Archive for April, 2007
April 30th, 2007
I’m at the airport again, delayed again, on my way to Pittsburgh. As I while away the time, I thought I’d show you this sticker on the wall next to me, in fortuitous juxtaposition with a sign fragment.
I spent a long, long time yesterday pondering the question “what is the purpose of this blog.” My answer is turning into a treatise, and it’s still not finished. But it occurs to me now that one purpose of the blog, for me anyway, is that it’s a place to put things like this photograph. Things which are kind of interesting in the moment, but beyond that, have absolutely no lasting value. It could be argued that I should not waste my time or yours on such matters. But I’m delayed at the airport. What’s your excuse? And more importantly, speaking of time, can you identify the source of that quotation?
April 27th, 2007
1. My visit to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh has been rescheduled for this Monday, the 30th, at 7pm.
2. Fun Home was nominated for two Eisner awards. One in the “Best Graphic Album-New” category, and one in “Best Reality-Based Work” (Ellen Forney’s I Love Led Zeppelin and Brian Fies’ Mom’s Cancer are also up for this). The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards are big deal in the comics world, so I’m very happy about that.
3. I know there’s something deeply wrong about putting my amateurish home movies up on the blog, and I’m sure I’ll regret it one day, but just now I can’t seem to stop myself. I’m thinking that if I just give in to the urge, I’ll get it out of my system. Just like how I stopped posting PhotoBooth pictures of myself. (Well, slowed down, anyway) So here’s a short film I shot of the wildflowers in my woods this afternoon. After I made it I learned that the kind of trillium pictured is trillium erectum, and now the whole movie kind of looks like wildflower porn to me.
April 26th, 2007
Ensie of Tacoma, WA, won the hiney contest. Here are her exceedingly correct and contextual answers:
1. Sydney – Sense and Sensuality (Hot, Throbbing Dykes to Watch Out For), about to do Mo with the “Cyborgasm”.
2. Stuart (Flow State – Post-Dykes to Watch Out For ) in bed with Sparrow, asking, “What’s Wrong?” and stressing over her previous female lovers.
3. Sydney (Polyamorous Perversity – Post-Dykes to Watch Out For) dressing quickly to get to the hospital with Mo when Harriet unexpectedly goes into labor.
4. Raffi – (Pajama Party – Hot Throbbing Dykes to Watch Out For) streaking away from a bath after lubing himself up while being babysat.
5. Mo (Buffed – Unnatural Dykes to Watch Out For) in the locker room, about to meet Deirdre’s Mom in the buff!
Thank you for playing, Ensie and everyone else. Oh, and Nichael! Thanks for the link to the Comics Journal cover. I hadn’t seen it yet. How very apropos.
April 25th, 2007
You’ve been going on about asses and tchotchkes, so here. The first person who can correctly identify the DTWOF character to whom each of these sets of hindquarters belongs will get a bunch of old leftover DTWOF tchotchkes from my basement. (click image to enlarge.) Wait. You have to not just name the character, but provide the context (since there’s never any gratuitous nudity in my cartoons).
Yeah, so some are easier than others. Email your answers to Katie. The winner gets the last Gossip mouse pad (see below), plus however much other crap I can jam into a priority mail box—buttons and bumperstickers and whatnot. Have you noticed how everyone’s saying “whatnot” lately? It seems to have become the new verbal filler, like “like” or “nome sane?” It’s a strangely archaic word for people to fixate on. Nome sane?
April 25th, 2007
Man. I don’t even know where to start. I’ve been working on a post about the blog for days, and it’s about 12 pages long and completely disjointed. But before I get to that, I have to make an announcement. I’ve made the very difficult decision to temporarily cut back to one new Dykes to Watch Out For episode every four weeks, instead of every two weeks. I’ll be interspersing these new Read the rest of this entry »
April 20th, 2007
Speaking of off topic, here’s a movie I made today–well, now it’s yesterday already, which sort of takes some of the pungency away–of the phoebes who return every year to nest at my house. They usually get here around April 9 or so, but it’s been so wintry, they weren’t showing up and I was growing quite anxious. They arrived at last on Wednesday. Today, Thursday, was a stunning bright blue spring day. You can’t actually see the phoebes in the video because I wasn’t patient enough. But you can hear them. You can also hear the brook rushing. I stole this photo off the Cornell bird site, which is normally really great but seems to have been under construction for a while now.
Today was such a nice day, in fact, that I couldn’t think about blogsistentialism at all.
April 16th, 2007
Here I am shoveling through a wall of wet snow at an ugodly hour this morning so I could drive to the airport and NOT fly to Pittsburgh. My flight from Burlington was delayed so long that I wasn’t going to get there in time to speak tonight, if at all. So I came home.
We’re going to reschedule my visit to Carnegie Mellon for some time in the next month–I’ll keep you posted.
I haven’t been ignoring the recent flap here about my Open Thread idea. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I’m still working on a coherent response, and will post it soon. In one way, there’s not a lot to say. It was a flawed solution to an ill-defined problem. Many commenters had a strong reaction against it. It’s gone.
But reading your ensuing discussion about the nature of blogs and online communities, I realized that I’ve never had a very clear idea about the purpose of this one, or what my relationship is to it. That’s what I’m trying to formulate.
April 14th, 2007
In case you’re in the neighborhood, I’m speaking at Carnegie Mellon on Monday night. If I get there. I keep hearing about a Nor’easter that’s supposed to hit Sunday and Monday. I don’t know what will happen if my flight is cancelled. Will they postpone my gig or just forget about it?
April 13th, 2007
Hey, go buy some books from Women and Children First and help one of the last women’s bookstores in the country to stay open. Here’s Linda and Ann, the owners. How can you resist? Here’s an article about how the store’s struggling and needs more support. They have a good website, I just ordered a couple books I’ve been wanting.
April 12th, 2007
Talk about flinging a rodent into the cat show. (Thank you for that image, ladiesbane.) I’m very, very sorry to have upset anyone with my misguided attempt to corral the conversation. Let’s just consider the Open Thread a failed experiment, shall we? So far all I seem to have accomplished is to double the number of comments. I just made my way through the 63 on “clustr,” and can’t yet bring myself to look at the 84 on the Open Thread. I’m going to go out for a ski to brace myself. Later, I will compose a formal response.
