On March 24, 1958, he was inducted as US Army private #53310761 and completed basic training at Fort Hood, Texas on September 17, 1958, before being posted to Friedberg, Germany with the 3rd Armored Division, where his service took place from October 1, 1958 until March 2, 1960.

 

http://www.cartoonlabs.com/comics/index.php?date=2008-07-06&show=sinfest

Sinfest
Tatsuya Ishida

http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/archive/2008/07/06.html

palaver: idle talk; also, to talk idly.

I will be in Chattanooga from August 2nd till the 9th.
Folks who wish to touch base drop me line.
You can post here or at my Email addy: doctor_paragon#hotmail.c o m

As my guest application was denied and I’ve subsequently decided to skip it this year (for mostly unrelated reasons. I’m not THAT fuckin’ petty. Usually) I particularly appreciated the following anecdote Venture Bros. creators Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer (a.k.a. Christopher McCulloch and Eric Hammer, a.k.a. the two raddest fucking dudes alive) had to share about finding inspiration for last week’s episode “The Buddy System” at Dragon*Con.

I have no idea how to embed this or even link directly to it, so just go here, click on the “extras” button of Part III, and check out “Ex-Villain Dinner Theater” to hear it. It rang so true for me that I don’t even think Hammer is a douchebag for wearing sunglasses indoors.

And Mickey Rooney IS the Godfather. That is all.

• 14:07 Mom walked up and down the hall! #
• 15:13 Modern hieroglyphics?: The_Senator posted a photo:
  
  
  Possibly the most confusing parking garage map ev.. tinyurl.com/6lal53 #
• 15:42 ...a pigeon just flew into the window and is staring at my mom and me. #
• 17:30 Mom has walked up and down the hall twice so far today! :D - bkite.com/00RkW #
• 20:44 Hair again...: The_Senator posted a photo: tinyurl.com/64mr8v #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

I applaud the creativity of any and all in this community that makes various steam gadgets, widgets and other fun things but I remember some time ago when I would look up steampunk on etsy and get... 15 pages, on the rare occassion. But now, I'm getting 215 pages of the same things, repeated over and over and I'm kinda bored of what I'm seeing. I just don't know why there are a hundred or so sellers making gear cuff links(hyperbole but possibly not too far from the truth). I'm sorry if the post comes across as somewhat negative but I'm curious to know how some of you feel about this. I feel that steampunk fashion is and was amazingly creative and I'm becoming kinda bored by seeing the exact same thing over and over again, I can't even tell the sellers apart anymore.

Dear Main Card,

We crap bigger’n you.


Sincerely,
The Prelim Fights

-

Dear Josh Koscheck,

Watching Chris Lytle bleed like a hemophiliac in a razor blade factory and keep fighting. Not you.


Sincerely,
What Was Interesting About That Fight

-

Dear Patrick Cote,

Underwhelming, lackluster, humdrum, uninspired, unimpressive, blah, dreary, wearisome, weariful, tedious, irksome.


Sincerely,
My Thesaurus

-

Dear UFC Main Events,

THAT’S how the fuck you fuckin’ do it, motherfucker.


Sincerely,
Jackson vs. Griffin

-

Dear Rampage/Forrest Judges,

Win, lose, or _____.


Sincerely,
Fill in the Blank

Slam Peckinpah.
I went to the Roller Derby this evening and enjoyed myself. I'm pretty sure I'll be going to the next event. Cute girls with tats that fuck people up. . . How could I not enjoy this activity?

And I really liked the season finale of Doctor Who, perhaps more than I should. Call me sentimental.

While it's been an eventful and relaxing day, I didn't take any pictures. Instead, you get something out of the archive - from our trip to London, over Christmas week 2005. This morning I uploaded a bunch of photos from the trip that I hadn't yet posted to Flickr.

The Victoria & Albert Museum was wonderful, and I especially loved the gigantic rooms filled with plaster casts of various historical works of art and architecture. These aren't modern casts, either, many of them are quite old, and all lovely.

The regular POD posts will continue anon. I predict tomorrow's will be food related...

Listed as Gothic Lolita
http://www.starletsandharlets.com/PhotoGallery.asp?ProductCode=TOWNER-32354-BROWN

Originally published at Enemy of Entropy. Please leave any comments there.

I don’t like loud holidays. I get nervous about all those explosions. There were random fireworks going off during the day today, too. At least they finished earlier last night than they do on New Year’s Eve!

My baby girl is having a bad flare She was going to a Braves game with friends earlier this week, but it had to be rescheduled because of some conflict in another family. So they were going to go tonight, but she’s been in bed or wandering around looking like Ophelia all day. Migraine, fibro stuff, nasty allergy stuff–the works. I always feel like I should be able to make it better, and I can’t.

(Thanks to the mods for sorting out a strange blip! The original post went missing, and they've graciously allowed me to repost :) )


Ladies, Gentlemen, and Everything In Between in the General Area of the City of New York:

You are hereby invited to an afternoon of tea and snacks on the Great Lawn of Central Park on August the Second. While somewhat in honor of my birthday, the invite is open to all and nothing in the way of presents is required (or even requested!) as the picnic is in no way a party simply for that reason.

Your hosts, liu_xing and I, simply want the enjoyment of your company. We understand that jaborwhalky is holding a wondrous event on the same day, and in no way want to take away from that! Think of us more as there for those of you who can't make the commute. We'd hate to think we're making anybody reconsider or change their plans. :)

Following are the details of the day:

Date: August 2nd
Time: 2 PM - ?
Location: We shall meet up on the steps of the Natural History Museum (Central Park West between 81st and 79th street) before walking to Central Park itself.


We would very much appreciate an RSVP, though if you decide the day of that yes, you can make it, we will quite gladly still accept you!

All we ask is that you make your best attempt to bring something, even if just some cookies or cheese and crackers. It will be a picnic tea to remember, if all goes well.

If you plan on attending, please respond to this post so we can have a good idea of the number of people attending. Closer to the date we will post the details of the day again, as well as a list of those hopefully in attendance.


In case of rain, we will still hold the meet up on the same day, but will instead rendezvous and dine at Alice's Teacup. Closer to the date, if rain is forecasted, we will make sure everybody involved knows exactly where to meet and how much tea will cost, at a rough estimate. So as not to confuse anybody, however, we'll leave that information out for now.

Harlan Ellison turned 74 years of age the other week. And so I dug out my copies of THE GLASS TEAT and THE OTHER GLASS TEAT, the collections of his columns on television written circa 1969-1971, and began to re-read them, as I do every couple of years. The thing you need to know about the GLASS TEAT books is that, for all the wrong reasons, they’re timeless. The states of American network tv, dissent and education have not notably changed since he wrote those columns in his mid-thirties. (I’ve been re-reading those books since I was 20 or so, and it’s a shock to realise I’m finally older than he was when he wrote them. And I don’t want to think about how long it’s been since I first picked up a volume of his short stories in Rayleigh Library. With my dad making approving noises behind me: "Harlan Ellison. Good writer.’’)

I met him once. I’d made a crack somewhere online about Harlan’s heart being held together with garden twine and Lego, I think as part of a larger piece about dealing with anger as a writer. One of his fans — not representative of his constituency as a whole, I think — suffered a major reading comprehension failure, fired a foul note off to me and put it in front of Harlan as a ’’let’s you and him fight’’ kind of deal. From which I received a very nice email from Harlan, assuring me that no gardening supplies were required to hold him together and actually addressing the substance of the piece rather than the misreading placed before him. It was nice, he said, that it turned out we each liked the other’s work.

There’s a peculiar artist’s fear, that rides very low in the gut and mostly goes unspoken. Though few of us would cop to having ’’heroes,’’ debased term that it is, the fear does run along the lines of ’’don’t meet your heroes.’’ The man or woman who wrote the things that helped form you as a creator is not necessarily as loveable as the work. This is something I’ve been lucky in, but I will admit to passing on meeting Hunter Thompson a couple of times, and friends of mine have not had my luck. I know writers who now cannot read their heroes’ work. The books are tainted by the experience.

I met Harlan some months later, at a convention. Our signing tables were side by side. Harlan arrived later than I did (I think the signings were staggered), spotted me and yelled "Warren Ellis! Let me give you a manly hug!’’ So I stood up. Harlan’s about five and a half feet tall. I’m six foot tall barefoot, and I was wearing heavy boots. He looked up at me and exclaimed, "Jesus, you’re HUGE!"

I don’t have "heroes," but there are writers I admire greatly, who were influential in my becoming a writer, and I am grateful to have met Harlan Ellison and remain able to take pleasure in his work. Better: now I can hear his voice, and recall the great personal warmth with which he welcomed me on every occasion we met during that convention.

All of which, wishing him a belated happy birthday and talking about how generations of writers deal with each other and so forth, is really just preface to my discovery last night that the fine ebook purveyor Webscription is now offering eight Harlan Ellison books.

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

Fun episode, apart from a few annoying bits and a slight cop-out at the end.

Without getting all spoilery I think I need to quote The Princess Bride at the villain of the episode - I do not think that word means what you think it means.

And for reasons I will not explain my use of this icon is extra appropriate.

There was a sound as we pulled into the parking lot. Voices, lots of voices - you could hear them through the wall and out where the buses (Buses! People charter buses to come in from Rio and points further away for this con!) roamed. It was the murmur of gaming, of people at full tables going at it with dice and cards. Marvelous. I hadn't realized how much I missed the good old days of Origins until today, here, now.

The con is buzzing, a constant font of nerdjoy. There's a room with archery targets set up - archery! Guihelm (one of my hosts) and I were betting as to what got dinged first - the lights or the wall-mounted clock, but Douglas (the Uberhost) informed me that they've been doing it for six years with no mishaps. That being said, there was a conspicuously empty wall mount for a flatscreen TV in there.

The big stage is in the school's central courtyard. This morning, before the interviews started, it was hosting impromptu boffer scrums. Enthusiasm, yes. Technique, not so much, but then again it's been a long time since I swung foam in anger.

My guides and partners in mayhem thus far are Guihelm and Rodrigo. G's from Sao Paulo but is studying abroad; R is from the country but knows the city better than G does, and together they have a great Now-look-what-you-made-me-do vibe that's a joy to behold. They've been teaching me Portuguese, both couth and otherwise, and have been beaming like proud papas when I get something right. Thus far, the vocabulary has been expanded to "I'm doing fine," "Thank you", and the Portuguese equivalent of badonkadonk.

I had some interviews scheduled for 1, but they started late due to the journalists in question having to travel a heck of a long way to get to the show. While we waited, we sat in the Green Room - manned by a ferociously solicitous woman who wants me to sample many things Brasilian and explain what each of them is in great detail - and I chatted with one of the women working the show. She wanted to be sure that I knew that Brasilian women were intelligent and strong-willed and Not At All Like What People Expect Based On Movies. Also, she wanted to practice her English on me, which is not a euphemism for anything, you filthy-minded brutes.

I did one interview with a couple of print guys, then got followed around by a cameraman/reporter from one of the music channels. He filmed part of my talk, then followed up with some questions, then asked me to record a promo.

I've never recorded a promo before. Based on my performance in this one, I may never introduce one again.

The talk was on worldbuilding in RPG design. It started with a half-full house that was pretty packed by the end of things, and it was a good audience. Most, but not all of the folks there spoke English, but there were enough folks who couldn't that I was assisted by a translator. I wish to apologize publicly to her in this space, as my writing style is syntactically tricky at the best of times, and that's without the bobbing, weaving, improvising, and anecdote-flinging I mixed into the talk. Most of the jokes got laughs, at least, and the response seemed to be good, which was a relief to me - most of my worldbuilding examples were from Wraith, and it turns out that Wraith was never released here.

Following that was an autographing session at the Official Richard Dansky table, which turned out to be loads of fun. There was a long line of folks there, and most of them had brought multiple books and wanted pictures taken. I tried to A)personalize everything B)tell stories on the books I was signing, including the hideous tale of KISS THE FISH and the rewrites on the Trinity adventure trilogy, and and C)get everyone's name. I was mostly successful, except on the later, but I did my best. A lot of folks wanted pictures, too.

This was followed up by another short television interview, and a few minutes chatting with the curator of the History of Game Consoles exhibit (Seriously. When was the last time you saw a Pippin?) at the show, and then the workshop. We pulled this together pretty much on the spot, with myself tag-teaming with a local game design professor named Roger Tavares. The audience seemed to dig it, which was all I was really hoping for.

And then back to the hotel room for a quiet night in. Tomorrow, there's another talk and another signing session, and then it'll be on to Rio on Monday.