Monthly Archives: February 2012

February Reading

Darkness, Boulet
A delightful comic made in only 1 day at the Angouleme festival. Three stars.

Anime Club, KC Green
A comic riff from Green that plunged me back into the crazy days I was in an anime club– all the arrogance, fury, and loathing are there. Great stuff. Four stars.

Secret Six: The Darkest House, wr. Gail Simone, Keith Giffen
The much anticipated final volume in Simone’s run with Secret Six (ended because of the DC-wide reboot). Again, full of human depth for the beloved villains plus some love and maybe some redemption, despite a trip to hell. Again I realize how much I don’t get the Marvel/DC style of storytelling that reboots characters, passes them from writer to writer, and some of the deep strangeness that can arise from generations of monthly publishing (like multiple characters who live in hell). I guess it would be similar if a writer I love took on a season of a soap opera I hadn’t previously followed? [Two other historical Secret Six teams- interesting] Four stars.

Midnite Surprise Vol. 1, KC Green
An anthology of art from Green’s tumblr, apart from his comic. Very pretty, though not always the pieces I would have chosen. Interesting. Two stars.

Horribleville, V. 1, KC Green
Green’s semiautobiographical comic from when he was 18-19 (!!). Pretty great early stuff. Three stars.

Saturn Apartments 3, Hisae Iwaoka
I will blame some of my lukewarm feelings about volume 3 on the experience of being interrupted for a year or more between installments, but I’m starting to wish that there were more movement in the various mysterious plotlines to go with the glorious evocation of time and place. I was also put off by an element of the supernatural that didn’t seem to belong. Two stars.

Black & White: The Confrontation Between Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth and Eugene “Bull” Connor / Larry Dane Brimner
A book that is under 300 pages on this topic would have a hard time containing all of the detail of the campaign for desegregation in Alabama, and this one is only 112 pages. It sometimes seems to be a recitation of events rather than a history with any depth. HOWEVER, it is still meticulously researched, even a non-footnoted comment had several sources, though I did have to email the author to find out about them (sorry I doubted you, Mr. Brimner). Interesting, yes, accessible to young readers, yes, sufficient for an adult history nerd to feel satisfied? No. Time for me to look for that 300 page book. Three stars.

The Always War / Margaret Peterson Haddix
An important thing for youth-service librarians to remember about their own childhood reading: we were enthusiastic but not discerning and did not yet have the broad knowledge of literature and literary conventions. I was totally blown away by the derivative and hackneyed books I read, books I would be embarrassed to be seen with today. Haddix is a fine writer, but boy has this premise been done to death. A quick and painless read with only a few unearned plot developments (we never actually see one of the protagonists reading old children’s literature, but it is quickly introduced and used to advance the plot when needed). Past me would love it. Present me? Two stars.

Hark!: A Vagrant / Kate Beaton
Beaton’s art deserves this gorgeous hardcover, heck, she deserves a slipcovered collector’s edition with heavy rag paper and gilt on the cover. I was delighted that the Nancy Drew and Gorey covers were included, the Wonder Woman strips too. Pretty great. Five stars.

The Empire of Death: A Cultural History of Ossuaries and Charnel houses, Paul Koudounaris
Utterly astonishing and breathtaking photos of lots and lots of bones! Four stars

The Adventures of Hergé, Bocquet, Fromental, Barthélémy
Not a linear biography, but 2-4 page bits of his life at a time. Informative and the ligne claire art is a great tribute. Four stars.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Slate & Fleischer-Camp
Book version of the short film, but with paintings based on the stop-motion photos. Doesn’t translate well. One star.

Redefining Marriage to Be About Love

Say, do you want to destroy traditional marriage? Sure, you say, but I can’t gay-marry, I’m already married to someone of a different gender, or hope to be some day. What can I do? I say you can do plenty! Here are some helpful strategies you can try in your own home, inferred from the talking points on an anti-same-sex-marriage pressure group’s web site. (I’m not going to link to them, but dollars to doughnuts you’ll be hearing their thoughts sometime soon. Gross.)

1. Don’t have kids.
Even delaying having children may be sufficient to destroy traditional marriage, since this is apparently the only reason you’d want to spend any length of time or emotional commitment on interacting with another adult.

2. If you already have kids, have a hobby or other adult interest in common with your spouse that doesn’t involve the children.
Try to spend a little bit of each week making it clear that you have a non-reproductive reason to live. Maybe go see an R rated film and then drink an alcoholic beverage while discussing topics that bore children.

3. Be a person of color who doesn’t hate.
For some reason, depriving someone of civil rights is totally OK if you heard one time that a black person had the same impulse. Now not being a complete dick is another delightfully easy way to destroy marriage!

4. Be a single dad.
Make it abundantly clear that you don’t need to have a religious contract with a god and a woman to take care of your own flesh and blood. Give your kid a bath, feed them breakfast, or just hang out together.

5. Be a dad.
You may not even need to be single to destroy marriage while driving the carpool van! Simply parenting of your own free will without any apparent pressure or threats proves that it’s possible!

6. Be a single mom.
Did you know that denying marriage to same-sex couples was so “women don’t get stuck with the enormous disadvantages of parenting alone”? If the reverse is true, your mere existence will make same-sex marriage happen!

7. Use gay love in your different-gender relationships.
The love between two people of the same gender is radically different from the love between two people of varied genders. Try using gay love for a day, a week, or even longer! Spice up your weekend! Alternate and see if your partner can tell which kind of love you are feeling for them at that moment!

8. Use gay-parent love on your kids.
Try feeling the kind of love a gay woman or man feels toward their child on your own offspring. Like Folger’s crystals, see if they notice! Go to a parent-teacher meeting or to the park while feeling the way a gay dad feels about his kids!

9. Bedroom fun.
Do something with your partner that doesn’t lead to procreation, if you catch my drift and I think you do. Anything other than Tab A into Slot B! This makes sure that no babies are born, ever, to anyone.

10. Alone time.
Bedroom fun on your own may lead to the end of all civilization, traditional marriage included! Disrupts space-time so that some people were never born in the first place.

11. Swap mom and dad roles.
It will either be a refreshing change of pace or exactly the damn same.

12. Both parents act like a mom or both act like a dad.
This will also probably be undetectable to the kids, but will destroy most traditional marriages within a 3 mile radius.

13. Make your roles in your marriage or partnership interchangeable.
Is there someone in your relationship who is always in charge, always has the last word and rules with an iron fist? I bet there isn’t! If you relate to your partner with love and respect and act as though you are both capable adults, you’ve been doing this one all along!

14. Spade-calling
A helpful tip from the introduction to the anti-gay talking points is the admission that using the phrase Ban Same Sex Marriage while they are trying to ban same sex marriage “causes us to lose about ten percentage points in polls.” So perhaps we can work that phrase into discussions of these legislatively-mediated slo-mo hate crimes as often as possible. Fun!

Bringing back the Bastard

Joseph Backholm, filing a referendum against same-sex marriage said today “There are lots of meaningful relationships that are not called marriage. Marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman and the children they raise.”

Does the inclusion of children mean that Backholm also wishes to make a legal distinction between children born in a marriage and those that are not? Or is under the impression that this is already the case?

But not English-Bengali

Some intriguing definitions from the Samsbad Bengali-English Dictionary, marooned among words in an alphabet I cannot read, with no page numbers because I can’t read those either:

  • a sound as of munching; confused noise as of hot discussion or incessant prattling.
  • possessing catlike brownish eyes
  • the sound of biting off or cutting off (esp. suddenly) a portion of a hard thing at one stroke; a snapping sound; an imaginary sound made by an ant when it pricks.
  • the part of the loin-cloth which the wearer tucks behind him between his legs.
  • a necklace of the twigs of holy basil worn by Vaishnabas.
  • to set a thief to catch a thief
  • a beggar’s bowl or drinking bowl made of cocoanut shell
  • the sound of clapping thunder or the fracture of a bone.
  • a letter (of the alphabet) written badly
  • to cast one’s horoscope from hypotheses or insufficient or uncertain data.

I may have to find my own copy to use as a sort of divining tool.

More Apple License Info

This is now old news, but this post has been in draft for several months.
From the 5.0 license agreement:

When you use Siri, the things you say will be recorded and sent to Apple to process your requests. Your device will also send Apple other information, such as your first name and nickname; the names, nicknames, and relationship with you (e.g., “my dad”) of your address book contacts; and song names in your collection (collectively, your “User Data”)

Granted, they add

All of this data is used to help Siri understand you better and recognize what you say. It is not linked to other data that Apple may have from your use of other Apple services.

I don’t remember this from last time, though it would not have caught my eye last time, either:

9. Digital Certificates. The iOS Software contains functionality that allows it to accept digital certificates either issued from Apple or from third parties. YOU ARE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR DECIDING WHETHER OR NOT TO RELY ON A CERTIFICATE WHETHER ISSUED BY APPLE OR A THIRD PARTY. YOUR USE OF DIGITAL CERTIFICATES IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, APPLE MAKES NO WARRANTIES OR REPRESENTATIONS, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, AS TO MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE, ACCURACY, SECURITY, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT OF THIRD PARTY RIGHTS WITH RESPECT TO DIGITAL CERTIFICATES.