vermont cat circus

December 23rd, 2009

No animals were harmed in the making of this video, but one was moderately annoyed.

Dear “Mark”

December 20th, 2009

[All: Please forgive me for a brief blog-hijack, but if you are not our resident Troll, you should probably just skip the following. –Mentor]

Dear “Mark”:

Look, it’s like this: I don’t know what the problem is here, and I don’t really particularly care. But despite you’re having been quite active lately, it’s the holiday season, and I’m in jolly mood, so let’s proceed in that way.

First, I don’t know if your primary goal here is to annoy (or irritate or lecture) the regular readers of this blog. But the simple fact is that I’m reasonably good at what I do so and, as a result, virtually none of the readers here even see any of your “messages”.

On the other hand, if your goal is to annoy (or irritate or lecture) Alison Bechdel herself, then as you may have noticed she’s been pretty busy lately, and so far as I can tell she has not even been aware of any of the last couple dozen or so of your “messages”.

So that leaves just me as the only person who even sees your “messages”. And, to be clear, I don’t see the “message” long enough for any of the above to apply, i.e. only long enough to ensure that it is from you before I hit the delete link.

(In this last case you’ve actually made the work quite easy. As pointed out previously: 1) despite plenty of chances to the contrary you’re earned the unique honor of having *any* “message” banned from this site without further ado, something in all fairness I might point out that you’ve also managed to do on several other sites, as a quick Google search will demonstrate. And 2) on the chance that you ever do decide to seriously enter into the discussion here, it’s fully up to you to demonstrate that you’re capable of doing so in a remotely reasonable way. But a quick clue: The way to go about this is not to leave your messes around for someone, e.g. me, to clean up after.)

So my first seasonal gift here is to point out the obvious: “Mark”, whatever you’re trying to accomplish it’s just not working.

Second, so nearly as I can make out you seem to be working under the “notion” (again, both here and on other sites) that the only issue is with the content of your “messages”. That you are simply making reasonable points that, for some reason, the readers here “just don’t want to hear”.

Is it really possible that you don’t understand that the real issue is the name-calling, the obcenity, the insults, in short the ridiculous (for want of a better name) “tone” of your “messages?

So, my second seasonal gift here is to give you the benefit of the doubt; because I simply can’t believe that anyone can be that dense.

So in closing, I’ve really said all that can be said here. You’ll never hear from me again. But just look at things this way: Do you really have nothing better to do with your time?

However, if you really feel you must write these “messages”, here’s a bit of friendly advice: Go ahead and write it, but when you’ve finished just hit “Delete”. You’ll save everyone, including yourself, some work; and the final result will be the same.

Your pal,
Mentor

[We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog. –Mentor]

a great gift idea for the home office worker

December 18th, 2009

Ergonomic cat tray!

tips from grandma

December 15th, 2009

Today my friend Erin Bried’s book How To Sew A Button comes out.

She talked to grandmothers all over tarnation and compiled their very handy and wise instructions on how to do all sorts of things younger people either never learned, or forgot along the way. Making gravy, balancing your checkbook, how to waltz, all kinds of useful stuff. Check out the Nifty Button YouTube channel for delightful instructional videos shot by Erin’s girlfriend Holly Bemiss. My favorite is How To Fold A Fitted Sheet, a topological problem that has confounded me my whole life.

lists

December 12th, 2009

To my great delight and slight bewilderment, Fun Home has been making it onto all these best of the decade lists.

Salon: ten best nonfiction books of the decade.
Entertainment Weekly: Best Books of the Decade
The Onion AV Club: best comics of the ’00s
The London Times: top 100 books of the decade

My mom congratulated me on the Entertainment Weekly list, and said “You have a gay admirer there.” Most of the time I think like my mom–that I’ve managed to squeak into these things because of someone’s bias, or maybe even a clerical error. And god knows, lists are subjective and problematic undertakings. But you know what? I’m going to man up here and accept some credit. Maybe I’ll even start smoking a pipe.

Okay, “to man up.” Discuss.

Late breaking, 12/14: Jezebel.com’s 8 Awesome books by women published in the 00’s.

Modern power outage

December 10th, 2009

Power’s out, but look! I’m still blogging. Cooked breakfast on th’ woodstove, and have to flush the toilet with water fetched from the brook. But we still have internet access.

WAM! And McSweeney’s.

December 4th, 2009

Hey, do you know about Women, Action, and the Media? It’s an organization that puts on an annual conference about gender and media which is apparently pretty awesome. And right now they’re having an online fundraising auction. You can bid on some original DTWOF art (episode 242, “The Pill”) or all kinds of other stuff, like getting to hang backstage with the likes of Cyndi Lauper, Margaret Cho, and Lily Tomlin.

McSweeney’s, the groovy literary journal, is coming out this week with an issue called San Francisco Panorama, which is in newspaper format. Or something like that…I can’t really wrap my mind around it. It’s a very sprawling, ambitious project in celebration of the beauty of the broadsheet, with pull-out sections, and a magazine. But the best part of it, if you ask me, will be the 16 page full color comics section. I have a small piece in it. I guess it’ll be in bookstores, but you can also order it here.