Yesterday morning, in an effort to winnow down some of the piles of paper lying around my house, I was reading an old copy of Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report. The featured issue was hate crimes against transgendered people, especially a recent rash of murders in the DC area. I can't even begin to describe how angry and heart-broken it made me feel to read those articles. I got so fired up that I was determined to do something. Particularly, there is this idea I have been playing with in my head, about starting a local umbrella organization for groups working towards gender/GLBT equity. I was going to call it Gender Justice and make a webpage. Today I decided to see if the url was taken, and found this rather scary and offensive diatribe against feminism. So maybe I'll have to go back to the drawing board for the name.



Yesterday afternoon, after leaving work for feeling ill, I dragged my sick butt out of the house to go deposit a check (because for whatever reason my husband thought it was terribly important that the check be deposited that day) and on the way home stopped by the comic book store so at least I'd have something new to read while moaning on the couch. "The newbie" and "the other guy" were working, and of course I was the only girl in the building, so there was the usual pressure to a) look at "non-girly" comics, and b) buy something even if none of my comics had new issues. I'm actually shopping for a new series, because out of the three I used to buy regularly, one series has ended, and the other mysteriously hasn't put out a new issue in months. The one I am buying, Strangers in Paradise, is unabashedly girly, for which I get no respect from "the other guy." (In my world, the comic book shop is run by "the manager," "the other guy," and "the newbie." If they can't be bothered to not be snooty, I can't be bothered to learn their names.)

Anyway so as I'm randomly picking up and flipping through other comics, looking for something good enough to follow on a regular basis, I am acutely aware that I am being watched. The last comic I pick up happens to have one of those stereotypical comic girlies with the impossibly large breasts and a body too small to possibly support said breasts, kicking people with her stompy boots. I put it down, shaking my head, and turn to find that yes, "the other guy" was watching me, with a smirky look on his face. Fine.

But when I get up to the register, in addition to my new Strangers in Paradise, I've picked up a new comic to try, Lumakick, which I decided to buy almost entirely on the frame I turned to randomly, which says "I spent the rest of the afternoon sulking at the bottom of the ocean." with a picture of a little man reclining at the ocean bottom, a stream of bubbles coming up from his head. As the newbie rings me up, the other guy leans over and says approvingly, "Oh, Lumakick!"

So my life has now been validated. The comicbookstore guy approved of one of my purchases. Hurray for me.

But it is brilliant. And I am terribly in love and I will buy every new issue as it comes out. So if they ever put out a new Love and Rockets, I will be back to a three comic habit.

This has gotten way too long, so no more stories for now.

My husband's boss just returned from Australia, and brought us a little gift pack of Vegemite.
I could smell it while it was still in the bag in the box in the little screw-cap tube.

I think I'm frightened.