was able to find a nice hooded black sweater with a big snowflake icon on the front (which looks more like a target), so I was all set. (It's very toasty, I'm wearing it as I type.) We retreated to the indoor portion to have some hot chocolate and talk romantically about our husbands, and who should come along but Robin and Alan, looking for us (as the con hadn't opened yet)? Men just know these things, don't they?

Oh, the con. Well, I missed the morning's activities, as our shopping excursion didn't end until after noon; I finally found a department store which had large-sized clothing and bought a nice silk blouse for work and a shiny shirt for the party (with lots of money off because I opened a store charge account, what the heck), then we met the guys as they'd just finished lunch, walked back to the hotel, grabbed a couple $5 box lunches from the hotel bar area for ourselves, then joined them again back at their table. The con organizers had put Alan and Robin all the way back in a very secluded area, where you had to turn right twice from the con entrance and walk the length of two long corridors to even get to them. And there were no con staffers assigned to Alan; I think at one point someone came by and asked if he needed anything, and when I suggested water the guy responded to the effect that he wasn't sure he'd be able to secure any (he did, but still, to sound that dubious about being able to get your touted "special guest" water?). But other than that, there was nobody assigned to Alan at all to help with the queue or cut people off or do anything involving crowd control or giving Alan breaks, and I had to repeatedly run the corridors to find con staffers and explain to them what needed to be done, falling back on my con staffing duties from Comicfest '93 when I should have been sitting there enjoying myself and watching Alan and Robin work and greet fans. I just found that kind of strange, not to assign at least one staffer to stick with your special guest and take care of the queue (the longest at the con, bar none) and so forth. Another guest shouldn't have to do it.

Alan and Robin had decided beforehand to do head-shot sketches to raise money for the con's designated charity, the American Diabetes Association (hi Natalie!) - Alan would pencil the sketches for a $10 donation and Robin would ink them for an additional $10. So while it was exhausting (made more so by the aforementioned con staffer situation) it was also a lot of fun and very exciting for this Davis-and-Riggs fangirl to watch. And of course I always love talking to fans; on Saturday a lot of the folks from the Comicart Yahoo group were hanging out, and the not-at-all pathetic and lonely Mike Fogg bought us drinks afterwards. I'd managed a quick sweep of the artist alley area, handing out party invites to folks I knew, and actually introducing myself to Allison - as mentioned, she and Adam had stopped by our klatsch the day before but I think Alan and/or Mike probably assumed we already knew them so we just sort of sat there outside of the conversation sphere for that period of time. By Saturday afternoon that was remedied, at least from the female angle - I'm not sure Robin and Adam ever got to talking, but Allison and I hit it off immediately, neither of us believing we hadn't yet met!

Because of the con staff situation being so disorganized, by the time Heather and I went to see if we could get a dinner reservation at the Cheesecake Factory we were told the wait was up to 2 hours. Instead of reserving us at a place of equivalent price range, I guess the hotel concierge had been advised to suggest the most expensive restaurant in the area, so we wound up at Smith & Wollensky, where the menus are placed in heavy wooden frames from which Robin immediately got a splinter (I find it hard to believe, as the waiter insisted, that it was "the first time this has ever happened"), topped off a bit later by the waiter spilling water on his back. At least we were glad that Alan and Heather enjoyed dinner and a show!

I left the others at S&W and hurried back to the room to start laying out food for the party. Leonard Kirk, Roger Stern and Carmela Merlo were the first guests, and among the others who showed up later (besides Robin and Alan) were Dan Mishkin, Mike Barr, Scott Roberts, Bob Ingersoll, Tony Isabella, Andrew Pepoy, Mike Fogg, Mike Rice, Stacie and friends, and a special party-crashing by some CBLDF folks wanting the pros present to sign a couple SpongeBob SquarePants pillows to auction off. As Scott had done some SpongeBob comics this was pretty fortuitous. I shall refrain from passing on what Leonard wrote on the pillows; suffice to say it was probably the rowdiest point of a pretty sedate affair. Which made it all the weirder when a hotel security person came up about 10 or so to ask us to close the door (we complied immediately), and downright surreal when his apparent boss came up at 11:45 to kick everyone out of the room, claiming we had been visited thrice (untrue) and asked to keep the noise down (um, what noise? conversation? nobody was even drinking!) by another unnamed guest. The security guy said something about how they had no choice but to believe their guests, whereupon Robin reminded him that we were guests as well so our word should be just as good as that of the anonymous ones. Now folks, I'm sitting here wearing earplugs because of the noise from the upstairs neighbors, can you really picture me creating that kind of ruckus if I'm this sensitive to it? Just one more reason (collect the series!) never to go back to this hotel and certainly never to knock myself out again to give a con room party. But hey, it's kind of amusing - almost, dare I say it, cool - to have the rep of hosting rowdy affairs even if it's not true...

Sunday, November 30 - We received a "wake-up call" at 10:30 from Alan care of Mike Rice, informing us that Alan was already hard at work at his table, as the con day had started at 10 AM rather than 11 as we'd all assumed. Again, if we'd had an assigned staffer this wouldn't have happened, he or she would have kept Alan apprised of the schedule! Naturally, because of this amazing oversight, Alan had to have Roger Price announce that he would no longer be able to do sketches due to high demand (which translated into too many people on a queue that, for at least the fourth time that weekend, nobody from the con had bothered to organize). More of the same - lots of nice people, including Phoenix from Alan's ThyTe message board (aka Jaye; here's her site), a promising artist who hung out by the table for much of the day. Only one real creep, a guy who whined to me (gah, why not complain to a con staffer!?) with his claims of having been booted from the queue three times, and I felt kinda bad when I lost patience with him until I saw what he actually was - some sleazoid dealer with a box of about 200 of Alan's comics, including about a dozen copies of Marvel's HEROES that he paid some mark to get Alan to sign - and the mark was a mentally challenged guy! I mean, this whole scenario was wrong on so many levels that I was immediately sorry I hadn't been gruffer with the asshole and told him to get stuffed. Fortunately, there were no others like him and his utter chutzpah was certainly grist for enough group derision and amusement later. I just wish he hadn't been the last on the queue before Alan packed up for the day. He and Robin raised about $575 for the ADA, by the way. I don't know how much Alan's sketch for the ACTOR raffle raised, and the sketch on which he and Robin collaborated won't be auctioned of by ACTOR until Mega-Con next year. Nobody from the convention itself, either before or during the con period, ever mentioned to Alan or Robin that apparently they (the Mid-Ohio Con people) had an auction too, or they would have contributed (see my con staff-related rants above).

Oh, I also moderated my panel, which I'd outlined here, and it went pretty well, about as planned. David Mack had laryngitis and couldn't make it, and I knew Alan would be fairly quiet, but not only did Mark Waid rise to the occasion as expected (he's practically a professional panelist by now, and has done his share of quality moderation, so I knew I needn't worry) but so did Pam Bliss and Scott Roberts, all contributing to a great discussion about characterization and constraints. Before the panel started Alan leaned over and whispered, "Ask me what I'll be doing for Marvel." It took me a few beats to realize that this meant he wanted to make an Official Announcement of news that he hadn't previously shared with anyone either publicly or privately. So I was privileged to be the conduit of the Official Announcement that Alan will be pencilling Uncanny X-Men, to be written by Chris Claremont. Guess I've added another X-book to my pull list! Alan and Chris had a great run together on the X-book they co-created, Excalibur, as well as having done a few issues of UXM a number of years back, and I know how much Alan enjoys working with Chris so it should be a lot of fun.

After the panel Robin and Andrew had a knife fight.

I suppose I should explain. Leonard's going to be pencilling a new book for DC shortly, for which the inker has yet to be decided. The editor said that Robin and Andrew should "fight it out." So Andrew decided to make it a staged event. He got a bunch of fake blood, smeared it over himself and Robin and a couple of rubber knives, and had Sean McKeever and Paul Storrie holding up signs in the background laying odds on one or the other, with Leonard standing next to them greedily fingering money. The camera shots we took consisted of (1) Andrew having the upper hand, (2) Robin then gaining the upper hand, (3) and (4) Robin and Andrew then realizing that Leonard's placing bets, and (5) them both ganging up on Leonard. Nobody knows who will get the assignment (and whoever does, the book will be well-inked!), but it was a fun event anyway.

A few regrets as the con wound down - Mark Waid had to leave that night so we never did get to sit and chat about CrossGen, but I got a hug and a kiss and for people who know me by one of my previous nicknames of "Waidgirl" you know how special that was to me. Mark has been my favorite comics writer for over a decade (still is), and being friends with him, with anyone who makes this magic, is something I'll never take for granted. But I've talked about this all before, so onward... I didn't spend as much time as hoped with people who didn't show up to the party, like Paul Jenkins and Sean McK and Paul S and Dave Roman and Steve Lieber and Matt Feazall (who apparently also missed a dinner date with Dave and Scott at yon yummy cheesecakey place), but at least I said hi. I never touched base at all with Chris Sprouse, Brian Michael Bendis, Mike Oeming, Steve Conley and probably at least a dozen others. I didn't have the courage to approach any of the media celebs like June Lockhart or Yvonne Craig or Walter Koenig, but they all looked gorgeous.

Robin and I went upstairs to wait for Stacie to get the party leftovers and receive an expert portfolio review, which Robin hadn't time to do at the table, after which we tried the Cheesecake Factory again. This time we arrived early enough to be seated fairly quickly, and I highly recommend the place to anyone who comes upon it, very yummy! We ran into Leonard after that and took a last walk around the Town Center. Rob and Leonard went into all the usual Guy places, and I went back to Godiva (where Heather had bought me some truffles on Saturday) to pick up some hot chocolate to soothe the scratchy throat the pumped-in hotel air had given me. By the time we returned the stores had all closed and my feet were too blistery to go join everyone at Fadó for après-con drinks.

Today - Which was just as well, as Alan and Heather informed us over breakfast that there had been a lot of cigar-smoking at the bar, which would probably have made me sicker than I already felt. The four of us rode to the airport together, and sat around with plenty of time before our flights discussing everything from Alan Moore to family matters to holiday plans to the sleazoid dealer. Our plane was a 737, but despite my being engrossed in the British paperback of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire that Heather had found for me (I'd read the American HC when it came out before giving it to my brother, but much prefer it in the original language, even though I have to keep asking Robin to translate phrases) there was still enough turbulence on the descent to give me major stomach pains, which haven't completely subsided as of this writing. We took NJ Transit and the subway back and made it to our apartment in under two hours. I thought it was hysterical that there was a guy playing I Can't Help Falling in Love With You on kettle drums in the subway station, as that's the tune the Lulu folks always sang when closing up our booth at cons. (Robin thought it was funny that we went down to the con yesterday in the middle of Holiday Inn on the TV, and came back to the room in the middle of White Christmas.) Robin spent much of the afternoon trying to get his Cintiq to work properly (it's operational at last), and me? After four hours and probably lots of stuff still left out, I've finally finished my con report.

All in all, apart from aspects of the con organization and hotel people, it was a fun weekend. We got to interact with fans and pros from all levels of the industry, we made new friends and renewed old friendships, we spent hours with probably Robin's closest friend, we walked around a lot in beautiful surroundings and, despite various physical ailments (note to self: bring Eno's next time as well!), we had a great time.

So, anything happen while I was gone?