Labels: galactica, science fiction, TV
¶ February 28, 2009 0 Comments
Labels: animation, athf, comedy, religion
¶ February 28, 2009 0 Comments
Why are they making this so damn easy? Two in 24 hours, both having to do with Michael Steele.
First, on a talk radio show hosted by former Guardian Angel Curtis Silwa:
SLIWA: Now, using a little bit of that street terminology, are you giving him [Bobby Jindal]any Slum love, Michael?
STEELE: (laughter)
SLIWA: Because he is — when guys look at him and young women look at him — they say oh, that's the slumdog millionaire, governor. So, give me some slum love.
STEELE: I love it. (inaudible) ... some slum love out to my buddy. Gov. Bobby Jindal is doing a friggin' awesome job in his state. He's really turned around on some core principles — like hey, government ought not be corrupt. The good stuff ... the easy stuff.
Wh--what does "slum love" even mean? Did they have some idea? And does Steele want to lose Indians and Pakistanis now, too?
Then we have the always-retarded Michelle Bachmann.
According to CNN, Steele was then praised by Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.
As Steele concluded his remarks, Minnesota Rep. Michelle Bachmann -- the event's moderator -- told Steele he was "da man.""Michael Steele! You be da man! You be da man," she said.
Are they drunk? On drugs? What is going on?
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Savor, please, that not only did you remove these people from any real means of deciding the fate of this nation, but that you did it at the point this party seems to have gone totally insane, and when they have purged all but their stupidest members.
Labels: Bobby Jindal, hate war, HUH?, Michael Steele, Michelle Bachmann, racism, right wing
¶ February 26, 2009 0 Comments
It's refreshing to see that Katrina taught Bobby Jindal that if there's anything failure to monitor a pending disaster teaches us, it's that we need to be less vigilant. In his hilarious speech, you may recall, he derided government money for "something called volcano monitoring."
While to someone in Louisiana, volcanoes may sound exotic and mythical, I live in the Northwest and there are quite a few active volcanoes on this side of what Jindal may not realize is still the United States. And people live within their sometimes very wide spheres of destruction. Maybe he thinks Mt. St. Helens was a TV miniseries.
So, as it turns out, just as we monitor for earthquakes, we have to monitor for volcanic eruptions, or else people might die unwarned. I'm sure, though, that Jindal isn't wishing death on us over here. He's just an amiable idiot happy to read talking points, and hasn't the slightest idea what he's talking about. And probably isn't very curious to know.
It's amazing how obvious the GOP's tonedeafness becomes when they don't have a way of terrifying you into submission.
Again: keep using this patsy, and Steele, and Limbaugh as your public face, GOP. We need laughs.
Labels: Bobby Jindal, politics, right wing, science
¶ February 26, 2009 0 Comments
Labels: advertising, history, MAKE IT STOP, weirdness
¶ February 26, 2009 0 Comments
Look! The GOP exhumed Tom DeLay! Let's see what message he has for us from the land of the dead.
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Labels: bastards, right wing
¶ February 25, 2009 0 Comments
He gets his worker's comp denied for the bullet wounds he ended up suffering.
(McDonald's customer service number was here; see below for reason of deletion)
Update: Well, the owner of that particular franchise, it turns out, agrees, and both he and the McDonald's corporation are supporting the employee's claim. Good for them.
Labels: bastards, business, crime
¶ February 25, 2009 0 Comments
The first(post-election) of what no doubt will be a long series! I don't include the Post cartoon. Let's call that a starting sputter.
And that was from a newspaper. Not like this Los Alomitas, CA mayor, Dean Grose, who sent out an e-mail to a local black businesswoman with an image depicting the White House Lawn covered in watermelons with the caption, "No Easter Egg hunt this year."
Update: The mayor--claiming he was shocked, shocked to learn there were any stereotypes regarding black folks and watermelon, and thus proving that, in any event, he's of unfit intelligence to be a mayor--has agreed to resign on Monday. He will, however, remain on the city's council.
Oh, please keep doing this, Republicans. You know, my favorite quote about Jindal's hilariously bad GOP response last night was:
If it sounds like Jindal is targeting his speech to a room full of fourth graders, that's because he is. They might be the next people to actually vote for Republicans again.At the rate they're going that will soon be true. The beautiful thing is that, as their entire identity is now tied to all the wrong things to do, their only way out of this is to stop being Republicans. They are now defining being Republican as "doing nothing in a crisis, except ones they invent or allow."
Labels: bastards, Bobby Jindal, hate war, obama, racism, right wing
¶ February 25, 2009 0 Comments
Labels: bastards, economy, New Depression
¶ February 25, 2009 0 Comments
Labels: fatboy mcfascist, hate war, mark sanford, politics, right wing
¶ February 25, 2009 0 Comments
The true purpose of the pro-life movement is not to prevent abortions. It's to discourage sex, period.
Good luck on that one!
Labels: right wing
¶ February 24, 2009 0 Comments
Obama: Forceful, positive, and maybe promising too much but certainly refreshing. They're all goals working toward.
Jindal: This is the star of the Republican party? This is their speech? I particularly loved the long lead-in that honored the historical nature of Obama's presidency by condescending in the most embarrassing way. The message is that they don't think he's anything more than that. Other than that, all he does is repeat already-debunked ideas about the stimulus bill that only those inside the hermetically-sealed Republican echo chamber would think anyone still believes.
And remember, this is the governor of a very poor state, still recovering from the destruction of its most important city, who just refused money that'd help his citizens.
Keep going this way, GOP. Please, make Jindal more visible. He's a terrible speaker and comes off completely phony and unaware.
Labels: Bobby Jindal, economy, New Depression, obama, politics, right wing
¶ February 24, 2009 0 Comments
Annie Liebowitz pawns the rights to her photos.
Labels: art, economy, New Depression
¶ February 24, 2009 0 Comments
That damn Bill Gates! He couldn’t just dominate computers, he had to take over the video game world too! Truly, these were the actions of a madman bent on dominating every corner of the electronic world.
Funny then that I hear no such things about Apple, which has in the last ten years gone from personal computers and software to expanding into selling portable music devices, portable video players, digital cameras, providing online music and video content, streaming TV, and through the iPhone, cellular phones, GPS and portable web browsers. Now the iPhone app store is expanding into, you guessed it, video games. So I was expecting all of these people coming out of the woodwork to complain about Apple’s corporate-imperial ambitions….
Actually I wasn’t expecting that, because when people complained about Microsoft “taking over the world” it was utterly frivolous and utterly dependent on the fact that Microsoft is a company people love to hate. There was nothing to it then, just like there’s little to criticize in Apple or Google expanding into more areas of service if they are following standards of business ethics and legality. Look, Microsoft had some serious antitrust violations, and on that specific score they deserve censure. But people have taken that idea of illegal monopoly and applied it very frivolously to Microsoft, assuming that branching out into a lot of different areas was indicative of illegal monopoly behavior. That just wasn’t so, and it’s aggravating to see the same kind of evidence that some people used to use to demonstrate Microsoft’s “evil” now ignored because it’s coming from cuter companies.
Labels: capitalism
¶ February 23, 2009 0 Comments
Labels: bastards, economy, hate war, New Depression, right wing
¶ February 23, 2009 0 Comments
Two live performances. Enjoy.
Labels: 1990s, music, post-rock
¶ February 21, 2009 0 Comments
He must be. He just turned down $90 million in unemployment money for Louisiana, which is one of the poorest states in the country. Historically, angering the poor is not good politics there.
Good, Jindal. That's exactly how to make most voters hate your party as well. All you Republicans who call the stimulus socialist? Yes, you, the guy who was laid off from your job. Show your pride and integrity. If you get a job and it's supported in any way by the stimulus money, turn it down. Now, you and your family will starve. But proudly!
Labels: bastards, Bobby Jindal, economy, New Depression, right wing
¶ February 20, 2009 0 Comments
Given they have no other options nor ideas, Republican media have decided to oppose Obama by comparing him and Eric Holder to apes. How mature! How clever!
Stay classy, GOP. And enjoy the wilderness. Please, keep showing us what you really are at your core.
Labels: bastards, racism, right wing
¶ February 19, 2009 0 Comments
A very early version of Ronald with a costume that seems like it was made of stuff from the dumpster behind McDonald's. Also very unappetizing-looking, squashed sad burgers. And Ronald doing a suspiciously large amount of convincing of a kid to come with him. (and at the end, for some reason, the kid is grabbing his disturbingly visible ass over and over) It's like some truly scary dream that feels like a buried trauma but you're not sure.
And here's another to sear your memories.
Did I mention that voice is that of Willard Scott? By now you're cringing and shaking in a corner. I wish I could say I'm sorry. Really.
Labels: advertising, history, MAKE IT STOP, TV
¶ February 19, 2009 0 Comments
Labels: Germany, satire, weirdness
¶ February 19, 2009 0 Comments
No, this was real, and this is all that ever aired. Here's some other TV shows that should not have been.
In fact...here's something to ruin Hugh Jackman for all of you, forever.
Labels: comedy, MAKE IT STOP, UK, utter crap
¶ February 19, 2009 0 Comments
You may not want to click this unless you want to see the saddest dog that ever lived. Again. Thanks to mad science.
Labels: crime, MAKE IT STOP, science
¶ February 19, 2009 0 Comments
The Republicans squeal for the stimulus money they tried to defeat.
Shame? They can't even spell it.
Labels: right wing
¶ February 18, 2009 0 Comments
I never thought the day would come when I'd be on the same side as Fox on anything, but in this one case I agree. Not because the ad is sexual(Jesus, that's the last thing I'd criticize in and of itself), but because, like every PETA publicity campaign, it's completely ineffective at getting their message across. (Click the PETA tag below for my past thoughts on the subject)
I'm a carnivore myself, but that's not the reason PETA offends me. I don't care about anyone's personal dietary choices.
But laughable crap like this? I should point out that the impotence canard didn't get anyone to stop smoking either, and I'd like to ask (a)yeah, what DO these ads have to do with impotence? and (b) name me many who'd be reached by the ad who'd care much that the supposed impotence hits by age sixty. This ad is targeting 18-40-year-olds, and even there I'm being broader, I think, than is called for. The spokesperson is being disingenuous, and besides, it seems to me the whole point was to generate controversy enough to end up on shows like this to actually spread the real message to viewers.
Fox viewers? That's a pretty small demographic, comparatively speaking, isn't it?
I have no idea what PETA thinks it can accomplish with these silly publicity stunts that only make it look laughable except to a core group that'd agree with them on anything. It brings to mind some of their past idiocies like trying to get Hamburg, NY, to rename itself "Veggieburg." But I guess when you have a lot of ignorant celebrities, who want to contribute to a cause, but are too scared to ally themselves with a real one, to swell your coffers with donations, you can afford to waste resources. A lot of NPOs who DO know how to target funding can't say the same.
PETA makes the left look ridiculous. Let me tell you: the Yippies were fun too, but they didn't stop the Vietnam War.
Labels: MAKE IT STOP, PETA
¶ February 17, 2009 0 Comments
Just look. This is Chicago this morning at 7 am.
Meanwhile, it's 49 degrees and a little cloudy here. No contest.
Labels: chicago, the Village
¶ February 17, 2009 0 Comments
Maybe so. But have you ever been to a convention or conference in a different field? Banking, for one?
You may stop screaming now.
(found on Smashing Telly)
Labels: economy, MAKE IT STOP, New Depression
¶ February 17, 2009 0 Comments
The Catholic Church revives the practice of selling indulgences.
The best part is that when you end up in Hell anyway, you can't ask for your money back.
Labels: bastards, crime, religion
¶ February 13, 2009 0 Comments
Sheriff Lott, the guy launching a ridiculous investigation of Michael Phelps, also appears to have gotten an armored personnel carrier for his sheriff's department. Does South Carolina ever have occasion where such a thing is needed? Yes, it does! When a SC sheriff has a very tiny penis.
My home state, folks. People ask me why I don't miss South Carolina, or why I flinch in horror when its name is mentioned. Uh, well, you've obviously never lived there if you're even asking that. To me, the only thing missing in this story is them claiming Jesus lives in the vehicle.
Labels: police, South Carolina
¶ February 13, 2009 0 Comments
Labels: satire
¶ February 11, 2009 0 Comments
The Republicans are so depraved that they are willing to take inspiration from the Taliban.
After giving the package zero votes in the House, and with their counterparts in the Senate likely to provide in a crucial procedural vote today only the handful of votes needed to avoid a filibuster, Republicans are relishing the opportunity to make a big statement. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.) suggested last week that the party is learning from the disruptive tactics of the Taliban, and the GOP these days does have the bravado of an insurgent band that has pulled together after a big defeat to carry off a quick, if not particularly damaging, raid on the powers that be.
I wonder when they will stop thinking of themselves and start thinking of the American people. Do they really think they'll get back into power without doing a damn thing to atone for their eight years of irresponsibility and evil?
Get out of the fucking way, assholes. And I'm still wondering, why is Obama even trying at this point to placate these useless fools?
Labels: economy, obama, right wing
¶ February 11, 2009 0 Comments
More Warren from "cyberghostface." And hilarious. AND John Severin! Read! (Click image)
Labels: comics, horror, satire, scansdaily
¶ February 09, 2009 0 Comments
Labels: economy, Europe, music, New Depression, satire
¶ February 08, 2009 0 Comments
Here's what it looks like.
Labels: bill clinton, obama, politics
¶ February 08, 2009 0 Comments
A smaller Black Cat sketch. Click image to enlarge.
(Character (c) and tm 2009 Marvel Entertainment.)
As usual if anyone is interested, the first one to write me at john.roberson@gmail.com saying "I want that thing" can have this one for $35 plus shipping. First come, first serve. I accept Paypal. ¶ February 08, 2009 0 Comments
A pencil sketch of Marvel's Black Cat, done kinda on a dare from a friend. Click image to see full sketch. And yes, it is on blue paper. I had some lying about.
(Character (c) and tm 2009 Marvel Entertainment.)
By the way, if anyone is interested, the first one to write me at john.roberson@gmail.com saying "I want that thing" can have it for $50 plus shipping. First come first serve, though more of these will be coming. I accept Paypal. ¶ February 08, 2009 0 Comments
A beautifully painted and touching story of a wolf. Posted complete at Scans Daily by, once again, "cyberghostface." Click image for more.
Labels: comics, fantasy, scansdaily
¶ February 07, 2009 0 Comments
Labels: galactica, science fiction, TV
¶ February 07, 2009 0 Comments
You're no longer vice-president, so I guess it's okay to say this now: I wish you would die. I wish your black heart would finally stop. I wish you would go away so we would never have to hear your vile verbal poison again.
Yes, I mean it. I truly hate this bastard. Think of the thousands upon thousands of lives wasted, all because of this little shit. If it could be done, I'd call for a public trial and execution of this son of a bitch, and the method would be drawing and quartering after disembowelment. This, following three days of waterboarding, with a doctor close by to make sure his heart keeps pumping for the duration. Fortunately for him, and contrary to his perception, we do not live in the Middle Ages.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Labels: bastards, cheney, right wing, supervillain
¶ February 06, 2009 0 Comments
Meet the New God, Same As the Old God
A great article by Steven Grant on, mostly, Morrison's Final Crisis. Which, due to financial constraints, I haven't seen a full issue of since November, nor its tie-ins, but I have seen a good bulk of pages on Scans Daily. It's a fairly even-handed article, but a specific portion jumped out at me. First, though, allow me to babble a bit. I can, as it's a blog. This won't necessarily be all about Grant's article, but these thoughts came up when reading it.
I have two pet peeves in storytelling, at least in comics--two concepts which I find self-limiting, overrated, and at this point, played out. These are: identification theory--the idea that to properly be engaged by a story, you must have a protagonist the audience can "identify" with, or more often it's phrased that they must "like" them. The wide exception with this is specifically, intentionally genre-based material. It's kind of hard to scare someone in horror, for instance, if they don't somehow associate themselves with the main character. I just don't think it's universally true for all narrative.
I think this rests on some shaky assumptions. One of these is that art is not about showing something new, but reinforcing the assumptions of the audience. I can see why Hollywood would want to do that, but look at their output and see the stale, repetitive entertainment that gets you. And another is connected to that--it forces a template of some form of "good vs. evil" on everything, and what is "good" is what the audience "identifies" with. This is all too deterministic for me.
Another is that everyone is different. To think that you can even come up with a type that would appeal to some hypothetical demographic in the audience is to oversimplify, to be, most likely, wrong, and even if you accept such a cynical view of your audience, suppose you pick the wrong one and end up with a small audience anyway.
I've always taken the view that artists should not consciously try to apply theory to art when making it, but rather simply go with what it seems to want to look like. Theory is something constructed to understand something after the fact. Everyone wants to do as little work as they can, so they try to come up with processes to simplify work. In art, theory is such a process. It's a way to try to determine the final form before ever constructing it. Which is certainly something you want to do in practical types of art, such as architecture.
But in narrative, I'm not sure it's very useful. For my own part, the only real way is to sit your butt in the chair at the table or desk, and do it. Which I don't do as often as I like, because that's the risky and boring part of art--the making. And no amount of theory will get you out of it, and if your art doesn't end up defying your theories, it might not be much good. And anyway, how much fun is it to make then, anyway? But the truth is the only way to see your final form is to work. Theories, sometimes, are a way of avoiding work, of thinking you're getting something done when you're not. Marcel Duchamp was eaten alive by this.
The other is mythology, and the idea that comics is best when it's all archetypes and that these are our modern-day myths. And also, the tropes of the "Campbell Structure," which Grant points out was not only long ago made a Hollywood cliche by George Lucas, but wasn't even intended by Campbell to be applied consciously to the making of stories. The form it usually takes in comics, however, is the justification of endless, static trademarks and their repetitive histories and recycling, as in the case of superheroes. Even if myths, though, are only stories--which Steven Grant points out is a misunderstanding--they began as something new. If one makes one's own stories without trying to be conscious of all this, or constantly making reference to past culture(on purpose anyway, as if referencing were storytelling, which, Geoff Johns, much as I'm liking Legion of Three Worlds, it isn't), stuff like that will come out but organically, rather than a stiff, fake, "this is myth" way.
Though I loved all that post-mod stuff once, I think at this point the bongwater's been recycled too many times. Perhaps that's why we all feel so tired. It's as though pop culture has gone through a phase of cannibalism, and then wasting away. I'm as guilty as anyone, of course.
Anyway, part of what Steven Grant had to say about myth, but you really should also read the rest of the column:
...superheroes are not good vehicles for addressing our times. By their nature they stand outside our reality, and holding them up as an evolutionary goal is a basic (again, very '30s-'50s science fiction) misunderstanding of evolution, which has no "goals." Comics stories aren't the joint creation of our civilization but the products of individual minds, even when those minds work in consort (and just as frequently at cross-purposes) in a "shared universe," a rather pathetic, puny shadow of mythology. They're just stories, they don't function as myths function. It's not reflexive; myths are stories but stories aren't myths. (We also nurse the misdefinition of "myth" as falsehood, but that doesn't apply in this context either. In their own civilizations, myths may not be true, but they aren't strictly false either. They're analogues of reality.)
Not that our civilization doesn't have myths, but the authors of those myths are Karl Marx and Milton Friedman, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein, not Camus or Isaac Asimov or Stephen Cannell or even Grant Morrison. And we no longer live in a world where magical/fantasy/mythological/religious constructs are required, or even useful, to make sense of it. Those are "comfort" constructs, ultimately reductionist to give us the consolation that even if we are unable to control our world in any strict sense of the word, we may at least simplify it to easily digestible bits that we might at least entreat. But our world is too complex for that to be of any practical use, so resorting to it is ultimately a surrender to an inability to cope with the complexities.
Labels: comics, grant morrison, literature
¶ February 06, 2009 0 Comments
By way of a close friend, here's a German composer who translated stock charts, and other kinds of graphs of various parts of the collapse, into music.
Labels: economy, New Depression
¶ February 06, 2009 0 Comments
Labels: comedy, history, my influences, satire, UK
¶ February 03, 2009 0 Comments
From Gold Diggers of 1933.
Labels: economy, film, history, New Depression
¶ February 01, 2009 0 Comments
Labels: economy, film, history, New Depression, propaganda
¶ February 01, 2009 0 Comments
