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Somebody’s gotta keep these projects classy. DC Universe, the animated arm of the DC Comics empire, has carved out a niche by mining and exploiting classic comics storylines for direct-to-video product. How they manage that material is up for debate, but unquestionably, one of the biggest talents in their stable is composer Christopher Drake. Continue reading
After it was first sighted last month by a fishing boat floating along the Western Washington State coast, eventually washing up on the Olympic National Park, it was confirmed that the 19-meter long dock was one of four that used to be lodged in the fishing port of Misawa in Aomori Prefecture that were ripped off by the March 11, 2011 tsunami. … It will be remembered that in June 2012, a first dock already turned up on one of the beaches on the Oregon coast. This one was even larger at 21 meters long, and was identified to have come from Misawa via a metal plaque plastered to it. — The Japan Daily Press
Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes) represents a new element in the rebooted universe where Daniel Craig holds the James Bond role. Previously, this Bond has answered truculently to the stentorian MI6 director addressed only by the letter M (Dame Judi Dench). The appearance of Mallory, a British hero of the Troubles who’s as willing as Bond to leap into the line of fire, helps destabilize this relationship, endows Bond with a new mentor, and, by the conclusion of Skyfall (2012), reboots the reboot.
Too bad Mallory’s actually a backstabbing architect of murder in the name of democracy.
From Adrian Chen’s excellent reporting on Gawker:
“My wife is disabled. I got a home and a mortgage, and if this hits the fan, I believe this will affect negatively on my employment,” he said. “I do my job, go home watch TV, and go on the internet. I just like riling people up in my spare time.”
I asked if he regretted anything he had posted, now that he’d be found out. No, he said. “I would stand by exactly what I’ve done.” The problem was, he explained, that if his identity got out, his many enemies would start attaching lies to his name because they simply don’t like his views. They would say he was a child pornographer, when all he had done was spearhead the distribution of thousands of legal photos of underage girls. They would say the fact that he created a subreddit dedicated to Hitler meant he was anti-Semitic, when really it was just trolling. (Brutsch says he’s got Jewish blood himself: “If you see a picture of me, I’m about as Jewish looking as they get.”) They would Google-bomb his name and the word “pedophile” along with his publicly-traded company’s name.
What Michael “Violentacrez” Brutsch is admitting here is this: Free speech of the kind he’s practiced on Reddit since 2007 has consequences. It is immune from government suppression but not from the censure of observers, coworkers, employers, friends, family, fellow townsfolk … society at large, in short.
Yet in the same breath that he lists the work sanctions he’s likely to face once Chen exposes his identity, he also says nothing he’s done is a big deal. (“I just like riling people up in my spare time.”) This split personality disorder afflicts aggressive Internet users (trolls) like Brutsch to such a degree I’m convinced it should go in the DSM-V. I’m not saying this out loud, I’m just saying this on the Internet. I’m not turning this picture of a dead girl into a postcard and mailing it to her parents, I’m just posting it on the Internet for everyone to see. I’m crafting a subreddit called Niggerjailbait, but I’m not saying “nigger” out loud in the town library, no fucking way, do I look stupid to you?
The passion of Michael Brutsch is proof — because so, so many people appear to still need proof — that speech on the Internet is speech, period, that it is not shorn of real-world context because it takes place in a chatroom or comment board or WoW environment. Government has no teeth when it denounces hateful speech, but the society under that government — social institutions, community constructs, mores — certainly does. You cannot advocate rape and squirm at being called a rape advocate. You cannot victimize and then recoil in horror when the victims point at you. And your words, tapped into a browser, are not just words but deeds.
The Internet is the world, now. It’s the way we interface with that world, as Joel Johnson cogently states, that is a measure of our maturity. Anti-speech moralists — the kind who put parental advisory stickers on our records; the kind Michael Brutsch thinks are out to get him — are also the kind of folks who like to say that new technology (the web, videogames) dehumanize people to the point that they become Violentacrez and his minions. But technology is just paint and canvas, which we can use to make gorgeous art or hateful graffiti; it’s really up to us.
The item in his backpack, that palm-sized but heavy parcel of chrome, lay snug in a lower pocket and nuzzled rhythmically as his lower muscles contracted and stretched. The sun fired orange in his left eye and its lower lip quavered at the horizon. He loped across soft bare earth and tried to land between the ankle-high juttings of severed cornstalk rows, counting them and estimating acres crossed. On all sides around him there were no structures, no roads, and the nighthawks began to virrup their calls in a small scattered posse overhead. Each impact of his heel jarred his head, and by the time the daylight flicked a final finger in defiance of the half-moon at its apogee he knew he’d undone a stitch beneath his bandages.
This year the pre-Homecoming party was out at Joel Fenniker’s parents’ farm, west beyond the highway, across the harvested acres. There was always a Bonfire on the Friday before Homecoming — Bonfire on Friday, game on Saturday, the dance Saturday night. The voting for King and Queen had all been done in homeroom classes on Wednesday and although the coronation didn’t come until the actual dance, the Bonfire — unsanctioned by the school — was where the royalty was initially, informally, anointed.
A long walk. Wesley headed down the hill away from the high school lot, past the junior high that was now emptying too, hearing behind him the high wails and the masculine muttering beneath it of cops frustrated at the lack of a murder weapon. The weight of his pack pressed him on while he walked, down past the practice field below the junior high where the younger boys with peach-fuzzed chins and bad skin shunted a soccer ball around, back and forth, back and forth, upwind and unaware of twelfth-grade death.
Philip K. Dick: A Day in the Afterlife
Lodged here mostly just because I want to post it: A 1994 edition of BBC’s Arena program, narrated by San Francisco comic and performer Greg Proops. With Terry Gilliam, Thomas M. Disch, Brian Aldiss, Elvis Costello, and an intimidating video camera.