They finally finished counting ballots in Iowa, so now we have a final tally for the 2004 election.

BUSH: 286 electoral votes, 51 percent popular vote
KERRY: 252 electoral votes, 48 percent popular vote

(Pretty much what I predicted over a year ago, but did anybody listen?)

I am overjoyed to announce the birth of a new blog, the Small Pax Romish Illustrators Guild (or S.P.R.I.G.), at www.smallpax.com.

Small Pax is a spinoff of the ChristArt Christian Artists’ Guild message board, a little place where a half dozen or so artists, myself included, would post a few things every few weeks. ChristArt was in operation for a year, but never really got off the ground. It suffered from a few deficiencies, including an unwieldy URL (”You can’t miss it, just go to laudamuste.proboards24.com.”), a homely layout, and an inability to upload images (for an art website, that’s a cardinal sin).

And the name “ChristArt” was confusing for two reasons. Firstly, there is a popular Christian clip art site named ChristArt already. Secondly, “ChristArt” connotes a certain, um, dourness?, which does not at all reflect the lighthearted atmosphere of the pictures and writing to be found on the site. Sure, we’re all Christians, and serious ones at that, but we don’t spend all our time being serious about everything. The more popular threads on the board were the “caricature contests,” where we would take turns sketching humorous likenesses of celebrated personages, ranging from sci-fi…

…to literature…

…to oddball juxtapositions of both.

Anyway, Small Pax Romish Illustrators Guild is up and running. Add it to the blogs you sometimes visit. You may even want to join. If you think you have what it takes to be a S.P.R.I.G., get in touch with Ted, I think. His e-mail address is over on the site.

(The title of this post, Blogus natus est nobis, translates to, “Unto us is born a blog.” I’m using blogus as the Latin word for blog, as per the recommendation of Edward Yong. I couldn’t find it in the Vocabula Computatralia, which is in sore need of an update.)