Miraclo Miles

Dirk Gently into that website... It's not complete, but there's an unauthorized comics version of Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency on the web. (Thanks to Mike Sterling for the link.)

Maybe there is a good reason to put on a Batman costume in public Granted, we're only getting his side of the story so far, but this does strike me as a reasonable - after a fashion - use of a Batman costume .

Superboy? It's another ridiculously busy week for me, but I had to make note of this 5 year old potential superman ... in Germany, no less. This should get several groups excited, including the mutant fans. (As for me, I can't get Spike Jones' Der Fuhrer's Face to stop playing in my head.)

Onward to the X-Prize Udating yesterday's "Into Space!" , I wanted to add that SpaceShipOne accomplished its spaceflight this morning and will now begin to get ready for the two, three-person space flights it needs to accomplish in order to claim the $10 million prize.

Will Rakshasha discover Pavitr Prabhakar's secret identity? ...or just try to poison and eat him? If so, will be prove too spicy? Here comes a "transcreated" Spider-man .

Sides of the deal To the best of my knowledge I'm not currently in the market for a new car. We have more than enough payments remaining on our main vehicle, and our secondary one, while it's been down for a while, appears to simply need a little work. We haven't needed it recently, and my schedule's been too hectic to get it back on the road. Besides, with gasoline prices being what they are we're generally better off with only one vehicle burning it. I've never been a car person. Waaaaay back in high school, as what most considered to be that magic 16th birthday approached, the topics of driving and cars became major, in some cases primary, points of conversation. Some simply wanted the independence, most probably wanted the increase in dating potential that came from that mobility, and some were obsessed with particular vehicles. For better or worse, I wasn't in any of these categories. I saw the headaches - added costs and responsibili...

Into Space! (Following up on a piece mentioned back on June 2 .) Tomorrow -- Monday, June 21st -- will see a manned space-shot by a civilian company . Planned flight specifics: SpaceShipOne, carrying a single passenger, is set to begin its flight at 6:30 am PDT slung under a separate jet aircraft. At 50,000 ft it will be released, ignite its own engines, and with an 80-second burn of its engines achieve an altitude of at least 62 miles, the generally-accepted beginning point of "space", where the craft is scheduled to stay for 3 minutes - pilot in a "weightless" (more technically microgravity) condition - before returning to Earth in a glide. The take-off and landing points will be the same, on a runway in the Mojave Desert. This is a run-up flight to this company's ( Scaled Composites ') bid for the $10 million Ansari X-Prize . The prize-winning flight will have to carry at least 3 people (apparently not the 2 erroneously mentioned in the ...

SomeThing to come? A still of a maquette of The Thing as he's to appear in the Fantastic Four movie was on display at the International Make Up Artist Trade Show in Pasadena, CA. Linking this to earlier news, this eventual bit of makeup will be done by the same crew that handled the title character in the recent Hellboy film. I'm hoping that the face is an early concept and they're open to changes - I'm partial to a Thing with a more prominent brow ridge, while what we have here is sort of midway between the early, lumpy Thing and how he developed over the first few years of the title. However, the way they've done it leads me to believe they'll be customizing the face to be a... monsterized version of whichever actor lands the role. So far I don't believe anyone's been cast for the film, though hardly a week goes by that some "strong" rumor doesn't pop up and Michael Chiklis (the lead from FX's The Shield ) claims to hav...

Poll finds the unsurprising: Iraqis don't want "coalition" troops A poll commissioned by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority last month isn't very heartening for the coalition. Among the results are that only 2 percent see the foreign troops as liberators, while 92 percent see them as occupiers. Those who want the troops to leave immediately were 41 percent, while 45 percent want to wait until a "permanent" Iraqi government was installed. Whenever I've been thinking about the middle to long range future for Iraq recently, I've come to realize that while I still believe that we in the US (and those in the UK) should press to hold their leaders accountable for the lies that allowed them to exploit fear and get the backing for this invasion, we have to allow the fate of Iraq to become its own matter now. The damage is done. These are a resilient people, having survived decades of rule by what was essentially a brutal crime family. Like...

Family wiped out by overlapping U.S. "wars" Grant ( Judas Goat Quarterly ) Schreiber brought this tale of tragedy to my attention. Please read it all the way, through, or at least until you see why the mother, Kim, was in prison. I'm interested in trying to track down verifying details for this story, but limited time and search creativity has seen me come up short. I've at least pegged that the Pekin Federal Prison listed in the piece is in Illinois. Here's one account of a visit to that prison . Hopefully, if nothing else, this story will be picked up and researched by a journalist in that region.

Off the books? So, now we find that Donald Rumsfeld ordered that at least one Iraqi prisoner was to be held "off the books" - keeping him undocumented and hidden even from the Red Cross.

At the Avengers' expense... Here's a re-scripted panel that was good for a laugh, courtesy of Chaosmonkey . I'm not a big fan of Scott Kolins pencils, but it's a passable panel-shot of the original Avengers. The interview and the accompanying panels have me interested in this project - Earth's Mightiest Heroes , a sort of Avengers Year One project - set to run as a bi-weekly limited series - how many issues I have no idea - starting this November. Most likely I'll (all together now) wait for the trade. (Thanks to Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin for the heads-up.)

More "Mutant Mayhem" info (HeroClix news) The Good, Bad & Indifferent According to one post some early information from a distributor concerning next November's "Mutant Mayhem" Marvel HeroClix expansion (which I first mentioned last Friday ) reads as follows ( highlighted text is the new information): "Marvel HeroClix: Mutant Mayhem mixes heroes and villains from different times, dimensions, and worlds across the Marvel Universe. Mutant Mayhem promises to bring the HeroClix game to a whole new level of fun. The set includes 97 figures, including an oversized Ultimate Giant-Man figure , and adds a new game mechanic to the HeroClix game: cards that include, character tokens, battlefield conditions, and feats! Collectors will clamor for Mutant Mayhem as they seek the extremely rare "MasterPiece" figures, a fully-playable Spider-Man from the Mutant Mayhem set, professionally painted and individually numbered with a signed Certificate...

Bush's increased abandonment of Church & State separations Yes, we've known about this for days, but I couldn't let it all pass without underscoring it: The Bush White House is pushing for legislation to allow religious organizations to maintain their tax-exempt status while allowing them to enter the realm of overt political action, all the while speaking out of the other side of his mouth about the importance of maintaining a separation of church and state. This is coming close on the heels of Bush's recent Vatican visit, where he pressed for Catholic bishops in the U.S. to be more politically outspoken in their support of Bush's stances on abortion and gay marriage .

Stranger than fiction I'm not even going to try to embellish this . I'd say there's a good movie in here, but it feels like two or three.

Is there an Ultimates pre-release event near you? (I left out "And do you care ?" because I can't answer that part below.) An expanded list of venues holding sealed booster tournaments for the new Ultimates set on June 19th or 20th has been posted by Wizkids. This will be the only place outside of a comics convention to pick up three boosters from this set prior to the June 30th release date. Events are being held in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indianda, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Washington and up in Ontario and Alberta. Of course, one can't just walk in on that date and buy three boosters. One has to sign up for the event in each location, the three boosters will then be opened at the time a starting signal given, and a 300 pt team constructed using some or all of what one pulls. If you go ...

Five votes you should know about Some congressional votes worth looking into before pulling that lever this fall.

Salem's Lot, anyone? I'd known a remake of the made-for-TV version of the Stephen King novel was being done for TNT, but was glad to have come across this piece to remind me that it's coming up next weekend. A more star-focused promotional piece for it is to be found on TNT's own site . I'll likely end up taping it for two reasons: One, if I'm going to watch a story on commercial TV that's longer than an hour I'd prefer to be able to skip through the commercials and know that I can watch the entire thing at will, and Two, the second hour of the premiere night for it will be running opposite the second episode of the new season of Six Feet Under . Sure, each of these will be replayed sufficiently that there's not a solid conflict -- if TNT runs it as they usually do their new movies it'll run back to back at least three times each night -- but between Sopranos and Six Feet Under - the most recent time-slot hand-off - I'm used to watc...

With or without a net? While catching up on news yesterday I heard that 41st US President George H.W. Bush celebrated his 80th birthday by making a couple parachute jumps . As far as that goes, good for him. What I couldn't help thinking, though, as he said "just because you're 80, that doesn't mean you can't do fun stuff or interesting things" (which is, on the face of it, a good message) is how easy all that is to say when one's reached 80 with the best, money-is-no-option healthcare helping to keep one well, and one has huge financial resources.

Supreme Court dodges "Under God" clause constitutionality question Wriggling out of the question on a technicality, the Supreme Court opted not to rule on a decision made by the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals two years ago, which declared the phrase unconstitutional. The technicality? The man, Michael Newdow, who brought the suit on behalf of his schoolage daughter is currently locked in a custody battle with his ex-wife, and so did not have legal authority to speak for her. Because the lower court ruling hinged on the father's being able to speak on his daughter's behalf, this non-decision effectively overturned the lower court ruling. This restores the pre-lawsuit situation, wherein it's not been ruled whether or not the phrase is constitutional, but with a presumption of constituionality. Feh. The MSNBC link (listed in the first paragraph) notes something that the AP one doesn't, that Chief Justice William Renquist, and Justices Sandra Day O...

WizKids slowing down rate of HeroClix sets? Here it is, not quite the middle of June, I still haven't decided whether or not to let my case order for Ultimates stand - the set's due for release on the 30th - and now I find that WizKids announced yesterday that the next HeroClix expansion will be Mutant Mayhem , and is due out in November. Presumably this confirms that there won't be another DC set this fall, and now stretches the release times between sets to roughly 5 months. I suspect this will help them sell through sets more throroughly, and allow more attention to be given to each set by the fans. (By way of confirming that this is almost certainly the only other HC set to appear yet this year, see this interview with WK's main designer, John Leithheusser. ) The information is sparse -- which is good, since people will be looking for more and more info on the set over the next five months. "Mutant Mayhem mixes heroes and villains from different ti...

Comic Book Idol II: Assignment #1 voting is open! As mentioned last Friday , Comic Book Idol II is underway. If you go here you'll find the ballot, followed by links to each of the assignments as the nine contestants completed them, followed by comments from the judges. As mentioned previously, this first assignment is a three-page romantic comedy piece. If you haven't signed up for the Comic Book Resource boards, you should go do that first. It's free and fairly painless. Without that you won't be able to vote. I've already given a preliminary look at each of the competitors' work, but have held off voting until I make at least a second full pass. There are a variety of styles among the nine contestants, and what's going to be difficult for me is not letting certain line-styles (I'm not a big fan of what I broadly think of as manga-inspired work) get in the way of acknowledging effective storytelling techniques and expression of em...

Feel like L. Ron Hubbard! (No, neither dead nor as if death has turned you into a prolific novelist.) Create your own religion! (Thanks for the alert from Elayne Riggs , which was in turn from Scott .) Okay, so they're targeted Mad Libs . Still, it was a fun idea.

Infantino vs DC Concerning the lawsuit I mentioned last Friday (wherein Carmine Infantino is suing DC Comics for ownership of the Silver Age Flash, among other characters), this week Steven Grant 's weighed in with a look at the case, the history, the question of whether "work for hire" is applicable and what it means legally if it's to be applied. The piece reinforces my earlier expectation that this is likely to be a matter settled quietly. DC (Time Warner) can certainly weather the legal costs better than Carmine can, but DC has much more to lose in terms of future legal actions against them if this plays through the courts and results in even minor judgements against them. So, they may string this out long enough to present a financial hardship to Carmine (and so to help discourage others from taking the same approach) and then offer him some settlement with a non-disclosure agreement.

Capturing the spirit of an era Thanks to Felix for hooking me up with this one. Yeah, that's the guy we remember. While I'm on the track of thanking people concerning such things, thanks to Grant Schreiber (writer/publisher of Judas Goat Quarterly ) for reminding me of a suggestion I made to him several years ago. I'd suggested that there should be a push to memorialize Ronald Reagan by naming as many active superfund sites as possible after him. Oddly enough, it works for both sides, as there are those who'd link him to them as a symbol of renewal, while the rest of us would see the linkage to despoilment. Finally, e boredom posted a recap and commentary piece on Reagan's Raiders #1. (Thanks to Mike Sterling for the link.) The saddest thing about this is that, for some reason, I know I have all three issues of the series somewhere in my collection... I'm such a packrat.

Paperfilms? I almost conspicuously keep out of the loop of creator information when it comes to comics -- I've never been that deeply interested in the puppeteers, having always found awareness of them the enemies of verisimilitude. Still, this one caught my eye a little, not the least reason for which being my understanding that Steven Grant long ago applied for legal ownership of the very similar term "paper movies." I haven't noted any public reaction to this in his latest column, but this could be old news to him. (Sorry, Steven. I probably only end up reading one column in 5 or even 10 -- it's as much a matter of schedules as anything else.)

Omaha, the Cat Dancer writer Kate Worley loses battle with cancer During some quick browsing and catching up, I came across a bit from yesterday's Thought Balloons that led me to notices on Newsarama and The Pulse . Omaha is centered on the titular character, an anthropomorphic feline exotic dancer, and involved adult situations of both dramatic and sexual varieties. The "funny animal" and sexual situations genres of comics have never had much appeal for me, but Omaha generally conveyed a sense of humanity lacking in lesser works, and/or those done primarily for their titillation value. Here's a brief memorial piece to the series , both nostalgic and informative, from one fan's site.

¡Journalista! closes up online Dirk Deppey's longtime comics mainstay, ¡Journalista! , saw its final posting today . Dirk, who ascended to the editor's chair of The Comics Journal back in February , plans to continue a print version of his long-running comics commentary blog beginning with issue #262 of the newly-revamped The Comics Journal .

The push is on. (...and isn't it ghastly?) As mentioned on Saturday , I expected that this week would see a push for the late Ronald Reagan's picture on either paper currency or coin. Today, Kentucky Replublican Senator Mitch McConnell confirmed that he is considering sponsoring legislation in the Senate to make this a reality. Aside from the $10 bill, the $20 is being considered, as is a half-level coinage of Reagan dimes -- allowing half to continue featuring Roosevelt, and the other half Reagan. Either way, I expect this to be pressed this week. They'll likely never get as strong an opportunity to make one of these things a possibility as they do during this week of remembrance, when few in public office want to say anything against the late former president. Meanwhile , (thanks to Mark Gibson for pointing this out) over on his blog, Peter David is taking some heat for mentioning what many of us have been thinking, that the GOP will be milking Reagan'...

Take with a pinch of swamp salt... Still, it's always fun to see someone getting excited that he may have found Atlantis . (I didn't have time for a detailed post about anything, it is of some interest, whatever it turns out to be, and at least I won't have the piece on St. Ronald sitting at the top of my blog now.)

Reagan's gone. Here comes the canonization In a matter of a few hours we went from notices from Nancy Reagan that Ronny was in his final days, to an announcement of his death . I never cared for him as a president, though he had style. In the coming weeks we'll see every politician who feels he can get away with it claiming his legacy - mythic in more than one sense of the word. We can also expect all of the various memorial projects, especially the move to get him on some form of US currency , to be pushed into high gear. Feh. This could go through pretty quickly if the forces are poised for it -- after all, he'd already had at least an airport and aircraft carrier renamed & named for him, respectively, and that was while he was still technically alive. Honestly, this could result in the first time I'd pointedly refuse to carry a particular piece of currency.

Carmine Infantino, Barry Allen, Barbara Gordon & DC Comics walk into a courtroom... I'm getting nostalgic again. I'd thought we'd seen the last of these (Golden &) Silver Age ownership cases come up, but an attorney for Carmine Infantino has come up with a new wrinkle to help pry back the fingers of corporate ownership by making the claim that his client had only ever given DC comics permission to use the Flash (and Batgirl, and a likely good list of characters he had a hand in creating between 1943 and 1967) in comic books . In an environment where comics are being increasingly mined as a source for Hollywood properties - and where the comics publishing business itself has become by comparison a financial footnote in the quarterly reports - this becomes a huge issue. Of course, the legal brief filed Thursday is a full copyright claim for these characters, probably on the sound negotiation basis of asking for more than one ever seriously expects to ge...

Comics conventions? As mentioned almost two weeks ago week, I attended Wizard World East , a comics convention held in nearby Philadelphia. I'm slightly surprised to see the report that it had 25,500 attendees, between the paying and promotional people. They made reasonably good use of the space, but there was room for expansion - the left side of the hall in particular had a large band of unused space. I suppose this means they have at least another year before they have to wonder whether they need to book a larger room. They're reporting this as an increase of almost 16% over the previous year, and 55% overall from the attendance seen at their inaugural event in 2002. Barring something miraculous happening to my finances and free time, this will be the only convention I'll get to this year. (Which, by itself isn't a tragedy -- one of these is usually enough, though I do miss the get-together in Chicago.) Does anyone else have plans to attend one or more of ...

Identity crisis (No, this isn't a piece on DC comics' latest cross-title arc.) Early in 2002 I took a piece of information I had about the specific quantity of one comic's order through Diamond (FYI for the non-comics folks, Diamond is for all practical purposes the comics distributor for comics shops in North America), and ran with Diamond's comparitive stats to get a feel for what quantities various comics were selling (again, through Diamond) at the time. This piece, which I called Cracking the Numbers , was a quick exercise and something I posted because, well, I was looking for items to post on that website (since long-abandoned), it was of interest to me, and I knew I wasn't the only comics fan irritated by how the numbers were being played close to the vest by Diamond. A few months later, an economics student in Europe was working on his master's thesis, came across my piece, and suddenly I'm being referred to as an "economics anal...

Comic Book Idol II The first time this was done I wasn't blogging, so I have an excuse. This time, however, I was simply remiss in not mentioning Comic Book Idol II sooner. Organizer J. Torres ( writer of DC's Teen Titans Go! , and the host of Comic Book Resources' Open Your Mouth among other things, though I knew him first waaay back as a member of Legends APA , well before he even began self-publishing early issues of The Copybook Tales ) kicked this comics artist competition off last year, and it's back with a solid, varied selection of competitors. Round 1 has begun, and the competitors have until Monday (June 7th) to illustrate a 3-page story from a common script. The first assignment, a romantic comedy piece titled "Chance Meetings" , written by former Oni editor Jamie S. Rich neatly covers a range of almost everyday emotion and action, which is a good test of talent in a medium where too many wannabes (not to mention several pros)...

Agendas: Looking to see who's out there Looking around, I saw a piece over on Mark Gibson's blog , dealing with a park official interrupting a baptismal ceremony in the park. Go over and read it, and the article it links to - leave comments if you've anything to add. The rest of this post is a tangent from the above piece. What I ended up focusing on was the references to The Rutherford Institute , a Charlotte, VA-based organization with a public mission of protecting civil liberties. I'd never heard of them before, so I thought I'd take a look. Here's their website. Articles on their main page include an action to protect a Muslim girl's right to wear religious headgear, and a commentary piece by the founder on how "Bush's War on Privacy Is a War On Personal Freedoms," both of which are made prominent by being placed at the top of columns. A little searching around the web quickly pulled up a piece critical of the Rutherfor...

More comics? But I haven't even read the ones I bought last time! Notice yesterday that my latest box o' comics is on its way (I'll probably see that tomorrow or Saturday, though now that I've said that it'll probably be Monday) reminded me I should get my next order in sooner rather than later. So! Here's what I ordered from the latest order form; items that won't hit the stores until August. This always strikes me as arrogantly presumptuous, because, well, it is . Who knows what will happen between now and then? Anyway... to the order: Doom Patrol 3 "It's a Cold Night's Death when creatures from before the dawn of time draw the Doom Patrol to the Antarctic, where the team is tested for the first time." Why does this remind me, disturbingly, of one of the early, lacklustre issues of Byrne's Alpha Flight from the 80s? Ah, the nostalgia od disappointment! We had such high hopes for that series, and it floundered almost f...

Army to near-retirees: "Yoink!" The US Army's ordered that for any soldier who is part of a division set to deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan within the next 90 days cannot retire until after serving another full tour of duty in whichever theatre of operations they're sent to. "Without the program, an average division would have to replace 4,000 soldiers — perhaps one-quarter to one-fifth of its strength — before or during a deployment, according an Army press release." A division in the US military is defined as containing between 10,000 and 15,000 soldiers . So, even taking the high-end figure, the army's expectation is that nearly one third of their force is up for retirement during the next year - or less, if the deployment period is less than one year. Somehow, this situation doesn't make me feel especially confident about claims that volunteers are flooding into the military, and that a draft won't be seen as necessary. ...

Farewell, Gill Fox I've just learned that Gilbert T. "Gill" Fox , another of the Golden Age comics people and a Pulitzer Prize-nominated cartoonist, died back on May 15th . Fox, 88, worked in the comics industry alongside Jack Cole and Will Eisner , adding his talents to many comics, including Plastic Man. In his time he was penciler, inker and editor for Quality Comics from the late 1930s through the 40s, also working on Eisner's Spirit strip. Later he went onto both teaching and freelance illustration, where one of his creations was the winking chef seen here, which has become a pizza industry standard. He is also credited with working on a wide range of animations, ranging from Betty Boop to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He was reportedly proudest of his political cartoons, which appeared in the Fairfield Citizen and the Connecticut Post.

The private race for space heats up Seeing this reminder of an impending private space flight (as opposed to a national effort) reminds me that this is a topic I kept meaning to get around to at least noting. In general I'm excited by these efforts, and I hope that sufficient creativity is shown in helping to make these commercial efforts successful. The downside of a direct commercialization of space efforts is that I lament the potential loss of the push into space as a national effort. Looking back over the Cold War era, there were really only two, truly ennobling efforts to come out of it: The Space Program and the Peace Corps . How much better is it to press funds into such potentially enriching human endeavors than to channel them into international military adventures? I'd hoped for a resumption of a space race each time China logged another milestone (for their nation) in terms of spaceflight in the past few years, and I'm sure it will play some part, but...

Never too late to remember The only reason I didn't note this post earlier was that I hadn't seen it until today. With the continuing press of "war" by this administration, and with a continuing buzz about a possible resumption of the military draft (though, depending upon who one pays attention to we might seem safe from it ), I'm concerned about both the very real need for more troops if these actions are to continue, and what a possible, second term for Bush might bring. As the father of two sons, 12 and 14, these issues weigh heavily on me. I've already seen how a creeping militarism in the culture has been infecting my older son's outlook, and have had to take steps to help balance it as best one can with the increasingly hormone-addled. When I consider how the lives of often high-minded, noble men and women are being thrown away by this administration it makes me angry. When I see that sacrifice being used in circular reasoning to suppo...

A comics survey Generally I don't bother with such things, but I followed a short chain of links from David Fiore 's site to this survey from someone looking to develop a comics retail business, and, well, this is probably as driven by a desire to do something other than what I should be doing at the moment than anything else, and that's enough. 1. Do you tend to go to the nearest store, the best store, any store, or does it matter? My primary comics buying is done online via Westfield . Aside from that, much depends on the available time and what I'm looking for. If it's to pick up something recent I missed ordering, I'll likely go to the closest store. None of the stores that I'm aware of in my area offer discounts, and those that may probably only do it for regular customers with a pull list. If I've recently been interested by a series that has more than an issue or two out (and that I don't want to wait for a collected edition) I mig...

The Designer States Concept The other day Mark Gibson slipped in a link at the end of his Happy Birthday to self post -- not realizing that drawing such attention to himself was a cry to the Fates for some unwanted attention -- concerning a plan to establish a Christian state . It's an interesting link, and is worth a little attention. This immediately reminded me of the Free State Project , which is an ongoing attempt by a very Libertarian (though they are careful to point out that they're connected to no, formal political party) group to get 20,000 or more people to move to New Hampshire, creating what they hope will be a strong enough political action base to reinforce and concentrate a system of minimal government and as little as possible dependence on the Federal government for assistance. They codify it in part as a philosophy "that government exists at most to protect people's rights, and should neither provide for people nor punish them for ...

A little something from Eric Idle I only found out about this one today (via Mark Evanier 's blog entry from yesterday) it's Eric Idle's "The FCC Song." (As you might suspect, the language wouldn't get past even a drunken censor, so be careful where you are when you play it.)

More unwilling campaign contributions Certainly, it's just a matter of degree, and there's tit for tat at work in it since the GOP criticized President Clinton for the same when he was the one blazing the trail, but it's good to note that Bush is burning up a record-setting number of miles on the campaign trail using Airforce One , which makes us all unwitting donors to his campaigning and fundraising efforts. Seriously, no matter who's in office this is a practice where (no pun intended) the sky's currently the limit, and some guidelines should be established. If there's one person on Earth who should be doing more than ever via telepresence it's the President of the United States.

Back into the flow My wife had surgery on Friday, and kept her in until Sunday, so there's been that . She's largely going to be out of doing much for at least three weeks, which will make my schedule more interesting. The kids will be out for summer vacation in a little over two weeks, which is something I cannot help but envy. An ending to one set of challenges, well over two months off, and then a fresh start. Indeed, I never knew how good I had it back in the day. The stress of the past several weeks (not worth going into, other than to say that most of the cause for it isn't going away anytime soon) left me open to a head cold, which moved down into my chest as this past weekend hit. Little time, despite the extended weekend, to really just sleep. So here I am at the start of a four-day work week breathing as if I've been a pack a day smoker for the past 20 years. I'm bouncing back, but could use a solid day of rest without commitments -- which isn...