Derf:

There don’t seem to be many new people around because alt-weeklies don’t run enough comics.  It’s funny because back in the ’80s. when nobody was reading alt-weeklies, it was the comics that put them on the map, like Life in Helland Lynda Barry.  I hate to see weeklies repeat the same mistakes that the daily papers have made: fewer and fewer comics, and running them smaller and smaller.

I can understand the business limitations, but you can’t go wrong with running more comics.  There are good comics out there. Weeklies should be running more than two or three strips.  They don’t take up much room, and what’s one less sex ad?

That’s exactly right. There should be room for new talent, without sending the established crop of cartoonists off on the ice floes. (Something I wish our friends in Detroit understood.)

We put up our Christmas tree yesterday. It doesn’t have much to do with my faith, or more specifically, my lack thereof — it’s been a few years since Sunday School, but I don’t recall that Jesus had much to say about the relative merits of Douglas Firs vs. Scotch Pines. But it’s still an important ritual, providing a sense of continuity to the scattered threads of my life.

And you know what? I don’t want the spectral presence of Bill O’Reilly hovering over that room. I don’t want that moment to be about politics. I don’t want the yearly bittersweet act of hanging the handcrafted ornaments I inherited when my mother died to feel like some sort of concession to the right-wing knuckleheads.

Atrios said it well a few days back — these people have managed to spoil Christmas. It’s the story of the Grinch, re-told, except this time, the Grinch has learned to be even sneakier — he’s sucking the joy out of Christmas by posing as its biggest defender, creating conflict and strife where none need exist.

Wednesday:

The goal: to remind the nation’s leaders that the New Orleans diaspora is still out there, and that its members want the levees to be rebuilt so they can return home and reconstruct their lives without fear of another flood.

U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., has thrown her support behind the rally and helped the women select the optimum date. Their permit for the rally was finalized Wednesday.

Sen. Landrieu has threatened to keep the Senate in session until it approves a $35.4 billion relief package that would fortify the city against a Category 5 storm, rather than Category 3 as proposed by the Bush administration.

The two local organizers also are reaching out to the entire congressional delegation from Louisiana, and e-mailing everyone they can think of to spread the word about rallying at Lafayette Park, across from the White House, at 11 a.m.

Update from organizers:
Rally has been rescheduled from noon to 2 pm. Sen. Landrieu tentatively scheduled to speak at 1 pm.

Newsweek catches up to This Modern World. And it only took them two years.