“To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.”
— Mitt Romney, responding to the question, “What’s better than a moon base?” at last night’s debate.
writer and editor jason rodriguez. this is my analog to digital.
i've edited comics like this one and this one. my books have been nominated for an eisner award and 8 harvey awards but i still don't have a cheap piece of plastic telling me i'm any good. i've written for comics and magazines and websites. i teach classes on comics writing at the writer's center and run a writer's workshop at arlington adult ed. i am currently working on an anthology of little-known baseball players. i blog about politics, sex, comics and pop culture, food, music, and tim cube. i live in arlington, va with my wife and our two dogs and our four cats and a parrot. i hate a lot of things, but i think i love you, even though i don't know you.
• ask me about things you want to ask me about
the bomb bag
• ask me about things you want to ask me about
the bomb bag
Benjamin J. Grimm by Jack Kirby
The Blue-Eyed Idol of Millions.
This past weekend we did our annual Virginia Wine tour to see what some of our favorite vineyards are serving up and check out some new vineyards, as well. We left early Sunday morning and got to Naked Mountain by 11, just as they opened. Did a tasting, had some veggie lasagna with a glass of wine by the fire, and left with three bottles.
Drove down 81 and stopped at Barren Ridge, a new place for us. A nice little vineyard that fully embraced the viognier grape which is fantastic because if there’s one grape Virginia does really well it’s viognier. Viognier will prove to be VA’s zinfandel over the next decade or so, so we fully support any wineries that serve it up as a varietal and within multiple blends. We picked up three bottles from there and then lowered the classy level by going to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the Pats/Ravens game.
After the game we checked in at our B&B, the Iris Inn. We’re big fans of the Iris Inn, staying in their Hawks Nest suite that has a private deck complete with hot tub. We sat in the hot tub with a bottle of wine and watched the Giants/Niners game before heading out to Waffle House for dinner. Then it was back to the Iris Inn for more wine and more hot tubbing and we looked like prunes when we got out of the tub at 2AM but it was a fantastic night.
Got breakfast at the B&B the next morning and then headed to Veritas for a tasting (free for us since we’re members), three more bottles of wine, and a glass by the fire. Played with their new 10-week old basset hound and laughed as he tripped over his ears whenever he tried to run.
Then we drove to Blenheim, a winery owned by Dave Matthews. We weren’t crazy about their wines last time we visited but the architecture is magnificent. The wines were much improved, they’re starting to find their legs, but still a bit overpriced - we didn’t buy anything.
On the way to Blenheim we noticed that the once bankrupt and always pretentious Kluge was bought by Donald Trump. A perfect pairing, honestly - almost as good a pairing as Shaquille O’Neal’s once-rumored purchase of the incredibly cheesy Oasis winery. We laughed at the sign and carried on to Barboursville.
At Barboursville we tasted the whole menu and purchased three bottles. We love Barboursville, the vintner there is a bit of a genius and does some great things with the sangiovese grape, the only Virginia-based vintner that has worked the sangiovese well, in our opinion.
And then we headed home.
We also stopped at three Sheetz over the course of two days, naturally.
Amazing gallery of vintage Mexican Horror Pulp cover art over on Super Brains. They’re just so goofy and absurd with a touch of outsider folk art. Gotta love it.
(via bigredrobot)
Trying too Hard
Me: I should take a picture of Norman Bates and write on it, “Always a mom’s date…never a mom.”
Coworker: I don’t get it.
Me: It’s a play on, “Always a prom date, never a…”
Coworker: Say it.
Matt Drudge and Newt Gingrich can both trace their careers back to the attempted character assassination of Bill Clinton. There has been a bit of souring since then, it seems.
Please join me for the opening reception at my first ever solo art show!
Saturday, January 28th, 8pm at Northside Social in Arlington!
This is the same plug from earlier…I didn’t realize Krissy was on Tumblr. She has a cool blog, too - you all should follow.
Lovable Misfits: New Paintings by Krissy Downing
My friend Krissy’s debut solo show starts this Friday at Northside Social in Arlington. I’ll be passing by for the opening gala and you should, too. Show some support for a great local artist! Info at the link.
Spent some time tonight writing about living forever.
What if we were to make new memories every moment, never repeating what we’ve done in the past, expanding our perception of time, and coming close to death once a week. Fear of dying would cause our neurons to fire like mad as we tried to recognize patterns and tried to escape death, we would replay everything, all of these new memories, and we would relive lives that were longer than other, mundane lives, once a week.
What if this was all compounded at an event horizon? What if we worked on the edge of a wormhole and the alarms blared and the navigator pounded the panels before giving up and we were quickly crushed but slowly perceived this end… and as time slowed our neurons continued to look for patterns, searching endless pathways for a solution, and we would see all of these memories that we created over and over again and wondered what it all meant and came up with new schools of thought and perceptions and theories and understood the meaning of life but we would never be able to pass this knowledge on to anyone?
I’ve been working short stories on the different ways to be immortal, and the most comforting one seems to be to increase the perception of time, to extract the mundane from our existences, to make our own time seem endless and then end our time in a way that allows us to relive every new memory we created before the end.
In my story, however, my character is so obsessed with new memories that he never experiences anything worth repeating. As he relives his life over and over again, as time slows and his body is crushed to nothing he looks back at all he’s experienced and realizes it is nothing but artificial discovery. It’s all fabricated nonsense, decisions made for the sake of having something new, never finding comfort in constants.
What’s the use of being immortal if you leave nothing behind?
HOLY SHIT.
A) Congrats to the crew, including you, Rafer
B) This has to be the first Kickstarter-funded book to make it on to the NYT Best Sellers list and that HAS TO be a major story, right?
“The only truly interesting thing about Elektra is that she died.”
—
Yes, I’m quoting myself. After hitting “publish” I realized that I was guilty of putting a woman in the refrigerator.
I could delete the post, but better to keep it and document my own realization that I can sometimes be a misogynist. It’s the more honest thing to do.
