That Day Ten Years Ago

I'm having a hard time coming up with things/ideas that aren't better put here by smarter people. So go read that Guardian piece if you want insightful commentary.

Instead, I want to talk about three of the good things that have happened around the day of of 11 Sept 01 and then get out. First: My Chemical Romance got started. This may not sound like much and up until the Black Parade, they were an interesting piece of errata, a band that started out in the Ink and Dagger school of goth/punk darkness, so the descent of the scene into badly aging macabre imagery was something they came by honestly.

Then they put out the Black Parade, a record I ignore outside of three songs, the title track for it's Queen-esque bombast, "Teenagers" because it's got a great hook and an even better chorus "teenagers scare the living shit out of me" and the hidden track "Blood" for it's bizarre-ness, even on a record called the Black Parade.

Then...Danger Days and everything changed with Thought Bubble 2010. The dance floor at TB 2010 for "NaNaNaNaNa"was absolutely massive and had me screaming my lungs out. Put simply, that single song restored my faith in adjective-less punk rock. It's a mission statement. It's a threat. It's superhero punk rock for want of a better phrase. When taken with the album intro, Look Alive Sunshine, puts an Invisibles style bounce in my step and deserves to be played as loud as possible from any speaker capable of being jury-rigged and stolen.

Danger Days is My Chemical Romance retooling itself after the scope of ...Parade and finding a different muse in genre playing. When they play the Cure ("Summertime"), it's worthy of the comparison, when they play Bon Jovi, it's done with the two images being a bulletproof heart and a hollow-point smile. With that, how can I resist?

Second, a very good friend of mine proposed one year ago today.

Third, Adorno was born today.

Finally. I'm going to take Ed Brubaker's advice and find something beautiful in my world today. Joy beats oppression, so I've heard...




...but oppression will make you pay. A song called "Paul Robeson" from the World/Inferno Friendship Society's record Red-Eyed Soul.

Penny-Arcade Dickwolves. (NSFW, TRIGGER, ETC.)

First things first: TRIGGER WARNING. Hello. TRIGGER WARNING. Consider this the bright, flashing red light telling you these things might set something off. This post will talk about the Penny-Arcade Dickwolves stuff, which you might imagine to be NSFW, but also if you are triggered by discussions of, a monster with penises for limbs who'se purpose is let's say, sinister, skip this one.

The background to the issue what appears to be full is available here and will only take five minutes of your time, so don't bother reading any further until you get through that page.

Don't worry, I'll wait.

...

Back? Great.

Let's get my positions out into the open first:

1. Penny-Arcade (for now, Jerry and Mike) was wrong to make the shirts and compounded that bad decision by letting those sleeping dogs lie.

2. Then, when they did talk about it, it was done haphazardly by Mike, who is no one's idea of a subtle instrument.

3. Which stoked the fire even more.

4. By the time Jerry weighed in (the member of the two who'se words carry rhetorical weight) and said “Maybe I'm wrong,” it was too late.

Rape is a pretty big blindspot for gamers. Why will take me off-track and I'll discuss it further down. And here goes my Ill Doctrine hat-tip: I'm less concerned if Penny-Arcade are rape-apologists in their hearts, I'm far more concerned that they responded this badly to an idea that's pretty clearly out of their depth. What Penny-Arcade did was make t-shirts out of a fictional monstrosity whose only purpose is rape. That was a bad idea. What Penny-Arcade is, though, is different. Rape, pretty obviously now, is their blindspot. Humans have them. You do. Shit, I do. When you add to that their poor handling of the issue, which I can understand quite easily, it compounded the problem, which was never really something they understood to begin with.

But calling them names and yelling insults at anybody within earshot doesn't fucking help the case. I think people get further keeping the focus on what they did, not what they are.

The hope is that Penny-Arcade learns from this experience, because, and let's be clear: They're not going anywhere. They're also the best of the webcomics and their work for the gaming community has paid incredible dividends. They're pretty obviously sincere in their desire to do good.

So far, they haven't acknowledged what I believe to be the core issue, and appear to believe the comic was the issue. The issue, as I see it and explained elsewhere as: "[Mike] was an asshole to people who have every right to be offended by jokes about violence that affects them every day of their lives. He doesn’t have the right to tell them otherwise. No one does."

The comic was not the issue. That's not the criticism. The problem, Jerry (if I can pretend to speak to him directly), was trying to merchandise a fictional monstrosity whose only purpose is rape (which he doesn't acknowledge) and then abdicating your responsibility to communicate (which he does.) He neatly avoid acknowledging that intent doesn't matter, once an idea is in the wild, it has a life of its own, the variety of which would surprise its author.

Jerry and Mike will get another bite at the apple on Friday, next Monday, next Wednesday and however long they choose to keep publishing. Yes, they fucked up, but this is not their only time at the plate. That's the nature of serial publishing. Make the next ones better, guys. Be more careful in the future.

(Also: I don't think I need to explicitly explain why making a tshirt out of a fictional entity whose only purpose is rape is bad.)

I think bitmob put it best when they ask for people to not wear their Dickwolves shirts at the Penny-Arcade Expo, so I'll quote them and be done:

We don't...get to decide whether someone else’s issues are valid or not. If someone says to us “Seeing these t-shirts triggers me into horrible PTSD and causes me substantial amounts of distress,” our choice is to either respect those feelings and seek not to cause that distress, or tell them “Sorry, our right to wear these shirts is more important than your not having panic attacks while walking the halls of this event you would otherwise attend.”

I listened to this song (and maybe even this version) last night approximately 30 times in a row. It's by former Bikini Kill member Kathleen Hanna (who has had a number of other projects that are far more successful, but that's the one I'm choosing) and is called I Wish I Was Him.

More Entries Into Terrible Things For 2010

Station ID time: We're going low power until the new year. No posts after this in 2010. I might clean up or spruce up earlier posts, sprinkle links in where they should go, but I'll catalog what I do. Anyway. See you in 2011! Merry Christmas!

I spent a bunch of time trying to write something about the Julian Assange rape thing and I think it ended up repeating a bunch of the much better, professionally written pieces about the issue, so I scuttled it. I'm trying to pass some kind of judgment on the Assange rape issue without having any kind of access to the evidence of the not-trial either way. What I have to say boils down to a couple things:

First: We ought, necessarily, to sort out what we think about Wikileaks and then quarantine it from what we think of the rape charges. Wikileaks is so big and so pervasive that it will lead us astray. So: Julian Assange is a guy accused of four counts of rape total by two different women in Stockholm.
Second: Until the trial gets under way, all I have access is to is the stuff in the press, which is spotty and unclear how true most things are. Hopefully, a trial where evidence is put in front of a judge, or public will help clear things up. Considering one of the charges is intercourse with a sleeping woman without a condom, some clarity will be useful.
Third: Yes, the CIA could have done this. Easily. And I'm willing to believe it, but damnit, I need some evidence of it. I would like to believe reasonable people take rape charges very seriously. But, before ringing the conspiracy bell, I would like to see something I can sink my teeth into. Or just something. I'm currently reading a book about a government trying to assassinate people, using official cover to do it. I'm sympathetic to the argument that the government is lying, but I've gotta be met halfway at this and I'm not seeing anyone.
Fourth: Because otherwise, I'm taking the idea of a boogeyman over the accusations of women who claim to have been raped that no one has shown a reason to disbelieve. That seems short-sighted at the very least. If this makes me naive, so be it.

The links below are useful. Tigerbeatdown is the hook, Jezebel's link has the larger view and Guardian has the details on just about everything. What you come up with is up to you, but man, I don't think there's answers, just more accurate information that clouds everybody's view.

Here are the links:
Tigerbeatdown-#Mooreandme: On Progressives, Rape Apologism and the Little Guy
Jezebel-Talking About Julian Assange Has Become Utterly Terrible
The Guardian-Assange bail request refused as Wikileaks Chief Fights Extradition, Julian Assange defends decision not to face questioning in Sweden, 10 days in Sweden the full allegations against Julian Assange



Today's song is by Propagandhi, called "With Friends Like These, Who The Fuck Needs COINTELPRO," which includes the lyrics:

The purpose of this new counter-intelligence endeavor is to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize any parades that you can't jump in front of.

You can view the rest of the lyrics here, but the title's indicative of what you're going to find. It's a live version because a studio one isn't available. Oh well.

NSFW. Neonomicon 2.

This isn't so much of a review as trying to exhale all these ideas in the corset of my chest and rib cage out. It's definitely not safe for work. (NSFW.) As in, turn back sharpish if you're on a work/shared computer. Like now.

For those of you sticking around: Hi. Yes, reading the writing of Kieron Gillen is beginning to influence my own. Finally. Anyway. This isn't one of those feel good posts. Away we go.



Neonomicon #2. We're only halfway through the story and there's an extended scene (read, the entire second half) where one of the characters gets murdered, and then while watching her friend's body is being dragged out, the other character is raped. By the way, there's gonna be no links to it, or pictures.

To paraphrase the greater internet, DO NOT WANT.

But in this case, it comes from a really, really surprising author, Alan Moore. Yes. Watchmen Alan Moore. Yes, Swamp Thing Alan Moore. Yes, that one, but more to the point, Promethea and fucking Lost Girls Alan Moore. Same one. From a technical perspective, it's foreshadowed kind of well, that in the beginning, one can kind of see that something bad is going to happen to the protagonists.

The requirement of the story, so far as I can tell, is that the place where the event happens, the water is some kind of crazy water that needs terrible things to happen to/around it to get it hot. Really. I'm sure it's used to summon Cthulhu somehow. In fact, were I to guess, that's the next plot point.

I'm surprised, genuinely, by the turn of events. I mean, yes Mr. Moore got me. I'm certainly shocked. I did not expect the thing that was happening here. I'm disappointed in Alan Moore, but then again, he's written a lot of things I admire, cherish and respect, so he as an astronomical bank of faith with me.

So what does that mean in real life terms?

First: It means that I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Second: It means that I'm willing to say that we're only now halfway through the story, so there might be something that, uhhhhhh, look, man, squick. Third: It's a Cthulhu story. Bad shit is supposed to happen. But is this beyond the pale? I've never read a Cthulhu story. This one is certainly out of my comfort zone.

Horror stories do not always mean disgust. They mean fear and terror. Two different things. For example: I don't remember murder rape being a thing Hitchcock leaned on when making his films. But back to Moore. It just seems out of character for him. I recognize his voice (or a particularly good sound alike) in the dialogue throughout, so I'd be willing to bet it's him.

Oh. Covering my ass, this could be a gigantic prank on the part of Avatar, slap Alan Moore's name on a story and seeing how people will contort to defend it. But I doubt it. They work with enough big names that I could see a stunt like this ruining their relationship with people like Garth Ennis or Warren Ellis.

This comes from a man who wrote, in all seriousness, one of the most careful, respectful books of pornography in the entire world, citing the idea that it is hardly ever seen from a female perspective, a guy who wrote an epic tale of love (Swamp Thing) and a guy who tried to create a female centered universe around the idea that ideas can be magic (Promethea).

And he wrote a murder rape. I'm not sure why. It's certainly not for the money. God knows if that was the case, he could get multiple million dollar offers from Marvel or DC just by saying "Hi, I'd be willing to do X number of issues on IP Y," or let his name be used on any of the movies based on his comics (V For Vendetta, Watchmen or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), I say, knowing I forgot at least one.

I'm shocked and disappointed in one of the most fertile minds of the medium. Remember what I said on Friday about being embarrassed by what I wrote five years ago? Maybe this will be the same way. Maybe I'll get over it. Maybe I'll get it. But right now, it's still ringing maddeningly in my ears and I want it out.


As a bit of a palate cleanser, listen to All I Do Is Win. It's a radio song (which means I never would have heard it on my own) and the chorus is so goddamn good, but the first time I heard it, I was on a boat, speeding over the water. Thus, every time I hear the song, I think of wind through my hair and getting lost in speed. Which, I would be willing to bet, is something that the composers had in mind when they wrote the song.