Just wanted to say that my bookie is now carried by a few more stores! They won't have stock 'til next week, but still! The stores are the following:

The Outer Limits, 437 Moody Street, Waltham, Massachusetts, Phone: 781-891-0444

Atlantis Fantasyworld, 1020 Cedar Street, Santa Cruz, California, Phone: 831-426-0158

Dragon's Lair Comics & Games, 6111 Burnet Road, Austin, Texas, Phone: 512-454-2399

As I mentioned, these stores are supporting me and I'm going to do what I can do support them right back. If you know someone who might be keen on my bookie and lives nearby one of these stores, give 'em a gentle nudge for me, ok?

Thanks!

Von

http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp11102009.shtml

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If there are any problems with the comic or website, or if you have any questions, comments, or complaints you would like to address directly to Randy, please email him at choochoobear@gmail.com.

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

If you feel like trying to convince me to vote for your preferred candidate in the upcoming primary for the special election for MA Senate, consider this your invitation.

Saletan on Slate has a decently written article making the case that when health care becomes a public good, it becomes a chip that can be traded away in the usual political poker game. He raises this in the context of abortion and the Stupak amendment, but of course it's equally true in other areas. As he put it: "When you throw in your lot with other people and agree to play by the same rules, you surrender some of your freedom and risk losing some of your options."

My primary objection to Saletan here is that he makes it sound like abortion rights becoming a political poker chip, and the loss of coverage options, wouldn't have happened if it weren't for health-care reform... and the poor foolish liberals who supported that reform just failed to understand that from the beginning.

The thing is, abortion rights have always been part of the political poker game, regardless of how health insurance is paid for. For the last couple of decades the pro-choice folks have held the stronger hand. Pelosi traded some of that hand away in exchange for House votes on the issue of the day; we're upset about that and mobilizing to get it back. It's not the first time that's happened; it won't be the last. Saletan's risible implication that this is some kind of new development just ain't true.

And the loss of coverage options when the insured "throw in [their] lot with other people and agree to play by the same rules" isn't a new development, either. Insurance is always a communal enterprise, and as Saletan says, that means we surrender some freedom and risk being denied options (that is, coverage) that we value (that is, require in order to maintain our health and/or lives). That was true last year. It's true now. It will be true next year. What's changing is that a lot of Americans trust the insurance corporations that manage those tradeoffs even less than they trust the government, and consequently want a government-managed insurance option in addition to the corporate-managed ones.

I understand that a committed free-market proponent takes as an article of faith believes that however lousy and unresponsive private corporations may be at providing health care, the government will necessarily be worse. OK, fine. I'm not that committed a free-market proponent, personally... I think the market does a better job than the government at producing institutions that make profits, but not necessarily at producing institutions that provide health care (or enforce laws, or defend the nation, or...). I approve of the former, but the latter also seems worth doing.

[Yes, I watch a lot of television these days.]

This is old at this point, and I've seen it before, but I threw it on to occupy my attention while I was eating breakfast, and hit this quote again.

"Who would you rather see in wet clothes: girls or fat boys?"

Fuck you. On many, many levels, I find this appalling. To name just a few:

• They're not pulling off their shirts and jumping into the pool to give you a good show, they're doing so because they'll find it fun to do so.

• By saying this, you're supporting the idea that women should do things like this in order to give other people a show. That is, you're encouraging the cultural objectification of female bodies.

• By saying this, you support the idea that male bodies are something to be ashamed of, never to be displayed in public.

• By saying this, you support the idea that fat bodies are something to be ashamed of, never to be displayed in public.

I'm sure other people have already discussed this to death, as it was months ago, but it bugged me today and I wanted to take a minute to rant. Not that this is the only incredibly inappropriate moment even in that one episode ["Purty" comes to mind. Seriously? You can't be bothered to learn her name?]

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Originally posted at http://marcmagus.dreamwidth.org/118835.html. ( comment[s]|comment there)

The truly bizarre things I find there -- my brain has just broken. Did the Lawrence Welk singers even know what the word "toke" meant?

Spark one up, everybody...

November 12
Actor's Day
Birth of Bahaullah
Chicken Soup for the Soul Day
*Epulum Jovis-Festival of Jupiter (Ancient Rome)
Exotic Dancer's Day
Feronia (Roman Festival for Juno, Minerva & Jupiter)
Fortuna Redux
*Hollantide
I Need A Patch for That Day
Indian Pudding Day, National
Indian Summer Festival
*Leonids meteor showers (Nov 12 - 23 annually)
Old Teutonic Yule Festival - Old Samhain
Order of Fools
Paracelsus' birthday
*Pizza (but no Anchovies) Day
*Proerosia
Runic half-month of Hagal ends, Runic half-month of Nyd begins
Sheik Day
Tooth Collection Days begin (Fairy)

St. Homobonus' Day (garment workers)
St. Stanislaus Kostka's Day, (doubt, palpitations)
St. Diego Alacala's Day (cooks)
St. Brice's Day (stomach diseases)
St. Emillion's Day (patron of Spain, finding lost objects)
St. Frances Xavier Cabrini (patron of hospital administrators)
St. Lebuin's Day (patron of the dying)
St Michael's Day for the Nile (Egypt)
( more on the starred holidays )

original French lyrics, s'il vous plaît.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/11/murder-re-enacted.html

The Graveyard Book just won a literary award, which never gets old, and this one came with a medal, and also with a cheque. I thought, Hm. I have to get myself something with the cheque and I have to do it immediately, otherwise it will simply vanish into the day to day bank account of life, and I will never look at anything and go "Ah, that is the thing I got with my Graveyard Book Award."

So the guy who I think made the worst decisions over the course of the final table won it all. This isn't to say he played badly, just that I think others played better, sometimes by quite a bit.

• 12:01 I consider chickens wandering around to be a good sign when i go to a new herb shop. #
• 12:53 And I was not wrong! Always amazing to find a great herb shop/medicinal herb farm. #

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A group of conservative Christians want Muslims barred from serving in the U.S. Military, all too excited to use the recent tragedy to promote their own hate of the "other guys."

Yeah, that's a great idea. We should totally use the murderous few in a group as reasons to discriminate against the rest who've done nothing wrong. That won't bite Christians in the ass at all.

Separation of Church and State, all men created equal, etc.

(edit) I guess this is something moderate Christians and Muslims can use for a dialogue to get to know each other. "How I handle my religion's crazy assholes who need to shut up."

November 11th
Air Day
* Armistice Day- Veterans Day- National Death/Duty Day-Original Poppy Day-
- Day of the Heros-Feast of the Einherjar
*Chalkeia- greeky
*Dionysus, Feast of
Education Day
* Martinmas
*Old November Day
Swedish Meatball Day
Sundae Day, National
Tear-Stomach Day
*Vinalia
Vox Populi Day
Wish-Spoiling Sports Day (Imps, Gremlins, and grumpy Goblins)

*St. Martin's Day-patron of wine growers, beggars and tavern keepers, & geese
*St. Menas of Egypt's Day (patron of caravans, merchants)
St. Theodore of Studios' Day

( more on Martinmas )
( more on the starred holidays )

( Veterans Day stuff )

Been a little while since I posted so here ya be.



( More After the Cut! )

Von

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/11/half-lifetime.html

The editor at CBS Sunday Morning asked if I had any photos of my son Mike back at the period when I first had the idea for The Graveyard Book - late 1985. I looked. We really didn't have any. I wandered next door and asked Mary (his mum, my former wife and for these last five years my friend and next-door neighbour) if she had any photos from back then. "No," she said. Then, "Do you mean those transparencies? I have them in an envelope somewhere." She vanished and came back with a large manila envelope from a long time ago. "Here."

Half a lifetime ago -- literally -- I was nearly 25, and working for magazines. Henry Fikret, who photographed a lot of the interviews I did, volunteered to take some photos of me and my family, and he did.A week later the envelope arrived, and I realised that everything he shot was on colour transparencies -- like huge slides -- and I was never sure what do with them, other than being fairly sure I couldn't take them down to Boots the Chemist and have prints knocked out. So they stayed in their envelope, and they kept their secrets, and were forgotten.

Yesterday I had the transparencies scanned, and finally got to see lots of pictures I had never actually seen before of Holly as a baby, Mike at the time that I would have watched him riding his tricycle around the graveyard, and me... at exactly half my age: A young journalist who had sold a very small handful of short stories and two non-fiction books, with dreams of writing fiction and comics. At the time I was dressing in grey, but was getting tired of the way that you would buy something grey and take it home and discover that it was a blueish grey or a brownish grey, and wondering if I'd have the same problem if I just started to dress in black.

And half a lifetime on, it seemed like it might be good to put one up here. I checked, and Mary didn't mind. What odd clothes we wore back then. What big glasses. And look, my hair is practically normal.





So long ago, and it went like the blink of an eye.