or at least laugh. Warren Ellis laughing is probably scarier.

See, Warren wanted to make a forum for promoting his own and other non-superhero comics work. So he (and several others) created The Engine. It was all set up and ready to go, so Warren issues a release on his email list and wanders off to the pub. Within the time it took to get to the pub, the forum was overloaded, despite some gigs of bandwidth and a supposedly (I don’t know, never used and hate the interface) sturdy forum package. and Warren finds this funny. heh.

A post of mine on metafilter.

It’s like nothing America has seen, and it could have been worse. The response of some of the people left behind The government response was terrible on a local, state, and federal level.

Having been born and spent some time in New Orleans (NOT Nola, ok), I got mixed emotions. Yeah, there was rich culture to the city, but the poverty, corruption and segration was too much. As a kid, it was always a distant place we traveled to for visiting relatives, which wasn’t always fun. As an adult, it was place I traveled to alone to bury relatives. There hasn’t been anyone left for me to personally bury, but now there’s lots of people that need burying and saving. The scope of it all is overwhelming and most of us aren’t even THERE.

Links about Katrina:
The Times-Picayune in New Orleans
Surviving New Orleans to keep your internet company running

flickr stream

AP zoomable photo of New Orleans

Images from Getty

Washington Post photos

Wikkipedia entry on Katrina

Timeline of Fema funding under Bush Administration

Technorati tags for Katrina

Full story of the image and the people who don’t like it here. So much for that gay porn video.

Not a bad, just a I’m-off-but-have-to-do-all-these-things-I-don’t-want-to-do. Responsibilities and what not. Did manage to join a fingerprint database though. It bothers me, but it’s more a philosophical bother: it’s so fucking stupid. Since I know my fingerprints are in the database, I know to be extra cautious when robbing that bank i.e. the smart people (the ones really motivated to beat the system) will find a way around this, as they always do.

I wonder how many databases my prints will eventually get into. Where they’ll go, what sort of crimes they’ll be cross checked for: high profile or baffling murders or that car ring that the cops just can’t crack. Naturally, I’m looking at this personally, but these searchs won’t be, it’s just a search.

No, I could not have gotten my license renewed if didn’t give them a fingerprint. I thought briefly of refusing, but then I couldn’t legally drive in the US. Which is kinda tempting at times, but that’s the point. The government put people over the barrel and most of us recognized the pratical aspects, said “fuck it” and went about our day. Nothing really changed when giving the fingerprints, I’m not suddenly a government guinea pig as they test new drugs, there are no men in suits watching over me, but, but, but….It feels wrong, like taking a brick from the wall and putting it in the road to hell.

Do I own my fingerprint? DNA? If so, how and when do I lose the right to it?

Why the American comic book industry is going to hell. and this too. Where’s a magic sterilizing wand when you need it?

The other reason is that people can find what they want. Case in point, my wife: She’s not a big fan of comics, but she doesn’t hate them either. Just never got intook, which is fine. But for some reason, she got interested in monthly comic book called “Girls”. No idea why she got into it, since it seemed to be all the stuff she disliked about comics, but she called it good fluff, and who couldn’t use some fluff every now and then. By sheer luck, the first 3 issues were in the store which she quickly read. Then she got annoyed that the4th issue wasn’t available and wouldn’t be for several weeks, in July. She felt gyped. So in July, we checked out at the video/comic book store where we got the first three issues. We never found the fourth issue. NEVER. I suggested she ask for it and she shrugged her shoulders, saying it wasn’t that important. She lost interest and moved on because it wasn’t worth her wild to hunt down a comic, when there were so many other forms of entertainment in easy reach. Can’t blame, you shouldn’t have to go hunting for people when you want to give them money. Even though I AM into comics, I’m not a collector, needing to get every issue. In fact, I hate monthly issues, preferring Graphic Novels which give me a chunk of reading that resolves itself when I’m done. No hunting down back issues, side issues or cross over issues. Just a (hopefully) good story at a good price.

On the upside, there’s plenty of reasons signs that comics aren’t going to hell.

Bathed in gold we’d plug into some kind of power
and connect with those days back before all of this went sour
-Cowboy Junkies, Come Calling from the CD Lay it Down


Soft dawn light is wandering into the bedroom, drifting from orange to yellow and back again. The ceiling fan pours and occasionally Lisa rustles in her sleep, but everything else seems etched in space, captured by some master artist. I was going to say something snarky about commercials in movies or the hate for our ghetto space shuttle, but it would destroy the mood. It’s early Saturday morning and the living is easy.

PS- no, theres nothing sour between Lisa and me, but the soft mood of the song fits the morning.

The real Batman lets the ladies know who’s boss.

South Koreans first to clone dog. Will this make Korean restaurants cheaper?

For those riding the London subway:
http://anextraordinarymachine.blogspot.com/2005/07/scary-notice.html