Alison Bechdel, Keith Knight, Aaron McGruder, David Rees and me?
In the same book! Wow!

Forgive me if I'm a bit starstruck, but that is just way too exciting for words. Following the success of the first Attitude, Ted Rall decided to put together a second collection, which he describes as follows:

DUE OUT, SPRING 2004: "Attitude 2: The New Subversive Social Commentary Cartoonists"! The work of 21 cool alternative weekly cartoonists is collected in this new anthology, which features interviews with each artist, examples of their work, and personal ephemera never before published elsewhere. Includes cartoons by and interviews with Alison Bechdel, Jennifer Berman, Max Cannon, Barry Deutsch, Emily S. Flake, Marian Henley, Justin Jones, Keith Knight, Tim Kreider, Aaron McGruder, Kevin Moore, Stephen Notley, Eric Orner, Greg Peters, David Rees, Mikhaela Blake Reid, Neil Swaab, Brian Sendelbach, Tak Toyoshima, Shannon Wheeler and Jason Yungbluth.

Just had to share... (says the cartoonist as she jumps up and down grinning)

Awfully convenient that Bush waited until now...

... to admit that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, isn't it? Seems like he was quite content to encourage that idea before... See Tom Tomorrow for more on this.

Gov. Romney to cut jobless benefits when they are most needed

As it becomes much more difficult for the unemployed to find jobs before their unemployment payments run out, Romney has decided that Massachusetts needs to cut the length of time they can receive payments. From The Boston Globe:

With the state's unemployment insurance fund nearly drained by the sluggish economy, Governor Mitt Romney wants to cut the length of time that out-of-work employees can receive state unemployment benefits, and force businesses to pay more into the fund.

and...

Romney also wants to give unemployment benefits only to workers who were employed for 20 weeks, up from the current 15, so that fewer workers who only find jobs during particular seasons and aren't seeking year-round work are covered. That would save Massachusetts about $30 million annually.

Which reminds me, if any of you out there have any leads on NYC-area jobs for an unemployed Cornell graduate with a Masters degree in English and experience in copyediting, please let me know and I'll pass it along to my boyfriend!

On Information Overload, Promise I'll Be Back

I hate to write blog posts that are nothing more than excuses for not writing blog posts, but I can't help feeling guilty about it. It's just become really difficult lately to juggle a difficult (but rewarding) day job, cartooning, the whole personal life thing (my boyfriend is unemployed and living in Boston and I live in Brooklyn so I spend a lot of time sitting on busses), the getting to know and explore New York thing... you get the idea. I haven't stopped reading and listening to lots of news (how could I, I work at a daily newspaper!) but I don't have as much time to process the news. It's either give up sleep or temporarily slow down the blogging to a crawl, and I'm afraid it'll have to be the latter.

Meanwhile, don't stop reading the funnies.

Yeah, so I'm back...
With a back-to-school cartoon

I have email and internet access once again, but blogging is going to be slow still as I am currently experiencing information overload and trying to dig through old emails and news stories that I neglected while moving into my new Brooklyn apartment.

I also have a back-to-school cartoon that didn't even make it into the Phoenix as I was not able to send it due to an incredibly slow modem. My back-to-school cartoon is about one of the stupid places money is going instead of to actual education--standardized testing. But I just wanted to mention there are other, much larger monsters eating the money that should be going to give students a good public education--like WAR and TAX CUTS.

But for the first time in my life, I myself am not going back to school, I'm just going to another ordinary day of work, and it feels pretty strange.

In other news, Huey got hold of one of those $40 George W. Bush Elite Force Aviator dolls.