After work tonight I went to a local bookstore that was hosting novelist and comic bookstar Greg Rucka. He did the usual Q&A followed by a quick reading and some book signing. After giving him some grief for having this event on a Wednesday night and interfering with my getting new comic books, I mentioned that I had read and thoroughly enjoyed his spy comic QUEEN AND COUNTRY and had only just read it a few months ago.
He stopped dead and looked me in the eye and asked if I had been in the twitters about this. I confessed that I had and he made as if to say, “Of course. I thought I remembered that.” I remarked that I hadn’t thought it terribly profound - whatever I had written. He smiled and said that he often finds himself writing in a vacuum and that even the occasional “I really dug that” means more than I could imagine.
Hours later I’m still thinking about how cool that is. I often find myself in a vacuum as well. I live a continent away from almost everyone I know and find that my primary means of communicating with these people is screaming into Twitter and getting the occasional reply. It’s gratifying to know that people are paying attention. I’ve been slacking on keeping the regular chains of communication open. My laptop has gone to shit so I rarely talk to anyone anymore. This should be resolved by the weekend.
Thanks to everyone who has been willing to slog past some really excellent tweets about taking shits and paying attention to what I’m up to. I hope that it’s all going to go off around October. Job things, and such.
Syrian government accepts Kofi Annan's 6 point peace plan -
There’s obviously some skepticism about the implementation. I got the link from foreignpolicy.com’s daily international news brief (the most valuable two minutes of reading you can do each day) and I realized that I didn’t know exactly what his plan was.
1. The Syrian political process must make allowances to effectively address the people’s needs.
2. A UN-supervised cessation of violence.
3. A dramatic boost in the availability of humanitarian aid.
4. The speedy release of all arbitrarily held detainees.
5. Freedom of movement for journalists.
6. Freedom of association and freedom of demonstration.
I will add my commentary to these when I have a moment to piece everything together.
One cup flour, one cup milk, two eggs, shake of salt, an inch of butter - beat until smooth. Grease pan and add half a teaspoon of butter to each compartment. Bake for 15 minutes at 450 degrees. Turn heat down to 350 and continue baking for 20 more minutes. Don’t you dare inspect them or stomp about or else they will be fucked. Serve with butter.
They didn’t rise quite as much as I would have liked for them to, but not bad for a first attempt. Popover tin for christMAS? A roaring success.
In the left corner: introducing - Elihu.
In case anyone read yesterday’s post and was interested in reading Jason Aaron and R.M. Guera’s Scalped, Thwipster has them for 50% off for the next 2 days or so. Mighty fine deal.
No, no. It’s not from Venice, Italy. Today’s mail was from Coy’s Comics in Saginaw. Not knowing where my next books would be coming from after moving to Phoenix, I made arrangements to have my regularly pulled titles set aside and systematically mailed to me. We reckoned this interval to be approximately four to five weeks. I have made a habit of calling the store with my credit card number at least every other Wednesday so as to make payment and to eliminate unwanted titles (mostly Marvel crossover bullshit) from the list of pulls.
I am elated to report that after five and one half weeks my first shipment has arrived. I did not recognize the box for what it was until I had been home for hours. “Oh look,” I may have casually remarked - had there been other parties present. “Another box I’m not allowed to open until two days before the Feast of Alvistime.” I am to understand that this day is known colloquially as Christ-mas. Had these parties interjected, select episodes of Sealab would have been viewed and it is likely that the box’s contents would have never been discovered. As it was, I found myself watching Ken Burns’ CIVIL WAR with a half poured glass of Samuel Smith’s Nut Brown Ale in my hand when I began cursing the delay shipment of my first box of comics oh wait what if it’s one of those three boxes that came in the mail today and it was. Here is what was inside:
And the finally-released hardcover edition of the Mirage run of the Ninja Turtles collecting issues 1-7, the Raphael one-shot, annotations from Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, and (the back cover boasts) more!
This is hot shit. And you’ll understand why I haven’t been inclined to waste money at the bar.
I do not know why the picture is upside down, nor do I care.
If you are looking for a long-running and venerable series to pound through, you ought to consider Scalped or Northlanders. The first is about undercover police in a corrupt and violent Indian reservation. The second is about Vikings in a variety of settings. Both are expected to conclude within 6 months or so. There’s really no better time get started. Lots of people read The Walking Dead. It’s become exceedingly popular since the release of the television program which has allowed for the profitable release of THE WALKING DEAD COMPENDIUM VOLUME 1, a hefty tome collecting issues 1-48 and usually discounted on Amazon to around 30 dollars. There’s really no better deal in comics at this point. Additionally, Amazon is usually the best outlet for getting cheap trade paperback collections - especially if you don’t mind getting them used (“like new” and “very good” are usually as used I like to go, although I have one volume of Brian Wood’s DMZ that was in “good” condition and it’s not awful).
If you want to reason to haunt the comic book store on Wednesdays, you might go with a title still in its infancy such as Pigs, Planet of the Apes, or Moriarty. Pigs is about Cuban sleeper cells in modern-day America. It’s funny, shocking, and very well designed. Planet of the Apes does a fantastic job of chronicling the spiraling descent of human and ape society. It’s very exciting to watch the story develop all the while knowing that eventually one side will enslave the other while the world awaits Charlton Heston. Lots of back-and-forth “oh fuck, what will the apes/humans do once they learn about THAT.” And Moriarty stars Professor Moriarty - say no more, except the art swings wildly between realism and some unique style where the characters almost appear to be shadows of themselves rather than actual figures. It’s marvelously dark, in a way that makes me want to switch Ken Burns for Sweeney Todd simply for having thought of it. The story is a little more mystical than I would like, but since I own every volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I don’t have much room to question its direction.
I need to get cracking though. It’s going to take me days to get through these.
Garth Ennis PUNISHER MAX issue 18:
What the fuck is wrong with you, Fury? What kind of demented asshole puts the Punisher in a missile silo?!
A quick quesadilla using whatever I had in the fridge. Eggplant, onion, jalapeño, mushroom, egg, pepper jack cheese, sriracha. Haven’t had a chance to eat it yet - it’s really hot. Enjoy with half a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.
EDIT: I fried another slice of eggplant and made a sandwich on toast while I was waiting for this to be ready. You know, like a gangster.
FUCKING HIPPIES.
(via seanbonner)
Everyone on Facebook has been reposting this thing all day:
These numbers show the insignificant effort that Important Government People have made to reduce the amount of the deficit by redisplaying them as if it were a single family’s annual expenses. Great.
This is not the reason why the S&P downgraded the US credit rating, and, if you think that it is, you are part of the problem.
The S&P doesn’t base its rating on how much debt that US has. It all depends on whether the US can pay it back. That we owe so much and are taking insignificant measures toward reducing the ratio of expenditures to income is unfortunate, but it has nothing to do with how investors perceive the value of American debt. So long as they can expect a return on investment, debt will continue to get purchased.
It’s important that we all try to understand how economic institutions work. If we start making demands of our politicians based on faulty information, they’ll hop to it regardless because they are responding to the will of the people. That’s how you end up with a buffet of Republican presidential candidates basing their economic philosophy on Reagan nursery rhymes instead of basic fundamentals.
Do yourself a favor: read everything that Paul Krugman has to say. We’ll be a better country for it. In particular, read this one. Does it not make sense? Ask someone who knows a thing about econ to help explain it. It’s important!
because it makes it sound like there’s more than one outcome.
Yeah, we’re expecting a baby
but it could be a velociraptor.
(Source: not-a-painbow, via ramblingeekette)
While writing just now I sneezed all over my phone, but I didn’t want to pause to wipe the screen off for fear that Tumblr would delete my post again. Srsly, can’t stand it.
Last night on the tweeters (chigmata) I made reference to watching episode 1 as part of Spike’s STAR WARS marathon. I suggested that Qui Gon’s time and energy might have been better spent finding someone not resistant to Jedi mind tricks to change his 20,000 republic credits into a more easily exchanged local currency.
Concern #2
It occurred to me this morning that if Watto is supposed to have been a shrewd and calculating businessman. He should have been suspicious of the peculiar offworlder who was flaunting large amounts of strange currency while demonstrating the abilities of a Jedi. “Surely knowledge of this man’s presence here is worth something to the right people,” he might have thought to himself. And surely his trade in salvage might have led him to operate as a fence for stolen parts. This underworld connection would have made the right people be the Hutts. Would a Hutt be interested in learning that there was a Jedi operating on his planet without invitation? Certainly. Handsome reward to follow.
I can understand why Watto didn’t do this immediately. He thought he was about to win a ship in a one-sided bet with some dumb foreigner. This does not explain why he didn’t take action after he lost the bet. He even said that he believed himself to have been swindled. He could have turned them in, taken the ship, and reclaimed his prize slave mechanic. And he had all incentive to do this as he had just “bet every on Sebulba” and lost.
Also, how did Anakin recognize Qui Gon’s lightsaber? Does a junk dealer’s slave on Tatooine have great occasion for observing Jedi and inspecting their equipment?
And I still don’t like that the Clone Wars were clones fighting droids instead of clones fighting clones. Why did the droids have to speak out loud to communicate with each other? They were all linked to the command ship in orbit, so they’re all part of the same network. Let them communicate wirelessly so that instructions are relayed instantly. And why did battle droids have to pilot those little flying sleds? Aren’t those droids too? Can’t they pilot themselves?
I guess what I’m saying is that the Clone Wars would have been better executed as Clones vs Cylons.
I’m sure there’s more to come. I’m going to be in the car for another 3 1/2 hours; the next thing I’m going to do as soon as I finish writing this will be reading Crimson Empire Volume 2, so STAR WARS will be on my mind for a fair bit of time today.
I had to write this post twice because Tumblr app still won’t save drafts. It’s been so long since that morning of disc gold in Royal Oak that I had forgotten. Naturally, I didn’t hesitate to blast over to Wikipedia to look up “alum” after Mom asked what it was upon seeing a group of condos called Alum Springs or some other stupid name. Tumblr needs to patch it back in soon or else I will migrate back to allportauthority.org. Anyone know if there’s a way to have wordpress post Facebook updates when new posts are published? I know it tweets, but I want wall posts too for the chance at larger readership. Although, if you’ve made it this far into this post you’re part of a dedicated few.
As you were.
Apart from an uncreative title, there was several important questions which arose as I began reading the current issue of FOREIGN AFFAIRS. Michael Ross, the author, is a professor of political science at UCLA and has just written a book called “The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations.” The main thrust of the article is that countries producing large quantities of oil are less likely to adopt democratic forms of government than those which do not.
The author briefly explains that initial oil exploitation was performed almost exclusively by western oil companies. This limited the amount of wealth delivered to the governments of these states. One presumes that the rents were extremely cheap. This addressed my initial concern that the article was going to neglect the influence that western powers had in limiting the development of civil society in these areas as economies came to rely exclusively on the rentier-state model.
Out of resentment, OPEC was formed and oil companies were nationalized. Autocrats were then able to do three things: buy domestic goodwill without the bother of taxation, keep national revenues secret, and buy the loyalty of their armed forces. It is the combination of these three tactics which has deterred the democratization of states with more oil production than Venezuela.
Ross makes recommendations. More transparency, privatize the national oil companies, offer dividends to citizens.
My concern is this: how willing will international firms be to allow democratic society to flourish if it means that the cost of doing business in the country goes up as a result? What happens when the state has to begin providing pensions and healthcare and all of the other bothersome administrative and infrastructural costs that accompany a new democracy? If the standard of living goes up (which you would hope would happen if the people are free to govern themselves) will foreign companies continue to do business with them? Or will they insist that prices stay obscenely low to compete with the remaining oil producing dictators?
I only bring it up because, while Arabs have been fighting and dying for self-governance, most people I talk to just bitch about the price of gas and then blame the President for not making more jobs in his magic oil and job factory.
Was tweetering just now. Cory Doctorow mentioned that he found great delight reading an old issue of PUNCH, the old tyme satirical mag from 1840s-1900sish. Remembered that it was one of the predominant publications while you-know-who was president. Was going to ask if libraried copies are common. Searched for online archives instead. Posted this link. Wrote this description. As you were.