Stephen Bezruchka on the causes of American societal ills. Originally heard (in part) on KPFA. 

Angela Melick, the cartoonist behind the online dairy / general silliness comic Wasted Life, has posted a positive review of Hereville.

The author, Barry, was my across-the-way neighbor at Stumptown. Hereville is “Easily in the top 3 comics about troll-fighting orthodox Jewish girls”. But in all sincerity, the book is awesome. I mean, awesome in such a way that I wanted to read it slowly so that I could spend more time reading it… you know? I was genuinely excited for the plot to advance!

The story is the epitome of a fairy tale… except that at every single place where Barry has the opportunity to do something cliche, he surprises you. The plot is so tight, that it’s really a delight to read.

Hereville is painted in a limited pallete of henna-tones that really comes to life in print.

Thanks, Angela!

I barely talked to Angela at Stumptown, because twenty feet of space separated our tables, but we spent the entire two days facing each other and every once in a while we’d wave. :-)

It’s always nice to get positive feedback — but it’s doubly nice coming from other cartoonists. Please check Angela’s comic strip out.

Originally published at hereville.com. You can comment here or there.

Biked 30 blocks yesterday on my new Nerd-Trike, and had a blast - about a dozen people smiled and gave me thumbs-up while I rolled past them with by gut and man-tits bouncing all over the place. How I've gone this long without putting an A-OOGAH! horn on that thing, I have no idea.

That said, the muscles in my legs nearly imploded while I was hanging with Anne a few hours later, which is a good sign that, yanno, I actually got a workout for once. GO TEAM BILL!

Unfortunately, I then woke up at 2am with one hell of a toothache that kept me up half the night (I didn't fall back to sleep until I'd downed a bunch of Benadryl while playing The World Ends With You for an hour), so it looks like I'm gonna have to find some kind of awesome/cheap "YOU AINT GOT NO INSURANCE? THAT'S COOL!"-type of dentist sometime soon here in Portland. BLAH.

And, oh yeah. I almost forgot.



New Battlestar Galactisimpsons (the original set is here). I'll have 4x6 prints of almost all of them for sale at Emerald City this weekend. Where Jamie "Apollo" Bamber will be.

I'm so sorry, Jamie.

So very, very sorry.

There are two more, but they're a bit spoiler-y for this season. So you've been warned!

And by the way, I'm now three weeks behind on episodes, so keep your plot-current comments TO YOURSELVES, for the love of the one true Cylon god!

( Tory and Anders below the cut. )

I've been enjoying everybody's self-portraits as teenagers and as their current selves (although really, I would not mind seeing more of them from people who were teenagers more than five years ago).

So I finally did one.



Mine was actually pretty tricky, since I have always been a relatively self-consistent little Martian. I asked Bill what has changed about me, and his comment was (after a long pause) "...you wear more earth tones now."

( full size behind the cut )

http://www.unshelved.com/archive.aspx?strip=20080509

archive | primer | blog | purchase print | send to a friend

http://www.unshelved.com/archive.aspx?strip=20080508

archive | primer | blog | purchase print | send to a friend

In the Minimum Security comic from 5/8, Bananabelle isn't attracted to slimy. Click on the fragment below for the full cartoon at comics.com:



In the Minimum Security comic from 5/9, Kranti likes green:



The more you click on my cartoons at comics.com, the better the chances they'll appear in daily city papers, possibly starting in the fall of 2008. If you like Minimum Security, please see a new cartoon each weekday!

Anybody have a Secret Power that could get me in a position to have a picture taken with Jemaine at Sunday's Flight of the Conchords show in Milwaukee? There's be much Dork Tower goodness in it for you, if you can help Make This Happen.

It's be a hoot.



Separated at birth. Well, birth plus ten years...

The Army of Dorkness has accomplished many amazing things over the years. This would be a rare feat, indeed.

***

It was a week of repeats on DorkTower.com, due in no small part to lots of large things going on, both in Real Life and Work Life.


Here's today's strip:



Happy Anniversary, honey!

And here's Monday's strip.

And Wednesday's strip.

This is my favorite song right now. It just resonates so perfectly inside my ribcage. Even this relatively joyful street performance, still gets me choked up.

Well it's been a long time, long time now
Since I've seen you smile
And I'll gamble away my fright
And I'll gamble away my time
And in a year, a year or so
This will slip into the sea
Well it's been a long time, long time now
Since I've seen you smile

Nobody raise your voices
Just another night to Nantes
Nobody raise their voices
Just another night to Nantes

You can hear the regular version here.

http://www.comics.com//comics/getfuzzy/archive/getfuzzy-20080509.html

http://www.catandgirl.com/view.php?loc=599

bruceb pointed me to this absolutely amazing discussion of spontaneous play between carnivores of very different species, which is lovely and wonderful, and well worth viewing. In any case, I'm reminded of the discussions of cooperation instead of aggression that I linked to in this post. One of the inherent blinders we having in this culture is the idea that conflict and aggression are in some way more natural or expected than cooperation or play. I think that some part our bias in this direction comes from a combination of the inherent assumptions of conflict built into capitalism and the fact that modern Western culture as a whole was designed around the ideology of conquest.

However, in my lifetime, as I've discussed somewhat here and in the various links, I've seen belief of the primacy and unavoidability of violence and aggression become far more common that it was 30-40 years ago. I'm fairly certain that this change is largely due to a mixture of deliberate fear-mongering and non-deliberate marketing decisions made by a largely right-wing controlled mass media. In any case, regardless of the reasons, these biases often blind us to the fact that violence and aggression are only one of many equally natural responses. I very much look forward to our culture overcoming the negativity and associated cynicism of the last 30 years.

Did you think I forgot about the list of 20 comics to make? This one is on it. Except this comic is so silly, it is so silly oh god.

Here, learn something, I am of no use to anybody.

AND A POLL! I told Mimi I'd do a poll on Harvey Keitel's sexy rating among my readers, and lo and behold, I did! (and yes, I am moving back to Massachusetts, bizarrely enough.)

Poll #1185008 Harvey Keitel's Hotness
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

MEN: Harvey Keitel,

WOMEN: Harvey Keitel,

Congrats to comfort guide contributor porkshanks who totally got written up in the New York Times' Steampunk Fashion article.

Now if only those old media shitheads could figure out what a hyperlink is so they could send some traffic to her etsy storefront, where you will find the most superlative of hand-fashioned reclaimed brass.

How awesome is porkshanks's stuff? I must tell a story.

Last Novemberish I'd settled on commissioning something from her for V's xmas gift.

She and I had dinner together and talked about what to do, and I said 'how about something squidlike?" and she said she had some ideas and sketched some out, and it was good.

Then, like twenty-four hours later, she emails and says that she's not gonna do a squidly idea, she's going to do something else that she knows V will like. And I have a lot of confidence in her, so I say, sure, go nuts!

A few weeks later, the piece is done and porkshanks comes to my birthday party. She's the first guest to arrive. V grabs her and drags her to the computer so that she can show V her portfolio.

The piece that V likes best is the one that porkshanks made especially for her. At that moment, the piece was in her cool steampunk travel bag, waiting to be handed over to me.

And! not only did she figure out the exact piece that would make V happy and then execute it, but she also covered totally gracefully when V saw that it had no price on her portfolio and asked how much for it.

"uh, it's a commission," she said. "A unique commission."