So the top story on my Google News feed today is that we still haven't found the remains of Amelia Earhart's aircraft.
I really don't think "Situation completely unchanged since yesterday or the preceding 75 goddamn years" falls under any existing definition of "news", but on the other hand, it got that crazy-eyed Red Fraggle-looking fuck off the top of my feed, so I'll take it.
There's a word Ford Prefect uses when he feels like he needs to say something but he doesn't know how to say it: goosnargh.
I'm going to say some things anyway. Maybe that's a bad idea. Guess we'll see. Maybe I'll stumble, fugue-like, onto some deep and profound truth; more likely I'll say something trite, insensitive and offensive -- in which case at least my newfound posting frequency means it won't be on the front page for long.
In the early hours of this morning, a man in a gas mask and a bulletproof vest walked into a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises, threw two cannisters of tear gas on the ground, fired once into the air and then began firing into the crowd. The death toll currently stands at 12, the wounded at 59. Those are the details as they're currently being reported, though it's still early and the information could change.
In the meantime, well, everyone is shocked and sad and horrified and, in compliance with human nature, trying to make some sense of this appalling act by making it fit some sort of narrative.
Was the killer a deranged Batman fan? Maybe he was and maybe he wasn't; I don't think it matters. Maybe he just picked a movie he knew would be crowded. Maybe he picked a movie where he thought people would think he was just a guy in a costume.
But there's something that feels like Batman about it, isn't there? An over-the-top villain on an over-the-top murder spree. There's no making sense of it; it's a horrific cross of violence and theatricality. If this man wasn't doing an intentional impression of a Batman villain, then he was tapping into something in the zeitgeist that forms the basis of all the Batman villains.
There's something Alfred says in The Dark Knight:
Some men aren't looking for anything logical. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
That's the kind of man we're talking about today -- a madman, a broken man, a man who cannot be understood rationally and whose motivations are fear and chaos on a scale that an ordinary mind cannot reconcile.
I heard an interview on NPR this morning -- it doesn't appear to be online yet -- with a reporter on the scene who also covered the Columbine massacre. The interviewer, sensibly, emphasized the fundamental differences between the two shootings, but, also sensibly, asked if the police procedure for responding to shootings had changed since Columbine.
The reporter said that yes, it has -- that in the case of Columbine, the police took time to set up a perimeter, whereas now they focus on getting in and stopping the shooter as quickly as possible.
And that makes sense, too, looking at something that's changed in how we see criminals. Setting up a perimeter and a dialogue is what you do in a hostage situation -- what you do when you're dealing with people who can, at least on some level, be negotiated with, reasoned with.
Random acts of violence are something else entirely. You cannot reason with someone who is just killing for its own sake -- there is nothing you can offer him to make him stop. He's not threatening lives in order to achieve something he wants; ending lives is what he wants.
It's a hard, hard thing to read about, to hear about.
Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing linked to Columbine: Whose Fault Is It?, Marilyn Manson's Rolling Stone article following the massacre which is sadly relevant today. He discusses how there is no single simple cause for such acts of violence, but how the media and society seek simple answers, seek explanations for the unexplainable. And how his own stage name is a criticism of the media's tendency to treat mass murderers like movie stars.
In the days and weeks to come, the news media will talk about this. They'll speculate. They'll engage in crass discussions of how this will affect the movie's box office, or what it's going to mean for Obama and Romney in the polls. Maybe they'll try and engage in some scapegoating and try to blame it on comics or video games, maybe they won't -- even speculating on such things is just too much for me right now. All I can think is how horrible this was and how my heart goes out to the victims and their families.
Perhaps the deepest and bitterest irony is that Batman itself is, on a fundamental level, a story about two people who went to see a movie and were gunned down, and the devastation that wrought on the son who would never see them again.
Last night, when I was digging for old Sonic the Hedgehog fanfic I wrote when I was 11, I ran across a page that had set up a profile for me.
Nothing I'd signed up for; a site that had apparently trawled search engines and found things out about me.
For example, it had an address and phone number on it that were both, at various times, attached to my domain registration information for this site. It asterisked out the last four digits of the phone number, as well as the street numbers of the address -- but I don't know how much that would prevent anyone from finding the house, seeing as the site's got a satellite photo of it with an arrow pointing to it.
Now, I haven't lived at that house in years. And I've been pretty good about keeping my current address off the Internet for most of this century. But you know, I did pick up a stalker once who posted vaguely threatening satellite photos of old addresses he'd found by Googling my name. He was laughably incompetent at the whole stalker thing, but it was still a little on the creepy side.
There are other things about that site that made me curious about its data aggregation. I know where it got my (old) address and phone number, but it also knew my brother's name, and I'm curious where it found that. (Not like it's a secret or anything, I'm just wondering where and how the scraper found it.) It also listed my age -- as "early 40's", which I have to admit makes me feel a little better about turning 30 in a couple months.
But you know, it's a bit disquieting to know that that address and phone number will be associated with me forever (or at least for years to come). If I ever attract any competent crazies, that could mean harrassment for whoever lives in those two places now. (My domain is now registered to the address and phone number of the hosting company. Please don't go after them if I piss you off, either; they're an understaffed local business and their job is tough enough as it is.)
There was a story a few months back about Spike Lee retweeting what he believed to be the address of accused child-murderer George Zimmerman but turned out to belong to a couple of elderly retirees. You can imagine how that went.
So, you know, not that I believe that the sort of gibbering maniac who stalks people who make him angry on the Internet will heed this advice, but here it is anyway: do not engage in Internet Mob Justice. You want to send an angry E-Mail to a public address or call in a complaint to a public number, okay, but leave personal phones and home addresses out of it. Not just because that's basic human decency, but because you might get the wrong person.
But Internet Mob Justice could make for a whole other post, or a whole series of them. (And, mind, I haven't actually been subjected to any, beyond the weirdo with the satellite photos a few years ago, nor do I expect to; I'm just indulging in general musing right now.)
But back to the point. Back when I used my real, personal addresses and phone numbers as contact for this domain, I wasn't thinking about long-term effects or unintended consequences. And I think that's an ongoing problem in the era of social networking.
Back in April, Cult of Mac wrote a feature on an app called Girls Near Me, which used Facebook and FourSquare location data to help users find people in the area and pull up their profiles. Charlie Stross had further comments.
At minimum, the app had potential for simple skeeze -- sliding up to a girl at a bar and pretending to coincidentally be interested in the same things she was. At maximum, well, full-on stalking. The app was pulled in pretty short order, but the app was just an aggregator -- people still post location data and personal information; that information is still out there, whether or not it's aggregated by a skeezy-looking app.
People post about being on vacation, and their houses get robbed. You'll recall I was out of town this past weekend -- but I didn't mention it until I got back. (I even scheduled two posts to go up while I was gone, to keep up my post-a-day streak.) Now, as I said, I don't think my current address is available anywhere on the Internet -- and my readership is far too small to pose any kind of statistical likelihood that somebody's waiting for a chance to rob my house -- but at this point it's just a best-practices thing.
I dunno. Guess I'm not going anywhere in particular with this. It's just weird, the amount of shit that's out there, the amount that's accurate, the amount that once was, and the amount that's just pure goofy-ass bullshit. (Still wondering where that aggregator got the idea I'm in my forties.) Something to think about.
It's a little weird to see things like, say, Ian Flynn doing a Sonic/Mega Man crossover for Archie Comics.
Because I wrote that story when I was 11.
(Okay, co-wrote it -- though I expect my collaborative partner would be happy for me to take all the "credit" for myself -- and it was Mega Man X, not the original Mega Man. But still and all...)
Ian Flynn and I were involved in Sonic fandom around the same time -- he went by Ian Potto in those days. I didn't really know him; we posted on different forums, but I remember seeing his name around. But, y'know, now and again it makes me wonder what would have happened if I'd stuck with it.
Per Wikipedia, Ian's about my age, give or take a few months -- but I skipped a grade. I expect I was starting college and Putting Aside Childish Things around the time he was submitting samples to Archie. Now I image laptops and he gets paid to do the shit I used to do for fun.
Which isn't to say I'd really consider writing Sonic comics for Archie to fit my personal definition of "livin' the dream", mind. You know the shit I go on about here, the way DC and Marvel treat their freelancers? Well, they're generous compared to Archie. Archie is like DC and Marvel used to be, before royalties, before creator credits, even, in most cases, before "house style" gave way to letting artists develop their own styles. Archie finally got around to crediting its writers and artists a couple of decades ago -- but if you piss 'em off they still might take your name out of the reprints.
And then there's Sega.
Ken Penders, one of Flynn's predecessors in the Sonic writer's chair, and an artist besides, was always pretty candid with the fans on the restrictions he had to work under. The book was marketed to 8-to-12-year-old boys (as he would constantly remind us), and so its content was inline with some dumb-ass Sega marketing guy's idea of a dopey eight-year-old's idea of a cool fifteen-year-old. Penders drew Sonic looking too depressed? Sega would send Pat Spaziante in to redraw his face to look more generally bored. Penders wrote a bit where Sonic, finding out that Sally wasn't dead after all, kissed her on the mouth? Sega made him change it to a peck on the cheek. Sonic was barely allowed to show an emotion north or south of 'Tude, barely allowed to like girls, and slept in a fucking race car bed.
(Let me stress that these are all real examples.)
So, y'know, it ain't exactly The Prince and the Pauper. I'm not crazy about my "career", and I grant that getting paid to write fan fiction about my favorite video game characters sounds like a pretty sweet deal. But in practice? Well, I wish Potto the best and I'm glad he seems a lot happier doing it than I probably would.
Good times.
And my good friend Jim is off to New Mexico for grad school. Good on ya, Jim.
A few weeks back, I laid out my aversion to Facebook and the like.
When I updated the site code a bit to add tags, I considered whether to add all the now-standard bullshit Like/+1/Pin/Reddit/StumbleUpon/Digg (Wait, Digg? That's Still a Thing?) buttons to the bottom of my posts. They'd probably get more exposure that way. And hell, maybe someday, if I'm actually concerned about getting exposure instead of, say, people stumbling on my site randomly while doing a search for "did stan lee bone at jack kirby's wife", I'll bite the bullet and stick a linkbar down there. But for now, I'm perfectly happy with my uncluttered little niche site. (Reminder: this site's title is meant as irony.)
Now, the thing is, upvoting actually does have positive applications. Not just in terms of exposure, but it's a great way to organize a comments section, provided it's implemented as it is on Slashdot or Reddit: popular posts become more prominent, while the trolls get drowned out.
Of course, this has the potential to result in mob-rule stupidity. That's why Slashdot doesn't allow just anybody to upvote comments; certain users are selected as moderators (and other users are selected as meta-moderators to help ensure that the moderators reflect the community). Slashdot's not perfect, but it uses a very effective model for its comments section. (On the other hand, if you put the power in the hands of too few people, you end up with a situation like Digg -- which I quit reading some years back precisely because I thought the voting had fallen to the lowest common denominator, but which as it turns out was being tightly controlled by a small and select group of morons.)
Course, that's not what the Like/+1/Karma/whatever button is typically used for. Typically it's purely masturbatory -- it doesn't affect which posts are more or less prominent, it just functions as a scorecard. The people clicking Thumbs-Up or -Down get to stroke their own egos and the ego of the poster (and it doesn't matter which -- do you really think someone who's got a shit-ton of thumbs-down clicks is any less satisfied than someone who got a bunch of thumbs-up? Because here's the thing: if somebody's got dozens of thumbs-downs, that is exactly what he was trying to get.). It's also a very rudimentary form of gaming, of the sort Ian Bogost parodied in Cow Clicker.
I'll say one thing for it: it at least serves as a substitute for people writing banal little one-word praise posts ("Seconded!", "Yes!", "Like!", "This!"). I'd rather see a "+100" next to somebody's comment than 100 one-line replies.
That said, I'd rather people actually, you know, find intelligent things to say.
Two days ago I mentioned, in passing, that while I'm boycotting Kirby-derived Marvel products, I'm not boycotting Ditko-derived ones.
Now, Ditko got much the same raw deal as Kirby back in the 1960's, and left under similar acrimonious circumstances.
But the major difference is this: while Kirby and his heirs asked for a better deal with Marvel and Marvel responded by suing them, Ditko was offered a better deal and he refused.
A couple of years back, Kurt Busiek said this in a comments thread at Robot 6:
And reportedly, Ditko also feels that Marvel owes him millions, and he's refused the money they've offered him as a bonus from the Spider-Man movie because he feels it's not enough. He thinks they owe him far, far more, and won't compromise his principles by settling for a lesser payment than he deserves.
He feels he was made promises that Marvel hasn't lived up to, going back to those inflatable Spider-Man pillows from the 1960s. That he's lived up to what he sees as his side of the bargain, and he won't renege on it even though he feels Marvel hasn't lived up to theirs. In his worldview, that shames them, not him.
But if you think Ditko thinks he doesn't deserve to be paid more than his page rate, then you're mistaken.
(While Busiek provides no primary source, he has a reputation for doing his homework; I am inclined to believe him on this one.)
I suspect -- though this is conjecture on my part -- that Ditko didn't merely refuse the money because he believed he was owed more, but that Marvel actually would have made him sign a contract stating that he was not entitled to any more. Rather like the one Kirby signed in the 1980's -- Marvel agreed to return Jack's original art in exchange for Jack signing a contract saying he had no claim to any of the characters he'd created. Marvel never lived up to its end of the agreement; the courts have found that while the statute of limitations has expired and Marvel is no longer obligated to return Kirby's art, it can still use that contract as evidence to prevent Kirby's children from reclaiming the rights to any of his characters.
So you can see why Ditko would be wary of signing anything Marvel offers him.
That said: he was offered something, and he refused it. It may have been a bad offer, he certainly had every right to refuse, but that's still fundamentally different from the Kirby situation, where both Jack and, subsequently, his heirs, have been denied anything at all beyond his original page rate, and Marvel has actually sued to keep it that way. Marvel's actions toward Ditko have been deplorable, but at least they've made a token effort to give him something.
Ditko, unlike Kirby, has also received a prominent creator credit in the Spider-Man movies (it's right upfront in the opening credits, as opposed to being buried 2/3 of the way down the closing credits). He certainly doesn't receive the recognition that Stan Lee does, but that too is a result of his own choices; as Mark Evanier recently put it:
The man has every right, of course, to refuse publicity and interviews but it's one of the reasons so many people think Stan Lee created Spider-Man all by himself. From Ditko's occasional letters in print, it's obvious this bothers him greatly...and it would bother anyone. But Lee is a great interview and Ditko is a non-interview and if you don't wave to the search party, there's a real good chance they're going to overlook you. I don't expect this to ever change. And nowadays when I talk about the many injustices in how the comic book industry has shorted major talents on money and/or credit, I've moved Ditko way down the list.
Ditko wants recognition but he refuses to grant interviews or even be photographed. While I can certainly admire his position -- that the work speaks for itself and that he should be recognized for his art instead of, say, being recognized for cameos in a bunch of movies based on it --, it's not a very realistic one.
In a nutshell, the reason I am boycotting Kirby-derived Marvel product and not Ditko-derived Marvel product is this: Kirby and his heirs have been denied money and recognition, while Ditko has refused money and recognition.
(In practice, lately it's amounted to the same thing. I haven't bought a Spider-Man comic in a couple years -- though I've been a Dan Slott fan since his Ren & Stimpy days and I hear his current Spidey work is great! -- and haven't seen Amazing Spider-Man. But as I've noted before, there's a difference between boycotting something and just not buying it.)
I read something kinda odd yesterday.
It was linked at Robot 6. It's a piece from a British rapper by the name of Akira the Don, explaining on the Huffington Post why he isn't going to go see Amazing Spider-Man. And there's this little bit in there:
It's not being made because a bunch of people really wanted, more than anything else, to tell the best Spider-Man story they could on the sliver screen. It's being made to stop the rights to the character reverting from Sony back to Marvel. Who, as we have seen, make much better superhero movies than Sony.
Now, before I go any further, I'd like to establish two things.
One: I hate the fucking Huffington Post.
Two: While I am boycotting Kirby-based Marvel product (eg the Marvel Studios films), I am not at present boycotting Ditko-based Marvel product (eg the Sony Pictures Spider-Man films). I haven't seen Amazing Spider-Man, but I still might.
I'd go into a bit more detail, but my reasons for those two points could really each make for a complete post, so I think I'll leave them as something to write about later.
Anyway. It's quite clear that Mr. the Don wrote this with his tongue firmly in cheek and is not serious about it. And also, he (rightly) praised Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2. So I'm not really trying to argue with him or tear his post down. But that one line is just kinda weirdly fascinating to me and I want to look at it a little further.
Marvel. Who, as we have seen, make much better superhero movies than Sony.
Really? I mean, Avengers has been a huge critical and financial success, but...are people's attention spans so short that that's going to become the conventional wisdom? The latest Marvel Studios movie was better than the latest Sony movie, ergo Marvel makes much better superhero movies than Sony?
I mean, look. I liked Thor okay. Story was pretty middling, but the art direction was fantastic.
But you wanna tell me it was better than the first two Raimi Spider-Man movies? Really?
Incredible Hulk, Captain America, Iron Man 2 -- all got pretty mixed critical receptions. And Punisher: War Zone? Let's put it this way: I was ten paragraphs farther down before I even remembered to scroll back up here and mention it.
Really, when you take a look at it, Sony and Marvel are pretty well even -- each has two big successes and a handful of mediocrity. Marvel's got Iron Man and Avengers, and Sony has the first two Spider-Man movies.
And then there's Fox, which I think probably also fits that bill: the first two X-Men movies were pretty successful, but the rest of their output hasn't been. (Maybe X-Men: First Class? I liked that one, anyway.) Fox may lose just based on the sheer volume of crap it's put out: X-Men 3, Wolverine, Daredevil, Elektra, Fantastic Four vs. Annoying Sarcastic Businessman, Fantastic Four vs. Giant Cloud of Gas...
Anyway. What Mr. the Don clearly means is that he wishes there wasn't this pesky matter of the outstanding movie rights at Sony and Fox, and that Marvel could get all its characters in one basket and we could see, say, Spider-Man and Wolverine in Avengers 2. As a fan, I can certainly relate to that desire; I really think the shared-universe aspect is what's made both Marvel Comics and the Marvel Movie Universe special.
But it's foolish to suggest that Marvel makes much better superhero movies than Sony.
Because -- just as in the comics -- it's not about the corporate rightsholder, damn it. It's about the creative team.
Avengers didn't succeed because it's Marvel, no matter how badly Marvel wants to say it did. Avengers succeeded because of Whedon and Downey and Ruffalo and Johansson and Hiddleston and Jackson and Evans and Hemsworth and Evans -- and, yes, the people who wrote and drew the stories it was based on, like Kirby and Lee and Heck and Millar and Hitch.
And the first two Raimi Spider-Man movies didn't succeed because they were Sony. They succeeded because of Raimi and Maguire and Simmons and Robertson and Campbell and Molina and Dafoe (and in spite of Dafoe's costume). And Ditko and Lee and Romita and Conway and Kane.
And don't get me wrong, there is something to be said about huge media conglomerates owning huge stables of characters who can all meet and interact. There is an episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold that features both an adaptation of an old Mad spoof and a team-up with Scooby-Doo. It is awesomesauce.
Or, hell, the recent Avengers cartoon where Ben and Johnny come over to the mansion for poker night. That was great! And it's too bad that we can't see something like that happen in a movie because of rights entanglements!
But that stuff's not great just because it's DC/Time Warner or just because it's Marvel/Disney. It's great because great people -- writers, artists, actors, directors -- put it together.
I heard on the radio this morning that there's an excessive heat watch in effect from 10 AM today to 5 AM Wednesday.
At first I assumed that was a mistake, but they repeated it 15 minutes later.
So, uh, I have to say that I'm not sure how this works. Why would an excessive heat warning end at 5 AM?
Do they expect it to be less excessively hot by 5:30?
Welp, another migraine today.
Went to see the doctor a week ago about all the headaches. She said some of them were probably tension headaches from sitting at a desk all day, and recommended I exercise more and do some neck stretches. She refilled my existing prescription and gave me a sample of a new one -- well, sort of new; it's a triptan and so it's a descendant of what I used to take in high school.
I've managed to put in some exercise every day since (though I might give it a miss today). We're into the part of the year where 102 is a cool day, and the air quality is simply awful, so I can't really ride my bike like I'd like to. But we got a stair machine awhile back and I've been using that.
I'm sure that's helping me get in better shape, and I feel better too, but it sure doesn't look like it's helping with the headaches.
Must say the new prescription's working out so far, though.
The one I used to take in high school didn't work this well -- it would give me a reprieve for a couple hours and then bounce back even worse, and if I took a second pill it would give me such a nasty case of the jitters that I was just as useless and nearly as uncomfortable as if I just had a migraine. After awhile I stopped taking it and switched to over-the-counter stuff (which tends to have roughly the same effect).
Well, I tried the new drug when I got up this morning. The immediate effect seemed to be nausea, which kicked in about 15 minutes after I took it. (Or it could have just been part of the migraine. It's hard to tell.)
But I managed to get back in bed and fall asleep for about two and a half hours, and wake up functional.
The headache's not gone, and when I first got up it pounded with every step I took. After I got some food (Cup Noodles, the thing I keep around for when I can't cook anything more complicated -- plus I've got a sore throat in addition to the headache, so it soothes that a bit) and some coffee in me I started to feel better. Still a bit jittery and out-of-it (I think I've stamped out all the typos in this post, but if you find any that's why), but much better.
Guess I'll have to get this script filled.