--about to launch its first attack!!

All the good wedding photos are on my camera, and thus inaccessible until I get home. There were a few photos I took with the new phone though - most of them blurred or foggy or complicated by the way the phone makes its camera-click noise and only then, once people have heard it and start to move again, it takes the photo -- but I can at least get them onto the computer and I'll put a few of them up here.

Mark Buckingham (our noble groom) and Kev Sutherland (a wedding guest, who stoppeth one in three).



Blurred, but still Bucky and Irma (bride, and the soi-disant Lady Buckingham) later in the evening.

The author (with blue rose buttonhole and crooked tie, in his own no-longer-lost suit) early in the afternoon.

Me again, later in the evening, posted not because I thought people would like to see me slightly drunk, but because here you get an idea of the decoration of the wedding reception. Personally, I think every wedding party should be decorated with Kirby blow-ups, and every wedding table should be named after a comics character and decorated accordingly (we were on Delirium Table, because it had the coolest flower arrangement). This may not be practical for all weddings, but I'm glad it was for this one.

...

Which reminds me. If you're a comics artist you want a nice clean scan of Wally Wood's 22 Panels that Always Work. If you're a comics writer you could do a lot worse than have your copy pinned up too, especially if you're going to write a few panels with people hanging around and talking. So go to http://joeljohnson.com/archives/2006/08/wally_woods_22.html and learn about the history of these panels (I didn't know it. Like everyone else, I got my copy as a nearly-grey photocopy from a friend, and treasured it). Download it, print it out, use it. It's gold. (Thanks to Mark Evanier.)

...

Hi Neil,

I was reading the Atlantic Online's "So You Want to Be a Writer" (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200608u/writing-advice) when I discovered this quote from none other than John Kenneth Galbraith, sounding an awful lot like you:

"All writers know that on some golden mornings they are touched by the wand—are on intimate terms with poetry and cosmic truth. I have experienced those moments myself. Their lesson is simple: It's a total illusion. And the danger in the illusion is that you will wait for those moments. Such is the horror of having to face the typewriter that you will spend all your time waiting. I am persuaded that most writers, like most shoemakers, are about as good one day as the next (a point which Trollope made), hangovers apart. The difference is the result of euphoria, alcohol, or imagination. The meaning is that one had better go to his or her typewriter every morning and stay there regardless of the seeming result. It will be much the same."

(I suppose, timing-wise, you sound like him, but the quote brought you to mind.)

Thanks for the books, the blog, and everything else.

Bonnie

That's what I've been saying for years now, only it's put rather better than I could have put it. I'm not saying it's fair, mind, nor that there aren't rare days when you get lucky and you really can magically do no wrong when you put pen to paper. Just that it seems to be true, and that writers should bear that in mind.

...

And finally, Hera, my favourite icelandic singer in the whole world, wrote to tell me she now has a myspace account and no friends. This last being some kind of tragedy, I feel I ought to point you all at http://www.myspace.com/herasings so that you can befriend her. Also, if you do she may put up the chocolate song, or "don't play this"...