As ever, it comes from rage.  Rage, in this case, at the introduction of a new snoop machine at work that records our entry into the building.  This in a university?  Rage at colleagues who just don’t get it that this is wrong, another assault on us as citizens and as scholars, but this time launched at us not from the NSA or our cell phone carrier, but (as far as I can tell)  just because the university cops decided to.

Recommended reading http://privacysos.org/

Greetings to all for the new year.  Hopefully, this diagram will help you navigate it.

As you know, the blog has been quiet for quite a while.  My main excuse is that my artistic efforts have been going into an Illustrated Ern Malley.  How could I possibly avoid drawing  “In the twenty-fifth year of my age, I find myself to be a dromedary”?  The plan is to issue this as a genuine paper book, a physical object that you can hold in your hand.  Stay tuned.

Stay warm.  Stay well.  Seize the year by its ears.

A geek, of course, is the guy who bites heads of off chickens at the fair.  Let us now follow the adventures of Senator Astute shaking hands and grubbing for votes at the fair.  As Larry Gonick points out in his fine book, The Cartoon Guide to Statistics, the good senator’s name is accented on the second syllable.  Sure enough, before he knows it, Senator Astute is gazing on imminent birdie death.  “Wait! Jim!  What on earth are you doing biting heads off chickens?”  Mirabile dictu, the geek is Senator Astute’s long lost cousin.  One thing leads to another, and the next thing to beer, and before long Cousin Jim has a job in the Senator’s office as the bag man.  And business is brisk.  Bribes here, bribes there, every day a dozen bribes to pick up and launder.  Things are hoppin’, but it sure beats chicken heads.

Well, this goes on for a year or so.  Cousin Jim is getting used to the big city ways, the hustle and the money grubbing, and thinks its time a little more of it was his.  “Senator, I want a raise.”  “You want a raise?  You miserable hick.  If you don’t like the pay here, go bite a chicken!”

Cousin Jim didn’t like this at all and went straight to the cops.  They wired him up, and the rest is history.

And the moral of the story is: Beware of geeks bearing grift.

And then other times, she just gets sullen and won’t talk.