Random Thoughts

Local Blogger Gathering: If any of my readers are from Bothell, come to the Lyon's Den on Tuesday, July 6, at 7:00 for the first ever Bothell Blogger Bash.

Ah, Polite Dissent, that master of medicine and comic books. He's come up with two "can't miss 'em" entries. First off is the The Reading Habits of Cats, in which he matches his cats' reading habits to the reading habits of Lucy the Cat at Lexapropriate Ramblings. I must say, for the most part, Sammy and Molly have much more... um... intellectual reading habits than Lucy. Scott also comments on Decompression in comic books and has some very nice points to make about six-issue arcs and the lack of action in said arcs. I tend to think that if you can summarize a comic book easily in two sentences without leaving out any major plot point, the arc is going WAY too slow.

A hearty comics blogosphere welcome to The Comic Queen!

ICv2 posts comic book sales for May 2004. Aquaman is holding steady.

Newsarama weighs in on the CrossGen situation, and gets a list of creditors along with the filing. *sigh* It just drags on and on.

Slashdot is reporting that Hotmail is blocking Gmail. Interesting. Update: I just checked my Excite account, and it says they will be upgrading to 125 MB of free storage with a 10 MB limit on e-mails soon. Heh. Let the free e-mail wars begin! I have five e-mail addresses, three of which I check daily. I just checked my Yahoo account (which isn't one I normally check every day) and it's offering 100 MB free storage with 10 MB limit on e-mails. Now if I could only get Eskimo to offer 125 free megs, I could safely expand my website...

Neat little coverage of a nasty scam perpetrated through spam mail on people who are a little too paranoid.

A very cool explanation of Jizo Bodhisattva Statues in Japan. Not only did the statues play a major role in Lone Wolf and Cub, a statue made an appearance in one of the more awesome Usagi Yojimbo stories. The references make a bit more sense to me now, thanks to Sampo for the link.

Some of the students in Marysville School District are walking out (KING 5 News) claiming that "The teachers set the example so it's all right for them to be out here," said one mother. As long as they understand that there are consequences for their actions, as there were for the teachers, I don't have a problem with the kids walking out. I mean, if their summer is so important that they are willing to repeat a grade, more power to them. I hope they enjoy failing all their classes due to non-attendance. And if the mother who thinks it's ok for the kids to "strike" complains when her precious little brats fail their classes, well maybe she ought to go back to school herself. State law requires 180 days of school between two dates, it never once says school days can't happen in the summer.

Regarding Ray Bradbury's whining about Moore "using his title", Boing Boing has the best response I've seen yet. It's pointed out that Bradbury took the title of I Sing The Body Electric direct from a Walt Whitman poem. Shame! He should "give the title back" to Whitman! But that's not all, no! Something Wicked This Way Comes was lifted straight from Shakespeare! My goodness, Bradbury is as bad as Moore! But that's not all! Many more examples of Bradbury's shameless title stealing can be found here. Either Bradbury is pulling a "Moore" to get attention for upcoming reissues of Fahrenheit 451, or, if he's serious, he's a freaking hypocrite. I really hope it's the former, as it would be nice to see Moore hoist by his own petard.

CNN's coverage of the launch of SpaceShipOne was utterly useless. They kept showing file footage, then were so busy talking about other things during the actual lift-off that they didn't indicate it was live. I finally got smart and turned over to MSNBC and got actual coverage. I went back to CNN for the touchdown, though, as they had Bert Rutan there on camera. Michael Melvill is the first non-government sponsored astronaut. Here's a little coverage from space.com.