"Not just different, my dear — prettier!"

Wow.

Remember that post I made yesterday about that stupid book that's all over the news? The one that teaches little girls that plastic surgery is painful and scary but will make you pretty so it's worth it?

Turns out the Onion already did it, and did it better.

Real life imitating satire, right down to some uncannily similar turns of phrase.

This Shit Is Bananas

There is now a children's book that explains that Mommy is kind of like a butterfly, because she starts out as a chubby bundle of inadequacy, goes into a cocoon of scary and risky surgical procedures, and comes out worthy of love. GIRL POWER!

Don't let TV and magazines get the jump on poisoning your daughter's confidence--buy her this book today and let her hear the bad news from someone she trusts.

The Road to COMPLETE SPIRITUAL BREAKDOWN

I stayed up all night because I was listening to Cormack McCarthy's The Road while I inked the comic, and I ended up so tense and anxious that I finally had to admit I wasn't getting any sleep until I finished the story, which I just did, and holy shit that book crushed my soul. It made the movie Children of Men seem like a Disneyland boat ride by comparison.

I wonder if McCarthy ever read Stephen King's The Gunslinger. The two novels had a very similar atmosphere of hopeless questing in an utterly ruined world, though King took his nameless protagonist and boy in a completely different direction plotwise.

Just do yourself a favor and don't read The Road if you're feeling in any way suicidal. A lot of popular stories taking place in a post-apocalyptic setting tend to pull the punch a bit and focus on the hope of rebuilding the human race, whereas McCarthy's take on the situation is basically "EVERYTHING IS FUCKED AND OH BY THE WAY THERE'S A BABY ON A SPIT. SLEEP TIGHT."

I utterly loved it, but goddamn. I need to hug a kitten or something just to get back my will to live.

IT IS TOO EARLY FOR MORE PLAGUE

DAMN YOU ROOMIES WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME

I woke up this morning without my voice, to the sound of a rumbling tide that turned out to be my own phlegmy breathing. Also, my throat feels like I deep throated a porcupine. And is my right eye attempting to water for no reason? I think it might be.

Also, what the fuck possessed me to begin reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius this week, of all possible weeks I could have taken an interest in the story? It's too good to put down but the first two chapters gave me flashbacks up the wazoo.

Oh well, at least my brain still works. Off to make some art.

Typed with one hand as I shoveled in cereal with the other...

Lately I've been reading a lot of paper-format novels on the assumption that part of my epic writer's block might have been touched off by reading nothing but nonfiction, which doesn't feed the imagination nearly as well. Sure, that keeps me striving to write better in the nonfiction arena, but what I really want to write is stories.

Also, I usually listen to my books so I can have my eyes and hands free to draw or exercise or whatever. This is good stuff, but I've been using it as a replacement for much-needed vegetation time. Just sitting in a comfy chair with a good book, doing nothing productive, is amazingly soothing for the spirit. I haven't felt so mellow and relaxed in ages--something I can defintely use considering that January is already starting to show signs of being a particularly difficult month for my spirit.

That said, I've just finished To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, and it kicked ass. If you like cats, time travel and snark in your sci fi, you need this book.