The last issue of the last man

This is the cover of issue #60 of Y: The Last Man, written by Brian K. Vaughan with art by Pia Guerra. Yes, it is a comic book. But this isn't a superhero fantasy comic. This is a serial graphic (just means drawn, though there is violence and some nudity) story, that has been told in monthly installments over the last five years. I should add: this is not for children.

Let's cover the story setup and then I'll tell you why you should, and how you can, read it.

The man in the straitjacket appears to be our main character, Yorick Brown (get it? "Y"...which also happens to be the second chromosome of a male's gene pair "XY", women's genes are "XX".) Yorick is an escape artist magician type, living in New York. He has a Capuchin monkey named Ampersand (also male.) Yorick also has a girlfriend, Beth, who is traveling in Australia for an anthropological study.

In issue #1, the event happens. Every living thing with a Y chromosome dies. Except for Yorick and Ampersand.

The story takes place across the USA and the globe. Yorick's mother and sister play supporting roles along with a geneticist, Dr. Mann (Vaughan likes the little ironies) and a bodyguard, the unnamed Agent 355.

There's no need to go into the story, if the setup doesn't interest you in at least checking it out, then telling you more of the plot certainly won't help.

Like many adult-oriented comics, the longer story is told within the context of many smaller stories that last anywhere from one to five or six issues. Vaughan does an excellent service to us by providing a handful of one issue back stories for each of the main characters. This is a far more satisfying technique than having a character tell their story in a load of exposition to other characters. How often do we do that in the real world?

With very few minor exceptions, this is a satisfying, humorous, dramatic and tragic epic of a world without men. Vaughan (who, as of Season 3, also writes for ABC's television show Lost) is a master of the cliffhanger ending. He kept people coming back for more of this intriguing story.

You should read it just to see how vibrant and imaginative the graphic novel medium can be. Or because you like a good story to escape for a bit. Or because you really want to know what the heck killed all the guys. Why did Yorick and Ampersand survive? Where did Agent 355 come from and what is her real name? Oh, yeah, and what about those astronauts who were orbiting the earth when all this went down? See what I mean?

You don't have to buy 60 issues or visit a dirty smelly comic book store. Go to your local bookstore. They will have Y in their graphic novel section. Y will be collected in 10 softcover volumes. Nine of them are already in print. Volume 1, Unmanned, collects the first five issues and gets the story rolling. Amazon has the books for less than $11 each usually. If you don't care to buy, try your local library.

The story ends next Wednesday. That's good news for you, because you can forgo the five year wait to see what happens to Yorick, Ampersand, Beth, 355, and Dr. Mann. Lucky dogs.

UPDATE: Terrific ending. Used Lost storytelling techniques (even had a downed airplane fuselage.) You might not enjoy every bit of the story, but there is no doubt that overall this is a classic. Expect the movie in 2009.

I've been working on a "101 in 1001" list. More to come.

Olympic sport: modern pentathlon

The Summer Olympics are on their way, so I will be writing about some of the more obscure sports and events of the competition. The Olympics isn't all gymnastics, track & field, and swimming.

One of my favorite sports is Modern Pentathlon. I even use "pentathlete" as the first part of my personal email.

The sport is a creation of the founder of the modern Olympic Games, Pierre de Coubertin. It is a multi-discipline sport, comprised of...yes, five events.

They are pistol shooting, epee fencing, 200m freestyle swimming, show jumping, and a 3k run. Coubertin wanted this to be a military sport. The events are intended to simulate a scout carrying a message through hostile territory.

Men have competed in this event since 1912. Women started in 2000. In the early days, the competition occurred over a five day period with one event each day. Now it takes place in a single day with about an hour between each event.

The video is of Sheila Taormina, an American athlete who is trying to qualify as a pentathlete for the Beijing games. If she does, she will be the first athlete ever...ever...to participate in three different sports at the Olympics. She was in the triathlon in 2000 and won a gold medal as part of the USA women's swim team in 2004.

What kind of pentathlete am I? Well...I can shoot ok, I know how to fence, I am a terrible swimmer, I can show jump, but I don't believe I could handle an unfamiliar horse on some of the higher jumps, and I haven't been running for some time. Nothing insurmountable, but I won't be challenging anyone at any of these events anytime soon.

I've always thought it would be great to build an Olympic training facility exclusively for Modern Pentathlon, that could be used by other athletes for their various sports, too.

If you can swim or run competitively, then USA Pentathlon would probably be interested in talking to you about learning the other three skill disciplines (shooting, fencing, and riding.) Who knows? You could wind up an Olympian.

Suzanne and I will never kiss

Let me say, at the outset, that I am not a big fan of entertainment news and celebrity gossip. Who they are, how they live, and what they do, just doesn't matter all that much.

But when I was a kid, there were certain actresses that I always found attractive. I didn't know why I did. I only knew that when they were on-screen, I felt funny, the good kind of funny. The crush kind of funny. I don't think I ever voiced it much back then. Certainly not to my friends. They would be merciless in their ridicule. Maybe I told my mom, I don't recall. I probably insulted everyone else on screen and gave a noncommittal grunt of acknowledgement regarding the actresses that I loved.

There were a handful that kindled these feelings. The list included Debbie Reynolds, Stefanie Powers, Julie Newmar, maybe Claudia Cardinale. But the one that was never in doubt for me was Suzanne Pleshette.

When I was a kid, she was Emily Hartley, the wife of Bob on The Bob Newhart Show. Her humor was dry and sarcastic and she had that gravelly voice. Some of the best scenes were when she and Bob had conversations as they prepared for and got in bed. Her character served as the psychiatrist's psychiatrist. One of the great episodes featured a story where Emily outscores Bob on an IQ test. I've got to go to Netflix and find that one.

Oh, I just found a picture of Emily. See what I mean? How could an 8 year old not fall for her?

So what is this post about then? Well, Suzanne, as you probably have heard, died this past weekend. I know people die. Yet you can't help taking for granted that people will be around. Especially those that are imprinted in your psyche.

No, I do not and did not obsess about her. I'm talking about an image or idea of someone that is stamped into your thoughts and memories, whether you knew them personally or not.

I've been lucky enough to only lose grandparents so far. The toughest loss being my maternal grandfather when I was 16. Even then, it took about three years before it really hit me that he would never be back. Until that time, it felt like we were just apart. I was in the military. All that I had to do was to go home on leave and there he would be sitting on the couch talking about the news or music. You know, I think I've written about this before. I'll stop.

The key thing is, I just turned 44. I can remember when my grandfather turned 50. More often now, we'll be dealing with irretrievable losses until someday, I become one for someone else. I'm thinking that I would rather have memories. Memories of the people and the times we shared.

I'll always have my memories of walking to the corner store or the barbershop with my grandfather, of watching him play the banjo or casually bend bottle caps between his fingers (he loved RCs,) of hearing him call my grandmother "Lindy" (her name was Linda) and my mother "Rene" (her name is Irene) and of helping him mow the lawn and how he would get so upset if you took his photograph without letting him pose.

I wish I could talk to him today, if only to tell him how lucky I was to have him around.

And Suzanne Pleshette and I will never kiss. It isn't that I thought we would, it's that I thought there'd always be the chance.

Microlending around the world

I've been investigating setting up a bond ladder, a structure of bonds maturing at different times so that as each bond matures the funds can be reinvested in a new bond. This spreads the risk across multiple treasury or corporate bonds.

I'm also looking into investing a small amount in certificates of deposit. Oh, and the investment in Goldcorp is doing ok.

Then, I stumbled on MicroPlace. Here is a great idea: invest in MicroPlace and they make the funds available to organizations that make tiny loans to entrepreneurs in developing nations. The interest earned on the investment is between 1.5% and 3% per year. Modest for sure, but not unlike CDs and bonds these days. Plus, you get the added bonus of knowing that you're helping spread prosperity directly around the world.

I investigated a little more in microlending. And stumbled on another site, probably more popular than MicroPlace (which is an eBay company, by the way.) That site is Kiva.

Kiva works a lot differently than MicroPlace. On Kiva, you select the person or group top which you would specifically like to lend money. In this case, though, you, as the microinvestor, earn no interest. But making money on this sort of thing, and at these levels, isn't the point.

With Kiva, you loan funds in $25 increments. In fact, in order to give everyone a chance to make a microloan, Kiva tries to keep the loans to $25 per lender. The entrepreneurs are looking for loans of anywhere from $200 to $2000. Not a lot. Kiva usually fulfills the funding for a request within eight hours of posting it.

So, after talking it over with Jocelyn, who thought it was a great idea, we signed up and made a couple of $25 loans today. Pictured above is Nodira Samieva of Tajikistan. She operates a food market in Istaravshan. She wanted a loan of $1000 (already funded today) to expand her product line. She plans on repaying the loan over the next six months.

We made another $25 loan to Ajele Justina of Nigeria as part of a $1200 loan to help her buy textiles so that she can knit clothes to sell. That loan has been funded since I started typing this message. She plans on repaying it monthly over the next 8 months.

If you've done something like this, let me know about it. Or if you invest or loan through one of the many microlending organizations out there, tell me about it.

It literally took five minutes to make this happen today. Technology can be used for some amazing things at a very small transaction cost.

It makes me happy.