I'm thankful to have been born in the same human race as Beethoven, Bach, Kirby, Miyazaki, Dante, Shakespeare, Verdi, Aeschylus, Homer, Kalidasa, Sappho, etc etc etc. I am thankful that I have the technology and resources to enjoy their work any time I please.

I am thankful for my friends. I am thankful for those among them who are geniuses and those who are just good people.

I am thankful for the wonderful beauty of my country, of Britain my second country, of the beloved city of Oxford, and of the whole European continent; and for all the people who contributed to such great beauty down the millennia.

I am thankful for the beauty of nature, for sunlit days and starry nights, for rivers and lakes and streams.

I am thankful to Debbie, Ruth, Clare and Kathy, just for having been born.

I am thankful to the Church and to my Lord Jesus Christ.

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"I really don't feel that there's currently liberty and justice for all." - 10-year-old Will Phillips

If you ever doubted that one person can make a difference, you have no further to look for inspiration than Will Phillips--an amazing kid from Arkansas, who has refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in school because he has gay friends who are not afforded equal rights.

Matters weren't helped when Will's teacher at the time, a substitute teacher for that week, insisted that he needed to stand, even though Will was fully within his rights not to. (Nor did he.) The principal, admitting as much, nevertheless stated that no apology would be forthcoming from the teacher. After Will's mother twittered about the incident, some of her friends got angry about it and alerted the news media.

You can read the whole story from the article in the Arkansas Times here. Will's story has also made it to CNN, interviewed here with his pretty cool dad, Jay:


 

Testing Zoundry Raven, a desktop blogging client. Using an image by Emma Vieceli to do so. You can find the print for sale here. Post2Blog never did drag and drop very well. I’d like a desktop client that was as smooth and easy as Tumblweed for Tumblr, to be honest, but there doesn’t seem to be one that clever and slick for Wordpress.

If the bumf is to believed, then swiping this image of Emma doing a bookstore PA should just paste in here:

(Sorry, Em, I’m using you as an experimental animal, but I had to google the link for your print shop and this was right underneath in the search results.)

Tumblweed is a clever app because it matches the intent of Tumblr: fast, easy scrapbooking for the internet. Wordpress clients tend to match the intent of Wordpress, as a place to write long blogposts. No matter how the theme of your Wordpress site actually changes that supposed intent. This site has gone through its tumblelog phases, but it’s hard to tumblelog in a big complex client, and bookmarklet apps don’t seem to work so well any more.

Anyway. Let’s see if this actually works.

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

Though I realize that objective journalism is something of an endangered species these days, Time magazine nevertheless has writer Bill Saporito to thank for the fact that my subscription with them probably won't be renewed. Because while Saporito makes the valid point that Black Friday is "in need of all the consumption it can get," he proposes the following for keeping the economy on the mend:

"We are all puritans now. Over the past two years, Americans have largely stopped spending more money than we had and running up credit-card tabs we couldn't pay off. To a great extent, we've been hectored into behaving more like our parsimonious Pilgrim forebears.

"This year, savings are up and credit-card use is down, which is good--sort of. Yet keep in mind that the Pilgrims were barely eking out a living, surviving in squalor. They had no access to credit. Thrift is a great virtue, but a little mindless spending this season couldn't hurt."

Saporito is very generous with his words, isn't he--feeling it's in his purview to advise rather than simply report. Why don't we see if he's equally as generous in opening his own bank account for all the people who have no money to throw away at the stores? Or would he rather see those people fail to pay their mortgage or rent, or not be able to buy food for their families, and instead have them rushing down to Macy's and charging a few purchases on cards that are already maxed out?

It "couldn't hurt." No, Bill, it wouldn't hurt you at all, I suppose. Unbelievable.
 

Yes, language has changed a smidgeon since the 1930s.

Hey, there's nothing in here about the Latin Kings, what a ripoff.

This is all about men and women dating, where's the gay romance?

Not a single drug-related story, I'm writing them a letter of complaint.

I made a Spotify playlist for Christmas. It’s nearly four hours long, so feel free to skip parts. I’ll try to remember to repost this nearer the date. Maybe I'll post it to FT then too.
Xmas playlist

Honestly. I happened to come across this at one in the morning on a cold windy night, and it gave me The Willies. Yikes. Whoever wrote this really knows how to push psychological buttons.

http://blog.newsarama.com/2009/11/28/linkaramanewsarama-149/

http://blog.newsarama.com/?p=13217

“I am not a tights guy, man. You get caught in tights, and you can not get out”: That’s Chicago Bears linebacker Lance Briggs talking about what sort of costume he would wear if he were a superhero in this Chicago Tribune article on his being a comics fan. I’m not so sure the “professional sports player reads comics book” angle necessarily deserves a feature story, but this is a pretty well written one nonetheless. The Tribune loses points for calling comics a “genre” in the sub-head though.

“In this case they are merely following Superman, when in 1961 he went back in time and managed to save Custer and Little Big Horn and Lincoln at Ford’s theater, but found his own history in his present day unchanged”: That’s University of Minnesota professor and The Physics of Super Heroes author James Kakalios, explaining to Popular Mechanics how modern string theory was anticipated by Silver Age Superman. You can read the whole Q-and-A with the author here.

“I’m not saying stop making these awesome movies that appeal specifically to me and others like me, I’m saying let’s share the wealth”: Writing for Fast Forward Weekly, John Tebbutt notes that teenage girls have “stolen our vampires,” and he’s okay with that (”I wasn’t using them anyway,” he writes). Along the way, he notes that Hollywood has similarly seen to it that superheroes aren’t primarily for kids any more, but for grown-ups who grew up on ‘em.

Whatever you do, don’t click on this link: And if you do click on it, for God’s sake, don’t actually go through with reading Ben Hutchings’ four-page Psionykk strip on Top Shelf 2.0. Seriously, don’t—you’ll have nightmares. (Speaking of Hutchings, check this out).

“But that’s not scary! Terry Long is not scary!”: Shaenon K. Garrity catches someone looking up a list of Black Lanterns on Wikipedia, and an amusing conversation about the event follows. I’m convinced that like Civil War before it, Blackest Night’s greatest value will be as a source of Internet jokes, regardless of how good or how bad the actual comics are.

For several hours on Friday evening the three news channels I look at (BBC News, Sky News and Sky Sports News) were frothing with the 'news' that Tiger Woods had seen seriously injured in a car crash. Minute after minute of direct feed of the 'accident site' was mauled over by tv journalists ranging from the reasonably experienced to the still in nappies (well, who else will you get on Sky Sports News on a Friday night?), an accident scene that looked remarkably like an untouched Florida suburb (not even a particularly wealthy one at that) According to Sky Sports News, at least, it was the end of an era and he was to be prosectuted for some driving offence or other. And the airbags had not inflated. But he was seriously injured.
Eventually wiser heads in the back office started solving the equation of serious injury resulting from a Cadillac (read 'tank') emerging from a very obviously short driveway and colliding with a fire hydrant and tree without the airbags inflating and realised that the answer was 'this does not compute'.
Shortly afterwards it was announced that Tiger had left hospital and gone home with minor head lacerations, which is pretty good for a seriously injured man.
So, the facts - such as they were known - appeared to contradict the declaration of the Florida Highway Patrol that he was 'seriously injured'. Now, I would expect the Florida Highway Patrol to be pretty well acquainted with the results of all manner of car crashes. So why should they declare that serious injury had resulted from an accident that didn't seem to even leave broken glass on the road? The fact that the injured person is a hugely succesful, popular, very wealthy Person of Colour raises its head, but no, that couldn't be true, not now, not with a similarly complected man in the White House. Could it?

Everybody's been on vacation the last few days. Oh, y'all, too? Must be some holiday or somethin'.

Wednesday after work, Marie hit the road to spend Thanksgiving on the island. Me, I went up to Athens, helped unpack and bag-n-board comics at Wuxtry and had an early supper at The Burger & Cheesesteak Factory on Prince. I recall reading about this in Flagpole's "Grub Notes" a few months back, but had forgotten about it until I read a review at Foodieville. Man, that is a great burger that they do there. It's in the Bottleworks development on Prince, near the Grit, and you would do well to ask for a little side cup of their "factory sauce" (mayo, Dijon and Worcestershire) as a dip for your tots. It was great to see Devlin, Robert and Chris for a bit, and I brought home lotsa good comics, which I spent Thursday reading.

I made my way home during a bad patch of traffic, so I decided to go check out the Gwinnett County location of Book Nook. After phoning dramaqueer to determine exactly where the darn place was, I found enough stuff to keep me browsing for the better part of an hour, and left with some more Doonesbury HRW collections, and a lovely little National Lampoon paperback from the early 70s.



Thursday, ummm, I didn't do a hell of a lot. I slept and read, mainly. Then I went out and watched some hockey. I haven't gone to see the Gladiators in a really long time, and after several trips to Philips over the last couple of seasons, had quite forgotten how small and cozy the Arena at Gwinnett Center is! I had splendid seats in row D and a couple of thousand were on hand for a pretty good game against the Charlotte Checkers. The first period was pretty slow, with only one goal scored and pretty lackluster offence, but the fighting started in the second. Most memorably, Aaron Brocklehurst went after some fellow and succeeded in stripping him of his jersey before the brawlers were sent off the ice. Then all the scoring started in the third, and it was pretty exciting for a while as it looked like the Glads wanted to come back, but the final was 6-3.

Yesterday I worked 'til 1 and the place was completely crazy with families and tourists. Then I went over to my folks' and watched the Iron Bowl with my dad. That really was a blast. Bama generously spotted Auburn 14 points to start with, and spent the next couple of hours regretting it, since the Tigers' defense just had all their plans and schemes figured out. Bama finally spent the fourth quarter being evil and breaking Auburn's heart, but even my dad said he didn't want to watch another ten minutes of that; his heart couldn't take it.

It's been a good couple of days. I'm going up to Chattanooga to retrieve the girlchild this afternoon, and Marie's coming back tomorrow. Her cat's been a pathetic, whiny drama queen in her absence, so I sorta wish she'd hurry the heck up, because I'm really tired of listening to her moan. Whoever said that cats are independent, solitary creatures never met this beast, that's for sure.

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Be sure to take a few minutes to visit Elzie Crisler Segar Memorial Park. Pay your respects to one of the great storytellers of the 20th Century and his most famous creations.. a sailor who has brought joy to the young and the young at heart for seventy years. This bronze statue was sculpted by Robert L Walker. Perhaps you could leave a single spinach leaf at the base of the statue. (And buy someone a hamburger while you're in town.)

http://blog.newsarama.com/2009/11/27/qa-savage-dragon-155/

http://blog.newsarama.com/?p=13218

This week’s Savage Dragon #155 was an action-packed issue with a lot of craziness going on; the first part of “Dragon War” saw the first major conflict beginning to bubble to the surface between Darkworld’s Dragon and ours, as well as a battle between Dragon and a decidedly more Dragon-looking Cutthroat and Glowbug, which demonstrated pretty clearly that the Vicious Circle has gotten a lot closer to creating a clone of Dragon that doesn’t blow up right away. Creator Erik Larsen sat down with Blog@Newsarama to discuss the issue.

Blog@Newsarama: So, ahh, Kirkman recently talked about the sales boost that putting “Beware the Hunters!” and then a story part number on the front of his book had for The Walking Dead. Are all those floating dollar bills on the cover what you hope to get out of “Dragon War”?

Erik Larsen: The reasoning behind that is simply to help the audience know where a good place to jump onboard is. One of the tough things about a long-running book like Savage Dragon is readers don’t know when it’s a good place to give the book a try. I actually do a pretty reasonable job of making it accessible with any given issue–but this IS the start of a longer story so it made sense to point that out.

Oh–also–this wasn’t brought up but I should point it out. The cover was based on an older cover–from the 99¢ “The Dragon” series which reprinted the miniseries, expanded into five issues. And pages 9-11 were based on the opening sequence from the very first issue of the very first miniseries back in 1992. I thought it would be a kick to revisit those especially since this will be the last appearance of both Cutthroat and Glowbug. Art style’s changed a bit over the years, it seems.

Blog@: What are the odds that the Darkworld Dragon’s act of heroism was, without his even knowing it, exactly what Urass expected, and that the whole prison attack was a setup?

EL: Those odds are pretty good–especially considering the fact that, as Dread Knight, he commanded an army of robots. It was no coincidence.

Blog@: Where did they get some of Dragon’s blood for the transfusion, after how hard it’s been to come by lately? Or did they just get it from Kurr-Dragon at the Police Department?

EL: That’s a secret.

Blog@: Was it the transfusion of “our” Dragon’s blood that made Darkworld Dragon’s scars heal?

EL: Yes. Darkworld Dragon didn’t have Dragon’s healing powers. His powers had been negated previously. Now, for the first time, he will be at full strength.

Blog@: Is that the Dragon who’s in Kurr’s body, or Darkworld Dragon, who’s fighting Cutthroat on the next page after the parole hearing? He’s talking like Kurr-Dragon, but it comes right on the heels of Darkworld Dragon talking about “finding his niche” or whatever.

EL: It’s “our” Dragon. The star of the book.

Blog@: It’s interesting that, after all that time of having a corpse hanging around and insisting that his dad couldn’t possibly be dead, Malcolm is just now starting to decide that Dragon is really gone after they’ve successfully reanimated him. During the Dragon War, is it safe to say that he’ll be a bit of a wild card?

EL: That’s safe to say, yes. Malcolm is still young–and somewhat confused by what’s going on. He’s trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again and having one hell of a time doing it. Time to get more king’s horses, I’d say…

Blog@: So, ahh…the Golden Age Daredevil’s got a thing for the young blondes, huh?

EL: Or they have a thing for him. I like playing the Golden Age Daredevil as something of an innocent. I don’t imagine that he’s thinking about shagging this 15-year old girl. I imagine that he’s thinking she means they could fight crime together and that Malcolm was her crime-fighting partner before so this would be akin to Robin sneaking off to team up with Superman in his mind. He’s not thinking that she wants to be his girlfriend necessarily. Angel, on the other hand, is clearly smitten by DD.

Blog@: Again, Overlord is talking about ditching the Vicious Circle name. Clearly, though, he’s got a vision that’s already starting to take some shape. When all’s said and done, a bunch of Dragons fighting is a pretty appealing story idea—but will Overlord be the one really behind a lot of the conflict?

EL: Absolutely. Overlord is still running the show and calling the shots to some extent. Just because it’s a Dragon War–it doesn’t mean there won’t be others in the mix.

Blog@: And, simply because it feels like it would satisfy a kind of narrative within this issue…if you were in Vegas, would you rather put money on Darklord being dead along with his world, or being the new Overlord?

EL: Well, we did see his dead body, but given the multiple earths involved—I wouldn’t rule out much of anything. Still–Darklord was a guy who ruled a planet. It seems a bit beneath him to want to be a crime boss in Chicago.

Blog@: Alright…so the question that I asked earlier feels less stupid now that we’re seeing Darkworld Dragon actually IN a police uniform. But why does he immediately assume that they’re going to fight? There’s no chance the two can coexist?

EL: Darklord Dragon knows how their previous encounter ended–and he did go to Rex Dexter’s place with the purpose of confronting his doppelganger, so it’s safe to assume that he has a pretty decent idea where this might be headed. He does at least pay lip service to the idea of talking it out–even if he thinks that’s unlikely.

For those of you wondering just why I think Adam Lambert has an amazing career ahead of him, in spite of his AMA number, have a look at this performance from the 2009 American Idol tour.

And jeez, I may have judged his stage voice too prematurely. When he brings his A-game--shit. Watch how he simply owns this classic Led Zeppelin song.



Really, man--86 the dancers you've got on your payroll now. You don't need even one of them.
 

http://blog.newsarama.com/2009/11/27/global-freezing-strip-0035/

http://blog.newsarama.com/?p=13216

Find out more about Global Freezing here on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays or at ComicsByEgg.com.

2012, as you may have heard, is rumored to be the year for a disaster of epic proportions.

Maybe the Mayans were onto something, after all.

Just shoot me now and put me out of my misery.
 

No comic today, but I wanted to point out something I found online today. Hey You Guys! is a charity movie screening and silent auction benefitting DonorsChoose.org and they’re having an auction on Monday. If you are looking for something cool to hanging your wall this holiday season, there are some truly amazing pieces of 1980’s movie inspired artworkon offer... including this one from Superman II that made me geek and laugh when I saw it.



Now seems as good a time as any to mention my own DonorsChoose profile; At this festive season of the year, it is more than desirable to make some slight provision for the poor... and in many respects, that includes our nation’s public schools. I have three project currently awaiting funding: one to benefit my classroom’s small lending library, another that looks to expand that library’s insanely popular graphic novel selections, and a proposal for a digital camera to re-start our school’s lapsed student newspaper. A great way to support the comic is to donate to my classroom!