And lives in the Bay Area?

From the Cartoon Art Museum:

Monsters of Webcomics: Webcomic-Con 2009

Cartoon Art Museum event: Saturday, December 12, 2009, 11:00am-5:00pm,

Free with paid admission to the Cartoon Art Museum

The Cartoon Art Museum is proud to host Webcomic-Con 2009, a single-day mini-convention dedicated to online comics and their creators. Visitors will have the opportunity to meet local webcartoonists and talk with them about their work. The featured artists will sell and sign copies of their comics, draw sketches for patrons, and conduct writing and drawing workshops throughout the day.

Featured guests include Brian Andersen (So Super Duper, Reignbow & Dee-Va, http://www.sosuperduper.com), Leigh Dragoon (By The Wayside, The Faerie Path Manga, http://www.leighdragoon.com), Shaenon K. Garrity (Skin Horse, Narbonic, http://www.shaenon.com), Victor Hao (King of RPGs, http://www.kingofrpgs.com), Karen Luk (Raconteur, http://www.karenluk.net, http://www.girlamatic.com/raconteur/, Betsy Streeter (Brainwaves, http://www.betsystreeter.com) and Chuck Whelon (artist and co-writer of Pewfell, http://www.pewfell.com).

NOTE FOR WEBCARTOONISTS: If you are interested in participating in this event, please contact Andrew Farago at gallery@cartoonart.org for more details.

Or, at least one...

Back in '06, I joined a service that was, at the time, called GreenDimes. It's now called "Precycle," and is one service of a web-portal company called Tonic. It's basically a service that triest to reduce junkmail coming to your home. (I sort of wish they would get back to just focusing on, and expanding, their original service, since I frankly don't care about the rest of what they're doing. But I guess they were having trouble making money on that; the direct marketers have been lobbying state legislatures to try to make it difficult for companies like Tonic to act on behalf of consumers -- they want laws that say a third party can't opt out for you, you have to do it yourself. Anyways, it seems like they've stopped investing effort in adding more catalog-mailers to their database of "companies whose catalogs we know how to stop".)

In any case, when they originally started, they offered, as one of the options, a long-term membership, and all memberships were based on periods of time. They've recently changed the policy to basing membership on location -- you buy once for your house, but you have to re-register when you move.

I wrote in to complain about the fact that this basically meant they wouldn't be honoring my long-term membership. Within minutes, they emailed back, and after a few quick exchanges, we agreed that they'd refund most of my original membership fee. They actually offered to refund the whole thing, but I would've felt guilty about that, so I said they could keep the equivalent of what it would've cost under the new policy to register at the places I've lived while using their service.

I've got a new William Bazillion mini-comic, "Fatty Camp," that's now available in the Couscous Collective store! (Thanks to the lovely and talented Pancha Diaz for updating the shop!)

Please check out the store here and load up on "Fatty Camp" (which is not available online, and probably won't be) and other fine Couscous products today. These make great stocking stuffers for those special comic fans in your life, and you should pick up on some of these quality items for yourself while you're at it.

Orders will be extra, extra appreciated right now as our home computer is in the shop, and we're bracing ourselves for a steep repair bill.

I'm still planning to write about my recent trip, because dude, that shit needs to be documented (not least because of the inevitable felony charges). But FIRST there is something I feel the need to rant about.

The high school curriculum where I live includes the following books: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, a tedious, repetitive piece of tripe that has become part of the 'Western canon' for no good reason whatsoever, and To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, a moving novel filled with beautiful prose that I honestly believe is well worth studying. Both novels have been banned at various places and times in history because of their unflinching look at race in America (and their liberal use of the N-word), which is an interesting issue that I will not address today.

No, what is annoying me TODAY is that both novels have, as a turning point in their narratives, a rape accusation that turns out to be false. In Of Mice and Men, Lennie is mentally disabled and doesn't understand his own strength, which means that a woman who thinks he is trying to rape her is mistaken about his innocent intentions, and he is driven out of town as a result. In To Kill A Mockingbird, a white woman accuses a black man of rape after her father catches her trying to seduce him.

So the message that high school students get, at least in this province, is RAPE IS A VERY SERIOUS CRIME AND IT WOULD BE A HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE THING IF IT EVER ACTUALLY HAPPENED TO ANYONE. GOOD THING IT DOESN'T! Man, theoretically, rape sucks a lot! That's why it is VERY VERY IMPORTANT TO BE CAREFUL OF WHOM YOU ACCUSE OF RAPING SOMEONE. Conclusion: rape is AN ABSURD LIBERAL MYTH PROPAGATED BY WHITE LADIES.

(The secondary message of To Kill A Mockingbird is this: Remember that black people are human, and that we must respect them! HOWEVER! Respect is A ZERO SUM, so if we give it to black men we need to take it away from someone else! How about that stinky Mayella, eh? She doesn't seem to be using it.)

To my knowledge, no book on the high school curriculum here contains a plot point that hinges on a rape that actually happens to an actual person. No wonder our students, both male and female, grow up believing that rape accusations are always, you know, JUST MADE UP.

But I can't remember who.

In any case: The majority of jobs (about two-thirds) are created by small young companies. "Kauffman's analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data [shows] that companies less than five years old created nearly two-thirds of net new jobs in 2007."

Previously mentioned... Here is the actual CraigsList posting. Feel free to share with friends who might be looking for a place, post to boards at your workplace, etc.