Shrubville

At least Winslow is a Democrat for a day.

I'm working on a search of Amazon to get book number 480,340. My most successful technique was a Google site search using 430840 as the term, which turned up a book that used to have that ranking but is now at 228,509: Supermodernism, by Hans Ibelings, a book on architecture.

I found this guide to understanding the Amazon sales rank: http://www.rampant-books.com/mgt_amazon_sales_rank.htm; bottom line, if your rank is below 10,000, you are selling about 1-5 books a week. At 430,841, it has to be like 1-5 books a year.

This is the letter -NOT email, letter- I just sent to the L.A. Times:

Last week, the comic strip ‘Prickly City’ by Scott Stantis called Nancy Pelosi a bitch. It wasn’t in support of an attempt at humor. There wasn’t any joke there. It was just the phrase ‘payback’s a bitch’ with the word ‘Pelosi’ inserted in place of the offending noun.
With all due respect, I cannot see a reason for this in my newspaper. It goes way past politics. The strip isn’t funny. The characters are barely ciphers; they exist only to repeat GOP talking points. The art isn’t very good, the setting is original but isn’t even featured. A few months ago, This Stantis jerk asserted that Senator Pelosi had had Botox treatments and had, therefore, paralyzed her facial muscles. He made fun of a female politician based on her looks.
Look at the strip yourself.
Ask yourself: is it funny? I put it to you that it hasn’t been funny for a looooong time. I understand you need to feel ‘balanced’ in political perspective. You have that awful, awful ‘Mallard Fillmore’ strip to balance for ‘La Cucaracha’. ‘Mallard Fillmore’ at least alternates its weak Liberal-bashing with some supposedly ‘wry’ takes on the foibles of modern life.
‘Doonesbury’? I don’t think a newspaper can call itself a major US newspaper and NOT have ‘Doonesbury’…maybe in Atlanta or Raleigh or something. We ain’t Raleigh.
If you need an excuse to cancel this strip, think of it as your Election Day Victory gift to me, the most devoted fan of the L.A. Times. I lived in Jakarta, Indonesia for 8 years. When I found out that a local media company got weekly Sunday L.A. Times samples, I immediately offered to trade a designer shirt for the latest copy. Every week, for three years, I would go out, buy an expensive shirt and trade it to the receptionist for the paper. THAT’S how much I love the L.A. Times. I paid the equivalent of $15 a week for your paper, and a two-week-old copy at that! Do it for me, and for all the constituents of Senator Pelosi and all the people who think humor should be protected. This isn’t humor. It’s just stupid.

and what happened to his podcast????

Ok, I'm sorry if I'm missing the point here, I mean I disagree with the majority of what prickly city says, and as I can tell you do to. So why exactly, if you hate it so much, do you take the time each day to write a good three to four, and sometimes even more, paragraphs each day about it? And even then it's a bunch of garbled bullshit. You complain about shit mainly because it's not to your liking not because the strip is genuinely offensive. I've been showing this page to my friends and frat brothers all around campus and pretty much everyone agrees you have no life. I mean do you still have brown on your nose from writing that letter to the L.A. times. And it's glad to see someone out there still uses paint for photo editing

Read Prickly City in the Washington Post, today 9/27/2007. I would go to Venus, except the part about heat that can melt lead bothered me. Question is, when Mr. Stantis goes to Venus, who will write Prickly City? Thanks.