The Fengi Newsletter

Spam Gets Romantic

2010-01-08T13:45:55Z

Subject: let's learn each other

From: "Ani E"

Hello, gentleman!

You may only be one person to the world but you may also be the world to one person. Some things go together perfectly as if they were made for each other. I am dreaming to find my half in this life. I spend my time thinking about you; sometimes I am elated and hopeful, and sometimes I am down and blue, waiting for these sweet dreams of us to come true http://clearlyafishingsite

There is a picture in my mind how our relationship could be and I believe happiness is possible for us. You do not have to look very hard because it is easy to understand that we are perfect for each other, like moon and stars. I will always be right here waiting for you, my love, and I do believe with all my heart that one day my dreams will come true.

Looking forward to hear from you
Anyuta E

------------

This is almost eerie for reasons people only IRL might figure out.

PayPal Question

2010-01-07T16:14:57Z

This year I want to give more money directly to artists and avoid undeserving middlemen, but even this process involves a middleman.

The problem is, I don't have a lot of money.

So when I drop a buck into a paypal tip jar, how much of it goes to the recipient?

How much does one have to give to put an actual dollar in their hands?

Does the processing cost and effort make a single dollar more symbolic than worthwhile? Or does every penny add up?

I'm just saying, maybe the mid-80s "Dragon" aesthetic needs a rest.

2010-01-06T21:32:58Z

This is an interesting post debunking the latest non-controversey involving the magazine Realms of Fantasy. What caught my eye is a passing mention about previous controversies involving women on the covers.

For me, the problem isn't just the gender content. It's RoF being stuck in the rigid Frazetta / Brothers Hilderbrand / Heavy Metal / Julie Strain / Etc. which still dominates the genre. If they moved towards, well, anywhere else, the gender content thing might solve itself. There's such a vast range of design and art out which can accomodate the fantastic, some radically different, some a small but significant step. I'd rather see a knockoff of any of the following: Chip Kidd, Carol Lay, Mark Ryden, Remedios Varo, Chris Ware, Lynda Barry, Dave Eggers, Jill Thompsonm Rene Margitte, Molly Crabapple, Charles Burns, ...there's such a vast range of design and art out there - why not change it up?

Hell there's a spectacular fantasy illustrators on livejournal who would easily fit RoF yet be a welcome change, and they'd probably within the magazines budget. I mean, if the goal is to further the cause of the genre, then how about putting out a product which the ever shrinking crowd of people who buy see print as a desirable consumer good will feel excited to purchase? It worked, and still works, for McSweeney's and others. Even the freaking Invincible Iron Man - about as mainstream a comic book you can get - has been changing it up with the covers. So why not Realms?

UPDATE: On the other hand it's important to remember the cover is still just one page of a magazine. And as someone who read a shit ton of zines, if something has to give, I'd prefer look over content.

Overheard in the office

2010-01-06T16:47:22Z

My single female boss: "For me, stupid is way worse than ugly. Ugly can be fit from the gym. Ugly can get in bed with the lights out. Stupid is always stupid. He could feed himself - well, he knew when it was time to eat, but that was where his brains ended. He was cute once and that was it."

It's New To Me And It's Awesome

2010-01-06T14:25:14Z

Thanks to the podcast "Tom Vs. The Flash", which began as a recap of 70s-80s Justice League comics, I just discovered one of the more hilariously ludricous editorial decisions of any major comic title in the 1980s.

I'm talking about Justice League Detroit. Granted, the JLA began as a cash-in title, combining DCs top selling characters with a few semi-popular also rans in hopes of hoovering up any leftover dollars from fans. As such, as DC attempted to mature (or at least match the sprawling soap opera of Marvel) it remained a continuity warping exercise in how goofy superheros can be.

Even by these standards, Justice League Detroit is "wack" as Vibe - the parachute pants wearing, breakdancing, cringe inducing inner city latino stereotype - might say. Listening to a verbal description of each issue makes one laugh and wince. There were creepy sexist (a woman ends up with her torturer) and racist elements, but the low point has to be when the production team forgot continuity entirely and had the abandoned Justice League Satellite crash to earth twice in two years.

Anyway, it's awesome in way things which aren't can be. There is a blog, although it's more about tracking any character remotely connected to those books than the series itself.

Fair Trade Sure, But What About Fair Wage?

2010-01-05T22:58:57Z

Here's something I only found out last week: Starbucks employees are classified as tip earning labor, making them subject to a mandatory tax - in Chicago it's calculated based on an assumed a dollar per hour.

I suspect many people, like myself, thought Starbucks workers are different from waitresses and bartenders and the register tip jar is merely a hopeful presumption.

Starbucks perpetuates this impression by limiting tip solicitation and not educating consumers. This lack of information is likely partially motivated by the detail tip based employees have less protection by labor regulations, including minimum wage. Starbucks may currently have better labor practices than McDonald's in some ways, but their employees are more vulnerable in others.

For example, Starbucks has a policy of compensating managers by allowing them to take a cut of tips from employees, which was the subject of class action lawsuits (you may have heard about this when employees won, but not when they lost on appeal).

This applies to more than Starbucks. Some independent coffee houses make ends meet by running a similar game on their baristas - it's probably worth asking.

It's bullshit to make tipping a necessity for level of service many consumers choose because tips aren't involved. Employees are at a strong disadvantage in telling them otherwise, both due to work rules and consumer hostility and the possibility some might be motivated to give up a luxury option if tips are added to the cost.

Governments and businesses are exploiting labor with a bogus loophole then trying to shift the moral burden on people who don't tip.

Wanting Your Best Long Posts

2010-01-05T16:29:18Z

Though I read a great deal of LJ, stuff you'd never think anyone reads, I miss vast amounts as well. This is especially true in December when holidays and other issues eat up my time.

I'm an especially big fan of long posts. So please provide links to the best long posts you've written or read in the last month or months. If you've posted a list of your best sometime time in the last month, link me to that.

Also: If you do a great deal of awesome writing somewhere besides Livejournal - or have migrated to another service* - let me know that as well. I'll even except twitter, but you have to be a master of substance in that form.

*Yes, I realize if someone is no longer using LJ they are unlikely to read this.

Excellent Blogging About Blogging

2010-01-05T15:51:10Z

dexfarkin has a thought provoking essay/rant on how we often forget the internet is a world wide broadcasting device. His specific topic: LOATHED PHRASE: "It's your journal/blog/webspace/etc and you should be able to say whatever you want and people jumping up and down on you for it is bad." or any such derivative of said opinion.

Much like with a broadcast signal, you can only truly control what is in the signal and your source of distribution, and not how it is received, and what arises from it.

In real life, we can control our privacy by various means, primarily by not broadcasting; being silent, keeping our thoughts in private journals under the bed, going for long walks in remote woods and being attacked by feral dogs....the very point of interaction with the Internet is to broadcast, carving out a digital footprint that says to any and all that will listen that you're there at the very least, whether you want it or not. The open nature immediately puts us in the manner of action/reaction outside of our sphere of control...You are posting to be heard. Whether you want it to be one person or a million, whether you personally consider it to be the same as a private diary, you are broadcasting to an audience. And, as we know, the audience wants to be heard in response.

Seeking Podcast Recommendations

2010-01-04T16:48:11Z

I currently listen to four "Witty people sit around talking" podcasts:

BBC Film Reviews with Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo

The Bugle with Andy Saltzman and John Oliver

CBC Wiretap with Johnathan Goldstein

E's Answer Bitch with Leslie Gornstein (iTunes doesn't always download this one for some reason).

As you notice the pods are light on the ladies. Can anyone recommend a podcast involving movies, comic books, current events and/or comedy sketches done by women?

Today in WTF TV.

2010-01-04T00:45:34Z

So Ion Television, which mostly does US network reruns has an "original" series which is really the first run import of Durham County. I don't know what to make of this show which is shallow but disturbing. Imagine Desperate Houswives if done by a straight depressive conservative rather than a gay Republican humorist. In this grim drama, suburbs are populated by controlling asshole guys and threats towards women are almost as pervasive as the ominious shots of the power lines. Does this reflect some stereotype about Durham held by Toronto residents?

Not Thinking Of An Elephant Means We Must Burn The Circus

2010-01-03T22:46:16Z

From the excellent documentary The Power of Nightmares comes the story of Team B, a major proponent of the unthought which now defines the right wing.

The entire series is worth watching. It's a well constructed argument on how hardliners on both sides of the terror war embraced a similar dishonest and tacitly patronizing ideology.

That there are no pictures of Daniel Pipes felching a goat means it was his main source of food.

Days of Yep: Most Impressive Thing Of 2010 So Far

2010-01-02T15:55:35Z

Monkey Engagement Ring. I wish I had a picture because it managed to be as classy and understated as a small monkey statue with the tail forming the ring can be. It was an artful monkey engagement ring rather than the most expensive monkey engagement ring and they kind of picked it out together.

It was a moment of delayed impressiveness because I only confirmed the couple were engaged later. "Is that an engagement ring?" is one of those questions which can be a party foul if the answer is no, so my reaction was mixed with hesitation.

Deadend Margo has now brought me up to speed and I'm all, "That's so fucking cool." To me, idiosyncratic versions of such rituals emphasize this is about the couple's choice rather than meeting the expectations of others.

I think this is another thing informing the marriage conservatives. Allowing gays to expand the legal and ritual boundaries would empower the personal choice side even more. Not only might this lead to people questioning much the special legal status of marriage (the tax thing, for example), but everyone might start signifying engagement with stuff they actually want to wear or use.

Warning: A Stock Rant

2009-12-31T18:05:14Z

Dear Hollywood: Stop making movies like fucking Leap Year, a film so empty and backlash informed it makes Amy Adams gently parodic role in Enchanted seem like an act of deep feminist subversion.

I am a fan of "they hate each other then they love each other" setup and the wacky road trip. One of few great TV movies I've ever seen is an old rerun of "Just Me And You" with Charles Grodin and Louise Lasser doing the animosity-to-amour pair in a rather minimalist, low budget, coast to coast trip. But then, it was two imperfect looking comedians shooting on location approximate to actual reality.

In this film, we have the usual desperate for marraige woman displaying an absurd disconnect with the macguffin boyfriend. These scenes rarely play well because the actors in them have developed a more human connection on the first day of rehearsal than their characters have in x number of years. Amy Adams might as well be crushing on a poster of Edward Cullen which is then mailed to Ireland.

It's partially because he is the macguffin and Hollywood has developed a near phobia about expanding on secondary elements, even at the expense of coherence and plausbility. What makes rigid genre work palatable is detail, background and digressions which is apparently viewed as a liability in the rom com department. Imagine The Office stripped down to just Jim and Pam with everyone else getting a few minutes in the first two acts. You'd want to stab them by the end.

Without grounding, her desperation seems anachronistic, unreal and ugly. The most memorable rom-coms when marriage had more power as the status quo seem almost edgy next to this (like the Philadelphia Story and His Gal Friday, both of which use divorce as a way to evade code rules against depicting infidelity).

EDITED TO ADD: foxfirefey's comment reminds me I didn't mention the central premise: Adams grand gesture results from a strict social taboo against a woman proposing marriage, only lifted for one day in magical Ireland. Trying to seize this fleeting power results in a hapless journey in which her long held choice is proven wrongheaded.

"Leap Year" shovels on an extra layer of stupid by having Adams travel to Dublin to propose and get stranded a whole six hours away in Cardiff. Although a time/space rift has dropped it into a pocket dimension of pre-modern quaintness, through which she must drive because there are no fucking trains in the UK.

The problem, I think, is Hollywood's lack of respect for women constricts the already tiny creative space within forumlaic exercises. It's hard to meet even minimum standards when half of humanity is mosty an annoying/threatening afterthought, be they girls in Sherlock Holmes inserted as a token against homoeroticism, or girls with entire dull movies to themselves.

ha ha ha sob

2009-12-31T15:52:57Z

Too Soon But

2009-12-31T05:14:39Z

Good Morning.

2009-12-30T13:36:57Z

Pointed out by jackscarab. There's a coherent context for this, but not knowing it makes it even more awesome.

That Meme

2009-12-30T13:22:53Z

If I was going to visit The George W Bush Presidential Center and you could request anything, what would you like to do there? Be specific--although anyone reading should know, this is purely imaginary!

All comments will be screened.

Year/Decade Cultural Musings: Shoegazer Cartoonists, Part One

2009-12-29T20:20:02Z

Shoegazer Cartoonists is my term for funny picture folks who produce mostly autobiographical, minimalist and/or chronically downbeat work. These elements aren't inherently good or bad - some of my favorite work has them. Yet in large amounts it seems like a lots of talent expended on a navel filled with tiny moments of one note pathos.

The most notable example is Chris Ware, a man of spectacularly vast talent and intelligence who seems increasingly constricted by his content. The strength of Ware's vision is admirable: most of his work (including designs for posters, toys, bookmarks, etc.) follows a clearly defined tapestry of plot, character, visual and thematic threads, some of which stretch back to his first work at University of Texas. He can tell a detailed story in a single page using several drawing styles and a fractured chronology yet remain coherent. The result is a densely layered work except for one thing: it's relentlessly depressing.

The sadness varies from satire and slapstick to wistful to gut wrenching bleakness, but it's all sad on some level. As the openly joking/playful moments have become muted over the years, the existential aspects are increasingly claustrophobic.

The turning point appears to have been when Jimmy Corrigan, Smartest Kid On Earth came out as a graphic novel. Ware mentioned discomfort with how the character seemed less rounded than the other people in the book, perhaps because he evolved as an iconic figure in Acme Comics before getting a single storyline. Yet this status made Jimmy's lonely loser persona a tad more bearable and playful. Perhaps it also had a mitigating effect, because Corrigan lets some characters have moments of grace and kindness and even ends on a possibly hopeful note for Jimmy.

Jimmy retired from the Ware's output after the book, leaving characters which have more depth but largely of despair. The most frequent stories involve the unlikable Rusty Brown [a chronically immature comics nerd long ago depicted dying bitter and alone and his equally doomed and emotionally stunted cohorts] and The One Legged Woman [constantly put through an emotional wringer]. The cartoony side stories have been dominated by the guilt and cruelty filled life of Branford the Best Bee in the World. Ware's impressive artwork starts to seem controlling, imposing isolation, disillusionment and crushing mortality upon his creations in way which verges on punishment.

There are still strips which are not totally bleak or offer more humor, but the cumulative effect is a narrative depression which may be ornate but inches towards the abrasive, kitschy one-note pathos of Funky Winkerbean. In person Ware's a total mensch, his design work has been a net positive influence and I'm proud he's a Chicagoan. At some point, however, I want someone to win for a change. Death is inevitable, but life is more than that.

The FUCK Is Wrong With This Guy?

2009-12-29T15:42:44Z

"Iraq was yesterday's war. Afghanistan is today's war. If we don't act pre-emptively, Yemen will be tomorrow's war. That's the danger we face." - Joe Lieberman (Leiberman-PA)

Source.

Question About Florida

2009-12-29T15:28:48Z

We went to the furthest part of the Apollo Beach section of Canaveral National Seashore, the part you enter from New Symrna. We took a stroll south along the shore from the final parking lot and...

So, is that area known as a cruising zone for gay nudist retirees?

Inspired by a post by James Nicholl

2009-12-29T04:10:51Z

I'm enjoying C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner series, even though her chosen lead character Bren Cameron is a mopey bastard who is at times insufferable.

Cherryh often has temperamental protagonists, but their touchy attitudes are given compelling or sympathetic contexts. Bren seems inappropriately petulant for a diplomatic conduit between aliens and humans who's done the job for a few year.

In the second book, when Cherryh offers more background which makes Bren's high strung personality more plausible (like Bren's youth and rare language talents). I don't see this as a retcon, as Cherryh clearly had these details in mind from the start, perhaps so much so she didn't notice they didn't fully come across on page.

I don't think I've been so intrigued by a series with such an annoying protagonist. I often want to slap Bren and his frequent physical discomfort in the stories is somewhat satisfying - I wonder if it's intentional.

Going For An Even Number of Movies

2009-12-28T19:23:39Z

There's still time for me to see one last movie in the theater for an even 24 this year. Here's what I saw.

Does anyone have a suggestion? The only criteria is it has to be playing in Chicago right now (list here), it can't totally suck and it's not Avatar.

Japan Spam Will Soon Replace Human Fail.

2009-12-28T18:28:56Z

My journal has been attracting what appears to be automated spam comments in recent days. They appear to originate from Japanese ip addresses.

I have no idea what keywords trigger the bots, nor their purpose, nor where they get the phrases to feign humanity. Nor the ultimate point of such ad-free spam (is it testing some defense?). Some are in English, some are not.

Here's the latest on my last post, appropo of nothing:

You better do so.

I will sue you, and will reveal everything about how sick and evil you are. What evil things you have been doing to me and was enjoying to vicitmizing me. How pathetic you are!

So I'm being stalked by a bot which complains of being harassed. We are reaching a mobius strip internet point. Soon we may have flamewars comprised entirely of autoreplies to spam containing randomly selected phrases from prior fail battles.

Movie Report

2009-12-28T17:38:13Z

I felt like I saw surprisingly few movies this year, but 23 works out to almost 2 per month. Far less than I once did, but a substantial amount financially. For 39% my primary motivation was air conditioning or social activity.

Few of these films matched the joy of sitting on the back porch with Deadend Margo drinking wine and watching masculinity and class get deconstructed by Mad Men and The Tudors. Interestingly, my two favorite films were inadvertently companion peices.

Sucked Ass
The Uninvited [Saw With Friends, Worse Than Expected]
Dance Flick [Saw At Discount Cinema For Air Conditioning]

Sucked
The Men Who Stare at Goats [Started Good Then Fell Apart So Much It Pissed Me Off]

Didn't Suck As Much As Expected, But Still
Year One [Saw At Discount Cinema For Air Conditioning]
9 [Saw At Discount Cinema For Air Conditioning]
Surrogates [Saw With Friends, For Air Conditioning]

Didn't Suck
Push
Monsters vs. Aliens
Star Trek
Public Enemies [Saw For Air Conditioning]
Paranormal Activity
Sherlock Holmes [Saw With Family, Coasts on Actors' Charms]
District 9 [Opinion Has Improved With Time]

Good
Coraline [Bad 3-D Projection]
Extract
Where the Wild Things Are [Saw With Family]

Quite Good
Timecrimes [Saw With Friends]
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Up
Inglorious Basterds
Zombieland

Best of Year
In the Loop
The Hurt Locker

Still Not Going.

2009-12-27T18:15:10Z

Some have said it at least has some intelligent sci-fi elements, but the films plot hinges on the need for unobtainium. I guess "macguffinitrate" was too long. I wouldn't be surprised if the tech guys wave their hands while explaining how the equipment works.

Also, nihilistic_kid has a great review: "Avatar does represent a step forward in science fiction film in that it is only forty years behind science fiction literature rather than the usual fifty years...Much has been made of Avatar's stunning visual sense, generally from people who never flipped through an issue of Heavy Metal in their lives."