As if I didn't love her enough...

...for her incredible books (Palimpsest utterly blew me away), this is what Catherynne M. Valente had to say about the recent Mammoth book of Mindblowing Science Fiction Gender/Racefail:

"Stories are important. Stories, in fact, are life. They are what is left of our unique experience in this world. They speak--no. They scream. And when an author sits down and constructs a completely imaginary world in their heads, if people like me, people like us, do not exist in it, or exist only to be ridden like animals or raped or murdered or humilated or destroyed so that an audience can acheive catharsis via symbolic annihilation of our lives, bodies, and souls, well, certainly, we can sit down and look at the floor and say: yes, you're right, that is what we deserve. Or we can stand up. We can scream back. We can band together. We can demand our right to exist, to take part in humanity, to learn, to grow, to evolve, to self-examine. We can tell our stories, to anyone who will listen, to the campfire, to our lovers, to coffee shops, to strangers, to publishers' skyscrapers in New York, to the heavens, to the earth. Yes, you're fucking well right we can."

Besides being the very first one to call it out. 

How to lose me as a customer

I'm finally getting back to work on my gallery website.  I tried it first two summers ago, and was ultimately defeated by my own ambition.  This time, no flash is going to be involved at all.  Just a simple, aesthetic layout in Dreamweaver, using Lightbox2 to showcase images.  My writing will go up on it too.
What spurred me to get on it again?  Well, my domain name registration expired.  I'd been waiting for this, because I originally got it using GoDaddy, as it had been the only registry I had heard of.  Then I got blasted with some of their ridiculously gross, sexist commercials.  Decided I didn't want to send any more money that way.  I canceled (after having them unsuccessfully try and charge my credit card for re-registry behind my back) and now it has been several weeks of waiting for my domain to free up so I can register with DynamicDolphin.  Is it supposed to take this long?  Seriously not amused.

But anyway.  Here is a doodle from one of my sketchbooks, done in café Tryst a few weeks ago.  Ballpoint pen and white coloured pencil on recycled brown paper.