Mister Bookseller
September 8th, 2008 GregDDCWell, Digg has pulled out yet another wonderful short comic for me to share with you. Mister Bookseller by Darko Macan is amazing. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.
Speaker for the Moral Majority
August 12th, 2008 GregDDC
One of the most prolific science fiction writers and my favorite authors has show his true colors. Orson Scott Card has recently written an article in the Mormon Times about how we, as a nation, should rise up and overthrow the government to prevent gay marriage from becoming law. It’s more than a little shocking to see this kind of rhetoric coming from such an (otherwise) brilliant man. I believe he may have what is clinically referred to as “asshole, stuck in his ways, old man syndrome” or (SIHWOMS).
How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.
It’s upsetting to think that someone as creative and open-minded as Orson Scott Card can be a closed-minded bigot with little remorse for a group of people who have not only haven’t harmed him but have been lining his pockets by buying his works. Overthrow the government over something as benign as gay marriage? You crazy, you crazy. He needs to get off his pulpit and go back to writing about how one idea can change the world for the better, not how it can destroy it.
It is an exceptionally narrow view to think that allowing gays to marry will be the downfall of marriage.
The pretext is that state constitutions require it — but it is absurd to claim that these constitutions require marriage to be defined in ways that were unthinkable through all of human history until the past 15 years. And it is offensive to expect us to believe this obvious fiction.
Homosexual behavior has been around for a VERY long time, much longer than the Mormon Church. It has been celebrated for centuries and has only recently become vilified. Same-sex marriages have been recorded all the way back to the Romans and have been thought to exist before recorded history. Applying insular ideals towards people you don’t even know is not Christian, it’s wrong. Christianity is about love and hope, not advancing your own agenda.
I believe that Michael Swaim has said it best.
What would Jesus do? If you can answer that question with anything other than “shower the world with endless love and understanding, then flip a wicked ollie on a flaming skateboard,” then you and I have a very different understanding of the man.
–Michael Swaim
I hope to continue enjoying his works, but it will be with a giant asterisk. This is as bad or worse as when Bradbury said Fahrenheit 451 wasn’t about censorship (You can’t apply your current morals to your past morals in a revisionist way Mr. Bradbury. You can’t.). I hope that he will change his stripes. I’ll wait a long time.
Religious tracts - Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn
July 25th, 2008 GregDDC
I love religious tracts. They’re one of my favorite things in the world. You might know them as those short and wide pamphlets the crazies are always handing out. You know the ones! They might tell you that you’re going to hell and will get AIDS for having pre-martial sex. Maybe they’ll tell you that all homosexuals have AIDS and are going to commit blood-terrorism! Perhaps you were wondering “Who murdered Clarice?!” Liberals are turning good Christians into social pariahs for not loving teh homogays!
Don’t think that Catholics get out of the sight of the wise and knowing eye of these tracts. Did you know that Mary cries whenever someone prays to her or that Catholics aren’t even christians? It would seem that the Eucharist is a Death Cookie! Even COMPLETE LOSERS LIKE JIMMY can be redeemed. Also, don’t put your faith in Presidente Carlos for in doing so you turn your heart from the lord.
The Holocaust was a Roman Catholic Inquisition against the Jews. No true Christians would kill anyone in the name of Jesus. God commands us to love the Jewish people.
Needless to say, these people are insane. But they don’t know what real horror is! I present to you the best religious tract of all time, The Cthulhu Tract. This is singlehandedly the greatest piece of literature on religion ever created. That’s not conjecture, it’s fact. Give the whole thing a read. If you do not you will not be aware of your hopeless existence of unendingly painful insanity in the face of the cosmic truths of the universe which your puny intellect can’t possibly fathom!
No merciful, paternalistic “god” looks down on you from the heavens - just an endless, frozen void that cares nothing about the fate of a collection of insignificant bipedal microbes at the hands of vastly more powerful beings whose motives their puny minds cannot even comprehend!
–Cthulhu Tract
CAPE! 2008!
May 5th, 2008 GregDDCJake and I went to CAPE! 2008 this Saturday in Dallas. CAPE! is an annual comic convention that is every May 3rd (which is Free Comic Book Day). To get an idea of what it was like there are a few flickr collections you can look at: here, here and here. The event was sponsored by Zeus Comics that was right next door.
The event is basically 4 or 5 large tents lined with comic book writers and artists. Almost everyone had a book they were selling and a lot of them were doing comissioned sketches. It was a good chance to chat up some intersting people and to see lots and lots of talent.
Jake and I each got a sketch from Josh Howard and a print from Ivan Flores. They’re pretty awesome. Many free comics were had and other sketches were commissioned. Other people are talking about it too!
Afterwards Jake and I raided Majestic Liquors and bought most of the New Belgium products they had in the refrigerator. It is delicious and tasty.
Good List of Valuable Websites
October 8th, 2007 GregDDCI couldn’t pass up linking this article to you, my lovely reader(s?). My favorite links from here are probably whatshouldireadnext, lonelyplanet and retailmenot. I have used retailmenot in the past and it was good to be reminded of its awesomefantisticness. I’ll have to stay away from whatshouldireadnext or I’ll end up spending all my time reading and not playing video games like a good boy.
Where the Great Old Ones Are
October 4th, 2007 GregDDCI stumbled upon this from BoingBoing and it’s wonderful. It is by an artist named Toren Atkinson. I wish I could think of great stuff like this.
How to Read a Book
September 5th, 2007 GregDDCHow do you know that you get the most out of a book? You get the most out of a book when it significantly improves your life to the greatest possible extent. Because of that, the goal of reading books is getting actionable ideas. To get the most out of the books, you should then put those actionable ideas into action.
I’m not sure if this article would apply to me or not. It suggests that you should put ideas you read in books into action as soon as practicable, create action lists and pen book maps. This runs counter to almost everything I do when reading for both leisure or work.
I prefer to have books “osmos” into my subconscious. It’s almost like when you listen to a lot of one band you start playing music that sounds similar to them. I prefer that lower-level influence over the full-on action plan personally. Thoughts?
Tag!
August 24th, 2007 GregDDCTag is a horror comic that tells the story of Mitch, an angry man whose loveless relationship with Izumi (his on-again, off-again girlfriend) has just ended, again. They’re leaving the restaurant when a shambling horror runs up to him, touches him in the chest and shouts, “Tag, you’re it!” Immediately, Mitch begins to die, his bodily functions shutting down, even though he remains able to walk and even talk (when he remembers to draw a breath). He and Izumi confront his death — the rigor mortis, the rotting — together, trying to figure out what happened to him. They find answers on a blog, where an earlier “tag” victim explains the rules by which this odd strain of zombiism is spread.
Tag comes from Boom Studios, written by Keith Giffen and illustrated by Kody Chamberlain and Chee. It has many resonances with The Ring and other stories that revolve around understanding the “rules” governing the creeping awfulness at the heart of the story. Like The Ring, Tag uses its gimmick to tell a damned fine tale about love and betrayal, a story with many layers that are peeled back as the story moves to a moving climax.
This sounds awesome. I have been buying too much stuff online lately, this is just another thing that I want. I pulled the trigger on Zombie Tales the other day so maybe I should hold off on the Zombie graphic novels for a bit.
…
I’ll probably buy it by the end of the day.
Zombie Tales: Volume One
August 23rd, 2007 GregDDCThe best-selling zombie anthology finally gets collected, featuring work from the best of the best: material written by Mark Waid, Keith Giffen, Eureka creator Andrew Cosby, Transformers the Movie writer John Rogers, Eureka TV show writer Johanna Stokes, Fall of Cthulhu writer Michael Alan Nelson, and more! Artists featured are a non-stop constellation of names: Keith Giffen, Fallen Angel’s J.K. Woodward, Painkiller Jane’s Lee Moder, 100 Bullets’ Dave Johnson, Mark Badger, and many many more!
Um…. hell yeah!
The Last Question
August 20th, 2007 GregDDC“You ask Multivac. I dare you. Five dollars says it can’t be done.”
“Adell was just drunk enough to try, just sober enough to be able to phrase the necessary symbols and operations into a question which, in words, might have corresponded to this: Will mankind one day without the net expenditure of energy be able to restore the sun to its full youthfulness even after it had died of old age?
Or maybe it could be put more simply like this: How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?
Multivac fell dead and silent. The slow flashing of lights ceased, the distant sounds of clicking relays ended.
Then, just as the frightened technicians felt they could hold their breath no longer, there was a sudden springing to life of the teletype attached to that portion of Multivac. Five words were printed: INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.
“No bet,” whispered Lupov. They left hurriedly.
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