It is too easy to blog. It is too easy to set up multiple blogs. It is too easy to mirror your content across several blogging platforms at once. It is too easy to add widgets and themes and plug-ins and ads and feeds and mobile connectivity and galleries and on and on and on.

These days I have a livejournal, a wordpress.com account, a blogger account, a vox account, a myspace account and a facebook account. To the last account, the same posts that appear in the first three accounts upload to the notes and Mirrorblog sections. If I could figure out how to do the same with vox and myspace (and I am sure there is a way) the same content would populate all six blogs.

Why am I doing this? Well, partly I am experimenting. I have been noodling around with blogging platforms to see which ones I like best, what strengths and weaknesses each application has, what I feel most comfortable working with, and what offers me the most features. Also, the brilliant Rory Bowman has generously provided space on his server to play with Movable Type, the first blogging application I had ever played with back in the days of the now defunct blargblog.

It is probably no surprise that I am going with Wordpress. Over the next month, in fact, I will be using it to design three different websites: Mooretoons, In Contempt, and Wanderlost. For the latter two I will be using the Comicpress theme, modified to my special needs and with some help from Barry Deutsch, who has done an excellent job at Hereville. Movable Type is a wonderful application, but the learning curve is just too high and time is just too precious in my work/parenting/creating schedule.

The roll-out is going to be about a month. So I am not changing much visibly yet. The only thing noticeable will be the absence of Wanderlost updates until June 12, 2008. I hate to do it, but I need the time to develop these sites and write the next story. I don't wanna hack the artwork, or put up a shoddy story - or shoddy websites for that matter. The end result is going to be a Wanderlost site with its own domain name (wanderlostcomics.com, not sheldonthepig.com) and with a workable, feature-rich site.

It's gonna be so freakin' boss, duuuude, ya gotta believe me!

As for facebook, livejournal, etc. - yeah, I'm keeping all that. I use facebook for totally different reasons these days (like my scrabulous addiction), I love my livejournal fwends, and myspace is a necessary evil.

Like I said, it is way too easy to do these things.

Click the image above to see the full cartoon.

More than likely you are familiar with the old song by Donovan - "The Mountain Song", in fact - that puts to music an old Zen saying about the impermanence of states of being. And if you're really hip, you have grooved to the 20 million year long instrumental adaptation by the Allman Brothers off their classic "Eat a Peach."

I am not the first to connect this Buddhist concept to environmental damage caused by mountain removal. Although I just discovered this post after doing this cartoon, Kristine at Outdoor Bloggers does a nice job of tying together the environmental, cultural and metaphorical aspects.

So, hey, happy belated earth day. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Oh, and: Sorry for no update on Tuesday. Life happened at me.

Click the image to see the full cartoon.

Click the image to see the full cartoon.

Click to see the full cartoon while it's still relevant!

Click the image to see the full cartoon.

If you think you have seen this image before, you are almost correct. The cartoon for January 4, 2008 used a similar image, only to a totally different effect. I hope this doesn't incur the wrath of the Bad Cartoonist. Although the attention would be nice.

Also, I seem to have drawn Hillary a bit chubbier than I usually render her. I think it's the bulky effect of the high collar pant suit I put her in (based on what seems a trend in her recent choice of pant suits) and how her neck comes out of the collar. But then Obama's head is HUGE. It threatens to break that pencil neck I gave him. Well...at least they are recognizable.

Lastly, anyone think I should start coloring this thing? I've been toying with the idea. It may mean keeping only a once a week schedule, but it would be a more Web-attractive cartoon. What think ye, O Hive Mind?

The splint and the exercises and the rest and the using my left hand more often (hey, now!) are finally beginning to pay off. Last night I was able to draw a full page of Wanderlost without any pain. I'm still taking it easy, so the page won't appear until tomorrow. But it will be in full color.

And in the spirit of going easy on my hand, I will be posting one In Contempt strip on Thursdays for the next month. If the wrist and hand continue to improve, I'll start doing Tuesday installments, too. But I'm not going to push it. I'd rather cartoon gradually throughout my life than, well, not at all.

Thanks to everyone for their advice and good wishes.

A new cartoon will appear next week Tuesday. Honest. The hand and arm no longer tingle, feel numb nor sore. Monday's Wanderlost (aka Sheldon) will likely appear in B&W.

And now: McCain. I don't feel the salient issue of the NY Times piece is his alleged affair with telecomm lobbyist Vicki Iseman. For one thing, I don't think it coheres with McCain's persona - i.e., it doesn't "sound" or "feel" right. For another, it seems pretty sexist to assume that an attractive young blond woman has only ONE purpose for meeting with the Senator behind closed doors. After all, isn't bribery sufficient enough to lock the door?

No, I'd say the problem is the less sensationalist, yet more important appearance of a conflict of interest. The Washington Post summarizes the problem nicely:

In the years that McCain chaired the commerce committee, Iseman lobbied for Lowell W. "Bud" Paxson, the head of what used to be Paxson Communications, now Ion Media Networks, and was involved in a successful lobbying campaign to persuade McCain and other members of Congress to send letters to the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of Paxson.

In late 1999, McCain wrote two letters to the FCC urging a vote on the sale to Paxson of a Pittsburgh television station. The sale had been highly contentious in Pittsburgh and involved a multipronged lobbying effort among the parties to the deal.

At the time he sent the first letter, McCain had flown on Paxson's corporate jet four times to appear at campaign events and had received $20,000 in campaign donations from Paxson and its law firm. The second letter came on Dec. 10, a day after the company's jet ferried him to a Florida fundraiser that was held aboard a yacht in West Palm Beach.

Thanks to arcana_j  for sending me the CTS exercises. They have already begun to help. I am giving my hand another day's rest, so no toon today. But I plan to have a cartoon on Thursday.

Meanwhile, what is not to like about this headline from Science Daily?
Giant Frog Jumps Continents, May Have Eaten Baby Dinosaurs

Or this illustration of "Beelzebufo or 'the frog from Hell'":