vermont cat circus

December 23rd, 2009

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

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.

my möbius shirt

November 17th, 2009

No matter what I do to it, this shirt is always right-side out. I find this infinitely compelling.

It comes in particularly handy when one is experiencing frequent hot flashes. Just whip it off. And when you cool down again, it’s all ready to go, no fussy inversion to perform. With the handy V-neck, you don’t even have to take off your glasses. (N.B., the most interesting symptom of perimenopause so far seems to be an uncontrollable urge to talk about one’s symptoms constantly, to everyone, whether or not they’re interested, which they’re pretty much not.)

Mo punkin

November 1st, 2009

Lookit this cool pumpkin carved by faithful readers Rebecca and Sarah of Charlottesville, VA! They based it on Mo’s face in the episode where Harriet brings home a VCR.

notebook

October 28th, 2009

Check out this wild Dutch animator’s video! As someone who spends half my life drawing and half my life on the computer, I found it oddly, deeply satisfying. Here’s her website.

down to th’ wire in Maine

October 28th, 2009

Marriage equality is up for grabs in Maine’s election on Tuesday. Anyone from anywhere can help make phone calls this weekend, if you have a couple free hours.

You can also donate here to No On 1: Protect Maine Equality, and see a short, sweet, moving tv ad of a Catholic mom talking about her gay son’s family.