Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, when she sang to the largest inaugural crowd in history (Obama’s).It’s Friday! It’s the third Friday of August.
This has been a weird week, with really bad air quality because of smoke from wildfires near and far. The teeny bit of silver lining is that it didn’t get as hot as it was forecast in the middle of the week because all the smoke was reflecting so much sunlight. It was still very unpleasant. And as I type this is not completely over. I’m driving across the state to see my Mom on her birthday, which I hope will be more pleasant than much of the news I had to sift through for this week’s post.
Which brings us to the Friday Five: the top five (IMHO) stories of the week, five stories of the unpleasant kind, the top five videos, notable obituaries (plus my blog posts).
(click to embiggen)It’s Friday! And we’ve already reached the second Friday in August. My, how the time does fly.
Weather forecasts last week had implied (or in some cases explicitly said) the region is was in for a persistent cool down. I don’t know if they were being hopeful or just really f-ing wrong, because several days this week have been as hot as the record-breaking hot days of just over a week ago. Supposedly a cool down is on its way, but I’ll believe it when I experience it.
Let me present to you this week’s Friday Five: the top five (IMHO) science stories of the week, top five stories of general interest, top five stories of people behaving badly, top five stories of interest to queer people, the top five videos, and a notable obituary (plus my blog posts).
Just one of the many cool graphics you’ll find if you click on the first story…It’s Friday! It’s August! How did that happen?
Sunday was the hottest day of the years, and Monday was still pretty bad, but the weather took a turn for the much more pleasant after that. We had drizzle yesterday and today! I’m so happy! I usually do my Friday Five on Thursday night and schedule it to publish in the morning, but I only got it half done because it’s been a crazy week and I decided to binge some things off the DVR. Anyway, only took a few minutes to finish up today.
Let me present to you this week’s Friday Five: the top five (IMHO) stories of the week, five stories of people behaving badly, the top five videos, and a few of notable obituaries (plus my blog posts).
(Click to embiggen)It’s Friday! Already the fourth Friday in July.
Another week of hotter than normal temps here, which we’re managing to get through, but I’m spending a lot more time sitting out on my veranda after dark sipping tea or ice water or LaCroix or gin & tonic…
But enough about us. Let me present to you this week’s Friday Five: the top five (IMHO) stories of the week, five stories of people behaving badly, the top five stories concerning queer people, the top five videos, and a few of notable obituaries (plus my blog posts).
This cartoon by Herb Block (Herblock) was first published in The Washington Post in 1968. It isIt’s Friday! Already the third Friday in July.
My writing continues quite slowly. I didn’t have a superlong work week this week, though since I worked late into Friday, the weariness bled through the whole weekend and I don’t quite yet feel recovered.
But enough about me. Let me present to you this week’s Friday Five: the top five (IMHO) stories of the week, five stories of people behaving badly, the top five videos, and a couple of notable obituaries (plus my blog posts).
I really wish I could blame Camp NaNoWriMo on how little blogging I’ve been doing, but it’s all down to the string of more than 10-hour days as we zero in on yet another ridiculous deadline at work. And now the heat is back, and I don’t deal well when the weather gets hot.
Anyway, here I present this week’s Friday Five: the top five (IMHO) stories of the week, the top five videos, and a couple of notable obituaries (plus my blog posts).
Most of my writing effort is going to Camp NaNoWriMo, so there will be fewer updates here than usual. I’m currently on a small vacation, as well.
Anyway, here I present this week’s Friday Five: the top five (IMHO) stories of the week of, top five stories about people disappointing us, the top five videos, and a notable obituary (plus what I posted this week).
We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars. The most interesting bit of this story is the fact that the makers of Sim City had to abandon their original plans to base the game on real cities, because so many parking lots made city look uninteresting!
The New York Posts sums up the situation correctly, again.It’s the final week of Pride Month. And it’s Friday!
Last weekend did not quite go according to plan. My husband came down with a cold on Friday, and decided he shouldn’t be hanging out at the convention hotel infecting other people. So I attended Locus Awards Weekend alone. He had hoped to be well enough Sunday morning to join me for the parade, but then woke up feeling much worse. Despite him telling me to go join the festivities, I decided to head home and try to take care of him. I enjoyed the events of the con and came home with a pile of new books, and I saw a lot of people dressed up in their Pride gear.
Here I present this week’s Friday Five: the top five (IMHO) stories of the week of interest to queer people, top five general interest stories, and top five videos, and a couple of notable obituaries.
Another in my series of posts recommending web comics that I think more people should read. This time around, since it is Pride Month, it’s all queer!
Private I, by Emily Willis and Ann Uland is a comic set in 1942 Pittsburgh in which queer gumshoe Howard Graves is trying to sort out a collection of bewildering clues and infuriating eccentric suspects. It’s an interesting take on a lot of noir tropes. It handles the queer elements well—being outed or caught by the wrong people can spell the end of not just one’s career, but possibly life. Which isn’t to say the story is grim (at least not more than any other noir story), but it manages to walk that fine line of being sympathetic to the characters without unrealistically portraying the surrounding society as being more accepting that it would have been. Anyway, it’s a cool story, and the artwork is really good. If you like period stories, or detective stories, or noir milieus, you’ll like this comic. If you like the comic and want to support the creators, check out their Ko-fi.
The Comics of Shan Murphy As far as I can tell, Shannon Murphy doesn’t post a regular comic on the web. But among the categories of illustration on her site are comics. Her work would get shared across my tumblr dashboard just frequently enough for me to think I recognized the comic, but often it was difficult to track back to where the original came from. Until recently, when someone included a link to her page. Her art styles (multiple) are really expressive. And she just writes really good stuff.
The Young Protectors: Legendary by Alex Woolfson. Technically, this is just a new story arc for the Young Protectors comic that I first reviewed and recommended a while back. However, Alex is changing up the artists he’s working with in this arc, and the focus is decidedly different. The first series involved some major supervillains and a fight to save the world. This new arc begins by exploring the changed relationship between our protagonist, Kyle (aka Red Hot) and one of his teammates, Spooky Jones. The story is NSFW, although unless you are a patron of Alex’s Patreon, you see a lot less of the explicit artwork. It isn’t porn, per se, and it isn’t a romance. And the story takes a turn into something very different than either of those. It’s still in progress, so I’m anxiously checking it out each week to find out what happens next. Which is probably the best review I could give it, right? If you check out the page, you’ll see that Alex has written several other comics, some of which are available to purchase in hard copy. And, as I mentioned, he’s got a Patreon account.
A queer subset (because it’s Pride Month) of the comics I’ve previously recommended: Some of these have stopped publishing new episodes. Some have been on hiatus for a while. I’ve culled from the list those that seem to have gone away entirely.
Check, Please! by Ngozi Ukazu is the story of Eric “Bitty” Bittle, a former junior figure skating champion from a southern state who is attending fictitious Samwell College in Massachusetts, where he plays on the men’s hockey team. Bitty is the smallest guy on the team, and in the early comics is dealing with a phobia of being body-checked in the games. He’s an enthusiastic baker, and a die hard Beyoncé fan.
“Manic Pixie Nightmare Girls” by Jessica Udischas is a hilarious web comic that tells of the adventures of Jesska Nightmare, a trans woman trying to make her way in our transphobic world. The comics are funny, insightful, and adorably drawn. The sheer cuteness of the drawing style is a rather sharp contrast to the sometimes weighty topics the comic covers, and I think makes it a little easier to keep from getting bummed out to contemplate that the strips aren’t exaggerations. If you like the strip, consider supporting the artist through her patreon.
Life of Bria by Sabrina Symington is a transgender themed comic that ranges from commentary to slice of life jokes and everything in between. Even when commenting on very serious stuff it remains funny—sharp, but funny. It’s one of the comics that I would see being reblogged on tumblr and lot and I’d think, “I ought to track down the artist so I can read more of these.” And I finally did. And they’re great! If you like Symington’s work, you can sponsor her on Patreon and she has a graphic novel for sale.
Stereophonic by C.J.P.“Stereophonic” by C.J.P. is a “queer historical drama that follows the lives of two young men living in 1960s London.” It’s a very sweet and slow-build story, with good art and an interesting supporting cast. But I want to warn you that the story comes to a hiatus just as a couple of the subplots are getting very interesting. The artist had a serious health issue which was complicated by family problems, but has since started posting updates to his blog and Patreon page, assuring us that the story will resume soon. If you like the 300+ pages published thus far and would like to support the artist, C.J. has a Patreon page, plus t-shirts and other merchandise available at his store.
The Young Protectors: Engaging the Enemy by Alex Wolfson begins when a young, closeted teen-age superhero who has just snuck into a gay bar for the first time is seen exiting said bar by a not-so-young, very experienced, very powerful, super-villain. Trouble, of course, ensues.
“Deer Me,” by Sheryl Schopfer tells the tales from the lives of three friends (and former roommates) who couldn’t be more dissimilar while being surprisingly compatible. If you enjoy Deer Me, you can support the artist by going to her Patreon Page!
If you want to read a nice, long graphic-novel style story which recently published its conclusion, check-out the not quite accurately named, The Less Than Epic Adventures of T.J. and Amal by E.K. Weaver. I say inaccurate because I found their story quite epic (not to mention engaging, moving, surprising, fulfilling… I could go on). Some sections of the tale are Not Safe For Work, as they say, though she marks them clearly. The complete graphic novels are available for sale in both ebook and paper versions, by the way.
Where are you on the Gay Spectrum? (click to embiggen)It’s the forth weekend of Pride Month, and this weekend there are three Pride parades or marches happening in Seattle (and lots of other cities also now have several parades).
My husband and I are, for the third year in a row, attending Locus Awards Weekend. And it just so happens that the con hotel is conveniently close to the part of the parade route and the Seattle Center where the big festival happens. So we’re going to have a fun few days of books and sci fi and fantasy and funny shirts and rainbows and lots of other fun.
Here I present this week’s Friday Five: the top five (IMHO) stories of the week of interest to queer people, five stories that made me go “What the f–k?”, top five general interest stories, and top five videos (plus a recap of my blog posts).
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