Selkie

Courtney Crumrin

Carrie Stetko

Hunter Rose

Jaeger

GenGris. that was exactly what I meant. All of it. Mmm, I can taste those pastries now... Doesn't matter what kind of food you're describing, as long as it's something you love.

Hi Jill! Always nice to see a new member join the STH estrogen brigade.

Talk to me about good food. Sensuous, sinful food. Warm comforting food that makes you feel all snuggly inside. Whichever. Whatever. Virtual food porn is the closest I'm going to come to enjoying food, so don't stint on the details. Describe the experience to the extent that propriety allows. :D

 

(But I will warn all: I'm in need of virtual comfort food because of romantic woes as well as starvation, so be careful of making crude sexually oriented comments or I will hunt you down, dismember you with an axe, and serve your severed limbs with some fava beans and a nice Chianti).

What's the deal with everyone saying Selkie? She comes across as a sweet person to me.

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Me? SWEET?! ME????!!!!!! Oh, how sadly mistaken you are. I assume it was the comics for The Kid thing that misled you as to my true nature? I'll have to work on that.

If I don't win this by a large margin, I will be extra bitter and angry!

A greyhound chasing moonbunnies.

 

(No, I'm not going to explain what a moon bunny is. Use your imagination.)

jaynova, I'd love to make it to the Mid-Ohio con but the odds hover between "slim" and "none." Heck, my health precluded me from making it to WW Chicago, which is fifteen freakin' minutes from my house (and is going on as I type this, which does nothing to improve my already nasty mood).

 

To keep this post on topic: Must Love Dogs has sharper dialogue than I would expect from a movie of its ilk, which almost compensates for the inane plot. Almost. Not quite. I can't complain too loudly about any rom-com that pairs a younger man with an older woman, for a change.

Christian, I wish I could recommend an effective anti-nausea treatment, but I can't find anything strong enough to treat the results of spending time on that web site. Here, look at some pictures of a cute bunny balancing baked goods on his head - maybe that will help.

 

As for the logic of the reprehensible Mr. Phelps, in the interests of sparing you further pain, I'll direct you to the bullet point on this page that says "God is not mocked. God hates Fags & Fag-enablers! Ergo, God hates the Marines, and God is killing them with IEDs and casting them into Hell."

 

I don't understand the logic, but since he advocates the death penalty for gays, I'm guessing he thinks the God is killing soldiers because the military is too soft on homosexuality. Or something. Nor do I know what an IED is, or why he thinks one was used to bomb his church (as mentioned in another bullet point on that page).

 

Pardon me, but I'm off to talk a very long hot shower with lots of soap now. Maybe a scouring pad. Make that lots of scouring pads.

The assholes from the notorious Westboro Baptist Church have come up with a new tactic to promote their odious anti-gay agenda - picketing the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq. I hadn't heard about this new tactic, but they recently struck at a funeral close enough to where I live that it made the local news. If you're not incensed enough after visiting their web site, be sure not to miss their opinion on the London Subway bombings.

 

I hate these people with the heat of a supernova. I don't know why I assumed they faded into the background after their reprehensible behavor atMatthew Shepherd's funeral - wishful thinking, perhaps?

All,

 

Heartfelt thanks for all the well wishes. They mean a lot to me. I'll write more when I'm able, but today has been a very bad day and it's only going to get worse so I'll wait till I'm feeling sounder to reply.

 

Slick, major congrats.

Fuckin' A, Selk! I sometimes wish I lived next door to you. Protein shakes or the like, my dear, maybe that would help your poor tummy?

 

Good thinking, because without 'em I would be even sicker and woozier than I am. If I'm really slow and careful, I can drink a SlimFast and keep most of it down. My every waking thought is dominated by the craving for food, which makes it really hard not to gorge when I do eat. Furniture is starting to look edible. So is dog kibble. But the actual smell of cooking food is absolutely repulsive.

 

Hey, by "the Kid," do you mean the little fella you've been sending comics to?

 

That's The Kid in question, and to answer pooka's question above, what's killing me is that there's not much I can do to help him.

 

I meant to tell you I set some aside, but a friend of ours was giving furniture and fun stuff to an inner city family through church and I gave the comics to these kids.

 

Makes sense to me, especially in light of the generosity of comics fans to The Kid. In fact, I still need to send that Asterix book Red provided to him.

you know, I'm egocentric enough to get a buzz from both Lou and Selkie sporting avatars by moi.   

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You deserve the buzz! I love my fire salamander, and he would have been used as my avatar at lot sooner if my hands had been feeling better at the time you drew him.

wolvy, how rural is the area where you live?! Just a clean, polish, and X-ray starts around $125 in my area. Been a long time since I had a cavity filled, but I think it was like $80 per shallow cavity.

pooka, the cheapest it costs to walk in and see a doctor - and by "doctor" I mean "whatever resident happens to be on duty at the local teching hospital auxiliary, which is one of the few places that will treat uninsured patients at all" - in my area is $85. Everything on top of that costs. To see a private practice doctor charges usually start around $150 and you usually have to wait several weeks to get an appointment. With insurance, the co-pay per visit is usually around $20-25 to walk in the door, but may be higher.

 

Those are rates for regular internal medicine doctors, BTW. Specialists are a lot higher. The orthopedics guy who arguably saved my life cost $450 for 15 minutes. I didn't mind his rates because he was actually smart, attentive, and knowledgeable. The less competent ones who came before him cost from anywhere between $250 - $325 for a fifteen minute consultation, and they all got it wrong. One of them wanted a $4k test before performing a $40-45k operation that would NOT, I repeat NOT, have solved or even substantially alleviated my problems. I just so happen to live in one of the top cities in the world for orthopedic medicine. I hate to think what my experiences would have been in a lesser location.

 

My cervical spine MRI, at the "discounted" rate, cost $950 for a non-contrast (i.e., no dye injection and therefore much cheaper). Ordinarily it would have been $1250, all out of my own pocket. A single chest X-ray and the reading thereof recently cost me $150.

 

Want me to go on, or does the NHS already look a whole lot more appealing?!

3000 dollars for THREE MONTHS COVERAGE? :o :o :o

What kind of FUCKED UP SYSTEM is that? I mean that's easily ten times the equivalent norwegian prices!

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Hey, could be worse. I'm an American citizen, and the last time I tried to get individual coverage - in my mid-20's, before I developed a "pre-existing condition" - it was going to be $1200/mo. That was, BTW, without maternity coverage, which could easily have doubled the rates.

 

Now that I have a pre-existing condition, it's a moot point. No insurance company will cover me at all.

Balthazar. this Grendel link may help you understand the strange, complicated publication of the early Grendels. I fielded the question on so many message boards - back in the day when I visited other comic message boards than this one - that I finally wrote up the essentials and tossed it on a web page. The Hunter Rose Grendels are well worth the effort to figure out what goes where.

 

As for the "future Grendels" post Brian Li Sung, you're on your own, but those are much more straightforward to figure out. Most people like War Child and God and the Devil. I didn't care for either, but YMMV.

 

Avoid anything called "Grendel Tales" (except Four Devils, One Hell, which is excellent) like the plague. Those are the non-Matt Wagner stories written and illustrated by "promising newcomers" in the Grendel-verse. Even when names who subsequently became big were involved, they're terrible. Really, really terrible.

What kind of mean was this movie then?

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Like watching the captain of the football team kick a developmentally disabled two-year old down the stairs, then cheering when the little one's legs break.

I'm guessing you've never read a Roal Dahl book.

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Wrong. I love Roald Dahl's writings, and one of my favorite books of all time was a little pocket-sized compilation of his short stories. I like mean, but not in the way this movie was mean.

I would really love to see those scripts of Jinx and Goldfish Bendis wrote for Miramax dusted off.

 

As much as the idea of Reese Witherspoon as Carrie Stetko makes me cringe, I'd still love to see Whiteout make it out of development limbo.

 

I alternately anticipate and dread the supposedly upcming Grendel movie. They're apparently doing the Christine Spar story, which is probably the most easily filmed of the Grendel stories, but it's Hunter Rose I'd love to see. Absolutely no movie studio would touch that one with a ten-foot pole without massive changes - imagine the uproar over the relationship between Eddie and Jocasta! - but I'd be first in line.

 

Although the end result would probably be bizarro, I'd love to see Baker Street done by the right set of hands. It'd never be more than a cult film, but has so much potential to be a beloved cult film. Garlands of Moonlight would have similar potential, I think.

 

A certain boy wizard probably has the market cornered, but Courtney Crumrin would be gobs of fun as a live action movie - even if that does mean Courtney'd have to have a nose! :happy:

Let the shunning commence: I loathed Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I do not merely dislike it, or find it instantly mildly distasteful but forgettable, or simply an inappropriate use of a couple of hours and $10. I hate it with an active passion. What a tragic waste of a talented cast and crew, and a large budget. Ugh. I think it's one of the most mean-spirited movies I've ever seen, and that's really saying something. I never liked the Gene Wilder film, but it's Citizen Kane by comparison.

I just finished Suffer the Little Children: The Inside Story of Ireland's Industrial Schools. What a well-documented, leave-the-reader-shaking-in-rage book. Despite large numbers of records and files being mysteriously "missing" from government files, or simply not made available by the religious orders in question, the authors build a damning indictment of the Catholic church and Irish government's wholesale destruction of families, the resulting massive widespread starvation, abuse, and neglect of thousands of children over most of the twentieth century, and the elaborate conspiracy and ineptitude required to cover it up. Even with the fairly academic tone the authors take - for which I'm grateful, because I don't know whether I could have handle dreading another firsthand account - I guarantee your blood will boil. So many of the same tactics present in the American sex abuse scandal - including transferring "religious" with well-known histories of abuse from one location to another - are present in these cases as well. Now I'm left wanting to do some follow up research on the industrial school scandals in Australia and Canada mentioned in the book as well.

 

 

Grr.... nothing like some righteous indignation to spice up one's weekend.

The Straight Dope

 

Television Without Pity

 

Breakables

 

Blue Frog Creations

 

Plus a blog that you're welcome to read if you can find it....

Use an ice pack for 20 minutes. Don't have one handy? Substitute a pack of frozen vegetables. If you're still in pain - you will be - get yourself those Thermocare heat backs intended for the lower back, and strap it around your neck like a scarf. Don't bother with the ones designed for the neck - they're much too small and wimpy to get the job done, especially for pain originating in the upper cervical spine. Take Advil; that's what my endless array of orthopedists recommend. Doesn't do diddly squat for me, but then I'm in a whole other league of spinal problems than you're likely to be, so it might help. Rest. Lots. Support your entire spine, not just the neck, with pillows, thick comforters, and whatever else works. If the pain's not getting better after that regimen, drop me a note privately. It's probably nothing more than having slept wrong on your neck, but take it from someone who went severely misdiagnosed for years, it's nothing to mess around with.

 

Good luck on a speedy recovery. If anyone in your immediate vicinity is being less than entirely sympathetic, supportive, and helpful, I'll be happy to shoot over the URL of an article about injuries to the cervical spine that will snap them right into line.

Akhira, I'm so sorry to hear of your news. Best wishes for a speedy recovery, and a new (and better!) job soon!