Buy Your Dream
Job for 7¢ Per Day
Norm Needs New Life on 'Net
One of my favorite comic strips over the past couple years has been "The Norm." I'm not certain of the particulars, but for some reason The Norm creator (Michael Jantze) has decided to end his relationship with King Features Syndicate.

Rather than completely abandon his characters, which given the independent lives and personal histories he's developed for each of his primary characters, would be akin to killing them -- Jantze's wife Nicole (and the template for Norm's wife Reine) has taken to the internet in order to grow the already existing roster of paying subscribers to the website. The Jantze's are also looking for sponsors for the cartoon website, offering banner ads and newsletter blurbs in return for specific donation amounts.

The goal is to earn enough funds to continue creating new content for both the daily internet readers and develop independently published projects, like The Norm archive collections.

Checkout The Norm online -- if you like the content and feel you'd enjoy reading it everyday, or if you just want the thrill of helping a person to continue doing what he loves to do -- join the list of suscribers. The basic subscription rate is only $25 for a full year (that's less than 7¢ per day) of stories and strips.

I know this kinda sounds like one of those Sally Struthers "Feed The Children" commercials, but if 7¢ per day can really help someone live their dream -- don't you think it's worth it? If you could do anything YOU wanted to do by asking a few people to kick in 7¢, wouldn't you have to at least ask?

This membership drive only lasts three weeks (until October 31st), after that -- the future of The Norm is unknown.

As a kid, I always wanted to be a cartoonist. It's looking like that's not going to happen anytime soon, but if I can help another person continue doing that to which I aspire -- he's got my 7¢.

I hope he'll get yours as well.
Become a member of The Norm site today.

Speaking of living your dreams --
One of the things to which I aspire, is rubbing
elbows and working with people I think are "cool".

I've been fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to add a lot of admirable and accomplished people's names to my 'list', and luckier still to watch that list continue to grow.

This week I learned that the BRAINBLOG has been added to the blogrolls of both the immutably incredible Laura Ries and the inestimably WOW-ish Tom Peters.

Rubbing elbows with people this cool is gving me calluses. Thanks for adding me to your lists.