News You Can Bruise for 2002 February 20

Kris has a great insult on his page today: "I think it's written by Indie Rock Pete." And Airsick Moth has a bit of doggerel inspired by a particularly tasteless Paul Conrad cartoon.

I should mention that Greg Knauss recently informed me that Paul Conrad is a stroke victim, so it's not really politically correct to take the sort of lime-and-salt pleasure in his cartoons that Kris/Leonard/Sumana take. Greg also passed along the following touching story:

[Conrad came to] speak at my high-school, seven million years ago, when I was a freshman. After doing his spiel, he took questions, and someone asked where his ideas came from. He, of course, said everywhere -- the newspaper, conversations, even high-school kids. Did anybody in the audience have an idea?

So I raised my hand, he liked it, and it was in the LA Times the next day. He framed the original and sent it to me.

I thought that was pretty cool.

Addendum: Ouch!