I think next presidential election season, I'm gonna throw my hat into the ring. I'll be running on a platform of friendship and rainbows. Now I'm not gonna lie to you guys, I know I can't do it alone so I'm gonna need Hubskiers to help fill various cabinet positions. If you're hesitant to join or vote for me, just take comfort in knowing that I can't be any worse than Trump.
Can I be your Minister of Technology? I'd be nice to have someone in the spot with some experience and understanding of how tech actually works. One of my duties would be to sit in the back of the House or Senate, with an airhorn, while they are in session. Anytime someone says something blatantly technologically moronic - oh, like, for example, that they are going to "eliminate porn on the internet" - I'd blow the airhorn to let everyone in the room know that the right honorable speaker is lying and incompetent. This is a service I will be proud to provide.
Absolutely. Though I hope you don't mind my saying that we might need to break up the position into multiple roles. These days, technology is a huge umbrella term and it affects every area of our lives, from national security to the economy to human rights. I think that in order to properly address the variety of ways it affects all of us, we might need more than one person to look after the issue.
Absolutely. Cyber security, power, telecommunications, international relations, and the Office of Technology Commercialization (previously a NASA department) will all be separate organizations reporting to the MoT. There will also be an internal government outreach organization that will aggressively move to modernize government systems and bring them up to snuff with current platforms and trends. Oh. And data visualization with Tableau will be a required course in Junior High School! Need to make sure the next generation is exquisitely data literate.
Yep. I used to help them out when I was at NASA. It was called a variety of names, but basically the department was responsible for taking all the taxpayer-funded science that NASA had come up with, and finding companies who could turn that science into commercial products. In practice it didn't work so well. It should have been eBay for NASA ideas... but at that point in time, eBay hadn't been invented yet. So technology kinda got funneled out to a few companies that had personal connections within the team, and then many of those companies failed to execute on creating legitimate commercial products from the NASA tech. A lot of those ideas floundered due to lack of accountability and follow through. But nowadays, I'd love to see a modern version of this. A place where NASA scientists could publish their work and findings, and then companies could pitch product ideas, and NASA could trumpet how taxpayer money went to create jobs and new products for the market... that'd be so cool! I have no idea how that department is doing today, or if it even still exists. Oh wait! Google! Lookee here... the department still exists, and now has a much better name and portal!
I'm pro-environment and would do what I can to increase federal funding for America's parks at every level, from federal to state to municipal. I'd work hard to encourage businesses to work with the EPA to reduce pollution while still being able to compete on the global market and create jobs for hard working Americans across the country. I will look into the current green energy initiatives we have in place now and see how we can tweak them to make them even more succesful. You can take comfort in knowing I would make such goals a major priority as I want to do all that and more. You may also voice your concern in the fact that I don't have the slightest clue how to do any of that. But back to your question. I am very much pro kitten. I am also pro puppy, pro bunny, and pro chicky as well. If it's cute and cuddly, I love it. If it's not, cute and cuddly, I will still love it. Every living thing deserves to have a place on this earth and I will work tirelessly to stick to an ideal that I hold near and dear to my heart. Thank you for your consideration and thank you for your thoughtful question.
You doubt that people will vote for you? And you compare yourself to Trump? What the fuck are you even thinking?! I expect your candidacy to be announced proudly and loudly. If you like minimalistic art, I may become your logo designer. Can't do much more, but I'm willing to give it whatever I can.
I would in all sincerity be excited to have you in my team. I hope you don't have your sight set on Post Master General though. One of my friends called dibs on that, which I actually find very comforting that he wouldn't want the most glamorous job.
I completely understand your reservations. Your opinion, as an American citizen, is both highly respected and valued. As I'm sure you're no doubt aware, War just happens to be an Internet username. I can assure you that the person behind it is a capable, respectable, productive member of our great country. I have the utmost confidence in their ability to serve the American people with pride and a commitment to what is right, fair, and just. Though your comment was mostly in jest, I would like to take the opportunity to speak on the subject of our nation's great military as I have not had the opportunity to do so until now. As a man raised by very conservative parents, I have been and will continue to be at heart a pacifist. I believe whole heartedly that with a little more effort and with hearts full of compassion and respect for each other, many of our world's problems could be solved without bloodshed. That said though, I believe that it is our nation's right to have a standing military for the purpose of protecting our interests here at home, as well as the interests of our friends and allies abroad. And what a fine military it is, with ranks full of hard working men and women equipped with some of the best technology known to man. It has been a key driver in our economy through job creation and technological development and I can only hope that it will continue to be so under my leadership. That said, I am concerned about some of the military spending that is allegedly out of control. It is my goal to take a good hard look at our finances and hopefully with the help of our congressmen and military leaders, we can find a way to trim some financial fat here and there and reinvest the money in our schools and infrastructure. While some people might raise alarm bells, warning of "budget cuts," the American people have my word that I will do everything in my power to ensure that our military will continue to be well equipped, well staffed, and a continual source of pride for this great nation.
In all honesty I always had an eye on Secretary of State, but honestly I doubt I would be prepared for such a huge position plus arguewithatree is probably more fit. I'm more than fine with a behind the scenes position that would involve me with the presidential agenda in terms of policy proposals, policy initiatives, and anything else you may need in regards to attaining your domestic goals during your term.
aw that's nice of you to say. deputy sec is also a presidential appointment i think. so is NSA.
Hmm. I have some actual considerations. What I need is a person who is willing to look me in the eye at any time and say, "rd95, your heart is in the right place here and I respect that. However, your idea is stupid and it needs a lot of tweaking before we implement it."
Hey Bartender Draw one, two, three more Glasses of beer! Being married is great. I'm killing it at work. I'm financially stable. I'm not trapped in my job. My parents have finally moved into their new house, which is much closer to me. I have health insurance, so I can finally get my foot looked at. (Ankle injury MONTHS ago, that just won't heal.) I've started writing again, working on a historical drama based on the founding of Seattle. There are about three episodes written, and I have now nailed down the Season 1 and Season 2 story arcs. So now I know where I need to go, who the characters are, and what actually happened (historically speaking), so I have clear sub-stories to write, and they all stitch together into the bigger story arcs. I'm really excited about this. But also nervous, because I was brought in as a story consultant on a friend's writing project. He has since kinda abandoned it, and I am still running with it, and I'm not sure if he's going to be cool with that. But since he works DPW for Burning Man, I gotta wait to ask him until he gets out of the desert in about 2 months, or so. Until then, I keep writing...
That whole paragraph is just fucking amazing for a fellow writer. You rock!I've started writing again, working on a historical drama based on the founding of Seattle. There are about three episodes written, and I have now nailed down the Season 1 and Season 2 story arcs. So now I know where I need to go, who the characters are, and what actually happened (historically speaking), so I have clear sub-stories to write, and they all stitch together into the bigger story arcs.
My side-project-to-unwind is done. /r/belgium loved it. A friend of mine who lives in Antwerp thinks it is a good idea to print it out and put it in the mailbox of the mayor, so there's that. The article I'm writing on selfdriving cars has gone through like five iterations and is starting to really come together. Not yet happy with it, partly because it's a difficult article, partly because I'm insecure about my writing. In exactly one week I'll be in Berlin, and in one week and a few hours I'll be in Western Poland. The job I mentioned two (two!?) months ago is finally taking off. I'll be getting a workstation laptop so I can work pretty much anywhere, probably will do one day at the office a week and work from home with that laptop.
Furnished an apartment and renting it out on airBNB this week: it's my plan to sustain myself for this summer. It helps that my dad's the landlord but I still gotta pay rent. I have some more vlogs to edit, it keeps me busy. Just doing odd jobs, trying not to think about the future too much. Like, I seriously got no direction right now. Only goal being not getting a job and manage to sustain myself. Works for now and it will for a bit - I really don't need much money. But that's not a good long term plan...
That's exactly what I'm planning to do. Take my mom's spare property, update it a bit, and rent out rooms on AirBnb. Hopefully I can eke a rent free living situation from it. Not having to spend $600 a month on rent is the same as making an extra $600. What part of the world are you in nowadays?Furnished an apartment and renting it out on airBNB this week: it's my plan to sustain myself for this summer. It helps that my dad's the landlord but I still gotta pay rent.
Just back from the apartment hunt. And... I'm finally settled! Got a decent apartment for myself, not far from the previous one, though much closer to the bus stop. A nice lady from the agency that deals with places of living in any way helped us look and showed us quite a few options. I settled for the one I did because it's by the trolleybus line, and I like that because trolleys are electric transport. The apartment has the Soviet feel, but it's cozy. Boy, that's weeks of worries over. I'm glad I'm through. I must thank my sister for helping out with this: it was her who gave us the number of the nice rentmaster lady. Moving in next week, which means I get to spend a month less with my parents - a victory. (dear Christ, do they talk shit on the road) Been shifting to what I call the "buddhist mind" lately. I come to accept the fact that I really don't know the world, so I can't judge people around me, whether I have solid reason to or not. It's a good life, and by focusing on the bad stuff one only gets the bad stuff. I feel like it comes from the place of love for life (which I've talked about recently), which I appreciate to come to embrace. My worries, it seems, were for nothing: all I had to do is to flip a switch in my head that says "I accept the power and the responsibility of living".
I'm living and working in Hollywood. Have done for nearly ten years now. It's wild - I realized recently that I have been an entertainment industry professional for longer than I was an AV consultant. I have done this for longer than high school, college and the gap year betwixt. Yet the last movie I saw in theaters was Star Trek Into Darkness. Television is chockablock with shows I've worked on but not watched. I read something like 24 books a year but maybe one of them is fiction. My friends are entertainment professionals. They work on shit you've seen, shit you've heard of. BM vs. SM. ID4MkII. Fury Road. TMNT. But we don't care. Discussion at dinner last night was about whether Spike Jonze jumped the shark before or after Being John Malkovich. My DP buddy's favorite film of all time is Tarkovsky's Stalker. And when I started this adventure we all worked on the movies we worked on so that we could afford to work on the movies we wanted to see. But those movies don't exist anymore. Nobody is making them. The most successful producer I know has gotten shit to Cannes several times but you haven't heard of his films, despite them gaining major theatrical releases. I don't talk to him anymore because Hollywood starfuckers annoy the shit out of me. The most successful producer I'm friendly with doesn't want to make movies anymore because it's a fucking grind. Subverting your life for 18-24 months so that you can have something that someone somewhere can flip through at Walmart and decide not to buy. And those are the profitable ones. I haven't watched Stranger Things. I probably should. At the same time, the people I know who love it are the ones whose relationship to the entertainment industry is nostalgic at best. Down below there's a discussion of the "genre" of superhero movies. Seriously? That whole pedantic manichean clusterfuck blew up out of cynical marketing in the past ten years. Dear ComicCon, fuck you. We thought we had our sci fi back when Star Wars finally ran its course. But no, we had to suck down another ten years of Pepper Fucking Potts while JJ Abrams retooled his lens flare for Tatooine. If you google image search "Malibu Cliff House" you know what you get a faceful of? Eat a dick, Tony Stark. So it's pretty fucked up that I'm looking up "Malibu Cliff House" on google image search because I was looking for one I set a screenplay in back in 2009, but never wrote. 'cuz I'm writing it again. Yeah. My attention span is so short I can't edit the book that I know I can sell but I can write the screenplay I know I can't. 'cuz me and my cynical buddies can shoot that shit and at least have something to strike back at the fucking dark(knight) with. I had the 8 year chip, tacocat, but I fell off the wagon. Fortunately, self-loathing is a useful prime motivator for creativity. (the house I was looking for was built in 2003 and didn't sell for 8 years at $1.8m. It sold in 2011 for $1.5m and has since been sold twice, each owner pocketing more than $350k simply by living in a bitchin' ass Malibu cliff house for 18 months. If you ever wondered why you feel like the economy is hammering you while Bloomberg keeps talking about how great things are, that's why)
I've been to 10 ComicCons. My Brother has been to 22? 23? This was his last one, and he say it is possibly his last Con ever. Somewhere in the last ten years Comic Con kicked out the nerdy, dorky, interesting people and invited in the mega money Hollywood and Entertainment people. The "Interesting" people who made ComicCon a place where you went to find a new Penpal, a new gaming buddy, a new foil for your Comic Fan theory? They were all shown the door so that actresses could pretend to be cosplayers because their agents set them up for the gig. Back in the day, I was standing in line for a water fountain and a short, odd-looking guy was behind me. I asked him what he was excited to see, and he replied "my fans." I was all oh, cool, you a writer or artist? He laughed and said, with a chuckle, You are holding my book. Good luck ever having an interaction like that at the shambling zombie corpse that ComicCon has become. And yes, he signed my book for me. It's around here in a box labeled "Never lose or sell this shit."Dear ComicCon, fuck you.
Hey! I haven't bothered with Stranger Things either! wasoxygen recently told me he cancelled his Netflix subscription. Well, I'm happy to report mine is cancelled too. At least, til tomorrow when I get paid. Who's pickin' up what I'm pickin' down, huh?
I'm enjoying Stranger Things so far but it's one of those shows that I like to watch while I do something else like knit. I haven't watched a show in a while that I could just watch without doing something else. I think this show Rectify was probably the last one.
I stopped at like S1E8, when fuckin' Tom DeLay was busy reminiscing about glee club. I've since picked it back up again to remind my self of my disdain for David Fincher. I was gonna give up on it at the end of S1 and continue with The Tunnel on PBS, but PBS has this stupid "if we aired it more than a week ago y'all gotta pay $5 a month" thing that's just straight up fuckin' bullshit even if it does star Stannis Baratheon. So I watched through like S2E1 and I still don't like David Fincher. I should probably pick up Bloodline again 'cuz it was good, but I was enjoying watching that with my wife, while I know she'd never pick up House of Cards (same way I ground through Mad Men). It's just kind of a bummer.
work still sucks. 3 more weeks til i can give notice. there's some sort of weird power struggle between my contract boss (who i am actually beholden to) and my area desk boss (who i spend most of my time working for but the contract wins out in a conflict) going on that i just do not care about and am somehow in the middle of. Fulbright can't come soon enough tbh. unfortunately since the plan is "pack everything", i don't really have need for making a detailed packing list (if you check the marginalia in all my notes when I'm approaching a trip, i like to write out and illustrate packing lists and haven't been in a meeting long and boring enough to warrant one for this trip lol) but I have been making one for the orientation which is coming up in a few weeks. pretty excited about orientation because they're putting me up in a nice hotel on the govt dime 👌👌👌👌👌 still haven't been able to book flights yet which is highly aggravating but not unexpected for a state department program. last i heard there were still people waiting on ministerial placements which is just absurd to me. people are supposed to be departing soon and they could possibly still not know where they're working?? i also posted in the facebook group the kosovo fellows have and came clean on not knowing shit about the balkans and now i have over 40 digital books and articles to help me!! totally willing to share those if anyone is interested. bad shit if you abused me and you know it and refuse to accept radio silence and social media blocks as indicators that i don't wanna talk to you but continue to try and find ways to do so in order to tell me that you won't contact me any more, clap your hands "clap clap" - my ex prolly so i never got around to getting that protective order i set out to get in the march/april timeline because the court system in DC is fucking stupid and closes at 4pm and wants you to show up ready for AT LEAST 2 hours of interviewing for DV intake/protective orders. and i figured that since he doesn't actually know where i live it's nbd. but he still managed to find my active tumblr (had previously messaged me at a url i'm only sitting on because i used it for 4ish years before switching) and send me a message telling me that "he gets it and won't contact me any more" while ALSO somehow still blaming me for him abusing me (he literally said i thought you were kinky like me.... so to bring that back around to the sex positivity discussion we were having the other day). L I K E. oh and he tacked on a halfhearted sorry about your cat too. so that was something. sandwich the bad stuff between good stuff on Friday Topher and I are going to the Annapolis Crab Feast with a friend and i am SO PUMPED to gorge myself on crab. every summer i am sad because i don't have family in Maryland to have a crab bake with and all i ever want is to eat obscene amounts of shellfish. so send expansive vibes to my guts on Friday.
This week was hard as fuck. Nostalgia is a drug more potent than heroin and cocaine. First up, I helped run a LAN party. I've been doing this for a long time now... so long that the original attendees are now coming back with their teenaged kids to plan games. Yea, the guys that I had to yell at to not be dicks to one another now have wives and kids. I've included an image of one of the first ones that I was a part of as a staff member. Why this image? so that you can see how far computers have come in the 12 years since this image was taken. This party had 500 or so people in it; last week's event had over 400. I had many, many conversations with people that I'd not interacted with in years and in at least a few instances a decade. We played old games, shot the bull, laughed about the old days and I left the event feeling a bit more connected to my nerd roots. http://www.lanwar.com/images/lw/Lanwar%2018/rad0A2D2_LanWar18.JPG I was on the tay-vee for the astronomy club. Fuck TV. But if doing this shit gets us more members and brings in new blood to the club I am going to hold my breath and swim in the shit, for now. The one thing that really fucked with me about the TV thing is that I have gained about 40 pounds since the accident. I'm carrying it well, or so I though until I saw myself on the screen. Holy shit I need to get back into a weightlifting regimen.
There's nothing like a bad picture of you to get you going. Bill Burr ranted about how a picture someone offered to take of him when he was taking a selfie with his wife wound up being the worst picture of him he'd ever seen, and I think the next day he built a gym in his garage. Not that that's an option for all of us. Also, for real, these LAN pictures & stories are awesome.
Something I want to study is the effect of community service as an alternative gap year on high school graduates' propensity to (1) become more civic-minded, (2) neutralize or reverse the trend of political polarization, (3) enter a career of public service, and (4) prepare them more for college. Some of these are really squishy concepts to test for. But I'm only in the idea phase. If I really let my imagination run away with itself, then the future holds me studying the effects of expanded national community service opportunities at the same time that a future president or interested Congress surveys potential options to solve the issue of access to affordable, or tuition-free, college. In exchange for a sacrifice on the part of a young person, tuition at a public university is reduced or waived entirely. They'll look at what I'm doing and think, "yo, let's run with this." I recently reread Atul Gawande's fabulous essay from 2009 called "Testing, Testing" where he looks at historical examples of sectors of the economy that were strangling the country, and how in turn the government responded to it. I encourage you to read the essay, but the short answer is that the government funded a slew of pilot programs to see what was most effective. I'm resuming undergrad this spring semester, and structured community service is what I'd like to study.At the start of the twentieth century, another indispensable but unmanageably costly sector was strangling the country: agriculture.
They say the same of the formerly two-year (currently one-year) Russian Army conscription. No one needs that, and it's terrible for everyone involved if you're forced to, but if one sets their mind to learn from it by going there - now there's a good experience waiting to be had.
His New Yorker bio page and contributor list, a catalog of all he's written for them, contains a world of wisdom and good reading. What's your favorite work or piece by him?
Wow this place is empty. I guess it's too early for a drink. Hey Hubski, I'm heading to the airport in a couple of hours. I still have to pack. The Only Thing That Really Matters (heading curtesy of ButterflyEffect) Make a packing list. Pack. Don't miss the bus to the airport. Clean out the fridge. Give away food.
Always forget about this part...glad you didn't. Safe travels, lil!Clean out the fridge.
Upside is that my wife is finally buying into my startup based on some keen interest from some potentially influential people in recent weeks. Downside is that my day job seems to be losing patience with me. I've been horribly unproductive of late, and I wonder how long I can keep that up. Big meetings in the near future, so with some good luck I might not have to care.
Thanks! Some weird and wonderful things are happening right now. If only mk would get his ass back in town! Haven't heard from him in almost two weeks, and I have no idea if he knows what we've been up to. I'm all for vacations, but FFS, sometimes you have to stay in the loop!
I'm going to Boston in two weeks I'm going to Boston in two weeks I'm going to Boston in two weeks. I have a deep love for that city and for some of my friends who are still there. Sometimes you end up getting exactly what you need exactly when you need it, without realizing it was something you need in the first place.
My mother and sister have invited me to go with them to Hořice in the Czech Republic (aka Czechia - which is used by Czech politicians but not that many other people - personally I prefer it because it's one word not two), to rediscover the Jewish side of my family's heritage (my grandmother fled Austria for Britain, just after the Anschluss). One problem: there are at least six places with the name Hořice, we might need to do some more research. One thing I do know that my great grandfather inherited a textile factory there which he ran into the ground (being more interested in law and intellectual matters than business) before it was stolen by the Nazis. We have a collection of translated letters that he sent to my grandmother just before the Holocaust so we should be able to figure it all out. One member of my family tried to appeal to the Czech government to get the factory and house back but they have put their foot down and will not take any more claims. I guess you have to draw a line under everything at some point. My feelings of Jewishness are conflicted - I was raised with absolutely none of the religious or cultural traditions. My parents are both agnostic and my grandmother (mother's mother) was raised secular and converted to Christianity before leaving Austria (totally unrelated to politics - in fact she became a Lutheran when Austria was ruled by a Catholic clerico-fascist government). The one time I do feel it is when people use mentioning the Holocaust as a cheap political tool (people from every political position regarding Jewish people / Israel have been caught doing this).
Thanks for the information. Yeah we reckon it's that one! We knew the town was in north Bohemia and this is the only Horice I found that is located around there. Also it looks like it was a shtetl. Where did you hear that textiles were traditionally produced there? Maybe if I find some historical resources on the subject I can get a bit more information. We have a lot of letters from family before the Holocaust so there are probably some more clues I haven't checked out.
Unfortunately my sources are pretty bad - Mileta, the only textile company still running (afaik) has this info on its website. It was easy to confirm that it's true (by that I mean the fact that there were several running factories at some point) by googling and finding some mentions here and there, but nothing more. According to a historical postcard, one of the factories was called "EM. FEUERSLEIN A SPOL", but again, no more information to be found. Towns around here often have tons of historical records in their archives or in local libraries that would surely contain useful information, but it's almost never digitalized (=takes a long time to search through it, it would also obviously be in czech or german) and may not be easy to get to.
I got off work early so I'm determined to make some gluten free chocolate zucchini loaf today. So determined that I stopped at the grocery store even though I smelt so badly like mushroom compost that it gave me a headache. I don't know if any of you have ever worked with the stuff, sometimes you can barely smell it but others oh man it's terrible. On my way there I say a Trump '16 bumper sticker on some truck. One of those shiny trucks that doesn't get used for truck stuff and resides in Canada. What is the point of supporting an American candidate in Canada ? Even if you might be voting nobody else cares. I think some Canadian recknecks just like to pretend they are American as much as they like to pretend they use their trucks. This damn loaf better rise like the picture showed, I don't think my ego can handle anymore let downs from gluten free baking. Edit: It tastes like fucking cardboard. On another note I started online counselling... I love that shit. I think google raised me. Please guide your children when they are young, ask them how they are feeling and try to help them the best you can through anything they bring to you. Be loving and patient when you teach them new things. Young people have options these days, they don't have to constantly turn to you even if you let them down. They can google anything and never be rushed or feel like a burden.
Mushroom farms smell amazing, much like Donald Trump is an amazing person. I'm curious what karmic retribution you're paying off to smell like one. "Gluten free" and "zucchini" are challenging together. I don't believe I've observed success. "Gluten free" and "banana" work a little better.
Hmm, I could think of a few. Jokes on the universe though I actually think it's kind of hilarious. I figure if I can't laugh at the smelly parts of my jobs I'll never make it out alive. I've been trying to master gluten free baking for a while now and the only person I can really impress is my mom. She was diagnosed with Celiac so long ago though that anything slightly resembling bread impresses her. She doesn't remember how good bread gets. Lucky her. I think I'll give gluten free banana bread a go, got any recipe handy ? I'm curious what karmic retribution you're paying off to smell like one.
"The trick to gluten-free," (he said, having watched his wife do all sorts of shit but never trying himself) "Is to know what flours to mix depending on what you're making. And a lot of that is trial and error. Which is why just starting out with Bob's Red Mill gluten free to start with often works best." Barring that, this cookbook is bomb. Note that almost everything in it has too much sugar and butter. In other words, extra awesomeness.
I do blame the flour mixture, we had a bag of Robin Hood gluten free kicking around so I used that. Well there is a reason nobody else really used it. I think that cookbook might be kicking around the house or I've at least heard of it. Now that I think about it the recipe I used called for oil instead of butter, I should have known.
You know it occurred to me the other day how poorly done most superhero movies are done these days. It tends to be the isolated story lines that are usually the best (Antman, Guardian's of the Galaxy, The Winter Soldier). Shoot, the television series are usually a lot better than anything produced in theaters (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, The Flash, etc.) After getting a chance to re-watch Captain America: Civil War( which I actually ended up disliking even more for the really dumb narratives), and finally seeing Batman v Superman it dawned on me how poor the entire genre is doing. I feel like the biggest issue that plagues these franchises is that a lot of the direction is so focused on getting to the next narrative, and not about the story being told. It's honestly exhausting because I think there are a lot of really awesome stories to be told, and they are really just missing the mark. I'm pretty sure it only gets worse from here.
Prior to Iron Man, the only decent superhero movie was Superman II. Your mistake is in assuming that the "genre" is anything but a temporary flash in the pan, or that it lends itself to quality. The "problem that plagues these franchises" is they are universal marketing rhetoric designed to be overdubbed in a dozen languages and offend no major culture, while at the same time standing in for a writ-large caricature of American culture for foreign audiences. Subtlety is deliberately written out because elegant cultural references do not play in Bangalore. You know how you know what lucha libre looks like but you don't really consider yourself a fan? That's superhero movies to the rest of the world. They'll sit down and watch them for the spectacle but that's all they are - spectacle. Think, for just a moment, what "Captain America: Civil War" means to the average 19-year-old citizen of Shenzen.
That's definitely the biggest issue. What's happening to these movies is something that happens in a lot of different markets though right? Although I find some of the Marvel movies (especially the Captain America one's) seem to be pushing this American Exceptionalism narrative which has quickly made me uncomfortable (Not that the sprinkling of propaganda is something new to other forms of media). I also apologize for using the word genre to describe those films. I'm not 100% sure what the correct genre is actually? Science Fiction? Fantasy? Just plain Fiction?
Naaah, it's a full-blown genre now. People have been bitching about it for years. Alan Moore made the argument that superheroes are American exceptionalism made human and that they speak to a latent desire for fascism or some shit. I can certainly see where he's coming from. It's the same argument that the Japanese obsession with kaiju stems from Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the transition from "ascendant power" to "vassal state" in the space of a week by instruments utterly beyond their comprehension.
I think it's interesting how American ideals have been portrayed in so many ways, from heroes like The Fantastic 4 and Iron Man embracing science and technology, to heroes like Superman and Captain America representing physical ideals, to guys like Batman and Punisher working outside the laws to achieve their goals while still sticking to their self imposed rules and ideals of justice.
But. Every superhero - every superhero - is extralegal. The Commissioner may call Batman with the Bat Signal, but Batman is utterly divorced from due process. He needs no warrants. He need not adhere to rules of engagement. And he is always called in when the police are helpless. You can extend that on down to James Bond - "license to kill" is a shitty fucking thing to grant someone. And there's always some supervillain that exceeds due process' ability to deal with the adversary. It's interesting that the same people that will rail against warrantless surveillance and drone strikes will chomp down on popcorn while watching the Dark Knight or James Bond or fuck - Mr. Incredible.
Alternately, it's a holdover from a culture of honor, where violence not sanctioned by institutions was encouraged because institutions were weak and the way you kept yourself, your family and your stuff safe was to have a reputation for violence. (The article I linked to isn't great, but there's some kind of unrelated Christian use of the term "culture of honor" that crowds the Google results and I couldn't find any survey papers.) That's regressive too in a modern context, but it's not the same as fascism. A fascist superhero would be backed by institutions, fascism being all about gaining power by surrendering to the collective, hence taking its name from the fasces.
That article links to a straight up bullshit study. Cortisol levels take weeks or months to crest. They take fuckin' 10 minutes just to test. Delaware?Participants were 83 University of Michigan white male undergraduates (42 northern, 41 southern) who were recruited by telephone and paid $5 for their time. Students who had lived in the South for a period of at least 6 years were considered southern. The South was defined as census divisions 5, 6, and 7. This includes the states of Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Texas.
Except there's a pretty direct line from Western vigilantes and detective novels to pulp heroes to superheros, and a lot of that predates fascism. They have more in common with gun nuts daydreaming of the day they get to stand their ground than fascists. Imagine something insightful about rugged individualism and how late much of the country got real police forces here; I'm too tired to formulate it.Alan Moore made the argument that superheroes are American exceptionalism made human and that they speak to a latent desire for fascism or some shit.
In chronological order . . . John Carter kind of serves as a prototype for super powered men. I mean, for modern fictional characters. Guys like Hercules and Beowulf obviously set a bit of a precedent here. Heroes like Zorro and The Shadow created the whole mysterious vigilante archetype. The Phantom is influential of the superhero aesthetic, from the tights to the mask. All of these characters pre-date Superman. That said though, the fascism angle does make a bit of sense as well. It was an argument that was brought up against comics many times, as I read in The Ten Cent Plague. I think maybe if enough people make that argument, there might be something there. Then again though, the people who were saying super heroes were embracing fascist ideals were trying to attack comics from any angle they could, so maybe their argument needs to be taken with a few grains of salt.
Woah, I'm inclined to agree with both arguments. Do you have any links that could lead me to those arguments that sounds really interesting. I always thought about how superheroes often act unilaterally and how everyone so willingly allows them to, was fulfilling the latent desire to be ruled. That theme is even funnier when you put it in context of every villain so far in the Marvel universe believing that human beings were unfit to rule themselves. I wonder why they have the conflicting narratives? Seriously though any reading on the Japanese obsession with kaiju I would really love to read on.
Godzilla as Hiroshima is such a well-worn trope at this point that there's apparently a documentary. I haven't seen it. It's been argued that anime characters tend to have big round eyes because of a subconscious obsession with the conquering culture of Westerners but most students of anime will point out that they're cartoons and that there's no more reason to assume they're Western than there is to assume they're Japanese. Here's a starting point on Superman, the fascist. To be fair, this is 20-odd years after Frank Miller basically made the argument that Superman was a fascist and Batman was a libertarian/anarchist. 
Wow, really really insightful read on Godzilla. I feel terrible for enjoying the most recent Godzilla remake. This reminds me of why a lot of the original "monsters" were created in the first place like the werewolf was created out of the fear of a serial killer, or something to that nature. The Superhero thing is definitely something I've seen a lot of. It actually ran rampant in the most recent Batman v Superman to the point that I could barely finish the movie at all.
I hate to say this, but you're probably right. If you look at comics themselves, editors often make the writers pursue story lines that try to draw in new readers while playing it as safe as possible to not lose old readers. Not to mention the set ups to major events that often feel convoluted, poorly written, hammy, and disappointing. It's one of the reasons I stopped reading Marvel and DC and I think that exact attitude is why DC's films are failing at the moment.I'm pretty sure it only gets worse from here.
I once sat in a closed room full of executives and watched the president of DC comics observing that the comic-buying audience is only a couple hundred thousand people while the viewing audience of "Arrow" was about four million... and that with numbers like that, they could burn the comic readers without any guilt whatsoever.
I think the Stan Sakais (a great artist with little mainstream success who has managed to continue working for decades) and Neil Gaimans (a great artist with a lot of mainstream success) of the comics world will continue to rare. I think the majority of artists will have to be content writing or drawing for the main stream to gain a modest income and rely on side projects for their more creative ideas. There are a lot of really great comics out there that sadly don't last long enough to come to a conclusion just because nit enough people buy their books.
No. You don't get to do that. You don't get to conflate the two. Comic artists are people who draw. They used to make about $850 a page, but the going rate is now under $200 for the indies because they're directly competing against Korea and Slovenia. Comic writers are people who write. They've never made much money. Consider: Stan Lee didn't get fucking paid for the Spiderman movies until he sued. In the comics industry, it's the writer who pays because for a brief shining moment there was a chance that someone in a secondary market would pick up your writing. Steve Niles - couldn't get "30 days of night" made as a script, so he paid Ben Templesmith to paint it up, so the rights got sold, so it became a movie. The apocryphal statistic is there are more players in the NBA than there are working screenwriters in Hollywood. The screenwriters have an advantage over the comic writers, though - nobody ever expects a screenwriter to chip in on the movie. If he does, he becomes a producer. All the little indie houses you know? I've got quotes from them on turning my writing into comics. A comic in your shop costs me about as much as a new car in my garage. I hate to beat you down on this but your speculation does not trump my experience. And you're wrong.
Hey. Before we go further, I just want to say I'm not looking for a debate nor am I trying to manipulate the conversation. I was just sharing my thoughts. I don't know in detail the pros and cons for being a writer versus being an illustrator in comics. I've been under the impression that for the most part, the industry was hard for everyone and there isn't much money in it these days. From what I understand, while working for Marvel and DC pays better, it's still not an amazing amount, hence artists and writers doing things on the side like running blogs and visiting conventions. In my mind, the way that I've seen it, writers and artists have always been the same, but different. I personally follow writers more than artists, while I know others prefer to follow artists more than writers. Don't get me wrong, I love comics. I borderline obsess over them. Unlike cars though, I don't focus much on the workings of the comics industry through. I find the workings often seem convoluted and confusing for one, and for two, a lot of the major players with their blogs and twitter accounts and interviews often seem to be very political and gossipy. r/comics often likes to discuss the controversy of the week between person a and person b, but I find that stuff off putting more often than not.
k. Just keep in mind that your "thoughts" are just that, while mine are experiences, and that while you may not know "in detail the pros and cons for being a writer versus being an illustrator in comics" those differences are very real and shape the experiences of all who derive income (or attempt to) in the field for which you profess your love.
'sall good. I'm particularly bitter today. I know a guy with a movie in development at Nickelodeon who has writing credits on a half dozen episodes of Sponge Bob. He lives up the fucking street. He's got the agent I don't, the connections I lack, the success that has eluded me and he's making about enough scratch to afford to live in the bargain-basement shithole I'm tucked into to save money while paying for the real house. And here I am, writing another fuckin' spec screenplay. Was talking to the other roommate yesterday. He interviewed for a promotion. Prolly gonna turn it down because it isn't enough for him to commute in from here (he works from home). College grad, nice kid. I make nearly a factor of ten more than he does per hour. I'm coming from a place of incredible privilege. Don't get me wrong - I worked hard for it. But I see the shithole that you have to live in to hardscrabble your way up in the creative side of the industry and it's just gobsmackingly repellant. I remain one of the more successful screenwriters I know, with two options and real ca$h money behind my writing, and my wife makes more in a month than I ever earned writing. I make more in three weeks.
I feel like across all forms of media we are really losing sight of the story we want to tell. The whole sequel-ization (a word?) of this generation has taken it's toll really. TV shows seem to be the next big thing because of their ability to tell a complete story, but also leave hints for the future. I don't think they are impervious to the general idea of sequel-ization though either.
You've got to give it to Zemo's plotline. Just an ordinary guy, barring recon training, - no superpowers, no supertech, no magic - beating the Avengers for a very personal reason that I could, for once, relate to. The rest of the story may not be so solid, but Zemo is the best villain MCU has produced yet due to his sheer relatability.After getting a chance to re-watch Captain America: Civil War( which I actually ended up disliking even more for the really dumb narratives)
If you mean that they're solid plotlines on their own, I agree with you. Either of those alone would make for a pretty interesting film. It slipped my mind that Black Panther is a good character because all I can remember is the magnificence of personality that Zemo as a character is. As a linguist, I liked that T'Challa and his people spoke Xhosa, as opposed to a constructed language. It really made Wakanda and its people click for me.
Bored and restless seem to be the watchwords for my life lately. I just need something to do during my downtime, and can't find anything. I spend my workdays bored as well, and I was hoping that if I pretended not to care long enough that it would stick (no such luck, it seems). Anything I try to get into these days just becomes boring in about 10 minutes. So that's where I'm at right now.
I'm nearly done a pottery class I started a few months ago and I found that to be great for the mind. It's challenging enough that you really leave the world at the door and it's been a great way to end my work weeks. Maybe something like that would be good for you :)
I've thought about that. I really want to get back into drawing, but find the actual learning process to be super boring and frustrating. I dunno, I find I'm missing satisfaction in life.
I feel the same way about drawing, the process is boring. The learning process for pottery on the other hand uses your muscles, is messy and you get to throw clay. It doesn't fix anything but I find it refreshing. So it won't fix that dissatisfaction but it might just feel good. I also find destroying shrubs to be amazing.
Yeah, I dunno. I just get paralyzed by choice, but at the same time I'm not sure I have the patience for a new skill these days.
This has been one of the most exhausting months I can remember. I've had 15 hour work days every day for the past 2 weeks, running sound, writing/playing music, cooking for the masses, building sets. Very rewarding, very tiring. Apropos of nothing in particular, but I love all you beautiful Hubski people, and hope to meet more of you some day.
So it's been a while since I've checked-in here. A lot of new stuff going on: finished grad school, started a new job, moved to a new place. It's all taken a pretty big toll on me. A lot of huge changes in my life right now and the adjustment is way harder than I imagined. Moving out of the old apartment was tough. I've never felt so homesick or sad about leaving a place as I did that time. I think I'm mostly over it now, but I was amazed how depressed I got about that. The new job is super different from anything I've done. I'm still settling in and adapting, and occasionally feeling doubts over whether I should be here or not. It's also a career move though; the prospect that I'll be here potentially for the next 20-30 years is pretty daunting and probably the main source of me freaking out over it. So things aren't bad. They're just... different. All the new stuff is cool but I haven't learned to love it yet. I'm just riding it out for now.
Oh fuck I’m late. Hope the place isn’t closed up. Family Last weekend was a treat. The relative who came from Israel had brought her book-in-progress on the family tree. My father had dug up pictures and footage from ~60 years ago my grandfather took of the family across various occasions together. Watching the footage was bittersweet. While it was hilarious watching/listening to them reminisce about Bar-/Bat-Mitzvahs, birthday parties and those who attended, I’ve fallen into a pattern of lamenting my parent’s getting older prematurely – if that’s even a thing. Watching my 5-year-old father springing around the grainy footage beaming at his parents when I’m watching his 50 (plus) older self who’s been taking care of his surviving parent look back at is disquieting. Feeding into the sad reminder that my time is limited with my parents. Tearing up in an airport. Ugh. Waiting for my flight to come in. I’m heading to Buffalo, NY for roundabout 5 days to visit an uncle on my mother’s side of the family. This is about the 5th visit to him I’ve made in the span of 7 summers. Now, this uncle is one hell of a gentleman-scholar. I can’t quite come up with words to describe what he’s meant to me – as much as any relative can living states away - in my forming years whenever I get the chance to see him. Needless to say, looking forward to some time away after school with a role model of my very own. School Finished summer courses and locked in my schedule for the upcoming semester. African history was beyond anything I could have ever hoped for in the class, plus it covers a “multi-cultural credit” meaning I won’t be forced to re-take Spanish courses. ☺ The last trip to an advisor had me sitting through 2 hours of a lecture on the opportunity-cost of ‘soul-searching’ and starting over with credits to make sure I get my time left in college ‘right’. Man, what a trip. I sought an override for a course and received a refutation of my life course. Felt more like an abstract of all the mini-lectures of parents and friends taken into account and regurgitated as a dissertation. Not quite sure where or why that decided to pop into my life… didn’t think it was very necessary, but what do I know of all things. At this point, I’m content with staying the course I set and not take reactionary advice in stride. Hope all y’all sweet peeps have a restful weekend.