Long Live the King

I'm glad somebody's calling out Marvel's bullshit vis-a-vis Jack Kirby. Marvel would not have existed without Jack Kirby's work. It sucks that they screwed him over so badly. I loved Marvel in my comic collecting youth (hell, I still have some of my comics stored away), but how Marvel has built its entertainment empire has Kirby's ghost left twisting in the wind. Truly vile policy, and the writer is right on the money (so to speak) when they say:

What makes this situation especially hard to stomach is that Marvel’s media empire was built on the backs of characters whose defining trait as superheroes is the willingness to fight for what is right. It takes a lot of corporate moxie to put Thor and Captain America on the big screen and have them battle for honor and justice when behind the scenes the parent company acts like a cold-blooded supervillain. As Stan Lee famously wrote, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

If Mitt Romney is right, and corporations are people, perhaps Marvel/Disney has the capacity to feel shame. In any event, a public flogging has already begun. Cartoonist and educator Stephen Bissette’s blog post calling for a boycott of The Avengers kicked up a lot of dust in the blogosphere. Tom Spurgeon, writing for his well-respected industry website Comic Reporter also framed the issue in moral terms, as did the cartoonist Seth: “The corporate lie about Kirby's role in the creation of all those characters is abhorrent. It's a bold faced lie. Everyone knows it's a lie. No one is fooled. Everyone lying for the company should be ashamed. Stan Lee should be ashamed. What the Marvel corporation is doing might be legal but it certainly isn't right.”

'Nuff said.

Aluminum

I was amused by this piece in SLATE about aluminum. I love the qualitative nature of value, how aluminum was a status metal a few centuries past because the extraction technology for it wasn't fully there, yet, which made it precious. The image of aluminum ingots next to crown jewels is awesome, especially when contrasted with its ubiquity today. Love that. Mmmm, stack of aluminum ingots!

SLATE's "blogging the periodic table" is a good series.

This-and-that

Still somewhat sick from the stomach flu; B1 soldiered right through it straightaway; I'm getting there. Lost two pounds in about 12 hours. Hah!

Today is the Uruguay v. Holland World Cup match. Holland should smoke Uruguay. We'll see. I'm thinking tomorrow's Spain v. Germany will be the real highlight of the World Cup, although whoever wins that playing Holland should be great, too.

In today's NYT... Need a Job? Ask the NY Philharmonic.

Next season the New York Philharmonic will have a rare 12 openings, or roughly 12 percent of its instrumental work force, thanks to a confluence of retirements, departures for better jobs and long-unfilled positions. The Boston Symphony Orchestra has 10 vacancies, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra 9, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic 7.

Elsewhere the Cleveland Orchestra has four full-time job openings and one part-time. The Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, San Francisco Symphony and Dallas Symphony each have three openings.

“We haven’t had this many for quite a while, not for 20 years,” said Carl R. Schiebler, the New York Philharmonic’s personnel director and its maestro of musician management. “A lot is six or seven.” 

I have the misfortune of working in a profession where people don't realize the value of the work that I do -- as I've said in the past (maybe not here), but editors, if they do their work well, are largely invisible. Only bad editing really stands out; if an editor does their job well, you don't even realize they're there. That's making the job search rather challenging, and even if/when I find something, the odds of it paying incredibly well will be remote. Not like it's my main objective, mind you, but it's still something I have to consider. It's why I'm looking into Technical Writing as a way of moving into something that uses my editing experience in a way that's actually valued.

Shuttle Diplomacy

B1 loves the Space Shuttle. And while researching it to talk to him about it, I saw that the last two shuttle flights are this year (mid-September for Discovery, and mid-November for Endeavour), and told him that. He said "But I love the Space Shuttle Program; I don't think they should cancel it." And I could hear a little hitch in his voice, so I gave him a hug. He said "What are they replacing it with?" and I told him that there wasn't anything lined up, yet, and he couldn't understand why they hadn't done that. I didn't have the heart to tell him that our country's increasingly becoming an economic and cultural basket case and things like space programs are going the way of art and music programs in the public schools. Sigh. Then he sweetly came up with some alternative plans for space programs. He's such a smart, sweet lil' guy.

400,000

I heard on NPR the other day that Ohio has lost 400,000 jobs over the past four years. That's a lot of jobs gone. It has something like a 10.8% unemployment rate. The Republicans have really buggered that poor state.

The World Cup is fun so far. Ghana won their match with Serbia, Germany smoked the Aussies (4 - 0 -- ouch), Slovenia squeaked by Algeria (1 - 0), and of course the US tied with England. I think England and the US will smoke Slovenia and Algeria (they're in the same group), so things are looking good for the US.

It rained a lot today. I went to the Old Town Art Fair, will comment more on that later, as I need a shower (so humid and rainy today, I feel like I'm in some kind of temperate rain forest!

Who Killed the Electric Car?

I watched "Who Killed the Electric Car?" last night, on a whim. I usually avoid documentaries like that because it just gets my blood boiling. And this was no exception -- it's a good documentary, and they lay it out methodically. It's a clear case of an automobile company sabotaging and scuttling one of their own products in the interest of serving Big Oil. It just kills me, because the EV1 was clearly a cutting-edge vehicle. 100% electric battery-powered, no emissions, fast and powerful, it was a real forward step. GM had the opportunity to corner the market on a new and exciting product, and they backed away from it and, instead, went with SUVs. And not only did they scuttled the EV1, but they took them all back from folks who leased them and had them all crushed and impounded on a GM lot! Amazing. Near as I can tell (although this isn't explained in the movie, I'm just theorizing, here) they realized they weren't going forward with electric cars, and they didn't want the EV1s out there to 1) show that electric cars were desirable and realizable, and 2) potentially be snagged by competitors and reverse-engineered, giving a competitor access to a fine electric car that they had no intention of mass-marketing.

In the wake of the Gulf Disaster, the open wound in the world that it represents, this documentary is a must-see, because you really see how Big Oil calls the tune in our country. It's especially fascinating to see the damning appraisal of hybrids and hydrogen fuel cell cars -- both of which are blind alleys intended to keep gasoline front-and-center. Fuel cell cars are inordinately expensive, relative to electric cars, and are, even in the best-case scenario, a stopgap technology. There's been plenty of money poured into them, and they're still a prohibitive blind alley -- compared with that, the electric cars are a far-cheaper, user-friendlier real-world alternative.

Anyway, the movie shows a clear case of companies acting against their long-term economic interest and actually foregoing commanding market share because of the easy, oily money being made in the here-and-now. And how they will work tirelessly to ensure that emission-free electric cars don't displace the gas-guzzlers anytime soon.

Amazing stuff, well worth a viewing, but if you have an iota of liberal and progressive values in your heart, it'll piss you off.

It's also staggering to see that the first electric cars appeared in 1897.

Holy Shit

One thing I notice a lot on Facebook is how people who likely self-identify as "Christian" are so often hard-hearted little souls who snarl angrily about the poor and the needy. It galls me that me, the resident atheist, apparently has a bigger heart than these supposed Christians. And when I see it over and over again, this stew of hatred and anger and malice and lack of empathy (to say nothing of sympathy) from folks, it bothers me more than a little. The jester in me wants to comment to these people "What Would Jesus Do?" when they go on one of their little tears, although that would likely just be "Oh, Dave's being a smartass" kind of thing, even though I'm really calling them out a little.

I'm busy teaching my sons to be kind and compassionate (with B1, it's hardly something I even need to do -- he's kind and sweet and sensitive and already has more moral sense than most of the adults I know), and I see these other people who purportedly embrace Christianity spouting hate and venom, and I think "My poor sons are gonna be sharing the world with these hard-hearted people's spawn."

It is haunting and frustrating and makes me sad. I'm kinder-hearted than most people probably actually think -- behind my sarcastic, snarky, cynical exterior, I'm fundamentally kind. I routinely give to the poor and the needy, and I'm reflexively empathic to the suffering of others. In a purely philosophical, Judeo-Christian ethical sense, I am more Christian than most of the Christians I know.

My least-Christian quality is that I don't hurt those who don't deserve to be hurt -- sorry, but if smacked in the face (literally or figuratively), I will smack back -- I'm far too Celtic to truly turn the other cheek, although I'm far more forgiving than I ought to be, and I never start anything, but I'm sure to finish it, if provoked -- I don't believe in initiation of force, but I do believe in self-defense, and that applies in a variety of settings, whether physical, emotional, mental, social, or spiritual. I do believe in Live and Let Live as an atheistic detente with the world around me. I won't hurt you if you don't hurt me, but Tit for Tat definitely is part of my character.

Anyway, it just bothers me to see hate and vitriol flung by people who've clearly been drinking the Christianist Kool-Aid and spew that kind of partisan venom at the poor and the weak and the needy. C'mon, people. It's very, very American to do that, really -- like to think that Christianity is more "God helps those who help themselves" than "Love one another." Or that Christ was somehow this oily entrepreneur, this venture capitalist for the soul, instead of a genuine spiritual radical who embraced the weak against the dictates of the strong and the powerful. Yet this obvious theological point seems lost on so many people.

As I've long said, I think Christianity came to America to die -- Europe bled itself dry of religiosity in countless wars, and our young country gleefully embraced (and distorted) Christian theology to its own end. Clearly, the nearly communist doctrines of actual Christianity are entirely un-American, so I wonder just what kind of Christianity those folks are embracing, precisely -- a "Christianity" where the strong kick the weak in the teeth, where the rich are free to enjoy the fruits of others' labors with impunity, where the powerful ride roughshod over the poor, where the bold inherit the Earth (standing on the backs of the meek, mind you).

The hostility people felt toward the health care reform is only one symptom of this spiritual sickness -- that reform was very, very mild (and, shhh, very conservative and pro-business) -- but those venom-spewers (good "Christians" one and all, for sure) got seething mad about it. And I looked at it and said "It's giving health care options for people who didn't have them. If Jesus saw that, He'd approve -- if anything, He'd say it didn't go nearly far enough to help the helpless." But noooooo, they lost their minds over people getting health care!

It doesn't bode well for this century, truly, that these cockeyed crusaders are busy taking swords to whetstones to "save this country" when, in truth, they are going to destroy it. And under the banner of "Christian values." Holy SHIT, people. The reactionaries a century ago realized that religiosity was the perfect shield for them to hide behind, and they surely are. We are seeing their foot soldiers marching under that banner of moral certitude and righteousness, while pursuing an agenda of anger, fear, and hatred. Yeah, good things will come of that, Lord knows.

The Big Board

This may seem so old-school, but I swear I need to get one of those whiteboards, like a status board, for my writing. On one hand, I could use the databases on the old computer, where everything's still kept, but as the old computer is being slowly mothballed, I have yet to impose a new order on the iMac. I don't want to upload everything on there.

Anyway, I'm tempted to whiteboard my various stories to indicate what's where, so I can just look on the board and react accordingly. I feel like I need that kind of a concrete thing, instead of it just being confined to electrons in the old computer. I haven't done it, yet -- I may just get a notebook and have that be the equivalent, but I haven't fully decided, yet.

Another short story idea, rendered through a title...

• Milking Human Kindness

A kind of SF/Horror story, this one is. Just jotting it down, so I don't lose the little chip of paper I write upon. As ever, I'm behind on my output, need to do that, but with Writing Season (e.g., Winter) riding high in the skies, it's a perfect time for me to propel myself forward on my schedule.

Magic Number: 6

Thanklessgiving

I'm going to take advantage of the current situation to get a lot of writing done over the weekend.

An agent took a pass on one of my books. No big deal, it was, perhaps, a longshot, anyway, but I had to try. I'm putting together another proposal for him, another book I have that is very nearly ready to go (I'll finish that up this weekend). This one may (?) be closer to what he's looking for, and I hope he appreciates that I'm slinging another work his way this soon after corresponding with him on another work. He's a good agent, gets those deals, so that's something I can look forward to, if I luck out and he considers this other proposal.

I need to organize my writing station more -- I have several file boxes for my hard copy, but I need to consolidate, have it in one place, in a cabinet with a lock and key. Something portable, but larger, and more centralized. Just for the sake of organization.