A suggestion

Earlier tonight I was looking up a song's lyrics on Genius.com. There was an interpretation at the bottom of the page, I think accompanied by some words from the songwriter himself. But when I scrolled down to read it, within a few seconds I'd be bounced back up to the top of the page and the scroll bar would disappear. After that everything was frozen.

This is not a great tale of woe. Before the page froze a third time I did a highlight all (Ctrl + A) and copied/pasted onto a blank unsaved word document. It turned out the material wasn't particularly earthshaking. 

But it is kind of a revealing picture of the state of the Web. The deep pockets are jabbering about how AI is going to change everything. Meanwhile the sites that people use are prone to becoming nonfunctional. Their priorities have little to do with ours.

to sum up

When I was a kid I had a book called Origins of Marvel Comics, and a bit later one called Son of Origins of Marvel Comics. That second one sounds a little tongue-in-cheek now that I think of it. As you might guess they were about the beginnings of the first popular Marvel Comics characters in the early-mid sixties.*

The thing I want to emphasize is that, yes, it featured reprints of the first and/or origin stories of the superheroes, as well as sometimes another reprint from slightly later in development. But on top of that there was Stan Lee's reminiscences about how the ideas came to him, and his collaborations with Marvel's art staff.

Lee is often accused of giving himself too much credit in the creation of the Marvel Universe. For diehard fans of Jack Kirby and sometimes Kirby himself, any credit given to Lee was too much. I wouldn't agree, but there's definitely an element of self-mythologizing in these books.

Around the same time I had another book, analogous, on the creation stories of DC Comics superheroes. It's similarly rich in the number of characters, and they're colorful characters. But this was more of a historical telling. No one person could give a firsthand account of all these creations and say, "Yeah, I had a hand in all of them." Not even fraudulently. It wouldn't have been credible. A couple of them hadn't even started at DC. **

To the extent I have a point here, it's not about whether Marvel or DC is/was better. It's that people have a tendency to be sucked in to big stories, not just about fictional characters but also their fictionalized idea about the real people behind them. That's why you hear a lot of things that are too "good", too simple, to be true.

*The company had been around since the thirties, and the characters Captain America and the Submariner predated American entry into WW2, so this was really more a highly successful rebranding than anything else.

** Plastic Man was one of the big successes at Quality Comics, a company that didn't long survive the industry downturn of the early fifties. The "Shazam!" version of Captain Marvel came from Fawcett Comics. DC had taken him out with a frivolous lawsuit and then revived him in their own pages about 20 years later.

In the making

It was the desire to improve both aesthetic standards and working conditions that generated a further article of faith shared by many active within the Arts and Crafts movement: the belief that the material and moral fabric of society had been infinitely better sometime in the past, be it in the England of the Middle Ages or the America of the pioneer age. The ethos of industrial capitalism demanded production for profit rather than need and had generated shoddily designed goods in the process at the expense of both their aesthetic appeal to consumers and the well-being of the workforce. These miserable conditions were in stark contrast to those of a pre-industrialized past in which, it was generally believed, production took place under far more wholesome conditions. The crafts of medieval society had none of the "engine-turned precision" of modern industry, but they retained the sense of humanity that [John] Ruskin so admired. Writing on "The Nature of the Gothic" in the second volume of The Stones of Venice, published in 1853, Ruskin insisted that: "You must either make a tool of the creature or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them."

(from The Arts and Crafts Movement by Steven Adams, 1996)

The more things change, the more they stay the same? We might not face exactly the same conditions as in the mid nineteenth century. But the process that Ruskin decried, wherein the industrialist's technological measurement becomes the standard for all activity, hasn't left us. 

The Arts and Crafts Movement itself is intriguing. In a way it was backward looking. Of course. If you're looking for ideals and ideas, you have to examine the past at least a little. You can't look exclusively at the future, because the future isn't here yet and hasn't revealed its intentions. 

Opponents

This column came out a little before the election, but I just read it a few minutes ago. It's not something I would have written myself, but I like it. The author, Andrew Napolitano, is a legal analyst at Fox News. Not the profile of someone I would have always listened to.

But antiwar voices from the right are out there. Tom Woods, the author of the Politically Incorrect Guide to series of books is another. Along with Ron Paul, the one most people probably know. 

I'm interested in these figures because opposition to wars of choice―especially in the Middle East―won't go anywhere if it involves only liberals and leftists. Who are often blinkered in some way anyway.

Bad from the beginning

Yes, H.R.9495 is awful. The claim is that it " terminates the tax-exempt status of terrorist supporting organization." But obviously the IRS isn't going to extend a tax exemption to anything they know to be a terrorist front now, and that's without this bill having passed. So the effect would be to cut off nonprofits with rumors against them, or ties to what aren't really terrorist organizations at all. Anyone opposing Israel's actions in Gaza and beyond will presumably be harassed.

It's also a really stupid bill for conservatives to support. Russiagate shows that Democrats are fully capable of playing this game. The next time they're in power, you don't think they'll hassle right wing groups for ties to Russia or the European far right? Please.

Nice what?

Good on the people of Zoo Tampa for trying to preserve the African painted dogs. I hope their efforts work out.

That being said, these creatures do not actually look like dogs. If you saw someone walking one down the street you'd spend at least a few seconds going "What is that?" rather than going straight to "Ah, dog."

Africa has produced a lot of animals that have weird and obvious patterns on their fur. I'd guess their extreme lighting conditions have something to do with that.

This'll be a short one folks

I was going to do a post on the new social media app Bluesky but man...As far as I can tell it is not interesting at all. Granted, that's basically on the basis of a few screenshots, but who has time? The main story is that where there was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth eight years ago, now it's basically just an extended public sulk. 

Anyway, the best reason to leave a social media platform isn't to find another one that flatters your biases more. It's to stop staring at your phone so damn much.

Awaiting

 

Demeter, in Greek mythology, is the goddess of the harvest and of plant life. The most prominent part of her legend is that her daughter Persephone was abducted by Hades and forced to marry him. While Zeus ordered the underworld god to return Persephone to her mother, by that time she had eaten of the underworld's food. Thus she could not stay with Demeter always, but rather had to divide the year between husband and mother. Demeter would not allow plants to grow while her daughter was imprisoned, giving rise to the seasons.

The gods of Olympus could be grand, cruel, childish. Demeter's plight shows them at their most, well, human.

"Demeter" is also the title of the above painting by Patrick Procktor. Procktor's biography is easily summarized. He was a polymath likely headed for great things even before he became an artist. In the 1960s he became involved with London's gay demimonde, befriending Joe Orton (whose portrait he drew) and David Hockney. Hockney's still with us, but Procktor passed on in 2003.

It's his hand, eye, and judgment for which he'll be remembered, of course. The "Demeter" painting creates a contrast between lush green plant life in the upper rough half and austere white marble in the lower. A symbol of the daughter's absence, it seems. It's allegorical and more than a little melancholy, but above all alive.

Signs of the season

#1.

We had a lot of summery days in October, and a few even in early November. For whatever reason. That's not how it is now, though. We're getting overnight temperatures in the low 30s. Certainly some nice things about this. You can just snuggle into the blankets to get to sleep. And it's getting easier to go for a long walk in a jacket without overheating.

#2

The couple who live downstairs have a string of lights running around their doorframe. Colorful. Some of the lights are non-Christmas colors, so I don't think they're Christmas lights as such. Plus, strong chance the couple are Hindu. But it's certainly festive.

Character parts

Been reading The World Encyclopedia of Calligraphy, compiled and edited by Christopher Calderhead and Holly Cohen. Calderhead also writes the introduction to the chapter on Chinese calligraphy, and he says something striking:

Calligraphy holds a central role in the development of Chinese art and culture. The tools of the Chinese painter and calligrapher are one and the same, and there is no clean line of demarcation between the two arts as exists in the West.

This is another way of pointing out that in Chinese words are pictures to a greater extent than in the West. The Latin alphabet is descended, yes, from the Phoenician abjad, and through it Egyptian hieroglyphics. By necessity it still has graphic properties. But they're mostly incidental to the sounds that the letters make, much less the meanings of the words they form. This is in large part true of the other Western alphabets like Greek and Cyrillic.

Eastern scripts are made up of somewhat more complex images that are often stylized versions of the things they depict. You have to learn thousands of them before you know the language. These markings perform, to a greater extent, an actual depiction of what they're supposed to mean.

I don't think either of these systems is necessarily better. There are advantages to both an abstract writing system and one that's more embodied. It's just interesting to realize your own way isn't the only one.

To the lighthouse

I've actually seen Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse up close. It's on the waterfront in Baltimore, which is a beautiful area. The lighthouse itself is quite fascinating as well. It's a screw-pile lighthouse, and thus looks quite a bit different from what we generally associate with the word "lighthouse." Different design for a different situation, I guess.

The Prequel Problem

Young Sherlock Holmes supports the general rule that if you want to see a really good Barry Levinson movie you should watch one set and shot in Baltimore. It's also an illustration of what might be called The Prequel Problem. 

What was Sherlock Holmes like before he applied his brain to ratiocination? What was his life like before he met Dr. John Watson and Inspector Lestrade, before he acquired Professor Moriarty as an enemy? Devotees of Doyle's books have speculated for years, and there may or may not be a movie in it. So of course in Sherlock Holmes he meets Watson, Lestrade, and Moriarty in boarding school, where he's already a fully formed amateur detective.

This is the Prequel Problem in a nutshell. You may make the pitch that there are great stories to be told before the story everyone knows. But you're not really interested in those Before stories, and/or you don't think your audience is. So you just wind up retelling the well known stories, but set earlier.

Smallville, a show that I never really got into, meant to be the story of young secret alien Clark Kent before he chose to become Superman. But as things dragged on the entire DC Universe formed while Clark was still dicking around in his everlasting gap year. I liked Gotham better but the same thing happened there. After the first season the idea of this being a prelude to Batman's career, rather than just a bunch of Batman stories where he's an adolescent twit without a costume, disappears.

It might just be that burrowing into the "deep" past of pop culture figures isn't very conducive to creativity.

Similarities and differences

There have been five Presidents who took office without winning the popular vote.

The first was John Quincy Adams, a second-generation President. His presidency ended with his rematch with Andrew Jackson. Afterwards he had a distinguished career as Congressman and abolitionist.

Rutherford B. Hayes didn't even with the Electoral College outright. Rather, Congress decided the winner in his race with Samuel Tilden. Not too surprisingly his reputation never recovered.

Benjamin Harrison did at least with the Electoral College, but like Hayes he was mostly forgotten after his single term.

More recent are the cases of George W. Bush and Donald Trump. And they both present a change from their predecessors in that they lost the popular vote the first time and came back to win it the next time. But even between them their stories are more different than alike.

Bush was reelected and improved his share of voters for a very straightforward reason: 9/11 made him a War President. His big war was neither particularly just nor particularly well-prosecuted, but most Americans weren't going to criticize him. Not in 2004 at least.

Trump's story takes a more circuitous path. He was impeached twice and then spent four years out of office before winning a nonconsecutive second term. What drives the story here is that Joe Biden successfully campaigned on a return to decency, for which you can substitute "establishment norms." But then during his Presidency and the campaign of Kamala Harris, voters got a look at what the 2020s political establishment was. Not too surprisingly they ran screaming in the opposite direction.

Aa is for...

Have you ever read an essay on a movie and think, "I'll probably never watch this movie, but the effect it has on people is fascinating"?

This is kind of my reaction to reading about Cerebus the Aardvark.

Cerebus the Aardvark is a barbarian fighter who also happens to be an aardvark. A very stylized and cartoony aardvark. He was created by Dave Sim, a Canadian artist who, a few years into his cult comic book series, had a personality breakdown and adopted a new philosophy that alienated huge numbers of his fans. The Frank Miller of Jordan Petersons, you could call him.

The big difference between comic book culture from the pre-War days through the 1970s and that which took hold in the 1980s was the spread of the comic book store. When comics were sold primarily through newsstands they encouraged a kind of casual engagement with narrative. If you had fun with the story involved you'd gotten your quarter's worth. 

Comic book stores enabled stronger content in terms of sex and violence, yes. But they also created a new audience who looked for longer, more involved, and in some cases more obscure narratives than had been available before. Heavy marijuana users, you might guess, and in a number of cases you'd be right.

Comic book stores always had Cerebus merchandise front and center, making him a mascot of the industry. Along with Omaha the Cat Dancer, whose title was basically furry erotica, but with a higher level of craft than the webcomics that would follow in her wake.

Anyway, I'm not really a big follower of epics, with some exceptions, which is why I never got into the Cerebus thing myself. Sim does seem to have been an accomplished artist, or at least gradually became one. And as I said before, the stories provoke interesting reactions from some other critics, like the ones I linked above. 

The public

The current Google doodle has buttons reading "Vote!" and "¡Vota!" It would be fun to respond by asking them, "For what?" Unfortunately, even though they're in a very public position, communications with Google are very one-way, so they'd never get or understand the message. Seems like there's a lot of that going around nowadays.