Back when there was a lot more hollering about Gay Marriage than there's been lately, some comic fans tried to rustle up a boycott of the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel in San Diego by attendees of the Comic-Con down there. As I explained here, I'm all for letting consenting adults marry or just hang out with the consenting adults of their choice, regardless of race or gender, but I'm not big on boycotts. I don't think they usually accomplish much of anything except maybe to make the boycotters feel like they're doing something.

Lately, I'm getting e-mails saying I should stop shopping Whole Foods Market because of an op-ed against "Obamacare" in The Wall Street Journal by the CEO of that chain. (And by the way, I think it would do us all a world of good if more of the health care situation was debated by folks who can't afford to buy the Mayo Clinic.)

I'd been thinking of curtailing my Whole Food purchases before that because, frankly, I'm tired of paying double the prices at Gelson's for meat that's not any better and maybe a little worse. I also keep getting produce and prepared meals at Whole Foods that taste they like were prepared by one of those experts who "styles" food for advertising photos, painting fake gloss on the Fuji apples and daubing the bananas with Turtle Wax. But I won't be taking my biz elsewhere because of Mr. Whole Foods' opinion piece…and I doubt that many other folks will, no matter how much he offends them. In times of anger, people in this country may swear they're not going to patronize a certain business or buy a certain product…but if it's what they want or it's cheaper or it's closer, that's what and where they buy.

Getting back to the Manchester Grand Hyatt, where again I stayed this last Comic-Con — and was treated quite nicely, by the way — the threatened boycott in '08 was because its CEO, Doug Manchester, was donating large sums to ban Gay Marriage. He said that he felt it was his duty as a Catholic…and of course, he's right that the Catholic church frowns on that kind of thing.

Of course, as this article notes, the Catholic church also frowns on divorce and that isn't stopping Mr. Manchester from leaving his wife of 43 years. They're currently in the midst of one of those messy millionaires' severances where both sides fight over six and seven figure properties and holdings, with much soiled laundry hung to flap in the breeze.

I don't think this is funny or a reason to gloat or anything of the sort. It's sad when a marriage goes sour and people suffer…just as it's sad when two people who love each other are denied the right and dignity to have their union respected. I just have to point out that "my duty as a Catholic" sometimes, like threats of boycotts, only goes as far as is convenient. And while we're at it, let's remember that despite the Neanderthal talking points, Gay Marriage is not what's threatening Heterosexual Marriage. I dunno what broke up the Manchester marriage but I don't think it was same-sex wedlock…unless Mrs. Manchester was furious at her hubby for spending their money to push Proposition 8.

By the way, I think I mentioned it here before but I'm curious what the divorce rate will turn out to be like for Gay Marriage. Will it be the higher, lower or the same as for mixed couples? For your information, the divorce rate in this country for straight marriages is between 41 and 50% for first marriages, 60 to 67% for second marriages and over 73% for third marriages. And that's just Larry King.

You know what's missing from comic books these days? Letter columns. In my day (read this sentence in the voice of Dana Carvey's Grumpy Old Man, who I think was him imitating Lionel Barrymore), comics had letter columns and readers would write in and either point out errors or ask questions or critique the previous issue. And then the editor (or someone impersonating the editor) would reply…and it made for a nice interaction. Julius Schwartz's in his DC books were especially good, while over at Marvel, the ones composed by Stan Lee (or sometimes, "Stan Lee") were as much a part of some books' appeal as the stories, themselves.

That all started to go away in the seventies. For a while, we had letter columns but it wasn't the editor who handled them. It was some kid in the office…some assistant to the assistant or something. In a few books, it was even me. That wasn't as much fun as engaging in a dialogue with the actual editor or even someone pretending to be him. Then at some point, comics just stopped having letter columns at all. Groo the Wanderer, which I work on, was one of the last holdouts. We had a letters page long after most comics didn't bother.

I used to jest that this was because we truly cared about our readers, whereas other comics didn't. That caused an editor at one of the companies to get real, real angry at me…though apparently not angry enough that he decided to prove me wrong and add letter pages to his comics. That, he did not do. Soon after, I stopped doing the joke not because I feared him but because when Groo shifted from monthly publication to the intermittent mini-series format, I stopped receiving a steady flow of letters. I suppose I could have made some up. A lot of letter pages used to do that…more than you'd imagine. But I have integrity I haven't even used yet.

Well, I've decided it's high time to get back into the letter column business. We have a new Groo mini-series starting and I'm cobbling up a letters page for it. Wanna see your name and letter in Groo? Send both of those things to letters@groothewanderer.com. I'll repeat that address for those of you who are slow of mind: letters@groothewanderer.com. It pays nothing and if you heckle us, we heckle you back…and we have home court advantage so watch it.

A recurring, too-occasional theme on this blog is how writers can protect themselves from getting swindled, burgled, fleeced, taken, exploited, cheated and generally ripped-off. It's a big problem and it requires a lot of policing and advising and warning. In 1998, the Science Fiction Writers of America set up Writer Beware, a website intended to help educate writers — new ones, especially — to some of the pernicious practices that may be employed to get them to pay to have their writing published (instead of the other way around) or at least to not be paid when their writing is published.

Thanks to the efforts of author Lee Goldberg, who is probably too busy trotting 'round the globe to writers' conferences to have lunch with his ol' pal Mark, the Mystery Writers of America group has joined the battle, throwing support behind Writer Beware. Good for all of them.

Remember: The way this is supposed to work is that you write it and they pay you to publish it. You do not pay to have it published. You do not pay to have it agented or critiqued or submitted or anything of the sort. They pay you and they pay you on an agreed-upon amount on an agreed-upon schedule and in real money. No matter how badly you want to see your work in print.

Carolyn was just sent a link to a site that features photos of live rats playing tiny musical instruments. How could I not post such a thing?

Every so often, someone writes to ask me what web hosting service I use for this weblog and the other sites I maintain…and they also want to know how happy I am with them. As you can see in the margin over on the right, it's Dreamhost. How happy am I with them? Well, I've been there since October of '98 and have never thought of going elsewhere. What does that tell you?

There are occasional outages and tech problems but that's true of any web hosting company. Every problem I've had at Dreamhost has been fixed promptly and with a real sense of someone on the other end who was trying to help. I can't imagine what any other outfit could offer that would wrest me away from where I am now. Maybe service that was just as good plus Creamy Tomato Soup.

I even make a few bucks through my web hoster. If you sign up with them by clicking through one of my Dreamhost banners, I get a tiny cut. So here's another one of those banners…

Writers Guild elections tend to be messy and argumentative and there are times when we seem more interested in clobbering each other than in besting those we should be uniting against. I have a certain respect for anyone who wades into WGA politics just for the sheer selflessness it requires. No matter how reasonable or moderate you are, there will be times when you're a Democratic Congressman addressing a town hall full of Glenn Beck fans.

It's campaigning time for the next election and it comes down to one slate versus another. One has Elias Davis as its presidential candidate; the other has John Wells. Both men have long histories of Guild service and anyone who tells you that either would destroy the WGA is engaged in hysterical hyperbole.

Davis and his cabinet have been endorsed by Larry Gelbart in a much-circulated open letter. I respect the hell out of Mr. Gelbart as a writer and as an advocate for writers, and I'm also backing the Elias crew. I do think though John Wells scores some solid points in his rebuttal to it.

For what, as they say, it's worth: I think it's true, as Larry says, that the years John Wells was our president were years when the guild was too timid and should have been more militant. What I'm less sure about is how much of that was John and how much of it was the mood of the membership at that time. There's only so much any leader can do to drag unwilling, bickering combatants into battle. I'm pretty much a hawk on Guild negotiations but I'm not willing to write off the view that there are times when we just aren't "together" enough to go that route, and it's better to get what we can get via non-confrontational discussions. In that context, John Wells just might be an ideal Chief Exec.

But I also think that an approach of that kind can only serve us in the short run and in times of weakness. Moreover, being non-confrontational almost always leads to the kind of rotten offers that sooner or later make confrontation mandatory. In a very real sense, every time the WGA has found itself in a position where a strike was necessary, it was necessary because Management thought it could exploit a perceived unwillingness to strike…so strike we must. Or at least, we have to make it clear that we will walk if they try to force a package of rollbacks and bad terms on us.

The last negotiation was one such period of necessity. We'd been too accepting and we paid for it. We had to go on strike to prove we wouldn't roll over and take what was truly a dreadful offer. Striking or acceptance were the only two options open to us and striking was the lesser evil.

Fortunately, through the wisdom and courage of our wartime prez Patric Verrone and his administration, the WGA got its act together…and I thought they handled a bad situation about as well as humanly possible. Given the spectacular collapse of the Screen Actors Guild in its subsequent negotiation, and given that the studios have obviously not abandoned their wish-dream of keeping all the revenues from New Media and not sharing, it would be insane for us to to forsake the momentum we've established. The best guy to keep that up and running is Elias Davis.

One other point. If you read the above links or other discussions of WGA politics on the 'net, you will do yourself a favor to remember the following. Ignore (do not even read) messages that are not signed by someone who at least appears to have signed a real name. Folks who sign themselves "Working Writer" may be unemployed gardeners. Six people in a row hiding behind pen names may all be the same person agreeing with himself. An anonymous person who claims to be working on a hit TV series may be working at Baja Fresh. It's not so much that they're lying but to get a sense of the "electorate" by reading those messages is like trying to gauge the mood of America from the people who phone in to Talk Radio. They're not the most representative. They're just the angriest.