—werewolves and dragons and mandrakes and unicorns and mermaids and Hyperborean amber and the gigantic birds encountered by Sindbad the Sailor and the funeral pyre of the Phoenix and quick-frozen mammoths and shrunken heads and—
Patrick Nielsen Hayden ::: (view all by) ::: January 31, 2006, 09:14 PM:
cd: We are reissuing Avram Davidson’s Adventures in Unhistory this coming December; that’s why it sprang to my mind.
And already I know what I want for Christmas.
Tonight there came a news that you, oh beloved, would come—
Be my head sacrificed to the road along which you will come riding!
All the gazelles of the desert have put their heads on their hands
In the hope that one day you will come to hunt them—
The attraction of love won’t leave you unmoved;
Should you not come to my funeral,
you’ll definitely come to my grave.
My soul has come on my lips;
Come so that I may remain alive—
After I am no longer—for what purpose will you come?
Even if you are not a bear, or have no interest in invading Sicily.
There are, I feel, two important morals to be drawn from The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily, by Dino Buzzati. The first, from the prologue, is as follows:
THE WEREWOLF. A third monster. It is possible that he may not appear in our story. In fact, as far as we know he has never appeared anywhere, but one never knows. He might suddenly appear from one moment to the next, and then how foolish we should look for not having mentioned him.
The second, from Lemony Snicket’s rather phoned-in study guide, which, all told, is not nearly so indispensable as the author’s lovely Tolkienesque cartoons:
QUESTIONS YOU MAY FIND INTERESTING:
When the boars arrive, King Leander and Professor Ambrose have completely different reactions. The King draws his sword and cries, “Let us die like gallant soldiers!” The Professor begs, “And what about me? What about me?” Which reaction do you admire more? Keep in mind that the Professor ends up saving everyone’s life.
Christ, what an asshole.
Yeah, there’s something smarmy about the New Yorker’s cartoon caption contest; something vapid, vacuous—hermetic.
Luckily, Modern Arthur has the answer.
Also, the anti-caption contest. The caption-the-ones-they-didn’t-have-us-caption contest. And, yes, McSweeney’s.
The son of the shirt.
Some facts about Cindy Sheehan’s arrest last night:
- It wasn’t a protest.
I had just sat down and I was warm from climbing 3 flights of stairs back up from the bathroom so I unzipped my jacket. I turned to the right to take my left arm out, when the same officer saw my shirt and yelled; “Protester.” He then ran over to me, hauled me out of my seat and roughly (with my hands behind my back) shoved me up the stairs…. I was never told that I couldn’t wear that shirt into the Congress. I was never asked to take it off or zip my jacket back up. If I had been asked to do any of those things…I would have, and written about the suppression of my freedom of speech later.
- Even if it were a protest, it wasn’t illegal.
As the Bynum court explained: “Believing that the Capitol Police needed guidance in determining what behavior constitutes a ‘demonstration,’ the United States Capitol Police Board issued a regulation that interprets ‘demonstration activity’,” and that regulation specifically provides that it “does not include merely wearing Tee shirts, buttons or other similar articles of apparel that convey a message. Traffic Regulations for the Capitol Grounds, §158” (emphasis added).
- Nor is it fair they’re doing it to Republicans, too. (And everyone else, it seems.)
Beverly Young, wife of Rep. C.W. Bill Young of Florida chairman of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee was removed from the gallery because she was wearing a T-shirt that read, “Support the Troops Defending Our Freedom.”
She was sitting about six rows from first lady Laura Bush and asked to leave. She argued with police in the hallway outside the House chamber.
“They said I was protesting,” she told the St. Petersburg Times. “I said, “Read my shirt, it is not a protest.’ They said, ‘We consider that a protest.’ I said, ‘Then you are an idiot.’”
You might want to counter the crazy-ass email Rep. Lynn Woolsey is doubtless getting as a result of all this. Were you so inclined.
With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat in unwomanly rags
Plying her needle and thread,—
Stitch! stitch! stitch!
Enter Sandman.
I should have been a Superman fan: greathearted utopian science fables starring the big blue boyscout who insists on seeing the best in us; who acts as if that’s all there could possibly be—what’s not to love?
The first Superman comic I ever read?
Number 234, from 1971. —I didn’t read it in 15¢ floppy form; it was stuck in an odd compilation of Batman and Superman stuff that had probably been assembled in England a couple of years later and printed and bound in cheap hardback and ended up in my hands in Iran. (The Batman piece I don’t remember as clearly, but then, I was already into Batman: I think it was one of the ones where he went to Tibet or something.)
And I know I knew something of the story of Superman, but I can’t remember exactly what; Superman’s a myth, after all, and the thing about myths is you always already know them. Even so, this issue is weirdly at odds with his Akashic record. There’s no Lois, no Perry, no Jimmy, no Lex; no Kandor or kryptonite. There is, instead, a volcano, a pissed-off planter, Morgan Edge, and this creepy-ass mofo made of, um, sand—
![[It] stares around at the blazing desolation...](/images/4.jpg)
There’s a reason it seems at odds with the myth: it was deliberately intended to be. Mort Weisinger, who’d edited the Superbooks for quite some time, retired in 1970, and Julie Schwartz took over Superman and gleefully joined the stampede to streamline, revise, refit, and update.
While Sekowsky led Supergirl down an avante garde avenue all her own, the rest of the Superman “family” editors came up with a scheme revolutionary for the industry at the time: Using Superman, as the cornerstone title, they all participated in streamlining the DC universe, openly doing away with such things as kryptonite and imaginary stories, and just plain forgetting about the humorous characters such as Mr. Mxyzptlk, the Bizarros and Krypto. No more Elastic Lad stories for Jimmy Olsen, no more Reptile Girl stories for Lois Lane, no more King Kong stories for Superman.
Boltinoff and Kirby got the “new” DC universe going in Jimmy Olsen #133, October 1970, which in a very real sense introduced a DC Earth as new and streamlined as the one that resulted from the Crisis series 15 years later. Two major DC characters debuted in Kirby’s “new” Jimmy Olsen: Morgan Edge, “president of the Galaxy Broadcasting System, new owners of The Daily Planet,” in JO #133, and in the following issue, the ultimate DC villain, Darkseid. (See Superman in the Fourth World.)
What emerged from the pages of Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, Action Comics, World’s Finest (which had become a precursor to the DC Comics Presents style of Superman team-ups), and most tellingly, Superman, was a new, faster-paced Earth (Earth 1A, maybe?), where the central characters simply had too much to do to worry about the secret identity contrivances and the varieties of kryptonite that had dominated their lives in the Weisinger era. Jimmy had the Newsboy Legion, the Hairies, the Outsiders, and D.N.Aliens to occupy his time with; Lois was caught in the middle of a gang war waged between the 100, Intergang and Darkseid’s minions; and Superman… well, in addition to all of the above, he had a new job as a TV reporter in his secret identity of Clark Kent and a sandcreature siphoning off all his powers to deal with. With all that and more going on, there simply wasn’t room to squeeze in Lori Lemaris and the bottle city of Kandor, too.
Heck, the issue just previous to this one stripped green kryptonite of all its plot-hook powers. Earth-shaking! —And you remember what Bill said (what Jules said) about Superman, right?
When Superman wakes up in the morning, he is Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red S is the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby, when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears, the glasses, the business suit, that’s the costume. That’s the costume Superman wears to blend in with us. Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent? He’s weak, unsure of himself… he’s a coward. Clark Kent is Superman’s critique on the whole human race, sort of like Beatrix Kiddo and Mrs. Tommy Plumpton.
And yes, that’s an uncharitable read, but still, think of Christopher Reeve as Superman. Weak? Unsure of himself? A coward? —Yes, it was obviously an act, but still. Except not in 1971.
Morgan Edge, Kent’s new boss, reassigns him to his TV station, WGBS, as a roving reporter. Here, too, Swan and Anderson shine. Gone are Kent’s solid blue suits and horn-rimmed glasses; throughout the saga Kent dresses mostly in brown, double-breasted suits with striped blue shirts and white ties, three-piece suits with striped yellow shirts and spotted yellow ties, and variations on these. Kent also switches to wider framed glasses that are more flattering and contemporary, and despite Earth’s yellow sun, his hair has gotten a little thicker.
Schwartz’s editorial vision was clear: no more gimmick-ridden plot contrivances for Superman, and no more wimpy Clark Kent portrayals. Personality-wise, Kent may be a bit bland, but no less a personage than Morgan Edge—the equivalent of, say, Ted Turner—recognizes the quality work Kent’s done for many years, and singles him out to become an on-air TV reporter. You don’t get to be one of the preeminent reporters in the country by being meek and timid, and, recognizing that incongruity, O’Neil dumps the wimpy persona.
But as a kid of—what, six?—these nuances escaped me. Instead, I was puzzled by word and picture splits like this:
Remember, this “red and blue juggernaut” had just been fighting “an eerie, almost shapeless figure” in the sky. We’re told the red and blue juggernaut smashes fiercely into the barrel of the gun, but it’s a muddy, colorless figure we see—not unlike the sandman. Which was it? —The next panel shows Superman getting up, red and blue again despite the rain. What happened? What was going on?
And it’s not like I’m blaming the art or the writing or the editorial direction for my visceral dislike of Superman. (There’s a lot not to like.) But the whole thing made an odd first read for a superhero naïf, and seeing the art again so many years later is weirdly disconcerting—an ur-thing that shaped the very eyes I’m reading it with. (Is it just me, or is the sight of Curt Swan’s grey-flannel face atop that goddamn costume just, y’know, weird?) —The existential threat of that sandman comes out of nowhere—well, the previous issue, sure, but I didn’t have that—and it peters out, unresolved, at the end. Unsatisfying, but in a deeply creepy way that squirmed somewhere under my skin. Batman was much cooler. (This was before I read that Clayface issue out of sequence, mind.)
Years later, of course, it’s creepy for another reason. We can see how prophetic it was:
The Sandman did appear, and (eerie, Shaper) did sap some of the superheroes’ power for itself. For a time.
—But what I didn’t realize (and let’s leave Thomas Hayden Church out of this for the moment, okay? I was never a Marvel zombie), what I didn’t realize, until I started poking around the web for my ur-Superman comic, what I didn’t realize was this: there was always another Sandman.
Sandmann was created in 1959 by East German TV as a result of a race with West German TV to prove socialism was more efficient than capitalism. East Germany won, and since then Sandmann has put several generations of East Germans to sleep with his bed time stories and dream powder. Sandmann is a fairytale character, but he inhabits the real world, an idealised version of East Germany. Sandmann is always at the right place at the right time; he drives a Trabant, he marches with the Jungpioneers, he even travels in Space! With daily broadcast Sandmann promoted the ideas of socialism to his audience; the East German children. He showed the future optimism, technical development and solidarity.
The plots of the films have changed as the East German society has changed, and Sandmann’s life goes parallel to the history of East Germany. This peculiar and slightly different historical documentary portrays the rise and fall of socialism in East Germany seen through life and films of Sandmann.
Greathearted utopian science fables? Starring a Jungpioneer who insists on seeing the best in us; who acts as if that’s all there could possibly be?
Superman
Superman
Rescue me
You’re so brave
and strong
and really care for me
In the end
sure I’ll be
your lover man
Superman
you will come
and rescue me
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I really ought to stop poking the whole James Frey mess, but it appears he’s dating Mary Rosh.
Do as I say, don’t do as I do.
This one pretty much speaks for itself.
On January 27, 2006, the Lowell Sun of Massachusetts published an article entitled “Rewriting history under the dome.” This story unveiled the editing by Congressional staff members of Congressman Marty Meehan’s Wikipedia entry.
Further investigation by Wikipedia members discovered well over a thousand edits by IP addresses allocated to the US House of Representatives and Senate. These edits had, among others, added libelous statements, removed content with malice, added childish insults, and violated Wikipedia Policy. This has resulted in the blocking of at least one of the IP addresses and the opening of a request for comments page.
The next time a politician or a pundit starts sniffing about the Wild West coarsening of our fine political discourse that’s engendered by those nasty, nasty bloggers, well, you know what to do. —Via the incomparable Majikthise.
This isn’t a joke. We are the domestic anti-terrorism task force.
In the summer of 2004 I had made the decision to go to Iraq with Circus2Iraq.org, an NGO that does circus performances for children in many areas inside Iraq. I planned to go in the late spring of 2005. I received notice that September that Action Medical, and travel a great deal inside the United States to medic at protests and actions. I intended to travel to the G8 in Scotland to medic after my trip to Iraq, but as I couldn’t go to Iraq I had failed to solidify my plans for going to G8. In fact at the time the interview was happening I hadn’t even applied for a passport.
All of which of course means Tabitha Chase has to go downtown under threat of arrest for a 2-hour interview with Special Agents Omar Molina, Dante Jackson, and a third to be named later. Our ostensible threat is doing just fine after five years of dead-or-alive, but it’s okay; Homeland Security is all over the Wobbly strippers.
It was ever thus. —Smile pretty and watch your back. (Thanks, McP.)
One of us; one of us.
I pretty much already knew Stephen Colbert was a geek; there was that bit when Viggo Mortensen hit the Daily Show and Jon Stewart played this recording of Colbert drily lecturing on Aragorn’s various names that was hilarious mostly because you could tell it was true. —But between the D&D and the improv theatre, it sounds like the Colbert Report’s an oddball campaign of Prime Time Adventures that somehow got itself ready for prime time.
The Gang of 25.
So I’m standing here covered in website dust as I try to plug all the leaks and I’m not paying too much attention to the events of the day and I was tempted, sorely tempted, to make a crème brûlée joke, and then I read Digby and I felt better.
The last time we had a serious outpouring from the grassroots was the Iraq War resolution. My Senator DiFi commented at the time that she had never seen anything like the depth of passion coming from her constituents. But she voted for the war anyway. So did Bayh, Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Kerry and Reid. The entire leadership of the party. Every one of them went the other way this time. I know that some of you are cynical about these people (and, well, they are politicans, so don’t get all Claude Rains about it) but that means something. Every one of those people were running in one way or another in 2002 and they went the other way. The tide is shifting. There is something to be gained by doing the right thing.
I know you’re tired. So am I. Chop wood. Carry water. Repeat.
Further technical notes.
I was with DreamHost; now I’m with A Small Orange.
I was using WordPress; now I’m using Textpattern.
You do the math.
—Yes, feeds are not where they were. Working on it. Yes, permalinks are a bit wonky, if by “bit wonky” you mean “every link to longstoryshortpier.com out there in cyberspace has just been deprecated.” I’ll get ’em back. There’s this one little bit I’ve got to copy from a table in one MySQL database to another. If you know the SSH syntax to handle that sort of thing, hey. BFF.
Project much?
My mama done tol’ me
When I was in knee-pants,
My mama done tol’ me
“Son, a woman’ll sweet-talk,
And give you the big eye,
but when the sweet talkin’s done?
A woman’s a two-face,
A worrisome thing
Who’ll leave you to sing
The blues in the night…”
—Louis Armstrong
My mama done tol’ me
When I was in pigtails,
My mama done tol’ me
“Hon, a man is a two-face,
He’ll give you the big eye,
but when the sweet talkin’s done?
A man is a two-face,
A worrisome thing
Who’ll leave you to sing
The blues in the night…”
—Ella Fitzgerald
As a 48-year-old never married single man still in decent shape, successful and now retired, and having weathered the “feminist” cultural storm still raging since my teens, I can tell you that even your having read Norah Vincent’s book, you STILL have no idea of the anger, the hatred, the vengeance and the pain so many otherwise attractive and available women are afflicted with. It is an epidemic of conflict and self-distortion that begins and ends with an impenetrable sense of entitlement, based on a false sense of victimhood, and for which not just any man but every man must pay forever for the restoration that’s never good enough.
Oh, you can hum a few bars and fake the rest, I’m sure. —The above gacked from Roy Edroso, who’s been quote-mining again, and dug up some doozies…
This is what they have made of us. This is what we have become.
There’s this inch—
An inch. It’s small and it’s fragile and it’s the only thing in the world that’s worth having. We must never lose it, or sell it, or give it away. We must never let them take it from us. I don’t know who you are, or whether you’re a man or woman. I may never see you. I will never hug you or cry with you or get drunk with you. But I love you.
—and it’s a really lovely thing to think about but ultimately, you know what? That inch is nothing.
They take it as easily as they take the mile and what do you do when it’s done?
Joe Sacco talked to a couple of men we picked up off the street in Iraq and tortured and interrogated and then let go without ever explaining why, and he sees just how easy it is to take that inch away. —Via the Beat.
Point, meet counterpoint.
Why, yes. This site’s been up and down rather more frequently than something that competes professionally on the going-up-and-down-frequently circuit. The fine folks at Dreamhost insist they won’t rest until the mystery is solved. Presuming you can read this, I thought I’d alert you to Tim, who, in comments, is disputing certain allegations of the “wear your own body armor and we’ll cut your death benefits” story; also, I thought I’d point you to this essay by Emma Bull, whose opinion on the new Battlestar is, shall we say, against the grain.
Our liberal media at work.
Who can forget your President Clinton’s immoral acts committed in the official Oval office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than that he “made a mistake” after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a worse kind of event for which your name will go down in history and remembered by nations?
I mean he sounds like an over-the-top Ann Coulter here, if not an Ann Coulter.
We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honor, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication [and] homosexuality…
Asked whether bin Laden had expressed “almost the same” sentiments that [Sen. Rick] Santorum did during an appearance on [Bob] Schieffer’s Face the Nation broadcast, the CBS anchorman told WABC Radio’s Mark Simone: “Well, he did. That’s exactly right.”
Ha ha! Had you going there, didn’t I. Just kidding! —You can slag on Matthews for his inept dissection of rhetoric here, and I’d send you here to snarl at Schieffer, only they yanked the software that processes your comment sometime yesterday after Think Progress posted the link, and haven’t gotten around to fixing it, yet.
(Damn. All these fine, first-world, top-flight media organizations that can’t keep their commenting software in fighting trim. —Programmers! I smell job opportunities!)
An article of pinnacle stupidity.
I mean, I knew their sense of self was weak; when your character is based so strongly on hate the Other, you’ve got nothing to fall back on for yourself. When that Other is inextricably defined by sexuality and desire, those deep, anarchic, inarticulable forces we must control to control ourselves, then a religion of peace and love and forgiveness can be turned on its head, reduced to nothing more than hate the gay. —It helps to explain why their encomiums to Dear Leader are so comically fellatial, yes, but careful; it also explains why we find it so funny to refer to them as “Assmissile.” There’s two edges on that blade.
So I knew, yes, but dear Lord in heaven and all His little fishes below, I swear I had no idea what a deep and gnawing, rotten and terrifying, Echthroi-howling hole it was inside them, until now—
It is cognitively and nationally dissonant to propose on one hand the advancement of the homosexualization of your most identified national folk icon and simultaneously bluster with the impending force of a war to defend that same civilization. The homosexualization of your most revered masculinity is the cheapest and stupidest shot you can take at the survival of your own culture and it is really inappropriately timed when you are facing, from threats abroad, the most substantial existential peril the nation has ever known. You can’t fight Islamism with gay cowboys.
Oh God, if You are up there, please. Hurry down the Rapture. We’ll get so much more done with them all out of the way. —Via the Poor Man.
