tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-117671462012-01-25T04:00:32.416-11:00"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.comBlogger5381100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-2058724337105885002011-08-26T18:39:00.003-11:002011-08-26T18:46:29.924-11:00

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-13942280198797646572011-08-26T01:09:00.010-11:002011-08-26T01:54:54.100-11:00

Rick 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-80088300187314744932011-08-25T01:53:00.004-11:002011-08-25T02:14:47.168-11:00

“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-25024743692862644722011-07-17T05:17:00.010-11:002011-07-21T00:35:29.920-11:00

(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.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-85722119124595180282011-07-12T21:44:00.001-11:002011-07-12T21:46:16.927-11:00

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-54670530330980527632011-06-04T02:00:00.006-11:002011-06-04T02:27:32.151-11:00

"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's

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-48516517642973278882011-04-30T09:36:00.016-11:002011-06-04T02:33:28.383-11:00

Over 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 slavery

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-87824199679803387592011-04-23T01:57:00.009-11:002011-04-24T12:56:52.705-11:00

Charles 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.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-7806777956324307852011-04-23T01:41:00.003-11:002011-04-23T01:56:47.996-11:00

"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-41938878586523103382011-02-27T07:28:00.003-11:002011-02-27T07:38:37.519-11:00

"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-88010800532122375892011-02-13T13:35:00.005-11:002011-02-13T15:11:30.796-11:00

Alexander 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-85874290515719683022011-02-06T03:54:00.016-11:002011-02-06T06:33:26.696-11:00

Francis 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

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-57390554641228259932011-02-03T10:14:00.002-11:002011-02-03T10:25:59.589-11:00

Speaking 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-24384385771743012672011-01-30T02:45:00.008-11:002011-02-03T10:14:16.016-11:00

THURSDAY 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-62207603026390963152011-01-23T16:05:00.003-11:002011-01-24T09:18:35.525-11:00

Don’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.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-60420677213218144492011-01-08T09:24:00.019-11:002011-01-09T01:46:49.958-11:00

Gabrielle Giffords, U.S. Representative for Arizona's 8th congressional district, was shot in the head today while attending a meet-the-representative event outside a Safeway grocery store. After shooting congresswoman Giffords, the assailant fired into the crowd at random, killing a nine year old child, a federal judge, and several others. Sarah Palin's webmasters quickly moved to take down her

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-86792117222040915902010-12-31T01:55:00.011-11:002010-12-31T09:40:49.481-11:00

The death of Rachel Corrie and the map below ought to cure us of any sentimentality over Israel. An essay by Jeffery Goldberg in The Atlantic, "What If Israel Ceases to Be a Democracy?" should finish the job. Unblinking support for Israel isn't ennobling, it's enabling.I already live in a country that cannot reconcile its stated intentions with the behavior of its governing class. Carrying a

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-40716178353877506302010-12-28T05:26:00.008-11:002011-01-09T02:28:34.589-11:00

Celebrating the return of the online index When Fangirls Attack,"a compilation of articles on gender in comics and comics fandom". More often than not, this source has led me to some of the most interesting thinking on comics as a cultural signifier, from the "Women in Refrigerators" trope (an ongoing complaint of mine in any continuing series, from Star Trek to Travis McGee) to Alison Bechdel's

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-83010791438671568722010-12-21T03:56:00.014-11:002011-01-09T02:29:55.096-11:00

Peetie Wheatstraw, a.k.a. William Bunch, the Devil's Son-in-Law and High Sheriff of Hell, was born during the Winter Solstice of 1902 and died on the Solstice in 1941. He was born in Ripley, Tennessee and his people relocated to eastern Arkansas. By 1920 he had moved to St. Louis, taken his stage name, and recorded more than 160 songs starting in the 1930's.You can always tellWhen your woman gon'

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-1805232604792837142010-12-16T17:07:00.003-11:002011-01-09T02:31:02.273-11:00

"In short, I conceive that great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by the false estimates they have made of the value of things, and by their giving too much for their whistles.” (Benjamin Franklin, "The Parable of the Whistle") To fall into despair is just a high-class way of turning into a dope. I choose to laugh, and laugh at myself no less than at others." (Saul Bellow)

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-61154788960811658342010-09-23T13:24:00.006-11:002011-01-09T02:32:07.647-11:00

Yes, I'm in that kind of a radical mood tonight, after a day of striving against ignorance. The Democrats are about to turn our country over to the Ratfuckers (who, as Yeats warned, are filled with a passionate intensity)... and worst of all, the Democrats deserve to lose. They spent two years trying to accommodate people who want to see us dead, somehow believing that right-wingers will one day

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-9525611003134148172010-08-11T03:35:00.004-11:002011-01-09T02:33:07.184-11:00

"I find film in its modern form to be quite bullying. It spoon-feeds us, which has the effect of watering down our collective cultural imagination. It is as if we are freshly hatched birds looking up with our mouths open waiting for Hollywood to feed us more regurgitated worms. The 'Watchmen' film sounds like more regurgitated worms. I for one am sick of worms. Can't we get something else?

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-22837706455635415672010-07-28T04:57:00.006-11:002011-01-09T02:34:42.148-11:00

click on the cartoon to see in fullI held out longer than most of my friends, trying to give Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt. I was trying to be "sensible". Excuse #1: Realpolitik means that progressives would have to swallow some things we don't like, in order to inch a little closer to a better world. I told my angry friends they underestimate the death grip of the intransigent right.

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-22733298202966330932010-07-28T01:38:00.007-11:002010-07-29T02:46:41.310-11:00

Koalas smell strongly of eucalyptus. So did my grandmother. Adult koalas look like old Jewish men (reference David Ben-Gurion and Lee Strasberg as seen below). My grandmother, however, was not Jewish, but a Spiritualist, in touch with an American Indian spirit guide. Leviticus expressly forbids Spiritualism. It also forbids haircuts (19:27) and wearing clothes made out of more than one fabric,i.e

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-34916350201324007682010-07-25T05:11:00.007-11:002011-01-09T02:34:09.489-11:00

Hug, nay, kiss and buy drinks and dinner for the comic book geek of your choice (ahem.) And pass this along to the PFLAG community, community organizers, and other people of good will.Apparently a few members of the the Westboro Baptist Church of Kansas, notorious and reviled for their "God Hates Fags" protests outside military funerals and other events, thought they would get their picture

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-75742871019609470122010-07-25T04:23:00.005-11:002011-01-09T02:43:51.738-11:00

“... It was the fixation of businessmen that the WPA did nothing but lean on shovels. I had an uncle who was particularly irritated at shovel-leaning. When he pooh-poohed my contention that shovel-leaning was necesary, I bet him five dollars, which I didn’t have, that he couldn’t shovel sand for fifteen timed minutes without stopping. He said a man should give a good day’s work and grabbed a

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-89694522661956882782010-07-09T04:36:00.006-11:002011-01-09T02:37:25.284-11:00

Sometimes, they pitch the irony at you slow and underhand and it hovers there waiting to be hit.

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-68757131057150673002010-07-07T03:51:00.004-11:002011-01-09T02:38:10.829-11:00

Cartoonist and muse Betty Lawyer Kimball passed away last week at the age of 97. Cartoon Brew posted a heartfelt obituary with charming photo album here.

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-41686907535884559472010-07-06T07:32:00.007-11:002011-01-09T02:35:42.562-11:00

We need a book for children that explains propaganda and media manipulation, from the Pharaoh's pyramids through Edgar Bernays, Madison Avenue and modern "spin doctors". For every seeker of the truth, there's a roomful of advertising executives and media consultants working overtime to create a perception that flatters their client. Just how persnickety can they get? The Daily Beast has an

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-89829640102353854152010-06-22T16:24:00.013-11:002011-01-09T02:39:23.648-11:00

Here's five bucks says that General McChrystal pulls a McClellan, and runs for president against his former boss after Hopey fires him. Getting fired for being an asshole is the best thing to happen to him, career wise. Now someone else gets to take the heat for losing in Afghanistan. McChrystal can now spend the rest of his life posing as the guy who Would Have Won the Afghan War If Only.Ah, how

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-41709179995237829262010-06-18T09:22:00.002-11:002010-06-18T09:25:55.457-11:00

“As the Bacchae knew, we always tear our Gods to bits, and eat the bits we like.”-- Adam Gopnik, “What Did Jesus Do?” in The New Yorker***“The same energy of character which renders a man a daring villain would have rendered him useful in society, had that society been well organized.”-- Mary Wollstonecraft-Godwin Shelley***“Each day brings fresh proof to my feeling that orthodoxy of any kind is

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-38541134627870663672010-06-16T04:40:00.024-11:002011-01-09T02:41:30.353-11:00

Othello isn't only about jealousy, any more than Hamlet is about revenge. Othello's great sin is his assumption that because you are Good, all others must necessarily be trustworthy as well. If I were sent back with a warning to the Belle Epoque in Paris, Vienna and Berlin, how many of the boulavardiers could perceive the deadly earnestness with which the children of that time were

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-43926951640891062972010-06-15T15:36:00.005-11:002011-01-09T02:45:39.868-11:00

Through a friend of my friend Shannon McRae, this wonderful animation of Barabara Ehrenreich's explication of the Happy People... I suppose my first encounter with the Happy People would have been in the 1970s. There had been experiments like the attempt to levitate the Pentagon, or my friend Tom's Whole Earth theories about mucus, but these thought experiments harmed no one and made great

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-25669563554361435122010-05-16T01:44:00.009-11:002011-01-09T02:44:41.578-11:00

“Of all wars, only culture wars offer the hope of sheer, unadulterated hilarity. Sex and hypocrisy were staples of farce long before America became a nation, and they never go out of style.”(Frank Rich)***"We Maltese — we bichon maltais, the Roman Ladies' Dog, the old spaniel gentle, the Maltese lion dog, or Maltese terrier – are suffered to know ourselves to be the aristocrats of the canine

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-87321096277566799642010-05-11T14:34:00.003-11:002011-01-09T02:43:09.336-11:00

“We’re becoming peasants again. Most of us. There’s the money people and the people around them, and then there’s you. But the rest of us, we’re peasants.” (A character in Adam Haslett’s short story “Night Walk”)As the Man with No Name told Tuco, “there's two kinds of people, my friend: those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig." If Great-Granda couldn’t afford the suit of armor,

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-35093237185057268652010-05-10T14:58:00.004-11:002010-05-10T19:09:28.812-11:00

I'm guessing most tributes to Lena Horne will include the 1943 version of "Stormy Weather", but it's interesting to compare that young girl's intuitive understanding with a bluesier version sung later in life. Not a false caesura in either version, by the way, which ought to teach pop idols the difference between genuine emotion and sentiment, but probably won't.The other two songs, "Moon River"

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-66045749539075609612010-04-20T18:24:00.005-11:002011-01-09T03:19:17.313-11:00

“He had seen society in its three great phases—Obedience, Struggle and Revolt... and he hesitated in his choice. Obedience was dull, Revolt impossible, Struggle hazardous.”(Balzac, Pere Goriot)“He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.”(William Drummond, some old Scotsman)“Something nice this way comes. It begins with the awful—whether it’s as

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-28196722554306078492010-03-31T03:14:00.006-11:002010-03-31T03:56:04.010-11:00

"This next one's called 'Fanny Power'. Fanny was the daughter of O'Carolan's patron and he wrote this piece for her wedding. I wanted you to hear it because I didn't want you to think there was only one perfect melody in the world.".... Sarah was surprised to see that his eyes were moist. "She must have been very beautiful." He looked at her. "Who?" And his voice was suddenly wary. "Why,

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-2345957347976171762010-03-16T16:44:00.006-11:002011-01-09T03:25:37.599-11:00

"It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and apologized to no one."The character of Valerie answers the question "Why we fight" in Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta, dramatized here:If Valerie is the heart of the thing, my other favorite scene never appeared in the film -- a film Alan Moore sniffed at as "a thwarted and

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-55361212042300764392010-03-13T05:58:00.002-11:002010-03-13T07:06:34.567-11:00

make custom gifts at Zazzle

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-1480019198145583902010-02-09T00:00:00.021-11:002010-02-10T03:19:55.436-11:00

But what's one more genocide? More than a thousand people are dying every week in Northern Uganda, in the concentration camps they've been herded to by their beneficent government-- "three times the death rate in Darfur."It goes without saying that the proposed laws affecting gays in Uganda are monstrous, bugfuck crazy. Friendly heterosexuals and simple humanity are outlawed as well-- the law "

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-20005237555283730362010-02-07T03:27:00.016-11:002010-02-07T05:23:30.894-11:00

"Ms. Stoeger, my plastic surgeon doesn't want me doing any activity where balls fly at my nose." "Well, there goes your social life."The Teabaggers' complaints about Obama's tax plan-- after years of taking it up the yinyang from both Bushes, giving tax cuts 'til it hurts to the richest people in America, then resenting the poor-- reminds me of Mark Twain's comment about the difference between

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-87624334477372226062010-02-06T19:57:00.010-11:002010-02-07T03:06:16.418-11:00

I still think there's something creepy about Holden Caulfield. What's this business of catching children before they "fall" into adulthood-- when the world needs more adults, not fewer? Or Seymour Glass, waking his wife Muriel from her shallow slumber in a particularly ugly way? I can imagine Holden (if he stays out of jail) ending as a basement-dwelling iconoclast, proud to be smarter, more "

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-17846930556887288572009-12-01T17:37:00.002-11:002009-12-01T17:53:57.351-11:00

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,And the women come out to cut up what remains,Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brainsAn' go to your Gawd like a soldier.-- Rudyard Kipling, "The Young British Soldier"Dr. William Brydon, shown here, was the sole survivor of a 16,500 man British invasion of Afghanistan in 1842. Dr. Brydon and two others were harassed by the Afghans to

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-54925436222909188242009-08-17T04:35:00.004-11:002009-08-22T19:07:35.673-11:00

“There are some people with a vested interest in the world as it is, because that’s the world they have power over.” -- Alan Moore***“People who read Empire of the Sun have often said to me, ‘What a strange life, how unusual,’ and I say to them, actually, the life I led in Shanghai before and during the Second World War was not strange; it wasn’t unusual. The majority of the people on this

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-73692548316203354772009-08-11T04:22:00.004-11:002009-08-11T05:15:17.006-11:00

Kalamazoo Single Payer Across the Nation is hosting an informational meeting at the Kalamazoo Library this evening to give our local crazies a chance to shriek about health care. Don Cooney and others are asking the relatively sane among us to show up early and keep things civil. I can barely speak in a coherent sentence these days, so eloquence and precision are out of the question, and I'm

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-2801871717544543522009-08-10T06:46:00.009-11:002009-08-10T08:38:13.820-11:00

While corporate charity continues unabated, writer John Ostrander is going blind because the health insurance he bought isn't going to be there when he needs it. Ostrander, godfather of Barbara Gordon's re-invention as Oracle, still needs several surgeries with extended stays in Boston to save his eye sight.Friends in the industry organized an auction to raise money for Ostrander at the Chicago

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-1829521068774117922009-07-10T03:18:00.006-11:002009-07-10T03:53:31.219-11:00

“…Jokes lead the way, like sniffer dogs, dragging their handlers behind them.”--Craig Brown in a profound article describing the evolution of his humor from satire to the absurd.***“They [Merrill Lynch and Bank of America officers] find out they’re $7 billion off on the estimate of losses for the fourth quarter and they never think maybe we should go back and adjust these bonuses?” Cuomo told me,

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-20985910851314476002009-06-18T12:32:00.004-11:002009-07-02T09:35:53.110-11:00

Did anyone else know that Library Thing has a version in Italian?

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-56858426814188583682009-05-24T05:54:00.009-11:002009-05-24T06:45:23.337-11:00

Remember those embarrassing, unfunny sketches when Bob Hope put on a wig and pretended to be a hippie? That's what the "health care advocates" looked like who testified before Congress last week and pretended to care. The Business Roundtable was there. The Chamber of Commerce was there. The insurance companies were there, naturallement. Gods help us and save us, the Heritage Foundation showed up

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-58458537574387657282009-05-17T02:00:00.005-11:002009-05-17T03:07:45.101-11:00

A sweet and simple fund-raiser idea: Douglas E. Sherwood of Oni Press asked a couple of dozen artists to draw his favorite X-Men character, Kitty Pryde, with the results to be auctioned on E-Bay as a fundraiser for the Oregon Hemophilia Treatment Center. I like the specificity of the idea, and that it offers something tangible-- an hour's diversion, a framed print, maybe a t-shirt-- to a

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-31672556299044768272009-04-09T01:00:00.006-11:002009-04-09T01:20:38.833-11:00

Re-reading this for maybe the third or fourth time: funny and sad and funny again. A happy ending with a wedding, so by Shakespeare's rules that makes it a comedy. The movie is actually well done (Michael Douglas shlubbing around in a woman's pink chenille bathrobe is iconic) but there are are layers and back story you'll only get from the book. Yes, it's embarrassing how many times my inner

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-25957393029444325372009-03-21T01:22:00.001-11:002009-03-21T01:24:02.791-11:00

I usually start answering memes and then don't finish them; too much like work, or Who Cares? But this one from Elspeth was fun and involves some word play:Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on to people you like and include me. Try not to repeat a song title. Pick your band/artist: Fats Waller Are you a male or female: The Sheik of ArabyDescribe

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-38698240211952384822009-03-15T05:15:00.009-11:002011-01-09T03:25:57.210-11:00

I enjoyed the Watchmen film more than I thought i would, seeing it with friends who'd never read the book but were able to respond to the larger themes. But ye gods, keep the general audience away from this thing that we love. Our local theater felt compelled to print out a sign warning customers that this is not a "superhero" film like they're used to, and I've already had students complain

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-20473045570214683462009-03-01T07:41:00.006-11:002009-03-01T08:38:49.485-11:00

I wrinkle my brow at those who limit themselves to the music of their youth, but here I am with three acoustic songs written before 1980, one of them when Shakespeare was a toddler. Poor old Granddad, I laughed at all his wordsI thought he was a bitter man when he spoke of women's ways:"They'll trap you and they'll use you before you even know; but love is blind, and you're far too kind-- don't

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-89752189248572640642009-02-21T05:03:00.008-11:002009-02-21T06:53:09.237-11:00

"Life isn’t divided into genres. It’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."- Alan Moore“I always offend someone by asserting that the reason the death of a pet is worse than the death of a human is that you have mixed feelings about all people.”-- Dick Cavett"I think that by retaining one’s childhood

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-36026669484622066582009-02-18T14:01:00.011-11:002010-03-14T03:03:15.893-11:00

Koala means "doesn't drink" (most of their intake coming from morning dew on eucalyptus leaves) so it's a sign of how thirsty she was that Sam drank from a bottle held by a volunteer fireman named Dave Tree. Caught on the ground in the daylight, too, but she quickly accepts that he is a creature of good will offering comfort from the forest fires that killed at least 180 people and Saint Francis

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-80135030845403113902009-02-14T22:32:00.004-11:002009-02-14T22:54:30.976-11:00

My friend Jef Burnham just finished his 100th review for Film Monthly, on a film of Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer. Were this a comic book, it would have a wraparound cover with the entire cast of characters and a hundred little Jefs watching them; if this was Vanity Fair, there would be a lot of manufactured drama over whose expensively powdered bare bottom should grace the cover; if it was

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-44926761221709923822009-02-12T21:31:00.004-11:002009-02-12T21:47:10.811-11:00

Awake at three in the morning. Plane crash in Buffalo on TV; 49 souls gone. But who knows how many-- the people who loved them-- who might be still asleep and don't yet know that their lives just stopped, too? I wonder about all the violent deaths in this country, more murders in one month in our larger cities than Japan has in a year, and does all that sorrow left behind add up in some way,

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-56853346316236189872009-02-11T16:17:00.003-11:002009-02-11T16:26:27.587-11:00

I heard Joseph Campbell tell this story at Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids back in the Eighties. Just found this transcription, and the story wants to be told again, for what it's worth.A starving and pregnant tigress comes upon a flock of goats and pounces on them with such fervor that she brings about the birth of her little one, as well as her own death. The goats scatter, but soon come

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-58685157629743665342009-02-06T22:57:00.007-11:002011-01-09T03:05:30.668-11:00

Art Deco has the Chrysler Building, but who knew that Steampunk (think of Jules Verne and a future designed with wood, brass and iron instead of plastic) has a building of its own? These are pictures by Alan M. Pavlik of the Bradbury Building , built in Los Angeles in 1893, a history of the building at Wikipedia, and the building's history as a set for films by Charlie Jane Anders at io9.

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-1660542202609020972009-02-06T22:42:00.000-11:002009-02-06T22:51:55.390-11:00

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-80911234720361865502009-02-03T14:41:00.004-11:002009-02-03T15:33:51.396-11:00

Upstate New York exists to make Michigan feel better about its status as the Texas of the North. Sure, we wolverines gave America its mad bombers, Nixon's pardon, the Amway-Blackwater dynasty, breeding enclaves for Calvinists the Netherlands didn't want, and city planning worthy of a post apocalyptic zombie film, but at least we don't shop at Forever Leather in Utica.

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-60100918763645169922009-01-28T16:24:00.002-11:002009-01-28T16:27:46.974-11:00

Everybody knows that the dice are loadedEverybody rolls with their fingers crossedEverybody knows that the war is overEverybody knows the good guys lostEverybody knows the fight was fixedThe poor stay poor, the rich get richThat's how it goesEverybody knowsEverybody knows that the boat is leakingEverybody knows that the captain liedEverybody got this broken feelingLike their father or their dog

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-73076115030511082072009-01-27T17:55:00.002-11:002011-01-09T03:11:00.089-11:00

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-34216402785668873352009-01-25T06:21:00.008-11:002009-01-25T06:37:12.604-11:00

In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.– Albert Camus*** Jimmy Olsen=me. And we all have signal watches-- unidentified comic fan, watching the inauguration***Friendships, like marriages, are dependent on avoiding the unforgivable. — John D. MacDonald***It may dash your hopes for that nice warm feeling called Schadenfreude, but the Masters of the

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-29657661504912225572009-01-24T14:29:00.006-11:002009-01-25T07:10:51.160-11:00

Yoko Kanno with her big band in a live performance of "Tank", a sound that, without fear or favor, truly kicks ASS and TAKES NAMES. If you aren't moving around to this, I don't think I want to know you:Yoko Kanno is a Japanese composer and leader of "The Seatbelts", a jazz band/pick up orchestra. She found the usual paths closed to her, so she made a name writing soundtracks for animation, much

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-72762902171168709632009-01-24T08:41:00.005-11:002009-01-25T02:37:20.383-11:00

Is anyone else worried about what's happened to Muntadhar al-Zaidi, the shoe-throwing journalist still in "detention" in Iraq? This is, after all, the land where habeas corpus went to die, and no one's seen or heard from him other than second-hand reports from his brother in the week before Christmas. We don't really know what "detention" means to the people holding the keys. We don't know if he

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-43820542547782911492009-01-20T17:11:00.008-11:002009-01-21T15:51:10.973-11:00

I didn't realize just how happy I was until I arrived at my friends' house and opened that first Guinness, with Rachel Maddow and the BBC interviewing survivors of the Little Rock Nine, and the joint realization that this is the first time in my lifetime that the guy I wanted to be president actually won. Sure, I voted for Clinton (Damn Near Republican) and went door-to-door for whoever was

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-45682681874123379832009-01-19T15:46:00.011-11:002009-01-20T11:06:01.400-11:00

"Three Fancies from the Infernal Garden", a short story by my friend Claire Cooney, can be read online in the Winter 2009 issue of Subterranean magazine.One of the things I love about Claire's poetry (and here, her stories) is that they look like smiling candied apples until you get up close enough to bite into one and you find them biting back. Here she plays around with figures from Russian

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-90873616575348834002009-01-18T17:35:00.007-11:002009-01-18T19:28:59.961-11:00

Louis Armstrong was a fan of Guy Lombardo, for reasons that passeth understanding-- but there was an elderly producer who said one of the most profound things he learned was that professional musicians have much wider tastes than their fans.Most of my friends have open ears-- Pat Relf pushed Danger Mouse and Gnarls Barkley on me, her daughters found Louis Jordan before I did, I keep nudghing them

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-30466426213881478802009-01-18T04:17:00.010-11:002011-01-09T02:55:52.823-11:00

What is it about the week of January 16? Now news comes that Andrew Wyeth and John Mortimer, the father of Rumpole, both died this weekend. And I'm not feeling too well myself. Wyeth was 91 years old, a refutation to the "live fast, die young" school of art. What makes Rembrandt Rembrandt and Hokusai "the old man mad with painting" was their ability to dive down deeper and deeper towards the

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-22566435397687754712009-01-14T18:12:00.015-11:002009-01-15T03:44:56.600-11:00

The summer I was 11 or 12, Animal World with Bill Burrud was on CBS, and of course I watched that. Immediately after was another summer replacement show, a British series called The Prisoner, created by and starring Patrick McGoohan. And now Pat tells me Patrick McGoohan has died at age 80.From the opening credits, I was entranced, stolen away to Faery by paranoid elves. I didn't understand half

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-65063690374053382412009-01-10T18:20:00.005-11:002011-01-09T03:26:35.529-11:00

I said what about my eyes?"Keep them on the road."I said what about my passion?"Keep it burning."I said what about my heart?"Tell me what you hold inside it."I said pain and sorrow.He said, "Stay with it."(Rumi)Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's Watchmen, the Citizen Kane of comic books, appears to have been turned into a beautiful film (though I'm a little vague as to whether the director, Zack Snyder

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-27335926129993476492009-01-06T14:20:00.004-11:002009-01-06T14:29:27.833-11:00

.cc_box a:hover .cc_home{background:url('http://www.comedycentral.com/comedycentral/video/assets/syndicated-logo-over.png') !important;}.cc_links a{color:#b9b9b9;text-decoration:none;}.cc_show a{color:#707070;text-decoration:none;}.cc_title a{color:#868686;text-decoration:none;}.cc_links a:hover{color:#67bee2;text-decoration:underline;}The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10cRoad to the

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-10135523667332173952009-01-01T03:23:00.007-11:002009-01-01T05:01:01.324-11:00

The BBC is talking about the death at age 91 of Helen Gavronsky Suzman, apparently the best known Caucasian anti-apartheid activist in South Africa. I've never heard of her before this, but something she said in a recording struck me as so simple and profound that I'd like to attach it to any description of my politics. It's weird that Americans don't have "politics" the way Europeans do; there's

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-69783199925687099702008-12-31T03:22:00.007-11:002008-12-31T11:19:54.061-11:00

I've heard the name "Diamond Jim" Brady since I was very small. I just knew it meant someone with a lot of flash and easy money. No idea how my family would have heard of him; their references to "Coxey's Army" made more sense.When I could read my animal books for myself, his name would show up in chapters about the passenger pigeon and the bison, as an example of the gaslight glutton who would

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-48940751808014523992008-12-25T00:45:00.022-11:002008-12-26T07:47:52.569-11:00

In a better world of my own design (I’m avoiding the word “utopia”—you see how that worked out for Thomas More) conflicts between nations are resolved by pandas, snow leopards and lemurs. (There are other components to my plan: reseeding the primeval forest from Maryland to the Mississippi, restocking free-range bison from the Mississippi to the Rockies, a guillotine on Madison Avenue as a

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-62431531251664370832008-12-23T23:18:00.003-11:002008-12-23T23:30:03.961-11:00

Porky Pig, singing "Blue Christmas".

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-63687456319357334242008-12-23T10:00:00.002-11:002008-12-23T10:01:30.031-11:00

It makes us think of all the deadThat sauntered with us here,By separation's sorceryMade cruelly more dear.It makes us think of what we had,And what we now deplore.We almost wish those siren throatsWould go and sing no more.An ear can break a human heartAs quickly as a spear,We wish the ear had not a heartSo dangerously near.

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-74170796864719355432008-12-21T15:22:00.008-11:002008-12-21T16:11:20.197-11:00

New Scientist (the liveliest of the journals) and The Guardian posted this video of the rebuilt "Antikythera Mechanism", a machine found in a Greek shipwreck some 2,000 years old. There's an argument on Wired as to whether it's a computer or a clock. Since it predicts points in time-- like calculating upcoming dates for the Olympics-- I say it's a computer. (The x-ray shows the inner workings

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-51879410373243292162008-12-21T14:55:00.003-11:002008-12-21T15:14:13.216-11:00

A startling gallery here of color photographs taken by French photographers during the Great War.

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-74453322433398189492008-12-21T04:52:00.018-11:002008-12-25T15:44:57.104-11:00

Video killed the radio star, but thirty years before, Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent and the McCarthy era killed the comic book's chance to evolve into a mature medium. The comic strip as objet d'art held on in the newspaper, with the Joycean wordplay of Walt Kelly's Pogo, Hal Foster's Prince Valiant (which survives, when you can find it, under Gary Gianni and Mark Schultz) and Frank

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-54662136725208596472008-12-20T17:21:00.013-11:002008-12-21T01:32:12.553-11:00

Michael (Mike) Connell (standing above left), the I.T. guy for Karl Rove and the Bush administration, the fellow who "lost" those Justice Department e-mails, who admitted that the 2004 vote in Ohio had been rigged, has died in a small plane crash, leaving a wife Heather and four children. Probably an accident, but certainly the most convenient death for an outgoing administration since William

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-84288414458420166132008-12-19T18:56:00.004-11:002008-12-19T19:07:14.685-11:00

"A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab?" -- While Raj from What's Happening looks on.

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-11162298682022111672008-12-17T16:20:00.008-11:002008-12-17T16:48:12.686-11:00

Living archetype and artists' avatar Miss Bettie Page has passed away at 85. I've written about her twice before-- just last year because of the early death of her greatest benefactor, Dave Stevens-- and we shall not see her like again. "All the sad sweet funny pretty girls in comics, from Sophie Bangs as Promethea to Francine to Maggie Chascarillo, owe a debt to Bettie Page."Of all the

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-48126520453756693122008-12-06T16:23:00.007-11:002008-12-17T16:00:28.439-11:00

Canadian Coup Corner: What the hell is going on with Canada? They're supposed to be the sane ones. Sure, they've just as many guns as the U.S., and their junior hockey program would give a Spartan pause, but they mostly leave the craziness on the ice. With habeas corpus suspended in the land of Mickey Mouse, the U.S. in the thrall of busy, evil men, and labyrinthine Mexico reviving human

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-56265607709461446132008-12-02T17:46:00.005-11:002011-06-04T02:41:15.709-11:00

It's that time of year, when Brian Cronin puts together an advent calendar for his blog Comics Should be Good. This year it features political cartoonists from Thomas Nast to Dr. Seuss (whose political work is collected in Dr.Seuss Goes to War). If you're "in love with pen and ink on paper" like I am, it's worth a click. I thought I knew Thomas Nast, but I'd never seen this drawing before; hats

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-55311618751020990082008-11-28T11:13:00.008-11:002008-11-28T12:03:25.624-11:00

With the Obama administration planning to restore habeas corpus and close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, while Bush factotums scramble for pardons, new photographs have been released of some of the "prisoners without a name, in cells without a number" rounded up by the Bush administration.

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-445442346970119322008-11-27T02:55:00.005-11:002008-11-27T04:11:09.064-11:00

This is how I plan to dress if I'm ever invited to the White House. So we're sitting at the big table with the grown-ups, and Barack is choosing his cabinet, and pundits I used to think of as intelligent (smarter than a Republican anyway) are already bitching about the choices. Welcome to the difference between bitching and governing, a moral struggle the Grover Nyquists and Gingriches never

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-452182866356151462008-11-12T15:44:00.007-11:002008-11-17T00:23:04.497-11:00

I like the kitties, though they seem to have wandered in off a popcorn can and more interested in the fringe on her costume than in joining her crime-fighting army of the night.I blame the haircut. It may have worked for Linda Blair in the 1980's, but did nothing for Adrienne Barbeau in Escape from New York, and it almost certainly doomed Nightcat to only one issue. Of course, the writing and art

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-19667946504715025352008-11-12T15:15:00.004-11:002008-11-12T15:30:14.480-11:00

The National Enquirer and Wonkette claim that Cindy McCain was entwined with a man not-her-husband at a Tempe Moody Blues concert.We cast no stones here. It may be, as one Wonkette reader opined, "Being finger-banged during 'Knights in White Satin' isn’t very First Ladyish"-- but hell, when I was in high school that pretty much defined my love life.

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-34391024805910675252008-11-08T11:46:00.006-11:002008-11-08T13:12:44.801-11:00

Forrest Ackerman, ninety-something years old, is fading away in California, body failing but alert as a cricket and taking the greatest joy in messages of affection from unofficial "nieces and nephews" around the world. It isn't too much of an exaggeration to say Mr. Ackerman is one of the people who created and sustained genre fandom, with Famous Monsters of Filmdom one of the cornerstones. I

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-88266815202728486792008-11-04T16:19:00.005-11:002011-06-04T02:45:17.634-11:00

Photograph from my online imaginary friend Drusilla, out in San Fransisco. Our secret weapon in fund raising, Dollar Dances for Democrats, sometimes known as Bluenose Backlash.

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-88207987506790682202008-11-04T12:40:00.006-11:002008-11-04T13:47:12.010-11:00

One more thing Sarah Palin doesn't understand; we're not "ashamed to be American", we're embarrassed to share it with people who shoot wolves from planes.***"Vote Early-- Vote Often": In his memoir Groucho and Me, Groucho Marx tells a story about Tammany Hall days, when his father and grandfather, poor immigrant Jews the rest of the year, would dress in their best clothes and be chauffeured down

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-41828491473675916402008-10-17T18:52:00.008-11:002008-10-19T15:40:59.715-11:00

"Contrary to the rumors that you've heard," Obama told the Al Smith memorial crowd, "I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father, Jor-el, to save the planet Earth."He had my vote after the New York Review profile, and then his ability to think in more than one dimension in Dreams from my Father cemented me there-- but it's nice to have a shout out from

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-48973943961667753782008-10-14T12:32:00.006-11:002008-10-14T14:14:47.478-11:00

An ACORN organizer was telling me once that the United Way hates his organization. ACORN works on housing for the poor, you see, and that frequently puts them in conflict with real estate developers-- and a lot of United Way groups are dominated by local real estate interests. "Be good," Mark Twain tells us, "and you will be lonesome." Now poor little ACORN, Association of Community

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-25103051753572332002008-10-01T13:00:00.003-11:002008-10-01T13:16:48.162-11:00

I don't care that Obama's ahead in the electoral college count this week-- we could still lose this thing, as foretold in this preview from the Simpson's "Treehouse of Horror: Die Bold".

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-33976826827013760052008-09-28T06:24:00.005-11:002008-09-28T06:43:26.281-11:00

Word comes that James Crumley has died of congestive heart failure. At least one of his novels, The Last Good Kiss earned him a seat at the table with Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, and another, Dancing Bear, is for me one of the best American novels of the last fifty years.A lot of us have the first line of The Last Good Kiss memorized, like the opening of Moby Dick or Pride and

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11767146.post-39421967228729667552008-09-21T02:01:00.008-11:002008-09-21T02:43:11.245-11:00

An idle question from John Martin made me look up my favorite character in Dickens, the theatrical manager Crummles from Nicholas Nickleby. Crummles is a relative of the mountebank Fox and Cat in Pinocchio and the Mouse from Pogo, featured in my masthead, but I suspect they were all carved from life. ... Nicholas was prepared for something odd, but not for something quite so odd as the sight he

Michael Fountain: Blood for Inkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05636180492565972504noreply@blogger.com1