A tip of the hat.

I just wanted to take the time out to mention and point people over to Vince Musacchia’s wonderful blog Soup2Nutz. I had the pleasure of meeting Vince many, many years ago. He still lived on the east coast and I got to spend a wonderful afternoon seeing his studio. Afterwards we were treated to the delicious fare at a small neighborhood Italian restaurant that was a throwback to another era.



Vince has what can best be described as ‘chops’ (meaning he can draw like all get out) and he’s versatile in that he can work in many different mediums and different styles (managing all with a high level of skill). Don’t take my word for it though, take a short trip over to his blog and see for yourself, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

New member of the family.



Just arrived today, mine looks a little different - pictures to come.

Another flick I’m eagerly anticipating:



Go ahead, I dare you to watch the trailer and not get excited by it! Damn, I am so envious of J.J. Abrams.

Getting rid of the junkie.

Today OPEC announced they were increasing production of oil by as much as 500,000 barrels a day.

So, that’s a good thing, no?

I mean if there is more of anything on the market, well it weakens the market and the price should go down, right?

Crude oil for October delivery climbed as high as $79.80 a barrel in regular trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That’s the highest level a front-month contract has ever reached on the exchange. The previous record was $78.70 from the regular trading session on Aug. 1.

See, there’s this great shell game going on and until enough people get pissed off about it, things are only going to get worse.

Tight global energy supplies are expected to keep energy prices high through 2008, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the Energy Department’s reporting arm, said Tuesday in a monthly report.

On Nymex, October reformulated gasoline closed up 0.25 cent at $1.9811 a gallon. October heating oil closed at $2.1827 a gallon, adding 1.11 cents.

People who don’t own cars think they’ll avoid getting hit by this but they couldn’t be more wrong because goods are shipped around the country and if it costs more to ship them you can be assured that the increase will be passed along to the consumer as well.

Plus, people always seem to forget about plastic.

...For this and many other uses, the oil needs to be separated into parts and refined before use in fuels and lubricants, and before some of the byproducts could be used in petrochemical processes to form materials such as plastics, and foams.

Petrochemicals are used to make plastic. Look around you, use any plastic?

Plastic is ubiquitous, it’s everywhere! Whether it’s garbage bags or toys or juice containers, plastic is all around us. If the price of oil goes up don’t you think the price of making plastic goes up too? Think companies will just eat those added costs?

Think again.

Back in the 70’s during those gas shortages, the obvious villain was those diabolical schemers at OPEC. Today though, the member nations of OPEC realize that a slowdown on the world economy will hurt them as well, so they are less inclined to take draconian measures and limit supply.

What’s the problem then?

Well, oil companies have gotten smart now. They realize as long as the price of oil stays high, they make money and lots of it! The convenient excuse oil companies use is that there is limited refining capacity to process the crude oil into other grades of fuel.

In the United States, there is strong pressure to prevent the development of new refineries, and no major refinery has been built in the country since Marathon’s Garyville, Louisiana facility in 1976. However, many existing refineries have been expanded during that time. Environmental restrictions and pressure to prevent construction of new refineries may have also contributed to rising fuel prices in the United States[8]. Additionally, many refineries (over 100 since the 1980s) have closed due to obsolescence and/or merger activity within the industry itself. This activity has been reported to Congress and in specialized studies not widely publicized.

Wow! That’s just tough for those poor oil companies, isn’t it?

“Consumer demand just continues to grow, and we can’t grow as fast at the refining level,” said Charlie Drevna, executive vice president at the national Petrochemical and Refiners Association, which includes companies like Valero, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillip. “But there are plenty of economic reasons why that hasn't happened.”

They just are at the mercy of their refining capacity and as long as they can only refine a certain amount of oil prices will just stay high and keep getting higher.

Now, I think it would be a good thing to wean this nation off of its oil jones - we had taken major steps in that direction until the early nineties when the SUV made the scene. Truth of it was, we had taken the kind of steps that dropped the value of oil and had the oil companies hurting and worried. It gave oil companies a great excuse to not increase refining capacity because the commodity oil had such a diminished value. Nowadays though, oil companies are reporting record profits but strangely enough you don’t hear about them taking any of that money and putting it into building new refineries.

I shouldn’t complain I imagine because I bought oil stock and it’s been good the last few years but, hell! I don’t want to see the economy go down the tubes anymore than anyone else. Never mind we have the cold weather coming. Even if you don’t own a home and the cost of heating oil goes up you don’t think your landlord isn’t going to raise your rent?

Wake up people.

Who’d thunk it?!?!

When I heard they were making an Iron Man movie, I thought to myself... ‘Ouch! Here comes another comic movie suckfest!’ Then I heard they were casting Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark and it only made me cringe even more. Marvel has a decent record with films of their characters since the first X-Men hit but, there is still major suck factor floating around these things.

Yeah, the X-Men movies have been pretty good and the Spidey films good too but, there’s that Hulk movie. FF was passable (I’ve yet to see the second one), Ghost Rider was decent, Man-Thing straight to video (surprising because it was okay) and then there was that Punisher flick - if I never see Travolta in another one of these kinds of movies again it’ll be fine with me.

Overall, sometimes these things translate well and sometimes they don’t. Iron Man is one of those things where it just looked like it would have too much to overcome to be a decent film. Today though, I took a look at the preview (click on the image):



AWESOME!

Money where my mouth is.

A few posts back I suggested how much better it would be if we remembered September 11th by giving back to our communities. Ever since the EYOC has been gone, I’ve toyed with the idea of giving over some time to the local food pantry. It’s a bit nostalgic in a way and in another it would honor the memory of the EYOC.

I donated cash to the food pantry (as well as some other charities) but, it didn’t seem like enough and when I sent off the last donation to them recently, I checked off the box saying I would be willing to volunteer. I got a call from them a week back and just hadn’t gotten around to returning the call but, keeping the thought in mind of how volunteerism is a good way to mark 9/11, I called today.

I start tomorrow.

Does anyone else ever wonder?

Just where we would be if the events of 6 years ago never happened?

I know it’s a bit pointless but, I have to wonder what the country (or the planet for that matter) would be like. A lot of times you’ll hear about all the planning that went into carrying out the attacks but, did you ever get the sense these idiots didn’t really follow through? By follow through I mean, they didn’t think about what would happen AFTER the attacks. It was more a like the goal of carrying out the things was the be all and end all. I guess it just speaks to how stupid the people behind the damn thing are: ‘WE WILL ATTACK AND THEY WILL DO... NOTHING!’

I’m trying to think what would Afghanistan look like? Iraq? Would Bush have gotten a second term? Would Guiliani even be running for president? You have to think about how different the world would be and then at the end of the day I’ve got to think the only thing that the people who carried out the attacks managed to accomplish was the exact opposite of what they wanted.

I could live without that irony.

I should’ve copyrighted it!

It’s all the rage now but, if you went back a bunch of years and haunted the boards over at Comicon (when Newsrama was still hosted there) you’d find I was the first person to coin the phrase ‘Marvel Zombies’ in reference to the blind zealotry displayed by some of the posters on that board.

Ah f**k, if only I had known!

(actually, thinking about it now it’s not the first time something like this has happened)

F*ck freecreditreportdotcom!

File this under the ‘don’t say I never did anything for you.’ Yeah, you probably heard those ads with that jingle that roles around in your head for awhile but, how about this:

YOU ARE ENTITLED TO GET A ONE FREE COPY OF YOUR CREDIT REPORT FROM EACH OF THE MAJOR CREDIT REPORTING AGENCIES EACH YEAR!

To top it off, it’s not the inordinate hassle it used to be. Thanks to the wonders of the web all you have to do is to direct your browser over to ANNUALCREDITREPORTDOTCOM and you can easily and quickly get your credit report from Equifax, Experian and Trans Union.

It’s so amazingly simple I am not surprised more people don’t know about it. Check it out for yourself.

Bad anniversaries.

September 11th is just about upon us again so, we will commemorate the day with a reading of names of the victims of the attacks at Ground Zero but, I wonder when the time will come when we don’t mark the day in such a manner anymore. We don’t do it for Pearl Harbor, when do we stop doing it for September 11th?

It’s not that I’ll forget that day, I don’t think anyone will forget it but, when do we move on?

It might sound crass but, I imagine we as a nation or a society could spend every single day of the calendar year commemorating lives lost whether through earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, bridge collapses, fires, shooting sprees or even terrorist attacks. When do we stop indulging ourselves by wallowing in our grief and just go forward?

The other thing I think too, if we are going to mark the day, if we are going to make it some kind of day of national memoriam, we should take the best that came out of that day and use it to make us a better people.

What do I mean you might ask?

Well, if we can say there was one good thing that came out of the day, it was how we as a nation showed our love and support of one and other. I can tell you for sure, people here in New York City were just a helluva lot nicer to each other in the weeks after the attacks. There was a civility, courtesy and compassion during those days that spoke a lot about what New Yorkers are made of. Beyond that, people from around the country rallied together in a show of solidarity and community.

If we are to take anything away from that horrible day, let it not be the senseless violence of the event but rather, the example set by the people who went out of their way to help absolute strangers; fireman, policeman, even ordinary office workers who did their level best to cope with a terrible situation and to put others ahead of themselves.

Maybe, instead of reading the names of the dead, if we must mark that horrible morning, can’t we use the example of those brave people and transform the day into a kind of National Service Day? By National Service Day, I mean a day when we volunteer a bit of our time to help out people in our community showing the same spirit of the people who set such an incredible example for us through their actions?

It’s a small gesture on the part of each of us but, I can’t help but think that the people who sacrificed their lives trying to save others would appreciate it. Meanwhile, it would make something wonderful out of that anniversary and at the same time make a statement to the people that carried out such a despicable act that we will never be defeated.

Fond memories of a misspent youth:

The problems of the penis.

So, it’s Sunday morning! What better time to talk about dicks!

Over the last few months, I have been responsible for seeing to a friend’s Flickr account. Basically, I had my dear Alix start a Flickr account to generate traffic to her website and it has worked. Men just can’t seem to get enough of looking at her charms. This is fine, in a way because part of what Alix has to do is to project an image to the world of this desirable, always horny women who is just insatiable and can’t get enough (by enough I think you should know what I mean).

It’s part of an overall strategy to build her brand and to increase her fanbase for some other projects that should be happening a little further down the road. I do it mainly because it means it’s one less thing for her to deal with. It’s really about the promotion and that’s how I’m involved in the process - promoting and packaging her. I want her to be successful and I don’t mind helping her, it’s a learning experience for me. Maybe that sounds stupid but, marketing is still marketing and at the end of the day the lessons learned here can still be applied in other areas and for other clients.

One thing though has bothered me - I have begun to get a really thorough distaste for my own gender.

Look, I’m a guy so I’m susceptible to the same urges that any guy is. I’m not raising myself above the pack (and we are talking about pack mentality here). Thing is, I was raised with manners - there really is no other way to put it. A lot of being polite is just not making assumptions about total strangers. It’s about showing them a certain level of courtesy and respect.

It doesn’t mean I can’t joke about things or be crass because anyone that knows me knows full well I am very crass but, at the same time I honestly don’t go out in the world looking to say or do something that would make someone feel uncomfortable. It’s just not... for lack of a better word, cool. I don’t know how else to explain it.

So, dealing with the whole Flickr thing over the last few months has exposed me in a way to what female members of Flickr go through on a pretty regular basis. See, if a woman shows any flesh, any flesh at all, it is taken as an invitation by the male of the species to reciprocate in kind, even if it is unsolicited. I know it happens frequently because I have friends on Flickr who have complained about it. Their photos are generally just artful nude photography, nothing garish or X-rated. Just shots that show a bit of skin.

The photos I’ve released through Flickr for Alix, always have a certain sense of decorum. They are not explicit, rather they are suggestive meaning they aren’t these horrific anatomical close-ups that would be better served as illustrations in a medical text than as a means of arousal. That’s a problem on Flickr sometimes is that there are people out there who can’t tell the difference between the two.

Anyway, getting back to the topic at hand: I cannot begin to tell you how many pictures of penis I have seen over the last few months dealing with this. Now, I’m an artist (or at the very least I have drawn from life) and I can appreciate a good body. By that I mean a body that has been well taken care of, someone who is in shape or at the very least someone who cares about their grooming. For the life of me though, I cannot understand how some of these guys could even think someone would want to see them nude!

It’s like... COVER UP, DUDE! I mean, really!

You don’t look good and you’re not taking care of yourself and no one wants to see!

It happens a lot too! I resist the urge to write them a short note telling them hey, I’m a guy that is getting this not the woman you think is getting this and I have to tell you even if I was a woman, I cannot imagine any woman getting the least bit aroused by your display. No, no, we’ve got to keep the fantasy going.

I just have to say though, ladies... I am so sorry! I just hope you don’t brand us all that way. Even I have to go EEEEEWWWWWW!

The trade the Mets should make.

If you hear about this over the coming months, just remember where it originated...

Here’s my letter to a writer over at the Pioneer Press:

As a baseball fan I cannot help but be fascinated by the saga of Johan Santana - a two time Cy Young Award winner reaching the market?! It makes me salivate.

Then again, isn’t this the kind of thing that baseball dreams are made of? Isn’t Santana the kind of player that can bring back significant value in a trade if moved well ahead of free agency or moved with a sign and trade kind of deal?

Besides, do Twins fans really want to see Johan Santana in a Yankees uniform? Does any baseball fan outside of the Yankee fan really want to see that? I know I don't!

That's because I’m a Mets fan and if I had my way, I'd be banging on Omar Minaya’s door right now to do everything in his power to put together a deal that makes sense for both teams.

Since salary is an issue for the Twins and they need to get value back, what would it sound like on your end for a trade of Johan Santana for Lastings Milledge, Mike Pelfrey and Aaron Heilman? That's a 22 year old outfielder who looks to only get better (and is a base stealing threat), a 23 rookie righthanded pitcher with a big upside and a 29 year old righty reliever who has worked as a swing man but could slot into a starting rotation or potentially close.

I think it’s one of those trades that make sense for both teams.

Then again, maybe I should be wary - the last time the Mets made a deal like that with the Twins, the Twins walked away with an All-Star closer (Rick Aguilera).

Still, I wonder if you put it out there for Twins fans, what they would think of the trade. These things have to start somewhere.

Real work versus pretend work.

So, things have been very busy lately. The problem is it has been a question of pretend work versus real work.

Whatever do I mean?

Real work pays you money, pretend work holds out the prospect of money but it’s a gamble at best. I have been focused almost exclusively on pretend work the past few weeks and I come to realize that has to change. My pocketbook just won’t allow me to focus on pretend work for too long so, back to the world of real work.

And it’s not a bad thing.

On other matters, you may or may not have noticed things have been awfully quiet around here of late. Well, that’s going to start changing real soon. I have a bunch of unfinished entries in the drafts queue that are screaming at me to be finished and I am getting them done. While things have been quiet around here (the blog), everywhere else they have been busy, busy, busy!

Lots of stuff to write/talk about.

In the meantime, I have to give a big shout out to both Ragnell and the wonderful Elayne. Ragnell posted a link on my entry about the Bendis lettercol contest and I got more hits in a day than ever before (so that’s what it’s like to have something that people read). I had honestly hoped I would have gotten more of a dialog going but, that didn’t seem to happen. As it was, it seems like the story has just died down and that surprises me a bit because I honestly thought there would have been more of an uproar over the incident.

Still, at the very least people know about it. I imagine that counts for something.

So goofy, it had to be shared.

Calling all feminists.

Okay ladies, time to put your money where your mouth is. I picked up the latest issue of Powers, a book that I love. I was thumbing through the letters column when I came across the following jewel:

And now after months of stalling and padding my letter columnn with entries; after months of holding back every snotty remark I have building inside me; after, literally thousands of entries (which was cool. it was cool to hear from so many of you long time readers, you should write more often!)

The winner is...

MARYPANTS

25 word essay

I love all of your stuff. That is all.

Oh, and by the way I am a girl, hot and I’ll have sex with you and your wife. Shit, I’ll move into your basement and be your au pair to boot.

And thanks for Powers and Spidey. I fucking love you. Cry myself to sleep. Think of Bendis fucking me.

Now that is how you win a contest!!! Thanks for playing. I will sic Mary on all of you in a couple of issues. And yes, I have seen the pics, and yes, she is hot.

So, in the scope of things, this is okay with you guys... how? You’re giving a pass on this one? What amazes me is for all the talk about Power Girl and female heroes and costumes, this slips by unnoticed? Does Bendis walk on water? Is it the fact a woman writes a note offering up herself (even if it is in jest) that makes it okay? Just trying to figure out where the line gets drawn.

Listen, do you want to know a secret?



So, maybe you haven’t seen the documentary, WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price.


It’s a shocking indictment of capitalism run wild and unchecked. The funny thing is, there just doesn’t seem to be any stopping this juggernaut. What’s even better is this latest tidbit that comes out of Mexico:

Wal-Mart is Mexico’s largest private-sector employer in the nation today, with nearly 150,000 local residents on its payroll. An additional 19,000 youngsters between the ages of 14 and 16 work after school in hundreds of Wal-Mart stores, mostly as grocery baggers, throughout Mexico—and none of them receives a red cent in wages or fringe benefits. The company doesn’t try to conceal this practice: its 62 Superama supermarkets display blue signs with white letters that tell shoppers: OUR VOLUNTEER PACKERS COLLECT NO SALARY, ONLY THE GRATUITY THAT YOU GIVE THEM. SUPERAMA THANKS YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING.

Nothing like having people work for free to enable a company to turn a profit, huh?

It’s even better when the Walton family, can get even richer by using taxpayer’s dollars to pay for operating costs.

Don’t believe me?

Well, have a look at this: WAL-MART Subsidy Watch

It smacks of the kind of corporate welfare that makes working class Americans sick to their stomachs. The kind of governmental largess that always seems to come at the expense of the American middle class - does the American middle class even exist anymore, I wonder.

All these characteristics would be clearly ascribed to one political party, right? I mean, let’s face facts, we know the party in this country that stands for big business and the one we can attribute all the wrongs of the world to.

So, imagine my surprise when I found this jewel:

Clinton’s six-year tenure as a director of Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retail company, remains a little known chapter in her closely scrutinized career. And it is little known for a reason. Clinton rarely, if ever, discusses it, leaving her board membership out of her speeches and off her campaign website.

Fellow board members and company executives, who have rarely discussed her role in Wal-Mart, say Clinton used her position to champion personal causes, like the need for more women in management and a comprehensive environmental program. At the time, she was Wal-Mart's only female director, the youngest and arguably the least experienced in business. On other topics, like Wal-Mart’s vehement antiunionism, for example, she was largely silent, they said.

The end result is Hillary walked away from Wal-Mart with about the same impact she had on Health Care Reform (see the movie and you’ll understand what I’m talking about) but, what’s interesting is how the fact that she served FOR SIX YEARS on the board of Wal-Mart isn’t common knowledge.



And before anyone starts screaming about bias, take the time out to look at a very calculated voting record during the New York Junior Senator’s term in the Senate - you might find yourself a bit surprised. It’s very clear the Senator never met a popular position she didn’t like.

Sounds like a Silver Age tale.

I was reading this today and all I could think about was the many comic book origins that ran along these lines - sounds like something out of the X-Men:

Sharapova’s mother, Yelena, was pregnant with her only child when the plant in Ukraine exploded and spewed radioactive clouds over the western Soviet Union and northern Europe...


...Sharapova’s father, Yuri, and her mother fled the city of Gomel in Belarus — about 80 miles north of Chernobyl — shortly before she was born in Nyagan, Siberia.

Gomel was one of the areas most affected by radiation. Sharapova said she still has family there, including grandparents.

The quiet man.

I care about experiencing the little moments of daily routine.
I am curious about how all things are related to one another
and how they are part of a bigger event that is out there.

I live in a small moment.
We live in a chain of time.
Every fraction of a second is valid.
The day always starts from a small decision.
The small decision can dictate my whole life.
The little tweaks and changes will most likely affect
the outcome of an event more substantial.

When I try - I mean seriously try - to see what I’m looking at;
what is heroic and what is not;
what is significant and what is not;
what is political and what is not;
what is successful and what is not;
the borderline between those things becomes rather obscure.

It occurs to me that the role of a tiny little insect crawling on the dirt
is equally important as my role in this universe.

My friend Sung and I have worked together now for four different companies.

We met almost a decade ago although it doesn’t seem that long and somehow we keep winding up in the same places. Some of that is happenstance and some of it design (I hired Sung to work for me in one company). I just really, really like being around him though. He appears as one of the quietest people to strangers but, when you get to know him you realize he has a wicked sense of humor, is incredibly warm and extremely talented. I worked with him again recently and it reminded me of just how much nicer the day is when you work around people you like.

My Miller moment.



Over the weekend I saw this picture taken by Phillip Marco Vallentin and couldn’t help but be reminded of Frank Miller’s Sin City. A few emails back and forth between Marco and I, resulted in me doing some quick fooling around with his photo to show him what I was talking about and I thought I would share the results.