tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-117671462024-03-13T21:44:05.135-11:00Michael Fountain: Blood for Ink"All the Stones the Builders Rejected" <img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7348/967/1600/kelly_pogo1.jpg">
(And some days it takes more Stones than others...) Where Mythical Bestiary meets Contemporary Culture and Chews On Its Leg Until Covered with Slobber.Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.comBlogger548125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-65944392910731072992015-12-28T09:15:00.003-11:002015-12-28T09:25:26.326-11:00Thomas JeffersonArguments with Dead Men, Number Eleventy-Something in a Series:
The more I learn about Thomas Jefferson, the more I have to concede what an utter shitheel he was.
I am not referring here to his keeping a slave as his concubine while advertising himself as a friend of Liberty. (A man with a reputed IQ of 200 ought to find any number of willing women, with his own charm and intelligence; was he Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-35287147383735385372015-02-20T06:55:00.001-11:002015-02-20T06:55:24.737-11:00David Carr Last Thursday, David Carr died in the newsroom of The New York Times. I'm going to miss him terribly. His attitude was not the cozy-with-power-posturing of a Ben Bradlee, but a link to the Hecht and MacArthur wise guys in fedoras and the ink-stained wretches before them who knew where the bear shat in the buckwheat and were keen to tell you about it. I expect he and his Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-90569350466502271842015-02-20T05:38:00.000-11:002015-02-20T05:42:59.032-11:00Satan Broads of TittFieldIf you're trying to translate a title like "Faster, Pussycat, Kill! Kill!", you might as go all in. Or all out, as the case may be. Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-7573044378250914152015-02-20T05:30:00.000-11:002015-02-20T05:36:34.444-11:00The 12 Billion Dollar Misunderstanding"There were mistakes made in Iraq." Jeb Bush
Here's my personal favorite, a grifter's dream as no direct violence was involved, just a gym bag and a straight face: How the US Sent $12bn in Cash to Iraq, and Watched It VanishMichael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-2450951714868822822014-08-08T04:51:00.001-11:002014-08-08T04:51:57.070-11:00Blinded on the Right-- and the LeftMass psychology time: I'm starting to understand the selective vision on the right as a funhouse mirror of old leftists who smelled Hitler coming, but somehow couldn't recognize Stalin and Mao for what they were. A key anecdote from Ronald Perlstein's Invisible Bridge:
“Reagan is on the radio [during the fall of Saigon], talking about the USS Midway rescuing widows and orphans on the high seas Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-75946662435738389992013-10-11T13:08:00.001-11:002013-10-11T13:08:25.830-11:00The More Fool IJack Kirby and Stan Lee created the Sentinels and the zealot Bolivar Trask when I was ten years old. Then I outgrew simple "comic book morality". I scoffed at scenarios about religious fanatics seizing power in the United States, of corporations replacing sovereign nations, of killer drones, of disasters manufactured for media consumption. I may have been more naive at twenty than I was at ten.
Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-3712856569806431612013-09-07T05:22:00.000-11:002013-09-07T05:41:30.576-11:00Syrial Killers
Dear Sir,
I would like very much to contribute to the purchase of 96 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a cost of 1.2 million dollars each, but oh dear, I’ve already spent that money on something else. And I would like very much to send in Wonder Woman to precisely target the pursed lips of Bashar Hafez al-Assad and those who obey his orders, but we. Just. Can’t. Afford it.
I am enough of an Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-68197324910098385102013-08-07T05:58:00.001-11:002013-08-07T07:09:38.841-11:00Many Are Called, Some Are Chosen, Maybe There's a Reason So Many Are Assholes There's terra incognita here for research into the social class distinctions among lawyers, doctors, politician/bureaucrats, and teachers.
There's certainly a culture gap between public teachers and professors, and among public teachers, a class struggle between those who love their subject, those who wanted to "teach" as an excuse to coach, and those who were intellectually lazy Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-56171648567519719712012-08-17T06:14:00.002-11:002012-08-17T07:47:35.536-11:00BulliesJust once, I'd like to see someone on the Right "take a courageous stand" against someone who has more money and more power than they do. (Yelling at a president who won't or can't hit you back is not the same.)
Andrew Shirvell, former Assistant Attorney General for the State of Michigan, was ordered to pay 4.5 million dollars to Chris Armstrong for "defamation" after repeatedly libeling and Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-64944670000062315012012-08-12T05:40:00.002-11:002012-08-17T07:46:49.502-11:00Jack Benny, the X-Men, and Continuity in ComicsRe-reading Grant Morrison's run on New X-Men led me again to its sequel, Joss Whedon's Astonishing--
and I now proclaim to the anxious masses that Torn (Astonishing X-Men Volume III) is best read in tandem with Morrison's Imperial (New X-Men Volume II).
Jack Benny is supposed to have gotten the biggest laugh in radio history when an armed robber snarls, "Your money or your life!" Benny Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-2058724337105885002011-08-26T18:39:00.003-11:002011-08-26T18:46:29.924-11:00Should Oracle Stay in Her Wheelchair?
It seemed to me the character of Barbara Gordon was more interesting (and important to the fictional universe) as Oracle than as Batgirl. The editorial reasoning seems to be if comic book science can heal Batman's spinal cord, it's silly to keep Barbara in a wheelchair.
Why not have both? If they'da asked ME, I would have given her a cybernetic body, like a drone plane, that she could inhabit Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-13942280198797646572011-08-26T01:09:00.010-11:002011-08-26T01:54:54.100-11:00Ladies and Gentlemen, Your American TalibanRick Perry and the New Apostolic Reformation have downgraded all non-Republicans to soulless demon status. They are not speaking metaphorically. This makes anything they do to achieve power justifiable, as those who oppose them are not even human.
Their "Seven Mountains Mandate" calls for religious control of business, government, media, arts and entertainment, education, the family and Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-80088300187314744932011-08-25T01:53:00.004-11:002011-08-25T02:14:47.168-11:00Commonplace Book: Readings, August 2011
“The plague of publishing these days is to mistake ubiquity for significance.”
-- Arts and Letters Daily and Alexander Nazaryan on Knotted: How the Necktie Changed the World. and other such titles
***
“I was turning 40 and thinking, Oh dear, I'm probably going to have one of those midlife crisis things which always just bore the hell out of everybody. So it would probably be better if, Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-25024743692862644722011-07-17T05:17:00.010-11:002011-07-21T00:35:29.920-11:00Favorite Authors and Favorite Artists (Lady Macbeth, by Steven Pugh)The author of the website Hey Oscar Wilde! It's Clobberin' Time! asks comic artists for sketches of their own favorite authors or literary characters. The collection has grown enough since 1998 to be written up in the Los Angeles Times. There are some small treasures that may someday be regarded as the definitive portrait of their subject.There's an ongoing Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-85722119124595180282011-07-12T21:44:00.001-11:002011-07-12T21:46:16.927-11:00Womanthology and Raising Funds on KickstarterMichael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-54670530330980527632011-06-04T02:00:00.006-11:002011-06-04T02:27:32.151-11:00Christina Rosetti, Robinson Jeffers, Revenge, Public Shame and Private Justice"Saints are ready to receive all sinners: all sinners are not ready to receive saints."-- Christina Rossetti, “The Face of the Deep”***“...This gig requires a highly developed sense of irony. Say you're doing a story (as Gladstone did last fall) about the fact that the press will come down harder on a politician who lies about himself than on a candidate who lies about his opponent, and that it'sMichael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-48516517642973278882011-04-30T09:36:00.016-11:002011-06-04T02:33:28.383-11:00New Gods for Old; Women Who Work in ComicsOver at Comics Alliance, an essay by Chris Sims on why the archetypes running loose in Jack Kirby New Gods can trouble our thoughts thirty years after they first appeared. "[Darkseid's] actions are geared towards conditioning people to embrace and exploit their own base hatred and fear. That's how he wins and remakes the world in his own image... devoted not to death but to Anti-Life... a slaveryMichael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-87824199679803387592011-04-23T01:57:00.009-11:002011-04-24T12:56:52.705-11:00Opinions are Like AssholesCharles de Gaulle is supposed to have thrown up his hands and asked of the French,"How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?" I'm starting to wonder about the United States-- how can you govern a country with 300 million opinions, half of those uninformed, half-baked or selfish-- but every single one of them convinced that they're righteous and deserving of the same respect?Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-7806777956324307852011-04-23T01:41:00.003-11:002011-04-23T01:56:47.996-11:00Commonplace Book for March 2011"The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule." -- Walter Benjamin"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross." -- Sinclair Lewis“Now that blind ambition no longer carries the slightest taint and the term "sell-out" holds no meaning, now that earnest young men sing not of Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-41938878586523103382011-02-27T07:28:00.003-11:002011-02-27T07:38:37.519-11:00Commonplace Book of Quotations, February"Hey, Sarah Palin, hows that hatey, killy, reloady, crosshairsy thing working out for ya?" -- Frank Conniff“Now, it's true that the [Wikileaks] cables were legally available to well over 1.5 million Americans, who had adequate security clearance. But trivial? Don't believe it. The cables show the daily business of a mighty empire acting in manners diametrically opposite to public pretensions..Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-88010800532122375892011-02-13T13:35:00.005-11:002011-02-13T15:11:30.796-11:00Ghosts at Reagan's BanquetAlexander Cockburn, who I first remember for trying to get at the truth of the 1980s and beyond, has a short, simple correction to all the aggrandizement of Ronald Reagan on the hundredth anniversary of his birth. If you're feeling less than moderate, there's a new book of Tim Kreider's cartoons, driving a stake through Reagan's dead black heart and putting his head on a pike, finally keeping Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-85874290515719683022011-02-06T03:54:00.016-11:002011-02-06T06:33:26.696-11:00Francis Fukuyama Discovers the Limits of Francis FukuyamaFrancis Fukayama came late to the party. Still, the Lord loves a prodigal, no matter his rolling in the mud with neo-conservatives before he got here:"What was truly troubling, however, was that the collapse undermined the fundamental moral justification for material inequality in a politically egalitarian society. Basic to the legitimacy of market capitalism is the efficient market hypothesis—Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-57390554641228259932011-02-03T10:14:00.002-11:002011-02-03T10:25:59.589-11:00Egypt, Tunisia, and Tianamen SquareSpeaking out of pure ignorance, I suppose everyone's waiting to see what the army does next. In Tunisia, the military identified and sided with the civilian protesters-- but at Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government very deliberately brought in provincial troops (and provincial kids) from the Chinese equivalent of Alabama. They told the soldiers that the Tiananmen demonstrators were dangerous Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-24384385771743012672011-01-30T02:45:00.008-11:002011-02-03T10:14:16.016-11:00From Cairo to IstanbulTHURSDAY UPDATE: John and Jeffery are in Istanbul now, taking advantage of the local beer, and the layers of a city going back to Byzantium:So we have fled the country temporarily. We are currently refugees in Istanbul (not Constantinople) which offers all of the typical trappings of a refugee environment: stunning views, great food, a local beer, Ottoman history everywhere. The usual.For the Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-62207603026390963152011-01-23T16:05:00.003-11:002011-01-24T09:18:35.525-11:00Blessed are the Big NosesDon’t know much about physiognomy, but remembering what Lincoln said about a man earning his face, the cartoonist in me has been thinking about the noses worn by J.P. Morgan and his current avatar, Rupert Murdoch. Is there something about a bulbous nose that is not content with owning just part of the world, but has to own everything, knock any opposition to the ground? Both men reached the Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0