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.

△

In cartoons about orchestras the triangle is played for absurdity. It's just what it's name says. A thick wire bent around a couple of times. You see someone stand up and play one note on it, then sit down again. Because what else can you do with it?

Apparently there are those who can do quite a lot. Hearty congratulations to them.

Just what we all wanted

Political discourse is no more real than old wrestling promos. The only difference is the “marks” aren’t wise to it. Liz Cheney can swear for years that Kamala the Radical Liberal will destroy the country, before turning babyface in order to team up with her against The Orange Miscreant at the next pay-per-view. Digby can spend several years telling us that Dick Cheney was the original election thief and a sociopath who orchestrated a phony war for the benefit of Halliburton stock prices, before gladly accepting this sociopath’s help to “protect democracy” from “fascism.” Words mean nothing, convictions mean nothing. It’s all bullshit. I’d rather watch old videos of Ric Flair and Dusty Rhodes screaming at each other. At least they were entertaining.

That's from this blog post, which presents a paper trail of what Liz Cheney has said about Kamala Harris over the years. What Niemand doesn't really go into is that Cheney never really wowed 'em as a conservative politician and was easily thrown over by voters in her own party. Despite the family name, although maybe "despite" isn't the right word. Yet her support is supposed to be a game changer.

It's really hard to see why Harris is up there most of the time, and what Tim Walz is supposed to be bringing to the party. While there's inevitably another teapot tempest I doubt Trump is very worried.

/songwriter

 

Tori Amos is not in the public eye as much as she was 30 years ago. She's a well-known and respected singer/songwriter, but things change and the top level of fame is fleeting.

What I take from this interview is that she largely is the person she appears to be in her songs. The mix of Christian and pagan ideas, the reflectiveness sometimes leading to self-consciousness. This could easily be an act, and there's always a little added in a performer's presentation. But from most signs she comes by her quirkiness naturally.

Anyway, if you're not familiar with her here's a nice song from her early stuff.

Ghost in the machine

An aviator demonstrates all the skills and knowledge that the space program is looking for in their astronauts. The catch is that he's crippled and dying. But there's a solution. There will be missions where they need someone who can adapt to unforeseen circumstances but who doesn't have the vulnerability of a human body. Ergo, the idea is to cut his brain out of his dying body and transfer it to a machine. You can probably guess how this is going to go.

It's the premise of "The Brain of Colonel Barham", an episode of the old Outer Limits series. It comes off quite well. One thing to note is that the titular colonel who's about to be cyborged is such an incredible asshole throughout that his story is more comical than depressing. You can look forward to him getting his comeuppance in the end. The medical professional on this project is played by Wesley Addy, a great character actor with a great Scandinavian face. (His parents were Danish.)

This is actually the third-to-last episode of the series. From what I've read the network had put The Outer Limits in a no-win timeslot, which resulted in creator Josef Stefano and much of the crew leaving. But it seems like the last ones to go and turn out the light were still doing some good work.

Forgive lack of clever header, there are no good rhymes for "cryptid."

There is indeed a certain charm in knowing that there's an annual Bigfoot convention. Is there actually a Bigfoot. Hell, I don't know. Certainly there are still species out there we haven't identified, although most are much smaller. 

But the attendees do seem to have an affecting faith in Bigfoot, and perhaps more importantly seem to like him. One says that mainstream science won't believe until there's a body, but that's not a trade he's willing to make.

As for " the sound you'd expect Bigfoot to make when blowing out birthday candles" I can't say I have much of a preconception on that.