Yes, and there is much rejoicing across the land. Get your free stuff and thank your shop by buying something, will ya, please? It costs them money to give you free stuff. My buddy Highlander wrote all about it. Fortunately, my local comic shop set me up with all the freebies (and I gladly paid for them, too) plus I got extra for a friend of Kathy's and the nephews as well.
And if you go here, Two Morrows Publishing is doing something different: They're offering free magazines today and tomorrow, but they're downloads. Yes, H, I know Bendis is on the cover of one of them, but you don't have to get that one, okay? You can settle for a Jack Kirby Collector or one of the other 5 freebies, okay?

John Ostrander writes about the uncertain future of himself and this country. Reader's Digest version: like me, he doesn't have health insurance and says "Once again, if you have money or job security, then you get health care. If you don’t, you’d better pray you don’t get sick. That’s one of the things this Administration wants to see, right? More prayer." Second, "It seems to me that when CEOs talk about making their companies leaner to better compete in a world economy, they’re talking about the little guy getting a salary cut or laid off. They continue to collect their salaries and bonuses; to fire an executive who is screwing up their job, you have to give them multi-million dollar severance packages. All of this are decided by Boards of Directors who generally have others of their ilk on it; how many have members of the Unions or even of the Stockholders on it?" Say what you will about unions, but what do you get if they decide they don't want you anymore? You don't need me to tell you squat.

Things are looking up this weekend, making it the best one without goin' south. I've got my tickets to the premiere of the IMAX theatre on Indy's southside showing Spider-Man 3. There's an IMAX downtown, but because it's close to another theatre chain, they don't show new films on immediate release (they're hyping just getting the IMAX version of 300) The only drawback was that this factoid was the catalyst to finally meet some good friends last summer, but...
And there's an author signing Sunday that I don't wanna say any more to jinx it like last time (although I plan to buy his new book at his venue) that I'll hopefully tell more after the fact.

Did some straightening up on the links to your right. I even joined the 21st century by changing one section from "web logs" to "blogs". Sure, there's some that I promise to play with every day, but most of the stragglers are gone and updated. I'll do something about that "get informed" section someday, that part's way overdue.
Check out some of the new ones if you want something to do. This Wessel kid can write. And that Violent Acres lady, too.

Mark Evanier relays this page that has stats today and stats four years ago...you know, back when the Iraq "Mission" was "Accomplished".
Peter David is right: the Democrats should call the spending bill W's gonna veto Operation MAMA, for "Mission Accomplished, My Ass".

I decided to reply to the postings here and here by telling you a new version of an old joke...
Hey Kids, wanna end the war in Iraq?
Put it on Fox, they'll cancel it in 3 weeks.
I'm here all week, tip the veal, try your waitress.
Of course, the old version was about Vietnam, the network was ABC, and the time frame was 13 weeks...
I don't know whether to laugh or cry about that last part, except to say in my reply to Mark Gibson that I have zero sympathy for the networks because their years of arrogance has been brought down by cable, VCRs, and the internet; so now I laugh long and hard about any stories about how the glory days of the webs have gone by.

Laura "Tegan" Gjovaag linked to this video that easily explains what RSS is and how to use it. I'd suggest watching the whole thing then go here to get a reader as they advise and sign up. I signed up for most of the blogs using the "Add Subscription" link on the left. It saves me time on looking at the blogs.

It's the first of the month, so instead of singing Welfare carols, I got all of this year's Thunder Over Louisville pictures up.
So when can I go back to Louisville? I know not this weekend, and I wanna have fun this time...