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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Outrage, Humor, Context

Burn, baby, burn
Burn, baby, burn

David Brothers was one of the smartest comics bloggers on the scene a few years back when I was at my peak of following the industry, and he’s remained one of the few whom I still follow despite my current pull list being a shadow of its former self.

[Side note: Have to get to Midtown soon before they cancel my bare-minimum pull list again. Particularly looking forward to Joshua Dysart’s Unknown Soldier.]

He has a great post up at his site, 4thLetter, called SuperHHero KKKomics 200Hate: A Year In Review, an exponentially more substantiative response to the knee-jerk (but cleverly illustrated) 2008: The Year of Misogyny, that starts as a typical rant about the poor treatment of blacks in comics, but quickly becomes something much, much better.

Some of my favorite highlights of 200Hate include:

Barack Obama– leader of Dark Reign, gullible enough to trust Norman Osborn
Crispus Allen– killed his own son, has to have some old white lady re-ignite his faith in God after he tries to kill his best friend for being a lesbian, probably Pro Prop 8, forced to wear goatee as racial identifier, likely never-nude
Falcon– lost his best friend, hasn’t appeared in Captain America lately, was set on fire once
Manhattan Guardian– tossed aside the second a WHITE Guardian shows up
Martian Manhunter– murdered with a spear (martians count as black, see also Lil Wayne “We are not the same, I am a martian”)
Spawn– blows own head off in own comic, promoting the suicide of strong and proud black men
Spawn (Michael Jai White)– Killed by the Joker in The Dark Knight, movie goes on to make a billion dollars
Storm– taken from high profile X-Men appearances to be a supporting character in some lower-selling book, forced into arranged marriage, needs Emma Frost (who once enslaved her) to call her names just so she can feel like she belongs somewhere
Tyler Perry– still not invited to write a Black Panther story where T’Challa remembers how his big grandma was the one that scared him into following the path of the warrior, leaving untold the story of Bg’mama, the true power of wakanda

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It's A Wonderful Life

How Wonderful Is It?

Back in 1996, when I was publishing my short-lived zine, zuzu's petals — which, in a wonderful bit of circularity, played a significant role in my getting married! — I wrote a pretty cynical essay about why I loved It's A Wonderful Life, not so much for its purportedly uplifting message, but rather for its "unintentionally subversive message".

Continue ReadingHow Wonderful Is It?
An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

This is the moment

[Liveblogging throughout the day, because I want to remember as much of this as possible…]

11:45pm: Wow. President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama. Drop the “elect” and it rolls off the tongue. I’m kind of speechless, actually. It’s all over but the big speech; a speech that, after a string of amazing speeches, will be the biggest speech of Obama’s life. And, perhaps, ours. So far…

11:30pm: Graceless idiots in the audience aside, McCain’s concession speech was a welcome return of the principled statesman I imagined I might be able to cast a reluctant vote for back in the Spring. Palin looked crushed, though, while Almost-First Dude looked ambivalent. In a just world, they’ll slink off to Alaska and not be heard from again, unless, of course, she decides to hold an actual press conference.

10:46pm: Switched from MSNBC to FNC to see what they’re saying and they’ve called Virginia for Obama and the mood of the pundits is rather somber as they’re discussing Obama policies as if he’s already won. Which he has, I guess, but I’m still waiting for it to be called officially.

9:52pm: Obama won New Mexico and is handily winning the Latin vote in Florida by double-digits. Remember, way back during the primaries, that meme about Latinos not voting for a black man and Clinton was the only one who could deliver Florida and Ohio? Hope trumps fear.

9:30pm: OHIO!!!!! This just might really happen…

7:30pm: I can’t stand it anymore! I’m turning on the news.

7:00pm: It hit me earlier this afternoon that, because Salomé and I had registered so recently here in New Jersey, we might not appear on the registered voter list and have to vote via provisional ballot, and that’s exactly what happened. It was more than a little anti-climactic and disappointing, but even as I’m typing these words, it’s settling in…

I JUST VOTED FOR BARACK OBAMA
TO BECOME THE NEXT PRESIDENT
OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

That’s the kind of huge my mind just can’t fully grasp at the moment.

(more…)

Continue ReadingThis is the moment
An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Buyer’s Remorse

Happy Halloween
Originally uploaded by bloomfieldguy

Actually, not at all.

It’s been five months since we bought the house, four months since we moved in, and excepting the unexpected $1,000 expense to fix a leak in the living room ceiling coming from the upstairs bathroom, homeownership in the ‘burbs has been quite the enjoyable experience.

Despite the somewhat disappointed tone of my last post, Bloomfield has been a great choice for us for all of the important reasons: we’re very happy with Watsessing Elementary School; my commute into the City isn’t too bad; and our neighbors on both sides are very cool people.

I worked from home yesterday so I could go to the kids’ Halloween Parade and class parties, and also be done early so I could go door-to-door trick-or-treating with them for the first time. (Me with them; my wife had taken them out last year right after school.) Following the recommendations of several people, we cut through Watsessing Park to hit Glen Ridge where many of the houses were elaborately decorated, and people were taking advantage of the comfortably cool weather by sitting outside to hand out candy and goodies.

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Continue ReadingBuyer’s Remorse
An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Morning Cup of Zen

I’m currently subscribed to 13 (coincidence) podcasts, three via NPR and a few other NPR-style programs like KCRW’s Left, Right and Center. Of them, my favorite is NPR’s Most Emailed Stories, a daily assortment of “the best of Morning Edition, All Things Considered and other award-winning NPR programs,” based on reader recommendations.

Their “This I Believe” series of essays is often a good read/listen, and yesterday’s episode featured Randy Komisar, the author of The Monk and the Riddle, and a self-described former “typical Type-A: an ambitious Harvard lawyer on the rise who [moved] to Silicon Valley during the go-go years to help start and run a succession of companies.”

I reinvented my work around creativity. I love entrepreneurs and innovation, and I decided to piece together a new role working with entrepreneurs to help them create the future.

This of course was a challenge. I was used to the story being about me, but now it was about them. I was most successful when I faded into the woodwork and my protégés took the limelight.

This seemingly small nuance turned out to be the door that let in the whole world. It was not just making room for the people I worked with, it was making room for everything — my family and friends, a dog’s bark, a warm breeze, the crackle of lightning.

Certain Eastern philosophies interpret the world as a blend of Form and Emptiness. Form is the world we know through our five senses — the world of struggle and suffering. But Emptiness is not what it seems. To the senses it is a void, but when the senses retreat in confusion, Emptiness illuminates with compassion and insight.

In truth we live in both worlds and I believe that it is the ability, the willingness to bridge these worlds until they are one — to engage both mind and heart — that makes this life so precious.

(more…)

Continue ReadingMorning Cup of Zen
An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Magical Wiki: Black & Tan

I’m an information junkie and the Internutz is a magical web of information, useful and otherwise, that I can lose myself in for hours at a time. Wikipedia, of course, is an information junkie’s cyber-crackhouse, with useful entries on almost anything you can think of — except, oddly, “Guy LeCharles Gonzalez” (someone needs to fix that!) — and a friend of mine discovered my latest favorite, “Black and Tan“, which includes an impressive list of variations on the theme, including:

Black & Black : A blend of Guinness Extra Stout and Guinness Draught
Black & Orange: Stout and pumpkin ale
Black Magic: Half Guinness and Half Magic Hat #9

Generally speaking, a Black & Tan should only be made with Guinness Stout, but Cape Ann Brewing Company‘s Fisherman’s Pumpkin Stout is a good substitute for Black & Orange.

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Why Your Book Will Never Be in Borders

The odds are pretty slim, and not just because they’re on the verge of going out of business:

“I market books for a living, so I can tell you an unpleasant truth: the order for any book, from any account, starts at zero,” [Andrew Wheeler, a marketing manager at Wiley] warns. “The publisher’s sales rep walks in the door with tipsheets and covers, past sales figures and promotional plans, to convince that bookseller’s buyer to buy that book… Sometimes, that buyer is not convinced, and the order stays at zero.”

(h/t GalleyCat)

The distribution system in publishing is arguably broken, partly a result of the industry’s major players’ short-term thinking, and partly because the overwhelming number of books being published these days is more than the system can support.

(Writer’s Digest publishes an aptly titled book: Some Writers Deserve to Starve! Think about it.)

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Continue ReadingWhy Your Book Will Never Be in Borders
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