It’s been colder than a witch’s caboose here, with our usual temperatures around the single digits. The foot+ snow on the ground from the last week is still hanging around, and since it hasn’t gotten above freezing at all, it’s still just as powdery as when it first fell.

Maybe this is just a weird thing I do, but when it first gets cold in the winter, I get this strange feeling of victory. I take the garbage out in a short sleeve shirt and bare feet and think, “Hey, this isn’t so bad. I can totally handle this cold.” And I start to imagine living in Alaska being no problem whatsoever because cold doesn’t bother me at all anymore and isn’t that the only drawback to Alaska, the cold? I don’t know why it suddenly makes me think of moving to Alaska, but whatever. Anyway, round about this time of year the cold smacks me upside the head and reminds me that no, I do not like the cold, no matter how much I may have “gotten used” to it and go walk in this in your bare feet, Chief!

So yeah, it’s been cold.

Which means we haven’t been doing a whole lot that involves being outdoors too much. On Friday we rented Collateral and enjoyed it. It was pretty much a straight-up Hollywood movie, but cleverer than usual. I’m not sure who Jamie Foxx was “supporting” in it, since Tom Cruise’s role didn’t really call for much other than gray hair and sitting in the back seat of a car.

We also went to Circuit City to pick up a CD spindle. Now, I dislike Circuit City, but it’s our most conveniently located place for goods of that type (especially since we were already on that side of town.) And one of the main reasons I dislike them is this foolishness:

That’s the receipt for a CD spindle. It’s easily two feet long. And what’s more is, it’s the receipt for anything. Buy anything from them and you get that scroll. What the hell? Did they look at Best Buy’s stupid receipt envelopes and think “Okay, sure, but I know we can waste far more paper than that!” It’s absurd.

Anyway, while we were over there, I also grabbed the Episode Three preview Lego set, which is quite cool. I may not be overly excited about the movie itself, but I always like me some Legos.

Saturday we just kind of hung around the house and then went to Noho to have dinner with Missy and Marty and Tom, which was fun. Tom tried to pick a fight with me by insisting that Girlfight was a really good movie about boxing, but I didn’t rise to the challenge. I haven’t seen it, so what was I supposed to say, “No it wasn’t?” Everyone was looking to see us throw down and I’m sorry we disappointed.

Sunday Becky made some home-made King Cake but alas, we couldn’t find a baby to put in it, so it’s really ersatz king cake. (Note: What King Cake is, to the uninitiated. It’s one of the few vestigial remnants of our Louisiananess.)

My CD cover project continues apace, and thanks for the comments! In other geek news, I may be GMing an RPG for my group soon. Also, I need to get cracking on some comics reading and reviewing, since it looks like I’m set to get several manga this week, including the new Planetes, new Hikaru No Go, and volume one of one I’m trying out, Planet Blood. There’s also a new Runaways volume coming out. I’ll have to make sure my manga pants are ironed.

So my recent bout of creating covers for my mix CDs kind of took hold of me, and now I’m trying to make covers for all of the compilations in the series. What I’ve done so far can be found here:

The CNMT Cover Project

My skills with Paint Shop Pro and my artistic talents being what they are, you may find a lot of them overly literal and trite. I’m totally open to criticism and suggestions. I’m especially open to suggestions on the ones I don’t have yet.

It’s a lot of fun and I am learning a lot about Paint Shop Pro.

On Sunday, the citizens of Iraq will have the honor of participating in an American institution. They will be able to cast ballots in a flawed and probably rigged election where there are no actual issues, where one side is trying to influence the outcome through raw intimidation, and where most people probably won’t vote. Let Freedom ring!

It’s not that I hate Freedom, either here in America or over in Iraq. It’s just that I have to wonder if America, especially under the current administration, is really the best country to try and teach people how to have free and fair elections, how to implement Democracy, and how to enjoy Freedom? We’re probably about as qualified as we are to wage war on tyranny. While we erode civil rights, preach hatred, torture prisoners, and run our own secret prisons, we’re going to claim we’re spearheading the fight for Liberty.

I was against this stupid war from the start and remain so. But I will say that I’m glad that at least the Iraqi people have experienced the side effect of being out from under the rule of Saddam Hussein and may have a slim chance of controlling their own destinies soon, assuming they decide on a government we like. Of course, this result is merely an artifact of the war; getting rid of Saddam was only Bush’s last reason for going into Iraq. Those who read things other than republished White House press releases will remember that Bush was more than happy to let Saddam stay in power if the tyrant would just give up his nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. You know, the ones Condi Rice lied to Congress about before being promoted to Secretary of State.

It’s obvious from the way we continue to support countries like Pakistan, Ukbekistan, and Saudi Arabia that we really aren’t overly interested in getting rid of tyrants. Out of two candidates, one of whom poisoned the other with dioxin, guess which one our government supported?

It’s little wonder if the rest of the world rolls their eyes at our heartwarming speeches about bringing Freedom to the masses. We’re losing steam as an economic power, our military is tied up in a pointless mess in the Middle East, aligning education with the Bible ensures we’ll soon not compete at all in science, and soon our culture will be censored into nothing but paintings of cute kittens. And we’re going to save the rest of the world. Uh-huh.

Edited to add the image. How could I forget that the teachers of Freedom are about to appoint Mr. Torture as Attorney General? Image courtesy of this blog, via Slacktivist.

I just have to ask, is there any word I can do a Google Image Search on and NOT get furry art showing raccoon women banging each other? Can’t we get these people an internet of their own?

I’m not as much of a manganista as many other folks are, but here’s my top five manga currently released in English, a meme started by Shawn Fumo:

1. Planetes
2. Hikaru No Go
3. Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
4. Battle Royale
5. Firefighter! Daigo of Fire Company M

and a bonus entry:

6. The Kindaichi Case Files

I included Kindaichi as a bonus because I’ve only bought a single volume, but really really want to get more. The other five I’ve bought at least a couple volumes of.

I’m currently reading Julius from Oni press, my spoils of victory from Kevin’s contest. As soon as I’m done with it, a review of it and several other books will be forthcoming.

Speaking of Kevin, the following is due to him:

Find out more here.

I’ve generally supported the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund in more-or-less selfish ways. Instead of becoming a member or sending a donation, I buy their books, so that I get some benefit besides the knowledge of a job well done. (Speaking of which, I still think it would be a fantastic idea for them to get the rights to the out-of-print Seduction of the Innocent and sell a new edition of it. They’d make scads of cash!)

Maybe this is more of the same, but damn if getting to put this in your wallet wouldn’t be worth a membership:

That’s their 2005 membership card, with art by the late, great, Will Eisner. That’s a thing of beauty. It also needs to be a t-shirt.

Membership is only $25 a year, and you can sign up here. If you think people should have the right to read whatever they want to without someone else deciding for them, think about signing up.

I’ve been reading this new Lilian Jackson Braun mystery novel I got from the library, called The Cat Who Murdered Some Guy for Drug Money and Framed the Gardener.

I’m only about halfway through, but I’m pretty sure the gardener did it.

This is a compilation I made a few months ago. The idea behind it is that these are some of my all-time favorite songs and yet, for some stupid reason or other, they never made it onto any of my mixtapes. Two CDs later, thirty-four errors have been corrected.