I bet you wish you had.
Best short story writer in America? —I don’t know; I haven’t been keeping up with American short stories these days. I did just finish the latest Kelly Link collection, though, and passed it on to the Spouse, and there is some little afterglow. It’s an album (of course), the one your friends are talking up and when you finally download it and unzip it and drop it into your mp3 player, you hover over play with some little skepticism, because it couldn’t possibly, but then you click and listen and yes, somehow, it does. Dreamlike, they’ll tell you, and I’ll tell you too, but you should maybe know that’s only how she gets where she’s going. Has nothing to do with what she does when she gets there.
“The Færy Handbag” breaks your heart, and “The Hortlak” chills it neatly, and “The Cannon” is as close as anyone’s got to Milorad Pavic in this language that I’ve seen; “Catskin” is as disconcerting as it was in a brown paper zine, and “Lull” is—“Lull” is. Wow.
And then there’s “Stone Animals,” which was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2005, and it’s the second-weakest piece in here, which maybe says something about where Kelly Link stands among the short story writers of America. (Oh, it’s as fiendishly clever as Matthew says, and it’s stuffed to the rafters with goodness, but it ends with the obverse of it was just a dream, and that’s never satisfying, no matter how you slice it.) (Though I am dragged back, and back again: the Journal excerpts a bit from Eddie Campbell’s truncated History of Humor, and it’s the panels where he’s trying to explain what’s funny about the marginal illuminations he’s showing his daughter. “Look,” he says. “They’re going to war.” “It’s not funny when humans do it,” she says. “Why should it be funny just because it’s rabbits?” Which it is, and it isn’t. Moving on—)
“The Great Divorce” is the weakest piece, but that’s okay; it’s a trifle, not meant to carry much weight. It’s the two pieces I haven’t mentioned yet you’ll want to be especially careful of. “Magic for Beginners” I left for last, because I read the opening lines first, and they—
Fox is a television character, and she isn’t dead yet. But she will be, soon. She’s a character on a television show called The Library. You’ve never seen The Library on TV, but I bet you wish you had.
—filled me with such a sudden ache of presque vu that I had to leave it until I’d read everything else. But it’s online, over here, so you don’t have to do what I did. Go, download, press play, see if it lives up to its hype: Did you watch Buffy with all your friends? Trade fansubbed tapes of Utena episodes? Are you obsessively trolling the TWoP boards for Veronica Mars clues? Do you download torrents of Battlestar Galactica as soon you can? —Well, that’s how she gets where she’s going with this one, and something of what it’s done to you when you get there.
And as for “Some Zombie Contingency Plans”—
Do not fuck South Dakota.
Roy Edroso’s headline does not withstand the fundamental point Roxanne makes, but it’s PZ who most eloquently, even poignantly nails it: South Dakota is only trying to de jure (against the people’s will) what’s been de facto throughout the country for far too long.
At least we can buy Girl Scout cookies this year without a wingnut fuss. —More and more, I’m thinking this classic Herblock cartoon cuts to the quick of sexual politics here in crepuscular America:
Fifty years and counting, and they’re still fucking terrified. Take what heart you can.
I’ve won hundreds at the track, but I’m not betting on the afterlife.
“The Big Guns,” Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins; “Fortune Presents Gifts Not According to the Book,” Dead Can Dance; “Mercury,” Heidi Berry; “Behind You All the Way,” Steve Espinola; “Picnics,” Monk & Canatella; “Kayleigh,” Marillion; “Bacalo Con Pan,” Irakere; “God Will,” Holly Cole Trio; “Walter Carlos,” Momus; “Amazed,” Poe.
Live through this, and you won’t look back.
So our government is bound and determined, it seems, to hand control of several major ports (including those of New York, New Jersey, Miami, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and what’s left of New Orleans, all of them already grossly undefended) over to a corporate arm of the United Arab Emirates, which, among other things, some of them doubtless germane and even adducible to the business that is running ports, are known to have perhaps circumstantial but nonetheless thick and fast and furious connections to That With Which We Are at War; namely, Terror—at least, connections thicker and faster and more furious than those which nominally launched ten thousand Iraqi deaths.
But far be it from me merely to rail about the wrong that’s going on! Silly notion: could we maybe, once we’ve staked the heart of this monstrous regime and cauterized the last neck-stump of its endless talking heads, could we put some safeguards in place? —We could wait till after the parade, you know, when the last of the ticker-tape settles on the makeshift stage, that moment, you know, the echoes of the cheers have died, and we’re starting to look at each other, a little uncomfortable, the whole future opening up before us with opportunities and possibilities and dare I even say it some little hope, but it’s all blank, formless, unshaped—what do we do now? Where do we go? What step should we take? —Might I suggest, and like I said, could be a silly notion, but hear me out: what we do, see, is decide, write down, codify an agreement that no one single, unitary person ever again should have this power to sell us out for a greasy buck: that the power to make such decisions be broken and scattered to differing, competing branches of whatever government we might put in place. Wouldn’t need too many: a couple, maybe three at most. Enough so that one can stop another should it step anywhere near being this far out of line. Needs a snappy name, though. Something like, oh, I don’t know, checks and balances?
(We may however have finally found the BTKWB limit: selling our port security to the highest bidder no matter whom. Jesus fucking Christ.)
You know it’s Friday when you wake up and it’s another Friday entirely and then you wait until it’s almost Saturday as it is.
“Music on the Floor, II,” Michael Torke, the London Sinfonietta; “Trumpets and Violins,” Suburban Kids with Biblical Names; “Between the Shadows,” Loreena McKennitt; “Oh, Lady Be Good,” Ella Fitzgerald; “Iced Lightning,” RJD2; “Strange,” the Soft Boys; “Four of Two,” They Might Be Giants; “Bungalow,” XTC; “Footsteps,” Brian Eno and John Cale; “We’re All Loaded (Whiskey Made Me Drunk),” Rosco Gordon.
Where we are; what we’ve become.
Fuck a bunch of vice president.
By the semi-nutty Stalinist line of discipline coursing through the fever-swamps of our national discourse—
—I hereby command you to stand the fuck up right now and salute the Editors. Present arms!
The loyalty “owed” a President, or any government official, or any policy of the same, by a private citizen, is this much loyalty: zero. Let me say that again: the loyalty I, or you, or anyone “owes” to someone in the government, or to some course of action they favor, is none whatsoever. To think otherwise, Teddy Roosevelt might comment, is “unpatriotic and servile.” Now, this is not to say you can’t give your loyalty to the President or his policies—it’s a free country, and you can do any non-treasonous thing you want with your loyalty—but that’s your decision, and nobody has to live with it but you (and all the people who suffer from the consequences of your stupid choice of loyalties, of course.) Personally, I think the President is a horrible fucking stupid cunt and his policies are for shit. Your results may vary. But if someone tells me that I “owe” it to the President or his crap policy to act like I don’t think that, well, that person can get in the big long line with WPE and the rest of folks who really desperately need to go fuck themselves.
But Democracy gets even worse. The President and the President’s policies owe me loyalty. The President and his policies are supposed to be working for the good of the country and her people. That’s how the loyalty flows. The President is required to act for my (ok, “our”) benefit; if he does not, the betrayal is his, and the sorts of things which you’d like to call “disloyalty” become duty. Does Gore’s speaking out against torture “undermine” the country? That’s a tricky position to hold if you oppose torture. Does it “undermine” the policy? I wish. No, it does this: it reminds the world that however fucked up our government is, it isn’t us, it doesn’t speak for us, and it can never, ever make us forget it. And I do say God Bless America.
So say we all, man. So say we all.
A mighty princess, forged in the heat of housework.
Remember when Belle had a pony? —Well, now she’s had a cow: an all too common and all too necessary cow, that too often sits in the living room with the dam’ elephant:
“Adrock”: Men seem to care less about certain chores. For example, in general, I think they’d rather just let the bathtub get grimy and deal with it than put a little time and elbow grease to clean it up. Is it a matter of priorities? Brain wiring? Societal influences? I don’t know.
Damn, why didn’t anyone ever consider that? Now that I consider this revelatory idea for the first time, I have to think it’s probably because “back in the day”, proto-human females liked to “tidy up” their area of the veldt in order to occupy their copious free time, while the males hunted big game. Makes sense to me! I mean, it’s obviously inconceivable that men in our society could learn that if they just flake out long enough, some woman will clean up their shit, and then they can be all “hey—you wanted to do that!”
It is brilliant, and hereby commended to your attention. —My only contribution is to violate a little copyright: in my ideal universe, we would all have copies of I Hate to Housekeep Book, with the delightfully frazzled Hilary Knight cartoons. (We might keep it next to The I Hate to Cook Book, and the Appendix to same. Our copy is apparently a first edition, ©1962 by Peg Bracken, ©1958 by The Curtis Publishing Company. It’s signed by Ms. Bracken (“Greetings!”) and inscribed: “From Mrs. Whittington, May 11, 1963.” Why, it’s only five years older than me.) —We would keep copies on hand so that when someone said something like, oh,
Wow, here’s a radical concept—men are generally sloppier/messier than woman and are better able to live with mess, women generally like a cleaner house, so it makes sense that women (unfairly) end up doing more cleaning.
I’m not sure how housework got to be elevated to some leftist cause, but it all sounds a bit petty.
well, we could sit them down with a copy and have them read for a spell, and they might could cop a clue or two as to how much of this earth-thing called “cleaning” is due to nurture, is a learned response, is all-too-terribly cultural, is easy enough to pick up for themselves. (I’d especially recommend the chapters entitled “How to Remember and How to Remember to Remember” and “How to be Happy When You’re Miserable.”) Heck, they might even glimmer to some of the reasons why it’s learned the way it’s been learned; might even muse aloud as to as well-meaning as these books are, they’re pretty clear indictments of just how thin and awful the tactic of going along to get along can be; might see just that even though women in this culture and this society have come as far as they have since then, it’s outrageous that Betty Friedan is dead of old age and they’re still in the aggregate expected to cover 70 of the cooking and cleaning at home. —But let’s not hold out too much hope. There’s nothing so self-righteous as a man explaining why he didn’t think to pick up his socks, and I say this as someone who’s a degree or two more slovenly than his Spouse.
The copyright violation? Well, I thought I might give you a taste of the foreword, here, along with a cartoon, and then close with a moral. And it’s not like anyone should care too terribly much about piracy; the dam’ book’s no longer in print.
For a number of long years, through no fault of my own, I have been shin-deep in the business of giving advice on Housewifery. This is a better name for it, I think, than Homemaking, which is rather too pretty, like Nuisance Abatement Officer for Dogcatcher. Housewifery is more honest and more inclusive.
Housewifery isn’t among the Seven Lively Arts, though it can certainly be regarded as the Eighth. It is lively indeed, in the same way sand-hogging is. They both take courage, muscle, and endurance. The main difference between a sand hog and a housewife is that he has a nice clean tunnel later to show for his efforts, and it stays put, while she has it all to do over again the next day. She must simply keep tunneling.
She is faced constantly with mute but persistent supplicants for attention. There are several choices; move it, clean it, shine it, brush it, wash it. Or hide it.
I have been doing all this myself for about twenty years, and I find it hard on the manicure. I’ve found, too, that none of the books about it does me much good. The household experts hand out cures that are worse than the ailment. They expect you to do things that depress you merely to think about, let alone do. They think you’ll actually keep an orderly file of all the washing instructions that come with the family clothes, once you’ve been told to. The efficiently organized expert makes the mistake of assuming that you, too, want to be one.
My own goals are more modest. I only want to make it around the clock, that’s all, and I don’t want to think about it too much, either, because I’m thinking about something else. If you’re a bit nervous in the service anyway, and your mind is on raising the African violet or running an office or painting a picture, reorganizing yourself into an efficient housewife is a giant step you’re not about to take. You want an aspirin, not radical surgery.
So, though I admit hastily and gratefully that many of the things in this book were discovered or invented by experts (even the experts slip up once in a while and recommend something you’d consider doing), just as many of them weren’t.
Indeed, some of the wee nuggets herein are ones that I mined, all by myself.
Take the matter of diapers. I had often heard, from wiser folk than I, that a soft, old, much-laundered diaper makes as nice a dish towel as any girl could want. When my child outgrew the diaper stage, I learned that this was true.
However, as one runs out of babies, one tends to run out of diapers. This happened to me, and for at least three months I was wiping the dishes on anything handy. Then, one day, with the lightning-swift grasp of fundamentals that has long marked my slightest move in the household arts, I realized that you don’t have to have another baby in order to buy more diapers. You just go buy some, that’s all. If you don’t have a wedding ring, let alone a baby, and if this sort of thing bothers you, you can always have the diapers gift-wrapped.
A note here, about language. I suppose it was inevitable that around so old a business as housekeeping—surely the second-oldest profession—a special vocabulary should have evolved.
It has. All the housekeeping experts say “food preparation area” when they mean “kitchen,” and “soiled spots” when they mean “dirty places,” and so forth.
In this book I prefer to call things by their right names, if they will let me. (Sometimes they don’t let you. Once, when I wrote a book about having a baby, I wanted to use the word “pain,” having come to a point in the proceedings where that seemed to be the only word that said what I meant. But they changed it to “discomfort.” These are things the writer can’t do a thing about, and he shouldn’t be blamed for them.)
One more point: the housewifery manuals I have seen pay little attention to certain aspects I consider pertinent; for instance, how to make yourself do things you don’t like to do, and how to remember to do them. Some of these techniques are included here. There are some swift recipes, too, for days when you shouldn’t have got up in the first place but still must go that last long mile and cook dinner. And there are some slightly slower recipes for company. And there is the matter of keeping up a good front—
Indeed, there is a small mountain of miscellany here—and naturally enough, in a book about the most miscellaneous of all miscellaneous businesses. Putting the scraps together was like sorting confetti in a wind tunnel, and you should have seen the ones that blew away. Catch them as they sail past, if you can. And meanwhile, here are the rest, in a book by a nonexpert for nonexperts, with warm good wishes, and best of luck to the African violet.
The moral?
Last night, we wanted a nice quiet evening at home, the Spouse and I, since the past couple of nights I’ve elsewhere or she has, and so we settled down together with some leftover risotto from a couple nights before, since I do the cooking and I didn’t want to cook, though I did stop on the way home to pick up a loaf of ciabatta and a bottle of plonk and another bottle of port, and after we’d supped and sipped and sat back from our empty plates, she said, did you get any chocolate? And I had to say, um, well, no. Hadn’t thought of it.
From which one can only conclude: there in the African veldt, while our male ancestors were out hunting giraffes, our female ancestors were sitting around sweeping and gossping and chewing on cocoa beans, which hardwired their neurochemistry (something to do with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, I think you’ll find) to damn well expect the stuff, and they’ve been nagging us about it ever since.
—cross-posted to Sisyphus Shrugged.
Just checking.
Lemme see if I got this right:
- The editorial page of a newspaper—a community organ—is a perfectly appropriate place to print ill-conceived, unfunny cartoons for pretty much the sole purpose of mocking the faith of some members of that community, and it’s irresponsible to voice even quasi-official disapproval despite the shockingly murderous backlash because, hey, free speech, they should grow up and suck it up and learn to deal;
- However, a memorial service—for a woman whose life has been dedicated to the fight for peace and justice and damn well grabbing the arc of the universe and bending it with her own bare hands—is a staggeringly inappropriate place to say much of anything at all about the fight that was her life, and the very particular strife and injustice yet afflicting her world and her country, because, hey, the president might be embarrassed, and how dare they carry on like that.
Okay then.
—cross-posted to Sisyphus Shrugged.
Of course she would look good in a suit.
Yeah, I’m elsewhere. Why don’t you go take a gander at Alison Bechdel and her best gal at the launch party for Sarah Waters’ Night Watch? —Via the Spouse.
Exit, pursued by a bear.
James, over at vacua, is looking for a macguffin.
In suspense movies and the thrillers you buy at airport bookshops, the discovery of one single significant piece of evidence—an incriminating letter, a tape recording, a computer disk—suffices to bring down the government. In the real world, the state of the evidence is apparently quite irrelevant. We know perfectly well that the current administration conducts aggressive wars on the basis of fudged intelligence, tortures suspects, taps phones without a warrant in direct violation of black letter law, engages in endless character assassination, buys television personalities, suppresses scientific information from public agencies, helps energy companies rip off states, and winks as its corporate supporters rip off the treasury through sweetheart contracts. Only a tobacco lobbyist could raise doubts about the reality of this pattern of wrongdoing.
Scruggs thinks it’s the other shoe.
Treating as normal people who are dangerously batshit is self-defense. If you pretend not to notice, they pretend too and don’t have to kill you to protect their charade. As always, the people who disturb me most are those who have coddled the charade, but are now getting that sinking, oh my fucking god feeling. They’re anxious for anything that would return us to a world where epistemic relativism isn’t the rule, but they’ve circumscribed their ability to assist that by playing the short term smart game.
Me, I just can’t get over how they’re running a plot that’s right out of (say) your average Xena episode.
FEINSTEIN
Can the president suspend, in secret or otherwise, the application of Section 503 of the National Security Act, which states that no covert action may be conducted which is intended to influence United States political processes, public opinion, policies or media? In other words, can he engage in otherwise illegal propaganda?
GONZALES
Senator, this will probably be my response to all of your questions of these kind of hypotheticals. Questions as to whether or not—can Congress pass a statute that is in tension with the President’s constitutional authority? Those are very, very difficult questions, and for me to answer those questions sort of off the cuff, I think would not be responsible.
FEINSTEIN
You’re lost for words? That’s somewhat outta character, don’t ya think? Bush wanted this war on terror ’cause he thought he could scare you into thinking change would bring anarchy. This man would do anything to remain in power—including lying, murdering, and brutalizing your children.
GONZALES
It’s—it’s all lies! Everything I’ve done was for the sake of the children!
Now’s the bit when Xena and Gabrielle solve everyone’s problems, right? —In that episode, they did it by dancing.
In 1649, to St. George’s Hill—
I was walking home from the sushi joint when it hit me, the full import of the passage Heidi MacDonald had quoted:
Not only did Groth re-use the piece—which is his right—but he took the opportunity to make another childish remark about me on the cover (apparently… I am advised). That, and the fact that he has not used the trademark registration of my name on the cover, thus exploiting a trademarked entity for his sole financial gain, with no smallest recompense to the trademark holder, puts him once again in my gunsights.
The trademark registration of his name on the cover?
I mean, I’d been skimming the post, hadn’t been paying that much attention; the fallout of the Fleisher suit and the resulting Ellison-Groth spat was about when I first started reading the Comics Journal, so I felt that much loyalty, I guess. Groth flipped somebody off yet again. Ellison’s taking umbrage for another walk about the block. Yeah yeah, sure sure. Aw, man, Seth Fisher died? —I wasn’t paying that much attention, is the point. Which is why it wasn’t until after the St. Helens plate and the green-tea cheesecake and the walk to the bus stop that it hit me, what he’d said.
—he has not used the trademark registration of my name on the cover—
So I went looking, and sure enough, you see it at the bottom of this piece, or that:
Harlan Ellison is a registered trademark of The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
And then you look at the byline and oh my God, there it is:
by Harlan Ellison®
And it’s not that those damn marcæ registradæ claw at the eyeball, snagging your attention as you pass it over the seething river of text that rushes past these days: unlettered interruptions in the abecederial flow that break the trance of reading, like “second”{-rate} post/moderne party tricks.™ It’s not just that (to my aggrieved eye, at least) ® and ™ and ℠ are signs that irrevocably signify pitches and propaganda, corporate greeting cards, snake oil in search of stooges; that they smear this implication over everything they touch. (Suddenly, I see in my mind’s eye a wall of Harlan Ellison® action figures—with kung fu grip!) —These are but matters of mere æsthetics, and wiser folk than I throw up their hands and cry “De gustibus!” Who am I to say otherwise?
Nor is it that when it comes to matters of name and fame and selling the words you write, I find Ellison’s stated reasons for looping this particular albatross about his neck to be hopelessly fusty:
We live in ever-more-complex technological times; the shapes of “emerging problems” are only beginning to loom large in the fog. And as Pasteur said, “Chance favors the prepared mind.” So I am extrapolating what scams and snafus MAY manifest themselves, and have moved to circumvent them before I get snookered and learn that some electronic poltroon has cobbled up a new way to screw the creator out of his/her creative rights. (Having employed this m.o. in re copyright registration years ago, has provided me the status to sue in my case against AOL.)
Sure, you can hold on tighter, gear up as David for one more one last fight against Goliath, best two out of three, but life is too short for Pyrrhic victories and depositions. (Thinking of those Harlan Ellison® action figures reminds me of that Robin Williams bit about seeing a dumpster full of discarded Mork® dolls. What has been commodified can be taken away.) —But what do I know? My name means almost nothing, and my words have only ever brought in beer money. Easy enough for me to pretend I could care less.
No, what concerns me about that brand seared into the collective unconscious after his name, after anyone’s name, is what happens, what could happen, when that brand is suddenly injected with a dose of HR 683.
- (c) Dilution by Blurring; Dilution by Tarnishment–
- ‘(1) INJUNCTIVE RELIEF- Subject to the principles of equity, the owner of a famous mark that is distinctive, inherently or through acquired distinctiveness, shall be entitled to an injunction against another person who, at any time after the owner’s mark has become famous, commences use of a mark or trade name in commerce that is likely to cause dilution by blurring or dilution by tarnishment of the famous mark, regardless of the presence or absence of actual or likely confusion, of competition, or of actual economic injury.
Now, it’s not Harlan Ellison I’m worried about. He would never, say, attempt to demonstrate that convention stories told out of school by a couple of famous japesters like Tycho and Gabe, in the arguably commercial context of bragging on their branded message boards, could constitute “dilution by tarnishment” of his famous mark. Nor do I think Ellison would seek to shut down free and open access to his Wikipedia entry, on the grounds that allowing just any slob in a smelly T-shirt to alter the public perception of his mark would dilute it through blurring. —But Ellison’s hardly the only person in the world who uses their name to conduct interstate commerce regulable by the federal government. Any slob in a smelly T-shirt who does likewise could slap a ™ or ℠ after their own name, or pony up a few hundred bucks and shoot for the circle-R. And whereas under the current law, the slob in a smelly T-shirt would have to prove that someone else in using their mark (registered or, less easily, otherwise) intended to—
- a) use in commerce any reproduction, counterfeit, copy, or colorable imitation of a registered mark in connection with the sale, offering for sale, distribution, or advertising of any goods or services on or in connection with which such use is likely to cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to deceive; or
- (b) reproduce, counterfeit, copy or colorably imitate a registered mark and apply such reproduction, counterfeit, copy or colorable imitation to labels, signs, prints, packages, wrappers, receptacles or advertisements intended to be used in commerce upon or in connection with the sale, offering for sale, distribution, or advertising of goods or services on or in connection with which such use is likely to cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to deceive,
—that they might seek injunctive relief (solely in order to protect the consumer from knock-off goods [or services] whose fake slob -in-a-smelly-T-shirt mark might be confused with real slob-in-a-smelly-T-shirt goods [or services]), well, now, or rather, soon, when (if?) the Senate passes its version of HR 683, and the two are reconciled, well, then the mark (itself already something of a good, or service, or at least a thing that can be blurred and tarnished; diluted) becomes moreso: no longer a method of protecting consumers, goods, and commerce, it too must be protected, cherished, zealously guarded. —And while some might take some little comfort in pointing out the fair use safe harbor the House carved out—
- (3) EXCLUSIONS- The following shall not be actionable as dilution by blurring or dilution by tarnishment under this subsection:
- ‘(A) Fair use of a famous mark by another person in comparative commercial advertising or promotion to identify the competing goods or services of the owner of the famous mark.
- ‘(B) Fair use of a famous mark by another person, other than as a designation of source for the person’s goods or services, including for purposes of identifying and parodying, criticizing, or commenting upon the famous mark owner or the goods or services of the famous mark owner.
- ‘(C) All forms of news reporting and news commentary.
—others might sadly shake their heads, remembering in what contempt fair usage is held these days, and point to the ADDITIONAL REMEDY that might be sought—
- (ii) by reason of dilution by tarnishment, the person against whom the injunction is sought willfully intended to harm the reputation of the famous mark,
—and then it’s all scorched-earth he-said-she-said, as far as the eye can see. (And though Ellison himself would never push this particular button, what about when he’s no longer with us? When the executors and officers of the Kilimanjaro Corporation have a fiduciary duty to protect that mark and best realize its potential? They would have no choice but to zealously prevent its dilution with every means at their disposal. —Though they might best be advised to step carefully: Wikipedia®, after all, is itself a registered trademark, and it might well be found that the publication of diatribes against its very modes and methods of operation might well dilute the mark…)
O brave new world.
’Tis new to me? Perhaps. —It should therefore be made quite clear that I don’t care whether Ellison brands every iteration of his name in the public sphere (beyond the curmudgeonly æsthetic concerns noted above); that it wouldn’t matter a whit if I did. He is entitled under the law to protect his commerce and his consumers fans, and if I tease him, it’s only because the shock of seeing the brand after his name was sudden and unexpected.
But I do care that Congress is trying to fence off yet another acre of free speech; that they wish to empower this corporation or that to shut me up, or you, or him, because something we’ve said might somehow, somewhere divert a buck or two from their coffers. That they are trying to create another piece of property inside my mind and mouth and art that somehow isn’t mine, is someone else’s, must be rented, borrowed, carefully considered, stepped around. —Fuck that, says I, and you should, too.
Contact Sen. Arlen Specter, the head of the Senate’s Judiciary Committee, here. Public Citizen’s Litigation Group is defending Don Stewart in an anticipatory test case; you can support them here. And write your own Senators, once more, again, as well. Go! Go!
Someone’s trying to tell me something—
“The Lady o’ the Dainty Doon-By,” Jeannie Robertson; “I’ll Come Running,” Chica + The Folder; “One More Colour,” Jane Siberry; “Moonglow,” Billie Holiday; “Under the Ivy,” Kate Bush; “Glad Tidings,” Van Morrison; “Wun’erful, Wun’erful! Side Uh-2,” Stan Freberg; “Gut Feeling; Slap Your Mammy,” Devo; “Sexy Hypnotist,” Luscious Jackson; “Finale B,” Rent.
The tragedy of monied bullies and criminal gatekeepers screwing the rest of us for the sake of a greasy buck.
A few weeks ago I referenced a proposed new trademark law formally entitled “HR 683 – the Trademark Dilution Revision Act.” It passed in the House of Representatives and is under consideration by the Judiciary Committee.
Now stay with me, don’t get bored. This is important.
The Act contains certain anti-speech aspects which will directly affect illustrators, photographers and others.
It will serve to eliminate the current protection for non-commercial speech currently contained in the Lanham Act. It will prevent businesses (artists)and consumers from invoking famous trademarks to explain or illustrate their discussion of public issues.
For example, using the phrase “Where’s the Beef” could be actionable. Although you might use it in a non-commercial way, the (very) famous Wendy’s slogan when used to comment might not be protected by the fair use exception.
The Act would give companies considerable leverage in preventing artists and photographers from employing their marks in images by claiming the mark is being “diluted”. The bigger the company, the more famous the trademark, the easier it will be to prevent you guys from using it. National companies with highly recognizable marks would have more leverage than any single creator or small business and would easily outspend any of you to prevent your using their mark.
Exceptions for fair use, non-commercial use, reportage, commentary, etc. currently existing could disappear and would be no defense to claims of infringement of a registered or unregistered mark.
Bad Soldier Apuzzo.
Comrade Apuzzo has coined new buzzphrase, “The New Triviality,” which will further cause of metrocon film studies. Good!
Comrade Apuzzo does not let facts determined by overwhelmingly liberal and homosexualist discourse to disuade him. Good, good!
Comrade Apuzzo forgot Star Wars III was anti-Bush parable, and so product of Hollywood liberal-homosexual cultural elite, thereby ineligible for People’s Oscar.
Bad, Comrade Apuzzo. Very, very bad.
The net treats censorship as damage and routes around it.
Once more, it never was “the tragedy of the commons.” It’s always been “the tragedy of monied bullies and criminal gatekeepers screwing the rest of us for the sake of a greasy buck.”
