You're not foolin' anyone, you know

What it says.

I still miss Jeff, not just every day, but several times a day. Many things still bring him immediately to mind.

I think, if he were still alive, he might have gotten through the rocky emotional shoals of early adulthood by now and achieved something close to contentment.

Perhaps even serenity. (I know he'd have liked the movie; he liked bad SF a lot.)

Or he might still be miserable, bitter, and filled with rage at a world that never appreciated him the way he deserved.

But, at least he'd be.

Go here to see some of his art, and here to see a lot more of it.

To meet the man himself, just hop in your time machine and set it for any date prior to January 13, 1993. Take a six pack, and a video of your favorite bad movie, or, better still, a DVD of it, along with a DVD player. Jeff would enjoy that.

Let me know when you're leaving. I'd like to go along.

(The artwork isn't even remotely safe for work, so, as always, exercise all due diligence.)

If anyone out there hates me but checks out the artwork and would like to praise Jeff on their blogs, it's okay. I won't take it personally.

Political self gratification

MAOTE: All right. Let's leave the necessarily petty bitterness of Geek Wars behind for a time, now, and talk about politics a little.

ME: Works for me.

MAOTE: It would pretty much have to, yeah. So... politics has pretty much always been a mess throughout the history of man. What's your silver bullet? What's the ideal form of government? And how do you get to it from what we've got?

ME: It... hmmm. 'Silver bullet'... you mean, some panacea to somehow resolve all the conflicts and problems we currently face, socially, nationally, and globally, as individuals, citizens of a nation-state, members of a race, and inhabitants of a limited ecosphere?

MAOTE: Uh... yeah. How would YOU solve the problems of the world?

ME: Given the Cosmic Cube or some other plot device that makes me all powerful... well... that's not a very realistic question, and I already answered it anyway in a novel and a couple of short stories. But it's a useful question regardless, because it underscores what I think is the fundamental problem with government, any government... we tend to expect too much of it.

MAOTE: How so?

ME: Well, America really is unique in human history, and in human social/political evolution. And I think that uniqueness comes largely from the fact that the American founding fathers had a previously unheard of political insight -- that wisdom is an individual attribute, one that is rarely or never found in groups of humans.

MAOTE: I'll pretend I don't follow you so you can explicate.

ME: Thanks! This self interview stuff makes expository dialogue so easy. Okay -- whether people are aware of it or not, what they hunger and thirst for, when they think of a 'better government' is a wise government. Whatever it is they want from their governing authority structure -- that it take care of them during natural disasters, that it protect them from harm, that it defend their individual liberties, that it keep taxes as low as possible and waste those taxes on idiocy as little as is feasible -- all of that boils down to 'wisdom'.

MAOTE: Which you would define as --

ME: Oh, Jesus. Wisdom is -- wisdom is the ability to learn not only from your own experience, but vicariously from the experience of others you become aware of, and to apply what you have learned in a manner that is consistently effective in resolving conflicts and solving problems.

MAOTE: Uh... ::ticking finger in air:: yeah... okay... okay, that works, I guess...

ME: But there are different kinds of wisdom, just as there are different kinds of luck. One person may be very wise in the ways of, say, the Amazon wilderness. Another may be wise in the ways of the streets of Brooklyn. Another may be wise in the ways of, saying, getting a grant proposal through Congress, or handling a budget meeting in the English department of a large University. Political wisdom is the most demanding of all -- it requires that you be able to use your own experience, and the experience of others, to effectively and consistently resolve not only your own personal conflicts, but the conflicts of a society, a nation, a race, or, well, generally, a group of human beings... and humans are the most cantankerous and difficult to lead entities in the known universe.

MAOTE: So we long for wise government. But...

ME: But, again, wisdom is an individual attribute. You rarely... I want to say 'never', but I don't generally believe in 'never', so, rarely... see it in groups of humans. Put the six wisest men and women in the world in a conference room with coffee and donuts, and tell them to, I don't know, come up with a plan for directing traffic smoothly around the Super Bowl, and two hours later, they'll still be arguing over who has to brew more coffee, because, you know, the guy from New Zealand deliberately left half a cupful in the bottom of the pot so he wouldn’t have to do it, and the woman from Canada is resolutely refusing to take that last half cupful and get stuck with the job.

Wisdom is stable only within the individual; try to spread it over a group and it evaporates.

MAOTE: So to get 'wise government', you need to get one wise person and let them run everything.

ME: Yeah. Which is the basis of every human government, pretty much, prior to the founding of America. Caesars, dictators, tribal shamans, kings, monarchs, pharoahs, emperors... whatever you call the Big Boss, it is basically this principle at work... find someone who seems like an effective problem solver, let them solve the problems.

MAOTE: But that won't work for the long run, because your effective problem solver eventually dies, and then...

ME: Other, less wise people covet the power he accumulated. Material power is a form of wealth, just like anything else, and it can be passed along, or seized. Once you give it to an effective problem solver... or he or she just takes it, effectively solving the problem of doing so and proving themselves 'politically wise' at least to that extent... it multiplies and takes on a mass of its own, and there is nothing people covet more than power. So once your first 'wise person' dies, there is inevitably a fight over who will inherit his or her power...

MAOTE: …which is a problem in and of itself.
ME: Yeah. And you have another problem, too. Wisdom rarely survives the accumulation of power. Take the wisest person you can find and give them absolute authority over a group of people, and that person will tend to, gradually or abruptly, become less wise.

MAOTE: Absolute power corrupts...

ME: We're trying to avoid clichés, but, yeah.. Anyway, that's the problem with seeking 'wise' government... you need to basically set up a government of one person. A tyranny, a monarchy, an imperium... whatever you want to call it. And however this form of government starts out, it won't stay 'wise' very long.

MAOTE: So... what... you try to find a way to make a governing group wise? How do you do that?

ME: I don't think you can. We’re just not that evolved or enlightened yet; any group of people is going to have problems getting along well enough to solve problems well. And our Founding Fathers knew this, too. They didn't bother trying to cut that particular Gordian knot. They decided wise government wasn't worth the effort.

MAOTE: And instead, they created… inept government?

ME: More or less. They tried to create a benign government, the only way they could… by, yeah, making it inept. Authority is going to become corrupt; you can’t stop it. So you have to set it up so that even when it does inevitably go bad, it can’t hurt you much.

So our Founding Fathers deliberately set out to create a form of government that wouldn't be wise, but that would at least be somewhat effective at what it needed to do, while, at the same time, spreading all the power across the largest number of people possible. See, they deliberately set up the opposite of the 'one wise person ruling all' model. They said 'okay, we'll have a lot of idiots handling everything more or less collectively… and when those idiots try to take advantage of their power, well, they won’t have much power to take advantage of'.

Things won't get done efficiently, and often they won't get done effectively... but they'll get done, just because, well, as S.M. Stirling likes to say, quantity has a quality all its own.

MAOTE: I don’t know. That seems awfully cynical.

ME: The most idealistically founded nation-state in the world was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Me, I’ll take cynicism; it generally works better.

MAOTE: That seems awfully cynical, too…

ME: That’s what a lot of people don’t get about the founding of the United States… it wasn’t an act of idealism. Our Founding Fathers were out for themselves. They were tired of having the Crown and the Church take their shit away from them, so they came to a new continent where they hoped they’d be far enough away from that nonsense to be left alone. Turned out they weren’t far enough away, and they didn’t feel like moving any further, so they fought… and when they succeeded in kicking the Church and the Crown out, they sat down and created a government structure meant to guarantee that the Church and the Crown would never be able to fuck with them again. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are not idealistic, they are very selfish… they are documents that say, ‘you can’t mess with us; these are all the ways you can’t mess with us, now leave us alone’.

MAOTE: You make our Founding Fathers sound very libertarian.

ME: Yeah… I don’t know. ‘Libertarian’ has turned into one of those words that means whatever you’re pointing to at the time… a lot like ‘Republican’ and ‘conservative’, actually.

MAOTE: You don’t think ‘Republican’ and ‘conservative’ are terms that have a specific meaning?

ME: Okay, I put that badly. I think ‘Republican’ and ‘conservative’ have become very successfully marketed brands that no longer have a great deal to do with what they are placed on. Our current Republican Party no longer has particularly Republican values. And the people we point at and refer to as ‘conservatives’… well… to be conservative is actually to be someone who is trying hard to protect the status quo. Conservatives, for the last twenty years or so, have been fighting hard to undo the status quo. The entire modern conservative movement is a backlash against the ongoing success of progressive government and social policies throughout the 20th Century. The ‘status quo’ they are trying to protect is from the 1950s… and not the real 1950s, but some idealized, Archie Andrews at the malt shop, Father Knows Best 1950s that never actually existed.

MAOTE: Yeah, I see what you’re saying. But you don’t think there are still Republicans out there who believe in Republican values… you know… states rights, the Constitution, patriotism, law & order, individual liberties… family values… whatever the hell it is Republicans believe in…?

ME: They want Federal laws that prohibit gay marriage, abortion, and flag burning. If they can’t get those through Congress, then, sure, they want a Supreme Court that will weaken or throw out the existing Federal laws, so they can legislate whatever they want on a state level. They want rule of law for a Democratic President, but a Republican President can do whatever he wants. They want to keep American troops home if Clinton wants to send them somewhere to save lives, but they’re perfectly happy to see them sent off on an illegal invasion without proper equipment if a Republican president does it. They’ll get up in arms about the body armor thing, sure, until a Democrat uses it as a campaign issue, then body armor is for wussies. If a Democrat lies, cheats, or steals, they should resign immediately, then go to jail. If a Republican does it, they’re a hero and it’s a damned shame those worthless America hating liberals managed to drag such a great man down.

MAOTE: So you’re saying that conservatives and Republicans are hypocritical…?

ME: I’m saying… well, no, first, they aren’t. But leave that aside for the moment. I’m saying, right now, we shouldn’t call them ‘Republicans’ or ‘conservatives’. Those words mean different things, and stand for different things, than the current groups labeled with those words. It’s misleading. We need to call them something else.

MAOTE: Such as?

ME: I don’t know. The Power Party works. It pretty much sums up what they’re all about.

MAOTE: You mentioned that you didn’t feel they were hypocrites, despite the endless litany of ‘they said this then/they’re saying this now’ that anyone can reel off regarding the Republicans and conservatives. How do you figure that?

ME: Well, the left wing keeps track of that stuff. Left wing blogs exult in it, they constantly point out ‘the Republicans are being hypocritical, blah blah blah, they wanted to send Clinton to jail for perjury, but they defend Bush when he authorizes illegal military action, imprisons Americans without trial, signs off on torture, initiates illegal domestic spying programs, lets his aides out covert CIA operatives, etc’. All of these things are illegal, indictable, unConstitutional, and by any sane standards, far worse than Clinton playing semantics to avoid answering a question about his damn sex life that wasn’t anybody else’s business but his, his wife’s, and Monica Lewinski’s, anyway. So the Republicans and conservatives are hypocritical, because, you know, they have one standard for Democratic Presidents, and another for their own. That’s the gist of it.

MAOTE: And you’d argue with that?

ME: The Republicans and conservatives aren’t hypocritical. They want power. They want influence. They want authority. They want wealth. They want those things, and they will do whatever they have to do to get those things. They aren’t hypocritical about it. When Clinton was in office, he diminished Republican power and influence; they did everything they could to get rid of him. With Bush in office, they do everything they can to support him… as long as his presence in the Oval Office is working toward their goals, which are now and always have been, securing and increasing their own personal and political power.

MAOTE: So, they’re being true to themselves…

ME: Always. It’s like calling Rush Limbaugh a hypocrite because he wants to put every junkie in jail and every drug pusher on Death Row… until he gets hooked on Oxycontin and starts getting illegal scrips from his maid. But he’s not a hypocrite, because Limbaugh doesn’t really care one way or another about drug addicts and drug dealers, what he cares about is his own power and wealth. And he secures and increases those things by securing and increasing his audience, which he does by telling them whatever they want to hear. He’s not a hypocrite… well, he is if you listen to what he SAYS. But not if you watch what he DOES. He believes one thing and says another, yeah… but the truth is, he has always been out for himself. What he says to get what he wants is going to vary somewhat as what his audience wants to hear changes, but, still, he’s always been true to himself.

MAOTE: Well, okay, but I’d still call them hypocritical. They say one thing, they mean something else.

ME: Oh, they’re lying scum. But it’s important to understand that whatever they said when Clinton was in power, they didn’t really mean it. Everything the Power Party says basically translates as “Get out of our way, give us what we want, shut up, roll over, get out of our way, give us what we want”. That’s what it all comes down to. They change the talking points as it suits that underlying agenda, but the underlying agenda is always there. And when liberals play “gotcha!”, they honestly cannot understand how the Power Party can just stand there and say “we never said that” or “9/11 changed everything” or “fuck you, you’re an idiot”. The liberal attitude is “Don’t you people have any shame?” But they Power Party has no shame, because they feel they have nothing to be ashamed of. They set out to get power, anyway they can get it, and they are doing that.

MAOTE: Yeah, but… I mean, that’s all politicians in a nutshell, right?

ME: I suppose. You’re not going to run for office if you don’t want power, certainly. But people want power for different reasons. The current conservative movement in America started out more or less ideologically pure. It was a backlash against the steady success and expansion of progressive social and government policies over the course of the 20th century. People who felt threatened by a world that was changing too rapidly for them, and that seemed to be incorporating too many different, even alien elements in it, were looking around for a way to slow things down for a while, or even turn the clock back. That was what the current conservative movement was all about, back then… just trying to give a voice and some influence back to a segment of Americans who felt that as minorities gained more influence, they themselves had become marginalized.

MAOTE: Which is ridiculous and insane, as, you know, Caucasians were and are still a majority in America, Christianity is still the majority religion, white males still essentially run nearly everything…

ME: I’m not arguing with that; in addition to being ridiculous and insane, the conservative movement has always been mean spirited and selfish. You pretty much have to be, to believe that the world is okay the way it is and we should try to keep it this way. That’s essentially the ‘I got mine, now you get yours, but keep your hands off mine’ attitude, and that’s conservatism in a nut shell.

MAOTE: So when you say they were ‘ideologically pure’…

ME: I mean they were trying to get into power so they could accomplish a certain social agenda. It was a stupid, crazy, mean spirited, regressive, crypto-medieval social agenda, but they felt they had an honest grievance. I mean, they grew up in a world where a white man could tell a Polack or a Jew joke at work, and if it offended someone, they’d better just shut up about it. White guys could have a bikini babes calendar on their desk. They could pat the secretary’s ass. Management didn’t have to explain why they wouldn’t hire a woman or a black guy. Every church had a cross on the top of it. You didn’t have to dial 1 for English when you called customer service.

MAOTE: It was like Paradise for skeevy white guys.

ME: Yeah. They wanted that back. They genuinely felt that they had a grievance… that in the midst of all this seemingly sudden pluralism, where every other culture and race was finding a voice and showing ethnic pride, the Caucasian race and culture was in danger of being minimized and lost.

MAOTE: You almost sound wistful.

ME: No, I’m not at all happy about having my own ethnicity intrinsically coupled with bigotry and hatred, thanks. Yeah, it bothers me sometimes that female empowerment is considered inherently good, while male empowerment is considered to be objectionable, and I don’t like affirmative action… I don’t think you get rid of bias by reversing and then institutionalizing it. I think ‘the level playing field’ may be the best phrase Clinton ever introduced into our social lexicon, regardless of how much of a joke it’s been turned into by conservatives. All I’m pointing out is, when the modern conservative movement began, they had an actual social goal. It was a hateful social goal, but still, the power they were trying to attain was meant to serve a greater end.

MAOTE: And you think that’s changed?

ME: Oh, absolutely. I think people like Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney and George Bush and Tom Delay are pretty clearly into power for power’s sake. They say whatever they need to say to keep their core supporters engaged… they’ll whore to anyone that can get them votes, as long as it doesn’t actually cost them votes… but they no longer care about the agenda they preach. They want power and wealth for its own sake.

MAOTE: You’re saying they aren’t even trying to implement a conservative agenda anymore? Isn’t that good news?

ME: Well, they sure as shit aren’t trying to implement a liberal, progressive agenda, so no, it isn’t. They’re already rich and powerful, so they are trying to change the laws to make themselves more rich and powerful. They’re cutting taxes for the wealthy, they’re setting up domestic spying programs, they’re deregulating every industry they are heavily invested in, they’re keeping the U.S. out of any treaties that would cost them money, they’re waging a war to make sure we have a supply of petrochemicals for the remainder of their lives, because they sure as shit don’t want to their portfolios to take a hit from viable alternative energy. People are upset because Alito is going to get rid of Roe vs. Wade, but that’s a smoke screen. Bush and his crew want Alito because, like John Roberts, he is heavily pro-wealthy and pro-business. With him on the court, they can completely gut the EPA, and no major corporation is ever going to lose a big lawsuit again.

MAOTE: So you don’t think they’re going to start up concentration camps for Arabs or Mexicans or anything?

ME: Not unless they can make a profit doing it. Bush actually wants to legalize all the illegals in the country, because it will effectively create an enormous cheap labor class. His crew has no pragmatic objection to it, but it’s going to cost them votes with their white constituency, so they’re sitting on it for now. Once they get Alito on the bench, though, they’ll go after the Federal minimum wage next… they’ll find some argument that it’s unConstitutional. After which, watch how fast illegal immigrants get driver’s licenses and working papers… and all the jobs Americans won’t do, at 35 cents an hour.

MAOTE: Any other predictions?

ME: They made bankruptcy much harder to file to please the credit card companies. Watch for it to become illegal, and watch for debtor’s prison to make a come back. Then watch for indentured service to come back, too. It will, effectively, be legalized slavery… people who owe money to corporations will be able to be forced to pay it off with labor contracts, or go to jail, and, most likely, shortly after that, they’ll make it legal for any adult who wants to to sell themselves into indentured servitude, too.

MAOTE: Sounds bad.

ME: Yeah, well… it will probably be a generation or two before they let parents sell their kids, but… yeah, if we don’t derail this thing, it’s going to get bad.

Self gratification, part 2

More of this nonsense? Hey, Scott, Nate, and SuperGirlfriend all encouraged me. I have to do what they say! Plus, it's fun. Deal.

* * * *


MAOTE: So… essentially, you’re going to take everything Bendis did on AVENGERS and write it all off as having occurred in… what… the authorized AVENGERS comic book that exists in the Marvel Universe?

ME: Sure.

MAOTE: Well… it’s… hmmm. You realize that every Brian Michael Bendis fan in the known universe is going to declare jihad on your ass, right?


ME: Yeah, well, Marvel’s not going to hire me to write AVENGERS any time soon, and if they did, I doubt they’d let me do that on the book. But you asked me what I’d write if I could, and that’s it.

MAOTE: You don’t think there’s any way to work within what Bendis has established? To, you know, de-emphasize what you feel isn’t exactly AVENGER-ly about what Bendis has done, and get the book back on track, without simply eliminating... what… two years of continuity… wholesale?

ME: Dude. Wolverine is in the Avengers.

MAOTE: It’s… I… well, you could throw him out…

ME: But then he would always have been in the Avengers, and next time, like, Kurt Busiek or Mark Waid or someone does this story where he brings in every Avenger who has ever lived…

MAOTE: Yeah… okay…

ME: I mean, we have to put up with D-Man. For God’s sake. D-Man is always going to be an Avenger. And U.S. Agent. And Sersi. And Dr. Druid. And friggin’ She-Hulk. Now you want me to clutter up the roster forever with goddam WOLVERINE? Oh, please.

MAOTE: Well… fine, I see your point. Still, you would get a great many death threats.

ME: Yeah. I’d like to bring back the letters page just so I could print and respond to all of them, too.

MAOTE: What would you say?

ME: I don’t know. “Say, Bendis fan, why don’t you see how rich and creamy a lather you can work up on my ass with your lips?” Something like that.

MAOTE: Speaking of fan hostility, you’ve been baiting Modern Age fans in general, and few fan bloggers in specific, quite a bit lately on this blog.

ME: Well, idle hands, you know.

MAOTE: Sure. And it’s having its desired effect…?

ME: Er… hmmm. Well, everything’s about attention, and it’s certainly getting me some attention. As to desired effect… well, let’s see. Kalinara turns out to have a lot of class, which was unexpected but pleasant. Ragnell seems to be keeping things in proportion, and she keeps linking to me, so that’s cool.

MAOTE: So, as always, the chicks are all right. But the guys…

ME: Yeah, they’re all pissing their pants.

MAOTE: Because an overweight middle aged comic book geek said mean things about them.

ME: Well, no. Let’s be straight about that. I’ve said nothing but nice things about Scipio, for example. I linked to his blog and praised his HeroClix pogs, I’ve dropped very complimentary comments on his blog… generally, I’ve been very pleasant to him. I think he’s a very good, very funny writer, and an excellent game designer. I like his blog.

MAOTE: But…

ME: I don’t know. He seems to be trying to give the impression that he’s pissed off at me because I looked at a lot of Hal Jordan bashing on his blog and concluded that, like most Modern Age fans, he doesn’t like Hal. Mind you, there’s nothing anywhere on his blog that indicates anything to the contrary, but I guess I’m supposed to snatch the data that he actually loves Hal Jordan (warts and all) out of the very ether, or something.

MAOTE: But you said ‘he seems to be trying’. In actuality…

ME: I think he’s just fronting. He’s actually narked at me because I keep saying Vibe sucks. What’s worse is, he’s so intelligent that he has to realize on some level that Vibe DOES suck. He’s just mad at me for pointing it out.

MAOTE: Well, he’s… I mean, he’s gay, right?

ME: He certainly gives that impression.

MAOTE: Well, then, maybe he likes Vibe for reasons that wouldn’t normally occur to you.

ME: Hey, maybe he does; perhaps he admires Vibe’s fine, fine ass. That doesn’t change the fact that I love the Justice League of America, Vibe is part of the Detroit Justice League, and the Detroit Justice League was created by Gerry Conway, the worst writer and editor to ever completely destroy every title he ever wrote or edited. The Detroit Justice League may not be the absolute nadir of the Justice League’s existence, but that’s only because Giffen came along a couple of years later and did them even worse by turning them into an extended Three Stooges short for several years.

MAOTE: Well… yeah, but that’s all your baggage. I mean, so he likes a character you despise, a character that represents a horrible smear on the escutcheon of a beloved part of your childhood, a character who you can’t look at without wanting to vomit, a character… wait, I’m not helping, am I?

ME: If you’re leading up to ‘why cain’t we all jes’ get alooooong’, I may throw you out a window.

MAOTE: That would be an interesting form of self applied psychotherapy, to say the least. Okay. So, you’ve admired Scipio, you’ve praised Scipio, you’ve linked to his blog, you’ve been friendly and effusive, and still, he’s sulking. How does that make you feel?

ME: Well, I’d throw him out a window, but, you know, he’s way over there.

MAOTE: Okay. What about this Calvin guy?

ME: The one who is all upset because I spoke honestly and in a straightforward fashion to someone who put a lengthy, thoughtful post on a comment thread on my blog?

MAOTE: Hey, dude, you hammered her ass.

ME: You fuck with the eagles, you better know how to fly. Anyway, Kalinara is a doll; she’s not mad at me, so Calvin can shut up about it. Why is it that every male geek in the universe completely forgets that all the female geeks in the universe are perfectly capable of standing up for themselves if they want to? Kalinara’s a big girl; she doesn’t need some guy who lost his toy tiger at an early age and has been bitter about it ever since flailing around earnestly on her behalf.

MAOTE: And Diamondrock?

ME: ::snorting:: Numbnuts. I write a hundred word post explaining my position at length, with examples. He writes a six word response, and misspells one of those words. And he’s pissy because I get up on him for it.

MAOTE: It was probably a typo.

ME: It probably was. Judging from his other posts, he’s clearly articulate and intelligent. But I have no respect for people with microscopic attention spans who state the painfully obvious as if it’s some brilliant insight and who can’t even be bothered to spell all six words of their goddam comment correctly. Plus, he’s yet another one of these male geeks who fawns all over every female geek he can find on the Internet. Jesus, that’s sad.

MAOTE: You never indulged in the urge to suck up to a particularly pulchritudinous she-geek you found on the ‘net somewhere?

ME: I didn’t’ tell her I was in love with her in her frickin’ comment threads. That’s just pathetic.

MAOTE: Well… yeah, okay, I admit, I read that, I thought “dude, move out of your mom’s basement”.

ME: Seriously.

MAOTE: So, now… you think things are going to get better or worse?

ME: ::shrugging:: Look. I’m middle aged. I have a girlfriend I adore and plan to marry as soon as I can talk her into it. She has three kids I adore, too. I have a full time job. I live in the nicest home I’ve ever had. I have a life, you know? I blog for fun. Now, given that Ragnell has already pretty much threatened war if I don’t tell her and all her friends that I’m just kidding around, well… I would guess this isn’t going to placate anyone. But ‘better or worse’? Unlike Diamond-dude, I’m not trying to sleep with any of these people. How does any of this make my life ‘better’ or ‘worse’? If they start trolling me in my comment threads, I’ll delete their shit. Other than that, what are they going to do, spell out WE HATE HIGHLANDER with their Yu-gi-oh cards and chant the Teen Titans Go! theme song at me a few times?

MAOTE: Okay. Dude, that is definitely not going to help.

ME: Yeah, I’m being condescending again. I’m old, they’re young, I’ll probably die before they do, they’ll just have to deal with it until then.

MAOTE: You’ll come to a bad end, laddie. Speaking of Diamond-dude trying to sleep with Ragnell… think he’s got a shot?

ME: Oh, please. She thinks he’s sweet. Sweet is like the kiss of death to all hopes of ever getting any from a chick.

MAOTE: Not to mention he’s being all needy and shit in her comment threads.

ME: Yeah, chicks find that to be so hot. Plus, she’s Wiccan. Wiccan chicks are awesome in bed, but Diamond-dude strikes me as a little too mainstream to interest one. Leaving aside, you know, the sweet thing and the needy thing, which are, again, a death sentence to all hopes of sexual gratification from any woman in the history of the world.

MAOTE: Okay, but, to sum up… you’re making absolutely no effort whatsoever to be placatory, to build bridges, to reach out, to make these people more comfortable, to be liked.

ME: I don’t live with these people, I don’t work with these people, I don’t anticipate playing HeroClix with these people or having them come over to my house for an RPG session. I don’t require any of them to kiss my ass and I’m sure not going to kiss any of theirs. I say what I feel like saying on my blog, and I don’t think I’ve done anything to or with any of these people that requires or merits an apology, or even an explanation. If they don’t like my writing, they can say so, or they can stop reading it. As long as they keep their comments reasonably civil, they’re welcome in the threads. But I don’t write to please anyone but myself.

MAOTE: And what would you say to anyone who pointed out that you are, basically, in this blogging post and the previous one like this, just talking to yourself?

ME: That's as good a description of blogging as any.

MAOTE: Fair enough. Okay. So, let's talk about politics for a while...

* * * *

More later!

Identify yourself, nuh?

I'm advised, by many other blogs, that this is DeLurking Week. I imagine I have a few lurkers out there, so, by God, this is the time. Show yourselves, damn you! Or I'll just start firing at random into the shrubbery...

No, sorry, that's not me, that's the Bruce Willis character from LAST BOY SCOUT. SuperGirlfriend and I watched it the other night.

Anyway, if you'd like to DeLurk long enough to let me know you're out there, the comment thread below would be the place to do it.

Rock on with your bad selves.

Heart of admantium

Well, back to reality, of a sort, after all that heady heady comic book tripping:

My love let me spoil her a little yesterday morning. I always have to fight tooth and nail to get her to let me indulge her a bit, as she's just not used to it from anyone in her life previous to meeting me.



Yesterday I got up early with the two older kids (they have to roll out of bed at 5 am to catch a 6 am bus) and let SuperGirlfriend sleep an extra hour. I also did the morning chores around the house as she wasn't feeling all that great; unloading and reloading the dishwasher, packing a lunch for SuperAdorable Kid (and my own, which SuperGirlfriend usually spoils me by packing for me), taking the trash out, making the bed (the last of which are my designated morning chores, anyway).

No big deal. But SuperGirlfriend was raised in a household where everyone expected her to do all her own housework, plus as much of theirs as they could fob off on her, and she spent twenty years with a guy who resolutely refused to ever get up early with the kids no matter how much she might need it, and who made doing anything at all she asked him to do into a huge tit for tat bargaining session -- an "okay, if I do the dishes and make the bed for you today, what am I going to get out of it and how soon" negotiation.

I can't imagine trying to maintain a loving relationship that way; I've always felt that when you're running a favor tab with someone, keeping track of who owes who what and how soon the debts are due, well, by definition, that someone isn't your friend (much less, your domestic/romantic life partner). To my mind, one of the simplest definitions of real friendship is, well, you don't bother keeping score, you just trust the other person not to take advantage of you... and when you stop trusting them, well, you stop being friends with them.

Anyway, I did all that stuff, which wasn't a big deal, because SuperGirlfriend needed a little extra sleep, and SuperDependable Teen fried an egg for breakfast yesterday and the smell in the kitchen combined with SuperGirlfriend feeling a little nauseous would have made it very difficult for her to be out there making lunches. A no brainer; she's the love of my life and it makes me happy to make her happy. I'm sure you can all dig it.

But SHE thinks it's a big deal, because, you know, I'm the first person she's ever known who's been decent to her, I guess. So last night, when she came and picked me up, she had a little gift for me: the Jocasta Unique from the most recent Marvel HeroClix expansion, one of the last few Uniques from that set I want.

At 78 points, Jocasta is no game breaker. Still, with the newest WizKids designer apparently determined to deflate all the games recent wildly jacked up attack and defense statistics once again, her opening Attack Value of 10 with a damage of 3 makes her a solid hitter. From there she drops down to 9 for two clicks of Psychic Blast at a 2 damage, which isn't shabby. That and her opening two clicks of Impervious make her a nice little package for the points.

Not that her playability matters much to me; I just wanted her because she represents an interesting character from late 70s Avengers continuity, and she gives me someone to put over next to my various Ultrons.

This really leaves only the new Spider-Man fig as a Unique I really want from ARMOR WARS, although I wouldn't mind getting the new Magneto and Mystique, either.

SuperGirlfriend also delighted me with a box I've been impatiently waiting for since shortly after my birthday, containing my mailaway ARMOR WARS freebie, the Anthony Stark Unique. Upon opening it I was delighted all over again; although the WizKids site clearly depicts that the fig has no TA on its base, mine sports the Avengers TA, meaning I give up absolutely nothing by simply swapping the gold armored sculpt from ARMOR WARS' Iron Man Unique with this grey armored sculpt. This is lovely, as the Anthony Stark Unique has a significantly better dial than the Iron Man version, which is kind of ridiculous, since the golden armor represents at least a generation of improvements in the basic Stark battlesuit technology.

I'd planned to swap them out anyway, but had been sad at the thought that my gold armored Iron Man, who actually was in the Avengers, wouldn't have the Avengers TA. However, now he does! (It makes little sense for WizKids to have put the Avengers TA on the grey armored Iron Man, since IM only wore that armor in his origin story, before the Avengers ever formed. But in this case, their mistake is my enormous gain.)

Looking at the two different figs and dials, you almost have to think that WizKids intentionally designed it this way. The dial they gave us with the gold armor, available from booster packs, has generally lower stats and a much more limited power array than the dial on the supposedly more primitive grey armored mailaway. About the only way to make things work consistently with actual comic book continuity is to do exactly what I have done, and switch figures. Perhaps the new game designer is more subtle than I thought.

In addition to all this, SuperGirlfriend also printed off several sheets of Green Lantern Power Battery and Mr. Terrific's T-sphere pogs (see one of my entries down below) so the SuperKids and I will have those if we want to use them in any future games. The T-Spheres I expect to be very useful when playing Mr. Terrific from now on, but the Power Batteries are also cool, being set up as they are to be able to be hidden on Hindering Terrain, and to provide the Support power when necessary, if only to Green Lanterns. (They have a movement value of 0, so they have to be picked up and carried around, or you have to go to them.)

Have I mentioned recently that I am the luckiest man in the universe?

::sigh:: Okay, off to work...

Self gratification

You know you’ve made it when someone, anyone, anywhere, wants to interview you. And I know I haven’t made it because no one anywhere wants to interview me. And while that would stop a lesser mortal dead in his tracks, to me it is no obstacle, because like Jimmy Rabbit in The Commitments, I am perfectly capable of interviewing… myself.

And I won’t be lobbing myself any softballs, either.

So it is that MISERABLE ANNALS OF THE EARTH magazine interviews… ME.

MAOTE: Highlander, you’re a powerful force for good in both the real world and on the Internet, and you’ve been crusading for justice for a long time, under a great many identities. Just how many nom de cybere’s have you had, over the years since you got your first computer with an AOL account?

ME: Well, first, of course, came Doc Nebula. DocNebula was, in fact, the very first AOL screenname I ever had. I wound up with it after every possible combination of GiantMan turned out to be taken, which still strikes me as bizarre, but what the hell.

MAOTE: And who is Doc Nebula?

ME: Dr. Nebula is the arch villain of a high school superteam I created back in college named Fighting Five. He’s actually the high school janitor. One of the members of Fighting Five was this total comics geek who used to fantasize about what would happen if he and four of the really cool kids at his high school were all on the same superhero team. Because the janitor looked very sinister to him, he also incorporated him into the fantasies as their arch nemesis, Dr. Nebula. Well, one mind staggering plot device later, his fantasies were transformed into actuality, the Cool Kids and he all had super powers (although they still didn’t want to hang out with him, of course) and the poor janitor had his personality completely overlaid by that of the megalomaniacal Dr. Nebula.

MAOTE: And did the hero feel guilty about it?

ME: Yeah, when he wasn’t getting beaten up by the Cool Kids he’d inadvertently given superpowers to.

MAOTE: What would have been a nifty twist there would be a couple of the Cool Kids ending up going villainous, and some of the other nerds in the school, who also got superpowers from the plot device, joining the team instead.

ME: Yeah. That was going to be the big second year reversal story arc – three of the original members of the team more or less go evil – well, arrogant and self involved, anyway – and the original geek and his girlfriend, who used to be one of the Cool Kids, end up with three other geeks in the team fighting the original members.

MAOTE: Would Dr. Nebula ever have become his normal self again?
ME: No, he’d be a tragic figure like the Hulk. Well, worse, because he’s totally evil, but it’s not his fault.

MAOTE: Okay. So, after Doc Nebula…

ME: I don’t know. I suppose my next webnomen was John Jones, Manhunter from Marathon, IL. I’d gotten a reputation under the Doc Nebula name that made it difficult to get people to read my work objectively… potential audiences were coming to me already biased by crap they’d read about stuff I’d written, that they hadn’t bothered to read themselves.

MAOTE: Like the whole Kurt Busiek/ASTRO CITY thing.

ME: Yeah, we call him ‘Slappy’ around here now, to avoid Google searches.

MAOTE: Ah. Wise foreign policy. So with John Jones, you wanted to start over…

ME: More or less. But after a while I got tired of being all conciliatory and just started to let my true colors show more and more in my writing, and it wasn’t long before certain people…

MAOTE: Slappy, for one…

ME: …yeah… tumbled to it. So I copped to it. But then I started blogging. My first blog was called Doc Nebula’s Eastern Oregon Dum Dum Depression Blog, but unfortunately, I was blogging about a really exasperating job I had at the time in the City Clerk’s office in Tampa, and my boss heard about the blog, so I had to go into hiding. Eventually, that led to me creating A Brown Eyed Handsome Man, a blog title that was actually inadvertently suggested by Elaine Riggs.

MAOTE: You don’t hang out at Elaine’s blog much any more.

ME: No, she writes about things that don’t much interest me, like, I don’t know, tofu matza balls and what have you. She’s a funny, sharp woman, but our reality tunnels don’t seem to intersect much these days.

MAOTE: So, let’s see: you were Doc Nebula, and then John Jones, and then A Brown Eyed Handsome Man…

ME: People generally just called me Handsome.

MAOTE: But you’re not vain.

ME: I considered it an ironic nickname. Like calling the tall guy Shorty.

MAOTE: But now you’re Highlander, and what the hell, dude, the blog name is pulled from BUCKAROO BANZAI, so what’s up with that?

ME: I live in a neighborhood called the Highlands. I was originally going to call myself Monkey Boy when I started this blog, but Supergirlfriend absolutely hated that name, and wanted me to be Highlander. I find when I do what Supergirlfriend wants my life is a very happy one, so…

MAOTE: ::makes whipcracking noises::

ME: And the horse you rode in on, buddy.

MAOTE: Okay. Marvel comes to its senses, calls you up, and begs you to write any one title you want. What is it, why, and what are you going to do with it?

ME: AVENGERS. It badly needs me. And damage control.

MAOTE: Give us an example.

ME: Like this:
PAGE ONE
VISUAL: This is a splash page, with several Avengers – Hawkeye, the Scarlet Witch, the Vision, Captain America, Iron Man, Giant Man, the Wasp, all dressed more or less as if they’ve all just gotten up on Saturday morning, in the kitchen at Avengers Mansion. Hawkeye is at the table with a plate of food, a stack of comics on the table beside him. He’s reading a copy of AVENGERS; from the cover, we can see it’s the issue where he supposedly died. Everyone else is sitting or standing around, eating or getting themselves food or washing dishes or what have you.

HAWKEYE: Uh…
HAWKEYE: Say, guys. Did you know I was dead?

TITLE: Starting Over

PAGE TWO
PANEL ONE:
VISUAL: Iron Man, Scarlet Witch talk to Hawkeye.

IRON MAN: You just got to that issue? Oh, it gets better.
HAWKEYE: Better than me dead?
WITCH: Sure. Turns out I killed you. And eventually about a million mutants. Because I’m an unstable psychotic mass murderer.

PANEL TWO

VISUAL: Add in more Avengers, see word balloons.
VISION: But you’re a very beautiful unstable psychotic mass murderer, Wanda.
WANDA: Aw, Vision, that’s soooo sweet. Pass the jelly.
CAP: I don’t know. I like the part where Tony begs Wolverine to join the team.
HAWKEYE: Wolverine… joins the team…?
CAP: Yes. ::snicker:: But only after Tony begs him.
HAWKEYE: You never begged ME to join the team!
IRON MAN: Well… be fair, Clint… we were enemies…

PANEL THREE:
VISUAL: More yammer.

GIANT MAN: I don’t know, Tony. Wolverine could be a valuable addition to the team. I could, like, throw him at… I don’t know… the Mandarin. Or giant robots.
WASP: Oh, ew. Those sideburns. And he never showers. I’d rather have D-Man. Honestly.
CAP: Maybe Tony can beg D-Man to join the team for you, Jan…
GIANT MAN: ::musing:: Yeah… I could throw D-Man, too…

And then, the mansion gets attacked by, like, super gorillas.

MAOTE: Super gorillas?

ME: The Marvel Universe has a criminal shortage of super-gorillas.

MAOTE: I suppose they could be being led by the Man Ape…

ME: Exactly.

* * * * *

There's no chance we won't continue this later. I could write this stuff all day and all night. Don't even dare to hope this is the end of it. But that's all for now.

The Abyss Gazes Back

My fans respond! And I love them for it.

First, though, let me say this: I am, by definition, a Modern Age fan. By this I mean, there are comics that were published after the Silver Age ended that I like and think highly of. There are writers who have worked in comics in the Modern Age whose Modern Age work I enjoy, admire, and respect. Therefore, again, by definition, I am a Modern Age fan.

When I write derisively of the Modern Age, I do not speak of every single panel, caption, and/or word balloon that has ever been published in a Marvel comic book since GIANT SIZE X-MEN #1, or a DC comic book since CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. Hell, I can’t even honestly say I loathe every swoosh line, impact star, or heavily inked spot black in all the Image Comics ever printed, since Alan Moore actually wrote quite a few good comics under that imprint, near impossible though that is to believe from almost any remove.


Similarly, when I write in glowing, majestic terms of the Silver Age, I am not necessarily heaping unconditional praise and brilliant accolades on every single pencil stroke, ink line, and beautiful Artie Simek lettered sound effect ever to appear on a spinner rack in the 60s and 70s. Well, okay, yes, all the Artie Simek lettering was fabulous, that’s irrefutable. But still, nobody who has ever read an issue of MARVEL TEAM UP and who is remotely sane could possibly claim that every single comic published in the Silver Age was a tremendous achievement in the graphic storytelling form. For that matter, virtually every title DC published during the infamous DC Explosion experiment, from BLACK LIGHTNING through STALKER to KOBRA to SECRET SOCIETY OF SUPERVILLAINS was, frankly, appalling. And the less said about BROTHER POWER THE GEEK the better, of course, of course.


So I am, to a certain extent and within the legal definition, a Modern Age fan… but it must be admitted, my primary allegiance is to the Silver Age, I am a Silver Age zealot, a Silver Age fanatic, a resident and denizen and citizen of the Silver Age. What stories I like from the Modern Age often contain Silver Age sensibilities; the stories I loathe the most from the Modern Age are, in nearly every particular, the anathema of the Silver Age. And when I say that, I mean many things, but here are a few of them:

In the Silver Age, writing mattered. Some of the most intelligent, sophisticated, and brilliantly written stories ever done in comics were done in the Silver Age, because way back then, nobody assumed that simply because the average comics reader was in his or her teens, that meant they were chuckleheaded overstimulated emotionally retarded morons who would buy anything that had a foil cover, and avoid anything that required a fifth grade reading comprehension level. Back then, no one had yet declared that All Teen Age Comic Book Fans Are Dipshits, and tailored their material to suit that preconception. Difficult though that is to believe, yes, Virginia, once upon a time there was an age prior to Image Comics, and in that age, smart, sophisticated, complex superhero comics filled with exciting and interesting concepts were written and published, and teenagers actually bought, read, understood, and enjoyed them.

In the Silver Age, heroes were actually heroic. I know. I just lost every Modern Age reader I might have had; every single one of them just leapt for the gunwales, screaming and clawing to get off this boat before it steams steadily off the edge of the their belovedly amoral world. “Heroic heroes?” they sneer in contemptuous derision as they frantically clamber over the transom, “dude, that’s stupid! Heroic heroes don’t have claws, or samurai swords, or automatic weapons, or flechette grenades, or particle beams embedded in their lower colons! They don’t break people’s backs or rip people’s hearts out, fry people to a crisp or slice people open! Heroic heroes? That’s CRAZY TALK!!! If heroes were heroic, what would I have to beat off to? Where would I get my carnage? NOOOOOOO!!!”

It’s an old riff, I know. One well pummeled into oblivion by now. I bring it up, understanding it is pointless, knowing full well it will be ignored. But it lets me segue into another point that is, perhaps, not quite so cliché regarding the difference between heroes of the Silver Age, and their Modern Age counterparts:

Back in the Silver Age, heroes actually had jobs.

This is something I only recently came to realize, but it’s nonetheless very true. My Silver Age icons all worked for a living. Even the really really rich ones, like Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne, still had careers they put a lot of effort into when they weren’t inside the super suits. Silver Age heroes pulled their weight and did their share, even when they weren’t out saving the entire universe from Fin Fang Foom.

This is a pronounced contrast to the Modern Age, where all the most popular heroes are slackers. They sit around with no visible means of support, playing video games and eating Cheetohs in between world saving adventures, and often, when evil rears its ugly head, they have to be cajoled, conned, or even threatened into getting off their asses and doing something about it by Older, Wiser (and therefore More Boring) Heads.

This is in large part symptomatic of why I generally loathe the Modern Age. All comics fans, regardless of Age, favor heroes that represent what we aspire to be. In the Silver Age, this meant heroes who were admirable and likable, men and women of ideals and accomplishments, folks who did things, big things, great things, who had a positive impact and made a social contribution.

In the Modern Age, however, the most popular ‘heroes’ are, well, parasites and layabouts, whiney wanks with no manners and few morals, lewd, rude, crude dudes with ‘tude -- defiant, petulant, truculent, and emotionally (and often physically) adolescent. They goof off, they sleep in, they (mis)behave, in fact, like exactly what they are: perpetual brats without the slightest shred of scruples or sense of responsibility. They are Titans of Tantrum and Sultans of Sulk. They posture, they sneer, they snigger, they leer.

They are… and I cannot tell you how much this appalls me… exactly what their target demographic wishes most fervently to be.

Of course, when I say that such characters represent the entirety of the Modern Age, I exaggerate. Actually, the eternally adolescent slacker non-hero supplies only a portion of the Modern Age non-heroic gestalt. The remainder is made up of the ultraviolent super-psycho – that fine fellow (or, I suppose, femme) who rampages about in a fine frothing frenzy (or in a cold, clinical, calculating… something that starts with a hard ‘c’ sound, I don’t know, get a thesaurus, do I have to do all the work around here?), distributing deadly force by the dumptruckful to every mob boss, drug dealer, loan shark, child molester, and t-shirt or turban wearing terrorist that walks, crawls, limps, scuttles, or hijacks an airliner within a thousand mile radius of him/her.


Oddly, most of your nutjob homicidal lunatic uber-vigilante types don’t have jobs, either. They just rove the Earth in armored black vehicles festooned with great big fetishistic symbols of a violent nature, living on moonbeams and apparently manufacturing bullets, bombs, and shuriken out of the very ether itself.

Nonetheless, I will admit, only a vanishingly small fraction of Modern Age fandom actually wants to be one of these guys. However, it’s not really morality or a sense of social responsibility that keeps the rest of them from aspiring to be a psychotic serial killer with a costume and a machine gun… it’s just that that stuff looks way too much like work to really appeal to them. They’d much rather just sit around in the clubhouse with Bart and Conner, playing HALO and leering at whoever happens to be calling herself Wonder Girl that week.

All of this has enormously to do with my general distaste, contempt, scorn, hatred, and loathing of and for the vast majority of stories that have been published within the perimeters of that era I refer to, generally through clenched teeth and often while spitting, as the Modern Age.

But I have never, not once, not anywhere, not on any occasion or at any particular nexus of time and space, claimed comprehensively that every story, every writer, every artist, and every editor ever employed in superhero comics during the Modern Age entirely and absolutely sucked. Nor, for that matter, have I ever stated the adverse, which is to say, that every creator creating and each creation created within the glorious parameters of the astonishingly epochal Silver Age was, in fact, transcendentally godlike in its awesome artistic power. There are many Silver Age writers and artists who are just barely adequate, and a small but discernible number that actually stink out loud and on ice.


And, for that matter, there are a very very few Silver Age writers, artists, and editors who were so horrifyingly, dreadfully, appallingly bad at their jobs that if being bad at your job was an actual crime, they’d be doing triple life without parole…and trust me, if that were so, superhero comics would be much the better for it, too.

So, yeah, there are good Modern Age stories, and yeah, sure, there are bad Silver Age ones. But the proportions are, well… honestly, they’re just disproportional.

And, obviously, this is all just my opinion. And it is possible that I may have exaggerated my claims, a tiny little bit, to make my overall point. (Which would, you know, be an absolute first on the Internet. Try not to faint. Wait, let me stand back and give you air.)

Regardless, however, nonetheless, notwithstanding, and, probably, a few other phrases meaning, basically, ‘but’ -- in my entirely arrogant and absolutely unabashedly snotty opinion, for whatever it may be worth to whoever may be reading this, most of what has happened in the course of the Modern Age has been a degradation and a diminution of the superhero comics genre. You can argue with that if you like, you can dispute it if you choose, you can disregard it if you must, but I will continue to think and feel that this is the essential underlying truth of the Modern Age in every fiber of my being, regardless of your feeble and utterly self indulgent need to live on the shores of Denial River.

You can loudly claim that Batman’s transformation from World’s Greatest Detective to World’s Greatest Facebreaker represents a quantum leap forward in quality comics storytelling. You can shrilly insist, if such you wish, that Aquaman turning from noble altruistic battler of pirates and all sea faring criminals to a sneering, posturing prick who inundates populated areas with tidal waves in fits of pique is a tremendous leap for the superheroic art form. You can insist that Superman sniveling about everyone wanting a piece of him, Hawkman becoming a patricidal junkie, the Legion of Superheroes being rebooted every 6.7 picoseconds, the Ultimate Captain America impaling elderly men on the nose-spires of fighter jets, the Ultimate Wasp flashing her tits at the Ultimate Hulk, and the all wise, all enlightened Guardians of the Universe selecting a Green Lantern on the basis of how much hair gel he wears, all represent incredible and brilliant innovations in the comic book continuum.

You can scream it, shout it, tell the world about it… but I simply don’t believe it, and frankly, I don’t think you really believe it, and I don’t respect you for insisting on it in the face of all evidence to the contrary. To me, this steady darkening, this grim n’ grittification, this rising level of self indulgence in the most negative and pernicious of antisocial, unappetizing and egregiously immoral impulses on the part of superhero comics is destructive and abrasive to the human spirit. It is, to put it as bluntly and simply as possible, a wrong thing, and it strikes me as being an atrocity and an obscenity that very nearly rises to the level of blasphemy.

Superhero comics, for all their essential inherent childishness, were once a celebration of the heights to which the human spirit could aspire.

Now, they are, for the vast most part, a wallow in the worst extremes of degradation, decadence, and debauchery. They teach nothing, they inspire no one, they aspire to nothing. There is no art to this art form any longer. Thirty years ago, the entire industry decided to thrust its hand into its underarm and make fart noises, and that is, for the most part, all that it has done ever since.

There is greatness in the Modern Age, to be sure… it’s just that when you find it, it’s like coming across a thin current of gold streaming through an ocean of shit. Even the finest Modern Age writers wallow too much in darkness and degradation; for every “Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow” that a brilliant writer like Moore gives us, we have to suffer through two hundred issues of PUNISHER or WOLVERINE or, for the love of God, YOUNG JUSTICE. For every uplifting story of human achievement that Alan Brennert or Geoff Johns offers up, there are a thousand stories where some badly Xeroxed Wolverine or Hulk or Spider-Man or Punisher rip-off breaks the spine or tears the entrails out of some hapless rapist or schoolyard bully. For every Modern Age comic book that makes me want to smile, or laugh, or nod in appreciation, there are dozens or hundreds that simply make me want to gag, or puke, or shake my head in appalled disgust.

And all of this, every last bit of it, is the fault of the Modern Age fans who love that shit, who can’t get enough of that shit, who, as someone in my comment threads very recently put it, votes with their wallets for that shit.

Which is why I have absolutely no respect whatsoever for the Modern Age fans who love that shit, and why I continually bait such fans on this blog page, and elsewhere.

And now, having concluded my preface, let’s bring on The Modern Age Fans their damn selves:

Someone named Rjwhite, posting at http://www.livejournal.com/community/seebelow/139314.html, cogently states the following:

“I know I've posted a few of these, but they still confuse me to a certain extent. This guy has his wrapup of Infinite Crisis and as opposed to that other silver-age obsessed guy who hates it, this one loves the heck out of it-“

Then he pulls a couple of paragraphs of mine from a much longer post, which, you know, I love, because there’s nothing anyone likes more than being taken out of context, especially for purposes of being denigrated behind one’s back. Here’s what he posted of mine:

In fact, Johns is a lot like Moore, he just doesn't seem to feel the need to paint Silver Age icons with three coats of shit in order to generate drama....

I should note that I don't expect anyone to answer all these questions, or even any of them, since my constant, well deserved abuse of Modern Age fans has no doubt driven any and all of them who used to drive by this blog shrieking away into the nether void. But that's okay. The nether void is where they all belong... and anyway, from what I can see, they may as well get comfortable there, because the Silver Age is making a big comeback at DC.

And I couldn't be happier about it.

And then, with admirable articulation for a Modern Age fan, he wonders, wistfully:

“Okay. I like some of the silver age stuff. I like some of the modern age stuff. Why is it an angry, either/or proposition for these guys? Why does it all have to be giant typewriters and magic rings, or else the comics should be burned? There was crap then, there's crap now. There were great things written/drawn then, there are great things written/drawn now. What is the deal with this mindset? It kind of reminds me of an uncle who told me once when I was a kid, that he refused to watch any film more tha five years old. It just seems so limiting.”

Fair questions, deftly delivered. Why, indeed, does it have to be giant typewriters and magic rings, or else the comics should be burned? Beats me. Speaking only for myself, I don’t know a single Silver Age fan, much less me, who thinks it all has to be giant typewriters and magic rings (and, in a slight digression, I’m thinking Giant Typewriters and Magic Rings sound more Golden Age-esque than Silver Agey, but, what the hell, you can’t expect a Modern Age fan to keep all that crap straight, after all, it all happened before BEVERLY HILLS 90210 was on, so who cares anyway?)

So I would say it doesn’t have to be all Giant Typewriters and Magic Rings Or Else The Comics Should Be Burned. What it has to be (Or Else The Comics Should Be Burned) is Well Written, With Heroic Heroes.

Got that? Or should I find smaller words?

Now, further down RJ’s comment threads, CalamityJon does some of my work for me, pointing out rather neatly that –

“Naturally, it works in reverse as well. I've participated in discussions (which have taken place on the internet, and therefore are 'arguments') where someone might say, for instance, "I'd prefer to read a Batman comic where he doesn't feel it's necessary to shoot the Joker in the crotch and then jam the tip of his sharpened steel-toed Batboot into his ballsac and grind it until the Joker dies of heart failure," and someone will respond "It's not the silver age any more, grow up!!!"

This is, I believe, an excellent point (and wittily written, too; bravo, CalamityJon, you are that rarest of all beings, A Modern Age Fan Who Can Actually Write). In fact, it seems to me that when Silver Age fans butt heads with Modern Age fans, it is generally the Modern Age fans who reach for their pistols first. They start shrieking and screaming badly spelled, exclamation mark laden death threats firstest and loudest, generally after no greater provocation than a mildly typed comment like “Well, sure, but I like my Green Lanterns with a little more intelligence and a little less styling mousse, thanks”.

Still, every once in a while you get what passes for an intelligent, reasonable Modern Age fan swimming amongst that previously mentioned ocean of shit that is the Modern Age itself. For example, here’s Kalinara, from my previous post’s comment threads, who takes some time away from plotting pornographic fan fic involving a threesome of sentient planets to opine:

My response was actually to Scipio not you, as it was his blog and I thought it would be rude to focus solely on your points.

Rude, and, well, futile, since my points are irrefutable, or, at the very least, beyond the abilities of any Modern Age fan to successfully refute, anyway. But, wait, she’s not done:

And sorry, I just didn't see the point of arguing Silver Age (or Golden Age) versus Modern Age with you. It's a matter of taste, that's all.

Yes, well, that’s very true, and her taste is for mindless carnage, contemptible non-heroes, and, it seems, amateur slash-fic involving the carnal interactions of intelligent celestial bodies. My taste, on the other hand, is for smart, complex, character driven plots, excellent dialogue, and heroes who behave heroically. (Okay, sure, I'll read any amateur slash-fic featuring Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl you may happen to have lying around, but planetary humping is just not my cup of tea, sorry.) By the very Jesus, let us not be judgmental. There eez, as they say in the old margarine commercials, no deeferance.

But… Holy Yammering Y’ung’uns, Batman! Is she STILL going on? It seems she is:

Personally I think Silver Age is vastly overrated. Golden Age characters appeal to me a lot more if you're going the nostalgia route.

And if she can tell the difference between the two, she’s at least one up on RJ. Give the woman her props.

And times and audiences change.

We love Modern Age fans here on the Satellite of Love, we do, we do. One of the reasons we love them so, is that they state the obvious with such style and panache. They do, they do.

Having said that in the snarkiest fashion available to me at the moment, let me add this: it’s all very well to say, with enormous if unconscious smugness, while still in one’s teen or early 20s, sitting in one’s happy comfortable little bed or dorm room safe within the sheltering wings of daddy’s paycheck, with all the heroes one has treasured since childhood still being happily and cheerfully published pretty much exactly as they have always been, that ‘times and audiences change’.

However, when you’re a few decades older and you’ve sat there and watched in hapless horror as all your beloved childhood companions are ruthlessly killed off, replaced by idiots, or rebooted in the most dreadful and appalling manners imaginable to the mind of men or monkeys, well, you’ll find yourself a great deal less complacent when mouthing bullshit, stupid ass, smirking platitudes like ‘And times and audiences change’.

Ah, but, give the lass credit: where most Modern Age fans have the attention span of a sand flea, our very own representative of the Kali-Yuga is yet to run out of steam. Harken:

As for say, Kyle Rayner, he *saved* the Green Lantern franchise. For whatever reason, DC did not believe Green Lantern was selling enough. This meant a change in front-person or cancellation. Whether you like the guy or not, he's the one who kept the line going so that in 2005, Johns could resurrect Hal in Rebirth.

A salient point. My response is three fold:

(a) Anything it takes Kyle Rayner to save isn’t worth saving.

(b) It didn’t take Kyle Rayner to save GREEN LANTERN, it took good writing, and maybe a fan favorite artist, rather than, you know, goddam Gerard Jones and Pat Broderick. I grant you, giving the power ring to an inept if beautiful dolt whose very incompetence would vastly appeal to a target demographic comprised almost entirely of inept incompetent dolts who all yearned for beauty was much, much easier than going out and getting a good writer and an interesting artist, but, well, the results have spoken for themselves… and, by the way, although it took more than a decade, we can now see that I am entirely correct: given a good writer and a good artist, Hal Jordan is perfectly capable of selling an acceptable number of comics.

(c) Anything it takes Kyle Rayner to save REALLY isn’t worth saving.


Some of us think there's more to "modern age" heroes than you seem to think.

Some of you think Vibe is a wonderful character, the word ‘constitutes’ has no ‘n’ in it, and my real name is Daniel Madigan. (Go back to RJ’s comment threads and scroll down for that particular example of idiocy.) Actually, I’m not sure I’d agree that ‘some of you think’ at all. Mostly, what Modern Age fans seem to do is emote melodramatically. And, you know, write slash fic about planets going down on each other. (Volcanic eruptions as the money shot? I'm just sayin.)

That's fine.

Wait. She’s admitting that she thinks a statement she has made disagreeing with me and supporting Modern Age fans is fine? Gosh. That’s very generous of her.

I've always liked Kyle, since Marz wrote him.

And this has nothing to do with Kyle’s fine, fine ass.

Johns never wrote him *in* Green Lantern after all.

There’s a point here somewhere, but honestly, I’m too tired to strain after it. And anyway, it’s not true; Geoff Johns HAS written Kyle in GREEN LANTERN, he’s done it recently, in the rebooted strip of that name.

I like Conner and Connor and even Bart.

I’m baffled. How did Angel’s son get into this discussion? Not that I mind, but man, he is DEFINITELY a Modern Age character… psycho, slacker, and perpetual adolescent, all rolled into one.

Oh, wait. She’s talking about Green Arrow Jr. Okay. Never mind; he’s an appalling snot.

Tim Drake is my favorite Robin, and Cassandra Cain and the modern age Huntress are great females in my opinion.

I like Tim Drake. I like him more now that Johns has written him, but I actually enjoyed his first couple of miniseries under Chuck Dixon (I think). I could do a whole article about how I’m greatly in FAVOR of seeing heroes age normally and grow into new roles, and have been for decades, and it’s the Modern Age fan who throws monster fits whenever anyone tries to inflict any maturity on their favorite brat-icons. But I won’t, I’ll just say, I like Tim, know little of Cassandra Cain, and nothing about the Modern Age Huntress…. But whoever she is, she can’t be as cool as the Silver Age Huntress, who was, after all, the daughter of Batman and Catwoman. I mean, how do you GET cooler than that?

But the way you worded your argument gave the impression that you would probably not be interested in our opinions. I apologize if that's not the case.

No apology necessary. I’m not interested in most Modern Age fan opinions, because most Modern Age fan opinions aren’t particularly well reasoned, and are generally abominably expressed. In Kalinara’s case, however, I’ll state that she’s only one for two. She certainly shows no capacity for lucid, rational analysis. But, on the other hand, she can construct a proper sentence and apparently knows how to use spell check, and that makes her very nearly a god(dess) among Modern Age fans.

But please don't act persecuted because we didn't see the point of arguing with you on Absorbascon. If you attack what we like blindly, why *should* we respond.

Well, I don’t feel persecuted, just smugly superior. And I have never attacked anything blindly; I support my opinions at length and with multiple examples (and no little modicum of stylish wit, as well). Which hardly matters, because few Modern Age fans have the attention span to read anything I write all the way through, and none I’ve encountered have the capacity to actually be persuaded by a rational point of view.

We'll respond with our wallets and buy the comics we like. Silver Age-rooted characters, Modern Age, or Golden Age-characters.

Yes. The Modern Age fan: They like crap, they want crap, they buy crap, and in direct response to this, the world fills up with crap crap crap. And, apparently, they are proud of it… or at least, this one is. Yay.

As for apathy, I think clearly that we've all got blogs to talk about what we like says otherwise.

I never said the Modern Age fan was apathetic about their favorite comics; just the opposite, in fact. What they are apathetic about is the notion of actually thinking about whether or not it’s healthy for them to avidly support such degenerate and despicable concepts and characters.

And, again… that’s why I have so much difficulty liking Modern Age fans, and why I really can’t respect any of them.

Still, some of their blogs are a great deal of fun to read.

And, all kidding aside, I do have to respect Kalinara for one more thing, other than her literacy: She's no coward. She talks to me to my face, instead of excerpting my stuff without notice and then pissing all over it behind my back.

Special True Believer Exclusive Bonus, in this issue only:

See me brilliantly analyze and define the perimeters of and essential underlying dichotomy betweenthe Silver Age and the Modern Age!

Stare in awestruck wonder and convulse in near constant gales of laughter as I bitch slap the living jesus out of a buncha dipshit Modern Age fan-turds!

When you gaze into the Abyss...

Ah, I just can't stop pissing off Modern Age fans.

Over at The Absorbascon, in the comment threads to this post, I seem to have inadvertently kicked off a minor little debate that strikes me as being a pretty good microcosm for the entire dichotomy between the Silver Age and the Modern Age.

See, Ragnell started the whole thing by chiding me -- "Highlander -- That's silly. Not all of any one age is crap the same as not all of any one age is good. I love Johns as a writer because he recognizes that and plays the mix and match game. Keeping Kyle and Hal, for instance."

I responded:

Ragnell -- sometimes I exaggerate to prove a point. No one here would understand that, of course. ;)

However, as to whether or not an entire age can 'suck', it depends on how you define ages. I've written several articles on exactly how I feel the essential difference between the Silver and the Modern Ages should be defined. To me, it comes down to one fundamental principle -- the Silver Age ended and the Modern Age began when the suits and the bean counters took over, and writers and artists were no longer allowed to primarily treat the characters and their worlds as 'real'.

The Modern Age is all about treating us as target markets and the characters, and the world they live in, as commodities and commercial properties. Got a Green Lantern who isn't pulling in the audience share your advertisers want? No problem... do a big crossover event to get rid of him, and stick in a new Green Lantern with jazzy new visual accoutrements, plenty of 'tude, and hair like that guy in the BUFFY spin off. The kids will like that, right?

Comics have, to one extent or another, always been a business and they have always been about sales, but prior to the Modern Age, the commercial aspects still had some room in them for love. The Silver Age creators weren't just working for a paycheck; they pretty clearly loved the characters, and the joy of reading the early Silver Age Marvel Universe is that the characters, and their world, seem real.

It's more complex than that, of course... there's also the simple fact that yes, audience taste has largely changed over the last thirty years (since GIANT SIZE X-MEN #1) and the young audience that comics try to cater to now wants different things than the young audience did when I was among them, and I pretty much despise all the things that lazy, simple minded non-writers preprogram into superhero comics nowadays to get the attention of that same young audience. Superhero comics have become much much more mean spirited, with adult heroes being largely seen as killjoys, and young 'heroes', on whom the focus always seems to be, seemingly always depicted as cool, irreverant, wiseass slackers.

I do admire the fact that Johns will try hard to keep elements of both ages around, but when he does that, he invariably has to (by my standards) vastly improve the characterization depiction of the Modern Age characters in question. Kyle, Conner, Bart, all the Infinitors he's scripted... under Johns' hands, these characters have all matured enormously and become far more interesting and admirable than they ever were.

Hell, if Johns wrote Damage for a while, I'd probably like him, too.

What I find notable -- and this may not be typical, I can't tell yet -- is that on many of the blogs and in many of the threads, I encounter a very real resentment from younger fans, or early 20s fans who grew up with these characters behaving in a certain extremely irresponsible manner, against what Johns has done to them.

To me, he's made the characters more interesting by showing them, to at least a slight extent, as undergoing growth. But to the people who grew up with Conner and Bart, et al, as brats with 'tude, this is a betrayal. They wanted those characters to remain snarling, smirking adolescents forever... and in a medium where Franklin Richards has been 8 years old for forty years or so, they see no reason they shouldn't have that. ("Good writing" never seems to carry much currency with such folks as a reason.)

Are there good Modern Age comics? Sure. Moore, Gaiman, Busiek, Kirkman, Nicieza, Stern, and now, of course, Johns and Rucka and Simone... all these people have done good superhero comics in the Modern Age (although it should be noted that all of them except for perhaps Gaiman and Johns have also done very BAD superhero comics in the Modern Age, too; that's the price of being prolific, and even Gaiman had his creative misfires on SANDMAN). But, still, the fact remains... overall, the Modern Age has largely been loathsome, because it has largely simply been one circulation stunt after another, with good, solid character driven fiction being given consistent short shrift at both Marvel and DC for decades now.

Would companies that honestly cared about their characters have ever given us either the Ultimates or the All Stars? Please.

If I seem harsh, well, that's how I will seem to you. I am a relic of another, better age. Looking around me at the ruins of that age, well, I am often bitter. I have heard that the best comics ever will always be those comics you read when you were 9 years old. I was 9 years old in 1970 and 1971; the comics of that era WERE the best superhero comics ever done. It's a tough act to follow.

Johns is picking up the mantle admirably, though.

A lot of pretty heavy points made there, I think.

Here's the response I've gotten so far:

Kalinara says: "*shrug* I liked Damage a lot more than Atom Smasher. That's all I know. :-) I'd like to see him return sometime."

And some twit calling himself Diamondrock opines: "Your opinion does not costitute objective fact."

That seems to sum it up. On the Silver Age side, we have cogent, well reasoned, in depth analysis, at considerable length, and it's all, as far as I can see, spelled correctly, too.

Rebuttal from the Modern Age can be boiled down to an inarticulate gesture of apathy, a statement of unwillingness to think deeply on the subject, and an additional statement as to my opinion being subjective that is so obvious as to be either Zen in its transcendent wisdom or just straight up clueless... and judging from the fact that its author apparently cannot spell, you can guess which side I'm coming down on.

That's the Modern Age for you -- Three parts self indulgence, five parts mental laziness, and two parts restating the obvious, all of it in the shortest sentences possible because the target demographic has no attention span... and can't spell, either.

His object tokens all sublime

Scipio, who blogs over at The Absorbascon, is one helluva fine and funny writer. He hates Hal Jordan and loves Kyle Rayner entirely too much for me to fully respect him as a comics fan, but in addition to being a creative guy, a witty fellow, and a very articulate proseator, he's also a damned fine graphic artist and an excellent game designer. As one can see, when one bears witness to the brilliantly designed, all original Object Tokens he's posted to his blog, specifically the Green Lantern Power Battery, on your left, and the perhaps even cooler (because they're a REV, how cool is that?) Mr. Terrific's T-spheres (pictured below).

There are some special rules governing both sets of Objects to be found in Scipio's original posts, here and here.

Scipio is always well worth reading anyway, even if he does go on and on and on about Kyle Rayner's butt and Hal Jordan hitting his head against blunt objects entirely more than can be accounted for within any rational definition of sanity or reason.

Misfire

There were, it should be admitted up front, bad omens everywhere.

I'd read somewhere that the Redskins were 6-0 when losing the opening coin toss. Staring at the screen, after ABC crammed in as many commercials as possible in their last pre-game break, forcing the at home audience to miss the coin toss itself, I realized with some approbation that Washington was lining up to kick off.

Uh oh, I thought to myself, even as Super Adorable Kid, recently graduated from toddler status by her 6th birthday, and high as a kite on too much sugar from said celebration's cake, ice cream, and pinata contents, buzzed around the room like a three foot high Battling Top, shrieking at the top of her lungs that she wanted to paint, she wanted to play with her Play-Do, she wanted to use her new tap dance shoes, she wanted to watch her new That's So Raven! DVD, and she wanted it all NOW, NOW, NOW-NOW-NOW, regardless of whether her mom was trying to blog, her older sisters were trying to do their own Saturday post-party stuff, and I was, oh, yeah, trying to watch the opening round of the play offs, in which my team was taking part for the first time in a seemingly endless, often torturous three regular seasons.

So, after watching the Bucs offense choke badly on their first drive, I got up and moved to the back room, sending Super Dependable Teen into a sulking snit, because the TV in the back room is the only one with the ultra-high tech cable box attached to it, meaning it's the only one that gets the channels numbered between 80 and 102, meaning it's the only one she can watch Bam on.

I evicted her relentlessly and regardless (it's my goddam bedroom) and watched as Joe Gibbs' readily apparent deal with the devil went into effect, and a tipped Bucs pass at the line of scrimmage neatly flew into the hands of a Washington defender named LaVarr Arrington, who had never done a single goddam thing of distinction in the game of professional football prior to that moment. A play later, the ridiculously overrated Clinton Portis, who didn't manage to do a single goddam other thing for the remainder of the game against Tampa's top rated, #1 defense, lumbered happily into the end zone.

A few minutes further on, the still supernaturally stymied Bucs were tripped up by diabolism again, as the previously utterly reliable Cadillac Williams inexplicably fumbled a ball while being tackled. One bumbling Washington defender hopped on the ball and shambled clumsily with it a few yards, was tackled from behind and had the ball stripped away, only to see another unbelievably fortunate Washington defender somehow scoop it up and ramble into the end zone with it.

I heard Satan laughing in delight.

It was a hellish, utterly inexplicable, by all natural laws impossible one-two punch straight out of some obscure Roger Corman movie about voodoo curses. The Bucs couldn't come back from it. The Redskins' offense, bewildered, seemingly hungover, and undeniably playing well out of their depth, never managed to accomplish a single stinkin' thing for the remainder of the game besides a chip shot field goal. Mark Brunell looked baffled and irritated whenever he was on the field; Clinton Portis finally discovered what it was like to run against a defensive line that actually knew how to play the game, and the only honest assessment of the entire contest would have been that the Bucs completely shut the Redskins down... except for those two, early, freakish, Satanically inspired touchdowns.

On the other side of the scrimmage line, whenever Lucifer allowed it, the Bucs moved the ball beautifully down field. Chris Simms racked up impressive stats, only to have drives that should have easily ended in touchdowns thwarted four or five times by the flukiest, unluckiest plays imaginable, as the Redskins' infernal compact with darkness continued to torment the Bucs.

In the end, even Satan couldn't seal the game for the clueless, blithering Redskins, but no matter; the refs were in on the fix, too, and found some idiotic, unimaginable, completely insufferable excuse to take away an obvious game-tying touchdown from the Bucs... a touchdown that was so obvious, in fact, that the game announcers called it, the ABC technical people put the points up on the TV screen scoreboard, and the Raymond James Stadium crew shot off the Bucs' trademark cannons in celebration.

But nooooooo... some puny, pathetic Washington defender, badly beaten by Bucs wide receiver Edell Shepherd on the play, went sobbing like a little baby-girl to the refs that Shepherd hadn't, maybe, had full control of the ball upon being brought down in the end zone. Even Forrest Gump watching the play would have known Shepherd had the ball; it was cradled in his arms when his knees hit the field, and only came loose as he slammed full length, an eternity after the touchdown was actually official. No matter, no use; given the slightest shred of justification, the insanely biased and clearly deranged line judge was happy to rule the pass incomplete, despite all visual evidence otherwise.

That ridiculous ruling was huge, and cost Tampa Bay the game, as the instant replay regulation requires irrefutable visual evidence to overrule the call on the field. Had the ruling been proper, for a touchdown, no amount of instant replay analysis could have thrown it over. Since it went the other way, though, an undeniably in the bag refereeing corps was happy to throw the touchdown out.

It's small consolation to me that had Tampa won (as they richly deserved to) they'd have had a horribly tough job beating the Bears in Chicago in January next week. It's even smaller consolation to me to contemplate the demolition and dismemberment that Gibb's inept and incompetent Washington Capitals... er, I mean, Redskins... will receive next week against the Seahawks.

Making the day complete, of course those useless, worthless Jaguars couldn't knock the loathed Patriots out of the play offs for me, either. One small shining jewel of pleasure for me in these playoffs is that it is statistically impossible for both Indianapolis and New England to get to the Super Bowl this year; one of them has to be eliminated. Now if only it could be both of them, I'd be very pleased. I have nothing against either the Bengals or the Seahawks; if both of them could end up advancing to the Super Bowl, I might not watch the game, but I wouldn't care overmuch who won.

Enough football. The season is effectively over for me. If Gruden has enough sense to pour piss out of a boot, he'll leave Simms in charge of the offense next year, and as long as Cadillac and Galloway stay healthy, and Clayton can get healthy again, the Bucs will be unstoppable. I'll just have to wait for that. (It would be nice if somewhere under the salary cap, Bruce Allen found a few million bucs for Mike Alstott, who has shown once again that he is a uniquely valuable and irreplaceable offensive resource for the team.)

Meantime, life is hardly bad here, and in fact, is wonderfuly good, for all the customary reasons I still never quite manage to become accustomed to. Staring around me sometimes at the astonishingly joyful tableau that my life has somehow, inexplicably transformed itself into these last eight months, I am left speechless and even breathless at just how inexplicably and undeservedly fortunate I am. Forget about Joe Gibbs; to all apparent observation, I myself must have signed some kind of compact with Satan to suddenly have everything turn out so right for me in such short order. Yeah, my football team got robbed, but on the other hand, I've got a super home to live in, filled with SuperKids and SuperGirlfriend, and even if I'm a clumsy, babbling, blundering dolt much of the time (as was evidenced yesterday, by an incident I won't go into detail regarding, save to say that it involved me attempting to carry a breakfast tray into the living room for SuperGirlfriend and failing miserably, with results that ended up throwing the family into a blue funk for much of the day, until SuperGirlfriend worked her inevitable magic and, once again and as always, cleaned up my karmic mess for me), well, life is pretty darned sweet for me.

And it's not just me that thinks so. Yesterday, at SuperAdorable Kid's slightly belated birthday party, her poor dad had to spend the entire afternoon watching me in my home that I share with his ex-wife, watching SuperAdorable Kid swarm affectionately all over me (no matter how often I tried to redirect her attention to her natural father, out of a sense of pity for the miserable schmuck), even on one occasion haplessly overhearing as SuperAdorable Kid identified the back bedroom, where SuperGirlfriend and I sleep, as belonging to her "mom and dad" as she gave her friend Ashley a tour of the apartment.

I felt bad for him. But, as he mentioned when he was leaving, he was off to Lexington... a phrase that we know (and he knows we know) means he was going to meet one of his many Internet paramours for a little post-birthday party bliss. So I'd gather his night ended with a bang rather than a whimper, and I say good for him. Who needs boring domesticity when you're a newly single man with a modem? To paraphrase Derek Smalls, people should envy him.

Us, we just cleaned up after the party, ordered in Chinese food, watched a frustrating football game, kissed the kids goodnight, and went to bed. Watched a little bit of The Last Boy Scout in the back bedroom, then off to sleep, with my brand new, second hand copy of Peter O'Donnell's fourth Modesty Blaise novel, A Taste For Death, sitting on the bedside stand waiting for me to resume reading it next morning.

Once again, I close by invoking the animated Gambit -- life just don' ged much bedda dan dis.

Full court press

A failed Supreme Court nomination could well spell doom for the Bush Administration, and a serious setback to the conservative Christian agenda. Are Republican leaders willing to step up? Will they go all the way to get Alito on the Supreme Court? Pictures don't lie --



















Christian conservatives desperately want Alito confirmed -- so much so, in fact, that they're willing to BLOW GOD!



















"Say!" says a prominent conservative African American, "that's a great idea! If it gets Alito on the court, I'll BLOW GOD too!"




Yet another wealthy and conservative African American shows his support for Alito. "I'm not orally inclined," this fine fellow opines, "but God, I will manually stimulate your prostate to orgasm several times if you will only put Alito on the highest court in the land!"





"Dammit," Senator Ted Kennedy says, "I'm not gonna orally copulate God to keep Alito off the Supreme Court, that's ridiculous... the best I can do is a handjob, Lord."












The nominee himself, meanwhile, is understandably exasperated with all this foolishness. "I'm the main man here! For Christ's sake, who's gonna blow ME?"














"Uh... well, I... thanks, ma'am, but... er... anyone else...?"



"Uh... wait... um... can I maybe get one of those black guys...?"
















"No need for miscegnation, Sam," the Senate Majority Leader generously volunteers. "My finely sculpted Caucasion suck hole was made to order for your pulsating pink love log... just break that bad boy out and ram it home, Goliath!"




In the end, the truly devout Christian can only stand aghast and appalled at what the Republican Party has become.