so daddy yankee endorsed john mccain, which means i now have "dame mas gasolina" running thru my head. AGAIN. DAMN YOU, DADDY YANKEE. that song should have been a hint, btw, and the next album will be called "dame mas offshore drilling."

in other wtf, dogs and cats, sleeping together kinda news, toby keith endorsed OBAMA and also said that's "coming from a democrat." this country is WEIRD.

Hey doods. I redesigned our studio's website. It's here. I'm getting the hang of this web design thing. I'm still much more comfortable doing print design, but web design presents its own fun set of interesting challenges.

Hm. I should update my design portfolio, shouldn't I? I haven't done that in AGES.

here is a mystery plant that showed up in my ivy boxes this weekend. anyone know what it is?




and speaking of plants, i discovered this weekend why my cilantro wasn't growing:

so, earlier this week, i found myself trying to defend cyclists on some random message board. it's a topic near and dear to my heart, seeing as how i am a cyclist myself. i bike about a 7 mile commute to work every day, rain or shine, even through the bitter chicago winters. the discussion turned to critical mass - which, btw, had actually just passed in front of my house a few days previous. hundreds of riders on interesting bikes, shouting "happy friday" and waving at everyone they passed. it was pretty cool.

anyway, apparently, crit mass in other cities that aren't chicago can get pretty shitty. in seattle some bikers damaged cars and roughed some people up. in nyc recently a cop threw a biker to the ground for who knows why.

i'm not going to defend cyclists who get violent and stupid. but i will defend cyclists in general when people who DON'T bike use isolated incidents to say "this is why i hate bikes" or "these people don't deserve safety laws", coz that's just dumb. i'm a very nice biker. i stay off the sidewalks, i stop at red lights, i yield right of way at stop signs. i also come extremely close to getting hit by careless or outright mean drivers at least once a day.

anyway, this is a long and roundabout way to say that someone from the message board followed me over to shortpants press, to leave a comment about how horrible some seattle critical mass riders were on a post about our latest book release. which has nothing to do with bikes.

and this is why i hate the internet so much of the time. this person doesn't know me, and i don't know them, and i don't know why he was so eager to make his point - about a ride i've never participated in, in a city i've never even set foot in - that he cyberstalked me over to a very small comic book company that i run in my free time to continue the argument on a post that has nothing to do with bikes. bad form. (also pretty confusing, especially since i didn't notice the comment until today, four days after the original discussion.)

so screw it. no more comments on the shortpants blog. bye comments! i came very close to baleeting comments on this blog too, just to say "leave me alone, internets".

but - while i am changing the comments system on jakze - the comments can stay. if you have a point to make about how much you hate cyclists, this would be the appropriate forum for that. in case you were wondering. click on the # thingie to do so.

dr. horrible's sing-along blog!

WATCH IT NOW. #1 because it goes away after sunday, to be replaced later on by a pay-for-it version, and #2 because it is really incredibly funny. :D

this showed up on icanhascheezburger today:



according to the des moines register, the cats' names are fry and bender. i wish there was an emoticon for me sticking out my lower lip and saying "awwwww".

man oh man. we saw mucca pazza at the mansion last night. they were PHENOMENAL. i'd seen them a few times before, but it'd been a while, and in the interim they have seriously stepped up their game.



have i mentioned that i really wish i was in this band? too bad they already have an accordionist. :(

OMG YOU GUYS. i bought my first ISBN number this week. i'm a little fledgling publisher with a batch of 10 isbns and my first ever isbn bar code! it feels so official. maybe i should get the bar code tattooed on me somewhere.

i was sick with a cold and sore throat all thru the long weekend. niles, sweetheart that he is, went out saturday and bought a new video game, and we spent all weekend playing it. now my boring sick weekend feels eventful and interesting. i wasn't laid up on my ass for three days: i saved the village of kamiki, revived the guardian saplings of hana valley and shinshu field, drove the cursed zones out of agata forest, and took down a fearsome spider queen to cleanse the tsute ruins.

here are some photos of our place, for those of you who've been wanting to see it. bet you didn't know i was on flickr. i'm also on twitter. and soma, substance D and gleemonex.

niles's parents are awesome. this is the card they sent for my birthday:




this is the card that, independently from them, niles got me for my birthday:




i submit this as proof that bad punning is genetic. i wonder if the human genome project can map out which gene is responsible?

happy valentine's day, niles. :)

niles gave me the complete persepolis for christmas.



which is awesome, 1) becoz i used to have hardbound editions of the two separate volumes and in a moment of poor judgment, i gave them away, to someone who prolly never read them even. and 2) because the movie is coming out! i haven't been this excited about a movie in a long time.

anyway, i spent a significant portion of my yesterday re-reading persepolis. and then i had persepolis-themed dreams last night. sweet. :)