From Edge of The American West:
1968 in the Peanutsverse.
What's odd is I don't specifically remember the first Franklin strip, and certainly didn't register its topicality as a child (Vietnam should have jumped out at me, I would have thought), although our elementary schools were packed with Peanuts anthologies, so I certainly must have read it. And once I hit High School it was all Doonesbury and Bloom County, of course.
Still, well done, Chuck.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Aujourd'hui Nous Sommes Tous Americains
Victory.
3:40AM, 24 hours later, and I'm still buzzed. This feels like the world's victory. So many thoughts in my head. It occured to me yesterday, too late, that being unemployed, I had had the perfect chance to go work for Obama, if I'd had a few thousand - even a few hundred - bucks to spare. Not that they needed another volunteer, as it turned out. There is nothing else that matters Tuesday as I hang on every development all day long, staying glued to the computer and the radio wherever I go.
America...Fuck yeah. Jedi messages, when the announcement is made, he with his gal in some pub, I with C and company in a friend's apartment.
I wish I was in Chicago, I say
-me too, says he.
There was a moment - just a moment - when the CBC reporter turned the camera to show the crowd- celebratory? angry? gathering outside the White House, when I held my breath. Everyone in the room listened as I outlined the dangers of the scenario. All you need, all you need, is a few agents provocateurs, turn the crowd into a mob, and you unleash the police and the soldiers you've had waiting...
2002.
I remember being in a massive crowd celebrating Japan's world cup win, in Sendai, in the middle of one of the city's massive shopping arcades, a line of Japanese riot police with shields and truncheons blocking one end as the crowd dances and sings, and kicks a soccer ball into the rafters, bouncing it off a lamp. My friend Mars laughing, plunging into the crowd, wanting to share in the moment, not understanding, not seeing the danger...if that ball breaks that light, the police will charge, and tear gas will be fired, and we're in a cattle chute five blocks long with no exits.
But the ball doesn't break the light, and the crowd stays happy and slowly dissipates, and my Canada Jersey gets high fives and approval from Japanese and Brits, the Japanese for the novelty of the world at their party, and the Brits because of Lennox Lewis just having knocked down some American Champion that day. Who is Lennox Lewis? asks Mars. Who Indeed...
But back in 2008, the moment passes. The crowd stays jubilant. We cut to Arizona. McCain impresses me, his supporters less so. Then Chicago, and Obama rises to the occasion.
O is speaking. , I message. I can hardly follow some of the words across the conversation, will read the transcript later. I don't quite catch the puppy reference, for instance.
What are those sheets? Huge teleprompters? asks JC.
Bulletproof Glass, I say.
No matter. The images are magnificent, indelible. I wish I was there. I wish I was one of them, just this once. But I'm proud of them. The world was at your back.
Later, at home, I continue reading, wanting to absorb every comment on every thread, drink in the joy from all corners of my online 'verse. I post a follow up to Charles Stross on Making Light, trade giddy articles with Rabbit at 1AM before watching Stewart and Colbert's repeat of their live show, then plunge back online. Time enough for caveats and low expectations. The homophobes still run amok, even though the count's not final when I finally crash. I know what he faces, I know just how deep the hole is, but tonight, for one night, none of it matters. Anything seems possible, and all of us everywhere have, at long last, won one. There is shit to do and we need them in the game and run by adults.
I won't be coming home tonight. My generation will put it right.
Victory.
3:40AM, 24 hours later, and I'm still buzzed. This feels like the world's victory. So many thoughts in my head. It occured to me yesterday, too late, that being unemployed, I had had the perfect chance to go work for Obama, if I'd had a few thousand - even a few hundred - bucks to spare. Not that they needed another volunteer, as it turned out. There is nothing else that matters Tuesday as I hang on every development all day long, staying glued to the computer and the radio wherever I go.
America...Fuck yeah. Jedi messages, when the announcement is made, he with his gal in some pub, I with C and company in a friend's apartment.
I wish I was in Chicago, I say
-me too, says he.
There was a moment - just a moment - when the CBC reporter turned the camera to show the crowd- celebratory? angry? gathering outside the White House, when I held my breath. Everyone in the room listened as I outlined the dangers of the scenario. All you need, all you need, is a few agents provocateurs, turn the crowd into a mob, and you unleash the police and the soldiers you've had waiting...
2002.
I remember being in a massive crowd celebrating Japan's world cup win, in Sendai, in the middle of one of the city's massive shopping arcades, a line of Japanese riot police with shields and truncheons blocking one end as the crowd dances and sings, and kicks a soccer ball into the rafters, bouncing it off a lamp. My friend Mars laughing, plunging into the crowd, wanting to share in the moment, not understanding, not seeing the danger...if that ball breaks that light, the police will charge, and tear gas will be fired, and we're in a cattle chute five blocks long with no exits.
But the ball doesn't break the light, and the crowd stays happy and slowly dissipates, and my Canada Jersey gets high fives and approval from Japanese and Brits, the Japanese for the novelty of the world at their party, and the Brits because of Lennox Lewis just having knocked down some American Champion that day. Who is Lennox Lewis? asks Mars. Who Indeed...
But back in 2008, the moment passes. The crowd stays jubilant. We cut to Arizona. McCain impresses me, his supporters less so. Then Chicago, and Obama rises to the occasion.
O is speaking. , I message. I can hardly follow some of the words across the conversation, will read the transcript later. I don't quite catch the puppy reference, for instance.
What are those sheets? Huge teleprompters? asks JC.
Bulletproof Glass, I say.
No matter. The images are magnificent, indelible. I wish I was there. I wish I was one of them, just this once. But I'm proud of them. The world was at your back.
Later, at home, I continue reading, wanting to absorb every comment on every thread, drink in the joy from all corners of my online 'verse. I post a follow up to Charles Stross on Making Light, trade giddy articles with Rabbit at 1AM before watching Stewart and Colbert's repeat of their live show, then plunge back online. Time enough for caveats and low expectations. The homophobes still run amok, even though the count's not final when I finally crash. I know what he faces, I know just how deep the hole is, but tonight, for one night, none of it matters. Anything seems possible, and all of us everywhere have, at long last, won one. There is shit to do and we need them in the game and run by adults.
I won't be coming home tonight. My generation will put it right.
Victory.
Monday, November 03, 2008
Cleaning out ma closet
(Crosspost)
Really odd things going on with my sleep pattern, almost to the point of being nocturnal. Mom and Dad coming to visit next week, so it's the usual batten down the hatches time. Do you need anything hauled away? Mom asks, but getting rid of an ex's stuff doesn't really work like that. Furniture is easily dealt with and gone long ago. Drawers of photographs, on the other hand, are another matter, and a pickup truck isn't really what's called for. Some sort of emotional electromagnet, maybe. Still, threshed my way through the main closet today, so progress made. Having the right boxes helps.
Webcomics I'm currently following, in no particular order.
Skin Horse
Something Positive
Questionable Content
Girl Genius
Girls with Slingshots
Fans!
Order of the Stick
XKCD
The Rack
Penny Arcade
And sometimes PVP, Devil's Panties, Punch n' Pie, Least I Could Do, and a few others.
It's funny, but except for Penny Arcade and PVP, none of these are strips I followed when I first got into webcomics. A few from that era are still around - Sluggy Freelance, Scary-go Round, and Goats, for instance - but most have folded, or mutated into other forms. Skin Horse is the sequel to Narbonic, for instance, and the mutation of Fluble (Amazingly, still on the web in archival form even if its official site is down) into the glory that is the Fafblog is a wonderful thing. But it's odd what an impermanent medium the webcomic seems to be. I wonder how much of the current web's content will wind up being lost 10 or 20 years from now?
Bonus: Fafblog interviews John McCain:
FB: Now let's get right down to it. Why should you be president?
MCCAIN: One word, my friends: leadership. As a Navy pilot I was shot down over Vietnam, as a member of the United States Senate I was beaten by my captors for five and a half years, and as your president I will continue to courageously endure those beatings for America.
FB: Well you make a pretty convincing case, John McCain, but why shouldn't I vote for a president who has even more experience being tortured, like Congressman Sheikh Mohammed or Senator Jesus or that guy who gets his head exploded at the beginning of Scanners?
MCCAIN: Because I know the problems Americans are going through right now. The American people are angry, my friends. They're hurt. They've been beaten by their captors for five and a half years. And they need a leader who's willing to stop federal tax dollars from going to research harbor seal DNA.
FB: We might lose our jobs and we might lose our homes and we might have to sell our youngest, weakest children to black market organ scavengers for a cardboard box and a can of refried beans, but we'll always be safe in the knowledge that our taxes aren't going to further our understanding of marine biology.
MCCAIN: Oh, and that's just the tip of the iceberg, my friends. Do you realize that federal earmarks last year directed literally thousands of your tax dollars to children's hospitals? Think about that now! Hospitals! For children!
FB: Now look John McCain, everybody wants to shut down children's hospitals, but how're you really gonna do it what with all the Washington gridlock and the Beltway infighting and the fatcat lobbyists from Big Children? I mean Ronald Reagan promised us he'd destroy the government and twenty years later we're still stuck with a functioning public sewage system.
Really odd things going on with my sleep pattern, almost to the point of being nocturnal. Mom and Dad coming to visit next week, so it's the usual batten down the hatches time. Do you need anything hauled away? Mom asks, but getting rid of an ex's stuff doesn't really work like that. Furniture is easily dealt with and gone long ago. Drawers of photographs, on the other hand, are another matter, and a pickup truck isn't really what's called for. Some sort of emotional electromagnet, maybe. Still, threshed my way through the main closet today, so progress made. Having the right boxes helps.
Webcomics I'm currently following, in no particular order.
Skin Horse
Something Positive
Questionable Content
Girl Genius
Girls with Slingshots
Fans!
Order of the Stick
XKCD
The Rack
Penny Arcade
And sometimes PVP, Devil's Panties, Punch n' Pie, Least I Could Do, and a few others.
It's funny, but except for Penny Arcade and PVP, none of these are strips I followed when I first got into webcomics. A few from that era are still around - Sluggy Freelance, Scary-go Round, and Goats, for instance - but most have folded, or mutated into other forms. Skin Horse is the sequel to Narbonic, for instance, and the mutation of Fluble (Amazingly, still on the web in archival form even if its official site is down) into the glory that is the Fafblog is a wonderful thing. But it's odd what an impermanent medium the webcomic seems to be. I wonder how much of the current web's content will wind up being lost 10 or 20 years from now?
Bonus: Fafblog interviews John McCain:
FB: Now let's get right down to it. Why should you be president?
MCCAIN: One word, my friends: leadership. As a Navy pilot I was shot down over Vietnam, as a member of the United States Senate I was beaten by my captors for five and a half years, and as your president I will continue to courageously endure those beatings for America.
FB: Well you make a pretty convincing case, John McCain, but why shouldn't I vote for a president who has even more experience being tortured, like Congressman Sheikh Mohammed or Senator Jesus or that guy who gets his head exploded at the beginning of Scanners?
MCCAIN: Because I know the problems Americans are going through right now. The American people are angry, my friends. They're hurt. They've been beaten by their captors for five and a half years. And they need a leader who's willing to stop federal tax dollars from going to research harbor seal DNA.
FB: We might lose our jobs and we might lose our homes and we might have to sell our youngest, weakest children to black market organ scavengers for a cardboard box and a can of refried beans, but we'll always be safe in the knowledge that our taxes aren't going to further our understanding of marine biology.
MCCAIN: Oh, and that's just the tip of the iceberg, my friends. Do you realize that federal earmarks last year directed literally thousands of your tax dollars to children's hospitals? Think about that now! Hospitals! For children!
FB: Now look John McCain, everybody wants to shut down children's hospitals, but how're you really gonna do it what with all the Washington gridlock and the Beltway infighting and the fatcat lobbyists from Big Children? I mean Ronald Reagan promised us he'd destroy the government and twenty years later we're still stuck with a functioning public sewage system.
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