Critical Apprehensions & Intemperate Discourses

Kip Manley, proprietor

Defying gravity.

Mostly a me-too post, pointing you to the sheer, unadulterated joy of Tintin Pantoja’s manga-styled Wonder Woman proposal. So far, there’s been no word from DC proper (Tintin herself theorizes that maybe she sent it up the wrong channels), but John Jakala makes as eloquent a case for the book as you’d want. —Let’s hope Joss Whedon, at least, is paying attention.

(Bonus, also from the Sporadic Sequential post: “A few years ago I pitched Dan DiDio a manga-style take on Supergirl that had Kara as a pop idol, Superman as the lead singer of the Justice League touring rock band (with the Flash as the Fastest Lead Guitarist Alive), and Lex Luthor as an Evil Music Mogul. Obviously it didn’t get picked up, and we ended up with Britney Kara instead, but it was fun to do.”)

—Filed 6856 days ago to Sequentualities; Comment.

I’m the best there is at what I do. The trick is not to mind it—

Whew! Rube Malek and Cole Coleman don’t have to wait for Buck Williams or Rayford Steele or Storm Saxon to save their bacon. Mike Mackey and the fine folks at ACC Studios have unleashed a Berkeley professor’s flawed duplication ray to bring us—Libarro World!

• Lt. Kerry, a pro-military warrior,
• Deaniac, an unexcitable ultra-genius,
• Miss Rodham, a sultry anti-feminist, and
• Teddie, a distinguished teetotaler.

Available in the pages of Liberality #3. (Keep your eyes peeled for the “Final Drudge Report” variant cover.)

—Filed 6859 days ago to Sequentualities; Comment.

“He would be as happy as anyone to be rid of these men. They frighten him as much as they frighten everyone else.”

I was going to say something, anything about Orson Scott Card’s latest exercise in one-state-two-state-red-state-blue-state (here, but also here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). But then I remembered I’d already quoted what somebody else had to say:

Unsuccessful in war and unable to adjust to a troubled peace, Weimar’s visionaries dismissed what was for them an overly complex, difficult, and demoralizing reality and indulged in elaborating fantasies of a vicious war of revenge that cast them in the role of conquerors. In their literature these angry men gave vent to primitive wishes for the annihilation of France, England, the United States, or whomever else they pictured as Germany’s enemy. But the war visions of the 1920s were not merely the self-serving fabrications of isolated malcontents. Instead of being left to dissipate in the realm of dreams, daydreams, and semireligious entrancement, the visions of revenge and renewal were converted into a literature of mass consumption. The published fantasy—often a quirky mixture of adventure story, fairy tale, millenarian vision, and political program—was intended to act as a catalyst inflaming the same type of emotions among the readers that originally elicited the fantasies in the minds of their creators. In this manner, what originated as compensation for the frustrated individual was transformed into a psychological tool, a propagandistic call for militant nationalism and engagement in antirepublican politics. Some of these writers, in fact, were also active as political speakers and agitators.

“History doesn’t repeat itself,” said Mark Twain, “but it does rhyme.” —Except, of course, he didn’t, and anyway, rhyme’s gone all out of fashion. Though I wouldn’t trust fidelity or fashion to keep us safe, not from this crew. Remember, “If This Goes On—”

—Filed 6859 days ago to Paralitticisms; Comment.

Logan’s end-run.

Let’s see: this post from Big Media Matt leads to this post from Tomorrow’s Pundit Today Ezra Klein commenting on five minutes in which SEIU’s Andy Stern told CAP’s CampusProgress.org the following—

We’re thinking of creating a new organization called My Life that would be mainly focused on 18 to 34 year olds. It would be web-based, and what it would allow people to do is purchase on a national level health care that you can move from job to job. You’d also be able to do things like tweak your resume on file permanently in your personal account. You could access debit cards potentially and start doing some of the new financial transactions like putting money on your cell phone. It would have opportunities for people to network with other people who are doing similar jobs or somewhat of a Craigslist-type function. It would be in some ways what AARP is for seniors: a place that advocates on their behalf. But clearly it’s a different form of organization; whether you call that a union, or an internet community, or an association, I’m not sure. But it has that kind of potential.

—which reminded me of a post from Old Skool Nick Confessore from back in the dark post-election depression of 2004:

Imagine an endeavor under which the official Democratic Party sponsored a non-profit health-insurance corporation, one which offered some form of health insurance to anyone who joined the party—say, with a $50 “membership fee.” Since I’m not a health care wonk, I don’t know how you’d structure such a business, or what all the pitfalls might be, or even if such a thing is possible or desirable. But I can think of some theoretical advantages. The Democrats could put into practice, right away, their ideas for the kind of health insurance they think we all ought to have. They could build their grassroots and deliver tangible benefits to members. Imagine a good HMO, run not for profit and in the public interest, along the lines the Democrats keep telling us all existing HMOs and health care providers should be run.

Which, yes yes yes. More, please. And of course you’d call that a “union.” Allow me to quote Utah Philips quoting some other guy—

Thus proving everlastingly what a union is: a way to get things done together that you can’t get done alone.

And to play for a moment the game of US and THEM: THEY are already out there, in their megachurches, patching the holes THEY’ve made in the social safety net: “First, you find a church.”

MBC is a mega-church with a parking garage that could serve a medium-sized airport, but many smaller evangelical churches offer a similar array of services—childcare, after-school programs, ESL lessons, help in finding a job, not to mention the occasional cash handout. A woman I met in Minneapolis gave me her strategy for surviving bouts of destitution: “First, you find a church.” A trailer-park dweller in Grand Rapids told me that he often turned to his church for help with the rent. Got a drinking problem, a vicious spouse, a wayward child, a bill due? Find a church. The closest analogy to America’s bureaucratized evangelical movement is Hamas, which draws in poverty-stricken Palestinians through its own miniature welfare state.

US could really use some more boots on this particular ground. Because let’s be honest, here: the point isn’t (just) to do good works. It’s to bind people to your party, your argument, your worldview; to provide, as Matt put it above, “the capacity to take people who aren’t ‘political’ sorts and make them see that politics is interested in them even if they aren’t interested in politics.” —That comparison with Hamas isn’t only a knee-slapper at the expense of the faith-based.

But let’s be further honest: one of the benefits of getting help from—and moreso of supporting the help given by—something like a megachurch is the ugly, comforting knowledge that the wrong people won’t be getting any. THEY must go elsewhere, and if they haven’t any elsewhere to go, it’s their own damn fault. —Partisan; exclusionary; tribal; the meanest of means tests, and Avedon Carol rings an important alarum re: My Life—

And this would mean, what? That you lose your healthcare once you hit a certain age, and then it jumps in costs because you’ll be in the other part of the demographic?

Now, Stern does say My Life would be “mainly focused on 18 to 34 year olds,” not limited to. And I think it’s a function of who would be likely to buy into the whole internet-mediated social networking 2.0 thing, as well as looking to reach out to people whose worklives no longer allow for unions as we’ve known them, and not a function of selecting only the young and liberal and secular and hip and healthy. —But the ugliness under the game of US and THEM is something to keep in mind: the whole point of the safety net, after all, is that it’s there for all of us, any of us, no matter what, should we need it. No binding other than citizenship required.

Also, “My Life”? Ack. Could it possibly be called something else—or is it actively intended to disincline folks like me, on the far side of the demographic line?

(I suppose it’s better than Welfr.)

—Filed 6861 days ago to Squawkbox; Comment [2].

Don’t let those Sunday afternoons.

The things that happen when you’re altogether elsewhere: back in June, “somewhere in northwestern Europe,” Jane Siberry changed her name to Issa. (Metafilter reacted, including the Jar-Jar joke you’d expect, and a wry lick at Siberry’s second album, which, thinking about it, you probably also would have expected.) As I’m typing this, she’s workshopping new material in Vancouver; there’ll be a tour of the Antipodes early next year. (I did hear about how she was selling everything but her guitar, thanks; apparently, I fell into a very narrow window the last time I checked up on her.)

I’m not so much mentioning this to comment on name-changes in general, or this one in specific; I know from design that surface is important, and I know from magic that names matter, but in the end a rose is still a song is still a rose, right? You either know her already and love her, or you’ve never heard of her, or she just isn’t right for you, not now, not at the current juncture, and what do you care what I think about what name I have to look for on the lists of upcoming concerts? —But if at this current juncture you think she just isn’t right to you because of maybe the whimsy, or the quirk, can I just point out that seeing her live is as close as I ever want to get to church, these days? “I didn’t know we could do that,” says Dana Whitaker, in the sort of deeply embedded pop-culture reference I specialize in, when I bother to specialize in anything; when I forget we can do that, something usually reminds me. —She reminds me, as often as not. Whatever her name might be.

Mostly I’m mentioning it because it’s what I learned on my way to pointing out that Child, the third disc of her New York concerts from back about the turn of the century, is pretty much a must for the playlists of the sort of people who make playlists of holiday music but not until after Thanksgiving. It’s available from her online store, for whatever price you’d want to pay, and for a while there, you’ll be as close to church as you’d want to be. And if I have to explain what I mean by that, well. Go listen to “Hockey,” instead. Smile as she calls the band home, one by one. “Rosie…”

Get away get away get away get away
Get away get away get away get away
Break away, break away

—Filed 6863 days ago to Poprocks; Comment [1].

Yeah. It’s a lot like that.

Well the way that song came to be written is, that I was watching a friend’s trailer down in Oklahoma. He lived in this trailer way out in the woods. Land is really cheap in Oklahoma, especially in the rural area. He’d had a trailer out there for just about forever and built a wood acroutements around the trailer, like he had a porch out front with a porch swing. So anyway, he was gone off overseas on some kind of journey and he left me there to watch the place. There was nothing to do. The TV reception was real bad and he didn’t have any books I wanted to read, but he had a video tape of the Marriage of Figaro, the entire opera by Mozart. So I spent days just watching the Marriage of Figaro over and over again and I didn’t talk to anybody for a long time, I was out there all by myself with no telephone. I would get kind of drowsy and you know how when you are by yourself for a long time, you’ll think I’m crazy, but the voices of your memory and your dream world start to become louder and louder. I think that is why people get a little nutty when they live off by themselves for a long time. But anyway I woke up one day out there in the trailer and I was kind of like living in this Marriage of Figaro universe, only I was still playing folk songs: I was playing Woody Guthrie songs to myself. So I went out and sat on that porch swing and started swaying back and forth and kinda fell in this trance. I had my old crummy classical guitar out there and was playing along. That melody came to me. First it was that melody that walks up the scale. so I don’t know it was kind of an impressionist mix match and I hear that other melody going along with it right at the same time. It all kind of… well, the combination of the mosquitoes, locusts all around, bees around the sound of the porch swing creaking, all that mixed together and having been immersed in the Marriage of Figaro for a few days. That is kind of where that song came from. It took me a long time to figure out what it was gonna be about.

—Dave Carter (with Tracy Grammer)

—Filed 6874 days ago to Poprocks; Comment.

Oh, hell yes.

—Filed 6880 days ago to Squawkbox; Comment [1].

“...until the white thread of dawn appear to you distinct from its black thread...”

I see that David Cunningham, the crypto-Christianist hack who brought us The Path to 9/11, is on his way to Romania, where he’ll be directing The Dark is Rising. —Walden Media hopes to launch another kid-flick franchise to follow the success of its Narnia adaptations.

Sigh.

If he doesn’t mangle the book(s) beyond all recognition, he will at the very least be forced to acknowledge Cooper’s bracingly grim morality: the Light, in the end, is in its purity and extremity as inhumane as the Dark, dragons and nemeses locked in an abyssal conflict largely invisible to us of the track. We can no more directly identify with the Light than we can wholly condemn those who succumb to the Dark. It’s one of those Important Lessons a kid really ought to learn. (Even if I did stay up late on my eleventh birthday. Just in case.) —Heck, maybe Cunningham himself will learn something, wrestling with the material. One can hope.

And even if he doesn’t, and even if he does mangle the book(s) beyond all recognition, at least those books will get into more kids’ hands. So there’s that, I suppose. —Whichever; I’ve got a sex scene to rewrite and a long-overdue boar hunt to choreograph, and a comics convention to attend. Bygones.

“It’s a terrific view,” Jane said. “Worth the climb. But the wind’s made my eyes water.”

“It must blow like anything up here,” said Simon. “Look at the way those trees are all bent inland.”

Bran was gazing puzzled at a small blue-green stone in the palm of his hand. “Found this in my pocket,” he said to Jane. “You want it, Jenny-oh?”

Barney said, gazing up over the hill, “I heard music! Listen—no, it’s gone. Must have been the wind in the trees.”

“I think it’s time we were starting out,” Will said. “We’ve got a long way to go.”

—Filed 6896 days ago to Paralitticisms; Comment [1].

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