The Invisible Library

Cosmonaut Rick Reports from the Mothership

What our dear friend Rick “Stop humping my leg! Ok, you can hump a little longer…” Santorum said on the 700 Club:

[T]he consequence is very clear. Marriage loses its significance. People will stop getting married. Homosexuals will not get married; heterosexuals will stop getting married. And that to me is the real threat to the American family and to the culture generally.

That’s some ironclad logic there, Rick: if gays get married than they won’t get married. He’s not only licked the toad, he’s started reading Quantum Physics texts.

Next he’ll describe how in a parallell universe, where homosexuality is the norm, it will be straits who are demanding the right to marry, and theparallell Rick Santorum will be in favor of that, ergo, in this universe, our Rick Santorum is actually a hip progressive activist fighting for marriage rights for downtrodden heteros.Makess perfect sense.

Citizens! To the Printing Presses!

The federal government […] has warned publishers they may face grave legal consequences for editing manuscripts from Iran and other disfavored nations, on the ground that such tinkering amounts to trading with the enemy.

Anyone who publishes material from a country under a trade embargo is forbidden to reorder paragraphs or sentences, correct syntax or grammar, or replace “inappropriate words,” according to several advisory letters from the Treasury Department in recent months.

Adding illustrations is prohibited, too. To the baffled dismay of publishers, editors and translators who have been briefed about the policy, only publication of “camera-ready copies of manuscripts” is allowed.

This is just the latest part of a disturbing trend in anti-intellectualism that this administration seems to have embraced wholeheartedly. From the shoehorning of science to fit their ideiologies (when they don�t just ignore it all together) to the blatant and easily refuted lies that contradict widely known facts, BushCo. has repeadedly and shamelessly attempted to undermine all forms of thought, research and expression that do not conform with their narrow views by labelling it as treason. And more to the point, George Bush seems to hate anyone smarter than him, which, as we all know is just about everyone. So if he can�t win in an honest battle of the wits, he�ll simply make us all witless.

So what if a researcher in Iran comes up with a new innovative Cancer treatment? Are we suposed to dismiss it as �Junk Terrorist Science�? What if a North Korean expat living in France writes the next great novel illuminating the suffering if his native land? Do we write it off as �Terrorist Propaganda,� close our eyes and plug our ears and pretend it doesn�t exist because it wasn�t written by a White Christian?

Because really, that�s what this ammounts to, censorship of forign and ethnic ideas. It will never work of course. Because if it isn�t published here, it�ll be published in Canada, or Great Britain and then we can just order it through Amazon.uk. Or we�ll start an underground printing press, smuggling foriegn manuscripts into the country and printing them in our garages and handing them out on street corners in the middle of the night.

BushCo. will have to burn down the printing presses and shut off the internet to stop these ideas form reaching our shores. And don�t think they wouldn�t try. Because the next amendment he backs will be the one repealing our right to read and think for ourselves, and it�ll be called the Freedom of the Press Amendment.

maybe I’m over reacting. maybe I’m fuming fust to fume. Or maybe our leaders are trying to drag us back to the Dark Ages. I’d like to think they wouldn’t be that dim witted but the sheer lack of luminosity of their thoughts never ceases to amaze me. I’m convinced, now more than ever that Bush would declare the world flat again if he thought their was some politcal ground to be gained form it.

~from Corrente, Making Light and others.

The Purge Continues

I have so far deleted IE from my Mac and am currently in the process of backing up my e-mail from Hotmail so that the account be be deactivated. Yesterday I downloaded a text editor called Tex-Edit Plus, which is half way between a bare bones text editor and word processor. It’s working fine for now but I will need a full word-processor soon. Luckily there are a number of cheep alternatives to MS Word like Appleworks, Mellel and a number of shareware apps that look intriguing, such as Bookends and Reference Miner.

Appleworks is b far the most well known (and expensive) of the word processing apps. oddly enough it also has the lowest rating of all the other apps I�ve looked at. It�s still better rated than MS Word but every review of Mellel i�ve read has been a rave.

This got me to thinking. MS Word is the �industry standard� the app everyone uses. It�s also a piece of shit. It�s an expensive, behemoth of a program (it uses far more megs of RAM to run than any other Word processor app out there. Just check the tech specs and you�ll see what I mean). And it has a lot of utterly useless deelyboppers that no one ever uses. So why is it so popular?

Mostly I think it is due to the relentless promoting that Microsoft does of all their software. That, and the monopolistic habit of bundling their crappy software with every PC on the market. Most people don�t realize their are alternatives that are cheeper, faster and more user friendly. Yeah, yo have to go look for them and initially, the search feels like dealing in drugs. You have to go down shady alleys and talk to some people whose reputation is unknown in order to get the stuff your�re looking for. This analogy falls short though because unlike drugs, alternative software is cheep. Mellel costs $29. Tex-Edit Plus is shareware, with a recommended donation of $15. Compare this with the student version of MS Office (you have to buy the whole suite) which costs $149.95 or the regular version which is $399.95.

Of course if anyone�s looked at the skyrocketing prices in Prescription meds these days, maybe the comparison is more accurate than I thought.

For the price of the student version of MS Office, you can get ahold of half a dozen smaller, cheeper faster apps that do the same thing (there�s even a shareware app that converts documents from Mac format to Word format and back again so cross platform issues are eliminated). All it takes is an afternoon�s search on the Internet. Or just go to Versiontracker.com, you�re one stop shop for MS alternatives for both the Mac and PC.

I�ll stop prostelatizing now, I promise.

Friday Comic Blogging

You may have heard by now that the Great Will Eisner has a new comic book called the Plot, which takes on that most persistent of fraudulent propaganda, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Several years ago I had the honor of taking to Mr. Eisner. It was a brief moment, standing around with several wide eyed art students, chatting with the man. He had came to my College to give a talk, as we were the only school in the country that offered a degree in Sequential Art (that’s comic books). He was sharp, witty and full of ideas, a real inspiration to everyone who ever had a passion to do something creative for a living, in spite of all the reasons in the world not to. He and Ray Bradury are two of the biggest influences in my life. Oddly enough both are the same age and both have new books out.

I hope to be as creative and full of life at 86.

P.S. I’ve added Scott McCloud to the blogroll, wherein you can get a regular dose of comic book goodness.

P.P.S. There is also a new collection of Ray Bradbury stories adapted into comics by such artists as Mike Mignola, P. Craig Russell, and Dave McKean.

The Vanity of Slaves

The Romans named their slaves after gods. It amused them to issue commands to Jupiter and Mars, Juno and Pluto. Favorite slaves were given special privileges; they could finish the master’s left over wine and dress them for parties.

Scipio Julius Africanius was a Praetor in the Roman Legion, a friend of senators and even dined on occasion with Caesar Augustus. He had a favorite slave named Apollo who, according to rumor, shared the general’s bed almost as often as he made it. Apollo was often heard lording his status over the other slaves of Scipio’s house. He was the general’s favorite. Still, he couldn’t go anywhere without the master’s permission, could never be free, or vote or marry.

When a slave thinks his chains are jewelry, he’ll never be free. He may be comfortable, or at least more so than the scullery girl or the stable boy but he is still a slave, any way you look at it.

Tell me, Andy (or is it Apollo?) how does it feel to be the master’s favorite?

Storytime 7:
Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart*

One day, after thirteen rude customers in a row, a waitress named Astrid throws a plate of clams in the face of a fat man from Laredo who keeps calling her Marry Anne. She promptly stomps into the kitchen, kisses a bus boy named Henry full on the mouth and slams the door behind her. After tossing a few clothes and her cat, Lucy into a suitcase, she hails a taxi down to the docks, walks strait out onto the planks and boards the first boat heading anywhere.

It turns out the boat is captained by a Cuban Ex Patriot named Jorge Veluptus. He is heading for Havana with a boatload of illicit knobs. He wants to turn on all the down-trodden peoples of his homeland and start a revolution. Astrid and Jorge make wild passionate love on the deck of the ship, named the Insolent Navigator. Jorge names Lucy Second Mate.

Astrid�s unholy temper and boiler room lingo frightens the crew, all of whom are one-legged former whalers who fear that having a loose woman aboard is a sure sign of doom. Omens of Giant waves, midnight squalls and unmitigated swooning fill their sleepless nights. But they reach Havana without so much as a rain shower blotting their voyage. Jorge Voluptus locks the sailors in the hold and sinks the boat. There is no room for Insolent Navigators or superstitious one-legged sailors in their world.

They take to the streets of Havana, Astrid and Jorge, drunk with love, swilling Molotov cocktails, holding roses between their teeth, mowing down police with tommy guns loaded with silver bullets.

Astrid seduces young boys and shy, bisexual girls to their cause. All she has to do is lift her skirt and they fall madly in love with her vagina.

A blind woman selling paieya gives Jorge Che Guevara�s old beret.

Lucy rouses the hackles of every tomcat from Havana to Guantanamo Bay. The cats are the foot soldiers of The End, racing calico bedlam through the palace and hissing at all those foolish enough to stand in their path.

When Castro sees them coming, he pisses himself. In his dotage, he mistakes Jorge for the ghost of his old comrade in arms, come back from the dead at last, leading an army of Left Libertarians and mad cats to dance on the broken back of his failed idealism. Fidel weeps. Astrid takes pity on him.

After the revolution, she and Jorge let Fidel live out his last days in the spare bedroom of their little hut on the beech. The sound of their midnight frolicking in the surf is the last he ever hears. He dies, quiet and repentant in his sleep, Lucy the cat curled up on his fat belly. Free at last.

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*After Camper Van Beethoven

The Right Thing

Everyone in the blogosphere is talking about President Bush’s backing of the blatent idiocy Marriage Amendment. many are angry at this news but I’d like to take this opportunity to defend our cowardly brave President. You have to give him credit. No other Dictator President but George W. Bush would take such a dramatic and bold stand against homosexual citizens activist judges demanding the right to mary the one they love forced sodomy. It’s really amazing to see such an ignorant motherfucker articulate man make an obvious political gesture ardent and heartfelt plea for bigotry kindness and decency in these troubled times. The frothing redneck hatemongers American People have spoken. They want the Government interfearing in personal matters to take a stand, to stem the tide of equality depravity which threatens to undermine their stranglehold on power our Democracy.

Take Off the Wig, George, It Just Makes You Look Like a Dandy

This headline sums it up nicely: Education Secretary Paige calls teachers union “terrorist organization” And all because the NEA doesn’t want to put their weight behind Bush’s little tip of the hat to the horrors of Victorian Education, No Child Left Behind. Or as it is commonly refered to around the Library, Nicholas NCLB.

The Dikensian acranym would almosty be funny if these people weren’t so dedicated to turning us into uneducated peasants. They need to really study their History though, having forgoten that those were just the people their Monarchist forebearers lost the revolution to all those years ago.

Get over it, George. The Enlightenment is here to stay. Pack up your King James version of the Constitution and your autographed copy of the Ten Commandments and hike it back to Crawford where you can be lord of your castle and the only sorry so-and-so that has to put up with your ass is Laura.

_________
~Thanks to Teresa Nielsen Hayden for the link.

The Simulated President
Part Two: Save Us, Arumcheck!

In Part One we compared George W. Bush to that fictional rascal, Furbish Lousewart V. In part Two, we will look towards another alternate universe, Philip K. Dick’s Radio free Albemuth in which Ferris F. Freemont cons his way into the white house through assassination and voter fraud. And he where’s a cowboy hat.

Ostensibly, Ferris F. Freemont is Dick’s caricature of Nixon. But really, if Dick were alive today, he would stand up and say, “Holly shit, Man! What the fuck is wrong with that Bush guy? It’s like he read my book as a how to manual!” Then he’d fall back into his chair and sob for us all.

There are worse novels to live in than one written by Philip K. Dick. That might not seem like a compliment but imagine living in The Brothers Karamazov or anything by Stephen King. At least in a Phil Dick novel, we know we’re in for some weird shit. True, there may be no way out of the Black Iron Prison, (short of help from a kindly Extraterrestrial Satellite named Arumcheck, beaming the voice of God into our dreams. Until a Russian ICBM blows it of the stratosphere) But at least it gives context to our madness. That’s something, at least.

Ferris F. Freemont’s most notable contribution to the American Way of Life is the founding of a new Government Department, the Friends of America, whose job is basically to spy on everyone. But not in that kooky behind the scenes, James Bond sort of way but in the overt, We’re-Totally-Aware-of-your-Information-and-have-a-nice-day sort of way. They are ever so polite about their intrusion into your personal space and overthrow of your basic constitutional rights. Oh, and Freemont also starts secret concentration camps in Montana where dissenters where rounded up and sent and ultimately executed. Now I know what you’re thinking. “That’s so inaccurate! And you’re right. Bush put his concentration Camps in Cuba.

My Evergrowing Reading List

I’ve just ordered Alan Moore’s Voice of the Fire.

“Part mythic cycle, part fictional history of Moore’s hometown, part collection of fireside ghost stories, Voice of the Fire is as clever and well-crafted as Moore’s other genre experiments, and by taking his dialogue out of word-balloons and panel arrangements, it gives his limitless literary ambition room to stretch out into new and fascinating forms.” ~Tasha Robinson, The Onion

I’m intrigued. I’ll have a full report once I finish Quicksilver, The Tahckery T. Lambshead Guide et al. and Grad School.