Pointless Man

With the mullet. Former Minnesota governor and current candidate for the Republican nomination for POTUS, Tim Pawlenty, has a problem.  People think he is boring.   To be fair, he is.  In the rare case where they talk about him, it is usually to point out how few people care about the guy. He might have avoided  this issue if he had just refrained from cutting his hair back in 2008.  You see, Tim's biggest problem isn't that he puts pundits to sleep, but his lack of a hockey mullet. With that funky hair style he once had, people would have been happily talking about him. Sure, they would have been making fun of the dude, but not in any sort of damaging fashion. Rather, it would have turned his biggest weakness into a strength. If people looked at him, and thought he was a goof, the fact that he is actually dry would make him seem 'serious' and 'electable' in contrast to expectations. Meanwhile, the mullet would have given him an immediate sense...

-On his June 26 Meet the Press appearance, Gov. Chris Christie blithely said the US murdered Osama bin Laden.  "I do think that we have achieved a lot of what we wanted to achieve in Afghanistan, especially after the murder of bin Laden."  Bizarre word choice for an American, let alone a politician of national stature.  Still weirder to throw the claim out there in such cavalier fashion.  I assume murder is still a serious charge in New Jersey. -Tea-Party-style Republicans are willing to make a deal with Obama, so long as it only contains cuts like ethanol subsidies.  Admittedly, ethanol is a largely ineffectual waste, the greatest effect of which is to cause food to cost more, but it's also a major interest/industry in several states key to any victory in the Electoral College.  In other words, doing away with ethanol subsidies means doing away with one's chance to be elected President of the United States of America any time soon. -Similarly, Mitch ...

Just south of the newspaper vending machine. From Duty Free Seattle: http://jimhamerlinck.blogspot.com/ The aluminum and glass Winchell's Donuts stands abandoned, dilapidated, its partial gutting on display through a fishbowl lens.  More than two years after this shop's closure, the manual newspaper stand at its front continues to be serviced.  Today's headline reads, " Art of decay ".

If Israel's 1967 borders are "indefensible", as Benjamin Netanyahu claims, why did Israel have so little trouble beating three nations in six days from within those same borders?  How is it they lasted for over 18 years before being expanded?  Were they so untenable, why couldn't this supposed problem be addressed by negotiated 'land-swaps', as has been suggested by most parties since before the Oslo accords? If the Israeli PM's claim seems unjustified on its face, why are so many politicians and pundits eager to repeat it ad nauseum ?  Why do they cheer this false objection? Is it because Israel is our friend?  How?  We give it cover on the world stage and in the UN Security Council.  We give it hundreds of millions of dollars a year.  What does Israel offer us in turn?  Lectures and insults? I'm not anti-Israel.  Its people deserve to live in peace and prosperity alongside their neighbours.  But this will not be achieved by an in...

Prose and verse are generally accepted as distinct writing formats with their own rules, styles, and grammars.  Though their borders are somewhat vague, they have come to be seen as something of a dichotomy in the eyes of the general public.  There are, however, at least 3 other popular approaches to writing as exhibited in picture-books, comicbooks, and plays.  Though sometimes given short shrift, these styles are accepted as literature.  They are included in libraries, book stores, and academic study.  Most importantly, they are read. In the general case, there is clearly writing being done in the creation of any one of these.  But what of the wordless comic or silent play?  Should we consider scripts written, but fully realized plays, comics, and picture-books, to be performance, art, or some other kind of non-literature?  These worries of theory are kinks to be worked out, surely, but they are not of immediate practical concern to the writer...

My scanner doesn't seem to work without it's power cord--surprising, I know.  I seem to have lost it in a recent move.  Such items are frustratingly difficult to replace now that Radioshack has become something like the sad little brother of Best Buy.  As a result, I am reduced to using camera-phones, with which I am nowhere near skilled enough to make my drawings look good.  This is why I haven't uploaded any sketches or comics in a while. But here is a sample anyway.  The face on the left has become my phone's background image (without the blue noise).  The lady on the right was kind enough to sit for me one day, or rather, she sat in front of me on the bus, and I sketched her without her knowledge.  It's all the same, right?

...that is, if its waves in Egypt, Yemen, and perhaps elsewhere unsettle the current governments, I predict future Republicans will praise George W. Bush for bringing Democracy to the Middle East. They will be wrong, in many ways, but it won't stop them. They might even Reaganize him. How weird would that be?