Author: J T. Ramsay

MAKING A CALL FOR COMICS

This item caught my eye over at Book­slut last Fri­day as I whit­tled away at my feed read­er. As I checked out io9’s plea to Hol­ly­wood, it under­lined how much I need to start read­ing comics again. But there’s more to it than that. If you’re one of the poor souls fol­low­ing me on Good Reads, you know I’ve been work­ing on David Had­ju’s lat­est book, The Ten Cent Plague, for­ev­er. It’s been a fas­ci­nat­ing read, but an inter­rupt­ed one. The upshot? I want to read comics like nev­er before!

A lit­tle back­ground: I’ve nev­er been a com­ic book read­er. A lot of that I’ll chalk up to tim­ing. Being born in 1977 to par­ents in then very rur­al Berks Co., Penn­syl­va­nia, meant not hav­ing access to a lot of things cul­tur­al (read: cool.) It also meant not being exposed to such-like until lat­er in life. My friend Ben Warfield hand­ed me a few comics dur­ing high school, mem­o­rably the Martha Wash­ing­ton series and V for Vendet­ta, both of which I con­sumed hasti­ly when I should’ve been read­ing stuff like Ethan Frome. I haven’t read much since then, oth­er than falling in love with Amer­i­can Splen­dor a few years ago when the movie came out, just like every­one else.

So here’s what I’m going to do. I plan on track­ing down some of io9’s sug­ges­tions, start­ing with Heavy Liq­uid, which is con­ve­nient­ly being reis­sued at the end of Sep­tem­ber. Treat their list like a primer. I’m also reach­ing out to folks who I know are into comics (Toby and Dou­glas, you’re my only hopes. Send links!)

But what would a blog post be with­out a seri­ous qual­i­fi­er? Here it comes: I’ll issue the caveat that it’s pret­ty obvi­ous that I’m not going to end up devot­ing myself to comics (maybe I’m wrong?), but I’d love to be exposed to some cool, new stuff. If any­one has sug­ges­tions, or is as curi­ous and in the dark as I am on this stuff, feel free to hit up the comments!

(P.S. I’m try­ing to fig­ure out how I want to for­mat titles on Black­mail Is My Life. Tell me if you pre­fer all caps to what I’ve been doing. You can also let me know if you think the font is easy to read, or if changes should be made. Thanks!)

Posted on by J T. Ramsay

I’m updating my wardrobe.

One of the ben­e­fits of train­ing for this marathon is that I’ve been los­ing a lot of weight. Unlike my Philebri­ty Fit Club expe­ri­ence, this has been a grad­ual, grat­i­fy­ing process, rather than a sprint to the fin­ish. I’m much hap­pi­er with the results.

Why? Los­ing 16% of my body mass in two months did­n’t do won­ders for my health. As an added bonus I was laid off short­ly after win­ning Fit Club. The wear and tear from run­ning and diet­ing, plus the added stress of need­ing to find a new job was just too much. I came down with some nasty bronchial some­thing that the doc­tor swore was­n’t pneu­mo­nia. I was cough­ing so much I bruised my ster­num. It was bad.

As I peel away the pounds this time, I’m find­ing that my biggest prob­lem is that I have no clothes to wear. When I start­ed train­ing, I looked in my dress­er draw­ers and was sad­dened by what I saw. I still have clothes from my days as a St. Joe’s under­grad! They are nei­ther pret­ty nor do they scream “media pro­fes­sion­al.” It’s time for a major update.

Last night I took a bold step and bought a pair of jeans. I’m back down to a 34″ waist after push­ing the lim­its of 36″ two months ago. They’re noth­ing fan­cy, just a pair of deep blue Lev­i’s I found on sale at Macy’s down­town. I did­n’t want to go too wild as I have thir­teen weeks of train­ing before the marathon and I fig­ure that I’ll prob­a­bly keep slim­ming down until the race. That got me think­ing: what should I get when I reach my goal?

If you have any sug­ges­tions, leave them in the com­ments, or, if you use Delicious.com, send me sug­ges­tions here. I’m look­ing for places to shop as much as pieces to buy, so all sug­ges­tions are wel­come. In the mean­time I’ll be the guy wear­ing a bar­rel to work. If you see me around 17th and JFK, be sure to say hi!

Posted on by J T. Ramsay