OYATM

So far 2006 continues to be very much like 2005.
I woke up a bit after eight this morning initially concerned that it was a work day and that I had overslept before realizing that it was actually Monday, at which point, even though I didn’t want to, I got up.
It was rainy and just generally cruddy out, so going for a walk wasn’t an option. I didn’t feel like doing much of anything, so I considered going back to bed, but then I started doing some reading and soon it was time to call my mother and then I was reading some more, and then, sometime around 2:00 my general lethargy won out and I ended up taking a two and a half hour nap.
Despite the fact that I didn’t get him anything, and I specifically told him not to get me anything, Chris ordered some Omaha Steaks for me for Christmas, so I had decided that I would have steak for dinner today, which would allow me to avoid going out into the world to buy anything.
I was lacking any sort of snacks, though, so I had intended to at least walk over to Safeway and pick up something there, but instead I decided to make oatmeal raisin cookies, as I had the ingredients for those on hand.
They were going to be just plain oatmeal cookies until I realized, almost at the last second, that I did, in fact, actually have some raisins.
And that was pretty much my day.
For anyone wondering what I was reading, I was getting caught up to date on the comic book series “JSA,” which I have in digital form.
It’s inaccurate to say that I’m “up to date,” as I’m actually up to about fifteen months ago.
There are groups of people out there who scan comic books as a means of preservation and distribution. Many of them post the scanned comics to comic-related newsgroups, which is primarily where I read them.
Most of the scanning groups, such as HACSA (Half-Assed Comic Scanning Authority) have set up “rules” for posting that prohibit posting any comic that is less than a year old to the newsgroups.
The reason for that proscription is that they aren’t trying to put the comic companies out of business, so whatever negative impact their sharing of digital copies might have is lessened by the fact that they’re only distributing things that have been off the shelves for a year.
So every month various people engage in a OYATM (One Year Ago This Month) mass posting, at which time all of the comics that were on the shelves the previous year are posted to the newsgroups.
Because they actually go off of cover dates, and covers are dated three months in advance, they’re actually posting things from fifteen months earlier.
The OYATM posts allow me to keep at least semi-current with comics without having to set foot in a comic book store or shell out for subscriptions, and they also help me to while away the long, slow hours at work.
Of course, things I’ve read in the newsgroups have inspired me to actually go out and purchase some of the titles I encounter, many of which I might not have ever checked out if not for the postings.
In any case, there do tend to be a lot of gaps in the OYATM postings. Some titles are only posted irregularly, infrequently, or not at all. And some titles get posted for a while before simply disappearing.
“JSA” was one of those disappearing titles.
Some time ago someone posted the entire series run from 1999 up until what was, at that time, the current OYATM issue, in one of the other comics newsgroups and I had downloaded it. Since I started reading OYATM posts in 2003, that meant I had a few years worth of back issues to catch up on, and since people stopped posting the OYATM scans in 2003, there were also a few issues after I’d started.
Recently, someone else decided to take the initiative and repost all of the 2005 OYATM scans, many of which hadn’t been posted, including “JSA.” I read those more recent issues over the past few days, so today I figured I’d go back and read the whole series from the beginning.
Given the unreliability of the posters, I’ve considered going out and buying some of the titles I enjoy most, or even subscribing to them, but apart from the savings involved, there’s a convenience factor involved in reading the comics in digital form.
Still, I do go out (or most often, online) and buy some of the hard and soft cover collections of storylines.
I suppose it’s only fitting that I talk about the whole OYATM thing, given that One Year Ago This Month was, in many was, much the same as this month now is, which is the point on which I opened this entry, and, I guess, the point on which I’m closing it.