My Blog Saw Something

The LOLs are not what they seem…!

But seriously folks.  It’s a red-letter day, because I haven’t done a link- or booster-post for ages, therefore by now I have actually seen TOO MUCH for me to try condensing it all down into some creme de la creme post and…

Huh.  WordPress is actually letting me type this without autosaving every 500 milliseconds?

Well, that pleases me no end!

Maybe now I can abandon my workarounds!  You know, that is really a very nice thing, because I did actually complain to the WP folks and felt bad about it because I think I sounded like a bit of a ranting troll…but now it’s fixed?

Now it works fine?

See, this is why I stick with WP:  they listen.  And listening covers a multitude of sins.  And listening can be valuable.  For example…

My blog saw something.  Something it can’t keep quiet about, so I thought we should bring it to the attention of the authorities?  And no, it wasn’t this Twitter exchange:

A:  “What even is a horse”

B:  “A sort of tall, hoofed dog”

Although let’s face it, somebody ought to be notified about that…

…But no, instead one of the major things my blog couldn’t keep having nightmares about was this fabulous new Mindless-constituent webcomic, which I was fortunate enough to be asked to read a bit of script for, and which I also QUITE LIKE…to the point where, for the first time ever, I signed on to a Forum.  Oooh, it’s quite intimidating, actually…this is that Thing One Will Start Seeing More And More Of As Time Goes By, the gamer’s webcomic, and so I’m absolutely OUT TO LUNCH about most of the theory they’re discussing over there, having stopped playing video games around about the time I became UNIVERSAL CHAMPION OF ASTEROIDS, which was about a year before they added “Shield” to the game…completely ruining its elegance if you ask me, like adding Dynamite to Rock Scissors Paper…I mean as far as I recall, Han Solo did not get to rely on the Millenium Falcon’s shields when he was flying through the asteroid belt?  Although I guess it’s possible George Lucas has inserted something about asteroid-shields into his many many revisions of Star Wars and honestly it is not about him raping my childhood, it’s just about how Star Wars is only a good movie for about the same length of time that your attention isn’t deliberately called to the many many ways in which it’s actually kind of a shitty movie?  Which it does miraculously turn into, as soon as there’s a guy doing a Stan Laurel pratfall off a CGI Bantha in the street behind where Obi-Wan is telling the Stormtroopers that these aren’t the droids they’re looking for…

…And that’s why after seeing the Special Edition, finally at long last, I followed suit behind Ed and swore off Star Wars forever and ever.  “This goddamn movie is dead to me now,” I swore, after making the INCREDIBLE mistake of having anything to do with something that could get the letters SE tacked onto the end of it…really my own fault, because would I ever read Dante’s Inferno SE?  The one with the extra Tenth Level of Hell that Dante always wanted to put in there, loosely modelled on his mother-in-law’s house, that expends ten volumes on how instead of the Prosecco he’d ordered for his wedding reception there was just a barrel of this crappy homemade white wine, so they had to junk the dessert course altogether and people just got wasted instead and puked on the lawn, and the priest was scandalized and ANYWAY WHERE DID THE MONEY GO?  Because don’t tell me those little wedding favours cost all that much…

Vanity, vanity.  All is vanity.  What I should’ve done is follow my old roommate’s example, from when he went to see the SE in the theatre…

“So how was it?”  I asked him.

“Uh…”

“Did you not see it, or something?”

“No…no, it’s just…I did all these mushrooms beforehand?  So the whole movie, I was so high, I just watched Chewbacca.”

“…What?”

“Seriously, he is in a LOT of scenes.  In the background, flipping switches.  Steering the ship.  Bringing up the rear.”

“…Are you serious?”

He just looked at me.  “Plok, man,” he said.  “I have never been more serious in my LIFE.”

And so the movie got his highest recommendation, but I should’ve known…should’ve known…

But anyway, I never knew anything about video games, after “Shield” came along.  Because it was all just so much Jar-Jar to me after that.  So the learning curve is a bit peculiar when it comes to the Project:  Ballad Forum!  I feel just like Buck Rogers, only thankfully this future doesn’t thoughtlessly mirror the racism and sexism of my own time…and strangely, I did end up watching Star Wars just one more time…

…And I must say it’s nice to see it go out on a high note.

But…

Where was I?

Hold on…let me think…

JUXTAPOSITION!

Darn it.  Sorry, that tends to happen sometimes:  wild juxtaposition, grown unruly in the margins of my thought.  Anyway I was talking about Project: Ballad.  I think it’ll be a fun exercise, and it’s got a lot of love in it, and it’s a friend, so this is my recommendation.  But…

I can’t leave you just with P:B, when I haven’t done one of these linkposts in so long!

So let me boost another Mindless thing, the wonderful article on THRILL-POWER that’s every bit as much essential reading as the classic Prismatic Age or Candyfloss Horizons pieces out of the Dark Dimension…though it’s silly, given the Deep Quality of the Mindless site, to try to make anything like a Greatest Hits here…you should just read every post, that’s all…but if you want to know what is OF THE MOMENT in terms of Industry Issues, then this is where you’ve got to go…

I mean:  we’ve all felt that tug, haven’t we?  That’s what a lot of us are doing out here in comics blogland, trying to dissect that insouciance of things of their time, maybe more particularly just hoping to run into the new thing, that feels like it has something in common with those old things…and trying to expand our horizons as we move along.

BUT!

“Home” doesn’t necessarily stay the same, while we’re off on our adventures.  So check out David Brothers, slowly hitting the same wall I’ve been slowly hitting for about five years, only saying much more about it in much straighter language, in exactly the most dangerous position one can be in, to say it:  well what else is a person supposed to possibly do?  It is probably impossible not to hit that wall at some point;  we don’t give up comics because they’re “kid stuff” anymore, but OH LORD WE COULD ALMOST WISH WE DID.  Anyway…

Yeah:  boycott that Avengers movie.  Or if you feel that’s too harsh a position, check out what a reasonable man says about it…

Just had to get that in there, you’ll forgive me I’m sure.

So anyway what else is going on in the world, besides P:B which you should definitely check out?  I won’t shill for record albums right now, just because I’ve been doing enough of that on Twitter…

Hmm…

Well…

Inspired by Michael and Kevin, I guess I could reveal my secret project, because it was supposed to be done last year but wasn’t:  essentially it’s a website that puts up what they call “content”, but in a concert mode rather than a publishing mode.  You use the site on spec, we charge people three bucks to visit it, a dollar goes to site costs with what’s left over after going to honoraria for producers/performers in case their show tanks…and the remaining two dollars are of the 50/50 draw variety.  Additionally, everyone who pays their shot to enter gets to participate in what I’m calling “user-generated advertising”:  having a website means having space to run ads, but we don’t sell that space, we SPEND it…on what attendees think deserves more recognition.

That’s the Hall.  Downstairs is the Lounge, that costs a membership fee to get into, that gives a discount on Hall shows.  See, it’s just like a pub!  And down in the Lounge there’s a yearly resident performer.  For the first year I hope it’ll be my friend Ed, doing his restaging of Jaws, acting out The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire in a gorilla suit, airing the classic cliffhanger series Brave New Show…and upstairs in the Hall, for the first year I’ll be putting on three shows just to set the tone for the “neighbourhoodliness” of this place.  The first will be “Poseidon’s People”, a two-day interactive jazz/pop/flamenco opera about the migration of the proto-Hittites (among others) into the Mediterranean Basin…so now you know why posting has slowed down around here, I guess…that one’s not just starring my friend the superb flamenco guitarist and my other friend the award-winning jazz guitarist, but also starring our good friends Andrew Hickey, David Allison, and Gareth Madeley…

So it should be a hoot, once it gets done?

…And the second will be something a lot like a radio play called “Tales Of New Liverpool”;  a murder-mystery with Moorean/Morrisonian overtones and a Twin Peaks vibe, set in my home town of Vancouver in 1898.  Also with people you know from blogland…

And then probably the third will be a thing called “Hinterland” that I once imagined as a nine-part adventure serial sort of lightly in the mode of Blake’s Seven…rather than an America scribbled large across the galaxy, or even an England, this would be a Canada…er, sort of like, Doctor Who visits Planet Canada?  And finds it’s a surprisingly complicated place.  I’m seeing Tom Baker for it:  because if you don’t have a sense of the absurd, this place’ll KILL ya, seriously.

You’ll die of exposure.

Oh God, I feel it’s happening to me right now.  But I have to tell it sometime, and if Michael and Kevin can do their thing all unafraid-because-awesome?

Then I can do mine, too.

Just one problem.

…

I don’t know how to make the website.  I don’t even know how to start.  I use a rotary phone.  My CD player is an old thing you used to use in a car…you used to just plug it in to the where the cigarette lighter was?  WORKS AWESOME!  But is perhaps a symbol of something, in a couple of different ways.

Though I fear to know what.

Oh well…Michael and Kevin adequately show that making the stuff is primary…and everything after is just everything after.  I’m certain it’ll work out.  You know…

…One way or another.

And you guys deserve more links!  I’ve been so stingy!  I’ll post again soon, but here are a couple to send you out on:

Diane is the name of his tape recorder.

Far better than Bowie and Burroughs.

I kind of want this.

Old Joe Campbell, shoved through a strange karmic process, found himself re-empowered as…CAVE-MAN!

Bit of Dan Goldman.  You should read.

Also…okay, a little shilling-for-record after all.  This one’s self-sold, so no redistributed money from Mick Jagger…every penny, should you deign to throw a penny, would count…

HEY…!

But Project: Ballad doesn’t even cost a penny!

…

And also three documentaries I love, that I can’t recommend highly enough:  “Between The Folds”, a documentary movie about origami, apparently narrated by a Parker Posey character from a Christopher Guest movie?  But worth it just the same…

From PBS, as is the one whose name I can’t remember about DEAF SLAM POETRY IN NYC…!  Now I have to learn ASL, no foolin’…

And then finally, I don’t know where in hell it’s from but in B.C. it’s shown on Knowledge Network, it’s called “Indian Hill Railways” and it damn well astonishes me, for reasons I can’t even say…

…But if you went and took a look at Project: Ballad, you might be as pleased to see the level of INSANE love these guys have for “Homestuck“…I mean it is out of order really.

But very entertaining.

Well, we’ve gotta enjoy these things while we’ve got ‘em, don’t we?

Send you out on a song, Bloggers:

Here it is.

Now don’t say I never did nothin’ for ya.

…

…Uh, even if it was weird?  AW, SCREW IT!

SEND-OFF!

Nice to see you folks.

You all remind me of THIS!

Or…

…

…Oh no wait, that’s ME that reminds me of!

…

As you were, then, gentlemen.

…

Gosh, this went on for a bit though?  One can’t help but wonder a bit about the POINT?

Oh yes the POINT.

Back up top is where it’s located, I think.

Interlude: Appearing Without Explanation

Just give me a minute, Bloggers, and we’ll be getting right back to the main programme…

However in the meantime, you may wish to scroll down to the latest entry on the Seven Soldiers Of Steve part of the sidebar, or just go here, to see what our pal the Disharoonian one has brought to the Valentine’s Day party…

(My God, we’re up to twenty-one of these!)

(It’s very gratifying…)

And as long as you’re going where I tell you, how about you check out a thoroughly unexpected interview with Gerhard (!) (WOW!), some Twin Peaks art, or even maybe read a book.  Thanks to Twitter I’ve been a terrible Linker Of Things lately, and I’m not promising I’ll correct it anytime soon (especially since the Mindless are linking so fast and furious these days), but as long as we’re both here we might as well go somewhere else, eh?

And then get back quick and take our seats:  the Universe should be starting up again in a minute or two…

“…Produce It, In God’s Name!”

Yo, Bloggers!

Well, I must say this is pretty goddamn cool…a nice crisp ten pages from Mr. Witzke and Mr. Lewis, of a story I’ve been fortunate enough to be somewhat, slightly, let in on, and MAN I’ve gotta tell you I’ve been dying to see it!  You may note that the action moves along pretty briskly;  you may note how the influences are worn on the sleeve;  you may wonder where it all heads off to, from here.

Answer:  it heads off somewhere pretty goddamn cool.

Go look, and then please join me in getting out your wallet and tapping it impatiently.

Looks great, guys!  Now MORE PLEASE…

Hold-The-Door

Okay, quick break everybody…!

…While you go and get yourself some of THIS, a truly dandy webcomic that landed in my mailbox a few months ago, and that FOOL THAT I AM I only started reading this week.  So I guess you could say I trade-waited it…which worked out pretty well for me, but I gotta confess I feel a bit guilty about not being there to play cheerleader while it got written.  The gentleman’s name is Dan Goldman, and lucky you he’s got an interview going at The Daily Cross-Hatch, too…and apparently he’s kind of famous already, or something?

Good God, I’m behind the times, eh?  Wait, wait…

…and HOLD THAT DOOR!

Jack The Baptist

Thankyou, PrettyFakers!

For the link to Jack Butler’s interview, essay, and poetry!

A fine writer and thinker, also a friend (again, thanks are due to the fine folks at PF), I find Jack never disappoints, because he’s always at pains to speak as cogently as he can.  So:  do go look.

I’ve Never Seen Anything Like This Before

Couldn’t hear whatever the sound track was, on this computer.  Don’t really care, though!

Pretty goddamn amazing.

Anyone familiar with this already?

The Man Takes A Link, The Link Takes Another…

…Then the link takes the man.

Oh, man.

Read this.

Feel a bit dirty?  I understand completely.  Here, hose yourself down with this.

…They’ve all gone a bit batshit over there, haven’t they?

Come on, North America, we’ve got to pick up our game, for heaven’s sake!  We can’t afford a batshit-gap!

Absolutely perfect Sunday reading.

The Great Steve

Knee-jerk post:

HOLY JUMPIN’ CATFISH…!!

Good Christ, this can’t miss.

“Cholesterol Culture”

This one’s for Jessica.

Good morning, Bloggers! A couple things of possible interest, for you. And maybe they’ll all link up into something along the way…pour, perhaps, into a little grey pool.

First, the thing that kept me up late into the endless snowfall tonight, a documentary on PBS’ “Independent Lens” which addresses a particular interest I have about documentary filmmaking…ever since I saw the “making-of” documentary companion piece to “Ryan”, that revealed the award-winning animated movie about the NFB wunderkind to have been, hmm, shall we say, also about the man who won the award for it. If that’s quite enough of a convoluted thing to say…

Hold on just a sec while I save that deathless prose ‘o mine…

Anyway it’s a pretty damn compelling thing, this “Operation Filmmaker”, especially when seen in the light of the “Ryan/Alter Egos” subject matter…and indeed for me it was almost as though I knew, at every moment, what was going to happen in it. For people who are used to seeing brown-skinned actors portray conflicted terrorists in American action movies and TV shows (and who among us is not so used?), it’s also a fascinating, somewhat guilt-provoking double vu…I mean forget what the PBS page says, I’m not sure how much it really does count as a “surprising allegory of America’s involvement in Iraq”, because it is far more a life-imitating-art thing, or at least so it seems to me…I don’t know when I last saw a documentary movie quite so, er, novelistic as this, and in a way it’s very familiar and in a way it’s very jarring, but any way you look at it I think you can’t help but find it arresting.

Because the novelistic element…the “factitious” element of such a documentary, as one interviewee eloquently puts it…that is an element which the viewer will bring to the documentary experience too, not just something inhaled off the hot celluloid carefully cut and spliced, and artfully assembled by the filmmaker into something as close as possible to a slice of life. Because the viewer is implicated too! With every great documentary’s viewing — and I do happen to think this is a great documentary — comes also a great responsibility on the part of the audience to try and see what hasn’t been shown. Well, don’t you think? In the documentary editing suite, all cuts are recursive…all lenses are mirrors, and all mirrors projectors, and all eyes participant fingers, smearing their prints on the screen. In this movie particularly, it is so clear that the filmmaker is also a subject, that it probably can’t be anything other than art…at least, it can’t be anything devoid of art. So in a way, this is every way of seeing gone wrong: everything a documentary should be, only flipped on its side. Illegitimately.

Oh…

Christ, I take it all back. It is a freakin’ allegory.

Good job, Nina.

Because we see her in there, you see, and that probably isn’t accidental — in fact at certain points it is practically what you might call ham-fisted. And yet that’s part of the art too, what you might call the “art” part, except it gets screwed up…but then also, it all really happened. So…

Oh, to see the “making-of”! But there does not appear to be one.

And so because it does not exist, I guess we will have to invent it.

Curvatures and re-curvatures, Bloggers! This movie was no mean feat. There is no easy “what an asshole” solution, to this problem. Pebbles set to rolling downhill long ago (has it really been three years?), once mystifying effects, practically atomic, inelastic, add up mysteriously to become cascading causes of their own: stories of their own. Bombs long planted detonate finally in serendipitous sequence, losing their randomness as they move up into the interconnected past, to grasp the base of the hourglass…their fireworks shooting up all through it, like bright little stems.

(This one’s also for Holly, because she liked the bit about the flowers. Talking about the light-cone here, Holly. It’s just a thing I do. Admittedly with some annoying frequency.)

But anyway that’s the thing about recursion, that in this particular case I like quite a bit: in fact, thank God for recursion! Otherwise I would just be on the receiving end of all this, it would just all be infall, infinite energy density in the spacetime defect that is the wormhole’s mouth of memory…time’s choke-point, nothin’ but plaque. But in recursion, you see, the thing that’s drawn also draws the thing that draws it…and so I find, perhaps implausibly, that I have an input to offer here. Something to give back, right? As it were: to my own past.  Down into the water.

Here’s Holly’s husband, the estimable Andrew…and here he is again. And here’s what I wrote him just tonight, as I was watching “Operation Filmmaker”. I’m sure you’ll agree it is all pretty damn funny how things occasionally come together. Wish I could take credit for it!

Well…I’ll take a little credit.

“You know, Andrew, after looking that thread over a couple of times, and the links it contains…

Wouldn’t you say a lot of those people seem to have a troubling faith in the ability of science to find usefully authoritative descriptions of how the world works?

I was searching for a way to sum it up, and finally figured out what it is: it’s certainty. But not the ideological kind of certainty (though there’s enough of that in evidence too), rather what bugs me is the sweeping assumption that the only debates left are political ones! As though everything there is to know were already known, and the only thing left to disagree about was what to do with the knowledge.

And might that belief not also be one of the headwaters of totalitarianism? Not that I’m one bit a technocrat, but rather I think I detect the technocratic urge simmering away under that discussion…and I couldn’t help thinking “haven’t we all played this scene before? Did the last ten, twenty, eighty, hundred and fifty years just never happen, or something?” Well, you know my opinion, of course: that the half-life of theoretical plausibility is shortening up. So naturally I find myself shuddering at the prospect of anybody saying “if I were in charge, here’s how I’d act based on the best information”, because I don’t see how you could ever trust anyone who believed there was “best information” that could mitigate their responsibility for making bad decisions in any way, even if only in a stoical way — that is, I don’t see how you can tolerate receiving hypotheticals from people who don’t know how to gauge whether a theory is likely to prove solid or unsolid…or how to gauge their own ability to tell, and the trustworthiness of their own opinions about relative theoretical plausibility. I mean, in that context — in the context of a world in which from year to year we can’t be sure whether or not butter really is bad for you, or if smaller earthquakes today really do reduce the severity of bigger earthquakes tomorrow — or, you know, any topic of this general stripe which is genuinely politically hot — then isn’t even the standard argument for “smaller” government rather woefully cart-before-horse-putting? When the real issue’s the same as it’s always been: how to deal with uncertainty about the future at a collective level, full stop. Not how to deal with the tension of collective vs. individual, I take that to be a secondary effect — as far as I’m concerned, once you’ve wondered how to deal with uncertainty on a collective level, you’ve said the primary thing, framed the issue nice and square. But, of course I’m just an average Canadian liberal — I look at “small government” and conclude that’s just code for “government doomed to suffer a catastrophic collapse exactly when I need it”, I look at private or P3 models for healthcare and consider them something akin to building dams out of sugar. I look at people mixing up the concepts of personal freedom and democratic freedom willy-nilly and think it’s like they’re arguing about whether it makes any practical difference to know if the Earth goes around the Sun, when the fact is the Earth either does go around the Sun, or it doesn’t…I don’t think the argument is one of science and empiricism, in other words, I think it’s one of observation and failure to observe. Of perspicuous representation, if you like.

I don’t know…I could be talking out of my hat, I suppose…still what got me thinking about it was your friend Hexar allowing as how he considered government a necessary evil…and, you know, I don’t actually agree with that formulation! Where I live, freedom is exceedingly easy to get hold of and keep: if I march fifty miles north into the mountains I can find all the freedom I could possibly desire. No government whatsoever; lots of rocks and trees to hide behind. Plenty of food, plenty of fuel, plenty of quiet. So what’s necessary about the evil of government? It actually isn’t necessary or evil, so long as you can escape it pretty much any time you want. Okay, so Canada’s a big and sparsely-populated country, but what I’m saying is, that “necessary evil” stuff isn’t generalizable, it’s actually quite site-specific, and of course in the States it is also part of a national mystique, a social/historical/political narrative that most Americans have impressed upon them very powerfully, and from a very early age. But now, what I like is the concept of political liberty, as a rights-based condition that only exists in political society, because it acts as a countervailing force on the personal freedom of the powerful in such a society, i.e. the people who fall on the good side of the ledger of economic equality. Out on a camping trip, this power relation of course doesn’t obtain, as we all know: you can leave your Locke at home, it won’t fit in the canoe…but back in the world of traffic lights and money supplies, it re-emerges, because where political society doesn’t exist, it doesn’t exist…you can only ever get it where that “necessary evil” holds sway. So, I don’t see it as evil at all, because I love my political equality, my democratic freedom, that the powerful cannot take away!

Does that make sense?

So…I just think most libertarians are full of it, you know, and very hidebound and impractical…although like you I’m impressed with the politeness of that bunch. But it’s not just Woobegone on that thread, it’s also many of his interlocutors, who seem reasonably comfortable speaking as though the well of history has been capped…intelligent and educated people, of course, but I found myself mistrusting their easiness with summary, the startling convenience of their facts.

Gee, now that I’ve gone so far as this, I think I would put all this in an email instead of a comment, but I can’t seem to find your email address around here anywhere…

Anyway, I’m a little surprised at your LibDems, I had not expected to find the American meaning of “libertarian” current anywhere outside America! Down south it’s a sort of political default, it’s the basic American “moderate” — less government’s generally better, whatever “less” means. By contrast, when I hear someone say they’re a libertarian in Canada, I don’t think they’re moderate at all, and I don’t think “liberty” is their interest…I think their interest is personal freedom in political society, not the thing that restrains it, and in my opinion is actually reduced by it. It’s sort of like the thing about cholesterol (which, so I don’t sound mean, somebody on the LC thread did in fact bring up in an extremely timely way, and the other folks there didn’t just go “whuh-huh?”, they grokked that bizness), which is that having a lot of the good stuff (so they say — and by “they” I do not mean cardiologists, but public health spokespeople — different critter, there) is more important than having less of the bad stuff. For me what seems most beneficial is for the sheath of liberty, of political freedom, around each person to be as thick as possible, positively fat. And “small” government is not good at supplying that fatness. Of course “big” government that is also poor government isn’t any good at supplying it either, and is even better at taking it away…but even good “small” government won’t get the HDL (do I have that right? is that the “good” cholesterol?) up to levels your doctor would be happy with…

And the irony here is that for twenty-five years it was known that there was this good/bad thing with cholesterol, but public health spokespeople told us there was just a “cholesterol number” that you needed to get down…because they were concerned if people were given the whole truth it would only confuse them, they had to create a cholesterol “culture” before they could start handing out the straight dope about how many kinds of the stuff there are. Know what I mean?

So I guess when I click through that link, I flash on “cholesterol culture”. I think that’s what those debates are like.

Jeez, I guess this should’ve been a post. Whoops. Feel free to delete it if you like, Andrew, it’s kinda long and rattling, and I’m beginning to think I’ve been a bit presumpuous…at least: careless.

Cripes, “Cholesterol Culture”, that’s a title, ain’t it…”

Well, and I guess it is. Either that, or a way of life, I’m not sure…

Mind you, “not sure” is rather the point: i.e. the recursive subject of “sure”, obviously. So, vase or faces, Bloggers? Figure or ground?

Mistakes, or clues?

Men may know the nature of things, but it seems they can do something else too, if they feel like it. So take a look at this mess, Good Lord how have the mighty fallen, after they got tripped who me don’t know what you’re talking about! The Edge World Question used to be just about my favourite online thing ever, but the questions have been getting worse and worse…there are still bright people in there who are saying very bright things, very educational things but as answers they are not as good…! Because a certain sense of restraint seems to’ve been lost over the last couple of Questions, and the howling ineducability of the digerati seems to be getting louder and louder…trying, I suspect, to drown out the echoes. In effect: doubling down. For our pals Doug Rushkoff and Freeman Dyson, there is still all the time in the world for to sit and ponder…they speak clearly, and obviously adore specificity. Alan Alda and even the joker who runs Wired are worth reading, too! But God help us the cholesterol culture that’s at work over at Edge these days, it’s horrifying. When the publisher of Wired magazine is one of the intellectually responsible people? It’s practically disgustipatin’. Did I suggest Andrew’s LibDems were bad? These guys are a thousand times their inferiors, they do exactly the same thing only their feet are held disgracefully as far away from the fire as it’s possible to be located. And cold-footed, they are living in the past.

But all the questions are about the bloody future!

Thankfully, though, as I said…it isn’t all of them. And even in the offenders’ greatest excesses there is still something useful to be grabbed onto, like a handle. With every great documentary, comes also a great responsibility to see what hasn’t been shown! And this is a wonderful time in history — the fucking future! — to solidly declare for, as my friend Jack says, some fidelity to the actual.

Smudges on the glass, Jessica. I give ‘em back to you. Those were what you wanted me to see, right?

I see ‘em, okay.

Do you see me?

Cardiologists tell me that a heart attack is a horrifyingly complex beast — there is never any one cause, there is never any one meaning, there is never any one thing that could have been done. Because heart attacks are not theoretical; as Einstein said, matter is not simple but subtle.

So we might well call, at this point in time, for a little more matter, and a little less art.

But who should we call to? Only ourselves. Because we must bring the matter, to the art.

And if we have no matter to bring…why then, we must invent it.

Right?

Tell ya what: if flowers in a vase look like anything, they look like trajectories. Well, ain’t it so? You may find them by accident; trip over them, fall on your face in them. Bring them home later as surprises.

But as soon as you drop them into that hourglass, they go all hyperbolic on you.

My apologies to you, the viewer, if my randomly-picked thoughts here have done the same.

But let’s move on, now.

They Also Serve, Who Only Sit Around And Link

Christmastime, Bloggers; and the snow is falling on the ground.

With a couple of consequences: my present-buying and foolish-spending money will not arrive on the streets of Vancouver until the 29th, also I’ve been shovelling snow and probably will not do the old annual Christmas Eve sit-around-and-drink thing with the Usual Gang Of Idiots I laughingly call friends…and believe me, if you knew them that’s what you’d laughingly call them as well.

But surprisingly, as it turns out…this will all be fine. Two very strange parties I attended recently, and the peculiar realization that nothing can be done about my finances in the short term, have left me thinking that maybe having no dough for Christmas is a good thing overall. No running around for me! My father’s learning how to be laid up in bed, my brother’s away on a skiing trip, and I’m considering that as lowdown as The Year Without A Christmas feels when you’re twenty, once you get past forty it’s a positive relief. So: pencils for everyone! You can write with ‘em, you can sharpen ‘em up…hey, they’re terrific! And one size fits all! The perfect gift.

Though not quite as nice as this: Nina’s rather fascinating year-end Q-and-A post over at Virgin Reads, which is as appealing a comics-related diary entry as any I’ve read…also in six words she manages to make me jealous of Tucker! “They interest him. He interests me.” We should all be so lucky.

Very much looking forward to the Virgin’s 2009 output! And I liked this column a lot before, you know…but now I feel even more perked-up for it. A wonderful experiment.

Also on my unChristmas list:

Rick Veitch demonstrates the fact that I was not nearly as talented a kid as everybody kept telling me…I KNEW it! Those liars…

But of course it could be worse: I could be RAB, and have gone quietly, utterly mad while no one was looking…

Also, David tees it up again, Tom Spurgeon conducts one goddamn long interview with Tucker, I had no idea that this even existed, and I should really start linking to stuff that nobody’s seen a million times already, shouldn’t I? I mean I feel like I’m sneaking food from other people’s lunchboxes here…okay fine, you asked for it, man I cannot BELIEVE I bought this comic…the strangest of letdowns, the moment when two equally-geeky parts of my brain met and cancelled each other out…a staggering thing, like eating a peanut-butter-and-mayonnaise sandwich with slices of tomato in it and lots of pepper…

Which is what you eventually end up with, when you make too much of a habit sneaking food from other people’s lunchboxes.

You think I’m joking?

Hell, I’m going to go have one right now. You have to eat it sitting down, or you’ll collapse onto the floor in confusion.

A little more posting later, unless I decide to a) do some work, b) read some Little Nemo, or c) read some Little Nemo. Anyway, Merry Christmas, bloggers, if I don’t talk to you before then. For those of you feeling not quite as adventurous as I, here’s my mother’s most famous sandwich, the “Cultus Lake Special”: white bread, mayonnaise, red onion, mandarin orange slices, black pepper. She swears by it.

Never actually seen her eat one, mind you…

Oh, and Fred Hembeck linked to this. I like to watch it while eating mayonnaise, myself…

Okay! Just be glad I didn’t link to the hurdy-gurdy festival.