The Iraqi blogger Riverbend disappeared for a while, ominously. She's OK... has been trying to get out of the country for two months, is finally getting out. I wish her well.

Probably her blog wouldn't have become so popular if she weren't of a type that Americans can comfortably identify with: young, secular, upper middle class. And if it's true as rumor has it that her family was politically privileged under Saddam, then I'm sure she has plenty of blind spots - but these days only an idiot could call her reports propaganda or think things are fine over there. She's a good writer who did a necessary job.

Gary Panter's Platform is the best one I've heard so far. Is it too soon for a write-in campaign?

(You may know Gary Panter as the designer of Pee-Wee's Playhouse. He has all kinds of amazing stuff on his website. I got one of his custom drawings once which I'll always treasure, assuming I can find it.)

(Thanks to comics reporter Tom Spurgeon. Hey! Spurgeon noticed our art show too!)

I still want to write something about Burning Man but right now I am busy busy busy busy busy. I got back in the middle of last week and my job finishes at the end of this week, and it's not ending with a bang nor a whimper, more like a huge wall of static.

Anyway, I went to Burning Man and it was kind of great, kind of bewildering, kind of annoying, kind of inspiring, definitely worth it. I spent a lot of time just wandering around and looking at stuff, a little time doing things, and a little time talking to people. Barely took any photos; meant to do some sketching but didn't. It is what it is. I ended up feeling pretty good about people, even though some of the best parts of the week were provided by forces of nature.

I was very happy to find out that the heat and the dust don't make me sick, and that they didn't make my sweetie sick like they did last year. And readjusting hasn't been too bad (although, like Becka, I have to remember not to take off my clothes in public), it's just that real life is too goddamn busy. There are a few stories and a few pictures and I'll put them here some time.

Even though I'm lazy about corresponding with strangers, and I was never really plugged into the zine world, having a PO box is really nice sometimes. I just caught up on 3 months' worth of mail (seems I've been distracted lately) and there were a couple of fan letters and comics orders. If you're one of those people, very sorry about the delay and I'm putting stuff in the mail tomorrow. Whee!

And double whee to the kind soul who photocopied and sent me the early Wallace Shawn play Our Late Night, which I hadn't been able to find. I'll write a few words about that, as soon as I finish scrubbing my eyes.

Non-whee to the plumbing entrepreneur who had my box number once upon a time, and who never bothered to cancel several dozen catalogs that have been coming to me for the last three years.

Language Log's thorough razzing of Louann Brizendine is a good public service, but this is funnier: guy makes up new brain part to support boys-versus-girls theory. At least it would be funny if this guy weren't getting paid to address teachers.

I remember when I was in high school, the whole left brain vs. right brain thing had just arrived in the bad-pop-science hall of fame. Three or four of my teachers passed around various xeroxed quizzes for us to all find out if we were lefties or righties. One of them was a multiple-choice test where every "A" answer was clearly about a left-brained Mr. Spock type, and every "B" was a touchy-feely artist; just when you thought it couldn't get any dumber, there was this: "Are you (A) a cat person or (B) a dog person?"

[Added:]

I didn't realize, until I wrote this, how much that crap really bothers me. The high-school thing just seemed like a waste of time, they didn't know what they were talking about, no harm done. But this Hodgins guy - especially if you look at his response at the end of that Language Log post - he's clearly a total crank, and a sloppy one ("the detailed part of the brain"? "frontal lope"?), and I'm sure he's not the only one cashing in on this schtick now all over the country, making up whatever contradictory bullshit will feed into people's preconceptions. Guys seem insensitive because they're so rational and they don't understand non-verbal communication! No wait, guys are slow learners because they only understand non-verbal communication! Conclusion always the same: classrooms are OK for girls, but we should put the boys somewhere better suited to their true natures (savage and antisocial, but in a lovable way since they can't help it) where we can figure out how to shoehorn some rules and technical skills into those Martian brains. Maybe a military academy would work.

Pop-science-speak comes and goes - "neuro" is this year's "cyber" - but in this one area, telling educators why Boys and Girls Are Not the Same, it's hit a really creepy social nerve that makes people turn off their thinkuses more than usual, and the schools have enough problems without that. I'm guessing that nerve has something to do with the poor besieged Mitchum Man... with a little sprinkling of leftover Bell Curve.