My painting sploded

I like this piece by Gregory Euclide, which uses two things I like -- miniature scenery and sort of negative-space-pieced-together-flimsy-surfaces...I don't have a word for the second thing.

http://thisiscolossal.com/2011/06/new-work-from-gregory-euclide/

In other news, I'll be reposting things from This Is Colossal until I get tired of it.

Dice people

I'm getting a kick out of browsing the archives of the blog This is Colossal. Here's some neat human figure art I found, people made of dice: http://thisiscolossal.com/2011/06/kim-hyuns-dice-figures/

New Bad Machinery: Lonely

Bad Machinery has a new story going on: The Case of the Lonely One.

I really like Bad Machinery. I like it so much that it's painful to wait for the next episode. I like to wait a few weeks instead and then catch up.

There's something about the way the characters quip at each other; the way their art shows their character. And the counterpoint of the adult teachers vs. the schoolkids is always fun.

I was rereading Giant Days, another spinoff of Scary Go Round, too, and remembering how much I liked it. With that one, I enjoy the college setting and the idea of new friends banding together against bad guys.

I guess I should try to join a forum or something. I feel like these are tremendous comics that you don't hear enough about.

Boardgames as free PDFs, from Cheapass Games

Cheapass Games, who I admire for Kill Doctor Lucky, have put several of their older games online as free PDFs. Have a look.

http://cheapass.com/freegames

Arrested for crossing the street

It takes a jury of driving white people, I guess, to convict a black lady of a crime when a  driver who admits he'd been drinking hits her 4-year old. This article puts that case in the context of road design: when you lack a car, and your bus stop is across the street from your apartment complex, are you going to walk several blocks to get to a crossing?

http://www.grist.org/infrastructure/2011-07-20-when-design-kills-the-criminalization-of-walking

Hermione Granger

What if the Harry Potter books had focused on Hermione as the main character?

http://globalcomment.com/2011/in-praise-of-hermione-granger-series/

I've read cogent criticism of Harry Potter before, and this what-if article reflects my favorite argument against the series: that Harry is treated as amazing, but never actually does much to deserve what he gets. He's a Chosen One and that's all. I hadn't really thought about who actuallly saves the day, though....

Glenn Beck books reviewed on New York Review of Books

Highly entertaining review of Glenn Beck. Kinda a review of his whole public life, actually.

http://lareviewofbooks.org/post/7114122761/magicland

A fatherly story

I laughed, I cried: 

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/my-father-is-an-african-immigrant-and-my-mother-is-a-white-girl-from-kansas-and-i-am-not-the-president-of-the-united-states/Content?oid=8932130