Spread the Joy: Advent 2025: Day 23

The holidays are tough. There's the stress of making it the perfect Christmas, either for yourself or a loved one. Maybe it's the last one you will spend with a loved one. Maybe it's the first one without that special someone. Maybe concerns about your health might mean this is your last Christmas season. Perhaps you lost your job, your passion or a beloved furry member of the family. 

Regardless of what may be keeping this from being a Merry Christmas, it doesn't hurt having someone to talk to. 

I was going to talk about suicide rates and the holidays. But upon doing some research, I discovered that it is actually a myth that suicides rise during the holidays. Apparently, the peak season is Spring! 

But if you are feeling hopeless and believe that death is the best option, regardless of the time of year, it doesn't hurt having someone to talk to. 

That is why for today's featured charitable cause, I have selected 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. 

I've never used the service personally. But I had a best friend who I wish had. I miss Todd, a lot.

If you are in need of mental health, support or just a friendly voice of guidance, please call 988. You can also text, chat or if hard of hearing, reach a trained volunteer here.

Maintaining such an national service is not cheap. Phone bills, web maintenance, and training of volunteers takes resources. Along with time, patience and compassion, it also takes money. If donating to 988 is an important cause to you, please click here.

The Big Book of Weirdos

Technically this book was a re-read. Only I read this book years ago. Long before I started to keep a reading journal. The first time I encountered this book was when I was living in Durham NC, after having just got married. So at most, I read this book for the first time 25 years ago. The Big Book of Weirdos was one of the Durham Public Library Main Branch's few honest-to-God graphic novels placed in the graphic novel section of the library. In those days, if you went looking for graphic novels at the library, you were lucky if you could find something other than Garfield and Bloom County on the shelves.

This book written by Carl Posey examines the lives of famous people we collectively think of as rather strange, like Howard Hughes, depraved, such as Rasputin and Caligula, or rather terrifying, such as Ivan the Terrible. However, the majority of the book is made up of people who had underlying mental illness brought about the abuse of drugs and alcohol or those whose lives spiraled out of control because they lived in an age of primitive mental health practices or were surrounded by 'yes men'. Occasionally, there's a subject or two of which my grandmother would classify as 'just damn mean.'

This is the 6th book from Paradox Press that I now own. I love these treasuries of various subjects that are given the short story sequential art treatment by multiple talents. In this edition, Rick Geary, Batton Lash, Kieron Dwyer and Frank Quietly are among over 5 dozen talented artists who contributed. There's about 8 more books in the series out there that I hope to one day get my hands on.

Though I haven't read them all yet, The Big Book of Weirdos is one of more spicier books. Sex, murder, cheating, corruption are just some of the seven deadly sins being broken in this book. And that's not to mention the 10 Commandments, of which at least 13 are broken by the artists, politicians and socialites whose alternative lifestyles are examined inside.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.