#tmh BatPizza reminds me of the chain Peter Cook started in Britain: the Frog and Pizza…

@Frito_KAL Whoever said “all math students hate fractions,” SHOULD have said “2/3 of all math students hate fractions” for maximum annoyance.

The bad news is I have no good news to give you. The good news is that’s the only bad news I have.

What is more painful? Yanking out the hair growing in your ears or just realizing you have hair growing out of your ears?

from @fmarciuliano: Worst lyric(“In the Summertime”) “If her daddy’s rich take her out for a meal/If her daddy’s poor just do what you feel”

The King Is NOT Dead, just retiring. http://www.metafilter.com/93304/My-suspenders-are-attached-directly-to-my-genitals-Los-Osos-California (yes, that was my contribution to Kevin Pollak’s ‘Larry King Game’ because I know he will NEVER want to chat with me directly)

to @MarieMonDieu : saw your tweet about “my new BP med” and thought “Is Big Pharma getting involved with the Oil Spill?”

Wootazon! My on-line shopping world has just been rocked (slightly) http://www.woot.com/Blog/ViewEntry.aspx?Id=13390

As this site bursts forth into full toonishness, there will be a section of links dedicated to webcomics (and the web presence of paper comics) and it will be organized according to update schedule, just as my personal bookmarks are now. Because there is no other way to keep up with the massive-and-growing numbers of comics worth reading (which isn’t just the GOOD ones) on the web.

That said, let’s run this up the wifi antenna and see who logs in…

9PM Pacific/Midnight Eastern (yes, I’m US-centric but even most of the best webcomics from other parts of the world schedule their updates between Midnight and Dawn in the USofA)
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In case you didn’t know, due to my Disability, I qualify for Medicare, and, in order to get the ol’ Part D Prescription Coverage, I deal with a “Medicare Advantage” program through SecureHorizons. That plan is now “branded” with the AARP logo for reasons that do me no good since I’m not even old enough to belong to the AARP (but at my next birthday, WHOOPIE!).

Anyway, from time to time, “AARP MedicareComplete form SecureHorizons” feels the need to send me some printed matter with information on services I may or may not be using and may or may not need. Their latest communique has a front cover that prompted a Level 4 WTF?!? from me. Let’s look at it, shall we?

Okay, point number one, it’s obvious that Insurance Companies, especially those doing business with T’e Fed’ral Guv’mint, are going to engage in public displays of Political Correctness, especially in the use of maximum-multi-ethnic clip art. Which usually doesn’t bug me. Of course, when I was a blonde boy the age of the blonde boy in this picture, I didn’t know three people who looked like the other three people in the picture, but that was the 1960s in the San Fernando Valley suburb of L.A. And then it struck me… blonde boy? Asian girl? Mixed-race child of somewhat indeterminate gender? Only the woman with the paintbrush looks anywhere near the age of 99% of the people Medicare Advantage plans apply to, and that’s only if you look closely, because she is certainly trying to look younger. Frankly, I doubt that very many of AARP MedicareComplete from SecureHorizons’ clients ever find themselves in the presence of three kids of any ethnic background unless they are all grandchildren. So that picture just looked not quite right for the intended audience.

Then I looked at the title that was supposed to describe the contents of this communique: Health or wellness or prevention information Or WTF?!? The first time I read it, my eyes skipped over the second ‘or’, just like you can miss short words that are duplicated like this over here –>

Is this information on how to prevent health or wellness? Even with the second ‘or’, it could be interpreted as giving the option for health/wellness prevention. Now, many people may consider it one of the benefits of America’s pseudo-free-market health care industry that they are not forcing health and wellness on us, but that is exactly the kind of thinking that is the mission of this blog to destroy. Then again, if you think that your wellness or illness should be something you make a conscious choice about, I recommend you choose Cancer.

Then again, just looking at this design disaster from a so-called Health Care Provider makes choosing against health somewhat tempting.

The webcomic Goats started out being about two drinking buddies, Jon and Philip, and a few unlikely talking animals and (in retrospect, rather quickly) evolved or de-volved into a multi-dimensional sci-fi-fantasy epic about the rush to save the Multiverse from shutting down due to a Y2K+12 bug in the software running all of existence (which was what happened when you had ancient Mayans with their limited calendar programming the automation of the uber-system). It all screeched to a halt last month when the artist/creator Jon Rosenberg took a long look at his real life and realized that, even with the third in a series of beautifully realized books of his oddball epic nearing publication, he still needed to do something more and/or else to make a reasonable living as a webcomicker.

That was a true Call to Arms for his fan base, who provided massive quantities of words of support and early sales of the aforementioned third volume of Goats-toons (I among them) while he worked on a second, less story-arc dependent but semi-related comic to fill the immediate financial gap and the long-term creative gap when the story (but not his entire fictional multiverse) inevitably ends in December of 2012. That strip, “Scenes from a Multiverse”, officially starts any second now.

UPDATE: IT’S ON. IT IS SO ON.
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As I have noted way too often, I was born the same day teen icon James Dean died, which I suspect resulted in my lifelong lack of a Cause (although I never got the hang of being a Rebel). So when I heard the news that Jimmy Dean had died, I checked my vital signs 37 times over the next 36 hours.

Once semi-reassured I was surviving (as well as I ever do), I noticed that nobody had posted an obit for him at MetaFilter (known for its frequent ‘Obitfilters’ and the practice of comments consisting of a single period “.” to represent a moment of silence) so I did it myself.

Jimmy was best known to Mefites for his brand of sausage, although he sold the company in the ’80s, and was dropped as its spokesman in 2003; its current owner is Sara Lee*. But his musical legacy is sealed by his ‘country rap**’ classic "Big Bad John" (performed live in 2008), often imitated, but never parodied better than with the stereotypical gay hairdresser saga "Big Bruce"*** (info). But to me, he was the guy with the variety show where he spent several minutes every week bantering with the muppet Rowlf****. Here’s Jimmy in Esquire Magazine’s "What I’ve Learned". His final resting place is music-themed, NOT sausage themed. "Here lies one hell of a man."

* Sara Lee’s original namesake is LONG gone but the company recently had a female CEO who is currently on medical leave.
** other MeFites pointed out the formal name for that style of song was “recitation”, but any category of song that includes “Big Bad John”, “A Boy Named Sue” and “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” deserves a cooler name.
*** the Steve Greenberg who did that novelty record was not the same guy who was behind Lipps, Inc. and “Funkytown”, it was oddly appropriate that they had the same name. Another classic Big Bad John parody pointed out by others was “The Ballad of Irving”, but it was more a general satire of folk legend songs.
**** performed by Jim Henson, with Frank Oz giving a hand (literally). The first muppet character to have a regular role in a TV series, ‘Old Brown Ears’ was pivotal in building the brand.