I happened to walk by a huuuuge newsstand recently — the kind with 10,000 different magazines on the racks — and couldn’t help thinking: “Do we really need a ‘Knitter’s Magazine’, a ‘Simply Knitting Magazine’, a ‘Vogue Knitting Magazine’, and a ‘Creative Knitting Magazine’?” Do we really?

Have we reached the point not just of hyper-specialization in our magazine selections, but of just plain ol’ fashioned need-a-boot-up-the-rear ridiculousness?

And then my second thought was: “Where the heck is the VC money coming to launch that fourth knitting magazine?” That would’ve been a helluva pitch meeting to sit in on….. “Ladies and gentlemen, the market needs Creative Knitting Magazine. The market is crying out for Creative Knitting Magazine. Ladies and gentlemen, won’t you give us the 6 million dollars to fill that void?”

This is worth sharing with you for the sheer randomness and creativity of it. After looking at a site like this, how can you not love Japan? Something tells me there’s a whole second layer of awesomeness to the web, but it’s all written in katakana…so I’ll never find the URLs to even see it.

[…found via OK/Cancel]

In the most recent Sheldon newsletter, I mentioned that Sheldon reader Monty F. had organized a shipment of donated Sheldon books to troops serving overseas….which was awesome of him to do. I was more than happy to donate the Sheldon books, but Monty did the heavy lifting in making it happen.

Kindness like that should be returned. So allow me to steer you to Monty’s store for the best salsa I’ve ever had in my life: his Cranberry Salsa. It’s amazingly tasty stuff: cool, sweet and delicious. My wife and I devour it in barbecue season.

He makes award-winning hot sauces, too, but because I have a wimp of a palate, I can’t give you knowledgeable recommendations in that department. But I’d fight a bear for that sweet, sweet salsa. A bear with anger-control issues. A bear who’s looking to burn off some of the steam from his failing marriage. A bear who….well, you get the point. A big bear.

(Note: I don’t profit from this link at all. I just wanted to do something nice for Monty’s kindness in getting Sheldon books to troops stationed overseas.)

It always cracks me up when I start to notice the marketing for pro-soccer-in-America heating up. Since David Beckham starts playing for the LA team in July (…sorry, the “LA Galaxy” — I literally had to look it up)…the radio, TV, and magazine spots have started to appear.

The potential in sports licensing, advertising and merchandising is what’s driving the push, of course. I doubt few, if any, markets generate as much sports-related income as the US. But boy, this is a road we’ve walked down before, isn’t it? The average American just couldn’t give a hoot about the game. I played soccer for seven years, and even I can’t seem to muster a long-term interest.

Why is that, I wonder? What is it about the American experience that makes soccer a “less-than” sport? It’s like the metric system of the sports world: no matter how good it might be, Americans are just not gonna have it. It’s right up there with Canadian Ice Curling as a sport Americans would rather not be forced to watch on TV. Yet the rest of the world goes absolutely bonkers over it.

While watching an Arsenal game in a pub one time, an English friend of mine told me that he was glad Americans weren’t into the game. He said that if we were, the World Cup would play out like the American medal count at the end of the Summer Olympics. He was much happier to see us sit it out, thank you very much. And he probably had a point.

So I say, “Watch out, Canada! The day we get interested in Ice Curling, you guys are going down!”

Today’s strip features that urbanite classic, the Big Wheel.

Ah, Big Wheel…how many trees did I crash into on you? How many hills did I tempt death with on you? And how quickly did your front wheel go out of alignment from your handlebars, making you completey impossible to steer? Ah, Big Wheel…you and I had some good times.

But even better than the Big Wheel was the less-commonly-seen “Green Machine”…the ultimate in childhood awesomeness:

The Green Machine still exists on the market, I see…but they’ve added some extra safety features from the model that I owned as I kid. Which is good…because let me tell you: that baby was not particularly safe in the hands of a 10-year old boy. I bit it at least 10 times over a half-hour period, riding on my Green Machine. That thing was a recipe for skinned knees and klonked skulls.

But you know what? That thing rode like no other vehicle I’ve operated, before or since. It was awesome: sitting 3 inches off the ground, flying down hills, steering by two vertical handles like some sort of jet pilot, crashing every few minutes, getting up and doing the whole thing again…C’mon! What ten-year old wouldn’t want to ride that! I’d want to ride one now, if I could fit my Krispy Kreme-addled rump on there.

Which is why this guy is so awesome. I wish this guy lived on my street. I’d love to crash on the Green Machine one more time.

For readers that love their StumbleUpon, Delicious, and Digg: today I’m adding social bookmarking links under every strip in the archive. That means if you have a specific strip that you love, love, love…you can now share it in your social web, with one easy click.

Boy! It’s a burst of new tidbits being added to the site, lately. But fear not: I’m always wary of feature-creep, so this will be the last one added for a while. I swear.

OK, wait. That’s not true. I am working on one other feature. A “Sheldon-On-Your-Site” system that allows you to put the daily strip in your website, just like the very funny Mark Anderson does with his toons. But that’s it. No more feature-creep after that. I totally promise. Pinky swear.

Until Samsung comes out with the holographic web in 2009. Then I’m going nuts with new features. 🙂

I’ll be honest: I haven’t signed up for Facebook yet. So I haven’t personally tested out this method of adding Sheldon to your Facebook page. But kind Sheldonista Alistair W. has, and assures me that it works like butter:

1.) Click on http://www.facebook.com/editnotes.php?import

2) Add https://sheldoncomics.com/index.xml as the feed

3) It will ask to confirm the settings.

4) It will show the comic in the “My Notes” section of “Notes”. (Facebook’s algorithm shrinks the comic to fit the page, but a simple click shows the full-size version from the site.)

Try it out, and let me know how it goes.

(Note: I think it might also be possible for me to set up a one-click button using this URL: http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=https://sheldoncomics.com/index.xml

…I’ll test it out, and if it works, I’ll add that button to the list on the left.)

It’s contest time! Time to find out if your pug is, in fact, the funniest pug in the world.

Here’s why: I recently told our family pug that he was the funniest pug in the world. But as I watched him chew a sock while scooting across the kitchen floor on his stomach… I thought to myself: “Is he the funniest pug? Is he really? Or did I lie to him? …is there a funnier pug out there?”

And that’s when it hit me: We need a contest. We need to find the funniest pug alive, and settle the matter once and for all.

So fire up your video cameras or start snapping photos. Cause the only way to prove that your pug is the funniest is by photo or short video.

Here’s How to Enter:

1.) Only 3 photos (or) 1 under-two-minute video per entrant. If you own 10 pugs, or have 10,000 hilarious photos to choose from, you have to narrow it down to your favorite 3 photos or your favorite <2 min. video.

2.) Both the pug, and the photos/video you submit, must be your own. (No trawling the internet for the funniest photo you can find. We’ll know if it’s not yours.)

3.) Your submission must be posted (or linked to) from HERE, in the Sheldon forum.

4.) All submissions must be posted by midnight (PST) on June 30th.

5.) I will choose the 10 funniest entries by July 2nd, and put them up for a public vote on the forums.

6.) Following a three-day public vote, the winner will be announced July 5th!

7.) The winner will walk away not only with public praise and adulation…they’ll also get an awesome, personalized, frame-able sketch of their pug, plus a free signed copy of the second Sheldon book: “The Good, The Bad & The Pugly”.

So fire up those cameras! And start sewing up that pug Klingon outfit you’ve been talking about! ‘Cause the world needs to know that your pug is the funniest!

Good news for folks that love their RSS feeds!

Thanks to fellow cartoonist and all-around awesome guy Tyler Martin, I’ve just added a bunch of RSS feed subscription options (scroll down, left-hand side).

Provided I set them up correctly, you should be able to add the Sheldon toon-and-blog feed to your favorite aggregator with one lil’ click. Buuuuut…you and I both know that among all those tidbits of code, I probably made a typo somewhere. So if you’re willing, please test out your preferred subscription option…and let me know if it’s not working.

And on a related sidenote: if anyone knows of a simple way folks can add the Sheldon feed to their MySpace or Facebook page, let me know! I’d love to give folks that option, if it could be made to work.

From the finest news organ in America, The Onion, a pug story that is simply awesome-sauce.

…make sure you click on the slideshow of pictures, about mid-way down the article.