Wow. What a beautiful take on the medium of Web Cartooning. Me like Pie also.

I have an apostrophe abuse admission: I only do it when I'm writing by hand, but I add one after "#" when I mean numbers. I know it's wrong and I know I shouldn't do it. I don't when I'm typing. The think is, it doesn't even bug me.

I keep having this thought:
Man, there are so many books these kids are reading today while they wait for the New Harry Potter, they just keep reading to get that fix. It's like they've just got to have something to read and they don't really care what it is.
And then I think: yeah, so? That's good, right? It's how I read...
It's just creepy. Yeah, they watch more TV than any generation before them, but they also read like none in a long time. I live in the South, in one of the states people point to when they want an example of a bad education system, but we can't keep books for school-age kids on the shelves. Ruthie's school is pushing her to read in a more effective way than mine ever did, and kids get literary references (albeit ones in books aimed at them, but is that bad?).
Watch out: the next generation are readers. I guess it's about time we had one o' them again. I better get writing already, or I'll be left completely behind.

Wow. I'm not the only one who thought that about the Lord of the Rings movies. It's good to know.

Everybody around me is at least a little sick. I'm in good company, hacking away.

Also, I'm sure I'm the last person in the world who hadn't seen Creatures In My Head, but it's also quite nifty.

I think cat and girl may be the best comic since PLIF. A teaspoon of hooker. Good lord.

testTEST
testTEST
testTEST

HEY!

Clear yer schedule for
February 22!
So you can watch me
destroy my fellow BP employees
through the magic of
Arm Wrasslin!
That is all.

Nothing is quite like Truffles from Paris.
Mmmmm... Life changing...

Oh, and hey, in case it comes up, and in case anybody ever asks you, and in case anybody ever says "if you don't like America, you can go live somewheres else," my response is this:
I love my country. I love the people in my country. I love the rich history we're living through, and I love the fact that, as far as countries go, ours is very young yet. We're barely a teenager in country terms. This is when the country needs two things: unconditional love and guidance. We need to grow up a little, and that means we have to get over the whole idea that we can be free-wheeling, gun-slinging, each other-murdering people, and be a functioning society that understands that the only way a society can work is for the people in it to not kill the people in it. America had a beautiful childhood that was a lot of fun. America got to learn from the best, some Adult Countries who've sort of been everywhere and done everything (one of them literally being pretty much everywhere for a while). This shaped the youth of this great country and that influence is still very much obvious today. It's why we say "bless you" when people sneeze and why we have this need to go take over Mars: we came by our imperialism honestly. It's why we place so much importance on tradition and dynasty, even when those traditions and dynasties are only very new. It's why we say things like "serving you since 1986." Those things matter in Europe, and so they damn well matter to us. At least, that's how it has been. As we enter our adolescence, we are forming our own identity. Maybe we'll hang out with the wrong crowd for a while. Maybe we'll do things the hard way and reinvent the wheel a few times. That's fine, and that's our prerogative. The people of this country are its conscience and we have to do what is right because it is right. That's a hard lesson to learn and it smacks childhood squarely in the face. Adulthood is cold and a little boring, but it's a necessety: it's what happens when you stop being a child. I love my country and I love watching it grow up.

Perhaps the stunningest of all commentaries.

My bagel got all cold.
I was gonna, like, make a snack of a bagel and juice. It's become my breakfast of late, and I have to admit one of which I am fond. I got the bagel at about 11am, and came up to my desk. Today, just to be different, I also obtained some lovely, pulpy orange juice and grapefruit juice (separate. I'm not a big fan of 'em together). I drank my Grapefruit juice right away and enjoyed it. Then, I had to work. Stuff started piling up, so I started working, ignoring my sad little rapidly cooling bagel. Two minutes ago, when I finally took a bite, it was all cold and hard. Oh well. I still have my orange juice.

Even stunninger commentary.
Thanks again, Sherbert.
Toshi and I did that one together. Ain't it sweet?

Toshi and I have been on a Will Smith/DJ Jazzy Jeff+Fresh Prince kick of late. I ordered Smith's first "solo" album, Big Willie Style (we all remember that one, right?) and a book from Amazon. Yeah, I know, I work at a bookstore and I ordered a book from Amazon. There's a reason. The book isn't available. The publisher doesn't have it, no bookstores have it, we had several and they all disappeared. I didn't buy it fast enough. Oddly, Amazon claims to have it and be able to ship it out in 24 hours. So, they're sitting on a big inventory of this book and nobody else has it. I could rant and bitch, but we did that with Egger's first novel. We had 1000 and they had none, so I guess it's fair.
Anyway, the book that the pub's out of stock on will be ready in 24 hours. The Smith album: 2-4 day wait.

Stunning social commentary.
Thanks, Sherbert.

President Bush: And... we in this room will do all we can to keep you free and safe.

Mister: ...by continuing to piss off the neighbors with bombs.

President Bush: America is the land of second chance.

Mister: Chances. We say second chances, in English.

President Bush: All of us, parents, teachers, families, must work together to counter the negative influences of the culture.

Mister: Buddy, that is the culture.

Hey: How 'bout this: a legal brief filed by 5 military lawyers. I'm reading it now. I'll drop an opinion if I form one.
Found via Salon.com.

It's enough to make you spit, I'll tell you, the whole Gay Marriage Thing.
On the one hand, the point is that it isn't traditional. Neither is waiting until a woman's older than 12 to get married. Neither is giving her rights. Neither is assuming that non-white people are actually human. Hell, if you go back far enough, marriage isn't traditional: it's a new-fangled idea put forth by those freakish people with thumbs and little foreheads. Actually, when there was a difference between the thumbites and the non-thumbites, marriage was a dim thing of the future and hadn't yet grown out of the harem philosophy espoused by so much of nature.
On the other, marriage is about procreation, right? That's why we enforce divorce or euthanasia when a couple don't start popping out babies? That's why we make couples sign an agreement that the woman will be pregnant within a year after marriage?
I don't know. Maybe there isn't a point that will convince me that homosexuals shouldn't be allowed the protection of the law for their unions. Maybe there is, and I haven't heard it yet. I'd say the jury's still out, but nobody's made a good point to me either way yet.

I didn't know Margaret Cho had a blog, but it doesn't surprise me. I've had a good ten minutes, skimming the posts there. Maybe you will too.

Hi, Mom.

Two things will be different at this year's wrasslin' tournament.
1. The public will be allowed, within reason, to watch.
2. I WILL DOMINATE!
heehee.

On the one hand, we do things that would set me off screaming if they happened to me as a retail customer, and on the other, I now know why those sonsofbitches at every retail establishment I go to do the things that set me off screaming most every time I try to deal with them. They lie because the truth is complicated and not pleasant. They lie because the truth isn't part of the retail experience.
The truth, when you order a book (or, really, anydamnthing you order at a retail esablishment), is this: We don't know how long it will take. Your book (or whatever) will arrive when it arrives. I've done, within the extremely limited scope available to me, the sum total of what I can do. From here on out, it's up to the gods of Buying and Receipt, and to God, when your book (etc.) gets here, if your book (...) indeed gets here. If the Buying gods see fit, It will be ordered the next time we order from the sources we order from, and it will arrive if they see fit to send it and God sees fit to allow it to arrive, and the gods of Receipt put it into the system and it's not lost, mangled or just plain vaporized by evil magic, then you'll be in a position to get your book (,).
That's the answer, and so we say "I'll order it, and it should be availble in 5 business days or sooner." Because the lie is more "retail" than the truth.
Now You Know.

*Caution. Contains Filth*
There's this commercial that I saw, I think during the SuperBowl. The name of the pill has evaded me every time I've gone to check on it but one, that one because I saw the confusing commercial while the computer was actually running and on the net. The ad is a guy throwing a football through a tire that's hanging from a tree. There is no indication of what this pill is supposed to do. Thus, our most puerile assumptions must be correct, right? I mean, football through a tire, right, nudge nudge wink wink.
It's sad how correct that actually is. It's an erectile dysfunction treatment. I guess the visual euphemism is better than directness.
"Hey guys: Having trouble throwing a football through a tire, know what I mean; Is your wife a goer? Does she go? Nudge nudge wink wink? Are you a goer, but having trouble, ahem, f******, because your, ahem, p**** isn't as hard as it used to be?"

Sick two days in a row. Wish I could say I was out having a good time and kickin' it old skool. I wasn't. I was sitting around the house, drinking hot tea and hot lemon-ginger-echinacea-cayenne juice. A'yup.

Writing today, staying home sick, been to the airport twice, and lunch. Fun and things.

Good one today.

I bumped into this via an article on Salon:
This bugs me more than meat-clown. I don't exactly know why; maybe it's the grinnin' pig sellin' porkflesh. Yeah, that's probably it. There are even bad cartoons touting the wonders of pork. I mean, it's low fat, right? That's why there's that folk saying, "thin as a pig," right? It's like a joke from old Simpsons, really, but it'd have Tress MacNeille doing the voices.

Although, speaking of Snopes, here's this story too, in its full glory. It explains the sad little protest we got outside when she signed here at the store, and the sign that said something about her having made the soldiers wait for Thanksgiving dinner. The answer is really pretty pedestrian: When a dignitary visits, everybody eats late. When everybody eats late, everybody complains. It's a human trait, and I'm sure it happens whenever somebody comes to visit an army base or any time anybody ever eats late. I'm just sayin' is all.
See, if they gave them butter guns...
Blorch!

OK, this one claims that it was queen victoria.
Snopes seems quiet on the subject. I'll keep looking.

I got this from a kind of questionable source, but I heard this:
Buttons on coat-sleeves are there to keep you from wiping you nose on them. The story I heard is that it goes back to Napoleon, who saw an officer wipe his nose on his sleeve and had a tailor put buttons on the coats as a preventative. I'll see if I can find that from another source...

Oh, hey, PS, this also seems wonderful, although I don't wanna pay shipping on Chocolate from Paris.

I bumped into this while looking for this, and, particularly, this.
And there's nothing, and I mean nothing, wrong with bumping into chocolate.
So, friends who know me, I've got a chocolate sampler (I got it for Xmas) with chocolate from around the world. Anybody wanna be able to say you've tasted the difference between Ecuadorian and Ghanan chocolate?

PS. Don't click on the link from the 18th of December. It's silly and dumb. On second though, click on it. It's silly and dumb.

Oh yeah, new year, new projects. More as it happens.

It's quiet out there. Geez.