You know things are looking bad when even Business Week — written by and for corporate executives with a vested interest in spreading the shiny, happy spin that everything’s going to be fine and the public can trust them with their money — admits that the economy has been built on hot air for the last decade.

(Economic rant continues below.)

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I have no idea if these will ever come in handy, but they’re neat anyway: a collection of “70 Horror, Blood and Gore Photoshop Effects and Brushes” for effects as simple as the Red-Eyed Anakin thing from the SW prequels, to full on zombies, to other things I don’t necessarily want to open at work.

I will get better at Photoshop, one day…

Some good links out there today:

• Jeff Vandermeer explains how to write a novel in two months.
• Radar lists a series of apocalyptic scenarios and how to survive them.
• I agree with every word of this rant about the housing bust hosted by, of all places, Suicide Girls. Now I can legitimately say I read it for the articles.
• I’m undecided on whether to go, but there’s a Comics Curmudgeon meetup in Tucson on March 7 at Kon-Tiki. In attendance: Josh the blogger himself and Slylock Fox cartoonist Bob Weber, Jr., whose strip is a frequent target of Josh’s mockery. Weber takes it in good humor, even designing a Cassandra Cat t-shirt for the Curmudgeon online store.

More thoughts on our Portland visit, to go with the handful of photos I uploaded:

• The light rail service between the airport and downtown is cheap, easy, and relatively quick. This alone makes Portland 1000% better than Seattle or Tucson, which have no public transportation aside from nearly-useless bus systems. On the other hand, for some reason there is no public transit between downtown/Pearl and Hawthorne, the city’s two most vibrant, walkable neighborhoods. We had to rent a car for the day to reach Hawthorne.
• I wonder if living among Portland’s diehard liberals would make me more conservative. Probably not, but I was still annoyed by the socialist activists on Hawthorne shouting, “Do you really think the Democrats can end this war??” Even as frustrated as I am with Democratic leadership right now, I had to resist the urge to argue back, “Do you really think a Socialist third party can end it?” Self-righteous college liberalism can be as aggravating as wingnut conservatism.
• Perhaps the best food we had over the weekend were the twin Mother’s/Mama Mia restaurants in downtown, which serve breakfast and Italian respectively. Second most impressive to me: the food in the lobby of Portland’s airport, which beat the hell out of the offerings at Phoenix’s.
• Lesbians, lesbians everywhere! Very obvious and affectionate ones, too, which I’m not used to seeing in public, despite the fact that lesbians are still more socially acceptable than gay males. (Credit/blame porn for that.) The stereotype of Portland being a lesbian town seems to have some basis in reality.
• It’s amazing how much cheaper everything is without sales tax. Better for the people, too — most people don’t realize how regressive sales/consumption taxes are. Poor people pay a greater percentage in sales taxes than richer people, even though the rich spend more, because the poor have to spend their entire paychecks to get by.
• Portland may have a ton of great local microbreweries, but they all have a shocking lack of TVs for NFL playoff games. I ended up racing around downtown to find the Patriots-Jags game, checking one after another, until settling on a cheesy chain sports bar. Does the city really have that little interest in armored, tight-panted mongoloids bashing each other to advance a weirdly-shaped ball 300 feet? And if not, why on earth not?

…for the next couple of hours, anyway.

Kristie and I spent the weekend in pleasantly cold and rainy Portland, checking out the city, staying at a great hotel, eating surprisingly good food, and drinking the microbrews. (That last one is more me than Kristie.) We return to Tucson, the daily grind, and a couple of probably lonely kitties in a few hours.

This marks the second straight year I’ve abandoned the balmy Arizona desert in January for a cold weather weekend vacation. Last year it was Chicago. What is wrong with me, anyway?

A handful of photos will follow, including one of my brand new Drinky Crow figure from Portland-based comic publishers Dark Horse.

*dook dook dook* I’m gonna marry a mermaid! *passes out*

I woke up this morning to learn that oil crossed $100/barrel for the first time ever. By the same token, gold finally topped its record high of $850 set in 1980, which is good if you own gold like I do, but bad if you’re a fan of economic stability.

The housing bust is still only beginning, and it’s already dragged the financial sector to the brink of collapse. The recession that for all practical purposes began in 2007 continues apace, even as clueless economists ponder the “even odds” of its existence.

Speaking of collapses, nuclear-armed Pakistan is on the verge of one. Iraq has been less chaotic recently thanks to the six-month ceasefire declared by al Sadr’s militia, but if it doesn’t look like the US will withdraw its troops soon, expect the violence to return around March or so.

Did I mention it’s an election year and the race is wide open, so we can expect even less realistic talk than usual about the above problems?

Here’s to 2008 and one bumpy ride.