Quit your junk news

And get the real thing:
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

A couple hours after the show airs at 6:00 pm, mp3s of each of that night's segments are uploaded to the site. So you can pick and choose what you want to listen to. But for the most part, every bit is worth it.

Tonight they had an amazing piece about economic inequality in New Mexico. Fucking phenomenal reporting. Horrible shit. Preceding it was an interview with 2008 presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who many of us think of as a cocksucker, but damn he sounds good. Especially next to the disgusting policies we have been fed and will continue to eat.

Everyone says Hank Paulsen is a genius, but they say that about Hank Pym too. And I think they've both been acting skrully. I mean every week this guy's got a new plan to spend a ton of money to increase confidence. And if you've been watching closely over the past couple months, he keeps denying he'll need to go further. "Just this one last huge sum of money, please." Don't worry it won't seem so big compared to whatever he asks for next. I swear to god, it's like these guys want to destroy America. At least the Skrulls bring their own infrastructure to replace what they destroy and dismantle.

Hank's plan is nothing but trying to burn money as fast as humanly possible. The NewsHour keeps talking about what caused this mess, the economic policies and philosophies of Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush. But we don't want to address the problems or create a better new system, just temporarily Socialize, and then return to the corporate heap. This has power grab written all over it. But it's what's happening. Despite having the greatest tool in the history of human communication, we have no idea what's going on. And when the dust settles we will all have boot marks on our asses.

So if Hank can spend a trillion dollars without a long term plan for success, I might as well give my plan. A trillion dollars, gosh... hard to even imagine how to spend all that. Okay, how about this, we buy a whole lot of really good acid. We dose the entire nation, except for the few who will be preaching love and inner strength and those who will distribute food, laptops, and medical aid after the nation's heroic death and rebirth. So after our Apocalypse we'll take a few weeks off to lay in the grass and talk to each other on the Internet, and figure out what we want to do next.

Okay, so maybe it's just ripping off an Alan Moore Apocalypse. Maybe all the comic books and 80s Dylan has rotted my mind, to the point where I am completely divested from our current way of living. Listen to the NewsHour report on Los Alamos, and ask yourself what should be done with the richest community in America. With blood on their hands, and empty bellies at their feet, these people need to have their minds cracked open. Showing them what they've done will be punishment enough.

Foolish Men of Science

Scientist have exposed this innocent creature to cosmic radiation. Am I the only one who has read the Fantastic Four? It's great that this little Tardigrada can survive a bombardment of cosmic rays in the vacuum of space, but I'm adding this to the list of things scientist shouldn't have done. It's always safest to assume fantastical horror until proven otherwise.

Stan Lee Dines with Kings

More Stan Lee / Hillary Madness

wiki on Peter Paul

Young actor's murderer still on the loose - could this be the beginning of a spree?

I have recently received insider information from an actor working in New York, that Heath Ledger was killed by the Joker. Ledger was recently quoted as saying that playing the part of the psychotic Joker in the upcoming film, The Dark Knight, put such a strain on the actor that he could not sleep at night.

Ledger told The New York Times last year that Heath Ledger stressed a little too much over the role.
The interview was done in London during the filming of Batman.
'It is a physically and mentally draining role (his Joker is a “psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy” he said cheerfully ) and, as often happens when he throws himself into a part, he is not sleeping much," Heath Ledger told The Times.

“Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night,” he said. “I couldn’t stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going.”
[Link]

So there you have it. Now the Joker's started killing people out here in the real world. Well, kind of the real world. New York City anyway, not LA, or Tokyo or one of those DC cities. A proper Marvel city. I'm starting to see it more and more. Life drifting into the broad strokes of a comic book: pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Chick Stone, and fuck sake let's say it, script by Stan Lee.
And that might be putting too precise a point on it. The inks aren't always by Chic Stone, and sometimes the pencils are by Steve Ditko. But regardless, like in the Mighty Marvel Age of the 1960s what we're seeing around us is a world shaped by the artists. A world that is running a few steps faster, and a fews steps deeper than what the writers are picking up or getting down.

Things are starting to happen which lead me to think that the dread iron system, whose shadow we have been cowering under since the birth of our New American Century, when on September the Eleventh the assault on the hearts, minds, and rights Americans began, but what I'm trying to say, is maybe that's ending now.

Yeah, so this is the thing. I might be fooling myself, and even if I am, its okay I need the break from the bleak. But I really am starting to think that maybe things are getting better. I really don't want to jinx it, but maybe the brutal and much loathed system, will just break. Fall apart like a poorly thought out Rube Goldberg machine. Not so bad. Weeds are springing up through the cement. Tree roots cracked it but the dandelions have the flowers now.

But it seems this is a transition period; reality is becoming less fixed, and change starts to happen faster and faster. New technologies are rippling into ever facet of life and every field of thought. And so the world starts to look more like a comic book. But I've said that already, so let's go to some examples:

Okay Tom Cruise is a lot of my evidence. I don't know when you first realized that he's a super hero, but for me it was a picture I saw on some tabloid last May that looked something like this,
I believe here he's pictured riding towards Avengers Mansion shortly before his falling out with Hollywood types he once considered nearly family. So far Tom Cruise seems a lot cooler than Tony Stark, who he was originally on the team to replace. Perhaps since Tom Cruise thinks he can move things with his mind, and did overcome his dyslexia through hard work, his mental powers make him more appealing than a gadget hero like Stark's Iron Man.
[Tom Cruise taking ‘Mission’ to Tribeca]

Also if you watched the latest Tom Cruise bit to hit the web, (but not the news, copyright is still ironclad for them) you may have gotten the impression that Tom Cruise's legacy will overshadow that of Scientology. I think he is using his mental powers and personal energy to summon forth something. And his image is starting to represent that something more than the dying cult he is presently apart of.
[Watch the Secret Scientology Tom Cruise Video]


And if Tom Cruise is our superhero, we know we're in the Marvel Universe since his arch villains are a shadow band of hackers known as Anonymous who have vowed to destroy Scientology. Sometimes, over the top is exactly the spot you need to hit. Seems like this could actually start some commotion.
[Message to Scientology]

I'll try to start posting more comic art and more evidences of this most enjoyable turn of events. And hopefully as my world outlook has been brightened, the stories I find and share will be a bit more upbeat from now on. But no promises.

"Sometimes I feel like all science is doing now is reverse-engeneering Jack Kirby..."

Is there a word for that unsettling experience of walking by some street corner you've walked by a thousand times before and noticing the building that was always there had been torn down, replaced by some shiny new thing--and now that the old thing is gone, you realize you can't really remember what was there before? I feel like that's happening around us all the time.
[pulphope]

===

I had a strange sense of seeing a foreign object, realizing I couldn't fully grasp it's significance to my future-self, but knowing one day in the future it would be significant. One day, the iPhone will return to me. One day I would be holding one of my own, never knowing how I ever got along without it before.

Over at the table sits Dean Haspiel, chilling with Heidi MacDonald and JahFurry. Dean and I start talking about Jack Kirby (not the first time). We talk about comics, the glory of them, making them, inventing them, loving them. We talk about science fiction in comics, about Jack Kirby and his particular type of science fiction. "In comics, there's no budget," I hear myself saying, "just your paper and your brush and your imagination."

"Look at all that stuff Kirby came up with, " he says. "Kirby just INVENTED on paper, he didn't bother to build any of it. He already thought of it. It was enough to just think of it -- he was just blueprinting the future..."

"Sometimes I feel like all science is doing now is reverse-engeneering Jack Kirby," I say.

And we sit there in silence a bit. The thought of Jack Kirby's imagination tends to make cartoonists' conversations taper off into quiet introspection. The place was full of people but the noise of Jack Kirby in my head drowned it all out--exploding, psychedelic Kirby visions, weird twisting pipes on Orion's cycle, the chrome curves and jet-exhaust vents on the underbelly of the Fantasticar, Darkseid's Omega Beams, with all their strange, Cubist trajectories, Seriphan and his collapsing Super Cycle, the silent corridors of the Red Ghost's lunar hideaway, High Father's staff, Machine Man's extending arms and dismantleable magenta body parts, his bug-like red eyes, his impassive stare-- the images paraded along an infinite mobius strip of their own, like the marching red ants in the MC Escher print.

"All the iPhone is is a retarded Mother Box," I declare. Dean nods, knowing.
[pulphope]

I finally got to look at the iPhone, like the iPod Nano, it's a 2010 device existing with a halo of improbability around it here in 2007.

Commuting Towards Iran

I just finished a magnificent graphic novel my sister got me for my birthday, the famous Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. So I've been thinking about Iran. But I don't think I am alone. The President's lite pardon of the Vice President's man, I. Lewis Libby indicates a future for Iran in the headlines. The Washington Post just finished a multi-part story on the villainy of the Vice POTUS Cheney. The story gained such traction that the Daily Show has already presented three parts of it's undisclosed number of part series on Dick Cheney, "You Don't Know Dick."

It's a good start. But even this increased scrutiny wasn't enough to dissuade Bush from following the course set for him in his private top secret meetings with the Vice POTUS. So while we keep hearing rumblings of dissension in the Bush Administration, Cheney holds the reins. Meaning Iran is still on the table. If the Vice POTUS can still get his friends out of prison, then he can still imprison the country in another war. We're already behind on the schedule for his new American Century.

And Persepolis is required reading for understanding the price of war.

Wikipedia on Marjane Satrapi,

Satrapi's career began in earnest when she met David B., a French comics artist. She adopted a style similar to his, especially in her earliest works. Satrapi became famous worldwide because of her critically acclaimed, autobiographical graphic novels Persepolis and Persepolis 2, which describe her childhood in Iran and her adolescence in Europe in an intelligent and engaging portrait of everyday life.

Iron Man

My friend Mark sent me these awesome photos from the new Iron Man movie. Looks great.

And since this is another comic book post, I should mention that today was the start of World War Hulk, and it was great.

World War Hulk #1 On Sale This Wednesday

In honor of King Hulk, and to my amazement at having only recently discovered these databanks of prodigious effort, I give you Marvel time,

Timeline of the Marvel Universe

Major Events of the Marvel Universe

Unofficial Chronology of the Marvel Universe

Wouldn't it be great to be able to overlay these timelines over historical ones. What were the great albums that came out when the Hulk first appeared? We need to map time and make all the maps mutable and mergable. I know it sounds silly. But just looking up dates in wikipedia is not a good use of that information.

However, some interesting information I found out that way,

The Fantastic Four conducted there first space flight the same month that President Kennedy sent 18,000 military advisors to South Vietnam.

Seven Soldiers of Victory

I recently read Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers. It was an ambitious project started in April 2005; 7 different unappreciated characters, each given their own 4 issue miniseries, with 2 giant-sized bookend issues. Separate stories joining together to form one giant story in the end. I didn't read it as it came out because 7*4*$2.99+$6.98= More than I want to spend on Superhero comics in a year. 52 is even worse, a new three dollar issue ever week. Thank you very much, no thank you.

I read it in trade and it was really good and I'm planning to scan some images to show it off. The one-shot bookends were drawn by J.H. Williams III, who is one of my absolute favorite artists working today. Anyway, in trying to learn more about what the hell I'd just read (a normal experience with a Grant Morrison book) I stumbled on to a blog I'd stumbled onto earlier this year. Jog - The Blog. Last time I found it I was really impressed, but let it slip through my fingers like so much internet sand. Not going to let that happen this time.

Seven Soldiers: A Short List
An index of Jog's reviews for the entire Seven Soldiers series. I read the last one, and again was really impressed. I'm planning to go through and read them all.

Batman #663
That first thing I read by Jog. A review of one of the worst comics I ever saw. Grant Morrison at his lowest. An important review for me because it backs up my rarely agreed with point that Morrison's Arkham Asylum is crap.

Actually, this issue is a little like Arkham Asylum in that way. It’s not nearly as bad, mind you, as Arkham Asylum is quite possibly the single shittiest comic Morrison has ever written on his own, a veritable catalog of his worst storytelling tendencies splashed with all the dourness and intellectual pouting the post-Watchmen superhero landscape could offer. This issue is a little too self-conscious for that. But it does share its popular predecessor’s tendency to substitute simple declaration for substantive insight - we’re told over and over what depth these characters have, yet we’re never allowed to see them demonstrate these hidden fathoms in a manner apart from the string-pulling of Grant Morrison.

Jog - The Blog
I'm also hoping his blog can be my guide out of the world of superhero comics. After Marvel's Civil War, I realized I really need to diversify my holdings in the comic book market. What I'm reading is fun, but it really needs to be supplemented with things that have not been completely infected by decompression. A single issue of Jack Kirby's Avengers had more happening in it than in the entire Civil War. I'm really enjoying the week-to-week anticipation thing, but I need my vitamins too. More on comics later.