High Anxiety

While I've been trying in vain to catch up on blog reading, Robin's been in the other room watching Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety on our local PBS station. I went in for awhile to watch with him, and found it pretty fascinating, particularly where de Botton talks about the American "myth of the meritocracy" (and its effect on people who are repeatedly propagandized to believe that if the rich get to where they are primarily on merit, then it stands to reason that the poor also deserve to be where they are). I stayed right up until de Botton went to visit with Grover Norquist, at which point I fled the room. I guess I have Norquist Anxiety.

Action Items and Other Links

Lots of stuff to get to from this past week, so bear with me!

• David at Barista talks about Holocaust survivor and artist Dina Babbitt, née Dina Gottliebova, who has been campaigning for three decades to have her concentration camp-created artwork returned from the Auschwitz museum, which acquired the pieces in 1963 from another survivor, acknowledges her copyright (her signature's right on them), asks her permission for reproduction, but won't give them back. Rafael Medoff, Director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, is spearheading renewed efforts to help Mrs. Babbitt. Joe Kubert is circulating a petition to the museum signed by himself and a number of fellow comic book artists; if you're an artist interested in adding your name to this petition, please contact Dr. Medoff.

• The next Friends of Lulu antho will be called The Girls' Guide to Guys' Stuff. Katie Merritt writes on the Lulu message board that they're still looking for artists and writers. Interested women should contact MK Reed. Not sure if I'm going to participate in this antho the way I did with the other two, but one never knows what's around the corner. More on Heidi's blog. Meanwhile, Lis Riba wants to turn a negative event into a positive opportunity, and is soliciting ideas on promoting women's participation in fandom.

• Karen Healey hits another one out of the park with her essay on Sooraya Qadir's skin-tight niqab (mistakenly referred to as a "burqa"); file under "unclear on the concept." I'm not sure whether to put the primary blame for this on the X-office or the succession of pencillers.

• With Labor Day coming up, it seems appropriate to be aware of the current state of the American worker. Barbara Ehrenreich has an interview up about that subject, and Avedon points to Harold Meyerson's op-ed column about the Great Compression turning into the Great Upward Distribution (i.e., the second Gilded Age when the well-off get richer, the poor get vastly poorer, and the middle class all but vanishes), which in turn references a NY Times report about how actual wages don't quite match up to "productivity" gains.

• John Aravosis is one of many people who doesn't need a friggin' 9-11 ad campaign. I'm another. I mean, just the thought of some government genius creating an ad campaign about a national tragedy like it's some kind of product to be sold boils my blood. But then, that's exactly how the Bush administration has treated it, isn't it?

• I have no business checking in on my Guys in Waiting section when I can't even get through my regular blogroll, but if I hadn't I wouldn't have seen Jim Henley's perfect mnemonic for our new Pluto-less solar system. Likewise, I have no business adding guys to that section, but Pam and others have had such positive things to say about Jon Swift that he's now tops on my must-check-out list.

• As fleme821 on Blondesense says, it's Star Trek meets Monty Python. And it's very funny.

• Documenting the hilarity: Siva reports on the latest Yes Men hoax, designed to point out exactly how criminal the government's neglect of New Orleans is, and how solvable it could be in a more ideal world. And I sincerely hope that the folks complaining to the FCC about Bush's public swearing (via Susie) are just taking the piss...

Gah, I have more open links to point to but I should quit here or I'll never get this posted!

Silly Site o' the Day

Wow, just like that the morning's gone. And I'm still not awake. Which doesn't bode well for chauffering around coworkers to get some office business done, but at least it's a nice day for a drive, and the company should keep me alert. Which you'll need to be for The Monkey King's Duel - just for you, Alan! Via Graeme at Newsarama.

Number 2364...

...out of a worldwide out-of-print run of 10,000:



Robin's a happy camper.

For Those Who Sit in Silence

Some very good advice from Mark Evanier on not taking offense on behalf of others, and from Kath David on staking out the moral high ground. I'm not sure whether either bit of advice can be applied to the reactions to another public groping episode, this time at WorldCon. From my WorldCon experiences a couple lifetimes ago I recall there was lots of private consensual gropage going on, but that's a horse of a way different color. Seeing as how Thinking People usually consider the public variety to be nonconsensual (regardless of whether the "grope-ee," aware she's on camera, elects to behave as though it's consensual for the sake of good humor or face-saving or because she feels she has no choice), and, in any case, without any context other than the TV shot or tape they're watching, I should imagine gropers would refrain from exercising certain impulses in a public forum except if they have some sort of problem that disables their id or something. And even then, you know, it's still wrong.

Because, as Lisa points out, "It all combines to tell us that we are not welcome there," that the primary function of women at a mixed-group event is as available playthings and adjuncts for men (i.e., The Other), and only secondarily as friends or peers (i.e., People). It's the same sort of raging frustration I felt at that long-ago CAPA-Alpha dinner in San Diego when one of the members was feted for his birthday by others hiring a stripper. As one of the only women participating in that comics apa at the time, I'd had it made clear to me on a number of occasions that my kind (the xx-chromosome variety) wasn't exactly wanted, and this sort of sealed it.

And I don't think I was taking offense on behalf of someone else (like the stripper, in a world where female strippers = prurience and male strippers still = goofy laughs, or other restaurant patrons), I was offended because I realized, at long last, that my fellow apans couldn't care less about my comfort level and never even gave the hiring enough forethought to inform me about it beforehand, when I could have excused myself and, of course, missed out on the comradery of being with people that, despite a few faults, I generally liked.

Because so often that's the choice we're given now. Either participate in a social event that's often the highlight of the overall experience you're attending and ignore something at that event that makes you uncomfortable, or leave. And most of the time when this happens, I'll acknowledge that I'm the one with the problem watching women gyrating for male pleasure in a public venue, and I'll reluctantly excuse myself, consequently missing, say, the First Annual Wizard Awards at a convention where I'm helping run programming (ComicFest '93) because the ushers/trophy holders are all Hollywoodized bimbettes with their assets hanging out (i.e., "No Girls Allowed"), or a dinner for a friend where a stripper shows up unexpectedly, or any number of other fun things made sour for me by exploitation of the female body.

And after awhile, even though I know it's my own personal discomfort which I acknowledge isn't shared by everyone else (not even other women), it happens often enough that it starts to become more of a pattern than an aberration. And I wind up either squirming and looking away or severely curtailing my social life. And I resent that something that happens this often is almost always turned around, when I do voice my mild objections, to make me feel like it's my fault. So I continue to take the choice not implicitly given (because nobody likes to hang out with boat-rockers), the choice to get angry about it and to speak up.

And that's why I think a lot of folks wind up taking offense on behalf of others. Because we suspect we're not the only ones made uncomfortable in circumstances where it would be just as easy to avoid giving discomfort if the perpetrators gave their actions just a couple more seconds of forethought in the belief that, you know, other people mattered. And we feel like we need to speak up not only for ourselves but on behalf of those who still lie back and enjoy it grin and bear it, or just "go along to get along" because they'd rather not call attention to themselves.

Silly Site o' the Day

I think every blog should have an official seal. Here's the one I designed in about a minute and a half:



The Official Seal Generator lets you choose from tons of pictures, border styles, colors, and of course you can put whatever text you like in there. Thanks, Generator Blog!

Another Anamorphic Illusion

Speaking as I was the other day of sidewalk paintings, today's Daily Mail reports on Julian Beever's latest triumph:



A great variation on a theme he started with his Spider-Man.

Silly Site o' the Day

With my boss away and the week before Labor Day kind of dead, I made a few Manhattan appointments hoping the rain holds up, so I get a couple more hours than usual to wake up. Robin's on deadline again, which means lots of music playing in the studio, which in turn means it's high time for this iPod warning:



The iPod Playlist Generator is, as usual, via The Generator Blog.

Silly Site o' the Day

Via Desi, it's Snakes on a Senate!

Après le Déluge - Every Blessing an Obligation

This is my contribution to the Katrina tragedy blogswarm proposed by KingCranky II.

It's raining this morning, for the third or fourth straight day. By this point I lose track of how long, the days sort of flow into each other with their warnings of local flooding and possible storm damage. I stay indoors on the weekends, struggling against the rain-induced drowsiness and usually failing. I spend the weekdays mentally rehearsing my commute, taking stock of the areas likeliest to flood between our apartment and the office (the I-95 on-ramp intersection, the spot right by my doctor's office, various points along the Saw Mill River Parkway which even experienced a mudslide last month, Broadway right around the subway terminus, the corner mailbox area) and trying to decide on alternate routes. My productivity goes way down because I'm so sleepy. I just want it to stop already so I can regroup my energy.

And how blessed are we, that all we need to worry about are a few hazardous driving conditions before we're snug and warm in our leak-proof homes or offices! How far we seem, even in occasionally precarious paycheck-to-paycheck life circumstances, from losing our belongnings or dwellings or loved ones!

Over 1700 people died last year as a result of government incompetence and/or indifference. Many of those people were poor to begin with. If we were living down there, we could have escaped in our cars, or flown somewhere to stay with friends or relatives. Many who died were black. If it had been us, we wouldn't have faced the crushing prejudice adding insult to injury, the refusal to see us as fellow human beings worthy of dignity and deserving of help.

Katrina's aftermath is the bathtub into which Grover Norquist wanted to drown a downsized government, a government run by radical reactionaries plainly uninterested in actually governing - i.e., in seeing to the safety and security and well-being of its citizens. The primary goal of the radicals currently in power is to enrich themselves and their friends; everything they've done has been a means to that end. The notion of being public servants is as foreign to them as the lives most ordinary American citizens lead.

And to tell you the truth, these lives are foreign to me as well. The difference is, I don't pretend they're not there. I count my blessings every day that I was born into a fairly well-off white family, in a country and era that allowed Jews to thrive in society rather than be thrown into concentration camps or grouped into shtetls, that I grew up during just the right period of time (much less income disparity - i.e., a stronger and more stable middle class - and both parents working) to be able to obtain a college education, that my current position still (barely) offers health insurance, that my family and circumstances still afford me a support system should anything go amiss with that position, and that local flooding is a minor annoyance rather than a life-threatening catastrophe.

Each blessing we have carries with it an obligation to remember those who haven't, and to help our fellow human beings when we can.

The Katrina Relief Organizations button on my sidebar still works just fine, by the way.

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 8/20 thru 8/26/06

The big news among Liberal Coalition members this past week was that John turned 50 and achieved his 75,000th site hit. Congratulations on both fronts, John! Elsewhere in the LC:

• Bryant finds more creative completely out of context Clinton bashing that has him saying something he didn't say in a way he didn't say it. I always think it's the height of hypocritical bad taste to accuse a past president of not behaving with propriety when (a) it's a lie and (b) the fart-joke currently in office wouldn't know propriety if it smacked him in the tuchus.

• Echidne introduces the Cootie Awards, to which I give a big EWWWW!

• Jude tells us the story of (In)Curious George and the Wanna-Kill Spree. With pictures!

• I agree with Kathy, it's not so much that Katherine Harris believes God (rather than her own machinations and the Supreme Court) chose our current president, but that she thinks of our public servants as rulers.

• Mustang Bobby wants to know, "You've got $1,000 of found money (the IRS goofed or something) and enough frequent flier miles for a two round-trip tickets to anywhere in North America (including the Caribbean). Where do you go? Who do you go with?" Too many hypotheticals for someone living paycheck to paycheck with no frequent flier miles!

• NTodd has an excellent perspective on the many Iraqis the US has killed this year.

• Steve Gilliard introduces us to Alice Waters and serves up a timely reminder that the government's post-Katrina failure "isn't history, it is current events." (Don't forget the blogswarm tomorrow!)

• Lastly, upyernoz reveals something he didn't know, and I didn't know it till he mentioned it: the name "Al-Qaeda" may have been inspired by the 1952 Arabic translation of Asimov's Foundation.

On to watch the Yankees game...

Silly Site o' the Day

Wow, too sleepy a day to do anything much. Mets rained out, so time for a bit of bloggy catch-up and organization of finances, job files, etc. before the Yankees game starts. Up next: my weekly Liberal Coalition blogaround. Up now: via Chris at After School Snack, another fun time-wasting game called Poom!. I have a feeling this will not help with Robin's deadline...

It's Not Just a Good Idea, It Oughta Be the Law

Happy Women's Equality Day! (Thanks for the reminder, Vanessa!) Please feel free to peruse the more than 100 female-run individual, duo and group blogs listed on my sidebar blogroll, as well as the links right above that where it says "Where are all the women bloggers who aren't on the blogroll below? Many are here!" pointing to, in turn, my Estrogen Month posts from '05 and my Bloglines subs (featuring two "Where the Women Bloggers Are" sections, the BlogHer blog and the Feminist blogs aggregate).

Maintenance Notes

It's worth remembering that most technology goes buggy from time to time. I just reset my side feed because Bloglines was seeing it as partial, even though it's always been a full feed. (Rob thinks it may have been because I posted two or three items in a short period of time, but I think it's just a general Blogger bugginess.) And in updating some of my Bloglines feeds that had stopped working, I noticed a few of them suddenly had incorrect URLS, like they say "blogspot.com" twice before the slash and "atom.xml" extension. (Shakespeare's Sister had one of those misdirected URLs, and I'm glad I fixed it as I'd missed reading it!) Just goes to show you, it's worth checking up on these things and doing a little tinkering from time to time.

On Internet Ripoffs

The thing about accusations that television shows are swiping gags from netcasts is that you're assuming that everyone's heard of these netcasts in the first place. Yes, the internets are a wonderful thing, but I suspect the audience for podcasts or whatever is far, far smaller than the audience for even the least-watched cable television show. (Besides, I agree with the last commenter who noted that it's entirely possible for obvious topical gags to occur to two comedians at the same time completely independently of each other.)

Silly Site o' the Day

It's that time of year again (although I know I blogged about this in July last year, so maybe it's not on a regular calendar per se) - witness the results of the 2006 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest! The complete listing is here.

Church vs. State

You know all those times you're watching a sporting event and a player does something good like scoring points and then immediately genuflects or makes some other superstitious gesture thanking God for implicitly being on his/her side and his/her side alone? (I have as little patience for that as I do for award-winners who thank God in their acceptance speeches, but at least with the latter I can make it into a drinking game of sorts.) If you think it's bad enough in a supposedly secular country, you really don't want to experience it in an area with history of sectarian violence like western Scotland, where a "gesture of religious reverence" accompanied by other gestures spells a heap of trouble during a football match between a Catholic team and a Protestant team from the same city.

Friday Cat [and Kid] Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

Yeah, I'm thinking Amy's bundled:



And because kid pictures are almost as cute as pet pictures, here's one I took of an employee's daughter at a local Chinese restaurant at lunchtime today:



She's a little cherub, that one.

Silly Site o' the Day

I was very pleased to learn about a band called OK Go via The Colbert Report a couple nights ago. Their choreographed videos are well worth the visit to YouTube, and I got a big chuckle out of their ping pong tips.

Maintenance Notes and Other Quickies

Melanie McBride has moved Chandrasutra to Wordpress; please note for your bookmarks. And Tom Peyer has invited Stuart Moore to join him as a coblogger, so I anticipate the newly-renamed Superfrankenstein and the Monster Force (which I've shifted into my Dynamic Duos section until such time as more monsters join the party) to be right at the forefront of incisive and hilarious political and comics commentary for some time to come.

John at Lodestone blogged about my recent adventures with my license plate frame. I got an envelope from Hyundai's US headquaters today that I thought might be a response to the letter I sent to my local dealer cc'ing them, but it was a survey. Hmm, wonder how I'll answer it.

Steve Gerber has a suggestion for people fed up with illiterate Repubs.

Cheryl Lynn remembers the black and white dolls of her childhood.

Heidi's overview of Snakes On, Well, You Know, to quote her, "proves something we’ve been saying for a while: The internet is NOT real life. You must market to the real world too. Sure there's a nice little world in a bottle that we all like playing in, but as much as it pains us to admit it, not everyone reads blogs all day. There's a lesson for everyone in New Line's mistake."

Ezra reminds us that, for many people, correlation does not equal causation only when it's convenient for their arguments.

Digby warns us, in great detail, that the radical reactionaries currently in power mean to stay that way by dusting off their race cards again.

Back to the baseball game, already in progress...

Creepy Spam of the Day

I usually don't respond, but this time I had to: Someone named Rebecca O'Roake spammed me:

Hello,I represent a company called Star Position -- a company that does what's known as advanced search engine placement. We reach a network of over 22 million people who are predominantly US based. Our network is entirely opt-in, and the users on our Network allow us to present them with a preferred choice whenever they are looking for anything on the top sixteen search engines (MSN, GOOGLE, YAHOO, etc.)

I seek one reputable source to send my clients on our Network to for information on explosives. I would like to speak with you on this.

Please contact me at your earliest convenience. I will be in the office today and tomorrow from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM Central time.

Best Regards,

Rebecca O'Roake
Business Segment Analyst, Star Position
Phone [deleted]

P.S. We would also provide you with real-time tracking information.

My response:

EXPLOSIVES?

Boy, do you have the wrong spam target, lady!

I have zero interest in explosives. The darn things make me itchy.

Plus they can, you know, KILL people.

Please delete this email address from any future spam correspondence you send.

I mean, ewww.

I wouldn't be surprised if Homeland Security goes after you for this.

- Elayne Riggs

And, you know? I wouldn't be surprised at all.

Milestone Notes

Happy birthday to Neil Ottenstein, and happy Wil Wheaton (#5!), Kevin Drum (#4), and Rachel Sullivan (#1 of many) - congratulations, all! Pen-Elayne will be celebrating our fourth blogiversary two weeks from today. I don't have anything special planned, like appealing to readers to artificially inflate the arbitary site meter (which I didn't install on the blog until August '03 anyway so it doesn't actually reflect how many people have visited since September '02) to reach some round number. I'm just pleased I've had new content up every day since I started, and that I've made it this far. This format is ideal for someone like me who's done one-to-many amateur writing for over 35 years (as previously mentioned I started when I was 13 or so, surreptitiously passing "Dream Marriage" story pages around to classmates until the teachers confiscated them, and realizing "hey, the other kids seem to enjoy reading stuff I write!"), and I don't intend to stop any time soon.

Silly Site o' the Day

Via eRobin, it's George Allen's "macaca" apology blog.

Silly Sites o' the Day

Religious fanatics, dey iz de kwaziest peoples! Pam discusses a for-really site selling Army of God pajamas. Security blankets coming soon, irony completely lost. On the other hand, Susie insists that the Pre-Born Funeral Box site is a parody, and if you read the fine print so it is. (Not from the same people who brought you the South Dakota Abortion Application Form, via Arthur.) In any case you'd better act now, for if you use Pray 2.0 (via Hanan), you might just be eligible for the Instant Salvation Generator (via the Generator Blog). Can I get an amen!

But Is It Art?

Or is it a "B-ship" profession? Either way, I want to be an award-winning crop circle photographer too! Either that or a sidewalk chalk art photographer.

Silly Site o' the Day

Unlike YouTube, Google Video doesn't seem to play well on my browser unless I go right to Google's page, so I'm not even going to attempt to embed these two Stephen Merchant/Ricky Gervais faux training videos done for Microsoft UK. About 45 minutes total of the usual hilarity.

Silly Site o' the Day

Hell of a tense day, but my boss' flight arrangements are all made for his upcoming vaca (we just had to do the return flights, which are now finally taken care of), and his wife has tasked me with following up on her post-vaca vaca arrangements. So organizing that took up my entire workday. But now I know all about where to eat when you go to the Eiffel Tower, where to get tour tickets for the Louvre, and what you call those boat cruises that go down the Seine, so there you are. I am also cured of any desire I might once have felt to visit Paris. Although I can't get that stupid song from Funny Face out of my head... "that's for me... Bonjour, Pareeeee..." And I guess a part of me will always want to visit the Louvre. But at least I can do things like the Mondrian Generator (via the Generator Blog) in the meantime, even though my data produced an awful boring thing of yellow and white with a few black lines.

Crowing

A year and a half after posting my Estrogen Month table (the entry to which my sidebar text "Where are all the women bloggers" links), thanks to a comment on John's blog I finally learn how to get rid of the extra line-break space that Blogger put in when I first posted the aforementioned table, and so I've been able to fix it. (Just in case it shows up on people's RSS readers and has them going "WTF???") Another one of life's little victories for me...

Silly Site o' the Day

I'm finally getting through some of the political graphic novels I've been saving, and today's reading is Wobblies, the pictorial history of the IWW. In honor of which I present a Silly Site of, as Cory at BoingBoing puts it, games designed to subvert post-industrialist capitalism.

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 8/13 thru 8/19/06

Well, I guess insomnia's good for some things; now I can get through my weekly Liberal Coalition post review before going to bed for good:

• Bora celebrated his second blogiversary by posting about All Clocks All The Time for about a week; keen! He also did a great post where he talked about being fascinated by collections of oral history and other storytelling.

• Bryant has an interesting theory about Republicans and Neville Chamberlain.

• Firedoglake founder Jane visits coblogger Christy, while coblogger TRex finds it hard to let go of a cherished friend and talks very eloquently about how playing the race card is a time-honored Republican tradition.

• Jeff reveals his inner evil twin.

• John had a Billy in his life too.

• Keith reviews the latest religion-oriented statistics.

• Maru reports on the discovery of Caer Caradoc.

• Mike's got the good, bad and mistaken from this past week.

• Norbizness translates another Presidential address.

• Steve B asks the $64,000 question, "If the monument is not specifically Christian in character, why are only Christians protesting its removal?"

• Lastly, Steve G has had it with the DLC (haven't we all?) and his coblogger Jen is back from Scotland.

Oh, and it turned out yesterday was a good day to be a New York baseball fan. The Yankees game was indeed another record-breaker, and the Mets tribute to the '86 team brought a number of tears to my eyes. (Yes, one can be a fan of both teams; I've always thought the "subway series rivalry" was stupid, but then I'm old enough to remember the joy of the Mayor's Trophy games.)

Closing Open Windows

I'm "done with the internet" for the moment, having skimmed my blogroll successfully once more, and I even got my employment-search act together earlier this morning (not that hard to do, after all I'm an executive transvestite secretary so if there's one thing I am by nature it's super-organized), so in between innings of the Yankees/Sox game why not make a few recommended reading suggestions?

• Another very enjoyable comic cover art analysis post by Lisa Fortuner, this one on Black Panther #18, the wedding issue. I'd just add, my first thought looking at the cover was "oh great, once more the male hero is covered head to toe and the female hero is depicted as mostly bare and showing lots of cleavage and leg," but the way Storm's been written and drawn through the years does show her as quite liking to show her skin so it's almost a legitimate take. Except, wow, do modern wedding gowns really show so much skin?

• John Rogers ain't a'scared. Unfortunately, us sensible folks don't really have the power to tell these usurpers of democracy to stop the politics of fear and have some common sense - only the power to vote them out (and even that's questionable given how many voting machines their cronies control).

• Desi's subtitle today: "Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi would have been 15 years old today, August 19, 2006. She was raped and killed on March 13, 2006. Members of the U.S. military in Iraq stand accused of the crimes. Today's call for peace is in her memory." Here's one I like:



• Pissed Off Patricia has a touching story of the tortoise that could sell a house.

• According to BoingBoing, apparently the world's slated to end on Tuesday. "As we know it, Hugh."

• Sheri Zollinger is too good for us. I'm seriously thinking of doing a job-interview-oriented parody myself, but maybe I'll wait until after I land a new position. :)

On to watch what I hope won't be another record-breaking game...

Silly Site o' the Day

Quand les poules auront des dents (When Hens Have Teeth) illustrates that French animators have a strange grasp on the concept of gravity. And/or comedy. As one might expect. Via Bibi's Box, merci!

Room Without A View

More and more handwriting is appearing on the wall. The company where I work is now so small that COBRA health benefits no longer apply, so if I'm laid off or quit I have no health insurance, period, until it kicks in at whatever new job I eventually get. This is not a good thing when one has been diagnosed with a heart problem and is on daily medication. Now my boss is considering renting out our offices and shoving the few of us left into our building's dark, damp, cold, windowless basement. Needless to say, my resume is always updated and I continue to look for salvation by answering just about every ad for a NYC-based executive secretary that appears on the online job market. If you're a potential employer, please contact me.

Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

The cuteness was on parade again this week:



They loved having the windows open in August for a change, and Datsa couldn't stop rolling around the living room carpet.



Amy, on the other hand, decided to use one of the couch pillows as a plinth. That's the front view...



...and here she is from the other side. Just for The Truffle, who I know loves her some "kitty pootie"...

Silly Site o' the Day

If you read my blog yesterday y'all know how I feel about advertising, but at the same time the idea of viral ad videos, particularly good ones, fascinates me. Via Eszter, Coke (which I don't drink, I don't do cola) now has a bunch of them under the theme "the Coke side of life," most of which are about as well done as you'd expect given the megacorporation's budget, but the one that caught Eszter's eye in particular was inspired by Grand Theft Auto only instead of violence there's just lotsa lurve, which I can dig. Can you dig it? I knew that you could.

Follow the Yellow-Brick Head

I don't read World O' Crap for their mockery of right-wing blogs, since I don't read any right-wing blogs. I read World O' Crap for Scott Clevenger's and Sheri Zollinger's devastatingly funny movie reviews. Scott has a wonderful three-parter up now about one of my "favorite" bad movies, Zardoz. I tell you, I've had it with this m***f*** giant head attacking this m***f*** Sean Connery! Do enjoy:

Zardoz (Part I)
Zardoz - Part II
Zardoz - Act III

In a totally unrelated matter, Michael at Bookslut reports, "The family of Wizard of Oz creator L. Frank Baum has apologized for the author's pro-genocide editorials, which were published in a weekly South Dakota newspaper in 1890 and 1891."

Silly Site o' the Day

Remember vinyl records? Sure you do. Robin just bought one, in fact. It's green, how hot can it be? He's also gone heavily back into his "must have everything Hal Blaine ever drummed on" phase. Therefore, this is dedicated to the one I love:



The Vinyl Record Generator is, as ever, via the Generator Blog.

The Case of the "Missing" License Plate Frames

So I called Hyundai this morning, and they promptly disavowed all knowledge of affixing their advertising to my car without my knowledge or permission like it was some sort of billboard. I don't think they can hide from this one, though. Advertising has a way of pointing the finger back at the advertiser, you know?

This photo is from back in August of last year, but I'd had my Ralph Spoilsport license plate frame longer than that:



I'm hoping I can find the original photo without the plate number PhotoShopped out, as it will be part of the letter I send to Hyundai (cc'ing the local Better Business Bureau and Hyundai's USA headquarters) asking them to reimburse me for the money I just spent reordering custom frames. (Although it's not about the money, y'know?, it's the principle of the thing. You don't swipe my property and put on your own just because you feel like it, without even telling me - and you don't compound the problem by then denying you ever did it when the evidence is right there.)

As an aside, I do find it ironic that my local Hyundai's website opens with the sound of a police siren accompanying it. :)

When the Macaca Hits the Fan

Wow, this thing has blog-legs! Among the more interesting posts I've seen about the incident:

Over at Arianna Huffington's place, they've published excerpts from Senator George Allen's sister Jennifer talking about what a violent little sleaze he was as a younger man. Creepy! And oddly familiar; I think he would have gotten along well with young Georgie Bush and his live-frog-exploding crew.

Mustang Bobby finds a blog post that observes, "According to two Republicans who heard the word used, 'macaca' was a mash-up of 'Mohawk,' referring to Sidarth's distinctive hair, and 'caca,' Spanish slang for excrement, or 'shit.' Said one Republican close to the campaign: 'In other words, he was a shit-head, an annoyance.'" Yeah, so obviously we'd want to welcome him to America. Being, as he is, an American citizen born-and-bred already.

And speaking of shit, Digby calls bullshit on this whole incident by revealing that macaca is, indeed, a well-known code word recognized by racists, particularly in France and by those familiar with North Africans - and, surprise surprise, John Amato finds a New Republic post informing us that Allen's "mother is French Tunisian (yeah, that’s in North Africa), and Allen speaks French." or, at least, he speaks la langue de racist code.

Why Cars Bear Repeated Inspection

Well, that put a damper on the evening. I just noticed that the Hyundai dealership where I last had my oil changed decided, without my knowledge or permission, to go ahead and replace my custom-ordered Ralph Spoilsport license plate holder with one of their own. Apparently they felt such an intense need to advertise themselves that they threw my property away. That's going to be one nasty phone call I make first thing tomorrow morning.

Grr, Argh (Administrative Professional Edition)

There's a new type of fake phone call making the rounds of corporate America, or at least my little corner of it. It's a version of the message that clicks on once the machine generating it has identified a person saying "Hello" on the other end. Sometimes I get the second half of it, as our office has an auto-respond that starts with "Hello" as well, but today I picked up switchboard fairly quickly so I heard the whole thing, and it's insidious. It replicates what you'd expect an actual message left on an answering machine to sound like: "Hi, this is so-and-so, I've been trying to reach you for awhile about such-and-such, could you give me a call at..." Apparently phone-spammers are starting to take their cues from email spammers and mock-personalizing their ads! Easy workaround - if the "person" at the other end doesn't respond to "May I help you?" it's a machine and an obvious spam, even more so if the message doesn't state "Hi, this is so-and-so and I'd like to leave a message for specific-name..." I'm sure there are switchboard operators and secretaries who call these people back, if only out of curiosity, but I can't imagine anyone else being simple enough to fall for it, at least here in the (sub)urban jungle, so I keep wondering how these phone spammers make money.

Silly Site o' the Day

Gah - bleary and icky-feeling. Only a week until my boss returns to his yacht in Europe, so I'm trying to hold out until then, when I can feel free to properly collapse. So out-of-it this morning that I couldn't spell my own name, even with the help of the primo Alphabet Soup Word Generator:



See what I mean? Via the Generator Blog, natch.

Silly Site o' the Day

Hey, I thought those TLC Life Lessons figurines would cost a lot more than $15. Not too bad! My favorites are probably #72 and #22 - although I often find myself in disagreement with the sentiment (particularly on #22, surely there are more options for women than either dating or keeping cats!), the designs are quite winning. I just wish they'd credit the artist somewhere.

Silly Site o' the Day

Just cleaned out my boss' personal in-box, featuring spams from Enlightening L. Kettledrums, Paced S. Bilbo, Diastolic A. Offenbach, Existent C. Foxtrots, Thrummed I. Underemployed, Neutralization A. Osiers, Sisterhood I. Skulks, Quilters P. Frightfully, Tenaciously F. Rants, Kayaks U. Boulevard, Fromm M. Spiffying, Constantly S. Immersion, Pursuer G. Stripper, Dodged Q. Detriment, Unsuited O. Feces, Pantheon H. Reese, Tortuga H. Junkie, Westerly O. Prefecture, Maurine J. Timbuktu, Actuating O. Togetherness, Impacts T. Pavements, Maypole T. Emulsification, Fatalistic H. Mortising, Middleweight J. Tenochtitlan, Haunch L. Salivation and Gangrene K. Calendar. And that was just for the spam accumulated over the weekend! I love the idea that in some universe these people are real and they're all members of the Funny Names Club. Via Mark at BoingBoing, William Ridenhour is thinking along those lines only much further, and has started a spam name obituary blog.

Good Balms for Bad Bombs

I've just received the following press release from Clifford Meth:

---------------------

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Top names in comics & SF join forces to aid Israeli children

Prestige anthology from Mahrwood Press directly benefits children affected by bombing in northern Israel.

Tampa, Florida, August 13, 2006

American-Israeli Publisher Mahrwood Press Ltd. has announced a special project to benefit children suffering disruption and more due to the situation in northern Israel.

BALM IN GILEAD will be a prestige anthology featuring the top names in comics and genre literature. All proceeds go directly toward feeding, clothing and housing children.

BALM IN GILEAD combines the efforts of Jon Bogdanove, Dave Cockrum, Jack Dann, Peter David, Harvey Jacobs, Jeffrey Jones, Joe Kubert, Stan Lee, William Messner-Loebs, Michael Netzer, Robin Riggs, Joe Rubinstein, and Len Wein. Additional creators will be announced in weeks to come. The anthology will be edited by Clifford Meth.

"We wanted to do something for the kids to give them some joy in a difficult time," stated Eric Mahr, Publisher and President of Mahrwood Press. "We are pleased and proud that some of the most respected people in comics and literature have stepped forward to join this project. Balm in Gilead will provide desperately needed help to children in northern Israel and the book itself will be something that Jews, Muslims, Christians will enjoy."

About Mahrwood Press

Mahrwood Press Ltd. founded in 2004, is a privately held company with offices in Jerusalem, Israel and Tampa, Florida. The company publishes visual publications and prose literature for the English, Hebrew, Spanish and French languages. For more information please visit Marhwood Press' website.

---------------------

If any writers and artists are interested in participating, please contact Cliff directly.

Now, I need to state here that I've been ambivalent about contributing to this project, and not just for the reasons I've already discussed as to why I'm not currently writing any stories. I've been struggling with the idea of helping only one side in a conflict that's cost far more lives, homes, etc. to the other side. Yes, there are innocents in both Israel and Lebanon who have been torn apart here, but all indications are that the Lebanese losses have outnumbered the Israeli ones by a magnitude of at least ten. And I don't see any similar venture being planned for the victims who seem to need it far more. Cliff replied that I should "let folks know that I personally would be delighted to contribute to or in any way aid a similar project in Lebanon. Or Iraq. Or Saturn." Despite that dismissive-sounding punchline, I know he's serious about this. A suddenly-displaced person in Marin County may have infinitely more resources than someone in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, but that doesn't mean we should withhold compassion for the Californian, just that we should endeavor to help both as best we can. After all, there but for the grace of god go we. So please, if you know of any Lebanese-based charities that would be interested in a balm of their own, let Cliff know!

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 8/6 thru 8/12/06

As you can imagine, plenty of Liberal Coalition participation this past week in CT, as LC members Jane Hamsher and TRex were among those covering Ned Lamont's campaign and victory in the Democratic primary.

• Jane takes time to savor the win before reminding us of one of the reasons Karl Rove is still interested in Lieberman, how the mainstream media isn't following the fake-hack story, and what Barbara Boxer changing her mind bodes for "Holy Joe"s prospects.

• Bora/Coturnix finds a back to school ad for a t-shirt that espouses, I suspect, a growing sentiment.

• Bora's also guest posting at Echidne's place while she's on vacation, along with other guests like blue lily, who gets a jump on next month's MDA telethon with these two posts.

• Jeff thinks the Movieguide people need to relax a bit, maybe take in a harmless Will Ferrell flick...

• John, who would dearly like to reach an arbitrary round number of hits by his non-arbitrary round-numbered birthday so do help him out, raises a point I was thinking about in the wake of the "get these m***f*** liquids off this m***f*** plane" scare. He parses: "We take these bottles away from people boarding planes because they might contain bomb ingredients. Then we feel bad about throwing away perfectly good products, so we donate them to the poor. We know it's safe enough for the poor to use because it's in unopened bottles. We think the products are too dangerous to allow on planes because terrorists can always fix it so that the bottles look unopened. We cannot accept the risk of letting these potentially reactive or explosive chemicals on a plane, but it is an acceptable risk to let the homeless pour these potentially reactive or explosive chemicals on their heads." Obviously the answer is that, at this particular airport, the personnel know what most of the rest of us already logically acknowledge - that the liquids are harmless - and they're trying to make something good happen out of someone else's bad policy decisions.

• Kathy reports that our country is only slightly less blinded by science than is Turkey.

• Keith gives us a blast from the past, mentioning a Billy Ray Cyrus comic that Marvel published last decade. I have to wonder if it was before or after the speculeech bust...

• Maru brings us yet another "benefit" of global climate change - the Welsh heat wave and drought have created conditions where aerial archaeologists have been able to find tons of new discoveries.

• Mustang Bobby discusses celebrity outings.

• Hooray, more 100%-original-content posts from Steve Gilliard, I hope this becomes a habit! Here he reminds us again how Osama bin Laden is still winning. Which leads to this post about how the GOP really "supports" the troops (which is to say, they don't). And of course he throws his opinion out about why Lieberman lost.

• Norbizness' strawconservative argues with his strawme; and he transcribes another press conference.

• Steve Bates has a sweet setup.

• Lastly, upyernoz reports from Riga.

Me, I'm just reporting from the Riggs Residence, off to watch baseball now...

Silly Site o' the Day

Via Cory at BoingBoing, an error message written specifically for Senator Stevens. Beware, there's music that comes on when you click the link, so you might want to turn your sound down.

Timing and Coincidence

You know, I don't think it's a bad thing to maintain a healthy skepticism. But since we have no way of knowing which story is true - was an "attack now" message sent from Pakistan to the would-be airplane bombers last week, precipitating swift action on the part of the British government; or did they move when they did due to US pressure? - I tend to side with Lesley on this. Not everything bad that happens in the world revolves around the US all the time, and blogs that insist it does start to sound rather tinfoil'ish (i.e., if you start off specifically looking for a conspiracy you're bound to see everything as a link to one - but then, to criticize our leaders for being on vacation whilst you're on holiday in Paris rather undercuts your point, however valid). Far better to observe that some British politicans are capable of being every bit the opportunists as some American politicians are, to the detriment of us all. Oh, and it's possible the British authorities moved when they did because word was about to leak out anyway after Rauf was arrested. But hey, let's not let that stop us from insisting everything was driven by the Bush administration...

Silly Site o' the Day

Planning on making this a mostly AFK (Away From Keyboard) day, as I'd rather reward myself for getting my errands done this morning (car inspection - check; gas - check; "juice run" to the supermarket that delivers up two flights of stairs so we don't have to carry heavy stuff- check) by lounging about reading magazines and such than be glued to my computer. I've gotten through at least two Entertainment Weeklys so far, but I still have most of June and July to peruse. I can't believe they didn't include Fark on their list of 25 must-browse 'net sites. Even though I no longer have the time to hang out there as much as, say, Wil does, I can still acknowledge how much a part of online culture they've become - after all, without them how would you even begin to get the in-jokes in this version of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"?

Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

I just told Amy I didn't need her to pose, since I wanted to get rid of some of my backlog cat pictures. I think she's disappointed. But, cutely so.

Here are two close-ups I took of her when I first started playing with my cell phone's camera.





Don't even bother click on them to enlarge, the phone's camera is lousy when you enlarge it.

Silly Site o' the Day

Via Hanan, here are some fascinating penlight animations.

Ask A Comics Geek, Goes Fourth

So soon, Comics Geek? Didn't we just play this a couple days ago?

Yes, but I needed to get rid of an old bugaboo.

Ooh, I think I have ointment that might do the trick!

Settle down and ask the question, you imaginary imp, you.

Spoilsport. Very well then, here's today's query: How come almost all the comics reviews I read on message boards and blogs and so forth only seem to mention the comic's writer and very rarely give any substantive ink pixels to the artist? I mean, if they're going to do that they might as well just read books rather than comics, am I right?

I'll have to agree with you 100% on this. As the wife of an artist, there's nothing more frustrating and disappointing for me than to find a review of a book on which he's worked, get all excited that Something Robin's Doing Is Being Talked About, read through it, and find absolutely no mention of either artist's name or the product of their many hours of labor. Considering artists put in way more time than writers, on average, creating a 22-page comic, this cavalier dismissal of their efforts by people who fancy themselves professional-level reviewers is borderline criminal.

My theory as to why so many online comic book reviews completely ignore the majority contribution to the product they're reviewing is that we're in the world of writers here. Blogs, message boards, even apas, they can employ illustration but the vast majority of these fan-run comic-related sites are geared towards the written word. It's what we do. So we're naturally inclined to pay attention to writers, because we can identify with them a lot more, being writers ourselves. And while there are many online reviewers who "know what they like" and don't like about comic art, and can even recognize different styles, they haven't necessarily developed (or even tried to develop) the vocabulary needed to discuss the visual component of a story the way they can discuss the written component. (Incidentally, it's not just reviewers; I've actually heard professional comic book writers insist that "comic book story equals writing" rather than "story=writing+art"!)

It's kind of the opposite of a movie review, isn't it? You don't read a lot of movie reviews that discuss the script per se, but they all talk about the actors and the direction.

Well, yes and no. They usually discuss plot believability and so forth, and that's a function of the writing even if the screenwriters' names are never mentioned. But a comic book character isn't the equivalent of a movie character. With live-action movies, the visuals are easier to talk about because the characters are being played by actual people (well, as much as actors can be considered people *rimshot*) who move and interact and show emotion. With a comic book story, as much as some fans may wish it (and as much as some reviewers like to pretend it's so), nothing on the page is real. The fictional characters don't exist independently of the artists who draw them and the writers who literally put words in their mouths.

There's not much you can do about a fan who's decided to review the characters in a comic as though they're real, ascribing thoughts and motivations to them rather than to the writers (and ascribing actions to them rather than to the artists). Admittedly, it's probably the preferred mindset for a reader to have while engaged in reading, because you want your entertainment to draw you into its world, to make you suspend your disbelief in order to follow the fantastic adventures of Harry Potter or Miss Marple or Tarzan or Dorothy or Superman or Spider-Girl. But that falls under the category of whether you enjoyed the work rather than how well the work was done, and it seems to me that a reviewer's obligation ought to be to consider the latter as well as the former.

As an example, rather than opining "Hey, Dick Grayson is acting out of character!" a reviewer should probably observe something along the lines of "I don't think such-and-such writer's or artist's characterization of Dick Grayson is consistent with the way other writers or artists have depicted him before," only less wordy. In this instance, Dick is acknowledged as a fictional character with no existence other than that with which actual creative people imbue him; therefore, it's the efforts of those actual people that a review ought to discuss. And they usually discuss only one of those actual people, the writer.

So how do you develop a vocabulary to discuss art? If you're not, you know, married to it.

Robin and I weren't married when I first started doing my weekly comic book reviews on Usenet and CompuServe In fact, I was hardly doing reviews at all any more after we got married, because I also had a job that didn't leave me with much energy for creativity then, later, a blog to maintain daily. But while I was reviewing I was also corresponding with lots of comics pros, talking with them at conventions, etc. And I educated myself as to how to recognize what the artists did and, to an extent, how they did it. I learned how to spot differences in drawing style. I learned that you don't need extensive technical knowledge to say snarky things like "this looks like it was inked with the back end of a Sharpie," you just need to be able to observe the lines on the page, the composition, the visual flow. It just takes a little bit of time and attention, like most things worthwhile.

So who does this well? Besides all-knowing you, obviously.

Speaking of snarky... Well, while I don't have time to read too many comics reviews now that I'm out of that scene, I've been impressed with Lisa Fortuner's occasional forays into analysis of Neal Adams panels. It's always a treat to see a fan rediscover Neal. Beyond that, I'd say that any reviewer who actually acknowledges the existence of the artists in reviewing a book they've drawn deserves more attention than a reviewer who only talks about the writing, as they're one-up already in that respect. Extra points, as always, for any reviewer who gives them more than a one-sentence mention. Mega-bonus points for any reviewer who understands that--

Ooh, I know, that pencillers and inkers are both artists, and knows enough about what each artificial-subdivision-of-labour does to be able to discuss it! But what about coloring and lettering? They're done by creative people as well.

They sure are, but here's where we get into more artificial subdivisions as well as a highly opinionated area as to whether coloring and lettering are more a function of production than of story. That their purveyors are (or should be) skilled and talented should not be in question. Now I personally tend to see lettering and coloring, and even editing, as important components of a comic that are far more noticeable if they're done badly; in other words, I believe that the function of the editor and colorist and letterer is not to stand out, and insofar as those things don't jump out at you they've done their job correctly. If you're a reviewer who likes all the stuff that bothers me (letters too small to read in indoor light, fonts too fancy to be legible, paper so glossy it hurts the eyes, "showoff effects" that do nothing to add to the story), then of course your mileage may vary.

Can I go now? You've been typing this for over three hours, on and off.

Sure. Just one more thing. If you have favorite reviewers who actually do their complete "job" and discuss art in their reviews, feel free to leave names and links in the comment section.

Silly Site o' the Day

Woo-hoo, got the first parking spot at the side of "our" office building on a day when the construction crew behind the property is pouring concrete, and those spots are usually all taken by the time I get here! As far as I'm concerned that's, to quote Keith Knight, one of life's little victories. I feel like doing a little victory dance, but you know, society frowns on large women dancing, doesn't it?



The iPod billboard generator is, of course, via the Generator Blog.

Quotables

Yeah, another "link dump" but with a twist this time to entice you to, as one says, read the whole thing:

Another level of this incident, and perhaps the most critical, is the blatant disdain, and self-hatred, for womanhood. To denigrate mothers and their lives with their children, is to diminish womanhood. This is not to say that womanhood is defined and validated by motherhood. Certainly, bearing and caring for children is one of the central and biological roles of women. However, it is not the only crole, but it is within the rich experiences of female lives.

- Grace Davis, A thorn in the bouquet that was BlogHer, 2006 version.

I am tired, dead tired, of men standing around with that "who farted?" look on their faces whenever the subject of rape comes up. It wasn't me! It was some other guy. Some crazy guy. Some guy I've never met. Some guy I don't know. Well, okay, I knew him; he was my buddy. But, gosh, what's a guy to do?

- Ilyka Damen, Yes, It Is and Yes, You Can

And, along the same lines,

It boils down to entitlement and a sense of ownership. Women--especially foreign, brown women--are property, mere objects to be used, abused, defiled, or cared for. We are placed on pedastals or thrown in the gutter, but what men do to us is never the fault of men. It's stress! It's what we were wearing! It's emasculation (since being a man means dominating and abusing people).

- Sheelzebub, Not stress. Colonialism, brutality and entitlement.

On the other hand, the dirty-hippies-for-peace metaphor might still have mileage in it. You could argue that the vitriolic bloggers are just like those flower-kissing weirdos of the past, and that they will destroy, destroy!, the Democratic party. Unless they don't matter at all, of course.

- Echidne, posting at Eschaton, on Understanding Liberal/Progressive Political Blogs: Polite Advice for Mainstream Journalists

And at the risk of bruising the delicate sensibilities of anyone in mainstream comics, I got news for you, bub, it isn’t exactly the most woman friendly field on earth. We’re sure there are many well intentioned and dedicated people trying to change that even as we speak, but that record stands. It’s just a tough field in general — we know of one line aimed at women that’s underway that doesn’t even have any women writing it.

- Heidi MacDonald, Fight! Simone vs Bendis!

By the way, can you tell me the last time there was a non-sexy female hero? The men can be sexy or hideous as heroes, but both heroines and villainesses have to be alluring. Also, when was the last time a comic book male looked past a hideous freakishness to see a potential lover the way women often are expected to do? Seriously, if you know, please tell me.

- Sheryl Schopfer, Is this really a good business model?

It was all just so disappointing to me. I remember having a table at the last three (and first Wizard World) Chicago Cons. Artists Alley had folks like Brian Biggs, Roberta Gregory, Cherise Mericle, and other really amazing indy artists. I would walk the aisles and just find so many cool comics. We sold cases of Manya and Max & Lily books. It was so fun and energizing. I liked comics back then. Now? Ugh.

- Kris Dresen's review of Wizard World Chicago.

AP: Why is the idea of a person being harrassed by their superpowered ex, who claims to be a hero while also being a creepy stalker, a subject for a comedy movie?

Thurman: Because the ex is a girl. The idea of women being empowered to do anything is laughable anyway, and so the idea that she might horrifically abuse those powers to threaten and abuse her ex-boyfriend is just utterly hilarious! And it's just as well that in our glorious patriarchy most women don't have any power at all, much less superpowers, because if they did those crazy bitches would just make men's lives hell with their just basic lack of control and just blowing a casket all the time! Just, basically.

- Karen Healey's "Karen Filter," Look! Up In The Sky! It's A Flying Vagina!

Blogs, gossip sites and the ability to circulate rumors -- and evidence -- is clearly what is driving the MSM to finally address the issue. When mainstream publications and broadcast media continue the heteronormative default when the buzz on the 'Net is 180 degrees from it, that destroys their credibility. It looks as though they are conspiring to hide some kind of "dirty little secret" when the truth is already circulating elsewhere.

- Pam Spaulding, Handling -- or not handling -- gay rumors

Why shut the pipe now? The timing of a sudden inspection and fix of a decade-long problem has a suspicious smell. A precipitous shutdown in mid-summer, in the middle of Middle East war(s), is guaranteed to raise prices and reap monster profits for BP. The price of crude jumped $2.22 a barrel on the shutdown news to over $76. How lucky for BP which sells four million barrels of oil a day. Had BP completed its inspection and repairs a couple years back — say, after Dan Lawn’s tenth warning — the oil market would have hardly noticed.

- Greg Palast, BRITISH PETROLEUM'S "SMART PIG": The Brilliantly Profitable Timing of the Alaska Oil Pipeline Shutdown

A two-fer from Lance Mannion:

And suddenly I couldn't deny it anymore. I'd been trying, for the sake of Al Gore, to pretend to myself that Lieberman wasn't what he was, a toady to Republicans, but that's what he was.

It was more important to him in that debate that Dick Cheney like him than that he take-down Dick Cheney.

- from Independent Man

Rowling is a first rate storyteller, whatever you think of her prose style or of the stories she’s chosen to tell, and I happen to think highly of both. She doesn’t do anything gratuitously. Everything she writes serves to move the story along and develop her themes. She is not the kind of sentimentalist hack who kills off characters just to make readers cry or give her hero a reason to seek vengeance.

- from Bring me the broomstick of Harry Potter!

Then, there you were in Minority Report, a film for which I had no love at all, my pet, except for the opportunity it granted me to broaden my hopes for you that much more. You could hold your own against a certified star, and effortlessly upstage him. My heart opened a bit more with Phone Booth and The Recruit —not great films, but fun enough, and you were, I reluctantly admitted, captivating, even in films that did not aspire to greatness. Still, I was not wholly convinced, but then—then, Colin darling—was A Home at the End of the World. And you slayed me.

- Shakespeare's Sister, channeling her inner Heidi MacDonald in Averting the End of the Affair

Enjoy, all!

Silly Site o' the Day

While I'm far from a Lamontophiliac (™ John) and I think once things settle down the liberal blogosphere may well find the bloom is off the rose (I believe some bloggers are being dangerously self-congratulatory and myopic here; I have nothing against Lamont but he really did sound like a typical sound-byte politician when he was on Colbert), thanks to Billmon I can't get that song from Cabaret out of my head now. But maybe Lieberman's refusal to admit defeat has to do with him not knowing what to do with himself after his political life. Might I suggest he help with the Bible Rewrite Project (via Michael at Bookslut)? Seems right up his alley...

Silly Site o' the Day

It's so very wrong, but I laughed out loud. It's the Obsessive Compulsive Action Figure, via Arthur.

Ask a Comics Geek, Part(y of) Three

I'm all caught up in my comics reading (well, except for a few graphic novels) and this month's DC comp box has yet to arrive, the two major conventions are behind everyone and the comics blogosphere's looking for something to talk about, so it must be time, once again, to Ask A Comics Geek! Yes, you, in the back, wearing the Superman shirt. What's on your mind, sonny?

Okay, you're married to a comic book inker, right?

Well, yes and no. Robin's an artist who happens to make his living as an inker at present. As he's fond of saying, inking is an artificial subdivision of labour (you can tell he's British because you can hear the "u" when he says "labour"), made necessary by an industry with tight deadlines to meet and historic underemployment. But go on, I sense this is leading somewhere.

Sure is, if I cared about the difference between "artist" and inker."

Watch it, sonny, inkers are artists, same as pencillers. If I had a nickel for every time someone wrote "artist and inker" in a comic review instead of "penciller and inker" or just "artists," why, I'd--

Okay stop, I don't care! I'm sorry I started you on that!

Most people are.

But you did mention having a nickel, and I had a question about money.

Most people do.

No, I'm serious. I read on the comics blogs that comic book artists and writers make a ton of money nowadays, even more than in the heyday of the speculeeches ten years ago. So why are you always bitching about not having enough?

What you read was one professional's opinion, an opinion based on hanging out with other writers and artists who are apparently all in the same happy circumstances. You shouldn't extrapolate those numbers to include everyone in the industry, any more than Mark Waid revealing to Parade magazine in 1997 that he made $250,000 means that every writer was pulling in those kinds of bucks, or noting that Jack Kirby drew very fast means that every artist can draw equally fast. In other words, you don't prove a point by noting the exception(s) to the rule. It would be like assuming our country's economy is robust solely on the basis of examining the richest 1% of citizens, rather than looking at the reality of a dwindling middle class and a large underclass becoming ever poorer.

In other words, if an upper echelon A-list writer or artist says something like "Everyone I know is doing fantastically," your first reaction ought to be to check with a B-list artist or writer to see if they concur. Chances are that B-lister (equivalent to the country's dwindling middle class - talented folks who do good work but aren't necessarily as "famous" as the rich folk) either lives in a place where the cost of living isn't as high as it is in typical urban areas, or he/she isn't able to make a living without, say, spousal income as well. They're extremely lucky if they have a regular book - do the math, there just aren't that many regular books to go around! - and they probably have no health insurance (a rarity in comics, usually only offered to freelancers with exclusive contracts - the, you guessed it, A-listers).

But-- but royalties...!

Royalties are only payable on books that reach a certain sales threshold. Like the "estate tax" is only applicable to super-rich estates that are worth gajillions more than you and I will ever see. Rob and I have been married for 7½ years and I've never seen a royalty check for any new book on which he's worked. And I consider him a solid B-lister. Most working comics pros know not to count on royalty checks for anything more than the occasional dinner out. (In the early '90s it may have been a different story but even then the handwriting was on the wall. I remember one freelancer boasting that he used his royalties to pay his rent, which seemed a tad shortsighted to me, and sure enough when that money dried up he quickly found himself in need of new digs.)

But what about the secondary market? Even if you're a B-lister you can still make big bucks reselling your art, right?

Assuming there are buyers out there, you still need to put in a bit of time and effort to market to them. Even if that effort is just eBay, it's still a whole 'nother level of organization with which a lot of pros don't want to deal. And if you get someone else to sell your art, they take a percentage. Besides, there are a lot of artists who don't feel like selling original art at all, that's not why they draw comics.

So, you won't be starting that writing career any time soon, then.

Oh, I still want to write comics and other stories, but likely only as a second career, and not until my primary one doesn't emotionally exhaust me any more. I don't think I have it in me to "quit my day job," in any case; I'm too addicted to a steady paycheck and a bit stronger illusion of security.

So, what would you say your motto is to anyone else who asks about Big Bucks in Comics?

I'd say, don't take any wooden nickels.

Silly Site o' the Day

Man, there's something about Mondays... as good a feeling as I had when I left work on Friday afternoon, that's how bad this morning made me feel; it was like night and day. Fortunately, things are now in hand and I can look forward to a very special package arriving for Robin this afternoon - a replacement cell phone for the one that hasn't worked in longer than I'd care to remember. I hope one of the first things he tries is the Popularity Dialer, via Catherine but subsequently seen on lots of other blogs.

Before They Disappear...

While they still show up as saved posts and I can toggle them off before Bloglines goes haywire again, I'd like to recommend the following good reads:

• Colleen has a terrific convention report on her weekend at ELF.

• Flea wants to know, how are you weird? Prizes are involved.

• I still regret not having had the time to review Kate's Adrenaline comedy show when she was in NYC, but she passes along a review that says pretty much what I would have written, only better.

• Sheelzebub reminds us that many of us still fall into the middle-class mindset trap of blaming indebtedness and poverty on the poor.

• Riverbend bids goodbye to many friends and lots of personal freedom. This is why it's so important to confront anyone who claims to support freedom with demands to define the word. To me, freedom isn't "having a greater choice of stuff to buy" (i.e., hyper-capitalism), it's things like knowing you're able to leave the house dressed however you want and not being set upon by religious fanatics.

• Celina at Feministing interviews the Too Hot Tamales. I was frustrated that they didn't actually answer her question, "Why do you think there are so many male chefs [compared with female chefs]?" other than with a nebulous "oh, women are too smart to go through all that work" which sounds awfully evasive.

• Bryan reports on Venezuelan chocolate (yum!) and what he sees the current role of bloggers being in politics.

• Hugo gave me the willies with a story of a colleague who "ranks" the women in his class, and why he finds it creepy. I don't think it's a power thing, I know women who "rank" guys the same way (both in their heads and, I don't doubt, in public diaries), but it is an objectification thing and has no business in a classroom, which one presumes is a setting wherein one's physical attributes shouldn't matter to the person in charge of your grades.

• I didn't know the crazy dude who shot those women at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle was a fundie Christian until I read Jesus' General.

• Terry Jones, for one, welcomes our Armaggedonist overlords.

Back to watching baseball and reading comics again! I love weekends.

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 7/30 thru 8/5/06

Happy birthday to the nominal "leader" of the Liberal Coalition, as NTodd celebrates number, um, 39 I think. It's also LC member Steve Bates' birthday, yay! As for this blogaround, I'm afraid Bloglines is still wonky, disappearing lots of posts I'd saved earlier in the week, including the following LC members' posts that I can't even call up again to toggle the "keep new" box and get rid of the saved-posts indicator, so I've had to unsubscribe then resubscribe to several blogs in order to clear the "save as new" flags. Very frustrating. Here are the ones I think I flagged:

• I believe the one from Andante that caught my eye was about outsourcing health care.

• I'd saved three from Maru; I seem to recall I liked this and this and this.

• I'd saved one from Steve Gilliard, I think it was this one about Lieberman and the black community.

• Don't remember what I saved from Mustang Bobby, maybe this about Katherine Harris.

Now for the ones that did save correctly:

• Bryant takes exception to Lawrence Britt's Defining Characteristics of Fascism.

• Lots of meta-discussion going around about what blogs are and what they do and so forth. Echidne weighs in from her outpost and discusses blogs and power. And Jude reminds the mainstream media that they should still beware the blog.

• John reports that Schmaltz Brewing has a new flavor honoring Lenny Bruce (shouldn't that be Lenny Brews?). I see their products a lot, especially at Whole Foods stores, and I love the labels but I've not tried any yet. John also notes that brewers in Greenland are set to capitalize on global climate change. And speaking of changing climates, he finds an item about penguins being transported back to Antarctica by Brazil's air force and navy.

• Kathy explores some facts (or are they?) about Wikipedia and is one of a number of bloggers reminding us that global climate change doesn't just mean record heat waves here in the US, but snowfall in Johannesburg.

• Natalie, who should know, reports that Grateful Dead Productions has ceased to be.

• Norbizness has at some music reviews.

• Scott corrects a too-common spelling error, one which niggles at me as well.

• The Scrutiny Hooligans take a look at how beloved our leader is throughout the world.

• Trish brings the unbelievable news of a father's rights advocate being arrested for hitting his father. File under "unclear on the concept..."?

• upyernoz is on the move, travelling to the Baltic republics for the next couple of weeks.

Lastly, Guy's RSS feed (at least to Bloglines) seems to be broken altogether at the moment, but Rook's Rant continues playing online chess. And Mike's RSS feed has never worked, which is a shame because he has some more Friday Fun that I'd love to convert to Silly Sites...