Is there enough interest out there, enough demand, for me to go back to writing and drawing the adventures of Mindover Man, the Interventionist and good ol’ Marv?

If you want more HeroIsUm, let me know, either with a comment below or by @replying me on Twitter. And if someone or a few someones out there are interested enough, let me know what it is you like about this, because obviously I get easily distracted.

Thanks for reading!

Please check it out and let me know what you think!

Thank you!

Three cheers for the person who ignores those idiotic tags at the end of emails that say “Before printing this message, please consider the environment.”

If you have that tag on your e-stationery, please take a moment to slap yourself.

Of all the dumb things with which to fake “environmental stewardship,” asking people to be careful with the most widely recycled, easily replaceable, and quickly biodegradable product on the market takes top honor for drooling-on-yourself-brain-death. Think about this: If paper is so much of a problem for the environment, why is it on rolls in our bathrooms?

Among my heroes are people who print, print, print — thus keeping the forester employed a little longer, as well as the logger, the paper-mill worker, the truck drivers, the loading-dock laborers, the paper salespeople (the real ones — not just those in Scranton, PA), the printer makers, the recyclers and anyone else who is part of this commercial ecosystem.

Those people keep our society moving. And you know what? I’d bet every book I own that paper use and recycling, over the long term is more environmentally responsible than buying every new paperless gadget that comes down the pike, obsoleting the last one purchased six months earlier and pitching it into the garbarge. What happens to those devices and all the non-recyclable parts (or the recyclable ones that end up in the landfill anyway because no one knows where to take these things to be recycled), not to mention all the hazardous, trace metals in their components. That will eventually poison the groundwater a lot faster than paper pulp.

And think about the infrastructure that produces those tablets and e-readers: You, Mr. or Miss High-tech High-horse Rider, are supporting the exploitation of dollar-a-day factory workers in China rather than helping to keep Canadian and American paper industry employees gainfully employed.

So please, when you see the message asking you to consider the environment, print two copies and help the human environment of our society.

Zero: Borders bookstores (This is the natural result of going digital)

I hate to kick a company when it’s down, but Borders is closing its store in my hometown, and I’m not happy about it. In a town of 100,000 people, Borders has had a virtual monopoly as a bookseller. There’s a skeezy Hastings and a small place downtown that’s more of a magazine stand. But other than Walmart’s and Target’s limited selections of mainstream pabulum, there’s not a decent bookstore within 20 miles of here.

Borders has been a haven to my family for years. Whenever we couldn’t think of anything to do, we went to Borders. Whenever we got done with something else early, we went to Borders. Whenever my wife and I couldn’t think of a good place to go on a date (which happens often), we went to Borders. Of course, we tried to persuade relatives to give us Borders gift cards for holidays, and regularly went there as our first choice as much as we used it for the comfortable Plan B. And we usually tried to make sure to buy something (often a lot of somethings) whenever we went.

It was always nice to know we could go there and just relax amid the fragrant mix of coffee and new-paper smell while listening to vaguely familiar music. I can’t count the hours of comfort I’ve enjoyed there. And soon it’ll be gone and we’ll have no nice place to just relax with the printed word.

Worse, I fear for the kids of this town. With one less place to go that encourages literacy and expanding horizons, I worry it’ll just be easier for them to mindlessly plant themselves in front of their video game consoles for even longer mini-eras than they do already. I’ll leave it at that and save my anti-video game rant for another day.

If I had the wherewithal, I’d look into opening my own independent bookstore in the same place and work like a dog to have multiple book discussion groups daily; a constant pipeline of authors coming to discuss their work; daytime programs for home-school parents and kids; a great coffee shop; a comic-book store within the store (another thing we don’t have here); and outreach efforts to get into the schools regularly. Maybe an independent store, with a smaller staff and no funnel back to the parent company could work here if it could handle the overhead. Reading should lead to community-building through discussion. Eventually everyone who’s so giddy about the narrow focus of their tablet or e-reader will realize not having to go somewhere to explore books makes the experience of reading more lonely.

Someday. …

Until someone more credit-worthy than me steps up, I’ll mourn the loss of the store those poor Borders execs zeros into the ground.