Let's do this thing!

PERSONAL STUFF!

Every year on 18 April, I write a post about my daughter's progress over the past year. The date is the anniversary of the car accident that damaged her brain. This year it's been a full decade since the accident. Man, I feel old. If you're interested, you can go check it out. I don't think it's too depressing - I try to keep it upbeat!

COMICS!

This comes from Robot 6: Marvel and DC push a gay agenda. Wow, really? I guess DC and Marvel must be doing something right, because some people think they're pushing a gay agenda, while others think they're not pushing one hard enough!

Sort-of comics news: Robert Downey Jr. made $50 million for The Avengers. Dang, that's impressive. Downey's career track is fascinating.

Robot 6 got nominated for an Eisner. As their "big brother," all of us here are obviously seething with jealousy - I mean, Brian should be nominated just for his hard-hitting exposés on the legends of comics! You can run, legends, but you can't hide!!!! Anyway, congratulations to Robot 6. If I happen to see JK Parkin at San Diego this year, I'm sure he'll be too snooty to talk to me.

Here's an interesting article about comics publishing. It includes a link to Steve Bissette's blog, where he rebuts. The comments are interesting, too.

CURRENT EVENTS!

Whenever something like this week's bombing occurs, we get reactions. Oh dear, do we get reactions. Here are some horrible tweets about the bombing, which make me sad to be not only an American, but a human being. Meanwhile, a Fox News contributor "joked" about killing every Saudi and then got his panties in a twist when people didn't like the joke. Yeah, because further explaining that you want to kill all of them makes it sound like such a joke. Of course, the suspects are as Caucasian as you get, but no one is tweeting about killing all the Caucasian males. That would be crazy! (Both of these links came from Rob Schmidt on Facebook, because he's on top of this stuff!)

RELIGION!

Also from Rob Schmidt, we get the story of a statue of Jesus as a homeless man rejected by two churches before finding a place. The writer doesn't say which churches they were, but I have no problem believing that it's true. The brand of Christianity that says wealth is good is particularly noxious to me, even though, as an atheist, I'm not a fan of any religion.

POP CULTURE!

El Torres linked to this page on Facebook, which features the Star Wars Bayeux Tapestry. I can't find the original, but if this is an entire thing, I would love to see it, because this little bit is awesome.



Ken Levine writes about actors he knew before they were stars. I love "before-they-were-stars" stuff. Too bad he didn't have more photographs!

MISCELLANEOUS!

I found this on Facebook, but I can't remember who linked to it: A student's final text. Man, that's chilling. Don't text and drive, people!

This is pretty interesting: Homeschooled kids speaking out about their pasts. Obviously, there are a lot of generalizations we can make about homeschooled kids, and I'm not going to do that, but this article gives us some perspective on the phenomenon.

Hey, look: Saudi Arabia deports three men for being too handsome. I can sympathize - I can barely walk the streets without policemen driving up and telling me I have to go home because so many women are following me!

Here is a video of the world's best jump roper. I don't know if that's true, but after watching that video, I can certainly believe it!

My friend John linked to this on Facebook: The ten worst people at summer festivals. It's been years since I've been to a summer music festival (the first Lollapalooza, I think, and that was in 1991), but you know, it doesn't look like anything has changed. It's the exact same people!

This is a cool little story about Vienna in 1913. Hitler, Trotsky, Stalin, Tito, and Freud all lived within the same two-square-mile section of the Austrian capital. It's not too shocking - it was the center of a giant and cosmopolitan empire, but it's still somewhat surprising that all those dudes ended up so close to each other.

Jim Thorpe's sons have won a federal lawsuit against Jim Thorpe, PA, which might clear the way for Thorpe's remains to be returned to Oklahoma, where he was born. This is an interesting story in which the town always seems to come out as the bad guys. When Thorpe died in 1953, his third wife wanted Oklahoma to erect a monument to him. The state wouldn't do it, so she shopped around until she found Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, a place Thorpe had never visited, which was willing to build a monument to him and change their name. Jim Thorpe is a nice town, actually - very picturesque. The sons claim his widow did this over the objections of the rest of the family, and I've never seen anything that proves it one way or the other (of course, I haven't followed this all that closely). The town might appeal the decision, and it will be interesting to see it move forward.

WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED THIS EXISTS?

My friend John (see above) also happened across this web site, which is a dating site. It's called "7 Or Better," and if you can't guess what that alludes to ... well, let's look at some testimonials, shall we?







I haven't needed to find a date in over 20 years, so I'm not in tune with what's going on today. Dating has gotten really weird.

I very much doubt if I can top that, so I'll say that's that for this week. Have a nice day, everyone!