No Shadow Conspiracy Allusions today. I am working on it, but between one thing and another thing and blonds showing up at the door, the day got away from me.
Just when I was starting to forget to think about it, my friend Chris posted a link to photos of the devastation in Japan on the Boston Globe's site. Slab gone is a phrase I never thought I'd know. Much less use again and again and again and again.
*******
My Other Other and I worked in the periodicals stacks at the public library for long enough that it was completely accepted that to her, paper dust has a different smell depending on the day. Some days it was chocolate. Other days it smelled of lemon drops. It was something that I didn't notice, always figuring that it had to do with 20+ years of smoking (off and on, people, off and on!) and that on top of what was not a great olfactory sensitivity to begin with. (It is balanced: I hear incredibly well at certain ranges) One of the things that we've been discussing over the last few months has become something of a goal reality for me of late, and I've begun collecting books with the intention of using them in a small privately funded public library. There are still many many questions that must be asked and answered before it is a physical reality, and I'm willing and happy to do that: it is part of the art of the becoming, but I do need books for the thing. And today I added a bunch of them to my LibraryThing catalog, in my new Other Library collection. I was sitting in my chair by the open window, laptop on my lap, books an the footstool, happily entering information, when it struck me that I smelled the dust - for the first time ever, I could tell the smell of the dust in the sunshine, and it was cardamom.
My Other Other understands the periodicals stacks of that public library better than anyone I know. She anticipates questions and organizational issues; she is weirdly able to find orphan issues and can spot volume and issue information hidden running perpendicular to the text in a box the size of a thumbnail in the space of 2 seconds after you've been looking for 5 minutes with a magnifying glass. It is right that she knows the smell of the dust they sloughed off - she is connected to the material. And now, so am I.
And I was happy in that place, and taking a break to let my eyes cool down a little bit and stop making decisions or lifting boxes when I wandered over to Whitechapel and found the monthly link to Webcomics. Fucking Warren Ellis, Internet Frost Swami!!!
There are already over 70 fantastic sites listed there. I've eyeballed at least 5 that I'ma have to feed to my Reader. And they all have archives, too. I am conflicted: ecstatic and dismayed allatonce.
Comics are now like some kind of very specific drug for me. And I do mean specific. I have said before that I don't read or very much like superhero stuff, and there are very few people who can write vampires without losing me completely. (I can think of three: Christopher Moore, Richard Kadrey and J.K. Rowling. So. You know. No one sparkling. Or angsty. I am so over the angsty.)
I get hooked, fast. I've said before that I read archives - in order to get my fix. Now you have an idea about why it was necessary for me to just link the damn thread everywhere and then find some other outlet. But that didn't happen. No. Instead, I saw that an old friend of mine was interviewed in one of his local papers about his new comic book venture Nix Comics Quarterly. He sent me the first issue in trade for a shout-out, which I did, although it was not as shouty or as outy as I think it deserved. Fortunately, he decided to do a Kickstarter project for the #2 issue. So, of course, I backed it. I backed it enough for a damn t-shirt. Because it is a good publication and it's locally funded and distributed. By local I do not mean only "sharing geography" as we live in the age of the internet which defines shared spaces more by use and combined traffic routes than by actual GPS points or physical destinations. It is not enough to say: "Someone is doing something around the corner and shouldn't we go because, hey, it's local." It is enough to say "This is a good bit of work. It is funny and it's dark and the stories are classically twisted and the artwork is varied and this author is fucked in the head in many good ways. Oh, and, hey - it's self-published and distributed - Well fucking done."
My fix was fed.
At least until I saw the super cool project that Lex Machina has going on Kickstarter! I love this! I think that this would be a fantastic reason to get a bunch of bellydancers together and head to Detroit and get decked out and photographed in a world of zeppelins and maybe even ray guns and jet packs. Jet Packs! I need to make more money so that I can spend it on all of this wonder.
There is too much horror in the world to ignore the potential for beauty in every possible place.
Although I still haven't had a chance to read any of my damn books today. I skipped chorale and everything.
PS: The cat is out of the room. She needed to cool down. There were blonds in the house.
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