Cleaning House on Tuesday

...and look at the little bastards I found lurking amid the dust bunnies. [All art (c) 2006 SRBissette, natch.]

Am I the only one besieged with banner ads for giant throbbing swelling infected toes this morning? One actually has an animated graphic lifting the big toe's nail off to expose the site of infection. Brrrrrr! Just what I needed at 6 AM. I feel like Lester Gass: "These giant throbbing toes, only I can see..." (since we're all seeing the Giant Leering Arabs these days, I reckon S. Clay's favorite misogynist character has to move on to something else eventually).

Five-Town Broadband Committee meeting tonight; non-stop scanning (for next week's one-two punch CCS workshops I'm teaching) all day, and more -- so, a potpourri plethora of posts through the day, hitting various points with little point other than each point's point:

* Mike Mignola and Hellboy fans, take note!

The Eisner-Award winning Mike Mignola comic The
Amazing Screw-On Head is now an animated pilot!

Thanks to an unexpected email from Mike's sweetie Christine Mignola, you now know "an animated pilot has been completed and the Science Fiction Channel will be testing it on Scifi.com on Thursday, July 13th" -- click the link for more info, and screw that head on properly, bunkie!

* VT Film Commission co-founder and fellow WRIF (White River Indy Film) committee member Bill Stetson sent me the following merger of comics, government, and environmental activism:

Polluters of America's waterways, prepare for Ganymede the Waterkeeper!

Yep, his name is Ganymede, that link brings you his debut image, and here's a few choice excerpts from the press release:

Starlight Runner Creates "Ganymede," New Comics Superhero to Debut in Waterkeeper Magazine's Summer Issue -- Waterkeeper Alliance Introduces Environmental Champion

New York, NY - July 6, 2006 - Move over, Batman, Spider-Man and Catwoman! A new guardian of justice is on his way, and he's not happy! Polluters of America's waterways, prepare to be struck by a Tidal Blast from Ganymede the Waterkeeper.

Ganymede is the brainchild of Jeff Gomez, president and CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment, Inc.... "We conceived Ganymede because he is the mythological cup bearer to the gods," says Gomez. "Water is the source of life." The new superhero has turned out to be a lifesaver for Waterkeeper Alliance.

"Waterkeeper needed magazine cover art to creatively illustrate the problem of illegal sewage spills," says Gomez from his office in Manhattan. "My first thought was how valiant the people of this organization really are. Waterkeepers patrol and fight for their lakes and rivers, bays and coastlines. What Waterkeeper Alliance needed was a new superhero who could raise awareness in young people about this critical issue."

"Waterkeepers are superheroes," says celebrated environmental advocate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., president of Waterkeeper Alliance. "Pollution is as insidious and evil as any comic villain, only it is real. Waterkeeper has 153 leaders around the world standing for their waterbodies, confronting polluters and fighting for clean water and strong communities."

The origin of this latest environmental comics character? Move over, Swamp Thing! Read on --

Celeste Swan, an African-American Waterkeeper, while testing the water in her local river, finds human waste. The illegal sewage spawns a huge hideous monster...and FWAASH! The blue superhero Ganymede strikes like a storm to vanquish the beast. Swan knows better, however. It takes more than just a muscle-bound water elemental to get to the heart of the pollution dilemma. She vows to fix the problem using whatever legal means necessary.

Wolff & Byrd, look out!

"Swan, like all Waterkeepers around the world, takes personal responsibility for her waterways and is proactive in her approach," says Eddie Scher, communications director of Waterkeeper Alliance, from his office in Irvington, New York. "Sewage spills are not an easy problem to illustrate. Comics allow us to show how Waterkeepers work: confront the problem, solve it and move on to the next problem."

The comic strip adventures of Ganymede & Celeste Swan are featured on the front cover of the Summer 2006 issue of Waterkeeper magazine, available for $5.95 from

here.

The further adventures of the dynamic duo are set to continue in subsequent issues of the quarterly magazine.

There's more, but you get the idea -- keep an eye out, folks.



* Can it be true: Only $600,000 spent investigating the collapse of the WTC on 9/11, versus $40,000,000 spent to investigate President Clinton?

Tell me this factoid that was emailed to me this morning is wrong. Anyone. Please.

How much have these fools spent on their investigations of everything but the ruling GOP/President/Administration's behavior & crimes, while the reality is so much more horrific?:

* The President W. Bush Commemorative Era of Real-Life-and-Death Online Snuff Movies is only getting nastier.

"Tape claims 3 GIs killed over rape-murders"

from Associated Press writer Robert H. Reid. "God Almighty enabled them to capture two soldiers of the same brigade as this dirty crusader," said the written statement posted along with the video. Nothing said whether the the two slain soldiers — Pfc. Kristian Menchaca and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker — whose bodies were found on June 20, were indeed part of the same brigade as accused rapist/slayers/co-conspirators Sgt. Paul E. Cortez, Spc. James P. Barker, Pfc. Jesse V. Spielman, Pfc. Bryan L. Howard and Sgt. Anthony W. Yribe. Time will tell.

Though Iraq has yet to yield a US atrocity on the scale (body-count wise) as devastating as the Vietnam War's notorious Me Lai Massacre, we're getting there, as our Congress stupidly ditzes about with flag-burning amendments, gay marriage homophobia, video game violence (huh, you think war-mongering in real-life carries a bit more cultural heft, do ya?) and everything but the real world.

What a sick fucking country we live in... willfully exploiting our rage and sorrow, we dupe ourselves collectively into supporting a completely bogus war and foment further global friction and hatred. We drop our own ill-equipped, trained-to-kill teenagers into the Middle East based on lies (Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11) and reign 'em in/turn 'em loose under a sociopathic neo-con leadership to act as untrained policemen in a country festering with all-out civil war prompted by our attack/"liberation"/invasion/occupation.

Of course atrocities follow. It is inevitable.

These atrocities, this war, these leaders of ours shame and degrade us all, and every honorable soldier serving. Our addiction to "Victory Culture" via nonsensical undeclared wars that cannot be victorious in any scenario -- much less the current one -- is bearing its terrible fruit.
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Ragmop quote of the day:

"Isn't that just like a woman. Blaming her personal failures on an imaginary patriarchal system where women are excluded on the basis of their sex."