Angus Oblong is going to be at Wizard World Texas in Arlington next month. On his appearances page he says that if someone brings him a midget, he'll give them a Milo NO. shirt for free. I wonder if Laurel could pass for a midget. If not, I'll just have to bring a chicken sandwich with cheese.

It would be so awesome to get my copy of 13 More Tragic Tales for Ugly Children signed... oh. Vogon says Arlington is too far. Dang it.

Ulrich Merkl, publisher of the complete Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, talked to Jessa Crispin of Bookslut (bookslut) about archival comics reprints. Winsor McCay fans might be interested in it.

Link: Ulrich Merkl talks about comic restoration

Earlier this month, eilonwy made me a penguin. I retrieved its parcel from the mail today and thought all afternoon about its name.

I pondered and shook my head to make my brain cells rub together faster and sniffed glue ate dinner before I saw multiple exclamation points and it came to me: POKEY!

The latest tack on potty-training: five minutes in the pool for each potty use. We put a small sticker on the calendar for each use and in the afternoon, she gets to go swimming for the earned time. Today she got fifteen minutes in the pool and will hopefully earn another ten before bedtime. *crosses fingers*

She loves the new swimming bag -- a grocery-sack style bag (I'm still working out the bugs, so most of them are muslin) in a large-scale fish print I had a remnant of large enough for two bags. I'm thinking about ripping out the serged finish around the edges and finishing them with the sewing machine since I need a lot more experience serging around curves before they look half decent.

I need to draw the line on no animal behavior other than noises. We've been working on not licking (she licks people, her toys, tables and counters, etc. despite regular reminders otherwise), but today I caught her after she dumped a handful of tortilla chips on the floor and was preparing to eat them off the floor. Later, she tried to throw her beach towel over the cat. *sighs*

I'm thinking of making a GIR icon for Laurel posts. Picked up a bunch of screenshots but the one for "Let's make biscuits!" (ep. "Planet Jackers") wasn't as crisp as I'd like. I'm debating whether to make one of my own since we currently have the volume of episodes it's on checked out from Blockbuster. Suggestions welcome.

V. happy to see the return to TV Funhouse in Comedy Central's early Monday AM cartoon lineup. After a few weeks of getting forgettable Duckman and Critic extra eps, Smigel is very, very good.

Carry on.

While making my occasional round of reading altparent (I belong but it's not on my friends list because it's got a lousy signal to noise ratio), I found a comment plugging a Teeny Little Superguy community.

Fangirl that I am, I hop on over to the community info page and the usericon looks really familiar. I initially thought it was just from a screencap I already had, but it looked too _flat_ to be from a screencap. (For those of you not familiar with the character, he's an animated man painted on the convex side of a cup.) Looking a little closer, it looks a lot like an awkwardly-resized version of an illo I sketched from a screencap to use on my website a few years ago.

I'll let you be the judge.
( my illustration, the community usericon, and a usericon made from a screencap )

Slightly edited from Lalo Alcaraz's official mailing list. For those of you not familiar with him, he's a satirist and nationally-recognized editorial cartoonist. Lalo also happens to be one of my personal heroes and a fellow beaner. This is your chance to vote for diversity in your comic pages!

( More reasons and how to vote for Cuco )

It helps if you have a passing knowledge of the SubGenius to appreciate this, but what the heck. It's not often you win with the absolute minimum bid. w00t!

Cherry Comics No. 8 signed by Rev. Ivan Stang

(Gentle readers might want to note there is comic nudity. Either way, the comic book has a Dobbshead shown on a screen in one panel. The following inscription is in the page margin: "Dan - Where's my royalties? Rev. Ivan StangTM")

Thanks to the wonder of syndication on my LJ friends list, I get both Boondocks and SinFest. (Now if I could just get both the comics and commentary of Ted Rall and Lalo Alcaraz, it'd be _perfect_.) For those of you that don't read Boondcocks, Aaron McGruder really hit the nail on the head for me today.

I've been kicking around getting a tattoo of a Jhonen Vasquez character for awhile, but never found one I really loved enough to mark my body with. 'Nny's too dark, Squee's too cute, Devi's just not me, and filler bunny is fluff. (No pun intended.) We wont' even discuss Happy Noodle Boy since it's already decided he's one of my heroes. So after some consternation -- and a discussion with TODCRA operatives, we decided I should go with Invader Zim. Specifically, the enclosed image showing Zim holding the world in his hands with Gir at his back holding up a piggy in the same pose. (There's a massive -- 630 kb -- copy of this in the World Animation Celebration's press pics, look under Faily Odd. I just made a smaller copy of it to illustrate this post.)

Then we discussed all the implications of Nickelodeon putting their massive marketing behind Zim and realized it won't be good for my geek cred to have a Zim tattoo. But I've been a fan of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and Squee since high school... and dammit, Zim is funny precisely because it's full of Not For Kids jokes although it's on Nickelodeon. So it's a possibility for the day when I can afford it and I figure it's worth it -- I never had a wedding ring (and if you've seen my engagement ring, it's a plain silver band that's since worn enough that it discolors my finger after I wear it) and it'd be fun as well as a way to identify me should I ever become lost (aren't I always?).

I'm moderately peeved about Hot Topic having so much IZ merchandise. I avoid their stores because the strong vibes of tryingto be hip and edgy make me nauseous. Also the salesgirl in the pink fur skirt at the Denver Pavilions store smelled like she could use a bath in Febreze, but first impressions go a long way with me. Should you be so degraded to wander into one, drop me a line -- I actually like the Invader Zim lunch box and it would go with my existing collection of metal lunch boxes (mostly of McPhee origin, which is much more desirable in my book).