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Folks who I’ve never had a conversation with about anything other than Stevie Winwood’s decline after he left Traffic, or whether or not Iron Man could really take Thor in a fair fight (what with Iron Man’s power being lim ited only by its energy source, but Thor is like, y’know, a god ), were soon telling me exactly how the Twelfth Amendment altered Article II, Section I of the Constitution beyond their ability to actually articulate rationally. You know what I’m talking about; it seems there’s always some hot-button topic, some new outrage that has the pundits punditting and the finger waggers wagging their fingers, and it seems it doesn’t really matter to those guys what they say as long as they weigh in with their opinions on whatever it is that everyone else is yammering on about. It matters to me what I say about comics. I’ve loved the art form from before I could read, and I’ve been following the business ever since I real ized making comics was a job you could actually have , as opposed to hav ing some sort of magical funny-book delivery system put ‘em on the racks down at the drug store. You’re not going to get Woodward-and-Bernstein here, but I won’t blow smoke up your ass. That may be as close to a mission statement as you’ll get from me about this column. Now, I dunno if you all noticed this, but in the US, the ol’ economy is slow ing down. The Fed took the unprecedented and unscheduled move to drop interest rates .5% to combat the slowing economy. Making it cheaper to borrow money, the big brains figure, will have the folks lining up outside the bank. Of course, they won’t be looking to buy that new Jet-Ski; they’ll be trying to get a third mortgage on their living quarters, but still. Helping hand from Uncle Sam. The bubble has burst on the dot-commies; tens of thousands of I-workers, e-traders, and code monkeys have become unemployed. This hasn’t real ly hit the National Unemployment Rate yet, as the ratio of new Starbuck’s kiosks opening up to failed dot-coms closing down has largely remained at par. Wonder why that dude with the soul patch is so surly when he hands over your venti latte in the morning? He’s the guy whose burn rate on his venture capital was a little faster than he had thought. So tip the poor bas tard well. +++++ You’ll not find that sort of thing here.

And, of course, the anticipation is that everything’s grinding down slower

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