On SlashDot recently there was a post concerning Google’s announced support for repealing or overturning Proposition 8. Google placed its opposition to discriminating against same-sex couples in marriage in the context of being able to entice the best workers to its California workplace, but immediately the commenters on SlashDot began to bellyache at the hypocrisy of being concerned about recruiting good workers at the same time they’re laying people off. As if the two things are mutually exclusive. I guess most SlashDot visitors are very young and haven’t been through many recessions.
But reliably came the calls from ersatz libertarians to get government out of the business of marriage. Civil Unions they say, are a workable compromise. People are just getting hung up over a word they say. Never mind that making all civil marriages civil unions just isn’t going to happen politically. Our enemies don’t want us to have even civil unions. This isn’t a fight over a word or none of these anti same-sex marriage amendments would forbid civil unions too and nearly all of them do. That wasn’t accidental. The word people are getting hung up over in this fight isn’t ‘marriage’, it’s ‘homosexuals’.
From the Salt Lake Tribune comes this little article, ostensibly to show that Utahns (read: Mormons) aren’t so bigoted after all…
While Utahns aren’t ready to let gay and lesbian couples exchange wedding vows or enter civil unions, most are willing to give them broader legal rights to inherit property, visit a partner in the hospital and ward off employment discrimination…However, the poll shows overwhelming opposition (70 percent) to any changes to the Utah Constitution that would allow same-sex partners to enter civil unions…
Well isn’t that lovely. You want hypocrisy? It’s not in Google taking a stand for human decency, even as it has to lay off workers. It’s here, right here, in all those righteous people who think that respecting the love and devotion of same-sex couples in sickness makes it okay to rip their lives apart in health. If you believe that homosexuality is a sickness, a perversion, an abomination to God that will lead to the destruction of the family and western civilization, then what sense does it make to give same sex couple’s any rights? All that says, is they know goddamned well that same sex couples love each other every bit as much as opposite sex couples do. All this says, is that they don’t want to be thought of as the gutter crawling butchers of other people’s hopes and dreams that they are.
This is their way of saving face, nothing more, nothing less. It’s the equivocation of bigots trying to look at themselves in a mirror and deny the blood on their hands was something they did willingly, deliberately, knowingly. We don’t hate them…look…we’re willing to let them visit their sex partners in the hospital… How does that make sense when homosexuals are destroying the family and western civilization? It doesn’t. It’s an admission of guilt. It exposes the bedrock of animus toward gay people that motivates them more then simply denying gay people all legal status does. Ignorance sees only monsters when it looks at gay people. It takes shame to know that kicking them in the face isn’t something you want to be seen doing.
And even those moral runts only constitute a bare majority of the whole in Utah. After the critical roll the Mormon church played in passing Proposition 8 became known, Mormon church leaders averred they had no objection to granting same sex couples some small rights, and the democratic opposition in the state promptly took them at their word, proposing legislation to grant them just that. They call their work, without any apparent sense of irony, the "common ground" bills.
While Senate President Michael Waddoups, R-Taylorsville, doubts Utahns would change the state constitution to permit civil unions, he said he would entertain bills on more-expansive legal rights for gays.
"The fact that anybody wants [wider rights] isgrounds to pursue it and investigate it," said Waddoups, adding that he would ensure the Common Ground bills get a fair debate if they make it to committee or the Senate floor.
But opposition certainly will follow from Utahns such as poll respondent Maureen Johnson.
"I don’t believe they should have any rights at all," said the South Jordan resident. "The Lord says the man is made for the woman and the woman is made for the man."
Well thank you Senator Waddoups, R-Taylorsville for entertaining the idea that gay people ought to have rights. The compromise between right and wrong is indifference to either right or wrong. The compromise between living in freedom and living in a police state is I agree to put the handcuffs on myself and pretend I had a choice in the matter. The compromise between love and hate is to put the knife into your own heart and spare hate the trouble. The word that describes the "common ground" between free people and tyrants is Battleground, not Peace. Just ask the shades that walk at Shiloh.
Common ground is that we are all equal in the eyes of the law. Once upon a time that was the American compromise. We all had different faiths, came from different lands, were raised in different cultures. But as far as the law was concerned, we were all Americans. The religious and fascist right have waged a decades long scorched earth war to shred the American ideal of equality, so that they might rise above the rest of us and rule over all. Because they are the favored of God. Because to rule over the heathens is their God-given right. No…duty.
Take up the Godly Man’s burden…
Ye dare not stoop to less…
And now we, who believe in the American dream, are in a pitched fight to retake what was once our sacred common ground: liberty and justice for all. Equality is the common ground. What’s equal to marriage, is marriage.
If you’ve ever played Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and felt down that you don’t possess Nathan Drake’s rugged good looks–don’t get down–you’re not alone.
According to research by a Kansas State University Psychology professor, gamers that view extremely muscular men or very thin women are more likely to feel self-conscious about their own physique.
Richard Harris, (author of the research) said that his research shows that simply viewing the attractive game character for 15 minutes can negatively impact the player’s image of their own looks and body.
“It was kind of sobering that it did have such a short-term effect,” Harris said.
Harris divided a group of university students up, having the males play a wrestling video game while the females played a beach volleyball game. Before they played, the students completed a survey about their body image. After they played the game for fifteen minutes, they were surveyed again. The new survey showed that the participants, as a whole, viewed their bodies more negatively.
You know what else can leave you with a negative body image? Friends. The kind that just drop chances for you to meet people on the floor because you’re not good looking enough to be boyfriend material.
The Catholic church’s list of sins and their ranking is made public for the first time. Ever wonder why the church has a hard time fessing up to its role in the Holocaust? They’re not being obtuse. Genocide isn’t that big a deal compared with, say spitting out the Eucharist…
The Apostolic Penitentiary, or "tribunal of conscience", has been shrouded in secrecy ever since it was established by Pope Alexander III in 1179 and until now has never provided details of the cases it scrutinizes.
They are considered so heinous by the Catholic Church that only the Pope can grant absolution to those who perpetrate them.
Blah…blah…blah…
While priests and bishops can deal with confessions of sins as grave as murder or even genocide, the tribunal is reserved for crimes which are viewed by the Church as even more serious.
They include attempting to assassinate the Pope, a priest abusing the confidentiality of the confessional by revealing the nature of the sin and the person who admitted to it, or a priest who has sex with someone and then offers forgiveness for the act.
…
Defiling the Eucharist, which Catholics believe is the body and blood of Christ, is also considered a sin of extreme gravity and one which is on the increase, the high-ranking members of the tribunal said.
Cardinal Stafford said there had been a rise in incidents in which people would receive Communion and then spit it out or otherwise desecrate it, sometimes in Satanic rituals.
…
Such sins, which can only be dealt with by the Pope, acting through the tribunal, bring automatic excommunication from the Church. If the Pope decides to grant absolution, the excommunication is lifted.
See…it’s all a matter of proportion. The punishment has to fit the crime. Forgiveness isn’t lightly meted out when the sin is grievous. Himmler could have been dealt with by the local parish priest. But only the Pope can forgive you for spitting out the Eucharist. And remember, there is no morality without religion.
So I’m at Home Depot carrying out two sheets of 2×8 sheet foam insulation to the car. There is no way I can transport 2×8 sheets inside Traveler, but I don’t plan on it. By the car, I take out a utility knife and cut the sheets in half. Then I open the trunk. At the top of the trunk are two levers I can pull which unlatch the back seats. When I bought Traveler, one of the options I made sure to get were the fold-down back seats.
When I owned the Prism, whenever I wanted to transport large items I had to literally unbolt the back seat and take it out. The Accord had fold-down rear seats but they were awkward. The latches were clumsy and the seat belts were always getting in the way. Plus, the opening you got by folding down the rear seatbacks was surprisingly narrow for a car as wide as the Accord.
Why I have been a Mercedes fanboy ever since I was a teenager: every little thing on a Mercedes is engineered with some careful thought and attention to quality and purpose. It is not just a sumptuous luxury car. And especially the ‘C’ class. Think of the ‘C’ not only as the baby Benz, but as a really nice, working person’s sedan. It’s not nearly as sumptuous as the ‘S’ class, or even the ‘E’, but Mercedes-like, it’s deliberately targeted to a particular driving niche, with no compromises. It’s not a luxury car in the same sense as the ‘E’ or ‘S’. It’s a really nice four door sedan built as well as possible, for its niche, which are working class folk like me. We don’t just drive our cars to work or to the beach. We need to be able to transport things in them. The car has to be a working member of the family. Let me put it this way: the ‘C’ class has cup holders in it and you can get it in vinyl upholstery as well as leather. I don’t think the ‘S’ even has cup holders. A wine cooler in the back maybe, but not cup holders. You’re not supposed to snack in your ‘S’ class, you’re supposed to stop at a five star restaurant and let the valet park your car while you sit down to a hundred dollar dinner. And I strongly doubt you can get the ‘S’ in anything but leather upholstery. Most ‘C’ class owners actually prefer the vinyl, known as MBTex, as it is just as nice looking and feeling as the leather, but lasts longer and is easier to take care of.
It’s a working person’s car. But built as well as you can build one. And yes, with some very nice touches to it to pamper you. But not at the expense of functionality and purpose. Mercedes never does anything at the expense of functionality and purpose. So I unlatch the rear seat backs and they just come undone with no problem and the seat backs pivot down smoothly and easily. I don’t have to tug on anything or fuss with the latches like I did on the Accord. I don’t have to mess with the seat belts. The people designing this thing took the seat belts into account. They are just not in the way. And when the seats pivot down they come to rest with their backs Exactly Level with the floor of the trunk. I put my foam sheets in, close the trunk lid, and drive home and I don’t get the feeling driving down the road that my car is any less solid with the passenger compartment open to the trunk then when it’s closed up (although the stereo does sound a little…odd). I get home, I unload Traveler, I fold back up the rear seats and once more I don’t have to tug and fuss with anything including the seat belts. The seat backs just pivot back into the upright position smoothly and latch firmly and solidly back in place. Done.
Everything in the car is like that. This is why you pay the extra bucks.
What’s significant about this is that Hanks is seen as the same sort of American Everyman character actor that Jimmy Stewart once was.
“The truth is this takes place in Utah, the truth is these people are some bizarre offshoot of the Mormon Church, and the truth is a lot of Mormons gave a lot of money to the church to make Prop-8 happen,” he told Tarts. “There are a lot of people who feel that is un-American and I am one of them. I do not like to see any discrimination codified on any piece of paper, any of the 50 states in America, but here’s what happens now. A little bit of light can be shed and people can see who’s responsible and that can motivate the next go around of our self correcting constitution and hopefully we can move forward instead of backwards. So lets have faith in not only the American, but Californian constitutional process.”
This, I can see from the other Google news headlines, has the kook pews up in arms.
Actor Tom Hanks went after The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for their support of California’s Proposition 8 while talking to Fox News. Today, the Church responded.
…
Church spokesman Scott Trotter issued a one-sentence statement today in response to Hanks’ comments. It reads: "Expressing an opinion in a free and democratic society is as American as it gets."
So cutting off your neighbor’s ring finger amounts to expressing an opinion. See how easy it is to live without a conscience? You don’t have to give a shit about anything or anyone. You can rip apart your neighbor’s marriage. You can brutalize children for profit. The lives of other people don’t matter. Only your quest for Godhood matters. Who cares how many lives you destroy, when at the end of it all you get to be a God?
It’s 14 degrees outside as I write this, and I can see a lot more clearly how the house is loosing heat now. The problem spots aren’t all what I thought they were. The exterior walls are worse then I thought, while the attic insulation is doing much better then I’d thought it did.
The house is maintaining temperature but the exterior walls are so cold it’s making the floors cold. Basically, air against the exterior walls is getting chilled and then sinking down to the floor and spreading out. So my feet are cold as ice as I walk around the house but my upper body, and everything a couple feet above floor level here at Casa del Garrett, is staying nice and warm.
The walls are, I kid you not, much, Much colder then the windows and the window frames. The windows here, which are new double pane windows installed by the previous owner, are really showing their insulating ability now. They’re staying warm to the touch nicely. The walls themselves are showing their 1950s housing code genetics. They are brutally cold to the touch. And being all masonry and plaster, they’ll retain their chill even as the outside air starts climbing back out of the single digits. Any inside air that hangs against them is being chilled to refrigerator temperatures. Then it slides off and spreads across the floor.
Meanwhile the second floor ceiling is warm to the touch. That old shredded paper insulation in the attic crawl space is better at keeping the heat in then I’d thought. And with the air leak in the bathroom skylight sealed up now, the second floor is staying much warmer now then it ever did in the winter. The chill here is all below knee level. It’s really weird.
So I’m going out to the hardware store in a bit to buy some of that blue foam sheet insulation and do a wee experiment. I’m going to put it up against the exterior bedroom wall with double sided tape and see what that does. For various reasons that’s an easy interior wall to do an insulation experiment on, and a good test case because facing the back of the house, which is the north face, that wall doesn’t even get any warmth from the sun hitting it. I’ll just cut some foam pieces with a utility knife and one of my big metal straight-edges so they fit snugly. Then I’ll tack them in place with some double-sided tape and see what effect it has. It doesn’t have to look good, just be a proof-of-concept. If it works well enough then I’ll start making plans to build out that wall, and the other exterior walls here at Casa del Garrett.
The days when you could just burn gas heat like it didn’t cost anything are long, long gone…
One of the things that woke me up about an hour ago was a small, brief, but very sharp stabbing pain in my right lower abdomen. About where the right kidney is…I think. I had one about an hour or so before bedtime and just shrugged it off. Now I’m on alert. I am not looking forward to my first kidney stone. Not one bit.
Ages ago when I was working as an architectural modelmaker, one of the architects I was working with on a project told me about his first kidney stone attack. He said it happened to him as he and his wife were walking to their car after eating out somewhere. He said his first thought was that he’d just been shot.
I’m dealing with the return of my insomnia again…but it gives me a chance to walk downstairs and see just how cold it’s getting.
The high-tech furnace I put in several years ago works as a complete computer controlled system with the outside air conditioner compressor also acting as an outdoor temperature sensor. The furnace box inside (which is tiny compared to the one it replaced) has an onboard computer that monitors indoor and outdoor temperature and tries to maintain indoor conditions as efficiently as possible. The burners can work at full blast or several stages below that. The blower fan is variable speed. So instead of the old system, where an indoor thermostat tripped at the temperature you set it to, turning on a furnace that only knew how to burn gas and blow out hot air at full blast until the thermostat tripped back off, this one will respond to temperature changes both inside and outside the house, and gently try to maintain the indoor set point with as little effort as possible. This is the first time since I’ve had it, that the temperatures have gone into single digits here in Baltimore.
The thermostat looks like an oversized iPod Classic, but without the wheel. It sits on a wall in the living room and among other things, tells me both the indoor and outdoor temperatures. I get the outdoor reading now far more accurately then the old porch thermometer I once had and I don’t have to look out the back window. Right now the thermostat is telling me it’s 6 degrees outside. I’m pretty sure that’s Fahrenheit and not Kelvin because the nitrogen in the atmosphere isn’t condensing on the ground. At least…I think that frost I’m seeing outside is water ice and not nitrogen…
For the first time since I bought Casa del Garrett the second floor is warmer then the first at night. That’s what you’d expect since heat rises but it’s never been like that in the winter and now I know that darn bathroom skylite has been letting all my heat out all these years. I honestly didn’t think it was that bad, but the change has been dramatic. Especially with the temperature down in the single digits out there. I’m going to leave that plastic sheet I put under it up for the rest of the season and when it gets warm enough that I can set up my table saw I’m going to buy some sheet acrylic and cut some panels to put up there permanently.
Wow… I just now checked NOAA and they’re saying it’s 4 degrees at BWI right now. My thermostat is still reading 6, but I’ll bet it’s still dropping out there. Two more hours until morning…
…and the sun only just went down an hour or so ago. They’re calling for 7 degrees tonight. So why am I drinking a frozen Margaretta now? Oh…I know… Because I was busting it at work for the past two weeks getting out a software release among other things and I need to unwind and it’s too cold to go outside and go anywhere.
This is the kind of weather when I start getting cabin fever: when it’s too cold outside to even go for a walk because your face freezes. I might just try in a little while though.
My energy bill this month is going to be painful to look at. But at least I can afford to pay it. So I count my blessings…
That’s what my new high tech furnace-a/c system says it is outside now. NOAA is reading ten at BWI airport too. But the house is staying pretty warm. Just the usual cold spots near the front and back walls and even those aren’t really cold so much as a bit chilly. But it looks like death outside. The sun is out and bright and the sky is cloudless but the only things moving are the tree branches in the wind and the birds around my feeders. I don’t even want to think about what the wind chill is right now. NOAA says it can be as much as 5 below.
A downy woodpecker was scouting out my suet feeder a moment ago. It had itself fluffed up almost to the point its body looked like a little round ball of black and white feathers. It lit on the feeder and then for some reason flew right back off. Those things are shyer then I am. I’m going to put out a second suet feeder in a little bit. I already need to refill the thistle seed feeders the gold finches use. Just thinking about going out in that is giving me the shivers.
I Suppose This Isn’t Going To Do My Gas Bill Any Good…
Temperatures going down into the mid 20s tonight…but that’s just for openers. NOAA is calling for temperatures Thursday and Friday evenings down in the single digits. 7 to 12 Thursday night…4 to 9 Friday night.
I’ve taken some extra steps to plug up a few heat leaks this year. Casa del Garrett has a bathroom skylight that’s basically just some glass panes with wire honeycomb between them. It’s at the top of a box that goes through the ceiling and it has a vent in the middle that, though closed, isn’t really tight. So I put up some plastic sheet at the roofline, and another plastic sheet at the ceiling line. I’ve also stretched plastic sheet over the front office windows. They’re double-pane and supposed to be "weather proof" but I’ve noticed some slight leakage around them. The effect has been noticeable. The entire second floor is much warmer in the mornings now then before.
Even so, my front and back walls, which are exposed, get darn cold to the touch when the temperatures dip down. They didn’t build these 1950s rowhouses to hold in heat because energy was cheap then. My front and back walls are brick veneer, concrete block and plaster and that’s it. So I can walk up to one and not even put my hand on it to feel the cold radiating off it. Actually, that’s my heat leaking out. It’s times like this I’m glad I’m not an end of group unit.
What I probably need to do, is build an interior wall out from the front and back walls. Put up some studs and put insulation between them and put drywall over that. It’ll cost me some space and I’ll have to extend my window frames but that’s the only way I can see to keep the heat from leaking out of those walls.
Friday’s my telecommute day, so I won’t have to walk to work in that frigid air. But for kicks and grins I might take a walk out in it anyway. A heavy blanket of frigid air like that changes things outdoors. It’s like everything just…stops. Stiller then when it’s snowing. It’s like death out there…but it isn’t death, life is hunkering down and waiting it out. But everything is so…still. And it’s a different kind of stillness then when it’s snowing. It’s an empty, bottomless stillness. Almost eternal. Life is on hold…the cold winter wind finally has reign. Nothing moves, except the wind…looking for something…anything, that might still be moving…and finding nothing. Until the sun comes out a bit…and the birds…the ones that the hard freeze didn’t kill…start darting about. I’ll need to put out some extra food for them.
Geekologie points out the RealTouch, which is a futuristic sex toy for men…
Apparently, the RealTouch is like a Fleshlight, kind of, only with moving parts. The orifice expands and contracts and the interior heats up to human body temperature. And it comes with a USB port that connects you to a computer where you can watch a POV porn film that is cued to the device, so the device simulates the intensity and frequency of the action committed by the porn star on the screen. Comes in straight and gay varieties.
Lovely…
Just…lovely… Behold the total dehumanization of sex. That…thing…on the right is the innards of the heterosexual version. Please god let me be born a gay man in the next life.
A university in Germany is concerned that while some of its students are learning skills that will help them get ahead financially they might be lacking in the skills required to attract partners. Potsdam University, south of Berlin, has initiated a course in flirting and is offering the course to all Master Degree computer engineering students. So far 440 students have enrolled in the course.
Emphasis mine. Gosh…you think there’s a need out there…?
The course will teach students how to write flirtatious email and text messages, methods for attracting partners at parties and functions, how to dress and what topics to discuss while on a date. The course will also guide students in how to deal with rejection if the methods taught in the course fail to produce desired outcomes.
…The university believes that education for students should be about helping them succeed in their future private lives as well as their future careers. ‘Students that feel they are missing out on the fun that others are having are liable to suffer low self esteem and possibly depression: many IT and science students also tend to be socially shy so this is definitely a step in the right direction’ Marta, a student psychologist noted.
…Recent studies around the world have indeed shown that university students studying computer related subjects and science are most likely to be virgins and engage in the least sexual activity during their years on campus. Could Potsdam university break this cycle?
I don’t see why not. This has been a hobby horse of mine ever since my mid-thirties when, still single and lonely, I became sickeningly apparent to me that I still had no clue what I was doing, or how to go about finding a lover. School should teach this as a subject, right along with reading and math and everything else they’re supposed to be teaching kids to prepare them for life. Yet we’re still, in this day and age, lucky to even get decent sex education.
Some people are naturals at this. That’s fine but the thinking seems to be that the dating and mating game is something we are all innately naturals at and that just isn’t true or there wouldn’t be so much loneliness in the world. And violence and hate and all sorts of other psychosis. Think of how much more peaceful this poor angry world would be if everyone had an emotionally fulfilling love life. Teaching people how to date, how to flirt, how to handle rejection, get back on their feet and go on, isn’t as silly as it sounds.
We are not all naturals at this. Most of us are just plain lousy at it. Whatever evolutionary baggage we have for it probably doesn’t much apply in a modern industrial technological civilization. The village were we all used to grow up in together and get to know one another is gone. The dating environment our parents found each other in is gathering dust in the history books. And they did it by trial and error too anyway. We need to get past that, and start treating the human need for companionship seriously, like it’s just as much a matter of our long term survival as making babies. Take a look at the news headlines on any day of the week and tell yourself that the problem with this world is there is too much love in it.
My maternal grandmother was a hard woman to live with. For me especially because he absolutely hated my dad. Being his son, every time she laid eyes on me she saw him and I had to suffer for it. She never saw anything good in anything or anyone, never saw joy or happiness or fun in any terms other then sinning. I never saw her smile unless it was at someone else’s misery.
She loved her soap operas. Even more then her radio preachers. When I came home from school, one of them was reliably on the TV and it was an open question of my youth whether or not that was because they chased me out of the living room into my bedroom. I hated those things. I could never understand how someone could be entertained watching people being mean and cruel to one another. Understand, this was in an age before reality TV.
Her two favorites were General Hospital and As The World Turns. Swear to God to this day I can still hear that theme song from As The World Turns playing though my head whenever I think about soap operas.
So it is with pleasure…no…relish…that I read today that the young, cute, same sex couple on the current storyline of As The World Turns finally had sex…
The breakthrough scene on As the World Turns begins at about 3:03. Of course what we see is simply the before and after, but for a show that took seventh months and an extended internet campaign from fans for producers to have its two main characters share a kiss, the sex, or evidence of it, is a revelation.
Henry Seltzer writes, in The Daily Beast: “And you know the best part? The person responsible for getting them back together after the fallout from Luke kissing his step-grandfather was his grandmother, the show’s matriarch (played by Elizabeth Hubbard for the past 25 years), who was also the most understanding when Luke first came out. So not only is this not your grandmother’s soap, leave it to the grandmother-who-unwittingly-played-a-beard to get the boys back together. She even delights in sharing their post-sex ice cream sundae.”
Hey grandma…I just watched two cute boys having sex on your favorite soap opera while drinking tequila! Yes…I’m a stinking rotten good-for-nothing Garrett just like my Pap! And your favorite soap opera has homosexuals on it now! Just like me! Only cuter. It’s still a wicked, wicked world grandma. Cheers!
BERLIN (Reuters) – Even the most quirky of computer nerds can learn to flirt with finesse thanks to a new "flirting course" being offered to budding IT engineers at Potsdam University south of Berlin.
The 440 students enrolled in the master’s degree course will learn how to write flirtatious text messages and emails, impress people at parties and cope with rejection.
Philip von Senftleben, an author and radio presenter who will teach the course, summed up his job as teaching how to "get someone else’s heart beating fast while yours stays calm."
The course, which starts next Monday, is part of the social skills section of the IT course and is designed to ease entry into the world of work. Students also learn body language, public-speaking, stress management and presentation skills. and
"We want to prepare our students with the social skills needed to succeed both in their private life and their work life," said Hans-Joachim Allgaier, a spokesman for the institute at Potsdam University where the course is being offered.
Via the very good comic newsblog Robot 6: Bill Willingham, who is a conservative superhero comic book writer probably best known for his Sandman ripoff series Fables, has a post up calling for superheroes to act more heroic. Unsurprisingly, to Willingham, "heroic" means "conservative," and his statement that superheroes have been getting more "decadent" means that they’re acting more liberal.
It’s time to make public a decision I’ve already made in private. I’m going to shamelessly steal a line from Rush Limbaugh, who said, concerning a different matter, “Go ahead and have your recession if you insist, but you’ll have to pardon me if I choose not to participate.” And from now on that’s my position on superhero comics. Go ahead and have your Age of Superhero Decadence, if you insist, but you’ll have to pardon me if I no longer choose to participate.
Holy seduction of the innocent Batman! And…speaking of which…the post above was followed almost immediately by this one…
Slog tipper Rich, who knows that I am a Superman fan, writes:
I read about this on io9 this morning and figured that if you didn’t already know about it then you had to find out immediately.
Secret Identity showcases rare and recently discovered erotic artwork by the most seminal artist in comics—Superman’s co-creator Joe Shuster. Created in the early 1950s when Shuster was down on his luck after trying to reclaim the copyright for Superman, he illustrated these images for an obscure series of magazines called Nights of Horror, sold under the counter until they were banned by the U.S. Supreme Court…
Paul Constant, the author of both posts you may note, goes on to say that fetish art is nothing new in comics, and that the artwork behind some pretty well known comic book titles was penned by guys who did all kinds of stuff on the side that would never have passed muster with the comic code authority. The creator of Wonder Woman was said to have kept a stash of S&M artwork handy so he could…ahem…figure out different ways to truss up his heroine in each new episode. Well…we all need models.
Does anyone see the problem with right wing jackasses who draw comic books for adolescent males that are full of pictures of muscular heroes and buxom women in tights that might as well have been painted on flexing their stuff in and out of the usual comic book danger and bondage scenes bellyaching about decadence? The difference between the guy chained to that table up there and Superman is the guy on the table is wearing pants.
[Update…] Look…I’m not saying that everyone who reads super hero comics is subconsciously into S&M. I’m sure not. But even back when I was a kid I knew I liked the eye candy, even if I wasn’t quite sure why. The sexuality in those comics isn’t exactly coincidental and it strains credulity light years past the breaking point to think that someone who sits down every day to draw those characters for a living doesn’t know it full well. Constant quotes Willingham as saying he was particularly proud of a recent Robin comic he did, patriotically dropping him into Afghanistan to fight the evil terrorist empire…
Borrowing some wisdom from the famous parable of the mote in one fellow’s eye, and the whole beam in another’s, it would be the height of hypocrisy for me to make any call for our industry to clean up its act, until I’ve first cleaned up my own. I’ve already made some progress down that road. In my run writing the Robin series (of Batman fame), I made sure both Batman and Robin were portrayed as good, steadfast heroes, with unshakable personal codes and a firm grasp of their mission. I even got to do a story where Robin parachuted into Afghanistan with a group of very patriotic military superheroes on a full-scale, C130 gunship-supported combat mission.
Okay Willingham…you want to clean up your industry? I have a suggestion. Replace Robin’s tights with a nice Sunday-go-to-meeting suit and see how many issues you sell. Go ahead. Geeze…even allowing for the costume change recent artists have put him through…probably because the classic costume makes them uncomfortable for some strange reason…that kid has shown almost as much thigh as Wonder Woman in his career. And speaking of Wonder Woman…you going to clean her up too? Put her in a decent womanly dress and back in the home where she belongs and not out fighting the forces of evil? Her and all the other comic book babes wearing almost as much as Hooter’s waitresses and Playboy bunnies that your industry has been waving in the faces of teenage boys for decades now? Well that’ll sure make the cash registers work overtime.
Decadence. Decadence. Right wing nutcases that babble about decadence make you just want to scream. Or laugh out loud I dunno… Decadence isn’t sex as entertainment. It isn’t violence as entertainment. It isn’t opening the door to the inner human heart, and all its passions sublime and gross and charging admission. It’s doing it without heart. It’s cheapening it. That’s what you never want to sell to kids. Not that sex is thrilling but that it’s cheap. Not that the struggle between darkness and light is exalting but that it’s vapid. It’s not making the sacred profane, it’s making it boring. That’s decadence.
I made sure both Batman and Robin were portrayed as good, steadfast heroes, with unshakable personal codes and a firm grasp of their mission. I even got to do a story where Robin parachuted into Afghanistan with a group of very patriotic military superheroes on a full-scale, C130 gunship-supported combat mission.
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