And so I present…Swamp-Man #2! It’s crude, it’s goofy, but it’s all mine, and I’m still very proud of it.

(One of the main reasons why I’m doing NaNoWriMo this month is to reconnect with that comic-making mindset I had as a kid. Hence the posting of this now.)

The very idea of having a 21st century, wired, Web 2.0 President thrills the socks off of me. I’m already getting updates to the President-elect’s transition team’s blog in my aggregator. YouTube fireside chats just add to the awesomesauce.

My question to my friends out there is: should we set up a password to access the wifi or leave it open? My beliefs push me to leave it open, but I’m wondering if there are consequences to leaving it open that I don’t want to deal with. I realize that anyone who really wanted to could certainly break into a protected network, but I also doubt anyone like that is going to be hanging around our neighborhood. So, open or not?

This time, I don’t feel like I have anything to prove to myself. I’m doing NaNoWriMo purely for the enjoyment of writing a story and continuing with that story for a full month. I’m not even thinking of this as a first draft. I’m not planning on showing this story to anyone. I just want to be in that mode of creative play, like when I was a kid, unselfconscious and dreaming out loud.

So, don’t expect a whole lot of blogging this month. I’m hoping to be too engrossed in telling a story to myself. See you all later!

Thanks, Great Pumpkin! Happy Hallowe’en!

I have mixed feelings about this. Tennant is my favorite Doctor. His portrayal of the Doctor is exactly how I want the character to be portrayed. Plus, David Tennant is around my age, grew up loving the show, still loves the show (listen to any commentary he does on an episode and marvel at his geeky knowledge of Doctor Who trivia), and his favorite Doctor is Peter Davison, who is also my favorite of the classic series. I would love to see him stay in the role for a long time, beating out Tom Baker as the longest-running Doctor.

Except I think Tom Baker went on too long, and I wouldn’t want Tennant to do the same. The show has always been about change, and it’s about time things were shaken up a bit more. I think he’s right to leave the show now, rather than stick around until we’re all sick to death of him.

So, thanks for playing such a smashing Doctor, David! I’m sorry to see you go, but that’s the way it should be. Good luck with the future. Allons-y!

I was in Milwaukee, attending GenCon (this was before it moved to Indianapolis, obviously). I was hanging out with some friends in their hotel room, the conversation flowing like some kind of fast-flowing liquid, when it occurred to me that I was the only person in the room without a blog. My friends immediately began encouraging me to start a blog of my own. “It’s so easy!” they said. “We’ll even help you get one started.” (In retrospect, it was very much like an after-school special from the ’70s, only with blogging replacing cigarettes or LSD.) When I got home from the convention, I bought a book on learning HTML, registered the domain “www.goblin-cartoons.com” (the name vaguely had to do with how I saw my prose and poetry writing at the time, and I thought it was catchy), and began blogging. In library school, I stumbled upon Jenny Levine’s blog, which led to discovering other library-themed blogs. After I graduated and got my first post-degree library job, I decided I wanted to join the ranks of library bloggers, so I changed my blog name to “the goblin in the library.” And then, of course, I recently changed the blog back to the more general “goblin cartoons.” And that, my friends, is the story of my blogging (so far).

I’m not going to tag anyone, but if you read this and haven’t written your own post about how you got into blogging, go ahead and share your story with us.

I had a great time hanging out with my library pals, but it’s good to be home.