So...thanks...merci...and mercy.

For Jack Daniels whiskey in Barb's sweet potato cassarole. The liquor was supposed to be burned out in the cooking, just leaving the taste. Quite frankly, looking at the result on Barb, I'm not convinced---or perhaps it's psychosomatic. (That's what you call a real Tennesee Thanksgiving, with Jack Daniels whiskey used as a flavoring.)

Thanks for the turkey-in-a-bag that turned out perfectly, for scads of dressing, for the corn souffle and even the green bean cassarole with fried onions on top of it, which I didn't partake of. (I ate what was left of the fried onions seperately, but I don't do green beans, thanks.)

Thanks for four day weekends where we don't have to go anywhere.

Thanks for the TV show SMALLVILLE, and for the Justice League cartoon (both of whose ratings went through the roof for their respective networks...and which are pretty good to boot!) It's a good time to be a comic book reader. Thanks for that half-decent trailer for Spider-Man on its website, with Aunt May and an unmasked Spider-Man leaping to the ceiling.

Thanks for time to read seemingly endless fantasies by Tad Williams, who actually spins a reasonable yarn when he gets going---but boy, could he use a good editor! (With a ruthless red pencil...) I'm almost at the end of GREEN ANGEL TOWER PART I. (The end of a trilogy is split into three 700-page books? Good grief.)

Thanks for time on a day off to page through old National Geographics, and create the above picture of the Loathsome Castle of the House of Mourn, for my PATHS OF DARKNESS hypernovel. You can't see from here the Warped Woods, where they do a singularly sinister "Warped Hunt", mentioned in an episode I uploaded today...it's on the other side of the mountain.

I took some pictures of some castles on mountaintops in Switzerland, and combined it, with all things, with the Sacred Mosque of Mecca, and got the look I wanted for the Loathsome Castle. (Please do not be offended, anyone of Islamic faith who might be reading this. It is not a political or a spiritual statement---at all. It's a neat architectural structure, and sort of gave the right look to the Castle.)

I notice a certain similarity between the Loathsome Castle which glows by its own light, and the Bright City in my fantasy world of Tu, which also glows by its own light, as you can see in "Our First View of the Bright City". My mind works in certain channels, I see. However, the Bright City is underground in a huge cavern by a Sunless Sea, and the Loathsome Castle is on a high mountaintop overlooking the Far Bazaars. So I guess there is room for both...

I'll probably link this picture to the picture galleries tomorrow.

Oh, the lady with the oddly curling hair chiseled above the front gate is the Goddess of Dark Chaos, founder of the House of Mourn, and her hair represents swirling eddies of chaos.

Just so you know.

Thank you that---and yes, I consider myself fairly patriotic---not everybody has fallen into a patriotic-yes-President-Bush-mindest. Let me recommend this Thanksgiving episode of the BOONDOCKS comic strip---and thanks for giving us courageous artists and writers who buck the trends.

Thanks also for friends like Gwenny the Pooh who get a kick out of such things, and let me know about it.

Thank you for the best of all weblogs, the always-entertaining MEMEPOOL.

Thank you for the brillant Bruno comic strip, which had a wonderful suicide sequence starting here that I paged through for an hour or so this morning. (Go to the next week's strips. And the next...and the next...)

Thank you for people who give us content without pay, for the sheer joy of creating and loving to create. (Not that pay wouldn't be nice...)

Yet as always---you do what you have to do, because you have no other choice.

Thank you for us. For your mercy towards us.

Merci.