Interesting.
In case you hadn’t heard, Café Press is trying to debut a print-on-demand service this year. Like the indefatigable Mr. Deppey, I’ll be keeping my ear to the ground on this one. (John? You should maybe listen up, too.)
This; that; a little of the other.
Ignatz on the administration’s MLK Jr. amicus. —Also, Atrios.
Messr. Capozzolla touchingly wakes the hairdresser.
This one, for no particular reason the rest of you should be hip to, is for Skook. (But y’all did know about National Geographic’s wallpaper-o’-the-day. Right?)
I really liked Chad Orzel’s point about rec.arts.nielsenhayden.com, so I thought I’d drop it casually in conversation over here, like I’d come up with it or something.
Via the ever-eloquent (by which, of course, I mean right-thinking) Dan Gillmor’s pithy, punches-unpulled take on the 7-2 Eldred decision: a new blog to follow, Copyfight.
In vaguely tangential if more important (although rather thumpingly obvious) news: television network executives are still every last one of them evil, ignorant scum who haven’t the sense God gave a flea and are all on a Machiavellian kick to suck everything good and pure and true and fun from our lives.
If you were wondering: yes. I am indeed Griffen’s hand model.
Oh, and Barry’s back. (Ask him about his electricity issues. It’s funny. In a glad-I-wasn’t-there sort of way.)
Oh, and by the way,
Heather Corinna wants us all to have more sex. There’s T-shirts and everything. Now, if you’ll excuse me—
Better than bombs, yes, but—
We’re spamming key Iraqi leaders. Apparently, the subject lines read “Important Information”:
If you took part in the use of these ugly weapons you’ll be regarded as war criminals. If you can make these weapons ineffective then do it. If you can identify the position of weapons of mass destruction by light signals, then do it. If all this is not possible, then at least refuse to take part in any activity or follow orders to use weapons of mass destruction.
While the sentiment is laudable, you’ve got to admit—it lacks a certain credibility.
•––• •••–• ••••–
That’s “134” in Morse code, if you read • as “dit” and – as “dah.”
“134” means “Who is at the key?”
This is what 134 wrote in the December, 1864 issue of Telegrapher:
now there is a prejudice against lady operators, and the very word he uses, “prejudice” (being a noun in that relation), which, according to Webster means premature opinion; injury; damage, admits that it is merely a myth. Who that wishes to do right, stops for a moment to listen to the voice of prejudice?
I’d known there were female telegraphers up and down the network that bloomed across the States in the latter half of the 19th century. I’ve read The Victorian Internet. (The comparison is not so half-baked as it might seem. —The first online romance kicked off in 1860-something. Honest.) Prejudice (and myths of women’s fingers having a lighter touch on the wire) aside, there was no qualitative difference between men’s and women’s tapping; women were cheaper than men; Western Union liked cheap. The telegraph hubs in most major urban centers employed dormitories full of women, taking in messages from one branch, retransmitting them down another. Women first began filling commercial telegrapher roles in great numbers with the advent of the Civil War, when male operators were drafted into military telegraphy; when the war ended, and those men came back to find women competing for their jobs, we saw some of the tensions of the late 1940s and 1950s play themselves out in microcosm, 80 years before. Here’s what TA had to say on the subject of the American Telegraph Company training women in Morse code for free in the hopes of employing them as operators—at, he feared, a lower rate than men (and thus more attractive to General Marshall Lefferts, American’s owner):
What operators should do to protect themselves from ‘hard times’ is to keep the ladies out of the National Telegraphic Union, and also as much as possible off the lines.
I’d known this, vaguely, sort of, in the back of the brain, having read that book a couple of years ago, and then jotted down some notes about a 19th century dot-com satire that didn’t end up going anywhere in time. (Think about it: San Francisco was hip back then, too.) —So it was nice tonight, on an unrelated search (looking for various types of radio operator slang and shorthand), to stumble over a paper that sums up the debate that raged in the letters column of Telegrapher on this subject. (Since turned into a book. Hmm.) Here, for instance, is Magnetta’s response to TA:
I asked myself, do I live in the nineteenth century…? or are the days of barbarism rolling back upon us, and are we to do homage to the god of selfishness?...All the spleen that may be vented will not assure us that General Lefferts, in opening a way for ladies to become operators, does it from such selfish motives as those stated. Henry Ward Beecher, and John B. Gough, strive in their lectures to convince people of woman’s proper sphere. General Lefferts does more; he gives us a helping hand, and places us where we can prove ourselves equal to the best of you, if only we persevere.
“Protect from hard times—keep ladies out of Union; also off the lines!” Sir! you weighed your soul in that remark! Please examine that weight closely. But how I shudder as I imagine your mother at home washing your linen, while your sister blacks your boots!
And that’s not even the kicker. Go on, click through, browse; keep your eyes peeled for Josie, and what she has to say. (Josie is my new hero.) —And also be sure to note that 134’s letter itself is preserved in all its glory.
God, I love the internet. Sometimes.
If you’re going to be a fucking pedant…
LanguageHat? Could I tell you something? Personal-like? —Dear sweet Jesus, but I fucking love you for this. (If the archive’s being persnickety, go here and scroll down to “David Foster Wallace Demolished.”) (And it matters not one whit to me that your face is as green as mine.)
Have you seen this ancient geegaw?
Okay, so it isn’t in the 1482 Annunciation by Hans Memling, as previously announced. But it is cool, and it is worth a look: the medieval Itty-Bitty Book Light. —If you should happen to see it before March, drop Janice Safran a line, would you?
Going to the Show.
Dwight Meredith has announced the winners of the 2002 Koufax Awards; hearty congrats to old friend Barry for the richly deserved Best Design Southpaw. Read through the whole list and follow every link: the winners deserve it, every one, and the nominees all gave them good hard runs for the money.
But now that a game’s been pitched intra-league, as it were, to extend the metaphor (conceit?), it’s time to head up to the Show. Maybe the 2003 Bloggies could signal the eruption of the left-wing grassroots mediasphere.
Hey. A kid can dream.
Currently appearing elsewhere.
I should probably point out that this entry of Barry’s has generated a rather lively and puckish discussion, in which I take part (I do some of the puckish bits. You’ll have to click on the comments link at the bottom of the item yourself to get there, since it needs Java-whatsit to work). I should probably also point out that I should maybe go ahead and try to smack those various inchoate comments of mine into a more coherent screed for posting here (I style myself a freelance critic of the paraliterary; pornography is, like comics, like role-playing games, like cookbooks, like genre’d prose, like legal briefs, like cancelled SF-Western television shows—excuse me, televisual texts—paraliterary. So I should maybe write about this rather long story which all too often is given too short a pier)—but pontificating about anything without providing specific, personal examples is worse than useless, and getting into specific, personal examples when one’s topic is pornography is, well. Revelatory and embarrassing.
So.
(Yes, yes. Honesty and candor; candor and honesty. The irony is richly appreciated.)
Apparently, pregnancy is a fact of life these days.
Granted, it’s a glaring example of that scourge of sound-bite journalism, the Ill-Defined Antecedent. Nonetheless, this quote from this article is instructive:
“As long as Midge is married, I don’t have a problem with it,” said Kristin Morris from Newport News. “It’s a fact of life these days.”
Since the first “it” is a reference to Midge’s (inexplicably controversial) pregnancy, and reading the second “it” as referring only to that specific blessed event (“Midge’s pregnancy is a fact of life these days”) is a wee bit psychotic, one is left with the assumption that what Kristin Morris of Newport News (who doesn’t, we should repeat, have a problem with married dolls having children) wanted to say was, “Pregnancy is a fact of life these days.” —One could, perhaps, make a further assumption or two: perhaps she meant “Children aged six and up being aware of pregnancy as a concept is a fact of life these days.”
Nonetheless: doesn’t it make you want to grab one of these upset parents, these frowningly concerned ministers, grab them by the shoulder, perhaps (not too threateningly), look them in the eyes, and say, quite forcefully, “You know—your generation did not invent sex.”
—via Ignatz
Because I’m still feeling ill and not up to any sort of heavy lifting and anyway the piece on webcomics isn’t quite done yet (and honest, Brett, I’m working on it)—but anyway, for now, another trifle:
Choose life. Choose a side. Choose a quest. Choose a fellowship. Choose a fucking big sword. Choose elven cloaks, horses, mallorns, and rings of power… choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are and why you’ve got to destroy the fucking thing. Choose sitting by a fire listening to mind-numbing, spirit-crushing ballads, stuffing fucking lembas into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable volcano, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats who left home with you. Choose a future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that?
Via Space Waitress, a collection of surprisingly better-than-not pastiches of you-know-what.
You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot,
Happy Christmas your arse, I pray God it’s our last!
I’d’ve maybe voted for “The Carol of the Bells,” which is deliciously sinister if done properly (ignore the pasted-on English lyrics and instead keep Poe in mind: “The tintinnabulation of the bells bells bells bells bells bells bells—”), or maybe I’d’ve gone with “The St. Stephen’s Day Murders,” but Barry, damn his eyes, went and wrote a surprisingly touching pæan to Irving Berlin’s spectacular perennial, “White Christmas.” So now I’m all discombobulated and don’t know what to vote for. (Rumors that George Winston’s December slips onto my turntable at this time of year for repeated playings when no one else is around are scurrilous at best.)
Rude, crude, and dangerous to know.
This one’s for former Buffalonian Kevin “Blarg” Moore: the Buffalo Beast’s 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2002. Too much sports and a peculiarly vitriolic hatred of John Ritter, but hey, it’s 50 people; you’re going to find some quibbles. The entry on Ari Fleischer alone is (scatalogically) worth the price of admission. Which is free. But you get my point.
An apology—
—to all my co-workers, since once more I’m listening to “Lift Yr. Skinny Fists, Like Antennas to Heaven...” off the album of the same name by Godspeed You Black Emperor!
“(...more awkward pirouettes in the general direction of hope + joy...)” —Yeah. Sometimes. Pretty much, yeah.
Because you might need a giggle as much as I do.
From this priceless article, found thanks to Atrios:
The biggest sign, though, that LeBoutillier and Co. have no interest in the “real truth” is the description of the proposed “exit room,” which will purportedly depict an “exact recreation of the White House as the Clintons’ left it—trashed, damaged and defiled. ... We will recreate this to show—in the most vivid manner possible—just how much damage the Clintons did to ‘the people’s house.’” (Italics theirs.)
—It is worth noting that the improper apostrophe after “Clintons” is also sic, sic, sic. It is also (perhaps?) worth noting the inevitable Lott connection.
So much for space cowboys.
It’s official: Fox isn’t ordering any more episodes of Firefly.
update— What The Man has to say on the subject. Fingers crossed and wood veneer knocked.
Satire comes on little cat feet—
The rumors of Satire’s death are greatly exaggerated—
Satire is where you find it—
David Chess (via Plurp) wants to know if this site is a parody or not. (I think Steve’s readers are right: the quotes in the older news pages get a little more obvious—
“Parents should monitor their children’s activities, not librarians,” stated ALA spokeswoman Lilith Strug, “Librarians are much too busy to be bothered with worrying over the occasional incident of a child viewing bestiality. We have books to sort and overdue fines to track down, you know! If you don’t like pornography, just look away.”
Eminently sensible, no? —Also, the Irreducible Complexity Mousepad is less than wholly subtle, in my opinion—but the Ruby Matrimonial Thong is altogether too, um, revealing.
