I Am a Jerk.

But you knew that.

It's very easy, once you're up and running and you've got dozens of hits a day from your Mom on the blog, to forget that some very decent human beings linked to you and gave you your first traffic. Or at least it is for me. Because I am a jerk.

Mike at Visible Monsters was not only nice enough to toss me a link from his very cool London-based blog back in the day -- he is, for lack of a better word, a tech hipster -- but also took me out for a pint at a goth pub when I was in London beating Shibumi about the head and shoulders with the blunt club some believe to be my writing ability. Then we got Japanese food and he trundled me off in what was apparently called a "rape cab." I wish I were making that up.

Side-barred, sir, with my apologies.

Caption This Cheny Pic

(Stephen Crowley/ New York Times)

"Ahhh. Back on the grassy knoll. After all this time. Feels good."

Spell Name: Mind Control
Range: Line of Sight
Saving Throw: Will

"I'm pantless, fuckers. I'm pantless and high and there's SHIT you can do about it."

Monday Quick Hits

-- Blades of Glory: Although enjoyable, it's the first time I've said after watching something: 'You know what would have been funnier? More incest."

-- Geek Humor of the Day: The E-Mail Inbox of Star Wars Worst Engineer.

-- More Blue Beetle pimpage: Besides the nice folks at the Shuster nominating me for Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Writer, otherwise known as "Darwyn Cook's Next Award", the Something Awful folks handed us a Bessie for New Talent, and Newsarama gave #13 the Pick of the Week. Come join the Beetle Train. Which, despite its name, is not some horrible sexual game Warren Ellis discovered in the depths of a Bangkok sex pit.

-- Your Free Software Recommendation: Either VLC Player, which will play an media file on the planet, including that weird bit you picked up one night from space, or Foxit for pdf's. I finally got my home Windows machine running on all free/shareware software except for the screenwriting program, and it's just fine.

-- DRM free music on iTunes. This is kind of huge. Hopefully the days of the RIAA suing small children will soon be over.

-- Two words on a certain somebody's "stroll" through a Baghdad market: "Dukakis." "Tank." Considering how much I admired this man at one point, I'm just buffaloed.

-- Battlestar finale: Although enjoyable, it's the first time I've said after watching something: 'You know what would have been better? Less space-lawyering."

-- LOST: Expose was a genuinely fine, tight little piece of television (I will take my Rosencrantz and Guildenstern check now, thank you)-- which unfortunately only reinforced what a great show there is about Hurley, Sawyer and Jin lost on an island, and how sucktastically boring the Others plotline is by comparison. As ridiculously talented as the writing staff of the show is, I'm not sure "Hey, let's put all the angsty, brooding, annoyingly cryptic characters on one side of the island, and all the fun characters on the other side of the island" ... was the right choice here.

-- David Brin's blog has been listed. You're mad not to go.

Discuss, complain, backtalk. I'm going to look at DP reels.