Birthing Day

And a very early happy birthday to blockade_boy stuck in Kansas. How do you Kansians stand it?

Box God demands your love! LOVE HIM!

Ok, thats pretty damn awesome

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Explanation: Follow the handle of the Big Dipper away from the dipper's bowl, until you get to the handle's last bright star. Then, just slide your telescope a little south and west and you might find this stunning pair of interacting galaxies, the 51st entry in Charles Messier's famous catalog. Perhaps the original spiral nebula, the large galaxy with well defined spiral structure is also cataloged as NGC 5194. Its spiral arms and dust lanes clearly sweep in front of its companion galaxy (right), NGC 5195. The pair are about 31 million light-years distant and officially lie within the boundaries of the small constellation Canes Venatici. Though M51 looks faint and fuzzy in small, earthbound telescopes, this sharpest ever picture of M51 was made in January 2005 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys on board the Hubble Space Telescope.

Ha ha! Good one

The hot water for my apartment building is working again. Which seems to have happened about five minutes after I finished my shower. This amuses me, because it confirms thoughts on the pettiness of certain divinities. Ones who will be getting theres one day. Oh yes. All will be remembered and a bill will be delivered...

Sunday Trade: Leave it to Chance

Leave it to Chance: Book One: Shaman's Rain
written by James Robinson & Paul Smith, color art by Jeromy Cox, lettering by Amie Grenier

Leave it to Chance is about the daughter of the premier dark magic battler of the city of Devil's Echo, Lucas Falconer. On her fourteenth birthday Chance Falconer goes to her father to talk to him about following in the family footsteps as his assistant. Which he won't allow. Because she's a girl. He'll just wait until Chance has a son and then train him to take over in the family job as monster buster and devil wrangler...

Chance doesn't see that as a valid answer. And with the help of a miniature dragon she accidentally frees from her father's lab she's soon investigating what a comatose shaman was doing in town. An investigation that has her dealing with mobs of sewer goblins, Trog mob enforcers and just plain old-fashioned political mobsters...

Leave it to Chance was one of those true rarities. Something that calls itself "all-ages" that is, in fact, all-ages. Its a fun and thrilling read for any adult and makes a perfect gateway druggift for younger kids. All three volumes of the sadly ended series are put out by Image in over-sized hard backs. And all three are great additions to the libraries of people of ANY age...