Meanwhile, on the Interwebs... / June 9, 2014 by LoLC

As a member of the Young Astronauts club back in 1988, I pretty much assumed that building model rockets, visiting an observatory, and tasting freeze-dried ice cream were about as far as my cosmic inclinations would ever take me.

So I am both bewildered and thrilled to announce that The League's "sometimes-humorous but mostly-accurate" guide to the sky is today's Astronomy Picture of the Day over on the NASA-affiliated APOD site! The honor of being featured alongside galaxies and nebulae is, astonishingly, even cooler than those special lunch line passes of yore.

This NASAchievement caps a recent, inexplicable flurry of social media-fueled interest in The League that inundated me with so many Facebook notifications that I was sure I'd been hacked. To all my new fans: I'm sorry I thought you were robots. It's awesome that you're real, and thanks for joining the party!

NB: Original "Astronomy 101" post -- and links to its various translations (!) -- are here.

Happy Second Birthday, Blog. / March 8, 2014 by LoLC

See all blog birthdays here.

Year in Review: 2013 / December 31, 2013 by LoLC

Happy New Year, People of the Internet.

(late addition here)

Other years summed up here.

Slings, Arrows / November 20, 2013 by LoLC

For reasons I won't dwell on, the past ten days have been rather rough going for me.*

The League has suffered.

But then, at tonight's archery class, this happened!

Followed by all of this!

And as it turns out, the pretend slaughter of woodland creatures is really cathartic!

Even for vegetarians.

So I think we're maybe back on track now. Thanks for your patience.

There are surely big changes ahead for The League in 2014, when I'll have to adapt my drawing subjects and frequency to reflect the onslaught of wonderful, happy things that must be just around the corner.

But in the meantime, I've got a backlog of angsty delights to finish. Watch this space.

*don't worry, the cat's holding steady.

My Badass Era / October 16, 2013 by LoLC

[note to mobile viewers: this post contains an embedded video]

[in said video, I run with all the grace of a wounded giraffe]

[but in the part that comes before that, I do some mean ground defense]

Responsibility / September 19, 2013 by LoLC

Back in the fifth grade, close to a quarter-century ago, my class learned about the Responsibility of Parenthood by carting around egg babies for a couple of weeks.

The numbers declined slowly but steadily. Eggs were dropped, or sat upon, or mislaid. There were some particularly dramatic losses on the playground, and a few (failed) attempts to fool the teacher with unsanctioned replacements.

In short, a bunch of ten-year-old kids did pretty much what you'd expect them to do.

Well, most of them.

I'd been wondering, recently, how accurate my memory was of that time; if I'd actually taken the exercise as super, super seriously as I remembered. Had I really hand-sewn outfits? And converted an old toolbox into a plush, fully decorated mobile nursery? And started up a mini cloth diaper laundry operation at my desk?

Egg babies in their vintage duds. (click on image to enlarge)

Then I found these--still dusted with baby powder--and doubted no more.

(As an aside, it turns out that a foolproof parenting strategy for getting your kids safely into adulthood is to tuck them away, untouched, in a dark attic for 20+ years.)

The World Internet Program / August 16, 2013 by LoLC

Spam's annoying, sure. But there's something sort of heartening about living in a world where somebody, somewhere, could still believe that using the Internet daily--both indoors AND in the office--is an effort worth six million dollars.