Everyone in blogville is commenting on Vonnegut's death. Who am I to be different? I've only read three of his -- Slaughterhouse Five, Sirens of Titan, and Galapagos. But I had been meaning to hunt down some others. Sad to lose such a brilliant and original voice.

"We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!"

Night bears. Our dog Laika dreams, which probably means that dreams date back at least to our common ancestor, which is a long long time ago. You can always tell -- her paws start twitching, and she whimpers. One time she even howled, which we can't even get her to do when we're awake. But I've always wondered whether they're happy dreams, or scary ones.

Usually she sleeps on her side. But last night, she fell asleep on the couch with me in an unusual position -- on her back. The practical effect of this was that her tail was freed up, and sure enough, when she started dreaming, her tail wagged. That can only mean that the dream, at least at the start, was happy. Isn't that sweet?

So my niece is into anime. This seems to be a trend that passed me by. For the most part, I don't get it. I'm sure that like anything else, though, there's good and bad.

But even comic books, I was never into as a kid, at all. I only ever owned one, and it was a birthday present from a neighborhood kid. I still remember it -- it was from The Witching Hour series, but I'd be hard pressed to say which one of those it was. I thought it was kind of dumb.

Which is all a prelude to saying that I just finished the first of Neil Gaiman's critically acclaimed "graphic novels", The Sandman: Preludes Nocturnes. And guess what, it seemed like just a comic book to me, and I found it very much like every other comic book I've ever read. I don't get what the fuss is all about. But in it he did name-check a lot of older comics, I noticed -- including The Witching Hour.