'Another year over.'

I have a long post I'm going to split into two or three parts. It will be titled 'The pick-up truck of Hieronymus Bosch'. But I don't want to split it over two months, never mind years, in the archive, so I'll save it till tomorrow. Meanwhile, I was clearing out my wallet for the end of the tax quarter and came across this scribbled on the back of a receipt. I lifted it from a women's magazine while waiting for my lad, Callum, at the doctor's the other day. He has a gaping hole in his shin from a skateboard accident, but it appears to be healing.
On women taking their husband's name. "Anyone who gets married is a fool. I can understand why a man would get married. Everybody can use a wife. it's just that nobody needs a husband. If women are fool enough to get married it really doesn't matter if they take their husband's name or not. Marriage is a very odd arrangement. A contract with no terms, a sacrament with no ritual. you don't know what it is you promised until you're told you didn't do it and you're being divorced." Germaine Greer.
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And while I'm having a clearing out, a few links that have gathered over the last couple of weeks:
TIME magazine's 10 Best Books of 2006, By LEV GROSSMAN, RICHARD LACAYO, December 17. I like that Alison Bechdel's Fun Home is no.1 without any qualifiers about it being a 'graphic novel' (sorry, but that expression is now permantly spelled with the quote marks around here). The next step after the 'graphic novel' being recognised as just another illustrated book is for it to be recognized as just another book. Then it will no longer exist and we will have achieved something.
On the same theme: Dirk, I loves ya, but I think you're being counterproductive in your first item here.
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Alan Moore's old strip from the British weekly, SOUNDS, 'The Stars my Degradation' is being assembled online here. There's a special long Christmas edition from dec 25 1982 which comes up on my screen as a load of code, so it's lucky that this other guy here has posted it too (thanks to Dirk Deppey for the link, see above). Alan was drawing this series when I first met him in '82. (1979-1983) When he stepped out of the Sounds spot Bryan Talbot had a go for a year and then Phil Elliott and I collaborated for two years, 1984-86. It was a great spot, a quarter tabloid size (down from Half when Alan was doing it), going all the way across the page. Not sure why Sounds was the site of so much activity. It's not like they were very bright or had any notions about the comic strip having cultural value. Mostly Phil and I tried to do good work while throwing enough toilet jokes to keep them distracted. Anyway, that was my first regular job as a cartoonist. Here's an example from 6 august 1984. Phil and I would draw alternate weeks, and I'd letter and sign them all 'Charlie Trumper', while Phil handled the paperwork and dealing with the publisher as I had a daytime office job. That's how we did it at the beginning anyway, and this is one I made myself. The title reads 'Everybody loves the government' and it's as true today as it was back then. (click enlarge)

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good review of Fate of the Artist in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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In comments a few days back, Steve Block linked me to this. Josh Lacey signs up to Daniel Pennac's wise and liberating 10-point manifesto, The Rights of the Reader from The Guardian of Saturday October 28, 2006. And I'd like you to go into 2007 with this thought from Pennac: "By making time to read, like making time to love, we expand our time for living."

May all of your gods, false or otherwise, go with you.