not falling down

“It sounds like your girlfriend reads a lot of ‘women’s publications.’ I have worked for women’s publications. We make up those sex tips so that people who read sex tips are terrible at sex, and those of us who read William Gibson novels are astounding at it.”

I know I already freaked out about her two weeks ago, but I need to emphasize that Julieanne Smolinski is completely invited to my birthday party.

I’ve mentioned before, I think, that hospitals contain some pretty potent olfactory triggers for me. So when a daily donation thing for a pediatric palliative care home bubbled up through my twitters, this caught me:

“We’re very cautious about the ‘hospital’ smell, so we have smell patrols,” laughs Simons. “Usually we have brownies baking.”

Okay, Debbie Simmons of Ryan House. You get it. Here’s my wallet.

BUT SOMETIMES THEY COME BACK

My favorite comic strips always go away! I am very sad about Bobwhite ending; it will leave a sore and empty socket in the jawbox of my daily comics list. For years it has been the funniest, smartest, most personal two minutes of my morning, and it was a privilege to read.

Unlike the bad old days, though, now when comic creators stop doing one strip they start another! I don’t know if Magnolia’s new Monster Pulse will ever replace Bobwhite in my heart, but I will pretty much follow her work anywhere at this point. The same goes for Kris Straub, of course, and F Chords has suddenly sprinted up to become my favorite outlet of his, with a distinctly more personal tone that echoes a little of what he used to do in Checkerboard Nightmare. So fucking go there already, I’m tired of telling you dicks.

And re-read Bobwhite!

Stephen responds.

A while back Stephen was telling me about those Patrick Rothfuss books for which all nerds have hard dicks. “What’s the best part?” I asked.

“This guy Kvothe gets up on stage and plays his lute, and it’s really moving,” said Stephen. “But not gay, because he has magic powers that make every woman want to bone him.”

“Uh huh,” I said.

“Fine,” he said, “what are YOU reading about?”

“Gun-toting bug-eating Muslim lesbians in space,” I said.

Okay, that isn’t strictly accurate. The primary protagonist is agnostic and the secondary one is a dude. But there are lots of guns, lots of bugs, lots of brutality (eg women throwing punches), lots of Koran-analogs, and lots of great characters who aren’t white even on the cover. It is not gentle in introducing its weird setting, and is very mean to everyone you like, and there is torture in it! So avoid it if that’s going to bother you. But while everyone’s sputtering over how many darlings die in George R. R. Martin, I’m going to be over here trying to wave you toward God’s War, easily my favorite book this year.

In no particular order. Some of the following use their streams purely to deliver high-wattage comedy beams straight to your swimsuit area, others are just general life tweeters who happen to be funnier than I will ever be in my wildest dreams even with other people helping and also the audience is on nitrous because they make poor life decisions.

• 
  Apologies if I accidentally sexted you yesterday, I was just trying to clean some hot sauce off my phone’s screen with my mouth.

  Kelly Deal was in the Breeders but will only admit it if you ask her about it enough times.

• 
  Can your uterus lining “drop a deuce”? I wonder how many followers I just lost.

  Kat is the only one of these people I could meet if I wanted to, specifically by driving a mile up MLK to her club and paying her twenty dollars. I would never do that. Where by “that” I mean “make it past the Mongolian BBQ place with a hot twenty in my pocket.”

• 
  “Hey sweet cheeks, howsabout you ride that bike down to the DQ and pick me up a banana nut whip?” I said, high-fiving myself in the mirror.

  Elisabeth really likes Jesse Thorn but look, we all have glaring flaws that will send us straight to Hell someday.

• 
  Just now, a ring totally deteriorated until it literally fell apart on my hand. These cleaning chemicals mmmay be too strong.

  I guess Annie Wu does art that makes Warren Ellis and James Urbaniak clutch their faces and weep with adulation or whatever? Anyway I like it when she makes sitting in her room and drawing sound like an Upton Sinclair book.

• 
  Found a quarter stuck to my back. Everything’s coming up Shelby!

  Shelby Fero is not her real name, I hope, because she’s fucking seventeen years old for Christ’s sake I’m just gonna go learn how to drink alcohol now.

• 
  I refuse to see movies that critics deem “fun for the whole family,” because most of our grandparents are pretty racist.

  Okay, this is a true story. There are, by some estimates, 200 million people on Twitter. One day I was talking to my friend Joe and he was like “so have you found anyone cool on Twitter recently?” and I was like “well, I found the funniest person on Twitter, yes.” And he was like “really? The funniest.” And I was like “yup.” And then there was a pause.

  And then he said “Boobs Radley?”

  And I said “Boobs Radley.”

  Anyway Joe and I are getting married now (it’s okay, he’s Canadian).