This just in — the Federal Marriage Amendment was just shot down in the Senate. The final vote was 50 “yays” and 48 “nays”, with two abstaining (Kerry and Edwards, oddly enough). The vote needed two thirds majority to pass. Wanna see who voted yay and nay? Check out

Roll Call Vote 155 over at http://www.senate.gov.

Charlie and I hit some geocaches today during our lunch break! Turns out there are quite a few within walking distance from our workplace, and two of them were right across the street on Papa John’s beautiful coroporate campus. We didn’t find the first (titled “Better Pizza 2”), but we did find the second (titled “Papa’s Paradise”). A nice little jaunt on a not-so-hot day.

Geocaching is a pseudo-sport where people hide little treasures called “caches”, record their longitude and latitude with the help of GPS receiver, and then using the Geocaching website, they list their new cache for all to see. Prospective geocachers go to the site, search for local caches, get the longitude and latitude and then commence to searching. Some caches are tiny film canisters (like the ones we found today) some are coffee cans, some are for swapping old ties. Write your name in the log and move on!

Check out this article from CNN: McCain: Same-sex marriage ban is un-Republican. Thank you, John McCain. Aside from the fact that an amendment would be most-unAmerican and terribly exclusionary, McCain makes the point that wresting control of an issue that varies from state-to-state from the states (and more to the point, from the people in those states) is most assuredly un-Republican. Good on ya.

I’ve been playing the heck out of SimTower as of late, but I just found the sequel — Yoot Tower — at The Underdogs. You can download it for free, it’s 52 megs.

From the Chicago Sun Times’ Love’s life spirals further down:

Love was admitted to Bellevue Hospital in New York on Friday — arriving on a stretcher, dressed only in a lace-trimmed camisole and a pair of handcuffs.

I’ll admit to never having really cared for Courtney Love, but damn! She’s really let herself go. Sad to see anyone make a tumble like this.

That is what a certain recent MetaFilter post asked. The whole “is black the new white?” thing is terribly played, but yes, it might be true. At least, I’d like to think so. The MetaFilter post linked an article at the New York Times entitled “Not Funnies”, and interviews a number of prominent graphic novelists including Alan Moore, Art Speigelman, Joe Sacco, and Chris Ware. Pretty interesting read for those interested in knowing why graphic novels “aren’t funnies” or “comics” as you might have assumed.

I think this line really sums it up: “[the next new thing, the new literary form] might be comic books. Seriously.”

I’m not going to summarize the article for you, but safe to say it will change your idea of why graphic novels are serious literature (not to say that superhero-style comics aren’t serious, but c’mon folks).

Further, Hunter sent me a link to a great interview with Grant Morrison, a heavy-hitter in the “comics” industry. He makes some salient points regarding the innovation that comics/graphic novels can and must make to stay relevant.

In any case, next time you are in your local Barnes & Nobles, ask your friendly bookseller to point you in the direction of the Graphic Novels section. Have a look-see.

update: I forgot to add this little snippet from the NYTimes article. Regarding Alan Moore’s (
From Hell) current project… “Right now, he is working on a pornographic graphic novel, ‘Lost Girls,’ in which the main characters are the Alice of ‘Through the Looking Glass,’ now known as Lady Fairchild and a laudanum-addicted lesbian; the slightly repressed Mrs. Harold Potter, nee Wendy Darling, from ‘Peter Pan’; and the randy Dorothy Gale, from ‘The Wizard of Oz.’” That, my friends, ain’t no superhero book.

Dear readers, I have changes up the styles a little bit. The new “default” theme is what used to be the “blue” theme. And the old “default” is now the “simple” theme.

What? You didn’t even know you could change the theme for the site? Why sure you can, doodarino! Look for the THEME dropdown list and choose one. Dependent on the theme you have chosen, this should be on the left or the bottom of the page.

WOXY is returning to the digital airwaves this morning ladies and gentiles at 10 A.M. EST! As previously mentioned here, here and here, WOXY was a great FM station out of Cinci that was by all means “independent” and family-owned. They decided to sell out after many years of serving the public, and sadly the webcasting stream went with it. That is, until now! Some very kind folks swooped in to save the webcasting portion of it (which, I might add, was terribly popular).

News Hounds is to cable news networks what Television without Pity is to uh, well, television (but not cable news networks). They recap cable news programs summarizing interesting tidbits throughout the day, so you don’t have to sit through it. Both TV Without Pity and News Hounds can smell bullshit and then promptly skewers it. With TV without Pity, the comedy usually arises from the witty summaries. In the case of the couple of stories I’ve read on News Hounds, the comedy is usually provided by the shouting, derisive gasbags. One cool thing is that they’ve got it categorized by both network and by show. I suggest you check it out.

Now for a little foot-notery. Thanks to Drudge, I was alerted to a (unnamed by Drudge) documentary about Fox News’ “Fair and Balanced” coverage called Outfoxed that will be debuting in New York very soon. Having searched the google, I found the site, and they linked to News Hounds. Outfoxed and News Hounds, by the way, were and are supported by MoveOn.org. Further, Outfoxed seems to be compiled of raw satellite footage much in the same way Brian Springer’s brilliant Spin (1993) was, regarding Gulf War v1.0. You can download Spin in it’s entirety at Illegal Art, which is brilliant in and of it’s own right.

That is all, hippies, good night.

Again Pitchfork reports more good news for people who like the rock. The White Stripes are readying a rarities album, among other things. Those other things include releasing the bootlegged and awesome John Peel sessions they did (they have done two so far, and the first I literally listened to on a loop for a week back in 2001), as well as a DVD and possibly some back-catalog stuff from the “early days”. Huzzah!