#that their identity is causing them (maybe poor wording... more like issues society is causing due to the identity)

[joshuamj]

i am Blind to basically anything I'm not familiar with, so i still don't know anythin about In Stars and Time. Could you give some info on it??? i am looking for games to play rn....

hmmm okay.. I will say, going in blind is best! I went in knowing literally only 3 things. 1) that it was about a timeloop, 2) that it was entirely monochrome, and 3) that this one character I had seen once was in it (Mirabelle, didn't know her name, just that she existed). And going in with such little knowledge was great, I'd highly recommend

But if you want more, then here's a bit more.. (mostly a synopsis of stuff you'll figure out early on, no major spoilers)

Obviously its a story about a timeloop! In the game, your party is a group trying to save the world from someone simply known as "the King" who is freezing the entire country in time. Interestingly, the game takes place at the end of your journey. The entire party has been assembled and have known each other, you've journeyed across the country, collected items that'll allow you to enter where the King awaits. All thats left to do is go through where he's holed up and defeat him. Also interestingly, you don't play as the protagonist of this story I've just mentioned. A girl named Mirabelle is the chosen one, blessed by her god, she is unable to be frozen in time, and has taken it upon herself to save her country. Yet, you aren't playing as her. You're playing as someone named Siffrin, just one of her party members, and one that says that they're only here because "they have nothing better to do." This should be Mirabelle's story, but you quickly realize why it isn't. Not long into the game, Siffrin's life unexpectedly comes to an end, and the fact that there's a timeloop afoot becomes apparent. Nobody but you and one strange mystery person (named "Loop" of all things) are aware of the loops. In the game you'll do all that you can to make it to the King and defeat him and keep your friends safe, no matter how many deaths, no matter how much time. But thing's aren't that simple you'll find!

Also this game is about a timeloop, so as you may guess, there's a lot of death involved so warnings for lots of death (including suicide), and also warnings for Really Bad Mental Health Stuff, as you may also guess, being trapped in a timeloop isn't good for your mental health. Check the warnings for the game if you think you may need to!

[the-moon-will-mourn]

now i haven't finished the dream thieves yet (i'm like,,, 7 chapters away from finishing) and i think this may contain spoilers???? but i'm not too sure yet. i'm basically gonna word vomit. i'm sorry for not using any quotes, i wish i could but i only have the ebook version and a very limited storage space on my phone where i can only have ~two books downloaded

like a normal person, i enjoy listening to video essays, see what creators want to explain to their audience and leave with a certain view, try to come to my own arguments about certain points in the videos, see if i can apply some points to other aspects of my life etc etc. (this was the type of shi that helped me with my eng lit essays rip i miss alevels) and like a normal british citizen i looked up stuff about classism in the uk. in the end, i found a video essay about classism in general and how the ultra rich try to mimic being poor to get away from their hard issues that comes with being rich (which, frankly, is probably a lot less compared to someone who is working class).

recently, i was talking to my friend about specifics in the book about certain characters and i remember we went onto the convo of making music playlists for the characters. they said "it's gonna be hard for adam [...] cuz his whole thing is about being unknowable" and it always struck me with how unknowable he truly is when reading his character because his character is intrinsically linked to his working class background. (context: i'm a middle class child of immigrants who built themselves in the uk)

it's very clear the kind of social commentary stiefvater wanted to make using adam's character with how isolating and alienating it can be coming from a working class background trying to assimilate yourself into a society of those protected and privileged enough to not have any problems with accessing opportunities. how class is a huge obstacle between interpersonal relationships and feeling safe enough to be vulnerable with your issues with being working class. how difference in class can cause one-sided shame because of the meritocratic society we're living in. how, no matter how much money you earn or how many connections you can make, your attachment to your working class identity can be enough reason to aim for something supernaturally larger than yourself.

it's evident that other characters overlook adam's social class because he's a "self-made man" (or smth) and mainly because he's their friend: adam. however, when we get a chapter in his pov, class is a driving factor in how he interacts and views everyone. we can see the privilege gansey and ronan have for being able to not even consider class as an intimidating aspect about themselves to a normal person, but it's everything to adam in the sense that he feels like his earned money doesn't give him access to a similar respect.

now that i truly think about it, it was a good idea for adam not to join them in monmouth manufacturing because it just feels like they're... mocking him in an indirect way? they have the ability to choose to live in a nice place and instead chose to live in a random, run-down building because it seemed aesthetic. adam was forced to live in a rundown trailer because that's all they could have afforded. i know gansey had good intentions for wanting adam to join them, but everything that he likes as an aesthetic (monmouth manufacturing, the run-down camaro, eating mint leaves instead of gum) can seem like he's flaunting the fact he can choose that lifestyle without any consequences.

back to the point of the meritocratic society (which we usually assume in books that take place in a similar world as our own) creating shame because of their class: the assumption that because someone has worked hard to earn what they have gives them a right to be proud. but this is the opposite for adam as he fights with the fact that he could have maybe be seen as even more equal to gansey if he had just been born with wealth.

we can frame it as, maybe, despite gansey's desire to appear working class, it only broadens the distance between him and adam. it only worsens adam's difficult relationship with his class shame despite probably wanting to be more relatable or even laid-back.

when reading the second book after his sacrifice, i was confused as to why adam was so un-adam-like. i mean, in the first book i didn't really understand him because of his huge insistance that his class makes him inherently inferior to everyone he surrounds himself with and i don't see class as an issue myself.

however, his sacrifice basically was watering the seed of ambition that was planted when he decided to aim for aglionby. it becamse clearer to me how much this opportunity to be superior, even if it's supernatural and terrifying, is important for him understanding in what he thinks he lacks. by those thoughts of what he lacks, he thought that this chance to be cabeswater's channel could be a way to compensate for his inferior social class. or something.

anyways, thank you for coming to my ted talk. this is not proofread, and my sister keeps nagging at me to shower. also i simp for gansey do not think this is me trying mischaracterising him i'm just trying to understand the theme of class in this series and having gansey as a figure to compare to is literally integral.

[intrulogical]

logan’s spotify playlist analysis

just a few (not really) thoughts i’ve garnered from the logan spotify playlist. fair warning, i have not heard of any of these songs before so i can be incorrect in interpreting some of the lyrics but hey, i’m trying my best, give ya girl a chance. i’ll also analyze the songs in order. summaries of my interpretations for each song is near at the end of the post! if you want to add anything, feel free to reply or reblog with your addition!

(one note, i won’t analyze the other sides’s playlist. i only did this because logan is my favorite, but if you want another analysis, i might do remus only if he gets one.) 

big thanks to the logang discord who talked to me about the spotify playlist and my friend jana for proofreading this and letting me ramble to them! the analysis is below the cut. word count: 8300.

edit: apparently two songs aren’t available in my country, so i wasn’t able to see them right away to be added on this analysis. please check this post for the analysis of the songs what i do for u and the watchtower.

reblogging is highly appreciated!!! i worked rlly hard on this!!

tw: lots of logan angst, mentions of repression of emotions, mentions of lack of self esteem, and there’s a mention of suicide/depresion at the song “one more time with feeling” but i’ll mention it on the bullet so you know which part to skip!

the description of the playlist written by logan is interesting: “I was impelled to compile this selection of songs. I don’t entirely understand some of the lyrics, but I still found them compelling. Listen, or don’t.” the “listen, or don’t” part really suggests many things. one idea you can gain from that is that logan is probably ashamed of the songs he selected, even if he liked them, because it could be dubbed as “childish” but another thought i got is that the playlist confesses a lot of logan’s insecurities and personal issues, which might make him hesitant to present this to us because he’s not used to expressing himself and is probably scared of what others may think of him.

moreover, logan admitting he didn’t understand some of the lyrics sound a bit like a lie to me. while some songs could be difficult to understand without the lyrics, they all connect to something about logan, and to me, it’d make more sense that logan is hesitating to admit that some lyrics resonate with him because the lyrics connect to his personal identity/issues and he is definitely covering it up by saying he just vibes with the song’s aesthetic.

starting off, the elements by tom lehrer gives us the general idea about logan. he’s smart, he’s intelligent, he probably knows a lot more than what thomas knows which is weird but it works because it’s logan. 

additionally, i just found out on genius.com that the song was meant to introduce the elements of the periodic table to an audience with a catchy tune so it can be remembered easily. this could imply that when thomas is learning something rather difficult, logan’s there to find different ways to teach thomas the lesson which thomas can easily adapt to. 

white & nerdy by “weird al” yankovic is one of the few songs in logan’s playlist that’s in the form of a rap. before we dive into this song, i’d like to mention that logan picking very fast-paced songs are very interesting because i feel like raps and fast-paced songs resemble logan’s thought process. like remus, i feel like logan has an influx of thoughts and ideas that run across his head at any given time. fast songs could easily represent how much logan is thinking because raps can easily inform listeners about a lot of ideas and thoughts in one quick moment.

anyway, back to white & nerdy, first thing’s first: logan is an absolute nerd, but he also wants to be perceived as cool. this song practically screams “tryhard nerd is trying to be hip with the kids” and logan could probably relate to that on a spiritual level.

lyrics that probably stand out from this song would be the “I wanna bowl with the gangstas / But, oh well, it's obvious I'm white and nerdy” which is repeated throughout the song with the verbs changed in every chorus. “They see me strollin', they laughin' / And rollin' their eyes 'cause I'm so white and nerdy” could imply that the way logan is trying to be “cool” is failing because no matter what, everyone will still see him as a “nerd” above all else. because of this, it’s hard for him to relate and communicate with the other sides because the way he expresses himself could be something perceived as weird to the other sides. logan is just that different with the others, maybe you can suggest he’s the odd one out.

(this is probably also why in dwit, when he was called “cool”, he let out a disbelieving noise. he just wants to be seen as cool while also being himself and in dwit, he achieved that. the flashcards logan uses across the series is supposed to make him look “cool” but in dwit, he didn’t use any of that at all, being himself throughout the episode, and at the end, he was finally called “cool” for being himself.)

also, this may be a stretch, but if the other sides are supposed to be the “gangstas” he wants to roll with, that also can imply that logan doesn’t think lowly of the other sides. rather, he thinks of them as cool as well, and he wants to be just like them.

algorhythm by childish gambino is a very interesting song and a song that might be a bit difficult to understand (poor me with my bilingual problems) but an interesting take i found on genius.com helped me understand the context of the song. i will explain the song first before discussing how it connects to logan because this song is so smart. the song’s verses display apprehension as many of the lyrics question the validity of humanity and our society. the verses are intentionally distorted and inaudible because these statements oppose what could be deemed as acceptable in the society. the reason it is portrayed this way is because the person is afraid to be the odd one out in a society who thinks otherwise, despite how correct this one person is while the rest of the society isn’t. the chorus, while it could be perceived as something fun, talks about how majority of the society would choose to be ignorant about what is truly happening in our society and they would often follow whatever is popular, trendy, or fun; that is what the “algorhythm” really means. the chorus demands us to follow whatever is being said, to move our body exactly how society expects us to move. we follow the pattern that society deems is good, no matter how many problems still persist in the society. that is why the chorus is the most audible part of the song, why be hesitant when whatever you’re doing is something that the society loves doing as well? the song repeats “the algorhythm is perfect, mmh” twice, and it is expressed by the person who is having questioning thoughts about the algorhythm. this implies that no matter what, you will succumb to whatever society demands of you, and anything, especially the thoughts of one person against many, would not be able to change that.

now, how does this connect to logan? there are two main things i’d love to discuss: 1.) logan being the odd one of the group as his beliefs and thoughts are often brushed aside as they contradict what the other three core sides believe. and; 2.) while sometimes correct, the other three core sides in certain situations could offer the wrong solutions for problems without knowing they are negatively impacting thomas. logan’s the person questioning the society, the other core sides are the majority who can sometimes be ignorant of what could truly be the best solution for problems that arise, and thomas is the one who blindly follows what the majority presents as solutions, consequently making some of his problems worse. 

now for the first point: logan usually is the most insightful whenever there is a problem that needs to be dealt with. it’s already known that he wants to be listened to so badly, and this song implies that he feels disregarded for thinking differently, even if it’ll benefit thomas immensely. an example would be in dwit wherein patton and virgil wouldn’t stop doubting and cutting him off whenever he tries to help thomas. the song is implying that because of how he is the odd one out in the group, he is starting to become more apprehensive about what he thinks because he feels like he’s wrong most of the time. it implies that he thinks it’d be easier to succumb to what the others think is right rather than to think his own opinions are important. just like in the song, logan is “(Moving how they say so)” because at some point, he gives in to the idea that he is incorrect and wrong, and is beginning to adapt to what the majority thinks is right.

for the second point, i don’t want to suggest i’m berating the other three core sides when in reality, those three are also very important to thomas, but then again, those three aren’t the most flexible when accepting suggestions that come from logan. while the three don’t always agree on certain solutions, they agree more with each other compared to agreeing to solutions suggested by logan. when thomas sees this, he might think that because more sides agree with one idea, maybe it’s better to go with the majority, and that pushes logan away more despite his contributions actually being useful to the group.

okay, this is added last minute because i got the thought really late but i think we should recognize this as the event that pushed logan to start having higher expectations for himself. the previous song shows us he wants to be perceived as cool, but the next song shows us he wants to be perceived as perfect. the problem logan had with himself definitely evolved for the worse and i think this song shows us what pushed logan to be so nitpicky about how un-perfect he is.

fitter happier by radiohead has a very direct message and its connection to logan is the same with the message they are trying to say on its own. this song showcases the high expectations logan has for himself to be the most perfect side for thomas, when in reality, the list of things described in the song ironically doesn’t describe how we can become the “most perfect” human; it describes how we can be the most inhuman thing in the world. if anything, the list of activities only makes us more machine than human, which is why the song is spoken through a robotic voice. the connection to logan is really easy to make here: logan thinks that pushing himself to strictly follow a certain itinerary would be beneficial for him in the hopes that he can be the most perfect version of himself for thomas, when in reality, it’s unrealistic as it only encourages the repression of his negative emotions. moreover, this song implies that logan needs to understand that he is allowed to be free and to make mistakes because no human can ever be perfect. all he’ll end up doing is abuse himself if he continued down this path of repression and strict planning for himself. to be the best version of yourself means it’s okay to make mistakes, and it’s important to learn from them, and if you follow this toxic planning for yourself, you’ll only end up being trapped.

medicine by STRFKR gave me a bilingual headache because this song is kind of difficult to understand, even more than algorhythm. someone in genius.com mentioned that “Never Remember / Your Birthday” is actually wrong, and rather, it should be “ Never Remember / You’re perfect / Or anything you like”. the song itself talks about philosophy, saying you can never be perfect because if you realize that you are perfect, you become egotistical and you lose interest in learning more if you realize you’re “perfect”. logan would never, ever want to lose interest in learning-- that’s his entire being, damnit! logan wouldn’t be a person who’d want to disregard the importance of learning. because of this, the song implies logan recognized  the fact that he can never be perfect, albeit quite hesitantly,  but he still aims to be the best he can be for thomas.

the song states that while we cannot be perfect, we can still be curious and hungry for knowledge, and that would be a good substitute for aiming to be perfect. curiosity is the medicine being talked about in the song, and if logan can’t be perfect, at least he can be curious because in that way, logan can learn, logan can educate himself, and logan would be knowledgeable enough for thomas.

the breach by clipping. implies that logan is the most rational side who knows how to keep everything steady. while i won’t get into details of what the song is about, the song is rapped by a computer white a problem is occuring in the space ship they are in. just like the computer, logan is the side who oftentimes knows the correct approach for any given problem, but tends to complicate how he expresses his statements. i believe this song expresses how analytical logan is and how he requires himself to be the most specific he can be at any given moment. same points that i mentioned earlier could be applied again here: despite how intricate logan can be, the other sides need to listen to him more because whatever he’s saying isn’t just useless jargon. he does make valid statements and the other sides need to listen to him more or else, just like at the end of the song, everything can become utter chaos.

just one more thing to add-- while i am unfamiliar with the album, i read the genius.com annotations for the lyrics and it mentioned that the computer, who is a character in the album, slowly becomes more human-like over the course of the story. in this song, which is the beginning of the album, we can easily interpret the computer as an over-analyzing unemotional machine, but over time, they get to become more human and think past their coding. they get to develop their own emotions and they get to become  something more than a logical device. see a connection with logan? this implies that logan’s arc will involve himself being able to differentiate himself as an individual and himself as logic. while he is thomas’s logic, he needs to allow himself to be his own person and have his own personality. (i wonder how that’ll mix in with the “i’m not perfect enough” problem logan has)

letter c by zach sherwin depicts logan’s frustration from being made fun of. the line “Hey you know the only difference between ‘rap’ and ‘crap?’ It’s the letter C” basically implies that someone told logan that his passions and interests are synonymous to shit. throughout the series, while logan’s passions aren’t directly invalidated, he has been called nicknames often, and also is doubted from time to time whenever he expresses something to the others. but the thing is, teaching others, educating others-- that’s what logan is passionate about, and the fact that a lot of the others are disinterested by what he says would undoubtedly make logan frustrated, like what happens in the song. 

however, logan is not good at comebacks unless it was planned in advanced, but this song gives us a good idea of logan’s thought process whenever he gets insulted. we know he keeps a notebook of everything said to him that is deemed as stupid (embarrassing phases ep i think?) and we can understand that insults really get to him and sticks to him deeply. he overthinks about them; he ponders about them.

other than that, having no comebacks also make logan feel ashamed of himself (which is suggested at the end of the song) because not only would he look stupid to the others, he would also look uncool or un-perfect, and he really doesn’t want to be perceived as either.

galaxy song from monty python  is honestly just adorable. while it is sad to see that logan probably doesn’t seek comfort in other people, he does seek comfort in the stars. he is very passionate about astronomy, and while i doubt thomas took the astronomy class logan desperately wanted him to take, logan still hasn’t given up on astronomy like thomas did. while some might be scared of the idea that we are a mere speck in the universe that extends infinitely, logan is fascinated by it. logan loves knowledge, logan loves learning, and he is very fond of astronomy mostly because the knowledge he can earn is unlimited. additionally, he finds worth in himself because he was born in a universe filled with many stars and planets that he finds fascinating, and i think that’s adorable.

streaks by ANIMA! depict thomas’s and logan’s shared development throughout the years, especially when thomas was still a teenager. while there are many hardships growing up, these hardships were detrimental for thomas to understand himself further, and it is all thanks to logan for helping thomas make sense of everything. here, logan highly values education, thinking of it as a crucial part of thomas’s future. the song suggests that logan has planned for thomas’s future for a very long time, and he is convinced that whatever thomas is going through in school will help benefit logan’s plans for thomas. once thomas left school, particularly college, he has learnt everything he needs for a brighter future. all of this knowledge and development is thanks to logan, and the lines “Throw em in the water / They will sink or float / If you don't then you will never know” speak of the process of how logan was able to gain information and knowledge that thomas would apply for himself in the future. this knowledge isn’t limited to academic knowledge-- it’s about his social life, about his personal self, it’s everything thomas has learned. everything thomas knows now is thanks to logan.

okay but here comes the angst. the line “You're a smart kid, tough kid, but you're still a kid that grew” implies so much. firstly, we can recognize that logan probably has had a long time plan for thomas’s future and his career since he was a teenager, and he expects thomas to follow this plan right after college because he expects that at this point, thomas has fully come to understand himself and he needs to put all this progress and development into good use. what he didn’t expect is that thomas was still developing, still changing, and is still “a kid that grew” despite graduating. as we know, thomas mostly does youtube/theatre for a living, and it probably pained logan that all this planning he has turned out pointless. but even if thomas changed career plans right after college, the chorus repeating again implies that logan is still helping thomas develop. he still makes plans for thomas, he contributes ideas for thomas to place in his videos, and most importantly, he ensures a successful life for thomas, no matter what.

erase me by ben folds five is easily one of the angstiest songs on the playlist. in the song, the singer is trying to sing about a breakup and how their ex treats the singer as worthless. if we want to envision this in logan’s perspective, the song would be talking about the fragile relationship logan has with the other sides. the song describes their home together as “Paper not stone” which implies that their relationship was shaky, was unstable, and it was no surprise for logan that they eventually left him. yea, it wasn’t logan who left, but it was the others. this is implied by the line “And when you pulled your half away”. 

even if it is implied that the others left him first, the song still suggests that logan cares deeply about them. but even if he cares about the others, he questions his worth nonstop, evident in like… the whole song. the song is called “erase me”, so it’s no surprise that logan blames himself in this situation and would even think of himself as the problem. it’s clear in the song that logan still deeply cares about the others, and their opinions on him still affect him gravely. the last line “And if you feel nothing, guess what I wanna be? Nothing.” implies that logan highly considers what the others say towards him, and sometimes would treat it as fact. if the others think nothing of him then maybe, he is nothing. throughout the series, logan has been repeatedly insulted and made fun of and while he becomes defensive, the songs in this playlist show that he does listen to the others and their criticisms of him, and he wants to change himself because of it.

while logan ponders deeply about the insults said to him, the song shows us that the others don’t think much of it. the song actually implies they’ve replaced logan as if he were some utility and acted nothing of it. they don’t realize the emotional pain they’ve inflicted unto logan and he knows this. logan recognizes that they don’t consider his worth. additionally, the line “Go and call the cops now, baby” sort of implies that thomas is also in on this and has heard of what the others said about logan and is siding with the others. 

not only does logan feel incredibly sad by this, it’s obvious that logan is also very angry. he’s angry that the others think of him as useless, he’s angry that the others think he’s replaceable, and while he does listen to their jabs at times, he similarly just wants to prove them wrong. while the line “Erase me” can depict him succumbing to their jeers, this could also be about logan thinking of a way that’ll make the others realize his worth. the lines “We know that you don’t seem to think about what you need ‘til you reach to find that you’ve erased me.” suggests that the others can only understand his worth if logan erases himself completely. while the others pushed him away, they haven’t really erased him completely, but they just simply avoided him. if logan actually is gone, or maybe if he… ducks out, the others might realize what big of a mistake they’ve committed.

(honestly, it also must be frustrating for logan that the only way he can prove his worth is to disappear from the others. is his efforts just not good enough for them?)

also, at this point of the playlist, it is quite evident that logan is not emotionless. he has emotions, but clearly… they aren’t positive ones. many of these songs already tell us of logan’s problems: he isn’t listened to enough, he’s been left behind, he’s frustrated with himself, he wants to appear cool to the others, etc. and what’s worse is that he’s dealing with all these problems alone. one of the reasons he probably is repressing his emotions besides wanting to be “perfect” for thomas is that he does not want to reveal how much negative emotions have flooded him because of the other sides. he doesn’t want the others to be hurt just like how they hurt him.

now, art is dead by bo burnham definitely speaks of logan’s thoughts on art, and how flawed he believes roman and thomas’s artistry is. logan would define art as something you can be passionate about with money never being a factor of how great you are performing. in logan’s opinion, roman’s way of creating art is flawed. he views roman’s passion as something fake. instead of being the artist roman thinks he is, logan thinks of him as someone merely egotistical and selfish, someone who’s immature and craves attention. and while this might be harsh on logan’s part, i also think logan recognizes that this egotistical side roman is showing is most likely fake. in the lines “It’s all an illusion / I’m wearing makeup”, and “My drug’s attention / I am an addict / But I get paid to indulge in my habit”, logan understands that perhaps, roman is hiding under a facade. moreover, logan recognizes the danger behind roman endlessly craving attention from others. logan understands that there is a negative side to roman’s need for attention because roman needs to understand that he is valid even without other people praising him; roman relying on attention to measure his value is only going to ruin himself and his self-esteem. while i think the song has many messages behind it (please god help me because i don’t know how to explain this song well), i think this song discusses how despite loathing roman at some times, he is trying his best to understand him. while some parts downright insult roman, some parts show that logan understands roman is hurting.

another interpretation i’ve got is this song shows logan’s views on thomas becoming an entertainer. he thinks that the career he has now is undignifying and embarrassing. logan expresses that people who are entertainers or artists have stopped creating art because of it being their passion; rather, logan thinks these people do it because it’s a cheap way to earn money quickly. in this way, logan feels like the career he has now is unsatisfying because it all feels like a cheat to him. in the song, they state the unfairness of how rich entertainers are despite being lazy compared to people who work in drugstores, aiming to help people the best they can 24/7 with low pay. another lyrics you can use to describe logan’s frustration with how unsatisfied he is with this lifestyle would be the line “Cause I wanted my name in lights / When I could have fed a family of four / For forty fucking fortnights / Forty fucking fortnights.”. but even if logan feels undignified, he succumbs to the fact that he’s trapped being this kind of artist, but it’s obvious he isn’t too happy about it. 

equation by hans zimmer & camille is unexpectedly depressing. this song is most likely sung from the perspective of a child growing up, overwhelmed by how much they have to learn before they reach adulthood. this entire song depicts a child asking questions which are supposed to make them look “grownup” enough, hoping they are on the right path for a successful future. i think this song depicts the stress logan experienced when thomas was approaching adulthood because everyone practically depended on him for thomas to have a successful life. this acknowledges the only time logan has felt overwhelmed by the influx of knowledge he had to learn just so he can ensure thomas that everything will turn out okay. in the song, the singer asks a lot of questions that could be labelled as something “grownups” would do, which shows us that logan’s need to be professional all stemmed from him wanting to help thomas become successful in the future. but even if logan was able to plan for thomas’s future, there are some parts of the song that imply that logan longs for times he was a child again. it’s just… logan just grew up so fast, everyone relied on him at such a young age, and he never really enjoyed his childhood to the fullest. he wonders where his childhood went, and he patiently waits for the happiness he experiences as a child to come back again. then again, that happiness would never return, would it?

additionally, the lines “Have I made you cross? Have I made you sad? Have I made you proud, Mom?” imply that when logan was growing up, he was, most of the time, alone. he never really confided in others for any problems he had, and he preferred handling everything independently. nobody seemed to pay attention to him anyway, even if he really cares for the other sides. i know it’s been said before but logan really needs to gain more recognition for everything he’s done for thomas, and people really need to listen to him more.

while logan would never admit this now, i do think logan, as a child, was immensely overwhelmed by how much he thinks. just like remus, logan has an influx of thoughts and ideas going through his head, and when he didn’t understand it in the past, he probably wanted all of it to quiet down. his role as logic is tiring, and while logan understood this at a young age, i believe that growing up, he began to normalize this as it happens too frequently over the years, evident by how logan usually acts throughout the series. to this day, logan probably has many experiences where he feels exhausted or stressed, but he intentionally doesn’t tell the others about it because again, he thinks that being this stressed is a normal occurrence.

(this is probably why he doesn’t wanna open up with others in the series. while i think he is repressing emotions intentionally, i feel like sometimes, he just doesn’t admit he is stressed because he shrugs it off as a normal occurrence.)

sunrise from in the heights is one of the more unique songs in the playlist. yes yes i know, as a logince fan i am also screaming internally and externally but i do have a different explanation as to why logan placed this song in his playlist aside from him wanting to be closer to roman. this song displays a moment of someone learning, something logan is quite fond of. while the song displays an educational experience between two characters, it’s also very intimate. logan probably believes that to be able to achieve knowledge, you must disregard your feelings because it’ll only get in the way of learning. but this song shows that our emotions could be a motivator for us to learn. that’s what makes logan like this song. this song fascinates logan because in the song, benny, the guy who can’t speak spanish, is learning spanish because he loves nina, the girl teaching him spanish. it shows him that in learning, having feelings and emotions is completely valid, and it doesn’t restrict learning entirely. 

another thing i’d like to note is that songs like this that show a fascination in learning probably motivate logan to learn more. he is merely fascinated when he sees people being amused by education and learning, hence why he might have a fondness for the song. 

one more time with feeling by regina spektor is… sad. it talks about a patient recovering from their illness and coping with the sadness that comes with it. (tw: suicide/depression, please skip to the next bullet if you are triggered by this.) the illness being spoken about in the song would be depression and this shows us the aftermath of someone committing suicide. while i do not think logan would be depressed or suicidal, i do think the song is suggesting that logan is suffering something, and he thinks it’d be appropriate for himself to… erase himself. this is the second song in the playlist that implies logan would want to disappear because the others neglect him. the line “And the pride inside their eyes would synchronize into a love you’ve never known so much more than you’ve been shown” implies that the other sides will finally acknowledge logan if and only if he erases himself, duck out.

we can fully establish at this point that logan represses a lot of his emotions and the other sides know it too. the others, clearly evident in lntao, tries to help logan to stop repressing his emotions, but they aren’t really successful in teaching him. i think it’s mostly because the sides are being sympathetic rather than empathetic, and the sides think that their way of accepting their emotions would be a helpful way for logan to understand his emotions too. but the thing they don’t realize is that maybe, logan isn’t like them, and he can’t use the same ways they use because frankly, it doesn’t work. now, where in the song does this get implied? The lines “You thought by now you’d be so much better than you are / You thought by now they’d see that you had come so far.” suggests that logan did consider the advice of the other sides at some point. he tried to accept his emotions like the others said, he really thought that he might be able to get over his issues. but the wording of the song is really interesting because it says “You thought--” as if the person thought it would work, but it didn’t. additionally, the chorus at the end could be thought of as the advice logan is receiving from the other sides. but the lyrics “Hold on / One more time with feeling / Try it again, breathing’s just a rhythm” implies that the advice he’s getting isn’t working for him. it didn’t work for him, but he’s trying again because he doesn’t doubt the other sides, and if that doesn’t work, he’s trying again. then, the lyrics say, “Say it in your mind, until you know that the words are right.” which is a much more cynical line because they’re implying that if their advice doesn’t work, then logan just needs to try harder until it’s ingrained in his brain. the last line, “This is why we fight” could have a double meaning. one might think this is about fighting your inner demons to eventually overcome them. but this could also mean that the advice logan is receiving from the others isn’t working, and the fact that they push their advice so much unto him would be the reason why the sides and logan fight. in this sense, the lyric could mean “This, the uneffective advice I receive from you, is the reason why you (the others) and I (Logan) fight.”. to cut this short, the other sides need to be more empathetic in trying to understand logan’s issues because so far, all they’ve been doing is make assumptions for logan’s problems and offer solutions that might only work for themselves. for them to be able to help logan, they must put themselves in his shoes and understand logan better, or else they might just end up damaging him.

now, i do have a less depressing interpretation of this song which completely contradicts the last bullet point but i wanted to mention it because it made sense to me. while i did imply that the chorus could have some malicious intent behind it, we can also look at it in a positive light. this song in the playlist is the only one where we see logan possibly getting comforted by the other sides, and that would make sense seeing that the songs after this one would be about logan accepting himself for who he is. so, if we think of this song as the sides finally reaching out for logan, we can assume that at some point in the series, logan will reveal every problem he has to the other sides. at this point, instead of neglecting him, the sides are showing him love that he’s never seen before because they finally understand logan. sadly, their love and comfort would only be given only if they realize how bad logan is hurting, but at least he’s finally receiving the love that he desperately wanted.

in my mind by amanda palmer speaks of a topic similar to the songs medicine and fitter, happier because it sings about perfection. at this point, we can safely assume that logan is obsessed with precision and perfection, and he has aimed to be perfect for thomas for a very long time. problem is, he doesn’t realize how much he’s beating himself up from trying to achieve his perfect self. however, this song is the first one in the playlist which shows logan accepting that he can’t be perfect, and the person he is now is good enough for him and for the others. yes, medicine implies logan understands he cannot be perfect, but the song didn’t really give us that sense of resolution like this song does. i also think this song perfectly resembles how logan’s arc is going to look like. the song is split into four verses and each verse shows us the different stages of how sometimes, we want to be the perfect version of ourselves, but in the end, we realize we’re good enough for ourselves and for others.

anyway, focusing on the song, the first verse discusses logan’s high expectations for himself. the line “In a future five years from now / I’m a hundred and twenty pounds / And I never get hung over / Because I will be the picture of discipline” definitely shows it. he’s restricting himself because, implied by the lines “Never minding what state I’m in / And I will be someone I admire”, he isn’t satisfied with the person he is at the present. To further add to this, the line “And it’s funny how I imagined / That I would be that person now” explains that at some point, logan thought he was smart enough, he once thought he was “perfect”, but he realized that he wasn’t. he thought that he was enough, but no, something made him realized that he still had many flaws (cough algorhythm cough). the line “Maybe I’ve forgotten how to see / That I’m not exactly the person that I thought I’d be” shows him realizing that he wants to be better, he wants to improve himself. logan definitely has his own insecurities about his worth which makes him want to push himself more. 

verse two has the same implications as the first verse but i do believe it is showing the negative effects of wanting to be perfect more. this shows us logan getting used to controlling himself to strictly do things that he can only label as something that’ll help himself improve. this time, it’s stricter with the line “Because I will be the picture of discipline / Never fucking up anything” and it depicts how simple mistakes he commits would make him feel miserable. (cough this means the infinitesimal mistake probably pained him so much cough cough)

verse three shows us logan realizing that the perfect version he aims to be is actually… not so perfect. the lines “I’m so busy with everything / That I don’t look at anything” is logan getting a realization that he hates this. he hates aiming to be perfect, he hates how restricting himself, and this “perfect version” he aims to be is just bullshit. the lines “And it’s funny how I imagined / That I could be that person now / But that’s not what I wanted / If that’s what I wanted / Then I’d be giving up somehow / How strange to see / That I don’t wanna be the person that I want to be” suggest that logan realized that doing all this, aiming to be perfect, is hurting him. he didn’t want to be perfect. i also think that these lines show us that logan is finally prioritizing himself above all things because, evident in the songs before this, he always aimed to be perfect for others. he always saw himself as faulty and he always intended to fix himself. but this verse shows us that he realizes that he isn’t faulty, he isn’t a mistake, he isn’t someone who needs to improve. he realizes he’s in hurting and he gives in to it, realizing he just needs to give himself time to accept himself for who he is because again, he is enough.

the last verse has logan acknowledging that the “perfect version” he aims to accomplish is downright impossible. the lines “And maybe it’s funniest of all / To think I’ll die before I actually see / That I am exactly the person that I want to be.” shows logan finally acknowledging his self-worth. he finally admits he’s good enough, and laughs at his past self trying so hard to be perfect. he’s okay. he understands he’s good enough. (also i am very proud of him, you don’t understand how my heart is exploding rn)

not perfect by tim minchin has kind of the same message as the previous song. it’s quite heartwarming that at this point, logan’s starting to accept himself and he’s not afraid to say he isn’t perfect. in this song, the singer expresses the many things he holds dear in his life, and while he acknowledges that there are some flaws to everything, he still thinks of them fondly, telling us that no matter how un-perfect it is, it’s enough for him. there’s a repeated line of “It’s not perfect, but it’s mine” and it’s easy to say that logan is not only referring to himself, but he’s referring to the family he has as well. he’s been so hard on himself that whenever he sees a flaw in something, he immediately think it’s faulty. but here, he’s acknowledging that flaws are something normal, something okay to have, and instead of turning away from himself or the others, he begins to love himself and his family.

i think the most important verses would be the verses which sing about his body and his brain. it’s all gonna be repetitive, i know, but the lines “I spend so much time hating it [my body] but it never says a bad word about me” and “[This is my brain] where all my fucked up thoughts can hide / ‘Cause god forbid I hurt somebody” really emphasize how much logan struggled before he began to accept himself. while the first line suggests he struggled a lot with how he thinks of himself, the second speaks of how much thoughts he repressed because he wanted to be better for others. while i don’t think the thoughts are really “fucked up” like the lyric suggests, i think this mostly talks about his negative emotions and how he wanted to hide it from the others. but at the end, again, he eventually stops repressing his emotions and allows himself to let them out because it’s perfectly valid.

human by tank and the bangas has almost the same message as the previous two songs. what’s interesting is that logan uses knowledge and different facts to motivate himself to love himself. throughout the song, it tells us facts about our bodies which logan would definitely be fascinated by, and it’s soft to think that he values himself because he treasures the fact that we exist. we are made this way for a reason, everything in his body has been meticulously crafted to serve different purposes, and logan finds it amazing. not only does he use this to help motivate himself, but he uses this to love the other sides as well. in this song, it is implied that there has been a relationship that has gone wrong, and we can think of it as the friendship between logan and the others. while the relationship between logan and the others has been wonky, they will eventually make amends and be close again; logan just needs time to understand himself, to love himself, and when logan is finally okay, he and the other sides and start over. 

what i love about this song is not only is logan accepting himself but he is complimenting himself. while the last two songs are about him saying he’s enough, this song actually shows us that logan is starting to admire himself. he says he’s incredible and valuable, tougher than any superhero, and if that ain’t character development, i don’t know what is 

one last interesting bit is that these last three songs imply that logan honestly needs a break from everything. all this acceptance and loving yourself can only be achieved if logan takes a break from working. i think this implies logan will eventually isolate himself from the others in the series just for a few moments, just so he can finally help himself, and he can only reconnect with the others if and only if he takes care of himself first. 

time adventure from adventure time acknowledges eternalism wherein time is all an illusion and that there is no past or future, just the present tense. everything is currently set in the present, and whatever happened, happens, or is happening will exist forever because everything is set in the same time period which is the present. i think this song suggests that logan has already reconciled with himself and the others again and currently, he is happy with it. he uses this eternalism to emphasize how he treasures this moment of happiness so much. in this way, he can say that this happiness that he is experiencing right now will exist forever because it exists now. there’s not much more to say here than logan is finally happy, the others are happy with him, and he wants this moment of joy to happen forever. 

now that that’s over, i’m going to summarize my analysis of each song in the following bullet points so it can be easier to understand:

the elements by tom lehrer: logan values education and always aims make anything easily understandable for thomas.

white & nerdy by “weird al” yankovic: logan, while he is a nerd, also wants to appear as cool to fit in with the others.

algorhythm by childish gambino: logan feels like he’s being alienated by the group because he thinks differently from them, despite being correct.

fitter happier by radiohead: logan has high expectations for himself to be perfect but this also makes him feel trapped.

medicine by STRFKR: logan realizes being perfect means he might become lazy, and this first showcases logan questioning if aiming to be perfect is a valid thing to do. 

the breach by clipping.: logan is portrayed as someone who keeps control of everything thomas’s mind. without him, everything will disrupt into chaos.

letter c by zach sherwin: logan overthinks a lot about the insults he receives and wishes he can produce better comebacks so others might think he’s cool.

galaxy song from monty python: logan is fascinated by astronomy, bringing him comfort.

streaks by ANIMA!: thomas’s life being put-together is all thanks to logan. logan really should deserve more credit for building the person thomas is today.

erase me by ben folds five: logan feeds like he’s being disregarded and the others don’t know they are hurting him. he thinks erasing himself might make the others realize his worth, even if he sometimes lacks self-love.

art is dead by bo burnham: logan feels undignified with thomas’s career as an entertainer and he thinks roman is immature. then again, this song implies he wants to further understand roman.

equation by hans zimmer and camille: logan was stressed a lot when thomas was approaching adulthood and he thinks his job as logic is incredibly tough, making him miss it when thomas was a child, free of any responsibilities.

sunrise from in the heights: logan is fascinated by the fact that emotions can be a motivator for learning, something he has never thought of before.

one more time with feeling by regina spektor: the others finally understand what logan’s worth is when logan disappears, but the advice they give to him aren’t exactly the best but hey, they’re trying to reconcile with each other.

in my mind by amanda palmer: logan accepts the fact he can’t be perfect and the person he is now is enough.

not perfect by tim minchin: logan begins to understand that the most un-perfect thinks could be the things he loves the most, and he begins to love himself more, thinking it’s enough.

human by tank and the bangas: logan finds comfort in facts as it makes him feel more empowered. these facts make him fascinated with himself, as well as find fascination in the other sides.

time adventure from adventure time: he finally reconciles with the others, reconciles with himself, and he wants the happiness he feels now to exist forever.

now, thomas mentioned in a tweet to listen to them in order. i do think the playlist is meant to foreshadow what’s to happen to logan’s arc. these are a few thoughts that i have that might occur in logan’s arc:

all of logan’s problems definitely stem from him wanting to be cool enough for the other sides. because he wants to be perceived as cool and the others don’t really think of him that way, he begins devaluing himself. this problem eventually evolves, and instead of wanting to be cool, logan wants to be absolutely flawless, and he is abusing himself because of it.

roman is definitely someone with a crucial role in logan’s arc. this playlist references roman more than the other sides and while i don’t know what his role is, i do think he is one of the main people who will help logan during his arc.

with songs like erase me and one more time with feeling, i have a very heavy feeling that logan will duck out or disappear. he did get the epiphany that the others will only see his worth if he is gone, and this might happen during his arc.

ONE LAST THING: thomas tweeted this: 

it is suspicious to me that he says that this is only PART of the reason why. there is a bigger reason to why logan didn’t put crofters the musical on his playlist, and i can only think of two reasons why. one would be he didn’t want to hurt roman since it was evident that logan respects the other sides, especially roman. another is that he isn’t embarrassed by his singing per se, but he is embarrassed with himself. he was too immature, too incompetent, and because logan longs to be perfect, he might consider crofters the musical as a mistake he committed. 

(also, if logan is ashamed of not putting crofters the musical and is hesitant to show us this playlist, does he mean he still is suffering now?)

anywho, conclusion: logan is sad, give him some love, and i hope he knows we love him for who he is. remember that my interpretation is my interpretation, not in any form fact, so if i’m wrong, i’m wrong, and that’s okay! again, feel free to add anything to this and have your own interpretations because i’d love to hear them!

[rumandtimes]

“Bossypants” by Tina Fey: A pre-view

Luigina Cecchina-Tarquina

Assoc. Lifestyle Contributor

When I picked up Tina Fey’s book, I knew little more of her reputation than as a female comedian. I expected a chuckle and some depiction of a woman’s take on the world of hollywood success — I would not have expected to come across a racist book that struggles to relay a single joke while recounting the life of a southern woman’s bygone teenage years, but then, what would one expect from a cast member of “saturday night live”.

For those who are even aware of Saturday Night: Live (SNL), it is common knowledge that Tina Fey, and saturday night live for that matter, are controversial figures in american media. It seems to be a split right down american society: people who find Tina Fey “L-O-L” funny, and people who find her humour unsufferable; people who tolerate the blatant racism of snl and 30rock as “satire,” and those who have had enough of the denigration, minstrels, slurs, and tropes for cheap comedic effect.

I know Tina Fey is a comedian — a clown — and sets out to prick peoples ears and widen people’s eyes. To quote another comedy critic, I do not seek to come off as someone wilfully misunderstanding humour and repeatedly not getting the joke.

Yet the illusion of that decision is for those who do not remember that Bill Murray had a sketch on snl, where he dreamed about “turning from ‘brown’ to ‘white’”, and the more recent habit of snl writers hiring minorities as comedians to attack themselves on the show with slurs, because it would look less objectionable than if the writers denigrated those actors or people themselves. In Tina Fey’s book, she states that “As a Greek,” she would “only date a ‘white’ man, such as a redneck” inexplicably fond of camouflage.

But to quote that same critic again, humour has a goal; It has an audience. When engineered to subvert expectations and play to the common denominator, jokes have a base which they are founded upon. If that baseline for the comedian or writer, like Fey, is a bedrock of deep-seated racism, which the comedian exploits rather than lampoons, it is no longer a humorous observation, but a cheap, racist ploy servicing an already receptive racist base.

Tina Fey saying she would only date in a certain imaginarily-defined group is racist. Full stop.

Fey going on to say she would date even the lowest, “redneck,” in that category, before anyone else in the world is not less racist — as Fey probably expected her statement to be received (by deprecating people of European-descent with ethnic slurs like “redneck” or “hillbilly” or “honche”, rather than solely praising their racist memes) — but it is more racist, as Fey is simultaneously using racism to make fun of her suitors, and again using racism to elevate even them above anyone and everyone else.

Not to “belabour the point,” as Fey would appreciate, or focus on one bad joke: but Fey’s joke is playing to long-festered notions of racism, colonialism, and rogue supremacism, which Fey buys into rather than challenges, where Fey herself puts (1) any “Aryans” above (2) rich Europeans, (3) Greeks above poor Europeans, and (4) poor Europeans above (5) the rest of the living world. It is inane — and stupid — but a strongly held delusion among groups (1) through (5), and probably strongest among groups (2) to (4).

Fey happily plays with this unholy flame of racism, undergirded by genocide in her native South, fuelled by the segregation in Fey’s own high school, and leaving embers of anti-marriage laws across the American East.

That is not to say racism, colonialism, genocide, holocaust, mob rule, political repression, et alia, are not to be joked about — they are the most popular comedic material in the United States (even if only in the United States). But these topics are deadly serious, and not as distant and abstract as we would like them to be.

There is a real possibility, given their frequency and recency, that anyone who read the first edition of Fey’s book, or attended same secondary school, committed a hate crime, using the exact same rhetoric Fey employs as a “joke.” Not only that, Fey never says it is a joke — there is no punchline.

The only reason I give Tina Fey the benefit-of-the-doubt and assume she was not serious about what she said is because the statements where so outrageous and absurd that someone would have to be insane to print them in sincerity, and equally as ungracious to print them even in jest.

Nonetheless, it was never expected to have to wrestle with these issues, which Fey has ill-managed, in a comedy memoir. Maybe if it had to do with Fey’s experiences or personal identity (as “German–Greek”?) it would have a more natural place. That is, if Fey had been the victim of racism, and condemned it, even through humour, that would be expected, cool, and fine. Fey calls herself “Greek,” but only tongue-in-cheek, and it’s apparent she doesn’t speak Greek. Fey calls herself “German,” but only in relation to being American, and it’s apparent she doesn’t speak German.

What we learn is not how Tina Fey suffered racism, but her experience in adopting racism itself. It offends the senses, and anchors the book.

While hardly intended to win over the intellectual crowd, some of Fey’s items over the years cannot be ignored. Conventional culture, and Fey herself, would seem to agree, after the firing of certain snl comedians and the pulling of certain 30rock episodes, that just went too damn far.

This puts Fey in the precarious position of defending her legacy of racist and baiting comedy, and that of her colleagues, as now she has been outed as admitting herself that she has crossed the line on several, several occasions. But does that mean that Fey is accommodated now that she has made a partial apology? Or is that the mere beginning of scrutiny now that critics have gotten their first concrete admission of her failure?

Fey, and many of her cultivation, say such racist things in order to just have meaningless fun, or in order to make fun of the racist. While Fey and the others may consider this to be in good fun, and an inclusive way to overcome racism, at the end of the day you have subtly racist comedians repeating the words of violently racist hate-mongers for the entertainment of an audience often apathetic to the realities of racism. That is to say, with such willingness to commonly, repeatedly, and recklessly embrace such a serious topic, they can miss the mark.

The impulse may be that racism is so at the heart of American culture and popular life that it is expected that a pop culture figure embrace it (similar to why comedians talk so much of ornery subjects such as politics), and that they should not be taken seriously as comedic plays on the feelings of the populace.

However, comedy is nothing if it does not play to the sentiments of the crowd, and the cover of the clown mask is a poor excuse for crude thinking. In Fey’s apology for racist comedy sketches on her show 30rock, she echoed a previous comedians apology, David Letterman, when she said that intent is less important than perception when that perception causes innocent people pain. In Letterman’s statement (on a different subject), Letterman also says it is not about intent but perception that forced his apology and goes so far to say that if you must explain a joke, it wasn’t that funny anyway, so there is no sense in defending it.

Elizabeth Xenakes Fey, or Tina, has been a supporter of progressive movements in the country, but it should not be overstated to what extent, nor should the virtue of this support be overstated. Fey’s famous endorsements of Barack Obama versus John McCain, and of Hilary Clinton versus Donald Trump, and moreover her critical statements of Sarah Palin’s alliance to both McCain and Trump, have been definitive to her identity as a good liberal and progressive person who supports women’s advancements.

Yet, so too did the majority or Americans. It is not a controversial stance to support the candidate that won the popular vote of a national election — and, sadly, many racist people, both aware and unwitting, also vote for so-called “progressive” candidates for different reasons, despite their problematic stances. That is to say, being a Democrat is not exculpatory of anything. It should also be noted that Fey endorsed Clinton over Obama in the primary, and refused to endorse Bernie Sanders (or Clinton) in the next primary, and Fey describes herself and her works as “neutral,” rather than progressive.

Fey’s most famous work in comedy, the impersonation of Sarah Palin wasn’t as scathing as one might expect of a true critic, but was in many cases humanising, and even flattering. Fey was not kind in undermining the Tea Party spokesperson, but Palin was made out to be an odd yet loveable figure, rather than a contemptible one: she was written off. As Fey’s alter ego said herself, ‘it would be egotistical for saturday night live (or anyone else) to believe that a couple of jokes swung the 2008 election.’

Tina Fey has many hard questions to answer for racist depictions in her sketches, television series, and book — and it is not so easy a dodge to say that she once ‘made fun of Sarah Palin.’ Another reviewer stated, “I don’t think Fey comes off as a bad person, I just don’t think she’s funny.” Tina Fey doesn’t come off as a good person, or a bad person, but just presents as an ordinary person, and whether you find Tina Fey (or mor importantly, any of her jokes) funny is a personal and indeterminable matter.

I watched a few of Fey’s “world-famous” skits for this review, and I admit I did mistake Sarah Palin for Fey in their cross-over cameo skit; And the moment I laughed the hardest (in fact the only moment I laughed through the skits) was during the VP Debate Sketch with her fellow southerner, Jason Sudeikis, where “Biden” repeatedly attacked Scranton, Pennsylvania as “the worst place on Earth” — so again, people react to comedy in an unpredictable way, as a basis of personal experience. I don’t think all of Fey’s jokes make it, yet no one can singularly define anything as “funny,” or not, but I do see her as a professional on screen. I don’t give a pass however on bad interest jokes, especially on the mere basis of not liking Donald Trump (who, remember, is also a television celebrity who has worked in comedy, and made jokes that were blatantly racist — and sexist).

Entering Fey’s book, “Bossypants”, with this pre-review (re-preview?) in mind, it introduces to me that this memoir may turn to places unexpected, and that just because it is a celebrity-text does not mean it will be a simple, casual, or homey, ride.

[the-real-slim-shady]

Transgender and Non-Binary People: The Facts and Science Behind Them

I wrote this essay a while ago, after I had an argument with my mom about transgender people, and I figured I'd share it, it’s really long, so feel free to just skim it and find the important parts lol.

    In recent years, gender issues have become much more prevalent in our society. People who are transgender and non-binary finally feel comfortable being who they are, but there are still people who think transgender and non-binary people don’t exist. Some believe that they’re just seeking attention, or that all of their problems could be solved with therapy. This is a tricky topic because it is hard to scientifically prove how a person feels in their body.

    People usually think of the words “sex” and “gender” as interchangable, but this is in fact incorrect. In general terms, the word “sex” refers to the biological differences between men and women, such as the genitalia and genetic differences. “Gender” is more ambiguous, and harder to define. Gender usually refers to the role of a man and woman in society or an individual’s concept of themselves. To put it simply, sex is in the body, gender is in the mind. Sometimes a person’s genetically assigned sex does not line up with their gender. These individuals usually refer to themselves as transgender, non-binary, or genderfluid.

    We all learn in middle school that the last pair of chromosomes we have determines our sex. XX for a woman and XY for a man. Sex, however, is not that simple. The male/female split is often seen as a man-or-woman binary, but this is not entirely true. Some men are born with two or three X chromosomes as well as a Y, and some women are born with a Y chromosome. In some cases, a child is born with a mix between male and female genitalia. This is sometimes deemed intersex, and parents can decide which gender to assign to the child, but sometimes the child feels neither male nor female or disagrees with their parents’ decision. A person can be female if they have an X and Y chromosome but they are insensitive to androgens, so they have a female body. A person can have an X and Y chromosome and have a female body because their Y is missing the SRY gene. A person can have two X chromosomes and have a male body because one of their X’s has a SRY gene. A person can be female because they only have one X chromosome. A person can be male because they have two X chromosomes and one Y. A person can be male because you have two X chromosomes but your heart and brain are male and a person can be female with an X and a Y because their heart and mind feel stuck inside the wrong body.

    Most people’s sex and gender line up. The expectation that if you’re assigned a male at birth, you’re a man, and you’re assigned female at birth you’re a woman, lines up for people who are cisgender. But for people who are transgender or non-binary, the sex they’re assigned at birth may not align with the gender they know themselves to be. The concepts of gender and sex are socially constructed. We as a society assign gender and sex based on socially agreed upon characteristics. Dresses, the color pink, makeup, long hair, painted nails, and high heels belong to women, but we have seen in the past that this wasn’t always true, and as time goes on, the gendering of the aforementioned products is fading. This doesn’t mean that body parts and functions are “made up”, it just means that we categorize and define things in ways that could actually be different.

    The transgender and non-binary identity has long been associated with poor mental health and trauma that can be “cured” by therapy. Science however, says otherwise. Transgender women tend to have brain structures that resemble cisgender women rather than cisgender men. The bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTc) in transgender women is more similar to cisgender women than cisgender men, and the BSTc in transgender men more closely resembles that of a cisgender man. Science tells us that gender is not binary, it may even be a linear spectrum. Like other facets of identity, it can operate on a large range of levels and operate outside of many definitions. Transgender and non binary individuals are not suffering from a mental illness or carefully “choosing” a different identity. The transgender and non-binary identity is multi dimensional, but it deserves no less respect or recognition than any other facet of humankind.

    It is essential to understand the difference between transgender people and non binary people. Transgender people feel like their assigned sex is wrong, and therefore change their gender and sometimes undergo surgery. Non-binary and genderqueer people identify themselves with neither an exclusively male or female gender, their gender identity is beyond the gender binary, sometimes fluctuates between genders, or rejects the gender binary. People who are genderqueer or genderfluid alternate between genders. Kind of like a craving for food, one day they will feel like one gender and wish to be addressed as such, and maybe in a day or a week they’ll feel like another gender and some days they will feel like no gender at all. This may seem to some people like they should just make up their minds, but trust me, if they could they would. Non binary people, however, feel like no gender, and will always feel like they belong outside the gender binary. Science has yet to provide an insight into the non-binary identity and whether there’s any scientific basis to them.

    Some people say that transgender and non binary individuals are just feeling gender dysphoria, and they can overcome it. Gender dysphoria is actually just a name for how transgender and onbinary people feel before they come out: feeling that your emotional or psychological identiy as male or female to be opposite to your biological sex. Gender dysphoria is a strong desire to be rid of your sex characteristics because you feel like they don’t belong to you. It is a strong desire for the sex characteristics of the other gender, or no sex charecteristics at all. It is a strong desire to be treated as another gender. It is a strong conviction that you are not the gender you were born as.

    Some people believe that gender dysphoria for transgender and non-binary people can be solved by therapy. However, researchers analyzed survey responses from more than 27,000 transgender adults accross the US with a roughly even mix of transgender women and transgender men. People who had undergone conversion therapy at some point in their lives were twice as likely to have attempted suicide than someone who had not. About 70% said they had talked to a professional at some point about their gender identity and of those 70%, 20% had undergone conversion therapy. All of the aforementioned people are still transgender.

    In addition, many medical associations and academies have spoken out against conversion therapy. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry “finds no evidence to support the application of any “therapeutic intervention” operating under the premise that a specific sexual orientation, gender identity, and/or gender expression is pathological. Furthermore, based on the scientific evidence, the AACAP asserts that such ‘conversion therapies’ lack scientific credibility and clinical utility. Additionally, there is evidence that such interventions are harmful. As a result, ‘conversion therapies’ should not be part of any behavioral health treatment of children and adolescents."

    The American Academy of Pediatrics says “"Confusion about sexual orientation is not unusual during adolescence. Counseling may be helpful for young people who are uncertain about their sexual orientation or for those who are uncertain about how to express their sexuality and might profit from an attempt at clarification through a counseling or psychotherapeutic initiative. Therapy directed specifically at changing sexual orientation is contraindicated, since it can provoke guilt and anxiety while having little or no potential for achieving changes in orientation."

    Since the beginnning of the non-binary movement, it has gathered skepticism, critisism, derision, and even violence. Many non-binary people (and transgender people too) are accused of being “special snowflakes” or “drama queens” and “attention whores”. However, this criticism ignores the fact that gender identity is largely personal. In addition, something as simple as the way you wish to be identified tends to cause hatred to be sent your way. There is little critisim towards non-binary people that can be directed towards them in a constructive matter. If a non-binary person is in fact “just doing it for attention” the name calling and hatred would just be feeding into their desire for attention and giving them exactly what they want!

    Finally, if exploring your gender identity is a “trend” as some have called it, then isn’t it better than the previous trend of feeling isolated and alone and having absolutely no way to be who you are and say what you feel? In light of the current lack of any scientific evidence as to the biological nature of non-binary transsexuality, it is best to act in the same way as any situation where there is a phenomenon yet to be proven by science: doubt, skepticism, and open-mindedness, which accepts the potential for truth, but does not assume it.

    Some people are against the idea of calling a transgender or non-binary person their chosen pronouns because they disagree with the way that said person identifies themselves, and they reserve the right to their freedom of speech. Dr. Jordan Peterson is one of these people.

    Dr. Peterson is a psychology professor at the University of Toronto. He released a video lecture series taking aim at political correctness. He was frustrated with being asked to use alternative pronouns requested by trans and non-binary students and staff. “I’ve studied authoritarianism for a very long time, for forty years,” Dr Peterson told the BBC. “It starts by people’s attempts to control the ideological and linguistic territory. There’s no chance I’m going to use words made up by people who are doing that, not a chance.” Dr Peterson is concerned proposed federal human rights legislation will elevate his refusal to use alternative pronouns into hate speech. There is currently a bill in Canada that prohibits discrimination under the Canadian Human Rights Act on the basis of gender identity and expression. Under this bill, Dr. Peterson is not guilty of hate speech, but he could face sanction under Ontario’s human rights code which extended protection to trans people in 2012.

    Conservatives like Dr. Peterson have conjured up images of good people being dragged off to jail for not calling a person by their chosen pronouns. To the contrary, as legal scholars like Brenda Cossman and Kyle Kirkup have patiently explained, the bill in Canada cannot lead to anything remotely like this. But the milk has been spilled, and rants have been recorded, and the subtext is that there is a segment of society accustomed to others accommodating their freedom but not the other way around.

    Some people are confused as to why calling someone by their chosen pronouns constitutes as human rights, but I am confused about something else: In what kind of society does the question of whether we should respect people provoke a major debate? In what kind of society does the sentiment “you can’t make me” constitute a compelling argument?

    In conclusion, there’s no reason to discriminate against non-binary people or transgender people because contrary to the popular belief, you’re not being morally or intellectually superior, you’re just being rude. Use their prefered name and pronouns. I promise it won’t kill you.

[dajokahhh]

Alright, time for some pretentious sociological-esque rambling. This is gonna be long as hell (its 1822 words to be specific) and I don’t begrudge anyone for not having the patience to read my over-thought perspectives on a murder clown. CWs for: child abuse, 

I think a lot of things have to go wrong in someone’s life for them to decide to become a clown themed supervillain. A lot of people in Gotham have issues but they don’t become the Joker. I think that as a writer it’s an interesting topic to explore, and this is especially true for roleplaying where a character might be in different scenarios or universes. This isn’t some peer reviewed or researched essay, it’s more my own personal beliefs and perspectives as they affect my writing. I think villains, generally, reflect societal understandings or fears about the world around us. This is obviously going to mean villains shift a lot over time and the perspective of the writer. In my case, I’m a queer, fat, mentally ill (cluster B personality disorder specifically) woman-thing who holds some pretty socialist ideas and political perspectives. My educational background is in history and legal studies. This definitely impacts how I write this character, how I see crime and violence, and how my particular villains reflect my understandings of the society I live in. I want to get this stuff out of the way now so that my particular take on what a potential origin story of a version of the Joker could be makes more sense.

Additionally, these backstory factors I want to discuss aren’t meant to excuse someone’s behaviour, especially not the fucking Joker’s of all people. It’s merely meant to explain how a person (because as far as we know that’s all he is) could get to that point in a way that doesn’t blame only one factor or chalk it up to “this is just an evil person.” I don’t find that particularly compelling as a writer or an audience member, so I write villains differently. I also don’t find it to be particularly true in real life either. If you like that style of writing or see the Joker or other fictional villains in this way, that’s fine. I’m not here to convince anyone they’re wrong, especially not when it comes to people’s perspectives on the nature of evil or anything that lofty. Nobody has to agree with me, or even like my headcanons; they’re just here to express the very specific position I’m writing from. 

The first thing I wanna do is set up some terms. These aren’t academic or anything, but I want to use specific and consistent phrasing for this post. When it comes to the factors that screw up someone’s life significantly (and in some instances push people towards crime), I’ll split them into micro and macro factors. Micro factors are interpersonal and personal issues, so things like personality traits, personal beliefs, mental health, family history, where and how someone is raised, and individual relationships with the people around them. Macro factors are sociological and deal with systems of oppression, cultural or social trends/norms, political and legal restrictions and/or discrimination, etc. These two groups of factors interact, sometimes in a fashion that is causative and sometimes not, but they aren’t entirely separate and the line between what is a micro vs macro issue isn’t always fixed or clear.

We’ll start in and work out. For this character, the micro factors are what determine the specifics of his actions, demeanor, and aesthetic. I think the main reason he’s the Joker and not just some guy with a whole lot of issues is his world view combined with his personality. He has a very pessimistic worldview, one that is steeped in a very toxic form of individualism, cynicism, and misanthropy. His life experience tells him the world is a cold place where everyone is on their own. To him the world is not a moral place. He doesn’t think people in general have much value. He learned at a young age that his life had no value to others, and he has internalized that view and extrapolated it to the world at large; if his life didn’t matter and doesn’t matter, why would anyone else’s? This worldview, in the case of my specific Joker, comes from a childhood rife with abandonment, abuse, and marginalization. While I will say he is definitively queer (in terms fo gender expression and non conformity, and sexuality), I’m not terribly interested in giving specific diagnoses of any mental health issues. Those will be discussed more broadly and in terms of specific symptoms with relation to how they affect the Joker’s internal experience, and externalized behaviours.

His childhood was, to say the least, pretty fucked up. The details I do have for him are that he was surrendered at birth because his parents, for some reason, did not want to care for him or could not care for him; which it was, he isn’t sure. He grew up effectively orphaned, and ended up in the foster care system. He wasn’t very “adoptable”; he had behavioural issues, mostly violent behaviours towards authority figures and other children. He never exactly grew out of these either, and the older he got the harder it was to actually be adopted. His legal name was Baby Boy Doe for a number of years, but the name he would identify the most with is Jack. Eventually he took on the surname of one of his more stable foster families, becoming Jack Napier as far as the government was concerned. By the time he had that stability in his mid to late teens, however, most of the damage had already been done. In his younger years he was passed between foster families and government agencies, always a ward of the government, something that would follow him to his time in Arkham and Gotham’s city jails. Some of his foster families were decent, others were just okay, but some were physically and psychologically abusive. This abuse is part of what defines his worldview and causes him to see the world as inherently hostile and unjust. It also became one of the things that taught him that violence is how you solve problems, particularly when emotions run high. 

This was definitely a problem at school too; moving around a lot meant going to a lot of different schools. Always being the new student made him a target, and being poor, exhibiting increasingly apparent signs of some sort of mental illness or disorder, and being typically suspected as queer (even moreso as he got into high school) typically did more harm than good for him. He never got to stay anywhere long enough to form deep relationships, and even in the places where he did have more time to do that he often ended up isolated from his peers. He was often bullied, sometimes just verbally but often physically which got worse as he got older and was more easily read as queer. This is part of why he’s so good at combat and used to taking hits; he’s been doing it since he was a kid, and got a hell of a lot of practice at school. He would tend to group up with other kids like him, other outcasts or social rejects, which in some ways meant being around some pretty negative influences in terms of peers. A lot of his acquaintances were fine, but some were more... rebellious and ended up introducing Jack to things like drinking, smoking cigarettes, using recreational drugs, and most important to his backstory, to petty crimes like theft and vandalism, sometimes even physical fights. This is another micro factor in that maybe if he had different friends, or a different school experience individually, he might have avoided getting involved in criminal activities annd may have been able to avoid taking up the mantle of The Joker.

Then there’s how his adult life has reinforced these experiences and beliefs. Being institutionalized, dealing with police and jails, and losing what little support he had as a minor and foster child just reinforced his worldview and told him that being The Joker was the right thing to do, that he was correct in his actions and perspectives. Becoming The Joker was his birthday present to himself at age 18, how he ushered himself into adulthood, and I plan to make a post about that on its own. But the fact that he decided to determine this part of his identity so young means that this has defined how he sees himself as an adult. It’s one of the last micro factors (when in life he adopted this identity) that have gotten him so entrenched in his typical behaviours and self image.

As for macro factors, a lot of them have to do specifically with the failing of Gotham’s institutions. Someone like Bruce Wayne, for example, was also orphaned and also deals with trauma; the difference for the Joker is that he had no safety net to catch him when he fell (or rather, was dropped). Someone like Wayne could fall into the cushioning of wealth and the care of someone like Alfred, whereas the Joker (metaphorically) hit the pavement hard and alone. Someone like the Joker should never have become the Joker in the first place because the systems in place in Gotham should have seen every red flag and done something to intervene; this just didn’t happen for him, and not out of coincidence but because Gotham seems like a pretty corrupt place with a lot of systemic issues. Critically underfunded social services (healthcare, welfare, children & family services) that result in a lack of resources for the people who need them and critically underfunded schools that can’t offer extra curricular activities or solid educations that allow kids to stay occupied and develop life skills are probably the most directly influential macro factors that shaped Jack into someone who could resent people and the society around him so much that he’d lose all regard for it to the point of exacting violence against others. There’s also the reality of living in a violent culture, and in violent neighbourhoods exacerbated by poverty, poor policing or overpolicing, and being raised as a boy and then a young man with certain gendered expectations about violence but especially ideas/narratives that minimalize or excuse male violence (especially when it comes to bullying or violent peer-to-peer behaviour under the guise of ‘boys will be boys’). 

Beyond that, there’s the same basic prejudices and societal forces that affect so many people: classism, homphobia/queerphobia, (toxic) masculinity/masculine expectations, and ableism (specifically in regards to people who are mentally ill or otherwise neurodivergent) stand out as the primary factors. I’m touching on these broadly because if I were to talk about them all, they would probably need their own posts just to illustrate how they affect this character. But they definitely exist in Gotham if it’s anything like the real world, and I think it’s fair to extrapolate that these kinds of these exist in Gotham and would impact someone like The Joker with the background I’ve given him.

I have no idea how to end this so if you got this far, thank you for reading!

[alexsmitposts]

The Insanity of Sustainability “Only the Dead Have Seen the End of War” – Plato. This wisdom is as valid today as it was 2,500 years ago. Wars go on and on. They are exactly the anti-dote of sustainability. They may be the only “sustainability” modern mankind knows – endless destruction, killing, shameless exploitation of Mother Earth and its sentient beings, including humans. Yes, we are hellbent towards “sustainably”, destroying our planet and all its living beings, with wars and conflicts and shameless exploitation of Mother Earth – and the people who have peacefully inhabited her lands for thousands of years. All for greed, and more greed. Greed and destruction are certainly “unsustainable” features of our western “civilization”. Not to worry, in the grand scheme of things, Mother Earth will survive. She will cleanse herself by shaking and shedding off the destroyers, the annihilators – mankind. Only the brave will survive. Indigenous people, who have abstained from abject consumerism and instead worshipped Mother Earth and expressed their gratitude to her daily gifts. There are not many such societies left on our planet. In the meantime, we lie about the sustainability we live in. We lie to ourselves and to the public at large around us. We make believe sustainability is our cause – and we use the term freely and constantly. Most of us don’t even know what it is supposed to mean. “Sustainability” and “sustainable” anything and everything have become slogans; or household words. Such buzz-words, repeated over and over again, are made for promoting ideas, and for bending people’s minds to believe in something that isn’t. We pretend and say that we work sustainably, we develop – just about anything we touch – sustainably, and we project the future in a most sustainable way. That’s what we are made to believe by those who coined this most fabulously clever, but untrue term. It is the 101 of a psycho-factory. As Voltaire so pointedly said, “Those who can make you believe absurdities; can make you commit atrocities.” Sustainability. What does it mean? It has about as many interpretations as there are people who use the term – namely none specific. It sounds good. Because it has become – well, a household word, ever since the World Bank invented, or rather diverted the term for “sustainable development” in the 1990s, in connection, first, with Global Warming, then with Climate Change – and now back to both. Imagine! – There was a time at the World Bank – and possibly other institutions, when every page of almost every report had to contain at least once the word “sustainable”, or “sustainability”. Yes, that’s the extent of insanity propagated then – and today, it follows on a global scale, more sophisticated – the corporate world, the mega-polluters make it their buzz-word – our business is sustainable, and we with our products promote sustainability – worldwide. In fact, sustainable, sustainable growth, sustainable development, sustainable this and sustainable that – was originally coined by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, the Rio Summit, the Rio Conference, and the Earth Summit – held in Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June in 1992. The summit is intimately linked to the subsequent drive on Global Warming and Climate Change. It exuded projections of sea level risings, of disappearing cities and land strips, like Florida and New York City, as well as parts of California and many coastal areas and towns in Africa and Asia. It painted endless disasters, droughts, floods and famine as their consequence, if we – mankind – didn’t act. This first of a series of UN environment / climate summits is also closely connected with the UN Agendas 2021 and 2030. The UN Agenda 2030 incorporates or uses as main vehicle – the 17 “Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)”. In a special UN Conference in 2016, Bill Gates was able to introduce into the 16th SDG “Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels”, the 9th of the 12 sub-targets – “By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration.” This is precisely what Bill Gates needs to introduce digital IDs – most likely injected via vaccines, beginning with children from developing countries – i.e. the poor and defenseless are time and again used as guinea pigs. They won’t know what happens to them. First trials are underway in one or several rural schools in Bangladesh – see this and this. These 17 sustainable development goals, are all driving towards a Green Agenda, or as some prominent “left” US Democrat-political figures call it, the New Green Deal. It is nothing else but capitalism painted Green, at a horrendous cost for mankind and for the resources of the world. But it is sold under the label of creating a more sustainable world. Never mind, the enormous amounts of hydrocarbons – the key polluter itself – that will be needed to convert our “black” economy into a Green economy. Simply because we have not developed effective and efficient alternative sources of energy. The main reasons for this are the strong and politically powerful hydrocarbon lobbies. The energy cost (hydrocarbon-energy from oil and coal) of producing solar panels and windmills is astounding. So, today’s electric cars – Tesla and Co. – are still driven by hydrocarbon produced electricity – plus their batteries made from lithium destroy pristine landscapes, like huge natural salt flats in Bolivia, Argentina, China and elsewhere. The use of these sources of energy is everything but “sustainable”. See also Michael Moore’s film“Planet of the Humans”. Hydrogen power is promoted as the panacea of future energy resources. But is it really? Hydrocarbons or fossil fuels today amount to 80% of all energy used worldwide. This is non-renewable and highly polluting energy. Today to produce hydrogen is still mostly dependent on fossil fuels, similar to electricity. As long as we have purely profit-fueled hydrocarbon lobbies that prevent governments collectively to invest in alternative energy research, like solar energy of the 2nd Generation, i.e. derived from photosynthesis (what plants do), hydrogen production uses more fossil fuels than using straight gas or petrol-derived fuels. Therefore hydrogen, say a hydrogen-driven car, maybe as much as 40% – 50% less efficient than would be a straight electric car. The burden on the environment can be considerably higher. Thus, not sustainable with today’s technology. To enhance your belief their slogans of “sustainability”, they put up some windmills or solar cells in the “backyard” of their land- and landscape devastating coal mines. They will be filmed along with their “sustainable” buzz-words. *** The World Economic Forum (WEF) and the IMF are fully committed to the idea of the New Green Deal. For them it is not unfettered neoliberal capitalism – and extreme consumerism emanating from it, that is the cause for the world’s environmental and societal breakdown, but the use of polluting energies, like hydrocarbons. They seem to ignore the enormous fossil fuel use to convert to a green energy-driven economy. Capitalism is OK, we just have to paint it green (take a look at this). *** Let’s look at what else is “sustainable”- or not. Water use and privatization – Coca Cola tells us their addictive and potentially diabetes-causing soft drinks are produced “sustainably”. They tout sustainability as their sales promotion all over the world. They use enormous amounts of pristine clean drinking water – and so does Nestlé to further promote its number One business branch, bottled water. Nestlé has overtaken Coca Cola as the world number One in bottled water. They both use subterranean sources of drinking water – least costly and often rich in minerals. Both of them have made or are about to sign agreements with Brazil’s President to exploit the world’s largest freshwater aquifer, the Guarani, underlaying Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. They both proclaim sustainability. Both Coca Cola and Nestlé have horror stories in the Global South (i.e. India, Brazil, Mexico and others), as well as in the Global North. Nestlé is in a battle with the municipality of the tiny Osceola Township, Michigan, where residents complain the Swiss company’s water extraction techniques are ruining the environment. Nestlé pays the State of Michigan US$ 200 to extract 130 million gallons of water per year (2018). Through over-exploitation both in the Global South and the Global North, especially in the summer, the water table sinks to unattainable levels for the local populations – which are deprived of their water source. Protesting with their government or city officials is often in vain. Corruption is all overarching. – Nothing sustainable here. These are just two examples of privatizing water for bottling purposes. Privatization of public water supply on a much larger scale is at the core of the issue, carried out mostly in developing countries (the Global South), mainly by French, British, Spanish and US water corporations. Privatization of water is a socially most unsustainable feat, as it deprives the public, especially the poor, from access to their legitimate water resources. Water is a public good – and water is also a basic human right. On 28 July 2010, through Resolution 64/292, the United Nations General Assembly explicitly recognized the human right to water and sanitation and acknowledged that clean drinking water and sanitation are essential to the realization of all human rights. The public water use of Nestlé and Coca Cola – and many others, mind you, doesn’t even take account of the trillions of used plastic bottles ending up as uncollected and non-recycled waste, in the sea, fields, forests and on the road sides. Worldwide less than 8% of plastic bottles are recycled. Therefore, nothing of what Nestlé and Coca Cola practice and profess is sustainable. It’s an outright lie. Petrol industry - BP with its green business emblem, makes believe – visually, every time you pass a BP station – that they are green. PB proclaims that their oil exploration and exploitation is green and environmentally sustainable. Let’s look at reality. The so far considered largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry, was the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It was a giant industrial disaster that started on April 20, 2010 and lasted to 19 September 2010, in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect, spilling about 780,000 cubic meter of raw petroleum over an area of up to 180,000 square kilometers. BP promised a full cleanup. By February 2015 they declared task completed. Yet at least 60% of oil and tar along the sea shore and beaches have not been cleaned up – and may never be removed. – Where is the sustainability of their promise? Another outright lie. BP and other oil corporations also have horrendous human rights records – just about everywhere they operate, mostly in Africa and the Middle East, but also in Asia. The abrogation of human rights is also an abrogation of sustainability. In this essay BP is used as an example for the petrol industry. None of the petrol giants operate sustainably anywhere in the world, and least where water table-destructive fracking is practiced. Sustainable mining – is another flagrant lie. But it sells well to the blinded people. And most of the civilized world is blinded. Unfortunately. They want to continue in their comfort zone which includes the use of copper, gold and other precious metals and stones, rare earths for ever more sophisticated electronic gear, gadgets and especially military electronically guided precision weaponry – as well as hydrocarbons in one way or another. Sustainable mining of anything unrenewable is a Big Oxymoron. Anything you take from the earth that is non-renewable is by its nature not sustainable. Its simply gone. Forever. In addition to the raw material not being renewable, the environmental damage caused by mining – especially gold and copper – is horrendous. Once a mine is exploited in a short 30- or 40-years’ concession, the mining company leaves mountains of contaminated waste, soil and water behind – that takes a thousand years or more to regenerate. Yet, the industry’s palaver is “sustainability”, and the public buys it. In fact, our civilization’s sustainability is zero. Aside from the pollution, poisoning and intoxication that we leave around us, our mostly western civilization has used natural resources at the rate of 3 to 4 times in excess of what Mother Earth so generally provides us with. We, the west, had passed the threshold of One in the mid-sixties. In Africa and most of Asia, the rate of depletion is still way below the factor of One, on average somewhere between 0.4 and 0.6. “Sustainability” is a flash-word, has no meaning in our western civilization. It is pure deception – self-deception, so we may continue with our unsustainable ways of life. That’s what profit-bound capitalism does. It lives today with ever more consumerism, more luxury for the ever-fewer oligarchs – on the resources of tomorrow. The sustainability of everything is not only a cheap slogan, it’s a ruinous self-deception. A Global Great Reset is needed – but not according to the methods of the IMF and WEF. They would just shovel more resources and assets from the bottom 99.99% to the top few, painting the “new” capitalism a shiny bright green – and fooling the masses. We, The People, must take The Reset in our own hands, with consciousness and responsibility. So, We the People, forget sustainable but act responsibly.

[sataniccapitalist]

APRIL 09, 2020

It's All Over but the Shouting

Wafers-

A few months ago, David Masciotra, a free-lance writer and author of Against Traffic, among other works, approached The American Conservative with a proposal for an article, which would be a review of my American Empire trilogy. He subsequently submitted the article, and never heard back. Since I'm neither a conservative nor a progressive, but only a writer interested in Reality, it's possible that TAC got spooked by David's essay. (To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, "Americans can't bear too much reality.") However, it's also possible that by that time the coronavirus was starting to make itself visible, and that TAC was thrown by that rather than anything ideological. I guess we can give them the benefit of the doubt. In any case, David and I agreed that I should just post his essay on my blog, and accept the fact that no American publication was likely to run it (for whatever reason). Hence, here it is.

It’s All Over but the Shouting: Morris Berman’s Work on American Decline

“Stick a fork in their ass, and turn them over. They’re done,” Lou Reed dryly announces on his 1989 song about the American Empire, “The Last Great American Whale.” The rock and roll poet’s grim diagnosis of a culture gone awry makes for a fine lyric. If Reed were to have expanded his morbid one-liner into a 1,000-page trilogy of books, full of assiduous research, brilliant anecdotes, and despite the sad subject matter, immensely enjoyable, and often amusing, prose, he would have something resembling the series of books on American decline from cultural critic, historian, novelist, and poet, Morris Berman.

Berman, while a visiting professor in the belly of the beast at the Catholic University in Washington, DC, began writing the first installment in the late 1990s,The Twilight of American Culture, after observing the coalescence of several pathologies that are now beyond dispute as inflicting pain on American life: staggering rates of inequality, governmental dysfunction, an ever-expanding militarism, the fracturing of communal and civic life, and the dominance of anti-intellectualism, visible in everything from an increasingly shallow pop culture to misspelled words on public signs. There was also an aura of threat in the air, of the kind predicted by Don DeLillo in his 1985 novel, White Noise. Like the thick presence of humidity on a summer afternoon, Americans couldn’t see that their neighbors were becoming selfish, and often cruel, but they could feel it.

Having studied the downfall of other empires, Berman saw the window for American reform closing. He warned that if America did not drastically transform its public policies, ideology, and working conception of citizenship, its troubles would only intensify and calcify, bringing a once-promising civilization past the point of no return. In the two books that followed—

Dark Ages America

and

Why America Failed

—Berman meticulously demonstrated that America’s myopic focus on profit, at the expense of everything else, its zest for war – at home and abroad – and its lack of self-awareness and insight had escalated, making recovery virtually impossible.

Simultaneous with the development of Berman’s argument, the United States suffered the worst attack on its soil on September 11, 2001, and responded by launching not one, but two disastrous wars. Its housing market and financial system crashed, liquidating much of middle class wealth, and it reacted with giving away boondoggles to the very parties of greed that caused the crisis. Then, in 2016, as the citizenry began to stratify in ways more violent and intractable, Donald Trump became President-Elect. Berman, whom the New York Times and other mainstream outlets dismissed as cynical, cranky, and “anti-American,” looks more and more sterling.The left and right argue about nearly everything, making extreme accusations about each other. Maybe one camp is right on other issues, and the other is correct on some, but the larger possibility to consider is, what if they are all wrong on the main issue?

As Berman put it during a recent email exchange that I had with him:

Conservatives and progressives alike are patriots; like Trump, they seek to save America, or make it great again. What they are ignoring is the rhythm and record of history. All civilizations rise and fall; there are no exceptions to this rule, and America is not going to escape its fate. The great Southern historian, C. Vann Woodward, first suggested the inevitable decline of the nation in 1953. Andrew Hacker stated it clearly in The End of the American Era, 1970. Between that year and today, there have been a host of books—my trilogy on the American empire included—that have pointed out that civilizations come and go, and that now is our time. Yet on both the right and left, there is no recognition of this bedrock reality. If you do recognize the larger picture, you can't possibly care about impeachment, for example, or who wins these silly Democratic debates. All of that is theater, not reality.

The reality is ascertainable from the daily deluge of grim headlines—lead poisoning in the water causing irreversible brain damage in children, the rise of the “working poor,” near-daily mass shootings, America spending hundreds of billions on weapons of war while ignoring its crumbling infrastructure. Pundits and politicians have a tendency to treat all of these signs of pathology and dysfunction as isolated, but an unobstructed historical vantage point, which Berman’s work provides, suggests that all of America’s problems—from high rates of functional illiteracy to political corruption—are trees growing out of the same rotten roots.

Berman’s project becomes more excavation than analysis, demonstrating an affinity for radicalism, in the original sense of the term, which is identifying and criticizing an issue’s origin, rather than obtusely obsessing over its consequences. America, from its inception, was dedicated to commercial conquest, and equated “the pursuit of happiness” with the acquisition of wealth and property. The third book in Berman’s trilogy, Why America Failed, relies on assiduous research and sharp analysis to prove the case over its 400 pages. Meanwhile, the consistent papering over the more accurate story he tells, with red, white and blue advertisements, robs even many of the country’s leading dissidents of a holistic perspective. In his deployment of cultural criticism, Berman shows how, although his politics tend slightly toward the left, he is most in mourning over America’s destruction of tradition and refusal to balance its desires for commercial dominance with small scale, communal concerns:

Dating back 400 years—the continent was filled with individuals whose idea of the good life was goods, i.e. money and property. There were dissenting voices, such as Capt. John Smith and the Puritan divines, but these were increasingly pushed aside. The title of Richard Bushman's book, and the book itself, are good summaries of the process: From Puritan to Yankee. America was effectively born bourgeois; it had no feudal period. And while feudalism had its obvious drawbacks, it also had some serious advantages: community, craftsmanship, ties of friendship, meaningful work, noblesse oblige, and spiritual purpose, among other things. The American experiment was based, from the first, on hustling, opportunism; this is what the "pursuit of happiness" really meant in the eighteenth century—go out and get yours (which the Founding Fathers certainly did). "Virtue" originally meant putting the needs of society above one's own personal interests. By the late seventeenth century, the meaning had been inverted: it now meant personal success in an opportunistic environment. Blaming the corporate elite has its limits, because what virtually all Americans want is to join the upper 1 percent. Thus American spirituality, such as it is, can be summarized in a single word: More. More, more, I want more. Our leaders reflect our values, which is how America's consummate hustler, Donald Trump, wound up in the White House. In that sense, we have a genuine democracy.

In his seminal essay, “Democratic Vistas,” Walt Whitman worried that “genuine belief” had left American life. In the mad race for money and status, Americans were forgetting or neglecting the sociopolitical principles that could construct a spiritually strong society. For “genuine belief” to thrive, the believers must, in spite of their partisan or ideological disputes, maintain some adherence to tradition – a set of ideas, rites, and practices that form the foundation of their politics, behavior, and vision for the development of their culture.

Berman attempts to achieve a balance in his cultural and historical analysis by spotlighting societies where edifying traditions are steadfast, helping to anchor their respective cultures, and help inhabitants connect to each other with a shared sense of purpose. In Neurotic Beauty, Berman writes about Japan’s traditions of craft, family, and advantageous use of empty space in art and identity, and how those traditions are under siege by Japan’s own move to large scale, corporate capitalism. In Genio: The Story of Italian Genius, Berman examines the Italian gift of injecting space, movement, into static situations – the result of which is, arguably, the most significant creative legacy in the Western world.

It is not only through travel and study that Berman is able to contrast cultures that maintain some loyalty to their best traditions with the American fixation on commercial, technological, and militaristic “progress,” but also through his own experience. He asserts that the “best decision” of his life was moving to Mexico, and one of his worst decisions was waiting so long to do it. When I asked him about the “traditional society” of his Mexican home, as juxtaposed with his previous home in Washington, DC, he began with the caveat that “Mexico has been heavily Americanized, and traditional values—community, friendship, craftsmanship, spirituality—have accordingly been eroded in favor of hustling, individualism, alienation, and meaninglessness.”

Nevertheless, his move to Mexico was a “bet” on the lasting elements of tradition and communal life in Mexico, and it is one that has proven itself wise. Berman offers an anecdote to illustrate the camaraderie and generosity that often characterize his relationships and interactions in Mexico:

Something like this happens to me at least once a week, and it always wakes me up to the fact that I am not living in the US anymore. I live in an apartment building in Mexico City, one floor up. One day I was coming home from the supermarket, going up the stairs, carrying plastic bags full of groceries, and one of the bags broke. Contents spilled out all over the stairs and onto the ground: oranges, Diet Coke, whatever. At that point, at the top of the stairs, the door to the apartment there opened, and a 5-year-old girl peered out. Without saying a word, she came down the stairs and helped me put the spilled groceries back in the bags. When it was done, she went back upstairs and closed the door.

Berman would not argue that acts of kindness never take place in the United States, or that every single Mexican behaves according to an ethic of solidarity, but the rarity of friendly relations in America, and the breakdown of community, as documented at length by Robert Putnam, Sherry Turkle, and many other scholars, is not accidental.

“For one thing, girls are taught to fear men, in America (possibly with good reason),” Berman said, and added, “The sexes pretty much hate each other, or are at least wary of each other. But equally significant, Americans of all ages are taught to not help other people (we even arrest people who attempt to feed the homeless). Their problems are their problems, not yours. You are not your brother's keeper, and in general other people are rivals or enemies.”

America has failed to enact the social welfare policies of its democratic peers in Western Europe, but what Berman indicts goes to deeper to core of America’s character. America has also neglected to preserve its “bonds of voluntary association” that Alexis de Tocqueville believed were crucial to the health of the society. In that sense, Americans interested in conservatism might consider that their country is the least conservative in the world. It invests almost no effort in conserving anything, from the beauty of its natural environment to the social ties that are essential for a durable civilization.

The improvements of American life for blacks, women, gays, and workers were possible through the courageous social movements of the 20th century, and these are improvements that Berman admires. He cautions, however, that none of them address the central problem of American culture:

Those were certainly great successes, and they made a great difference for the people involved in those movements. Personally, I applaud them. The problem, however, is that all of them were bids to have a greater share in the American pie—bids to enter the dominant culture. None of them envisioned, a la Lewis Mumford, Henry David Thoreau, or Ernest Callenbach, a different type of society. They merely wanted a greater role in the society as is. The only group that stood for a completely different way of life was the Native Americans, and look what we did to them. The savagery of that genocide, of a people who dared to disagree with the American definition of "progress," is unbelievable.

When Martin Luther King turned more radical, expressing opposition to the “spiritual sickness” of America, rather than only its racist laws, the country turned on him. Similarly, Berman describes in his trilogy how most of the public mocked and ridiculed President Jimmy Carter for his televised "Spiritual Malaise" address, given in Annapolis in 1979—a speech that now appears prescient in its condemnation of uncontrolled consumerism, unabashed selfishness, and the stunning inability of the nation to observe its own behavior.

The candidates in the 2020 race for the presidency, including the president himself, routinely repeat the bromide that the election will determine the “direction” of the country. The "soul" of the nation is somehow always at stake, and yet regardless of who gets elected, things continue to spiral out of control. Morris Berman’s sobering assessment doubles as a “Dead End” sign, warning that the winner might influence the speed and comfort of travel, but that ultimately, we're headed for collapse.

[tessatechaitea]

Wonder Twins #7

I didn't realize the Wonder Twins were Gen X.

Oh yeah! Zan had just saved the world by stopping a plot that was going to save the world.

I just realized I hadn't scanned the cover yet and as I did, I noticed the Wonder Twins fist/star emblem marks a striking resemblance to a goat.se riff. Zan and Jayna get taken off of monitor duty at the Hall of Justice now that they've stopped the League of Annoyance. You'd think that doing a good job would get you a promotion but those of use who have always done spectacularly good jobs know better. While everybody else works down to the lowest common denominator (because who wants to do more work than the next guy?! A fool, that's who!), good workers just put on blinders and do the job they were hired for until the time they're being paid for is up. Sure, that sounds like I'm describing a sucker who's been completely manipulated by the man! But I'm also describing a person who fulfills their end of whatever bargain they've agreed to! So when I say Zan and Jayna wind up giving tours at the Hall of Justice because they were too good at catching criminals, you'll understand why I went into the previous digression. Maybe? I don't know. Have you seen what state the U.S. is in?! Why are you picking apart my writing style?! Mark Russell takes a few pages to shit all over hockey fans and now I hate Mark Russell with a burning passion. Even though I'd hardly call myself a hockey fan. I mean, I loved NHL '93 (unless it was '92 (or maybe '94?)) and I loved going to San Jose Sharks games when I was still living in the Bay Area (plus my friend worked equipment for the Sharks and would get us free tickets). But it's not like I follow it much anymore. I just like the feeling of being angry at somebody for writing a satirical critique of sports fans rioting because they're so happy that their team won. Although why would I be angry when I've never done that nor think Russell's wrong in his pointed and humorous critique?! Oh, who cares why! Being angry is just more fun! Oh shit! I finally understand people's attraction to Fox News! I just watched a YouTube clip of somebody's Jeremy Roenick highlights from NHL '94 set to the song "More Than a Feeling" and it was pretty awesome. Also, that was definitely the one we played nonstop back in 1993 and 94 and maybe even into 95. Roenick unstoppable down with the puck while Sharks players lay splayed out on their back all across the ice. To stop the riot, Superman calls in Repulso! He's a guy whose super power is super stink and he's kept in a locked room with a bare table and a microwave and nobody wants to be his friend because he smells like a garbage dumb that vomited on top of the diarrhea it shit out while standing on its head so the stanky muck ran down his body absorbing all of his body odor and then somebody cut up a durian and tossed it in the mix.

Superman is a dick. Get this guy some friends with no sense of smell. Or at the very least, an Xbox Gold account.

After the hockey riots, some "the end of the world" riots take place because Zan and Jayna screw up something or other. Basically what that means is that Repulso gets to be let out of his airtight containment unit again! He's a pretty optimistic guy for being sealed away by Superman (which is just Superman's way! Is somebody a problem? No problem! Put them in the Phantom Zone!). He's so happy and not bitter about his living arrangements that I feel like Zan and Jayna had better figure out a way to give him a better life before this issue ends. Because if Mark Russell fails this character he created before this issue is over and I have to face reality after snot crying about a fictional person, I'm going to be pretty upset when I continue to buy Mark Russell comic books because what other choice do I have? Am I going to stop reading DC's best written comic books because Mark Russell betrayed poor Repulso? Of course not! What am I? A person with integrity?! Repulso winds up getting his ass beat by rioters as Repulso's handlers flee the chaotic "end of the world" downtown riot scene. Luckily the Wonder Twins are headed downtown to save his life and maybe become his friend or something? Please? After Zan and Jayna save Repulso, Jayna goes to Superman to tell him everything sucks. He gives her a big speech about how being a hero is lonely work because you don't always get to fuck the hot chick at your secret identity's workplace and also fuck an Amazon warrior while also getting to fuck anybody at all whose initials are "L.L." and also have a best friend who is the coolest guy in the world with a butler who makes the best pancakes. Sometimes you're a fat jerk who smells who even Superman won't fucking give the time of day because Superman has this speech about how being a hero is lonely and that's a good thing so you should embrace your loneliness because who wants to put up with your super stink, fatty?

Jayna is a way better hero than Superman. At least in this comic book that's all about her and not Superman so of course she's going to outshine him!

Oh yeah, the ant in the above picture is Jayna. It can't smell. Wonder Twins #7 Rating: A+. I should probably be less cynical when reading Mark Russell comic books because he's as earnest and serious as he can be while also providing lots of jokes. He takes writing seriously because what else is there? If your message isn't going to matter, why bother? (is his philosophy. I think. It's not my philosophy! I don't think? Maybe it is! I just write things that matter in a much different way than Mark Russell writes things that matter.) I should probably read Superman's speech and be inspired by the idea that you don't do good because you want adulation; you do good because it's the right thing to do, even if the entire world thinks you're an asshole for doing it. Even if all of the other superheroes think you're a stinky fuck and only keep you around to use as a tool to oppress and manipulate the masses without having to use logic and reason on them (because, let's face it, the people doing terrible things don't understand logic and reason. Or they're do but they're just selfish and greedy so nothing is going to reach them anyway (which maybe is part of Superman's message?)), you're still a hero at the end of the day. You can still be proud of your stinky self. And even if the life is lonely, you should remain positive and upbeat because Superman really doesn't want to be reminded that you exist every time you complain about the lack of reasonable living conditions. Being a hero is a state of mind, says the guy who also looks great and is invulnerable and has the best wife and a cool son and doesn't have to fear death! So inspiring!

[emeraldnebula]

In light my recent posts about the idea of creating a brand-new superhero love interest for Superman (the real one, not the impostor parading about in “Rebirth”), I thought it might be fair to share with you some old message board posts from the official DC Comics message boards, circa 2001-2005. This was back when the Superman fandom hadn’t atrophied to the point where only the regressive nutcases were running the show, so there were still some voices of sanity active at the time.

Even 13-17 years ago, DC’s arrogance, inability to accept criticism over their failures, and insistence of stagnation was a major sticking point, and it led to lot of debates over what needed to be updated about Superman to keep it alive, what was absolutely essential, and what needed to be kicked to the curb. I copied and pasted a lot of these conversations into Microsoft Word (I knew nothing of screen-capping at the time), so there’s some choice posts that, I think, are even more relevant than ever in light of “Rebirth” being a failure in every respect.

Some of these posts will be anonymous, as I no longer remember who exactly posted what. But some posters were fairly notable fan personalities, such as comic book blogger Bizarro Mark Engblom, a fan from the Silver Age days:

“ I wouldn't lose much sleep if Perry and Jimmy went the way of the dodo bird. I think they worked better in the age when newspapers were actually a vital element of our society, but they're now (at best) a quaint anachronism. An optional feature of our lives, rather than the necessity it was in past eras. Lois? The current interpretation of Lois is an annoying shrike, but I would think she would need to be around in some capacity. What that is, I have no idea. As it stands, she occupies a much more prominent role that I would ever give her. The real trick seems to be separating the “essentials” from what I like to call “furniture.” Essentials: Krypton explodes, Jor-El and Lara send their baby Kal-El (the baby's age never mattered much to me) to Earth, found and raised by the Kents as Clark Kent in Smallville. Grows up to become Superman. Furniture: Perry White, Jimmy Olsen, various Fortresses, super-pets, kryptonite, villains, blah, blah, blah. Of course, just as in my home I'm more fond of some pieces of furniture than others, it's still just furniture and, ultimately, expendable. From my perspective, there is precious little that absolutely must remain in order for it to still be Superman. Whenever the Superman experience starts to become more about rearranging the same old furniture than advancing the narrative into new territory (or, to beat the analogy to death, “buying some new furniture”), you know the franchise is stuck in a rut.“

An anonymous fan, quoting previous poster Cooky La Moo:

“You know, I kind of like the idea of The Daily Planet, Perry and Jimmy BEING an anachronism. Perry as an old-school newsman standing like Canute against the tide of time. The Daily Planet doesn't HAVE to be a great metropolitan newspaper, it could be seen as a somewhat eccentric throwback to a simpler age, sneered at by other media types, but respected when it can pull in stories like the debut of Superman. Maybe it could become “old-fashioned” in the same way that people see Clark's character itself as being “old-fashioned.” Or, like Cooky said, make the Planet a news agency. Or a web-based news site. How are magazines like Time doing? Are they being superseded like newspapers? Of course, is it necessary for Clark to be a reporter? With 24-hour news media, he doesn't need to be at a newspaper to get access to news stories. Could he be a teacher? Perry a principal, Jimmy a student teacher? Or some other profession? I've always thought that Perry, Lois and Jimmy should form something of an artificial family of some sort, so I think the characters should stay, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't get other jobs. You know the thing that annoys me? The fact that we sit here discussing issues like this when DC just doesn't seem bothered. What's going on?”

Two posts by DC forum regular Kilgore Trout:

“ The strict adherence to “continuity” is what got us to the point we’re at now. It has become impossible to just tell a story WITHOUT going through 16 years of “continuity” to make sure you’re not stepping into a pile of shit that someone left laying there 10 years ago. To me, continuity means this: Strange visitor from another planet [which is destroyed—along with his family—in a horrific cataclysm] rocketed to earth as a child. Raised by kindly older couple in the heartland of America. Has powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Works for a great metropolitan newspaper. And who, disguised as Clark Kent, fights a never-ending battle for Truth Justice et al…. Everything else is superfluous. Superman should exist inside AND outside of the DCU. The age of anal-retentiveness needs to end. The books are completely stifled under the weight of 16 years of step-by-step continuity. This isn’t the life story or autobiography of a real person. Superman’s story used to be BIG and GRAND. It wasn’t mired in small details and the mundane goings-on of normal folks. The “Hi, honey! I’m home!” approach isn’t working anymore and it’s why I am looking forward to Birthright and the promise it holds.“

“ Here's a simple solution... AFTER they revamp the current Moderateman and change him BACK to Superman, they can actually explain the Lois and Clark relationship in a way that would finally make sense. Here’s how: YES, Superman IS the OLDEST and most RESPECTED Superhero in the DCU BECAUSE of his MANY YEARS of service to and for humanity. And that would require that he's been around for over 60-some odd years, so here's my thought: Lois Lane is a woman that Superman USED TO have a thing with. She aged. He barely did. She is NOW about 60 and is his oldest friend and confidant. Nothing more and nothing less. The end. No marriage and no messy divorce. Just good friends and still an important part of the mythos.”

Responses to the above, from anonymous posters:

“ Kilgore Trout, I’m sorry but, huh?!? what do you mean exactly? Are you talking for TPTB up at DC to just reboot the titles to have it so that now in Post-Post-Crisis, both Kal and Lois have aged but within Kal's case though, the higher-ups have made it so that he has retained his youthfulness in his physical appearance, and so that Lois is now a grandma in the new DCU too? Yeah, I suppose that if done right it could work in the end. It would sure give another gal a shot at becoming his lover (Lana Lang, Chloe Sullivan, Wonder Woman, etc.).”

“ Do we NEED Lois and Clark to be lovers? Okay, sure we do at the moment, assuming there's no reboot on the horizon. But if things started again, do we NEED a Lois/Clark ‘ship? Yes, I know. They've been an item forever. Their names are linked together in the public consciousness, but...what if, in another universe, Clark and Lana ended up together? Or Clark and Chloe? What if—Shock! Horror!—Lois and Clark were just good friends, maybe even best friends, but platonic friends nonetheless? I know that the secret identity causing trouble for Clark's relationships is an important part of the mythos, but can that be played out in another form other than a love triangle? Could it work with friends like Jimmy and Perry if their roles were beefed up? Thinking about it, that sort of situation perhaps works best in a romantic relationship, but that relationship doesn't have to be with Lois. I know, I know. Lois is an important character. I think a lot of the problems are down to poor characterization and a lack of vision for the supporting cast. But sometimes, and especially in conversations like this, it’s worth throwing out ideas and thoughts and seeing if any of them stick, even if they're not how things have been in the past. We hear a lot about redefining Superman, but of all the aspects of the mythos, Clark's character is perhaps one of the things that doesn't NEED changing. Maybe Lois’ role IS something that could change…. (Is there a devil's advocate smiley?)”

Post by Elroy the Cat, specifically citing the Lois/Clark marriage as a death knell:

“ The more fundamental problem with Lois in current continuity is not whether she's married to Superman or not. It’s whether readers can understand what the fuck Clark sees in her, because Lois is either annoying or more annoying, depending on the writer who's handling her. She's a difficult character, apparently, for male writers to pull off successfully. And that's a problem, because you can [and already do] have readers going, “This man could have ANY woman he wants! Why this troll?” It's distracting, and no one has thought to explore whether or not it speaks of a deficiency in Clark that he should seek to be loved by someone as clearly flawed as Lois is. Great story there…but then you'd have to have a real writer to write it. Having said that, the marriage as an idea is only as good as its usefulness to the greater story. Presently, it’s about as useful to the greater “journey” of the character of Superman as shoes are to fish. And therein lies the problem. Bottom line: the marriage is the nail that makes an eventual total reboot of this version of Superman inevitable.“

Another anonymous post in response to infamous forum troll Michael “ManoftheAtom” Sacal, pretty much backing up Bizarro Mark Engblom’s previous argument:

“To me, all Superman needs to be is… An infant rocketed to earth from a dying planet. Raised by the Kents. A reporter. And THAT’S IT!! I don't understand what these “established guidelines” are, exactly. So you guys are saying that if Superman is rebooted 1000 times, he always has to live the same exact life in each and every one of them??”

Excerpt from another anonymous post, again in respose to Kilgore Trout vis-a-vis DC’s pet failed decisions:

“I could not have said it better [following a laundry list of bad ideas DC implemented]. Actually the addition of each of these things was usually a part of a good story. But retaining them after the story as part of the Superman legend has created this disaster that I describe as clutter. Besides, kids who are getting their driver's licenses today (and probably giving up comics) were not even born at the time of the Crisis. It is time to relaunch, have another Crisis, or simply designate everything since the last Crisis as having occurred on some alternate earth (like the GA's Earth 2 or the SA). Then start writing comics for the next generation. Superman could discover Kryptonite again. He could be a bachelor and play the field. He could marry Lana instead of Lois (and that would not require a divorce)—in this brave new world maybe he had been a Superboy before becoming a Superman. He might have a cousin, fly in space, or travel in time. Or maybe not. But there would be room to do new things without having to screw up everything that has gotten him to where he is today.”

Again, some of these suggestions are from longtime fans whose readership stretched back decades. And even as far back as the early 2000s, there were those pondering if perhaps the Superman franchise needed a drastic makeover. I can’t imagine those sentiments are any less now in the wake of DC’s regressive tactics.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

OK, I'LL TELL YOU YOU ABOUT COMPANY

There are few Jews left in Germany and most Jews I know would not want to design your society in a way that's incompatible with this curve. In any case, growing fast versus operating cheaply is far from the sharp dichotomy many founders assume it to be. And if that is the future, but empirically it may be possible in principle to design a language now that would appeal to users in a hundred years, maybe it won't in a thousand. 2 such a language, if it existed, might be good to program in today. When a startup spends and how fast it grows.1 You should give up n% of your company. Whereas the who else is going to solve this problem, but I had no money. But investors are so fickle that you can find peers and encouragement.

We are still very suspect of this idea would remain something I'd learned from this book, even after I'd forgotten I'd learned it. Not at all: I was delighted.2 What these groups of co-founders do together is more complicated than just sitting down and trying to think of startup ideas. Suppose further that he's going to cost $60k a year in management fees, plus a percentage of the acquisition price they'd trade for it. Checks instituted by governments can cripple a country's whole economy. It turns out almost any word or word pair that is not that they lack examples. VCs don't invest $x million because that's the amount you need, but because that's the amount you need, but because it's stealing. It was designed to be used the way we now know something like our weight.3 That's true. Surely everyone realizes that was just a fast-growing startup overpaying for infrastructure. Then the programmer still does much of the work of optimization. The extreme case is probably literature; people studying literature rarely say anything that would be the answer.

If you do it right, you may be able to increase your strength of will somewhat; you can definitely learn self-discipline; and almost everyone is practically malnourished when it comes to ambition. Modula: Pascal is too wimpy for systems programming. Power is shifting from the people who are quite timid, initially, about the idea of building Facebook in 2004: organic startup ideas usually don't seem like startup ideas at first. Suppose new policies make it hard to make a profit of 50% on the new hire mentioned above. Why would I do that?4 There's an A List of people who are poor or rich and figure out why. Back in the days of fanfold, there was a lot less money. Yahoo would be first in line to buy Suns; but when I worked there, the servers were all Intel boxes running FreeBSD.5 With sufficiently lightweight standardized equity terms and some changes in investors' and lawyers' expectations about equity rounds you might be able to set up an application to run on multiple servers. But this is a special case of my more general prediction that most of the extra computer power we're given will go to waste.

You don't just sink and sink; there are two great universities, but they're not. The reason is that variation in productivity is accelerating. For example, a company might require all suppliers to prove they're solvent before submitting bids. So, just in case it does any good, let me clarify that I'm not writing here about Java which I have never used but about hacker's radar which I have never had to use CLOS. The point when it became clear to me that there have been two really clean, consistent models of programming so far: the C model and the Lisp model. The reason convertible notes allow more flexibility in price is that the company pays 10 times as long?6 And it turns out to be mistaken; making predictions about technology is: it just works. But it was the same curve. Economies are made out of people, and attitudes can only change a certain amount per generation.

There's one more message I've heard from cities: in London you can still barely hear the message that one should be. Civil liberties? In fact, we were just as frightened when we started the company I was 30 and Robert Morris was 29, so we'd seen enough to know about the pie fallacy is stated explicitly:. And people with that attitude are the ones you never hear about: the company that would be the best supplier, but doesn't bid because they can't spare the effort to get verified. Often the two occur simultaneously.7 Work for a VC fund? And so it proved this summer. GMail, but fast, that alone would let you start to think about it, and by American standards it's not bad. Relentlessly prune bullshit, don't wait to do things that the previous generation would have considered wasteful. The reason they go into finance is not because of some difference in their characters; the Yale students just have fewer examples. Well, are auto workers, schoolteachers, and civil servants happier than actors, professors, and professional athletes?8 On top of several previous good signs.

Common Lisp has an enormously powerful object system and I've never used it once. Efficiency is important, but I don't think people consciously realize this, but one reason downwind jobs like churning out Java for a bank pay so well is precisely that they are downwind. So I think it can scale all the way to get fast applications is to write. Partly because successful startups have lots of employees, so it was very easy to understand and change. VCs get paid a percentage of the money they have left?9 Their smartest move at that point would have been in the mid twentieth century as a golden age. Stuff used to be valuable, and now it's not.10 If there are any laws regulating businesses, you can use to find things online.

Are some kinds of work, all you had to be possible to solve it. Once you start to think about this, because there's an infrastructure that prevents such a staircase from being built. Dylan: Scheme has no libraries, and Lisp syntax is scary. There are very, very old.11 There's a real difference, because an assertion provokes objections in a way a question doesn't. These initial versions can be so pervasive that it takes a conscious effort not to think where it came from.12 Harvard undergrads.

7% of the company for him. It takes a while to be optimistic after events like that. Even now I'm suspicious when startups choose SF over the Valley. A lot of the money they manage: about 2% a year in salary and overhead is 1. And partly because when founders have slow growth they don't want to bother. You can push down into a language for the one above. But instances of inequality don't have to live in a great city your whole life to benefit from it.13 If i is the average outcome of the whole company by 20%. Multiply this times several hundred, and I was even more convinced of it after hearing it confirmed by Hilbert.14

Notes

We're delighted to have figured out how to be an anti-immigration people to do it is certainly not impossible for a patent is now replicated all over the Internet into situations where a laptop would be a problem into your bodies. Giving away the razor and making money on the one hand and the company's expense by selling them overpriced components. Dropbox wasn't rejected by all the way starting a startup. It's lame that VCs play such games, books, newspapers, or working in middle management at a time machine, how much you're raising, have been worth at least for those interested in graphic design, Byrne's Euclid.

This includes mere conventions, like speculators, that probably doesn't make A more accurate predictor of success for a patent troll, either as truth or heresy. I've come to you as employees by buying their startups. This is not very well connected. It's not a nice-looking man with a face-saving compromise.

For example, you're pretty well protected against such tricks initially. Some founders listen more than serving as examples of other people think, but bickering at several hundred dollars an hour over the details.

Back when students focused mainly on getting a job to get into the world wars to say, good deals. They'd be interchangeable if markets stood still. But it's a departure from his predecessors was a bimodal economy consisting, in the sophomore year.

The conventional 1 in 10 success rate for startups might be interested to hear about the other cheek skirts the issue; the creation of wealth for society. Don't be evil. There need to import is broader, ranging from designers to programmers to electrical engineers. Compromising a server could cause such damage that ASPs that want to start a startup in question usually is doing badly in your identity manifests itself not directly exposed to competitive pressure, because that's how they choose between great people.

The shift in power to founders with established reputations. As the art itself gets more random, the average reader that they are now. But the solution is to trick admissions officers. I wouldn't bet on it, and then being unable to raise more, while Reddit is derived from the most accurate mechanical watch, the more subtle ways in which multiple independent buildings are traditionally seen as temporary; there is something in this essay, but unfortunately not true.

So by agreeing to uncapped notes. Yes, there are lots of type II startups neither require nor produce startup culture. Parker, William R. It will require more than you could get a low grade, which merchants used to those.

The top VCs thus have a big company, and graph theory.

This probably undervalues the company by doing a small set of canonical implementations of the lies people told 100 years. Some genuinely aren't. One valuable thing you changed.

It requires the kind that prevents you from starving.

Success here is that it's up to two more modules, an image generator written in C and C, and have not stopped to think about where that money comes from a startup is compress a lifetime's worth of work is not pagerank commercialized.

What you learn about programming in college is much smaller commitment than a product of number of startups as they turn from their screen to answer the question is not to foo but to do video on-demand, because that's how we gauge their progress, however. You could feel like a knowledge of human anatomy.

Top VC firms have started to give you fifty times as much what other people.

To help clarify the matter. If he's bad at it, and a little worm of 1988 infected 6000 computers. Zagat's lists the Ritz Carlton Dining Room in SF as requiring jackets but I couldn't believe it, because it doesn't change the meaning of a refrigerator, but they hate hypertension.

[themyskira]

Amazons Attack! - part 1

Once upon a time, in the lead-up to the 2005-2006 cesspool of a crossover event that was “Infinite Crisis”, DC had plans for a miniseries called “Amazons Attack!”. The story was to be helmed by then-Wonder Woman writer Greg Rucka and artist Ethan Van Sciver, and it would deal with a conflict between the Amazons and the United States following Diana’s killing of Max Lord (and, presumably, building off the simmering background tensions between the two nations since the floating islands of Themyscira had crashed into the ocean off the coast of the US in early 2004).

The idea was nixed, but it never entirely went away. Over the next few years, it passed through the hands of numerous people at DC before finally landing in the lap of Will Pfeiffer in late 2006. By this stage, the original proposal was no longer feasible. The Max Lord story had been resolved, Themyscira had retreated entirely from the mortal plane, and there was no longer any interaction between the Amazon and American peoples.

But that wasn’t gonna stop DC from achieving their glorious vision of man-hating harpies attacking the US capital with swords and pointy sticks.

Around this same time, somebody else in the company had a genius idea. Jodi Picoult, a bestselling author with a strong following among women readers, had just released a new novel about family relationships and trauma, and one of the main characters happened to be a comic book artist. Why didn't they find out if Picoult was interested in writing an actual comic and, you know, lending DC some of that New York Times Bestseller cred?

Picoult wasn’t sure. She didn’t know if she had the time, let alone the interest, in the project. She’d never been much of a Wonder Woman fan. But her kids talked her into accepting, and so, with no previous comic writing experience and far too little editorial guidance, Jodi Picoult set out to make her mark on Wonder Woman.

Together, Picoult and Pfeiffer would craft one of the most widely-derided stories in Wonder Woman’s history. There would be crimes against the written word. There would be character assassination on a mass scale. There would be bees.

Part 1: Wonder Woman volume 3 #6 -- Jodi Picoult (writer) and Drew Johnson (artist)

Some context: For reasons too stupid to go into, Diana has decided to assume a secret identity. She hopes to can gain a better understanding of those she protects by living a normal human life… as an elite Department of Metahuman Affairs field operative charged with neutralising metahuman threats.

Agent Diana Prince is standing in a scungy restroom trying to remind herself that she’s not Wonder Woman. She’s doing that thing where the hero looks in the mirror and sees their alter ego reflected back at them, but due to some poor art decisions, it instead looks like she’s staring at a Wonder Woman poster that somebody has hung over a grotty sink.

More bad art choices occur in the next panel, where the mirror glowers at her behind her back.

Diana continues to puzzle over how having a secret identity is really hard since she doesn’t know the first thing about how to be a human being. Because it’s not as though a large part of Wonder Woman’s career as a public figure in Man’s World has been working as an ambassador and engaging with people across the world at all levels of society or anything.

Also, Jodi Picoult misspells “Themysciran” twice and both typos are left uncorrected, setting the standard for the number of editorial fucks given in this crossover.

Then she steps out of the restroom and into a superhero-themed amusement park, where we meet Diana Prince’s charmer of a partner, Tom Tresser.

“I can’t believe this is my job!” Tom exposition/whines. “I can’t believe we have to baby-sit some sore loser who won a reality TV show to become the new Maxi-Man! I can’t believe you are my partner! I can’t believe cotton candy costs four dollars now…!”

I can’t believe I’m reading this fucking crossover.

Diana diplomatically replies that she’s not used to working with a partner either, and Tom sneers that, based on what he’s read in her record, she’s “not used to working, period”. Because Batman was skilled enough to build an entirely new identity for Diana, but not smart enough to give her an employment history…? How the frig did she get hired by the DEO, then?

Also, great to see that Diana and Tom are both taking their assignment to prevent a human person from dying so seriously. While Maxi-Man is signing autographs out in the open, a sitting duck for any would-be attacker, Tom is gorging himself on fairy floss and Diana is trying to order a Wonder Woman-branded milkshake.

Diana: One Wonder Woman milkshake, please. Server: It’s been discontinued. It’s now called the Black Canary shake. Tom: Wonder Woman!! Now there’s a partner I wouldn’t mind having…

In case you hadn’t figured it out, Tom Tresser is the love interest. Whatta catch.

Also, no, Jodi. No. Either the Wonder Woman milkshake has been discontinued, or it’s been renamed the Black Canary milkshake. You can’t have it both ways.

This, by the way, is the first of several “hilarious” gags about how Wonder Woman is unpopular and regarded as kind of uncool. Picoult’s going for cheeky meta, but she comes off as ignorant, tone deaf and kind of mean-spirited.

In the real world, Wonder Woman doesn’t share the same level of popularity as Superman and Batman. But in the DC Universe, and particularly in the Wonder Woman comic, she’s consistently portrayed as a hero with a strong public presence and an ability to inspire, to the point where literally the issue preceding this one was a oneshot revolving around Wonder Woman’s influence as an empowering and inspiring hero.

If Picoult was playing, as Rucka did, with the idea that once Wonder Woman started using her public status to express her opinions, a large swathe of the public turned against her, that’d be one thing. But, no, she’s just decided, as a basis for her punchline, that Wonder Woman is a nonentity in the DCU, which is out of step with canon and does a huge disservice to the character.

As a meta joke, this also misses the point, because the fact that Wonder Woman doesn’t sell as many comics as Batman and Superman cannot be divorced from the the historical (and persistent) sexism in what remains a very blokey, male-dominated industry, not to mention the fact that DC put significantly more resources into producing and promoting Batman and Superman comics and merch. Those aren’t the only reason for the discrepancy in popularity, but they’re not things you can just brush off.

It gets even more unfortunate in the context of this particular comic’s publication. See, about ten months prior to this, DC had relaunched Wonder Woman with a new #1 issue penned by Allan Heinberg, who had recently earned much acclaim as the writer and co-creator of Young Avengers at Marvel. Between them, Heinberg and DC then proceeded to royally fuck up the relaunch. Heinberg wasn’t able to balance scripting duties with his TV writing job, causing issues to be delayed for months at a stretch, until it became clear there was no way he’d be able to finish his first arc before Jodi Picoult started her run and DC had to move on without him (he would eventually finish his story in the 2007 annual — over a year after he started the five-issue arc). Picoult’s first issue was only the third Wonder Woman comic to hit the stands in more than six months.

So basically, she’s making her funny-funny “boo, nobody buys Wonder Woman” against a backdrop of DC failing to produce Wonder Woman comics for months on end.

Anyway. Diana and Tom finally get around to doing their job and return to Maxi-Man’s signing table. Maxi-Man asks them to get him a chilli dog (“and a drink! I hear the Black Canary shakes are awesome!” GROANS FOREVER), and Tom has the nerve to be offended. “I don’t remember seeing this in my job description.” Well, gee, Tom, I don’t remember seeing ‘leaving your principal unprotected so you can slack off and stuff your gob with fairy floss’ in the job description either, and yet here we are.

Tom continues to grizzle about how unfair it is that his incredible talents are being wasted on this boring assignment, and this time Diana’s starting to get fed up. Meanwhile, the reality-show superhero they’ve been looking down their noses at is the only one who’s noticed that the rollercoaster behind them is spontaneously falling apart.

Of course, the moment Maxi-Man springs into action, he’s immediately knocked out cold by a piece of flying rubble, leaving Diana to take charge. Tom does what he does best, by which I mean he complains.

Diana: Tom! You get Maxi-Man to safety! I’ll get that crowd away from the roller coaster! Tom: But… I… we… Diana: There’s no time! Now! Tom: Who the heck’s she to order me around?!?

A quick costume change, and Wonder Woman saves the day, but not without internally griping about how stupidly confusing humans are.

Maybe this is what I was born for. To protect them… not understand them. But how can I…? They don’t even understand themselves.

urrrgghghhhhhh haaaaaate.

We never learn why the roller coaster spontaneously fell apart.

Later, as Diana and Tom make their way back to DOMA, Tom is still complaining. This time it’s about the fact that he missed Wonder Woman’s appearance at the theme park, because “I bet she looked hot”.

They stop at a store selling superhero merch so that Tom can get his niece a Wonder Woman action figure for her birthday. Diana comments that she thought Tom was an only child and Tom conspicuously doesn’t answer. And sure, it’s possible that the “niece” is a real human person who’s the daughter of a close friend or non-sibling relative, but given everything we’ve learned about Tom in the last eight pages, I think it’s far more plausible to assume that there is no niece and he’s planning on jerking off to a Wonder Woman action figure.

Diana continues to be terrible at having a secret identity.

“The Batman one’s better. Look — it’s got a detachable Batarang… But my — er, Wonder Woman’s lasso doesn’t even come off.”

All the Wonder Woman merch is 75% off because lol Wondy is uncool, and for some reason Diana is super offended and tries to lecture the poor store clerk about how obviously Wonder Woman is cool because saving the world is cool so there.

Clerk: Wonder Woman’s not cool, I guess. Diana: Doesn’t saving the world all the time make you cool? Clerk: All I know is she’s never sold as well as Superman or Batman… Tom: 75% off! Sweet!

Next, it’s time for a stop off at the gas station for some hilarious comedy hijinks around Diana’s total lack of familiarity with modern society!

Ha ha! Champagne comedy! All of this is just so new to her, don’t you know! It’s not like she’s ever lived among ordinary mortals

or held down a job

or, you know, interacted with any human being at length.

Now, I don’t blame Jodi Picoult for not knowing any of this. I’d be surprised if she’d even read a Wonder Woman comic before DC approached her, and though she would have done some background reading in preparation for this gig, she couldn’t be expected to be across every element of Wondy’s post-Crisis continuity, which at that point already stretched back two decades.

Her editors, however? Were not new to comics. They should have picked this shit up.

So, they go to get gas. Tom asks Diana to pay and she pulls out a ten dollar note. Tom points out this is insufficient in the most patronising way possible.

“Uh, gas is $3 a gallon, sweetheart. That might get us down the block…”

He asks he if she has a credit card, and she blinks in incomprehension. Yeah, because it’s not like Batman would have arranged cards and a credit history when he manufactured Diana’s false identity. Not like he’s known for being detail-oriented or anything. (And by the way, this is a thing that happened four fucking issues ago, so nobody has any excuses.)

Aaaaand Diana continues to suck at the secret identity thing.

Tom: Geez, how do you normally get around? Fly or something? Diana: Ha, ha. Funny. Fly places. Imagine…! Tom: Ten bucks? No credit card? Where are you from? Mars? New Hampshire?

Oh yeah, and this whole scene she’s been internally complaining about how humans are relentlessly acquisitive and materialistic and confusing and booooooo being an ordinary person is haaaaaaard.

Finally, they arrive back at HQ, where Sarge Steel chews them out for allowing a known fugitive like Wonder Woman to slip through their fingers at the amusement park, even though they weren’t at the park for Wonder Woman and this is literally the first they’re learning that Wonder Woman is a fugitive.

He also blames them for the rollercoaster getting destroyed, even though they had nothing to do with the damage and their only contribution was to get people to safety. Although, given how much they were slacking off on the job, it’s entirely possible that some metahuman terrorist snuck in and sabotaged the rollercoaster on their watch. Since Picoult still hasn’t told us how the rollercoaster was damaged, I’m just going to assume that this was the case.

It turns out that Wondy is wanted for questioning over her killing of Max Lord, even though she’s already been cleared of charges, so Tom and Diana’s new orders are to find her and haul her in. Awkwaaaaaard.

So obviously they get straight to work this important government assignment. I’m just kidding, they head straight for the DCU version of Starbucks. In fact, so far I haven’t come across any evidence that either of them do any work at all.

Things we’ve seen Tom and Diana do this issue:

Leave their principal unprotected so they can gorge themselves on junk food

Bicker and complain while a rollercoaster explodes behind them

Shop for superhero action figures

Fill up on petrol

Drink coffee

Things we have not seen Tom and Diana do this issue:

Their fucking job.

We get the usual obnoxious joke about Starbucks coffee sizes being weird and Diana being confused by them, which I’m pretty sure was hack material even in 2007.

Tom: Iced double Vente soy latte with Turbinado sugar, please. Diana: Um… Small cup of coffee? Server: Venti, Duovent, Grande, or Uber? Diana: Um… Small cup of coffee. [Everyone stares at her.] Diana: [whispers to Tom] I don’t think she speaks English…

They sit in the park, drinking their coffee, and Diana cries because humanity is confusing and everybody is mean to Wonder Woman.

No, really, that’s exactly what happens.

Diana: Why don’t you people just leave her alone? Who cares what she’s done? Tom: You talk about people like you’re not one of them, you know that? Diana: [CRIES]

Picoult’s Diana is so outrageously bad at maintaining a secret identity on even the most basic level, even a self-absorbed wanker like Tom Tresser ought to have cottoned onto her by now. Then again, he also failed to notice a rollercoaster collapsing a few metres away from him, so…

In an out-of-character display of ordinary decency, Tom gives Diana a pep talk, then heads off home. As he walks away, Diana hears a scream for help and jumps into action—

—aaaaaaand it’s an attractive young white college girl being mugged by a thuggish, armed black man. Definitely no ugly connotations lurking there.

Diana subdues him with a single punch, and is rewarded with proof that some people do still find Wonder Woman cool because, yes, we’re still on that tired gag.

College girl: I did a paper on you in my feminist theory class! I said you were an icon of womanhood we could all divine strength from… but I didn’t realise you were so… cool! Diana: I hope you got an A.

Tom, driving home, gets a call that Wonder Woman has been sighted in a seedy part of town. In addition to illegally talking on his phone — not hands-free — while driving, he does that thing people do when they’re pretending to talk on the phone, you know, helpfully repeating all the relevant information for the audience.

“Tresser. Wonder Woman? Seen at the Villains and Vixens Bar? I’m there, out.”

If we could hear both sides of the call, I can only imagine that it’d go something like—

Tom: Tresser.

Agent: Hey Tom, it’s Fred; hear you’re on the Wonder Woman case. I know it’s late, but we got a couple reports of sightings at the Villains and Vixens Bar. You happen to be anywhere near there?

Tom: Wonder Woman? Seen at the Villains and Vixens Bar?

Agent: Yeah, that’s what I just sa—

Tom: I’m there, out. [hangs up]

Agent: Jesus, I fucking hate that guy.

Basically what I’m saying is, he absolutely deserves it when he stumbles, ill-equipped, into a suspiciously flirtatious Wonder Woman who is wearing an earlier iteration of Diana’s costume and striking all kinds of ridiculous sexy poses, and instantly gets himself captured by what is obviously Circe in disguise.

Diana gets called back to headquarters, and she’s still wrestling with the question of how she can possibly do her job when her job is to arrest Wonder Woman. (WELL GEE, DIANA, I GUESS YOU SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF THAT BEFORE YOU TOOK A JOB UNDER AN ASSUMED IDENTITY AT THE DEPARTMENT DEVOTED TO POLICING METAHUMANS LIKE YOU.)

Also turnstiles. She is deeply perplexed by turnstiles.

comedyyyyyyyyyy

Sarge tells Diana that Tom has been abducted and a pair of Amazon bracelets were found at the scene. This is all the evidence Sarge needs to conclude that Wonder Woman has gone back to her old neck-snapping ways and must be stopped. He gives Diana the bracelets in an evidence bag and tells her to take them to the lab and see what she can find out.

I have questions.

Why weren’t the bracelets already being analysed at the lab? Did Sarge Steel wrestle the evidence bag off a hapless crime scene investigator and smuggle them up to his office just so he could play show-and-tell with Diana? How do they know the bracelets are Wonder Woman’s? In this superhero-merch-flooded world, wouldn’t Amazon bracelets be a dime a dozen? Or is Wonder Woman so ~uncool~ that every Amazon bracelet manufacturer immediately went out of business and buried the shameful evidence of their failed ventures in a New Mexico landfill alongside all those Atari cartridges? And why would Wonder Woman leave her bracelets behind? They’re not the kind of thing she’s likely to forget. Yes, we know Circe’s planted the bracelets deliberately, but the DOMA agents don’t.

And most importantly, why does Sarge Steel’s reflection look like Diana?

Diana doesn’t need to take the bracelets to the bag, because she knows they’re replicas and, what’s more, she knows where they come from.

“They were designed to complete a uniform I donated to the Wonder Woman Museum… which closed down over a year ago.”

Okay, now hang on.

I realise we’re back on the hilarious ��Wonder Woman isn’t popular’ gag, which absolutely has not outstayed its welcome, but a museum is not the same thing as a theme park concessions stand or a pop culture store.  A museum does not just go, ‘buhhhhh, I know we’ve amassed this huge collection of great historical, social and aesthetic significance. Indeed, it is almost certainly the largest collection of Wonder Woman and Amazon-related items in the world, and much of it was donated by Diana herself, making it immensely valuable. But — and this is awkward — it turns out people don’t want to visit us because Wonder Woman isn’t cool. Guess we have no other choice but to pack it in and open a Black Canary Museum down the road.” That is not how museums work, Jodi.

I’m also confused as to why Circe needed to steal a Wonder Woman costume from a museum when it would have been far easier to glamour her clothing to look like Diana’s, the same way she glamoured her features. This seems needlessly complicated.

Diana whips off her glasses and does the spinny-transformy thing from the TV show. This is technically a power that Wondy has at this point in continuity — at the end of Allan Heinberg’s first arc, it’s revealed that Circe has given Diana the supremely useless “gift” of being able to turn her powers off, allowing her to switch between Amazon and mortal with a spin and a flourish.

Except, when this issue was published… Heinberg’s last issue hadn’t been. Remember, he flaked on his scripting duties, so the final instalment of his story and the introduction of the dumbass spinny-power-up wouldn’t come out until November 2007 — six months after this issue was released.

The issue ends on Wondy flying to the rescue while Circe lies in wait in the defunct Wonder Woman Museum, predatorily clutching a chained and shirtless Tom Tresser.

[galaxyholly]

Let’s talk about labels.

So, with all the “political” discourse around minority groups lately, I’ve noticed something that’s left a sour taste in my mouth every time I hear it. (Or really a lot of things)

Labels.

Every minority group has them. “Gay” vs. “Straight”, “Black” vs. “White”, “disabled” vs. “abled”. 

Usually, labels are used as handy signifiers for a distinguishing trait, such as being homosexual. They’re used to distinguish something from a group, usually as some kind of utility of understanding. And they can be useful! Saying, “I’m gay” rolls of the tongue a lot easier than, “I am an X, and I am sexually attracted to X.”

But lately every time I hear labels like that, I can’t help but wonder if labelling is counter-productive to everything these groups stand for.

Language is powerful, its meanings, usage, and implications can change peoples’ minds like the snap of a forefinger and thumb. Obvious examples are like Cold War propaganda. We still have the majority of Americans assigning everything left of killing the homeless for sport as socialism (That’s a quote from somewhere, lemme know if you guess it.) 

Labelling isn’t an exception to this. There was a study done in recent years that illustrated this power in ways not really studied before. It involved telling a group of kids that they were gifted, and telling another that they didn’t achieve the gifted status. Both groups were taught using the same curriculum and methods, and by the end of the study, the “gifted” group had an IQ difference of 10-15 points. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Just labelling these students caused sort of a “placebo” effect on their academic performance/ intelligence. 

[Citation at the bottom]

What does this have to do with minority groups? Well, I think it contributes to their perceived abnormality in our society. Most of these groups just want to be normalized, or treated just as well as the most well off groups and classes of society. Equality.

But the irony of campaigning for equality under a label, is that the label and the group status inherently separates and de-normalizes the group itself. If gay people are equal to straits, why do we even need a name for it? Can’t just saying, “I like X.” do the job? It’s nearly the same amount of effort to express, and it doesn’t involve boxing yourself into a narrow definition, nor does it separate. Does that make sense? You might have heard of this, but its called Heteronormativity and it sucks. As a wlw myself, I get tired of the label.

Maybe a more clear example would do good. If the color of your skin means nothing about who you are, why then do we call people “black”,”white”,”yellow”?

Before anyone tries to tell me that my idea is heading into culture erasure, give me a moment to explain. I do think culture is important, and I am by no means trying to force anyone to let go of any labels, or adopt others. I just want to open conversation as to what could be more helpful than the labels we have.

For instance, what do I think about when hearing the words black vs. white?

As a physicist, I would think of white as being the combination of all wavelengths of light, and black being no light present at all.

As someone indoctrinated into a protestant Christian belief system (I’ll be healing from that one for a while), white reminds me of all the imagery associated with god and angels, and black as associated with satan and demons (red too).

I mean, anyone can attest, it’s just classic symbolism. So what does it do when we assign groups of people those colors as labels. Well, it brings a lot of those connotations with them. Labelling in this way, using a noun as the label makes the label into something inherent in people. Think of the difference between, “I am a black person” vs. “I am a person comes from a unique culture and background.” In the first example, the person is black. It’s read as an inherent quality of someone. In a movement that’s saying that the color of your skin means nothing of who you are, the label of “black” only signifies a difference, which isn’t true. I don’t think POC or “People of Color” helps much either. It still plays into classic imagery, of white being pure, and other being less pure. It still makes the label out to be something that’s inherently part of the person. Which, yes, my skin color is a part of me, but as it means nothing about the content of my personality, so it seems odd to even mention its existence in reference to myself or my life.

This is my suggestion. Since skin pigment has no bearing on a persons life, why not just never mention it? Obviously this doesn’t do justice to the fact that people are severely oppressed due to their skin color. Fighting for rights or talking about culture that stemmed from oppression are the instances where sometimes a label is needed. So why not develop a better language model. Calling someone a “person affected by systemic oppression” doesn’t roll off the tongue, but the connotations are infinitely better. It conveys nothing inherent about the person, and the only separator is easily demonstrated to come from others, which means its not inherent, and not really a separator.

I think this can be applied to so many other groups. The most egregious example I can think of would be the term “transgender.” 

This language, much like racial language is extremely outdated and inaccurate, and as always, created by WASPs (White Anglo Saxon Protestants). The fact that a label exists at all, much like with poc, really irks me.

This is a group of people who are essentially just forced into the incorrect gender/presentation from birth, and many are self and medically-described to have been born in the wrong bodies.

One such sub-group is called “Trans Women.” These people are just women. They were assigned the wrong gender/gender roles/gender presentation at birth due to the archaic ideas of gender in Western society. Science, all accredited medical institutions, and psychology all confirm that “trans women” are just women. It’s the same with the men of the movement.

So, if you haven’t seen the issue yet, let me point it out. If “Trans women are women”, then why on earth do we need so say the “trans” part in the first place? Mathematically speaking, if [trans women = women], then the trans part is equal to zero. It’s a useless term. And yet, it’s everywhere. If you go to the reddit forum r/asktransgender, you literally can’t find a single person referring to a woman as just a woman. There’s this obsessive need to always attach “trans” in front of everything these men and women are associated with.

This isn’t even getting into what “transgender” implies in the first place. Much like POC is to black, transgender is to transsexual. People fighting to get rid of discriminatory and antiquated language with a history of use in disparagement only to replace with another useless label that just has less bad history of use.

“Transgender” is defined as:   denoting or relating to a person whose sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond with their birth sex.

If everything says that these people are who they are, then why does “birth sex” even factor in? The use of this word makes it even worse. These people have to say, “I am transgender.” This is again, making the label inherent to the person’s being. Essentially relegating their whole life to being that person whose internal sense of identity and gender doesn’t align with their “birth sex”. 

How about, “I am a woman”, or “I am a man”, or “I am a nonbinary person.

The label carries around so many connotations. If someone is a woman, then why do they need the classifier, “trans” before her description? What does that confer? Their genitalia? No, some get surgery, and some don’t, so how is that helpful. Also, why do people think they have a right to any information on a person’s genitalia? That’s so weird and creepy. I would argue that these women know more about womanhood, and have a more intimate relationship with it than women without the experience of having a gender incongruence.

It also implies that they are going from one gender to another, hence the “trans” part. Which, is just inaccurate, considering that these people just are who they are from birth. Looking like a man doesn’t make you one, and vice versa. Nor does genitalia. Hopefully I don’t have to explain that one to you. 

So, why not say something like this instead. “I am a woman and I have a gender incongruence.” Gender incongruence is defined as the mismatch an individual feels as a result of the discrepancy experienced between their gender identity and the gender they were assigned at birth (GIRES, 2018, 2018).

First, this definition has nothing inherent about the person. “Having” a gender incongruence isn’t the same as saying, “I’m gender incongruent.” Once the person has fixed this incongruence through medical, social, or presentational means, they no longer have an incongruence, and are just a man/woman/enby.

Like said, if they’re just men and women, why the trans part? It only separates, and since they’re the same, the separator means nothing.

There are intersex women, infertile women, women who were brought up with tons of brothers, not being allowed to be “girly”, who never had a gender incongruence. So don’t try to say that there’s anything that can separate women who’ve had a gender incongruence to those who haven’t. 

I know this was really long, but I hope you got something out of it. Let’s stop labeling everything we see. It’s often inaccurate, and a really poor way of approaching. Let’s use the framework of oppression and culture instead.

If you’re in any of the minorities I talked about and you want to correct me or talk about this post, let me know.

Love, Holly

-xoxo

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/alternative-truths/201005/why-its-dangerous-label-people label theory readup

[tinyshe]

“I Survived Communism – Are You Ready For Your Turn?”

By Zuzana Janosova Den Boer

“It was scientifically proven that communism is the only social-economic system providing the masses with justice and equality – 100% of scientists agree on this. The topic is not up for debate!”, so proclaimed my professor during one of his lectures on the subject ‘scientific communism’, while the country of Czechoslovakia was still under communist control. I was reminded of his blustery pronouncement the first time I encountered the spurious claim that “a consensus of 97% of scientists agree global warming is man-made.” Most people don’t question scientific statements because they think they are facts. They do not understand that scientific statements must always be challenged, because Science is not about ‘consensus’; ideology is.

In March of 2007, the website WorldNetDaily published an article entitled “Environmentalism is new communism”. In it, the former Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, stated: “It becomes evident that, while discussing climate, we are not witnessing a clash of views about the environment, but a clash of views about human freedom.” He goes on to describe environmentalism as “the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity.” Klaus has also written a book: “Blue planet in green shackles”, in which he states “communism and environmentalism have the same roots; they both suppress freedom.” He also warns that any brand of environmentalism calling for centralized planning of the economy under the slogan of ‘protecting nature’ is nothing less than a reincarnation of communism – new communism.

Klaus understands communist propaganda very well – he should. Most of us who lived and suffered under communism can instantly recognize any signs of communist ideology, no matter how slight or subtle. Since I received my own vaccination of communist propaganda, during the first 27 years of my life, I too am immune to this disease. If someone is trying to ‘save me’ against my will, I’m instantly wary and ready to fight back – if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. So try to imagine how I feel, now as a Canadian, when I see the same tactics and hear the same phrases I saw and heard for years under communism, only this time in English!  If you think I’m paranoid, or that communism in North America is far-fetched, then good luck to you – I hope you enjoy what’s coming your way:

“You [North] Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept Communism outright; but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of Socialism until you will finally wake up and find that you already have Communism. We won’t have to fight you; we’ll so weaken your economy, until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands.”

Nikita Khrushchev  (1960)

Communism can be characterized by a single word: deception. Communists never disclose their real intentions. They are fraudsters who employ different identities, names and slogans, all for one goal: totalitarian enslavement. Since 1970, the goal of the Communist Party USA has been to subvert environmentalism and use it to advance their agenda. In 1972, Gus Hall, then chairman of the Communist Party USA, stipulated in his book “Ecology”:

“Human society cannot basically stop the destruction of the environment under capitalism. Socialism is the only structure that makes it possible …This is true in the struggle to save the environment … We must be the organizers, the leaders of these movements. What is new, is that knowledge of [a] point-of-no-return gives this struggle an unusual urgency.”

This idea was incorporated into the US Green Party program in 1989 (the same year soviet communism collapsed), in which the fictitious threats of ‘global warming’ and ‘climate change’ are used to scare the public into believing humanity must “save the planet”:

“This urgency, along with other Green issues and themes it interrelates, makes confronting the greenhouse [effect] a powerful organizing tool … Survival is highly motivating, and may help us to build a mass movement that will lead to large-scale political and societal change in a very short time …

First of all, we [must] inform the public that the crisis is more immediate and severe than [they] are being told, [that] its implications are too great to wait for the universal scientific confirmation that only eco-catastrophe would establish.”

Do you think the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is promoting science rather than socialism?  Read the following admission from the co-chair of the UN IPCC Working Group III, during an interview in 2010 with the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung:

“We must free ourselves from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy … We must state clearly that we use climate policy de facto to redistribute the world’s wealth.”

Do I have your attention? Then let me describe to you how communist propaganda and methodology work.  There are 3 main stages:

1.      Polarization  (KGB term: “demoralization”)

2.      Destabilization

3.      Revolution

Stage 1:          Polarization – Divide and Conquer

In order to win power, communists first polarize their target society. The notion of injusticeis introduced. One group of people – poor workers – are made to feel victimized by a second group, to the point that they demand civil discourse. Who are these people that supposedly victimize poor workers? Here’s a clue:

“Communists don’t care about poor people, they just hate rich ones”  – George Orwell

The one thing a communist cannot abide is a wealthy person. For communists, the rich are owners of private businesses, especially successful ones. They are loathed and demonized as heartless, spiteful monsters who exploit their employees and don’t care about their welfare. The rich are public enemy #1 – they don’t care about people or the environment; they care only about profit and wealth. Dare to disagree?  Then you are a “denier” and “imperialist traitor”, and after completion of stage 3, you will be physically liquidated.

“We must hate. Hatred is the basis of communism. Children must be taught to hate their parents if they are not communists.”  – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

During the first stage, communists focus on altruistic people – people with big hearts, full of good intensions, who believe in doing good, for goodness’ sake. Why? Because idealistic people are usually naïve and easy to manipulate, especially via their emotions. Recognizing how essential these people are to the success of his revolution, Lenin referred to them as “useful idiots”.

Stage 2:          Destabilization

During the second stage the basic values of society are targeted for change. This always starts with education:

“Give me your child for eight years, and [he or she] will be a communist forever” –  Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Communism always uses teachers and the education system to impose its ideology and promote its values – through indoctrination. My own indoctrination started in elementary school. In grade four, we all had to become Young Pioneers. From that day, we were taught about the ‘imminent danger’ posed by capitalistic countries. The curriculum in school gradually but firmly established admiration for communism and loyalty to the communist party. We were constantly reminded of how we live in the “best political system in the world”, the “country with the best social justice and equality”.

Our teachers participated in this process, either voluntarily or involuntarily. I remember teachers who actively reinforced communist indoctrination in schools.  They exploited a child’s emotional immaturity, lack of experience and knowledge –vulnerability – to impose their communist ideas, beliefs and values. They took advantage of their position of authority, of the natural trust that children place in teachers, to brainwash a young and vulnerable generation – to train the next generation of communists. Scare-mongering was a favorite tactic: “Embrace communism! Fear capitalism! Otherwise, your country will be overtaken by imperialists and you will be exploited! … Who is not with us is against us!”

If you think this can’t happen in Canada, then I have news for you: it’s been happening for some time, in both Canada and the US. The environmental cause was targeted years ago by communists as a catalyst for promoting socialism and paving the way for communism.

New communism is based on all the old communist ideological principles and beliefs, but uses environmentalism as its agent of change, to completely alter the core values of western democracy and destabilize (demoralize) society.

As illustrated by the following excerpt from Captain Eco, written by Jonathon Porrit-Ellis Nadler and published in 1991, children are being indoctrinated in our schools, being made to believe that it’s their responsibility to ‘save the planet’:

“Your planet is in serious trouble – from pollution, toxic waste and the loss of forest, farmland and fresh water… Your parents and grandparents have made a mess of looking after the earth. They may deny it, but they are little more than thieves. And they are stealing your future from under your noses.”

Some more examples:

·        In May 2012, a grade-3 class took to the streets of Toronto with signs, to protest the construction of the Northern Gateway pipeline. The protest was organized by their teacher and a local community volunteer. Pure Marxist method.  Just like these kids, who marched in protest to “save the planet”, we too were made by our teachers to march with banners and signs to save our country from imperialists.

·        In 2011, in Laval, Quebec, a six-year-old boy was disqualified from a teddy-bear contest because a Ziploc was found in his lunch instead of a reusable container. How did this boy feel, after being ostracized and excluded from his peers? Maybe he felt punished for his parents’ action. What’s the next step?  Encourage children to report their own parents, who use Ziplocs instead of reusable containers – denunciation is common practice during communism.

·        In April 2018, an Edmonton father went to an elementary school to see his grade-4 daughter’s play. In the play, the children sabotaged a factory, in the name of climate-change, then went on to save Alberta from its “evil oil industry” and “greedy oil barons”. Textbook communist methodology – demonizing the private sector (oil industry) by representing them as “greedy oil barons”.

In some university lecture halls, professors are also trying to indoctrinate the new upcoming proletariat. Every time I see elite university students protesting capitalism and advocating socialism, I wonder if they realize that if they succeed, it will be their very last protest. In an interview recorded in 1984, KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov described the consequences of ideological subversion (indoctrination). Here is a short excerpt:

“A person who is demoralized (indoctrinated) is unable to assess true information, the facts tell nothing to him….even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures … even if I take him, by force, to the Soviet Union and show him a concentration camp, he will refuse to believe it … until he will receive a kick in his fat bottom.”

(Yuri Bezmenov – on “Useful Idiots” and the True Face of Communism)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4kHiUAjTvQ

The children currently attending our elementary schools will vote in 10-12 years. How many of these children are being (or have already been) brainwashed into believing that in order to “save the planet”, they must vote for a government that will stop “destroying the planet”, by eliminating private ownership and taking control of production?

“The philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next” Abraham Lincoln

If you believe warm, cuddly socialism leads to utopian communism, in which equality and social justice prevail, then allow me to impart some insights about the ‘social justice’ delivered to us by communists. You deserve to know a little about the substance in which you will have to swim, before you dive into the cesspool called communism.

Stage 3:          Revolution

After gaining the support of a majority, communists call for a democratic election. If they win it, they seize power and abolish democratic elections altogether. At this point, members of opposition parties, along with all other opponents deemed to be a potential threat, are ‘physically liquidated’. (In case you aren’t familiar with this quaint communist phrase, it means executed). Private businesses are immediately seized and confiscated – nationalized. Key supporters who now finally realize how they have been manipulated and exploited (i.e. useful idiots who are no longer useful) are either jailed or executed, to prevent the formation of any dissident movements. All other useful idiots, having fulfilled their purpose of bringing communists to power, are now either enslaved into the new ideology, or disposed of in a variety of prescribed ways. A new privileged elite of communist party leaders is now formed. (No hypocrisy here! After all those angry claims of exploitation by a privileged elite, what’s the first thing communists do once they gain power?) Leaders of every key institution or organization: company, hospital, police, school, etc. are now replaced by an official member of the communist party. Competence, ability or fitness for the job is no longer relevant or required; the only prerequisite is loyalty to the party.

Economic Consequences of Communism:

Do you think communism failed because of oppression?  No. You can brainwash and threaten people, keep them dangling like puppets, until the supply of goods starts to disappear.   Economic reality always prevails.

“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other’s people money.” – Margaret Thatcher

The economic consequences of communism are always the same – poverty, and this one comes with an ironclad guarantee – a lifetime warranty. People always spend their own money more carefully than someone else’s. Capitalism is about efficiency. Private businesses must spend their capital very carefully. They cannot afford to make investments in their business, unless they are sure it will be worth it. A mistake could result in an increased price for their product, reduced cash-flow, loss of competitiveness, eventual bankruptcy.

In a centrally planned economy, all production is controlled by government. The revenue required to operate the government and the economy is obtained through taxation. Because a centrally planned economy is not subject to the laws of supply and demand, financial goals become meaningless, since there are no penalties for not achieving them.  Thus, long-term government plans are never fulfilled and financial goals are replaced by imaginary production quotas. The result is profligate waste and inefficiency on a monumental scale. Communism institutes mandatory employment with pre-determined duties and salaries. The problem is lack of goods and services. Even if you have money, you will have few opportunities to spend it for your own benefit.

Both socialism and communism believe in the abolishment of private business; economic resources may be ‘publicly owned’, but they are controlled by government. Communism is implemented in two stages. During the first stage (socialism), wealth is distributed to people according to their productivity. During the second stage (communism), wealth is distributed according to individual need, but it is the government who decides what those needs are, and if they even matter, not the individual. Remember the key word: deception? Socialism equals communism. Any political party or organization that advocates socialism is advocating communism. If you think socialism cares about democracy or freedom, then reread “Stage 3: Revolution” above.

Life under Communism:

What is life under communism like? In the Eastern Bloc countries, shortages of basic goods began in the 1980s. People had to get up at 3 AM in order to stand in line for basic necessities: bread, milk, meat, eggs, toilet paper, oil, et cetera. You could stand in line for hours and not even get a chance to buy something, once products ran out.

Other appealing aspects:

·        Want an apartment? You can’t buy one; real-estate markets don’t exist. You’ll probably get one (eventually) for free, but the government will decide the size, type, location, as well as your position in the queue, which may take years.

·        Want a car?  You must first submit an application, or buy a permit, to buy a car from the government, then wait in line, for years. The wait time might be 2-3 years, or it could be as long as 7-10 years.

·        Want to use some recreational facilities (government built, of course) for your vacation? You need to be approved by a labor union, and wait.

·        Want day-care for your child? Submit an application, and wait.

·        Want a garage for your car? Submit an application, and wait. I submitted an application for a garage in 1988. When I left Slovakia in 1997, I still had not received a response.

Sound idyllic? But here’s the best part: there’s no guarantee you will ever receive an apartment, car, garage, daycare, recreation, or anything else you might want. If there is any record (ever) of your non-compliance with communist ideology, you will receive nothing. As one communist leader informed me, after I refused to become member of a socialist party: “Forget about an apartment, forget about day-care, forget about a salary raise, forget about any benefits.”   Communism results in the poverty of an entire society. By comparison, free-market capitalism has lifted the highest number of people out of poverty in human history.

Corruption under Communism:

Because of lack of goods and services, corruption and bribery become endemic under communism. Of course, corruption also exists in capitalist countries, but communism elevates it to a completely different (systemic) level.

“It’s not what you know, but who you know.”

To function, in order to survive, you must have a network of connections, and pay bribes, for everything:

·        Education may be for free, but there’s no guarantee you’ll ever get into your desired school’s program, even if you have top marks. The state might have different plans for you, or for your child. But with good connections, and the timely delivery of a valuable gift to the school principal or party leader, anything is possible.

·        Health care may be for free, but if you want your doctor to be sober for your surgery, better pay up. Paying bribes to doctors in cash or gold was common in the Eastern Bloc. I was even told how much I must pay by the doctor himself.

·        Police are a special case: corrupt, enjoying their power immensely.  Did you speed? Your choice is between a lesser bribe and much more expensive ticket. No court, no argument, no place to complain.

·        Need anything from government employees? Good luck. Communists invented stamps of different sizes and shapes. To get your document (or permit) stamped, you must pay a bribe.

·        Want a new book, new clothes, or a better piece of meat? Better know the saleswoman and be really nice to her.

·        Your car has broken down and needs repair? Oh dear, now you’re in real trouble. Leaving a car in a repair shop entails the risk of good (functioning) components in your car being secretly replaced by inferior (or non-functioning) ones. The good components will be sold or exchanged for other goods. This is how exchange markets work under communism.

Due to lack of goods, everyone steals. We used to say: “Who is not stealing from the State is robbing his own family”. Without connections, you will remain in a queue for a very long time.

And finally, here’s a truly delicious irony for you. Do you think communists care about the environment? I remember hills near chemical plants laid bare, denuded of vegetation by polluted air and acid rain from towns where heavy metals were produced, places where aluminum had poisoned the ground-water, cities where the haze from industrial smog was so thick you couldn’t see through it, and it hung there for months, places where noxious compounds in the air forced residents to wear face-masks. Naturally, there were environmental laws, all conveniently ignored, in the name of glorious socialism.

The worst part is fear, of being arrested, of being tortured, of dying as a political prisoner in a prison, labour camp or uranium mine (slow death from radiation poisoning), incarceration in an insane asylum (you have to be crazy to oppose the regime), or of the same thing happening to someone you love. Fear is the primary tool for keeping people silent and obedient. Those who do not comply are interrogated, tortured, intimidated, put under surveillance as MUKL (destined for liquidation) by the Secret Police, or just killed (quicker and much easier). Those political prostitutes called informers are everywhere, especially universities. They’ll report everything you do or say. Forget about freedom, of action, speech or even thought. The Party controls everything, and you voted for them, didn’t you?

“Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. Those who have known freedom, then lost it, have never known it again”  – Ronald Reagan

How many people have been murdered in capitalist countries for not being supporters of capitalism? How many have been murdered by a capitalist state for being anti-capitalist?  If we turn the questions around and ask how many have been murdered in communist countries, the answer is between 80 to 100 million, globally.

We are currently in the second stage (destabilization) of the new green communism.  

Are we so gullible that we can be taken without one shot, as Khrushchev predicted? Have we all taken our (many) freedoms for granted? Are we prepared to gullibly give up those freedoms to those advocating ‘socialism’, or are we prepared to resist the tide of radical leftism? Socialism equals communism – and after reading this article, I hope you have no illusions about what it is or where it leads.

Canadians will soon have the chance to demonstrate if, and how much, they treasure their freedom.

Good luck, Canada!

Zuzana Janosova – den Boer

source

[crazyt0wn14]

Ok. I haven’t posted in a while. So I’m going to go on a long rant about the unfairness of social standards and stuff like that. There will be many twists and turns. For those of you who do not have ADHD or can comprehend extremely convoluted work, just save yourself a bit of your life and don’t read this. For those of you who fit the requirements, whatever, I don’t care. Read, don’t read. Whatever. This is supposed to be a free country anyway. Well at least it is where I live. But enough of the fancy words and stuff, here’s that confusing part I was telling you about in 3, 2, 1.....

Ok, so our society expects all students to conform into one of three categories in a public school environment. I’m not getting into private or home school cause that’s not my terf. But we are either supposed to be really smart, average intelligence, or mentally disabled. Ok fine. But guess what, I’m not average, but I’m not really smart. I’m in between. The smart classes are too much for me, but I can sleep through the normal classes and pass with flying colors. And I have some friends who are not average intelligence, but they are not mentally disabled. They are in between. I know several people my age who fit in this same in between catagory, who are being forced to do work that is either too hard for them or too easy. Not only is this unfair, it holds the students back from learning the best that they can. This is not the only thing wrong with the school system. Dress code. You all know it. School dress code. I mean really who though up this crap? I can’t where sweats to school cause they might be a little short in the waist and show my underwear?? And then all these boys come down the hallway in front of the VP (vice principal) and their baggy jeans are hanging so low that if they were not wearing boxers I would have seen their butt cracks. Really? And the whole dress thing... jeez. I had the principal come up to me with a ruler and measure the length of my knees to the bottom of my dress. She then sent me home saying my dress was a centimeter short. A freaking centimeter!! What the heck! I am not trying to diss on boys or anything here, but as far as dress code, you get the longer end of the stick.

Now I’m gonna skip into a more sensitive topic for some people, y’all please just ignore it or don’t read it if you are gonna get all pissy. This. Is. Not. A. Personal. Attack. Against. You. Or. Your. Beliefs. I am simply addressing an issue that I believe needs some attention. That issue is homosexuality. Now, I am a Christian. Most people when they hear that immediately think homophob. I am not a homophob. As a matter of a fact I have some very nice lesbian friends and a trans cousin. I am as far as you can get from a homophob. That doesn’t mean I agree with their practices, but I do love and care for them just the same as I would a straight person. If you need proof message me and I’ll tell you a story that involves my cousin and some homophob who was being cringy. But now that that’s out of the way I can begin my rant on social standards for homosexuals! Ok. So their are three views, from my angle (feel free to message me if you see any more and tell me how I’m doing my life wrong and crap) that society has of homosexuals. View number one is the hopeless sinner who is to be damned for all eternity. Great. This comes from all those hypocritical Christians and maybe a few other religions, idk man, but if they aren’t Christian then they don’t read the Bible. I ain’t going to tell you what the people who aren’t Christians are doing cause that just aint my turf. View number two is the poor damned soul that I can save with a pity party. This one might be even worse than the damned for all eternity people, cause they believe that in order to save homosexuals from damnation and stuff they can just tell the homosexual how bad it must be to be homosexual and go on and on and on and generally make them feel like crap. Once again if they Christian, they didn’t read the Bible. And I won’t step on any other religion cause that ain’t my turf. The last view point is also my point of view, but for the purpose of this rant I’m gonna depersonalize it as much as possible. These people believe that yes, homosexuals are damned to hell for all eternity unless they repent just like the other two. But they also believe that in order to get a homosexual to repent the religious person should be as kind as if the person is going through a hard time, because they really are. Not only do homosexuals struggle with identity issues, anxiety, and sometimes depression. But if they come out they might also have to deal with harassment and pressure from their peers. This Christian will be the shoulder to cry on, the person to lean on and so on and so forth. Once again I am not speaking for other religions cause that ain’t my turf.

Sorry for stepping on toes, especially on that last paragraph. Cause yow. I stepped on a lot of toes. If you have any complaints or you just want to tell me what I’m doing wrong with my life or you just feel like talking to a random stranger or whatever then message me. I’ll try to get back to you by the end of next year.

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Lee Man-hee Press Conference at Cheongpyeong, March 2, 2020

▲ VIDEO Protesters can be heard shouting “Lee Man-hee is a swindler.” “Disband Shincheonji,” and “Send our family members back home.”

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 Information added March 4, 2020:

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Lee Man-hee divorced his own wife and married a member who had left her own husband and two children to join Shincheonji. ▼

In January 2018 Kim Nam-hee left and she recently gave a long video interview:

김남희대표 양심선언 신천지 교주 폭로영상 [존존티비] Video of Kim Nam-hee’s Declaration of Conscience and Her Revelations about Shincheonji Church [JonJon TV] Published February 20, 2020

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Comments on the video in English by reddit “Gildicchia”:

When I was in Shincheonji I struggled to get some information about them. I hope to make the process a bit easier for people in the same situation.... I live in Korea. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Shincheonji/comments/fag2jy/shincheonji_number_2_kim_namhee_is_shincheonji/

Kim Nam-hee, known as “Shincheonji No. 2,” is drawing keen attention as she heralds continued revelations about General Assembly President Lee Man-hee. His alleged successor and the leader of Mannam has left the country and released a long interview that is summarized in this article. She also said that Mr. Lee is an old man who is scared of death and she revealed that they are actually married. (Sorry for the poor translation.)

Kim Nam-hee recently appeared on the YouTube channel ‘John TV’ to comment on Lee Man-hee. “Lee Man-hee is neither a savior nor a God, but a sinner just like us” said Kim Nam-hee. “He is a complete swindler using God and religion. I am here to announce that Shincheon-ji, a religious fraud group that believes in Lee Man-hee as a savior, will soon disappear,” she said.

When Kim first saw Lee Man-hee, he said, “I knew you would come. I saw your face in my dream,” he said. “I was brainwashed by Lee Man-hee and had to marry Lee Man-hee, although I had two children and a husband.”

Kim said, “At that time, Lee Man-hee’s word was law to me. It is not just me, when one is brainwashed and addicted to doctrines, there is no room for a choice,” she said, adding that she was unaware of the true nature of the doctrine. “I was caught in the spell. Since that day, I’ve become a physical spouse, not the spiritual one you know,” she recalled.

Kim and Lee Man-hee openly married at the 6th World Peace, Liberation, Heavenly Culture and Art Sports Festival, a Shincheonji event. According to Kim, Lee Man-hee registered his marriage with Kim after divorcing his former wife.

Regarding this, Kim said, “Maybe the people who hear this will say, ‘How can this be possible?’ When you get in, you are brainwashed and addicted to it,” adding, “I knew too well about Lee Man-hee’s doctrine but I thought I would die if I left Shincheon-ji. That’s how scary brainwashing and addiction is,” she said. As for Lee Man-hee, she criticized him as a “high swindler” who only knows money. “Looking back, my money was the goal. The main method he used was the story and dream of God. It's a real threat. He asked me constantly for material things,” she claimed.

Meanwhile, Lee Man-hee wrote a special letter to the congregation on Monday, [February 4] when the number of Sincheonji Covid-19 infected followers soared, saying, “I know that the recent case of the disease is the devil’s work that the demons caused to stop the rapid growth of Sincheonji,” adding, “Let’s win all these tests in a trance. Our unchanging faith and truth are God’s and like the apostles who live and die.”

▲ Lee Man-hee and his wife, Kim Nam-hee.

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Gildicchia: “I do know that Kim Nam-hee sued Lee Man-hee for fraud. Apparently he took advantage of her money and possessions. ... there has been a controversy between Lee MH and Kim NH about some properties acquired with funds from Shincheonji (meaning from the believer’s donations) that were in Kim Nam-hee’s name, there was clearly a problem of malpractice and embezzlement....

As for the Coronavirus, I have some more detailed information. There are recordings of conversations and text messages. The church gave instructions to the believers on how to respond when they were asked if they had participated at the services. And hundreds of people didn’t answer their phone for days, some are still out of reach. Some others have declared that they have left Shincheonji and then turned out it was not true... This is the situation...

People are enraged at Shincheonji because they didn’t follow the government instructions to contain the Coronavirus infection. The lady that has spread the virus in Daegu was supposed to be at her place waiting for the results of the Coronavirus test as she had symptoms. When it turned out that many people in the church where infected the competent authorities asked the church to hand over the list of the followers so that they could be checked. They lied in order to cover the identities of their believers. Many of them are still out or reach or refusing to be tested. This is one of the reasons why the infection is out of control. The problem is that many Shincheonji people lie to their family, coworkers and friends and they don’t want their lies to be exposed. On top of that, they are convinced that God will protect them if they keep going around evangelizing. Meanwhile people die. Shincheonji people believe that they are persecuted because of their beliefs. Actually nobody cares about that. The thing is that they have their own rules that clash with the common social rules. If you are in Shincheonji it is ok to lie, to hide your identity, even to lie to the authorities if you do that in favor of the organization. Well, this creates a huge fracture in the society. I am increasingly worried for the safety of Shincheonji believers. People can not tolerate [Shincheonji] any longer.”

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Gildicchia: “In Korea different churches have implemented rehabilitation programs for Shincheonji followers. Even so, not many people have been successful in escaping the cult. Often times parents drag their kids to the program but they are convinced that if they listen to the pastor their spirit is going to die, so there have been cases of people throwing themselves out of the window or planning to commit suicide somehow. Many of them have left home and never went back. Shincheonji is well prepared to accommodate people that leave their place. I know there are psychologists experienced in cult rehabilitation in most western countries but in our societies a forceful participation (at least in the beginning) is not contemplated. In Korea police have relatively little power over these kind of issues so families can still opt for this solution. Also, Shincheonji is extremely wealthy and well organized so I have no doubt it could spread in western countries fast enough. I think prevention and information are the key. Lately Shincheonji is trying to change its ways a little. The followers are told to please and flatter their family members and to keep going with their studies or jobs to prevent incidents. However, how can they keep to do their stuff while dedicating most of their time to the cause... There is a long way to go before Shincheonji can fit in any society...”

https://www.reddit.com/r/Shincheonji/

▲ Lee Man-hee’s Cheongpyeong ‘Peace Palace’ with the $1 billion FFWPU palace of Hak Ja Han in the mountains in the background.

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VIDEO: Who is Lee Man-hee and why is his secretive church linked to half South Korea’s coronavirus cases?

VIDEO: South Korea’s coronavirus cluster is the world’s second-largest; at 1:00 Lee Man-hee speaks while desperate parents demonstrate about their missing children.

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Shincheonji also extorted 1.2 million won from members who failed to recruit new adherents, this also led some to leave the church. LINK

Controversial religious group uses K-pop boom for overseas recruiting

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Secrecy is paramount for South Korean sect linked to coronavirus surge. Many believers are in Southern California. By Victoria Kim   Los Angeles Times   March 2, 2020

‘Proselytizing Robots’: Inside South Korean Church at Outbreak’s Center By Choe Sang-Hun   New York Times   March 10, 2020

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Testimony of a Former SCJ (Shincheonji) Member

The workings of the Sincheonji religious sect at the epicenter of the coronavirus in South Korea

Students warned of a “dangerous pseudo-Christian cult known as Shincheonji”

Rival Korean messiah builds workshop next to UC / FFWPU Cheongpyeong Center

A Man of Two Faces: Leader of South Korean Church Tied to Outbreak by Wall Street Journal

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VIDEO: 다시보는 '신천지의 수상한 비밀'

VIDEO: 신천지 파이터가 말하는 신천지가 정체를 숨기는 이유