Was, is, and ever shall be.
Photo credit should read MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images.
On a clear day you can see the ambiguous heterotopia.
“You’re supposed to have slightly less than one-fifth of your population in families producing children,” the man with the beard and rings said, “and at the same time, slightly over a fifth of your population is frozen on welfare…” Then he nodded and made a knowing sound with m’s that seemed so absurd Bron wondered, looking at the colored stones at his ears and knuckles, if he was mentally retarded.
“Well, first,” Sam said from down the table, “there’s very little overlap between those fifths—less than a percent. Second, because credit on basic food, basic shelter, and limited transport is automatic—if you don’t have labor credit, your tokens automatically and immediately put it on the state bill—we don’t support the huge, social service organizations of investigators, interviewers, office organizers, and administrators that are the main expense of your various welfare services here.” (Bron noted even Sam’s inexhaustible affability had developed a bright edge.) “Our very efficient system costs one-tenth per person to support as your cheapest, national, inefficient and totally inadequate system here. Our only costs for housing and feeding a person on welfare is the cost of the food and rent itself, which is kept track of against the state’s credit by the same computer system that keeps track of everyone else’s purchases against his or her own labor credit. In the Satellites, it actually costs minimally less to feed and ouse a person on welfare than it does to feed and house someone living at the same credit standard who’s working, because the bookkeeping is minimally less complicated. Here, with all the hidden charges, it costs from three to ten times more. Also, we have a far higher rotation of people on welfare than Luna has, or either of the sovereign worlds. Our welfare isn’t a social class who are born on it, live on it, and die on it, reproducing half the next welfare generation along the way. Practically everyone spends some time on it. And hardly anyone more than a few years. Our people on welfare live in the same co-ops as everyone else, not separate, economic ghettos. Practically nobody’s going to have children while they’re on it. The whole thing has such a different social value, weaves into the fabric of our society in such a different way, is essentially such a different process, you can’t really call it the same thing as you have here.”
“Oh, I can.” The man fingered a gemmed ear. “Once I spent a month on Galileo; and I was on it!” But he laughed, which seemed like an efficient enough way to halt a subject made unpleasant by the demands of that insistent, earthie ignorance.
—Samuel R. Delany, Trouble on Triton
Triton broke my brain more than any other book I ever read as a kid: I saw things differently after I read it—politics, sexuality, protagonists, sf. I read differently after I read it. And part of it was the thorny, prickly, problematic, nonexistent government of Triton and all the other Satellites, where you’re free to live under whatever system you want to vote for, or squat in the unlicensed free zones of whatever city you like—but behind it all that immutable, implacable, eminently sensible hand that invisibly takes what each might provide and in turn provides what each might need, but that also enables its agents to speak of “a” state and “a” system and to wage war on its behalf let’s not forget.
But it’s this idea of welfare, this road-not-taken over on the other side of the gulch from years of Reagan-Bush-Clinton, this road we might never have been able to take, but is nonetheless so dam’ sensible, where everyone’s given a hand up when they’re setting out regardless of etc. (and where everyone’s a stakeholder, and thus the system’s as untouchable as Social Security)—it’s this that came to mind when I read about a recent appearance on Glenn Beck’s medicine show by the Incredible paterfamilias himself, Craig T. Nelson, who in the course of a rant on how he’s sick of paying taxes for things that do not benefit him by God, said the following—
I’ve been on food stamps and welfare. Did anybody help me out? No!
It’s becoming clear that the question that will define the early 21st century is this: can the white man create a sense of entitled privilege so large even he can see it?
All signs point to no.
Doughty theep.
I wonder how many pro-life national lightning rods have been murdered for their views.
T-shirts can be decorated with text and/or pictures, and are sometimes used to advertise.
Not to knock Star Trek or nothin’, but Jayne’s T-shirts instantly made the future far more believable than any blandly newage councillor’s gown or ostentatiously homespun Jedi robes. It’s a future that keeps in mind clothing as she is worn: not just ceremonial formalwear and peasant uniforms, but everything in between, the knockabout workaday clothing you catch as you can, adorned with the serendipitious poetics only mass-produced things can provide. Proletarian chic, to re-appropriate a phrase.
I mention this because among the many things the Spouse does well in Dicebox is precisely this sort of practical imagineering: what do you wear when you don’t make your clothing yourself (or have it made for you)? What options are possible in a future of better fabrics and showier printing techniques?
All of which is a long-winded way of saying her ladies wear some fine T-shirts:
Now, the Spouse has done her bit to bring the future into the here-and-now by handrolling her own small-batch runs of T-shirts, but in addition to better fabrics and showier printing techniques, the future will bring us (has already brought) new ways of designing and distributing these quotidian goods. —I mean, basically, all of this has been a long-winded way of saying the Spouse has begun posting designs to Threadless.
You know how it works, right? Sign up for an account, then peruse the available designs; vote up the ones you like, vote down the ones you don’t, and those that are sufficiently juiced get printed as T-shirts and posters which you can then purchase and add to your quiver of mass-produced, knockabout, workaday poetics. And if you’ve ever looked at a page of Dicebox and said damn I want that shirt, add jemale to your watchlist and vote vote vote.
Fun T-shirt facts! A life cycle study of one T-shirt brand shows that the CO2 emissions from a T-shirt is about 4 kilograms (8.8 pounds)—including the growing of the cotton, manufacturing and wholesale distribution. The loss of natural habitat potential from the T-shirt is estimated to be 10.8 square meters (116 square feet).
The benefits of social media.
Just wanted to point out that if you were a member of the City of Roses Facebook group, it’d be easier to find certain special surprises and treats, is all.
Scott McCloud, author of Zot! Understanding and the comic is one of the theorists of gender.
“It’s as if they had been married to comics and computer but this is still in bed former husband, who is the paper.” And even want to “husband” will be good things, hopes that the young (which are now below 20 years and have grown up with both formats) to carry out the revolution that most have not been able to achieve.
—M.J. Albaladejo,
“Un manual de instrucciones para adictos al cómic” [via]
All is forgiven.
Oh, Pine State Biscuits. Your hype is not your fault, but is still ridiculous; your lines are too long, your biscuits are a tad bit too salty, and you use those orange individually wrapped slices of cheese, which is taking authenticity a number of steps too far. But by God you carry Cheerwine! So there’s that.
Cross-pollination.
I wanted to take a moment, just a moment, to share with you a couple of morsels from 
teaotter’s distillation of ithurtsmybrain’s list of Pairings that Ate Fandom:
From her “I’ll be in my bunk” list:
84. Nikola Tesla (The Prestige) / Sarah Connor (Terminator/SCC)
And you know? That works very, very well. It’s an intriguingly doomed disaster of a relationship in waiting, it is. But this next one, this:
From her “That would be (deliciously) wrong” list:
98. James Bond (James Bond films) / Bella Swan (Twilight)
I just. I mean. Words fail, you know? I mean.
Slouching toward Muhammad.
Ladies, gentlemen, them what are otherwise designated: the lights are flashing in the lobby. The final issue of the first book of Dicebox has begun.
A delightfully odd couple.
Ted Olson and David Boies have together filed a challenge to Proposition 8 in federal court. [via]
PR.
In which I try some of that publicity stuff to see how it tastes.
H8ers.
Folks, folks: California fucked it up way back on November 2. Getting mad today at a state supreme court that did the best they could with what they had is counterproductive. —I’m pretty sure the landmark 5–4 decision in Bush v. Gore wasn’t the last time a cabal of activist judges bent law and precedent all out of shape to overturn the will of the people, but I trust it proves my point?
But I take a pedant’s umbrage. Who wants to be productive? Right now, anyway? So here’s a charming little ditty from France; crank it, so long as you’re not at work sans earphones, and put the don’t-mourn-organize smile back on your face:
They will lose, on this front, anyway; it is inevitable. Doesn’t mean there won’t be setbacks here and there along the way. (So cold, so callous: a marriage forestalled, a life together deferred once more, is but a setback.) —I know! Let’s open it up to some friendly competition: how many states you think will properly recognize marriage before California gets its act back on track?
A riddle:
So why is it I’m thrilled to hear that Edgar Wright is filming in and around the actual dank pit that Bryan Lee O’Malley picked out for Scott and Wallace’s apartment, but the slavish care and monomaniacal attention to detail that Zach Snyder and co. slathered all over Watchmen left me cold?
The power of love.
“As someone who has closely observed politicians for many years, what I see is the rare integrity of a politician who couldn’t rationalize his way to swearing to uphold the laws of his state and nation while breaking them.” —Rick Casey, “Mayor quits job for gay illegal immigrant he loves” [via]
Bushy-eyed and bright-tailed.
I’m awake; I’m good. Did I miss anything?
Dear Rick Santelli—
Jon Stewart once spent, oh, about fifteen minutes on Crossfire:
Crossfire doesn’t exist anymore.He’s spent about eight minutes on you and CNBC.
So far.
