Three months later, and I'm back. It's been a tough couple of months, both personally and for the world, and they've both affected my ability to write blog entries on a regular basis. The personal stuff is, well, personal, so I won't be talking about it much here. As for the rest of the world.... Over the last few months, I've been collecting a whole bunch of links to news stories about the "war" in Iraq, the steady erosion of personal freedom in the US, and the concurrent erosion of humanity's soul as we (apparently) just sit back and allow this to happen. I would read some news item which would inflame my righteous fury, and I'd record the link and prepare to write a blog entry, when I'd come across another one. And another, and another and another. Pretty soon, I started feeling completely wore down and depressed, and I didn't want to write about any of it because I didn't want to be dragged down any further. I suppose I could have written about comics or TV or movies or whatever, but that seemed trivial and frivolous in face of what our government was doing to our country. So I didn't write about that stuff, either. Plus, like I said, life intervened, and ultimately, it was just easier to set the blog aside for a while.

Today, though, I discovered that my pal Jim has me listed as a blog of note (or whatever) on his own blog site, so I feel sufficiently motivated to get back to work. You know, just in case anybody decides to come check me out from his site. So, without further ado, here's the links I've been saving the past few months...

Sony to cash in on Iraq with "shock and awe" game: This one was pretty irritating when I first read it. The other day, when I heard a car dealership urging car buyers to come in to be "shocked and awed" by their low prices, it all came back. Bad enough we invaded, fought the war, killed uncounded--by us--numbers of civilians based on a flimsy tissue of lies and fabrications that nobody really believed in the first place, and nobody is commenting on now that they've completely turned out to be false. But could we possibly wait, I don't know, an eternity before commercializing it? This is the world in which we live.

Library Public Policy Manual 2004: Like a lot of things in life, we laugh because it's funny and we laugh because it's true. Or because it all too possibly could be. This is the world in which we live.

US soldiers in Iraq asked to pray for Bush: Because, you know, he's in such a tough, difficult place that he needs the hopes and prayers of the people he sent in to be shot at by Iraqi troops based on a flimsy tissue of lies and fabrications that nobody really believed in the first place, and nobody is commenting on now that they've completely turned out to be false. Yeah, they should have been praying for him, sitting safe and sound in the White House, desperately trying to learn to count to ten using all his fingers so he can at least pretend to understand numbers and math as he tries to explain to the country on how tax cuts for the rich will somehow benefit the nation as a whole... Soldiers should be praying for him during that difficult time instead of nervously eyeing Iraqi civilians around them, trying to sort out which ones might be disguised suicide bombers and which ones just hate the American soldiers for coming and and killing innocent men, women, and children without just cause...

You see why I didn't feel like writing anything for three months? It's just so easy to get started, and so hard to stop, and then I just get to feeling angry and tired and depressed. I swear, it's enough to make me hope that this life really is some sort of virtual reality illusion and we're all batteries for the machine. It isn't as if I've turned my back on the world in hopes that it'll just get better on its own. Last week alone, I found myself calling my state's senators in Washington, urging them to vote against tax cuts and FCC deregulation. I just haven't felt like writing about any of it.

And this week I'm on vacation, and I want to relax. I don't want to get all worked up and foaming at the mouth over the latest outrage committed by our government. I want to relax, I want to go see The Matrix Reloaded on my birthday, I want to go to Disneyland, and I want to read a huge stack of comic books. And that's what I'll be writing about this week.