WINNER OF THE 2013 HERBLOCK AWARD!

Hey! Tom Tomorrow's newest compilation is hot off the presses -- and available exclusively at TopatoCo (where you'll also find a variety of fine t-shirts, plush Sparkys, and other merchandise)! Featuring the last two years of TMW cartoons in full, glorious color, an introduction by Eddie Vedder, and extensive annotation!

ALSO: please consider joining SPARKY'S LIST!

I thought I’d share a little of what I wrote on Sparky’s List about this week’s toon:

Well, it’s always fun doing a Thomas Friedman cartoon.  This one was inspired by the full page ad in the New York Times last weekend for the Times-sponsored GLOBAL FORUM: THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN’S THE NEXT NEW WORLD!  And I quote:
 
AGENDA ITEMS WILL INCLUDE:
* The World We Live in Now
* Threats or Possibilities
* What Happened to Power?
* How the Digital Revolution
Is Accelerating Everything
* What You Don’t Know Is Coming
* Doing Business in the Next New World
* What an Education Is Going to Mean
* What Energy Is Going to Be
 
Tickets to this daylong festival of Deep Insight are $495 and available only after one requests an invitation.  The video posted on the forum website contains these nuggests of wisdom:
 
While we were sleeping, something really big happened over the last decade. While we were focused on post 9/11 and the subprime crisis, something really big happened in the plumbing of the world and by the plumbing I mean, basically, the technological platform on which innovation and education and companies all rest. So back in 2004 I wrote a book called The World Is Flat, and the argument of the book is that the world was getting connected. Well, I would argue that in the last 10 years, while you were sleeping the world went from connected to hyperconnected.
 
Get it? We used to be sorta connected, but now we’re really, really connected!  These kids today, with their gadgets and their Facebook!  And it all happened while you were asleep and focused on world events, in your sleep.

As Wonkette notes, he’s been pushing this latest buzzword — “hyperconnectivity” — hard.  And you have to give him this: he’s nothing if not relentless.  When he writes a book about the world being flat, or short, or dusty or some damn thing, you can count on seeing that metaphor worked into successive columns for years.

BONUS Friedman follies: here and here.

Just lost a long-time client paper, for the usual budgetary reasons.

On a somewhat related note: you can support independent cartooning AND get a sneak peek at each week’s cartoon by signing up for SPARKY’S LIST!

That is all.

Forgot to post this last week.

The Herblock ceremony was held last Thursday at the Library of Congress. It was an amazing evening, for which I owe huge thanks to everyone at the Herblock Foundation.

With fellow cartoonists Signe Wilkinson and Matt Wuerker. More pics below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

This project was co-ordinated by Ruben Bolling, who writes more about it here.

I’m still contending with the Dread Mailchimp Payment Glitch. In short, if your subscription is up for renewal but your credit card on file has expired or been cancelled, you will be repeatedly, automatically unsubscribed — even after you update the cc info. Mailchimp has been informed of this bug many times but shows no sign of addressing it.

If you get an unsubscribe notice, DO NOT TRY TO RESUBSCRIBE without contacting me first. I have to manually re-set your account to keep you from falling into the unsubscribe loop.

Apologies for the hassle.

A flea market find: a cookbook of favorite recipes from the wives of military personnel stationed at Guantamo, circa 1964.

What Digby said:

In recent years, Roger Ebert did something else that was revolutionary: He showed us how to live with a terrible illness and, despite a disability that would have destroyed most celebrities, stayed as relevant as ever by engaging the public through social media. His writing became even more feisty and aggressive than it had been when he was younger, particularly when it came to politics. He was an inspiration.

This is a photo contest for those of you who own plush Sparkys. Send in your pics of Sparky in odd locales or strange situations, or simply in his native habitat in your home. Winner will be chosen at random (unless there’s one I really, really like) and will receive your choice of a Droney shirt, a copy of the new World of Tomorrow compilation, or a Sparky’s List subscription. Send entries to tomtomorrowATgmail.

Cartoon flashback from March, 2004.