Varnish

I lost an entry yesterday when we had a power failure at work. The good news is we went home early.

It was about comic books I've been enjoying. I was all elaborate about them, but now I'm just going to list them:

Two by Mike Carey, writer of Lucifer:
Ultimate Vision (picking up where Marvel's Ultimate Galactus saga ended)
Crossing Midnight: A new Vertigo book he's writing that is more along the lines of Lucifer but dealing with Japanese mythology.

Antique Bakery - a fabu manga about a small bakery in suburban Tokyo which makes me hungy every time I read it. Sweet, romantic, delicate, funny

American Virgin - the writing is a bit obvious but it's fun watching a young american evangelist virgin being dragged around the world and confronting things that make him question his faith. Awesome, sexy Becky Cloonan art.

Finally, a quote from Bruce Sterling's Heavy Weather about my profession:

"The profession of design, having once lost its aspiration to construct a better world, must by necessity decay into a work-for-hire varnish for barbarism."

Convergence

While everyone is going on about the new Apple iPhone, I'll pass because I still don't want a cell phone and I don't have or desire an iPod.

However, the new iTV is sort of interesting. I've been figuring out that in a year, instead of buying a new TV, I'd buy a big HD monitor and hook it up to a mac mini and, from there, get my TV signal (still coming from the bunny ears on my TV) through it. In fact, HD is being broadcast through the air.

I suspect that iTV will not be friendly to anything except iTunes TV and movie downloads. No thanks. That's as annoying as buying tunes on iTunes and not being able to put them on my PDA (except, of course, you can if you use Hymn).

But convergence is upon us and I will not buy a dedicated TV if I can have a big screen computer in my living room for a comparable price.