I'd almost forgotten about this one. Believe it or not, this is an actual lunchbox that dates back to the mid 1940s. I saw it listed on eBay in around 1999 and had to download the images - mainly because I got outbid on it. If my mind isn't failing me it eventually sold for about USD$300. And yes, it was listed as 'Classic Gay Lunchbox'. So, hello luvvie! It's obviously also an old Anmerica custom to shower with your best pals and watch them soap up. Duckie!

Does I need anymore excuses to hit the grog? Thought not.

"Beam me up, Scotty!" Taken from CNN . It's gonna be a long week. James Doohan, 'Star Trek's' Scotty, dead Wednesday, July 20, 2005; Posted: 4:09 p.m. EDT (20:09 GMT) LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- James Doohan, the burly chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise in the original "Star Trek" TV series and motion pictures who responded to the apocryphal command "Beam me up, Scotty," died early Wednesday. He was 85. Doohan died at 5:30 a.m. (1330 GMT) at his Redmond, Washington, home with his wife of 28 years, Wende, at his side, Los Angeles agent and longtime friend Steve Stevens said. The cause of death was pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease, he said. The Canadian-born Doohan fought in World War II and was wounded during the D-Day invasion, according to the StarTrek.com Web site. He was enjoying a busy career as a character actor when he auditioned for a role as an engineer in a new space adventure on NBC in 1966. A master of diale

Taken from the Newsarama site. JIM APARO PASSES AWAY From Spencer Beck The Aparo Family has asked me to send this information out to all parties. It is with the deepest regret I have to inform you of the passing of the legendary Jim Aparo early Tuesday Morning, July 19, 2005. Mr. Aparo, who was 72, died from complications relating to a recent illness. All Funeral arrangements will be a private ceremony for Family and Friends of Jim. Aparo, born in 1932, was primarily self-trained as an artist. After years of working in commercial fashion design in Connecticut, his first break in the comics field was with a comic strip called "Stern Wheeler," written by Ralph Kanna, which was published in 1963 in a Hartford, Connecticut newspaper for less than a year. In 1966, editor Dick Giordano at Charlton Comics hired him as a comic book artist, where his first assignment was a humorous character called "Miss Bikini Luv" in "Go-Go Comics." Over the next few years at

Click on the above image to order the magazine. No vested interested for me other than the Up Your Nose article that bears my by-line.

Whoosh!!! Ok, so I got a response from Peter David. Several in fact. I won't go into detail, but I will say this - the 'abbie' comment was spoken by an American. That's fine - I'll admit I was wrong on that one. PAD says I'm wrong about the Stolen Generation comments and as he won't agree to disagree I'll leave it to him as he's obviously the expert. Anyways. Ever have one of those days? I swear that I’m the bastard son of Claude Raines. The latest example of my power of invisibility took place only this past Friday. Chad , Tobias, Dr Nick Riveria and myself decided to catch up and see the Fantastic Four flick. So far so good. We managed to get out of the city, parked the car, allowed Chad to have a quick peek at some top secret material that we just happen to have lying around the house (non porn mind you) and because I only live about a minutes' slow walk away, we deiced to wander over to the Villanova for lunch. Now the Villanova

Let me start this one off by saying that I'm a fan of Peter David . I've loved his writing for years now, and his Wolverine run with Sam Kieth is some of the funniest stuff I've seen in a comic book. I've enjoyed his 'But I Digress' column in the CBG for what seems to be decades now. His run on the Hulk was unsurpassed and that'll probably remain so. As a writer he's rare in the comic book industry - his name has marquee value; a Peter David comic can grab readers in more than some so called 'superstar' artists can. If you want to know all about Peter David then wander over to his site and have a look around - excellent reading. So it was a case of pure and utter disappointment when I read his latest issue of the Hulk. The issue itself, issue #83 of the relaunched title, is part of a company cross-over titled 'House Of M'. In short the Scarlet Witch, Magneto and Quicksilver have all apparently gone insane - again - and the Witch has used

Perhaps I'm a cynic... the catchcall was 'Make Poverty History', yet here in Australia only those who had the money to pay actually saw the concerts. All we managed to see here in Australia was a watered down version of the 24 hour event - a whole 80 minutes wrapped up in a 'two hour' highlights package, complete with car commercials. Someone made some money from this event and, as you'd expect, it was Packer selling advertising space on Channel 9, and Rupert Murdoch who cashed in by getting people to cash him up and fork over an eventual four figure sum to subscribe to Foxtel. Not to take anything away from the event but isn't it a tad hypocritical for someone as wealthy as Bono, in the middle of a world tour that'll see him net another twenty million or so, preach to the people about forking over cash in aid? Ummmmm, the collective worth of that London line-up alone must near reach the billion plus mark - how about they donate the profits from a tour