The young-folked-aimed biography that I mentioned a while back as being called Drawing Funny Pictures: The Life and Times of Charles M. Schulz is now going to be titled Sparky: The Life and Times of Charles M. Schulz, and the release date has been moved up to April.

And as long as I’m posting something, it’s time for my annual “on buying gifts” message.

First off, the gift is not important. Caring is important. The gift is at best a symbol. Don’t stress over it.

Times are tough. If you can’t afford to give, don’t. If you can afford to give, and can’t think of anything, give a gift to an appropriate charity. If your friends are lucky, giving to their nearby food bank may not help them directly, but to the degree that it helps their environs, it will indirectly help them.

But if you are going to be buying physical objects, buying online is a good way to go – particularly if your buying gifts for folks are not nearby. Often, the added discount of buying online is balanced out by the cost of shipping – but if you’d have to ship it anyway, having the gift shipped direct to its destination helps out, and saves you from standing in line at the post office. We’re probably going to fly out to see some relatives for the holidays, and rather than toting gifts through the airport (especially with today’s added baggage fees, yipe!), we’ll have them shipped right to the relatives and wrap ’em when we get there.

And if you’re gonna buy through Amazon… please come to this blog first. If you click through on one of the product links in the blog on your way to Amazon, they’ll credit AAUGH.com for everything you buy. It doesn’t cost you a cent more, and the money that generates helps to justify all the time I spend on the blog and the website. When it comes to the question of whether I should buy a certain piece of Peanuts merchandise to write about, it’s far easier to justify saying “yes” knowing that running this blog does generate money.

In the coming days, you’ll be seeing a few extra messages from me. I’m no fool; I want you to have a link in front of you when you’re about to do some online shopping. But I will make it painless. I’ve been saving up a few good posts for the next few days.

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