Readerless Digest

2003-05-30T22:27:00.000-04:00

A word on Congo

Regular readers (hi mom) know this is not a political blog. It's not even a blog, just a palimpsest of neurotic whimsy. But there are MILLIONS of dead people piling up in uncountable mounds in the Congo.

Would Belgium and France and all those countries that want to rival, or foil, or counterbalance American imperialism please get a coalition together to go in and kick all the necessary asses to make this stop immediately. We'll oppose you in the U.N. maybe, but just tell us to fuck off, go in and in like 50 days fix the genocide thing. Don't worry about rebuilding before you stop the killing.

2003-05-29T23:51:00.000-04:00

Digest Style Manual Updated! Non-compliance not an option.

I will never, ever again describe one thing as another thing on a drug, or as another thing meets a third thing. I'm still going to describe things as the bastard children of another thing and a third thing, for now.

2003-05-29T23:26:00.000-04:00

Charged: PDA

King of the Makeouts this guy is not.

2003-05-28T21:28:00.000-04:00

Giant transforming robot joins war effort, fails to update blog

First, an apology: This story surfaced like two months ago, and I missed it entirely. I live in Ohio, ferchrissakes, and this I am telling you is exactly the kind of crap that I am trying to foist here.

Yes, there's a million metric ass-tons of crap veining Mount Internet, but there are a lot of lazy, unoriginal bloggers mining its rich, irony ore. The competition would be intense if not for such bloggers' endemic apathy. I certainly don't care. But I believe in freshness: I think that your crap has got to be fresh, or else what do you have? Just crap.

Sorry for the just crap. To make it up to you I will leave the house and not post for a while.

(off that joint where stereolabrat is hosted, via Colby Cosh, whose smartness I covet. I read CC every day and get pissy at him when he doesn't post, even though I've never met or interacted with him in any way, and sometimes I overfamiliarly refer to him as "CC," which I imagine he wouldn't like. Or maybe he would. Who knows. He gets paid to journalize by day. His blog is known to contain Canada (Western), hockey, music and news and it would permit, even encourage, smoking if it existed in realspace. Is this too long for parenthesis?)

2003-05-27T19:36:00.000-04:00

What the fuck are YOU looking at?

Recent e-mail suggests that the Digest is no longer Readerless. Shit. Give me a minute, here.

2003-05-26T18:28:00.000-04:00

Happy Memorial Day

To PFC Luther Burdette Allen, 63rd Infantry Division, wherever you now may be. I miss you, Granddad. Seen Bill Mauldin yet? Thanks for saving the world.

2003-05-26T17:34:00.000-04:00

Ha, ha! There's some art!

You know how some bloggers, like Aaron "Mr.-Genius-Hegel-blah-blah-Schopenhauer" Haspel have annoying "expertise" and "know-it-allness" about stuff like poetry, Czechoslovakia, self-fellating, or Mahler, or driving trains or motorcars? And how they show off all the time in "thoughtful," "clever," and "amusing" posts on a host of subjects?

I'm completely incapable of that kind of shit, so I'll be sticking mostly to swearing, escapist male power fantasies (often featuring underwear and wellingtons), and weirdness. But that can't stop me from having a regular art feature where I celebrate art through critique. Celebrate its ass off.

Full disclosure of bias: I favor the "Damn, I ruptured my nutsack laughing at that shit!" and "Whoa, what's with that?" schools. Also, porn. Even cartooning.

"This is a picture of L. Ron Hubbard on the couch eating Funyuns and pizza. He's thinking, "Mmmm, that's a lot of pizza!"" Brandon Bird brings a keen eye, a learned hand and a variety of brushes and other painting equipment at his disposal -- pallettes, too, yes -- to bear on the kind of things we really, really need to see. As a culture, together. Hugging.

Brandon also organized a Santa Cruz gallery show where he and his artist friends displayed works inspired by Edward Norton. Next up: Law & Order. Not the concepts, but the much spun-off TV drama. As if I'd link it if it was about laws and orders.

2003-05-26T14:02:00.000-04:00

"A g'day for comics," or "Fair Inkum," or some other bad Australia/comics pun

Via Journalista (scroll down to second item in "In Other News") comes word that last October's first annual OzComics 24-Hour Challenge is being reprised June 7-9. Amature and professional antipodean scripters, scribblers and pixelherders must squeeze out the best they can on a common theme in a 24-hour period, which according to the contest dates, comprises three days. Time flies down under, I guess.

Might Stephen Turner offer a revision of his grossly unpredictive Aussie war story from 2002? Not holding my breath. (You might also enjoy the script of Turner's nifty mini-comic, Meena, about a political immigrant to Oz (an Afghan, natch) who assassinates two politicians (Howard and Ruddock) whose government policies he blames for the death of his daughter -- but our troubled subject is not a terrorist because he possessed "no terrorist motivations, or even political motivations, for his crime." Oh.)

2003-05-25T16:01:00.000-04:00

Weighing in on comics

The latest Title Bout, courtesy of the mysterious AK, is the funniest ever, maybe even for non-comics people. He's like stereorlabrat without the Rack(TM). But he's got the Eyebrows(TM), and Diamond Comics' weekly shipping list to skewer instead of Wms.burg hipsters in gimme caps.

2003-05-25T15:42:00.000-04:00

Nipponese Cature

Engrish may be passe, but this humiliates cats to make it funny again like the very first time.

(again, via the super and excellent transom that is collision detection, through which all that's strange, and good, and strangely good, seems to drift)

2003-05-25T15:35:00.000-04:00

Mash at your own risk

At last! Outerwear which explains that part of "no" that's so hard to, er, grasp.

(via collision detection)

2003-03-23T02:38:00.000-05:00

Palindrome

Neilalien is a cool blog about comics, particularly Dr. Strange.

2002-11-04T21:52:00.000-05:00

Q: Are Comics Cool or Uncool? A: Exactly.

Kieron Gillon at Ninth Art:

Comics are cool - in that they all have the potential in themselves for greatness. Specific examples of the form - like, say, X-TREME X-MEN - are not cool. Understand the difference.

However comics being touted as a cool item is as inherently ludicrous now as it was then. Certain books of the period - the aforementioned MAUS and WATCHMEN - were cool purely in and of themselves, and so supported the validity of the form. To consider comics themselves as cool is putting the effecting factors before the affecting ones.

The point is, comics are a form, and so a possible font of excellence, and are treated as such by very cool people. Because very cool people, by their nature, are violently cosmopolitan elitists, and a single form can't satisfy them. They need constant fresh blood to smear along the sacrificial blade of culture.

Possibly mis-billed as the first in a series on the "role of the comic book as a chic accessory of the cutting-edge consumer."

2002-11-04T20:44:00.000-05:00

There Goes the Neighborhood

Dirk Deppey is editing the new TCJ Blog, Journalista. Three great screenloads already. It's less than a week old -- go catch up and be an early adapter. You'll thank me later.

2002-11-03T21:39:00.000-05:00

Buckle Your Chinstrap!

As a lad, for a few years in the mid-70s, I loved to watch those college football "all-star" games. The East-West Shrine Game, the Blue-Grey Game, the Senior Bowl. Back then, I believed these were real football games, steeped in regional antagonism, rather than beefcake bazaars for pro scouts.

What I liked best were the helmets: the players brought their own. Jerseys and pants were in budget for these showcases, and necessary to distinguish the opposing teams. But costly, high-impact headgear custom made for a single game wasn't necessary or practical. I'd watch the whole game with a set of colored pencils and draw in the logos on a sheet of pre-drawn helmet templates I'd produced that morning.

If I had had a PC and Photoshop or Freehand, my little stacks of paper would have vaguely resembled -- but never rivaled -- this.

2002-11-03T21:14:00.000-05:00

Back from Prague

I jest. I wasn't anywhere. I didn't have time to post when I wanted to, and I didn't want to when I had time. E-mail me for subscription fee refunds.

2002-10-27T12:43:00.000-05:00

I'm Somebody!

I knew a news day would eventually come to pass slow enough that this would see print. See you in the birdcage.

2002-10-27T12:19:00.000-05:00

You Could Have Read This Here First (but you didn't because nobody reads this here)

Throw enough, er, conjectural blather at the wall, and some of it is going to find purchase. I've yet to see additional reference to the five red stars, reggae or Rastafarianism, but "Word is bond" as used in the sniper letter is looking to have originated in the rap-rhetoric of hip-hoppers under the influence of Pharaoh Con, like Brand Nubians. I should also point out that House of Pain frontman and human Sinn Fein handbill Everlast is also an N of I "Five Percenter."

2002-10-26T00:01:00.000-04:00

Slawmaturgy

Kazoomy!

(via memepool)

2002-10-25T21:44:00.000-04:00

Peters' Principle (Or Lack Thereof)

Funnypage readers nationwide get a daily dose of hackneyed scribblewit Mike Peters courtesy of his syndicated strip, Mother Goose and Grimm.

But Daytonians are bludgeoned thrice more weekly with Peters' sledgehammer-subtle editorial cartoonery. Don't get magic marker all over your monitor -- Readerless Digest has done just that so you don't have to: N-R-A. Get it?

Mike's work is consistent only in its intellectual laziness (billed as bipartisan criticism), and displays all the artistic finesse of a jailhouse tattoo. His signature W-as-okapi-or-wombat-or-something caricature is nearly as puzzling as Rall's Romulan Idi Amin.

Update: Capybara! That's it.

2002-10-25T17:58:00.000-04:00

Johnny Too Bad

There are the obvious Islamist implications to the sniper terror arising from John Mohammad's last name, but more puzzling are the ties to Jamaica and reggae music.

Malvo is a Jamaican national, and the pair's New Jersey digs were above a Caribbean restaurant. Further, according to Fox News coverage prior to the arrest press conference, the five red star "signature" on the calling cards and used to authenticate the priest's communication with authorities is apparently a Reggae reference -- a song lyric, or a band name (Sorry, I can't find an on-line reference and I caught it out of the corner of my ear). Shepard Smith also suggested that Moose's "Our word is our bond" quote may have reggae roots as well, though it's more easily traced to hip hop cuts by living Sinn Fein billboards House of Pain and Farrakhan fanboys, the Brand Nubians.

While Rastafarianism is far from universal among reggae acts, much less among Jamaicans in general, anti-Westernism is among its core tenets.

2002-10-24T20:43:00.000-04:00

All Kids, Out of the Pool!

Well, this is certainly good news, though I'm not an anime buff.

I'm a Sunday Swimmer who tunes in early to catch Home Movies, nods off for the shrill Oblongs, the uneven Mission Hill (no longer in production), and the hit-or-miss Harvey Birdman, then revives himself for the Williams Street stretch run.

2002-10-24T00:54:00.000-04:00

Vehicular Assault

I borrowed my folks' new Beetle today. I pulled up to a light and two kids in the backseat of a Honda in the next lane started beating the living crap out of one another, laughing and shouting the whole time. It took a moment to register. . . Slug Bug!

2002-10-24T00:27:00.000-04:00

Flyboys

Mike Fuller’s Seattle Pilots Baseball Team site is a hoot.

The Pilots landed in the American League as part of the 1969 expansion that also brought us the Royals, the Padres, the Expos and divisional play. They lasted one inglorious season before airlifting themselves to Milwaukee at Bud Selig’s expense and becoming the Brewers.

The Rainy City got their major-league nine seven years later with the arrival of the Mariners, and the abortive Pilots were all but forgotten. Had Sick's Stadium not been a career stop of noted baseball tattler Jim Bouton, the Ps would have been relegated to even deeper obscurity.

Current-but-soon-to-be-former Mariners Manager Lou Piniella was a proto-Pilot, an expansion draftee from the Tribe who went on to win the Rookie of the Year Award in his team's inaugural season.

He had been traded to the Royals during spring training.

2002-10-22T20:23:00.000-04:00

Euchre with the DIKs!

"Euchre is a terrific, fast-playing partnership game that has been passed down from generation to generation, and a popular favorite on college campuses nationwide," says the House of Cards.

It's also a great excuse for barley pop.

What's your pleasure?

DIK update: The same writer's wrap-up of the DIKs' St. Patrick's Day Observance is too good to exerpt -- go read it all. Enterprising Grove City College Student Life reporter Mike Froust has the DIK beat nailed.

2002-10-22T19:31:00.000-04:00

Get Your War On

Beato has jumped in the ring with Treacher, Hesiod and Reynolds in the dust-up over Doonesbury's blog riff.

Treacher's right about Trudeau's laziness in finding grounds for mockery, and Doonesbury defenders have been more muted on day two -- when it became clear that the blogging character was a lefty cutting and pasting NYT editiorials with only a few punctuation tweaks.

Hayseed. Heh.

2002-10-22T14:06:00.000-04:00

Social Suicide?

Marc Weidenbaum makes a modest proposal (via memepool). Hey, you might even meet some nice girls.

2002-10-22T10:39:00.000-04:00

Cafe (de)Press(ed)

Poor Roast Beef.

2002-10-22T01:02:00.000-04:00

Viva Sixto Lezcano

Save a ton of time with Aaron Haspel's summaries of Steven Den Beste, then joyously waste two tons on Blue Moon Odom, Gates Brown and the notorious Carl Mays.

2002-10-21T21:23:00.000-04:00

First Post

I've cursed this template on other blogs, and I don't like it here either. I was in a hurry. Sue me.

Hmmm. Got Blogger and Blogspot all fired up, and now I can't think of a damned thing to post.

Oh, yeah! This is the site for my little brother's band, Face for Radio. I suggested "Twang Chung," but what do I know from band names?