"All the Stones the Builders Rejected" 
(And some days it takes more Stones than others...) Where Mythical Bestiary meets Contemporary Culture and Chews On Its Leg Until Covered with Slobber.
COMMONPLACE BOOK, MARCH
I think my credentials as a conservative are impeccable. I think it's because he is not conservative that George W. Bush is in such terrible trouble. – Jeffery Hart on C-SPAN
There's a weird attitude about sex in this country, particularly, and I've had far more sex than I've had fights on water towers against guys with super powers, so why people should be freaked out by the fact that I write about characters with sex lives or that I enjoy sex, is something I'll never understand. –Chuck Austen
“James Cameron is uncertain about his next project, but he's promised it will be a love story, set either in Jonestown or on TWA Flight 800.” -- unknown internet signature
[In] “.... Woody Allen's ‘Manhattan’, a picture in which, toward the end, the Woody Allen character makes a list of reasons to stay alive. 'Groucho Marx' is one reason, and 'Willie Mays' is another. The second movement of Mozart's 'Jupiter' Symphony. Louis Armstrong's 'Potato Head Blues.' Flaubert's ‘A Sentimental Education’.
This list is modishly eclectic, a trace wry, definitely OK with real linen; and notable, as raisons d'être go, in that every experience it evokes is essentially passive. This list of Woody Allen's is the ultimate consumer report, and the extent to which it has been quoted approvingly suggests a new class in America, a subworld of people rigid with apprehension that they will die wearing the wrong sneaker, naming the wrong symphony, preferring Madame Bovary.” -- Joan Didion
"Nothing made a more lasting impression during my journey through America than the semi-comatose state in which I found the American left. I know, of course, that the term "left" does not have the same meaning and ramifications here that it does in France. And I cannot count how many times I was told there has never been an authentic "left" in the United States, in the European sense. But at the end of the day, my progressive friends, you may coin ideas in whichever way you like. The fact is: You do have a right. This right, in large part thanks to its neoconservative battalion, has brought about an ideological transformation that is both substantial and striking. And the fact is that nothing remotely like it has taken shape on the other side--to the contrary, through the looking glass of the American "left" lies a desert of sorts, a deafening silence, a cosmic ideological void that, for a reader of Whitman or Thoreau, is thoroughly enigmatic." -- Bernard-Henri Levy, "A Letter to the American Left"
"’Who comes to writers’ conferences?’ you ask. A random sample of twenty students will contain six recent divorcees, three preachers’ wives in middle life, five schoolteachers of no particular age or sex, two foxy grandmas, one sweet old widower with true tales to tell about railroading in Idaho, one real writer, one not merely angry but absolutely furious young man, and one physician with forty years’ worth of privileged information that he wants to sell to the movies for a blue million.” -- Kurt Vonnegut
Friends of Wonkette in Iraq found the following sites censored by the Marines:
* Wonkette – “Forbidden, this page (http://www.wonkette.com/) is categorized as: Forum/Bulletin Boards, Politics/Opinion.”
* Bill O’Reilly (www.billoreilly.com) – OK
* Air America (www.airamericaradio.com) – “Forbidden, this page (http://www.airamericaradio.com/) is categorized as: Internet Radio/TV, Politics/Opinion.”
* Rush Limbaugh (www.rushlimbaugh.com) – OK
* ABC News “The Note” – OK
* Website of the Al Franken Show (www.alfrankenshow.com) – “Forbidden, this page (http://www.airamericaradio.com/) is categorized as: Internet Radio/TV, Politics/Opinion.”
* G. Gordon Liddy Show (www.liddyshow.us) – OK
* Don & Mike Show (www.donandmikewebsite.com) – “Forbidden, this page (http://www.donandmikewebsite.com/) is categorized as: Profanity, Entertainment/Recreation/Hobbies.”
“The America the ACLU defends does not stifle debate, engage in searches without judicial review, hold prisoners without due process, or participate in torture." -- Scott Crichton, Montana ACLU
"There are people in Hollywood, not all of them, but there are some people who are nothing more than harlots They will do anything for the buck, they wouldn't care, if you asked them to sodomize their own mother in a movie, they would do so, and they would do it with a smile on their face." -- William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, on Gary Busey's participation in the Turkish film "Valley of the Wolves: Iraq"
"I remember when everybody won Tonys for ‘Dreamgirls’, and they all got up there thanking God for letting them win this award, and I was thinking to myself: God is silent on the Holocaust, but he involves himself in the Tony Awards? It doesn't seem very likely." -- a character in Christopher Durang's “Laughing Wild”
See also: Random Quotations, Commonplace Book:January, Commonplace Book: December
CITIBANK ATMS LOOTED; DRESS REHEARSAL FOR THE COUP
Word of mouth from Boing Boing Saturday night: Citibank customers traveling out of the country have been frozen out of their bank accounts. They are being told that the ATM networks of Canada, Russia and the United Kingdom have been "compromised", so that using an ATM card over the Canadian network locks out your account automatically.
"She informed me that I would have to return to the United States to change my pin number before my card would be valid and in a usable state again. When I informed her that I would be traveling outside of the United States for at least a few months, possibly up to six, she repeated that I would have to re-enter the United States to fix the problem."
Electronically frozen assets have been a trope in science fiction at least since Heinlein-- that's why so many of his characters have gold stashed somewhere. In Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale", electronic banking was used to strand the opposition and take over the United States.
Gotta wonder is this isn't criminal activity at all, but a dress rehearsal for some future "state of emergency". I hate being intuitive sometimes. I still remember puzzling over a small NYT story about an assassination in Northern Afghanistan the weekend before September 11, and thinking that the murder reminded me of the prologue for a paperback thriller...
"She informed me that I would have to return to the United States to change my pin number before my card would be valid and in a usable state again. When I informed her that I would be traveling outside of the United States for at least a few months, possibly up to six, she repeated that I would have to re-enter the United States to fix the problem."
Electronically frozen assets have been a trope in science fiction at least since Heinlein-- that's why so many of his characters have gold stashed somewhere. In Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale", electronic banking was used to strand the opposition and take over the United States.
Gotta wonder is this isn't criminal activity at all, but a dress rehearsal for some future "state of emergency". I hate being intuitive sometimes. I still remember puzzling over a small NYT story about an assassination in Northern Afghanistan the weekend before September 11, and thinking that the murder reminded me of the prologue for a paperback thriller...
THE DEMIGOD'S LOT IS NOT A HAPPY ONE
Panels written by Kurt Busiek and Alan Moore, two writers more skilled than I at articulating the problems inherent in the genre. And you thought religion holds up an impossibly perfect role model...?
Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of "The Left Hand of God" notes on C-SPAN that society sometimes regards cynics as "wise" and knowing, and other times its concept of objective reality shifts towards an optimistic worldview. These shifts are writ large in the dreamland of comics.
MARY JANE WATSON, MAY PARKER HELD AT GUANTANAMO WITHOUT HABEAS CORPUS: ACLU Seeks Release of Dissidents' Relatives
Yes, there are otaku lurking at the NYT, and the horribly artsy (therefore acceptable to New Yorkers) Chris Ware can go screw himself. Or bore himself to death. Myself, I'll always love watching the Archetypes wrestle with the Zeitgeist. I hear the Zeitgeist is getting a couple of evil sidekicks, Weltsmerch and Schadenfreude:
From The New York Times, February 20, 2006
THE BATTLE OUTSIDE RAGING, SUPERHEROES DIVE IN
By GEORGE GENE GUSTINES
".... America's current real-world political issues will wind themselves into the lives of the heroes of Marvel Comics in "Civil War," a seven-issue limited monthly series set to begin in May. In the series, the beliefs of many well-known Marvel characters, including Captain America, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man and Spider-Man, will be challenged. ...
"Civil War" provides problems in spades. The story opens with a reckless fight between a novice group of heroes (filming a reality television show) and a cadre of villains. The battle becomes quite literally explosive, killing some of the superheroes and many innocent bystanders. That crystallizes a government movement to register all super-powered beings as living weapons of mass destruction. The subsequent Registration Act will divide the heroes into two camps, one led by Captain America, the other by Iron Man. Along the way, Marvel will unveil its version of Guantánamo Bay, enemy combatants, embedded reporters and more. The question at the heart of the series is a fundamental one: "Would you give up your civil liberties to feel safer in the world?"
".... As deeply entangled in current United States politics as the new Marvel series seem, "Civil War" and the accompanying "Front Line" series won't be written by Americans. Mark Millar, a popular comics writer who is Scottish and lives in Glasgow is writing "Civil War"; Paul Jenkins, a British writer who lives in Atlanta and had a lengthy run on "Spider-Man," is writing "Front Line."
".... Mr. Millar said the story would cause a "seismic shift" in the Marvel heroes: "Before the civil war, the Marvel universe was a certain way. After the civil war, the heroes are employed by the government." But don't think that gives away the ending. "Some people refuse to do it," he said, "and those guys are performing an illegal act by doing so."
***
[--do the words, "Spider-Man: Threat or Menace?" strike a familiar note? As the most human of heroes, fighting for the little people and not ideologies, I'm sure that Spidey, bless him, will find himself bucking authority for the sake of some victim of "collateral damage", and get booted out of Stark Tower with the rest of the Mets fans. -- M.]
***
"Mr. Jenkins's "Civil War: Front Line" will explore the ramifications of the events in the main series and more. "I have absolute carte blanche to take on the political landscape as it exists in America and all around the world," he said in a telephone interview.
"Mr. Jenkins will be telling some of his stories through the viewpoint of two embedded reporters. One works for a left-leaning newspaper, The Alternative. The other works for The Daily Bugle, whose fictional publisher, J. Jonah Jameson, Mr. Jenkins likened to Rupert Murdoch. Jameson has an agenda and pushes his embedded reporter to meet it.
"Mr. Jenkins will be doing some embedding of his own, using, in part, actual war letters and diaries, including "The Diary of Anne Frank" to tell the parallel story of a frightened young mutant girl in Manhattan, and the World War I poem, "Futility," by Wilfred Owen, to chronicle the last moments of a hero's life.
"Are these stories getting too heavy for comics readers looking to shut out real-world tensions?
"Not really, say the Marvel writers. "Civil War," Mr. Millar said, will work on two levels: "At the core, it's one half of the Marvel heroes vs. the other half." But, he added: "The political allegory is only for those that are politically aware. Kids are going to read it and just see a big superhero fight."
***
There's a part of me that still believes in Truth and Justice, and despite what television says, that doesn't always include the "American Way".
To give credit where credit is due, DC and Frank Miller covered these conflicts back in the 80s, when Batman used kryptonite to beat the mortal shit out of Superman for protecting a Reagan lookalike: "Keep talking, Clark; you've always known just what to say. 'Yes'-- You always say 'Yes'-- to anyone with a badge, or a flag. Just like your parents taught you. My parents taught me a different lesson, lying on this street, shaking in deep shock, dying for no reason at all." One thinks of the recent photographs-- I'm not going to post them, you can hunt them down yourself if you need to be taught that lesson over again-- of children screaming over their parents' body parts in Iraq, and parents trying desperately to put their broken children back together.
People who don't read comics, but are interested in this war of ideals, or the intersection of human reality with fantasy are encouraged to start with Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross' "Marvels". A recent New Yorker cartoon showed a grumpy old man growling past a bookstore, "Now we have to pretend to read GRAPHIC novels, too?"
From The New York Times, February 20, 2006
THE BATTLE OUTSIDE RAGING, SUPERHEROES DIVE IN
By GEORGE GENE GUSTINES
".... America's current real-world political issues will wind themselves into the lives of the heroes of Marvel Comics in "Civil War," a seven-issue limited monthly series set to begin in May. In the series, the beliefs of many well-known Marvel characters, including Captain America, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man and Spider-Man, will be challenged. ...
"Civil War" provides problems in spades. The story opens with a reckless fight between a novice group of heroes (filming a reality television show) and a cadre of villains. The battle becomes quite literally explosive, killing some of the superheroes and many innocent bystanders. That crystallizes a government movement to register all super-powered beings as living weapons of mass destruction. The subsequent Registration Act will divide the heroes into two camps, one led by Captain America, the other by Iron Man. Along the way, Marvel will unveil its version of Guantánamo Bay, enemy combatants, embedded reporters and more. The question at the heart of the series is a fundamental one: "Would you give up your civil liberties to feel safer in the world?"
".... As deeply entangled in current United States politics as the new Marvel series seem, "Civil War" and the accompanying "Front Line" series won't be written by Americans. Mark Millar, a popular comics writer who is Scottish and lives in Glasgow is writing "Civil War"; Paul Jenkins, a British writer who lives in Atlanta and had a lengthy run on "Spider-Man," is writing "Front Line."
".... Mr. Millar said the story would cause a "seismic shift" in the Marvel heroes: "Before the civil war, the Marvel universe was a certain way. After the civil war, the heroes are employed by the government." But don't think that gives away the ending. "Some people refuse to do it," he said, "and those guys are performing an illegal act by doing so."
***
[--do the words, "Spider-Man: Threat or Menace?" strike a familiar note? As the most human of heroes, fighting for the little people and not ideologies, I'm sure that Spidey, bless him, will find himself bucking authority for the sake of some victim of "collateral damage", and get booted out of Stark Tower with the rest of the Mets fans. -- M.]
***
"Mr. Jenkins's "Civil War: Front Line" will explore the ramifications of the events in the main series and more. "I have absolute carte blanche to take on the political landscape as it exists in America and all around the world," he said in a telephone interview.
"Mr. Jenkins will be telling some of his stories through the viewpoint of two embedded reporters. One works for a left-leaning newspaper, The Alternative. The other works for The Daily Bugle, whose fictional publisher, J. Jonah Jameson, Mr. Jenkins likened to Rupert Murdoch. Jameson has an agenda and pushes his embedded reporter to meet it.
"Mr. Jenkins will be doing some embedding of his own, using, in part, actual war letters and diaries, including "The Diary of Anne Frank" to tell the parallel story of a frightened young mutant girl in Manhattan, and the World War I poem, "Futility," by Wilfred Owen, to chronicle the last moments of a hero's life.
"Are these stories getting too heavy for comics readers looking to shut out real-world tensions?
"Not really, say the Marvel writers. "Civil War," Mr. Millar said, will work on two levels: "At the core, it's one half of the Marvel heroes vs. the other half." But, he added: "The political allegory is only for those that are politically aware. Kids are going to read it and just see a big superhero fight."
***
There's a part of me that still believes in Truth and Justice, and despite what television says, that doesn't always include the "American Way".
To give credit where credit is due, DC and Frank Miller covered these conflicts back in the 80s, when Batman used kryptonite to beat the mortal shit out of Superman for protecting a Reagan lookalike: "Keep talking, Clark; you've always known just what to say. 'Yes'-- You always say 'Yes'-- to anyone with a badge, or a flag. Just like your parents taught you. My parents taught me a different lesson, lying on this street, shaking in deep shock, dying for no reason at all." One thinks of the recent photographs-- I'm not going to post them, you can hunt them down yourself if you need to be taught that lesson over again-- of children screaming over their parents' body parts in Iraq, and parents trying desperately to put their broken children back together.
People who don't read comics, but are interested in this war of ideals, or the intersection of human reality with fantasy are encouraged to start with Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross' "Marvels". A recent New Yorker cartoon showed a grumpy old man growling past a bookstore, "Now we have to pretend to read GRAPHIC novels, too?"
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