Grant Morrison, I'm Putting You On Notice...

No one will ever write a better Superman story than this. No one. Ever.

Ambient

Listening to Fear Of Music in the car yesterday. Listening loud. Pavement’s a mess, and I need to hit the wipers to wash the road-salt from the windshield. The wipers continue: the music continues. After a while a new element enters the mix, and it takes me a moment to realize that the juddering squeal at the edge of hearing is coming from outside the cabin and not from the speakers—it’s the sound of rubber on glass as the wiper blade drags against the dry shield.

Somewhere Brian Eno is smiling.

Herod the King, In His Raging

Church music director goes on a shooting rampage, then kills himself in the lead-up to the Nativity pageant.

Let me state from personal experience: Frankly, I'm surprised this kind of thing doesn't happen more often.

Don’t Fuck with The Jesus, Mang

[Jesus said] "If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also." Why the right cheek? How does one strike another on the right cheek anyway? Try it. A blow by the right fist in that right-handed world would land on the left cheek of the opponent. To strike the right cheek with the fist would require using the left hand, but in that society the left hand was used only for unclean tasks. …. The only way one could strike the right cheek with the right hand would be with the back of the hand.

What we are dealing with here is unmistakably an insult, not a fistfight. The intention is not to injure but to humiliate, to put someone in his or her place. One normally did not strike a peer in this way, and if one did the fine was exorbitant … A backhand slap was the normal way of admonishing inferiors. …

Why then does Jesus counsel these already humiliated people to turn the other cheek? Because this action robs the oppressor of power to humiliate them. … Such a response would create enormous difficulties for the striker. Purely logistically, how can he now hit the other cheek? He cannot backhand it with his right hand. If he hits with a fist, he makes himself an equal, acknowledging the other as a peer. But the whole point of the back of the hand is to reinforce the caste system and its institutionalized inequality.

Lest we forget: A nice examination, in social-historical context, of the Christ as poetic terrorist, the Trickster tearing down Power by mocking its hypocrisy. The Son of Man, come down from heaven to fuck shit up.

The Prince of Peace was badass, bro—and non-violence is not for pussies.

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Man, I could read—and read about—Wallace Stevens's stuff all day long (don't even get me started on "The Emperor of Ice-Cream"). And the Flower City is getting its first real snowfall of the season as I write this. So indulge me, yeah?

Update

The first panty shots have appeared in the Powerpuff Girls fan-webcomic (in the 12 December 2004 installment).

Utterly unsurprising, but still pretty goddam creepy.

Best Regards

Finally finished and posted the last in the “Letters to a Young Poet” series. It’s backdated to October 31, to put it in proper chronological order with the others: Scroll down, or follow the permalink.

Looking for a Well-Done Webcomic?

Pleasingly designed. Gorgeously rendered. Mad as a bag of ferrets.

Fanfic and doujinshi: Is this stuff the Outsider Art of the information age? One of the characteristics of genuine Outsider work is that its makers have no access to the art world as a system. But with the Web as the great leveler—JoJo McMadbastard’s website is every bit as visible as the MoMA’s, and may get just as many hits (maybe more, if it’s BoingBoinged or Slashdotted)—is anybody truly “outside” anymore?

I have to wonder—given that this guy is drawing at or near a professional level—is he getting offers of work? Or worse (but somehow, I think, more likely), turning them down to leave him more time to concentrate on his passion for the bleedin’ Powerpuff Girls?

Meanwhile, I still can’t find anybody to draw one of my scripts. Out in the world there is talent to burn.

And fandom is the fire in which so much talent goes—whoosh!—up in smoke.

Gahhhhh Sweet Baby Jesus

Beneath the Christmas tree the two-year-old just picked up a shiny glass ball ornament and took a bite of it like it was fucking apple—D and I both within about six inches of the boy but it was so fast, so unexpected—one moment happy baby playing with Mummy and Daddy on the floor, the next a bad-dream crunch, sudden as a gunshot.

Somehow, miraculously, he did not cut his lips and tongue to ribbons—nor even scratch them: Somehow, by grace of God, he did not swallow, did not choke: Somehow, by kind fate, we were able to get all the shards out of his mouth. He was more scared by our panic than by the event itself.

Jesus. Jesus God. Heartbeat still hovering around nineteen thousand beats a minute, here. All okay in the end, but Christ.

The stuff of nightmares, truly.

O Internet, Thou Unfaithful Servant

Amuse me, damn your eyes! I am weary and I crave distraction.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Going Dim (But Not Dark)

NaNoWriMo may be over, but blogging will continue sporadic for a while as I continue to tinker with Seven Souls and, y'know, rebuild my shattered personal life.

I'll be around if you need me.