SimplePhrase Blog

Link to Sluggy Freelance web comic.

The early days of Sluggy Freelance were wild and woolly, and this book collects the earliest of the early days. These cartoons were published in the late 90s and are things of beauty.

I followed the strip at that time, and read almost all of the strips in this book online as they were published. That was a great experience, particularly because I had some friends with which to enthuse about the comic. Early Sluggy was magical.

Somewhere along the line, the magic wore off. We all stopped reading Sluggy at one point or another. And revisiting these strips was a bit of a let-down after they'd been built up in my memory.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading the strips and I'm glad I bought the book, even at its outrageous price.

Amazon link.

Man, that Dave Barry sure is funny. There are many laugh-out-loud funny bits in this collection of columns. I'd heartily recommend this book to anyone.

Some of these I hadn't read since they were first published in the late 80s. Going back and seeing them again made me realize just how big an influence Dave Barry has had on my own somewhat warped sense of humor. Reading this book was like getting reacquainted with an old friend.

I'll probably be picking up more Dave Barry collections in the future.

It took some tedious work, but I've finally gotten my web site up to HTML 4.01 strict compliance. My code has never been particularly sloppy, but I like having everything legitimized. My site is now a responsible one.

To celebrate this momentous occasion, I've updated the Quote Extant. It's even semi-topical.

SimplePhrase

Amazon Link.

Creepy was a magazine put out by Warren Publishing starting in the mid 60s. It was decidedly in the tradition of the EC horror comics of a decade previous. Since Creepy was published as a magazine, it escaped the trap of the Comics Code Authority that stopped the publication of the EC titles. This volume collects issues 1-5 of the magazine.

Printed in stark, glorious black and white, the artwork is on an equal footing with the EC stuff. The writing, sadly, is of markedly lower quality. Despite its shortcomings, Creepy is good fun. The art is mostly excellent, and while the stories aren't great, some of them are quite good. I enjoyed reading this and I'm glad I own it.

I don't know if I'm going to buy more of it, though. Creepy Archives is up to vol. 5, and Eerie Archives, a sister publication, is up to vol. 2. So I guess the good news is, I've got lots of material coming available. As to whether I pick up more Creepy and/or Eerie, I think I'll revisit the question when I have my collection of EC reprints where I want it. Until that time, any spare change for this sort of entertainment must go towards the cream of the crop stuff.

Here's the Wikipedia entry on Asiago. It's a crumbly, sharp, parmesanish, slightly cheddarish cheese, and the rosemary sets it off nicely. Good stuff.

Post this helpful sign wherever you deem it appropriate. I have one on my refrigerator. If you actually use it, I'd love to hear about it.

Link to sign (pdf)

Amazon Link

William Gaines and his company, EC (Entertaining Comics), published horror, war, crime, and science fiction comics in the early fifties, before the Comics Code Authority effectively shut them down. The stories were amazingly consistent and enjoyable; the art was incredibly high quality. These comics are cultural treasures, and I love the crap out of them.

EC had three horror titles: Tales from the Crypt, The Haunt of Fear, and The Vault of Horror. Haunt of Fear is my favorite, and Vault of Horror is my least favorite. So I didn't enjoy this collection as much as some of the other EC stuff. But it's all good. After the work of Carl Barks, these are my favorite comics of all time, so even the "bad" stuff is awesome.

The EC Archives series reproduces the comics, complete with letter columns and what not (but not ads), with completely refined color, in nice hardbacks. They're a decent value at Amazon prices. Unfortunately, they're getting hard to come by, with further publishing of the series now in question after shakeups at Gemstone, the publisher. So it goes.

So I retired When I Woke Up, my abstract fiction strip. If I do produce any more flash fiction, I will post it here on the SimplePhrase Blog or start another blog. Or, on the off chance I change my mind, I'll just delete the good-bye post and continue on as though nothing happened. I don't anticipate changing my mind, but this is me we're talking about, so I'm leaving it a little open.

Why am I making an end of it? Because I've come to feel over the past few weeks that further posts wouldn't be offering anything particularly new. It would just be more. And the more I produced, the less special any of it would be. I think the strip served its purpose, and now I have the opportunity to break it off clean.

Those of you who have interest in my writing may watch this space; any further developments on the writing front will be announced here on the SimplePhrase Blog.

Prairie Breeze is an award-winning cheese from Milton Creamery in Iowa. It's a cheddarish cheese with fruity, nutty overtones and crunchy bits. It is… incredibly delicious. Seriously. I took one bite and about swooned. You gotta try this stuff.

It is popular wisdom that looking at a back-lit screen for long periods causes eye fatigue, and that for this reason E-Ink is superior to LCD for e-readers. I don't think that's necessarily the case. This belief on my part has not been based on any rigorous research. Nor have the people making the eye-strain case done any rigorous research. It's all anecdotal.

But now there's an article in the New York Times [Link] that discusses the issue. Turns out, different screens (and paper, for that matter) can be better or worse depending on the circumstances under which they are used. Which shouldn't be too much of a surprise if you think about it. More significantly, the article claims that blinking and resting your eyes periodically is a more significant factor than screen type when it comes to eye fatigue.

I am pleased at this information, because it bears out my point of view that back-lit screens are not necessarily bad for your eyes. Considering how much time I spend looking at a computer screen, it would suck to be wrong about that.