My sister-in-law has a friend with a brain tumor. She’s a young college student named Tracy Russo, majoring in Education, and does not have health insurance. Although she is in the care of a local neurologist, the physician wants her to get an operation done in Pittsburgh, totaling 130,000 dollars.

Although the local community has poured support in, Tracy is still well short of the funds needed for this procedure. I would ask that you spread the word about her donation site. Let’s see if we can harness human decency and help this young woman out.

Thanks so much for your time.

Seldom will you see a glimpse into my political or moral bearings on this site. But there are some things I think even an entertainer (at least, I hope I entertain folks) has to say their peace about.

So I’ll say mine: It disgusts me that already people are batting around discussion about whether or not this sleaze bag will play pro ball again. What the hell is wrong with people? If Vick was some random person off the street, you wouldn’t give it a second thought about his career being ruined.

And you know what? It should be ruined. This wasn’t a crime that a criminal should recover completely from. Vick didn’t rip off the IRS or get caught with dope. He strangled, beat, and drowned dogs that didn’t perform well enough in a sport where people watch and bet on abused animals tearing each other to shreds.

He can’t go back and un-torture those animals. I don’t care how repentant he gets; I don’t care if he cleans up his act completely. You can’t resurrect these dogs and give them happy homes. The damage is done, and it’s done forever. Vick should be so lucky that he lives in a society that will only slap him with minor jail time and a lost career. And I question the ethics of anyone that comes out to see this guy play pro ball, if he ever does so again.

I received my contributor’s copies of Murky Depths and have read a few of the pieces within.

Simply put, I echo sentiments that this magazine is a work of art. Everything has come beautifully together — the fusion of prose, poetry and graphic novel have blended to create an interesting hybrid that manages to easily hold one’s interest. The two runaway hits I’ve seen so far in my initial readings are Gareth D. Jones’ moving piece “Looking In, Looking Out”, and “The Other Woman”, by Chris Lynch, which manages to be emotionally involving and downright disturbing at the same time.

One of my favorite things about the mag is it does not demand an hour or more to finish each tale — many can be read in fifteen or twenty minutes, which lends the anthology a wonderful rapid-fire feel, and also makes it schedule-friendly to those of us with limited reading time in our lives.

In my humble opinion, this is the magazine to watch over the coming year.

Yeah, yeah, I know it’s been a little while since I updated the blog. I have legitimate excuses. Work has been intense lately, and things have been relatively silent on the writing side, which I’ll touch on in a moment. But I promise that I’ll be more regular on this blog from now on.

Speaking of regular, one of the constants in my life is that I always receive packages or mailings long after your average person does. I’ve become convinced over the years that the U.S. Postal service routes all my mail through Juneau, Alaska. Sig Hansen is probably going through his mail at the port address right now and marveling at all those misdirected mailings that keep coming in addressed to some guy named Jonathan C. Gillespie.

So it goes with my contributor’s copy of Murky Depths Issue numero uno. The postal service might be screwing up again. I know this because the last time I ordered from the Murky Depths crew, the magazine got here in just over a week. This time, I’m watching everyone else relish this high-quality mag, and the suspense in seeing how “Paston, Kentucky” was handled is killing me.

In other news, things have been slow on the subs front lately, as all tales are in the wild and I’ve two more that should be added to the mix this week. I have to make up for the ones occupied by sales. I love saying that — this time last year I wouldn’t have imagined sitting here saying that already. It’s good stuff.