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givesushopeIt's that glorious time of year when we reunite with loved ones (we neglected all year), stuff our faces to excess, and pass out in front of the TV. Perhaps a recalibration of the thanksometer is in order. A spin-off of the popular GivesMeHope.com site, this community invites you to document moments of kindness, generosity, and pure human love.
veggieslackersDespite its mainstream appeal, Thanksgiving is not for everyone. There are those struggling with food disorders, for whom this day causes endless conflict. There are the cash-challenged, who can't afford the gluttony we've grown to expect. There are the lonely, who don't have loved ones nearby. And let's not forget the vegetarians, who decry the animal cruelty. But there's one more group we often overlook: the terminally lazy! This community of lazy vegetarians offers easy recipes for an animal-friendly feast.
fashinJust in time for holiday shopping season, this fashionista community brings you the world of haute couture in the form of sumptuous photos, video clips, and candid commentary. There's also a sugary sprinkle of mainstream movie discussions and debates on such pressing social issues as manicure styles and celebrity colonics. If you need a break from the daily grind to indulge your girlie side, this is twinkly pink on steroids.
Well, Halloween was a lot of fun. Emme and I went as June CLEVER!!! and her dead husband, Ward.
Immediately after that, I caught the flu with a startlingly immediacy. Monday I went to work, got home, went out and did the majority of my second-job stuff for that week, came home again, and started to feel... odd.
"Crap! I recognize this," I thought. "Illness!"
So I took a shot of nyQuil, dove into bed, and figured I'd be up the next morning good as new. Next morning came, I stood up, and crumbled like a cookie.
I spent the next two days in bed/on the couch, doped up and feverish. On Thursday, in a mad, stupid desire for worthless money, I dragged my rag & bones to work. I probably shouldn't have been there, but I was, all day, and then went immediately to bed that afternoon and slept until I got up on Friday to go to work again. Going to work Friday wasn't as stupid a decision as Thursday, and I wound up at home, tired but not exhausted and absolutely DREADING Saturday.
What!? Dread and Saturday? How does that work, you ask?
See, in addition to my temp jobbing, I picked up a gig last winter working at King Arthur Flour in their warehouse. KAF does... I dunno, I want to say about 60-70%, but I can't remember... anyway... it's a LOT so they do a lot of their business in the last three months of the year as people order from all over the continent for holiday treats and ingredients from KAF. (Last night I packed an order for a rolling pin that's going to Idaho, for example.) So they need a massive influx of workers for a very limited time.
They also fit one of the criteria I like in a job, which is that there's a lot of cardio.
I like going to the gym well enough, but I really like going somewhere to get paid to work out even more. Last year I mostly worked in the shipping department, loading thousands of boxes that weigh as much as 50 lbs and are six different sized and shapes into the back of a truck as high and tightly as possible. In practice, this plays out like something like the biggest Tetris game ever.
But I really wasn't sure I'd be able to handle that truck on Saturday.
I sucked the last few drops of solice from the second bottle of nyQuil I'd drained during my enfeebled period and plowed into bed at the ripe ol' hour of 7:00 pm or so. Saturday rose, and so did I, and together we crawled up the hillsides and poured into the valley. I was a bit over-prepared, I brought three shirts, a sweater, a hat, and two sets of gloves in fear... FEAR (!!!) of falling apart in the un-insulated back of a tractor trailer. But it was all for naught. First, there was a new guy I'm working with this year who's more of a work sharer to keep everyone from getting bored (which I'm fine with), and second, the weather was a ridiculously balmy 57 degrees (which IS ridiculously balmy for Vermont at ANY point in November). As I drove home that evening, simply surviving the day felt like winning the day.
Sunday dawned like a blow to the head, and I got around to seeing what the rest of my life was supposed to be about. Lots of looking at my bank book, figuring out bills, (finally) getting around to looking at the business cards and contact names I'd picked up at the Boston Comic-Con... and, for the first day this month, getting back to the studio. Even if it was only to empty my garbage can and sit down in my chair for a few minutes.
Because writing and drawing have been a big no-go no-show.
Now, for most of last week I was either unconscious or my consciousness was of a kind that would've been no good to anyone, but I was going to do NaNoWriMo this month with my own twist. Instead of writing a novel in a month, I was going to write and thumbnail (and hopefully pencil) my new minicomic. I feel like I've done nothing instead, and the month's 13th days in.
That really terrifies me.
But listen. That's not true. The new book (hereforafter called TGC3) is a series of short stories and other comics around a theme. Not quite a personal anthology, since the theme isn't just "done by me." I started selecting the stories I wanted to tell, and I've been thinking about how to tell them. I don't want to do just a collection of cute autobio. I feel like I'm trying to learn how to write things all over again, and I'm playing with the process (writing a script for one before drawing, straight thumbnails for another, etc...) of making a comic book story. There's a script for one story already almost complete. There's another story that takes place in the Vatican City and is gonna require a load of reference work (to the point I'm pondering prose)... 11 days plus a week of illness. This is doing something.
Isn't it?
I don't know what brought this on. I mean, I haven't been living like a crazy artist lately. I've been getting lots of sleep, doing dishes, watching Harper's Island and stuff...
I think it's about the feeling of inert-ness. I know some of it is seeing something else change for other people, and feeling like I'm missing out by not constantly doing the same thing. Which is a dumb, negative energy to hook into, and the conception is at it's very base self-defeating and wrong. Something to beat.
Here's a post-it I doodled to feel better in the meantime.
All the best, later.
Hell will not see one soul in his school.
Was he a skeptic and did he believe?
The world was child, like me, in Creator's tummy
He has love for all and I believe in salvation.
Teacher sits us down and puts the fear of God in us.
Some in this room will see the gates of Hell.
So you better be careful, because salvation is selective
I prayed for selection one thousand times.
And you
Can't
Tell me
That
Christ
Counted.
I want to sue you for my scars
(As I forgive those who trespass against me.)
It's all my fault, the fear of God in your eyes.
It's all my God damned fault.
I wish I could take it back,
Take it all back and take you with me.
But I feared God's love
Would not reach a Catholic.
(Forgive me my trespasses)
Click to enlarge.
Originally published at friedwontons.com. You can comment here or there.
There will be a page update tomorrow. All further pages will be updated rather sporadically. I have one more fully finished page and the rest are in progress. I will update them as I finish them.
My life is pretty much revolving around Catch, my surviving pet rat, who needs a lot of attention and care. So working on my projects hasn’t been my top priority lately.
I do, however, plan on having Vezere Valley Venture completed by the end of the year. 
Thank you for your patience!
Originally published at friedwontons.com. You can comment here or there.
Notes augmented
We've enhanced and de-bugged Notes. If you haven't tried it yet, now's the time! You can create a private note when you ban multiple users. You can also delete multiple notes at once. Lastly, paid users have the option to add a note (visible only to you) whenever you add or remove a friend (guaranteed to avoid embarrassing social mishaps). If you don't currently have a paid account, you can upgrade now! It only takes a few minutes and costs less than a bad shopping mall haircut (plus, it's way more fashionable)!
Product tweaks and bug kill
- In another effort to zap spam, comments containing links from domains LiveJournal deems untrustworthy are now automatically screened
- The issue causing random comments to vanish has been fixed!
- If you visit a LiveJournal page and get prompted to log in, you'll be returned to the same page after you sign in (Thanks, Dreamwidth)!
- If you don't edit the timestamp for an entry at all, the entry timestamp will indicate the time the entry was posted instead of the time the Update Journal page was loaded
- Comments with paddings/backgrounds render correctly within the comment box (and will no longer wrap outside the box and break frames/margins)
New FCK fixes rich text editor!
- We've updated our RTE (Rich Text Editor) to FCKeditor version 2.6.5
- When switching from the RTE to HTML editor, links for syndicated feeds are no longer broken
- RTE now functions properly in Safari 4.0
- An extra line/space will not be auto-inserted whenever you switch from RTE to HTML editor
- The insert image link now works correctly in all browsers
LiveJournal Cares
We’re pleased to introduce you to lj_cares, a new LiveJournal community dedicated to raising awareness and funds for U.S. charitable organizations that improve the health and well-being of people around the world. Each month, we’ll spotlight a nonprofit that is making a significant global impact through medical research, public outreach, and/or humanitarian social programs. Charities will be selected in accordance with the U.S. calendar of national health observances based on a high rating (of over 60%) on Charity Navigator and global scope of impact.
In this, our inaugural month of November, we will celebrate national adoption month by offering a charitable virtual gift (priced at $2.99) to support Love Without Boundaries, an organization that saves the lives of orphans with life-threatening diseases and places them in loving homes around the world. LiveJournal will donate 100% of the proceeds from the sale of charitable vgifts (we'll cover the cost of credit card transaction fees). To learn more about Love Without Boundaries, please visit lj_cares and read about how they helped save Baby Kang and the Rainbow Twins from fatal illnesses, who are now thriving in nurturing families. You can purchase your Love Without Boundaries gifts in the Virtual Gift shop.
Papered in postcards
A couple of weeks ago, we asked you to send in postcards to surround us with LiveJournal community. Thanks for coming through! We've received postcards all the way from Germany, Finland, and Canada and from all over the US, including Texas, Florida, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Indiana, Hawaii, and Oklahoma just to name just a handful. We're thrilled with our improved decor.
Please keep the love coming for one more week by writing to Frank the Goat, Esq., c/o LiveJournal, Inc., 539 Bryant Street, Suite 210, San Francisco, CA 94107. Be sure to include your username, since we'll be drawing the names of ten random contributors next Thursday to win paid account credits!
Photos of the week
We have more dazzling images posted by talented LiveJournal photographers from around the world. We're hoping to span the entire globe, so please continue posting and tagging. Of course, you can also sit back and enjoy the view at lj_photophile.
You can see a sample of this week's gorgeous photos and check out spotlight communities and awesome user content after the jump!
( Read more... )Curtains
We thank you, once again, for joining us. See you next week!
Anyways, we're up, we're working, the load balancers are barely breaking a sweat right now and I need some food and a shot of whiskey. I don't even *like* whiskey!!
Thanks
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mhwest and dnewhall for helping out!---
On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice.
Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials.
We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait!
As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work.
I've been thinking about it a little bit since I had to do a rather bullshit posting about the holiday for Timken. Veterans apparently now have the option of taking the day off, according to New Hampshire law. The gesture is somewhat cheapened by the fact that it's an unpaid day, or is that just me being unpleasant?
Veteran's Day was the spawn of another holiday, Armistace Day, that celebrated the end of World War I.
Of note: WWI ended at 11:00 am on the 11th day on the 11th month. How did that happen? Did someone with a taste for patterns get put in charge of scheduling the war that week? Is it part of a larger pattern? Has anyone done anything like that in other wars?
Did whatever general or whoever that was in charge of the surrender want to go all the way? Does his memoirs look back... "Tarnation! I was gonna go hog-wild! November 11th? Well let's do it at 11:00. Heck with that, let's do it at eleven after eleven! Is there a room 1100 we can use? Something left that high after the war? Eh? Oh, that was the plan, but we were moving ahead of schedule... and the whole affair actually ended up being kind of depressing, so we called it a done deal some 11 minutes early..."
Armistice Day was replaced after, well, the SECOND World War and other wars. The efficiency, if not the love of three day weekends, changed the name if not the date. (Well, the date was changed for a little while, but then was changed back.)
Eleven o'clock on Eleven Eleven. Fascinating.
Or not, as might be said by Nine Below Zero:
Oh boy! My first strip is up for The Rapidian, a "hyper-local" news source here in Grand Rapids! It's a review of the Great Lakes Swimmers concert Wendy and I went to a few weeks ago. I hope you like it!
*This is not up on my website yet, but the original art is available if anyone is interested. It's big! 2 pages, each 19" x 12"! Email me for details.
I made a holiday card to express the religious/secular tension that is ankle deep here in the Midwest this time of year. It was indirectly my friend Chris's idea. There is also a hi-res version (for printing). Enjoy!
Click to enlarge.
Where did page 13 go? To be honest, I skipped a day in my journal during my trip and I haven’t finished drawing it yet. I wanted to get a page up today so I decided to move along to the pages that are finished. I’ll let you know when page 13 is up!
Originally published at friedwontons.com. You can comment here or there.
sixwordstoriesWhether you're in the mood for a creative challenge or you're short on time or attention span, this semi-addictive community is perfect for those who find flash fiction way long. Once you get the hang of it, you won't be able to stop. The prince turned into a frog. The girl ran home to mother. Tough to write. Easy to read. It's a double threesome of fun.
dailyfoodieDelicious, ambitious, and occasionally nutritious dishes make for an eclectic, all-you-can-eat feast. Whether you're searching for recipes for your next dinner party or you're jonesing for a late-night brownie fix, your cravings are sure to be well sated. A warm and inclusive community that welcomes all orientations, from carnivores to vegans, from gourmands to junk-food junkies. Guaranteed bias-free, food-positive, and pan-epicurian.
Spinning World appears each month in The Commons (in 2 different places this month – editorial for this one and the usual spot on the comics page for the other, which I’ll post soon).
Originally published at Colin Tedford dot com. You can comment here or there.
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Page Summary
- lj_spotlight :: ljspotlight : Spotlights: Homepage Spotlight 11/16/09 [+1]
- lj_spotlight :: ljspotlight : Spotlights: Homepage Spotlight 11/16/09 [+0]
- lj_spotlight :: ljspotlight : Spotlights: Homepage Spotlight 11/16/09 [+3]
- mattyoung : Back In The Saddle (Don't Kick A Dead Horse) [+1]
- 30sevenplace : A Brood of Many Vipers [+0]
- gummibaehr : Vezere Valley Venture! - Page 15 [+0]
- oletheros : (no subject) [+0]
- gummibaehr : Vezere Updates [+0]
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news :: theljstaff : LiveJournal Major Notes: Notes, Tweaks, Bug Kills, LJ_Cares! [+119] - reidsrow : (no subject) [+3]
- lj_maintenance :: dwell : Network Maintenance: Saturday, November 14, 2009 at 04:00-06:00 UTC/GMT [+39]
- mattyoung : Eleven o'clock on Eleven-Eleven. [+2]
- mattyoung : I Love This Thing [+0]
- reidsrow : Musical Review: the Great Lakes Swimmers [+1]
- reidsrow : Over the TOP! [+2]
- gummibaehr : Vezere Valley Venture! - Page 14 [+0]
- lj_spotlight :: ljspotlight : Spotlights: Homepage Spotlight 11/9/09 [+25]
- lj_spotlight :: ljspotlight : Spotlights: Homepage Spotlight 11/9/09 [+2]
- hungrybelly : Great Moments in Nuclear History 10 [+0]
- flameape : (no subject) [+0]