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The Fat, the Frail, and the Faithful

28 November 2021

Any three non-exclusive descriptions can easily be expressed as a Venn Diagram, with singular lobes all around, intersections between, and all at the center.

It has been clear to many, long before the advent of Wuhan Flu™ (“hallowed be its name”), that the fat and the frail are much more susceptible to respiratory distress than the rest of us.  Influenzae, Coronae, and Rhino viruses have been killing the elderly and the sick and the obese in much greater proportions than everybody else for centuries.  “Virus gonna virus” means that new strains will claim new victims. As they mutate, they’ll become more transmissible and less lethal.  Otherwise, they would extinguish themselves, which is a poor business model for any predator.

People generally know their own interests best, so I’m disinclined to confront them over their personal precautions.  Even if I doubt their motives or reasoning, we should still be able to peacefully coexist.  If a private merchant insists that I muzzle up before entering his shop, I will either comply (if I want what’s inside enough), or I will move on.  When a privileged insider who remains open while his smaller competitors are padlocked by the state makes the same “request” I am less sympathetic.  I have to both breathe AND eat, so I will cheerfully endure the stink-eye and hectoring as I shop.  If ChowMart™ or JohnBoy’s™ want to throw me out, they’re going to have to tell me personally, or maybe even threaten me with violence.  Again, I have to eat.  But that’s just me.  You do you all you want. 

For me, a face mask outside of the ICU or surgical theatre makes as much sense as casual swimwear.  They are often just sectarian vestments, so I’d rather not. And if I can get away with it, I won’t.  But sometimes the penalties for non-compliance are too dire, so I’ll wear pants at some beaches, and masks in some shops or homes.

I am less sanguine about the sacraments and sacrifices of this new faith.  I’ll pass on the alleged “vaccines” partly for the same reason that my old chum stays away from LSD or Quaaludes while still enjoying weed or booze.  Some things have passed the tests of generations, and some things are a little too new for our comfort levels.  I am horrified by the gerontocratic insistence that babies and toddlers be jabbed or muzzled for the sake of their grandparents.  If Granny is in precarious enough shape, then we’ll cheerfully muzzle up in her presence.  We love her.  Otherwise, we’re going to play in the sun and the dirt, just as we have for millennia.  Children (other than the fat and the frail) are generally the most durable of us, so subjecting them to dangerous experimental injections constitutes child sacrifice.  Moloch seems to be back with a vengeance.  Maybe it’s time to crush Canaan again.  Paging Joshua…

update 211201 — Cultish Comparisons
I’ll clarify for the eagerly aggrieved. Some people have very good reasons for masking up or accepting an injection that mitigates their risk. Their behavior may be neither cultish nor irrational, but prudently cautious. I would not presume to know their motives, so I’m satisfied to let them be.
Some other people who decline these precautions are much too eager to presume motives of sheepish compliance and to excoriate those whom they consider to be “Branch Covidians.” I wish they wouldn’t. First, because we’re not living each others’ lives so, in general, we should not infer reasons for face masks or yarmulkas or Mardi Gras beads. As Mr Jefferson reminds me, if “it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket” it’s probably none of my business. Second, and specifically, the late Branch Davidians were the victims of state violence, whereas the most egregious of the pushy Maskerati and Jabolins are the proponents of state violence.

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Biograph

12 March 2002

Hi!  Excuse me!  Can I bug ya a minute? … is how I approach prospective petitioners as I solicit signatures.  And while that may not be the way a life begins, it is how each campaign begins.
Hi!  … is a friendly greeting.  It says, “I’m not sneaking up on you.” 
It gives you a chance to size me up.
Excuse me!  … is an acknowledgment that I’m interrupting you. 
I know that I’m using up your time.
Can I bug ya a minute?  … means that I have more to say so if you need to blow me off, now would be a good time.

After that, I’ve gotten someone’s attention without getting them out of the bath or rousing them from a nap.  In fact, it usually doesn’t take as long as a minute to actually sign a petition.  I don’t knock on strangers’ houses, I walk the residential areas of the district and engage pedestrians and weekend gardeners and skateboarders and people out walking the dog.  They’re up.  They’re alert.  They’re approachable. 

I will not knock on someone’s door unless, a) it’s an emergency, b) I have an appointment, or c), it is the home of friends who more or less expect me, and are usually glad to see me.  Other than that, NO WAY. People should respect your privacy.  The Congress should respect your privacy, the State Legislature should respect your privacy, and first of all, politicians should respect your privacy.  If a candidate shows so little regard for your rights while he’s begging for your support, how much will he respect them when he’s in office?

Earlier…  A little background, usually in order about here…
Our family has lived on the Island of Hawaii since 1997.  We moved here from the Oregon Coast.  Previously I have lived (as a Navy Brat) in Oregon, on Oahu (1969-1971), and in New England and Washington State.  My cumulative kama’aina tenure would now be about seven years.

I guess I was born a libertarian, but I didn’t know the word until adolescence.  I developed an interest in politics at a fairly early age.  My parents were split over Kennedy/Nixon, and my mother showed a great fondness for Barry Goldwater, so by the time I was 12 years old, and Nixon and Humphrey were the anointed, I was “Clean with Gene” (McCarthy.)  It’s just as well that 16 year olds couldn’t vote in 1972, because at the time I believed that George McGovern was going to rescue America from the viper Nixon.  I’ve since come to recant that position a bit, looking upon Richard Nixon as something of an unintentional national hero.  His worse than useless price freeze of the previous year was the final straw that led to the founding of the Libertarian Party, and his presidency in general has done more to inspire distrust in government than just about any other figure in recent history.  Sadly, that lesson seems not to have stuck.

In 1975 I met Early Riser, and in 1976 we were wed.  She has since blessed me with two fine sons.  Stargazer is presently an Astronomy major at UH in Hilo, and The Enumerator is pursuing his Masters’ Degree in Mathematics at Oregon State University.

Later, in 1976, I found myself a Jerry Brown Republican, arguing that America should return to the Gold Standard… and the Moon.  I’m still working on both counts.  During the same summer I’d read William F. Buckley’s “Up from Liberalism” and re-read Abbie Hoffman’s “Revolution for the Hell of It.”  The two taken together set up a wicked turbulence in my mind that left me well poised for an epiphany.  Working security at the Ketchikan Spruce Mill one long Alaskan summer night I ran across some literature from the Roger MacBride campaign, and first saw the word “libertarian” spelled with a capital letter and in some other context than “civil.”  I read it, read it again, and all that night read it over and over.  Amazing!  Here was an organized group of people who seemed to believe as I did, that governments are instituted among men, and that they derive their JUST powers from the consent of the governed, and that the government that governs best governs least, and every other battle cry of freedom that I could recall from my twenty years of life.

That was twenty-six years ago this summer, and I haven’t looked back.  But I did go on.  I spent four years in the Air Force, served as a Jet Mechanic for the Strategic Air Command and for the Pacific Air Forces, and was honorably discharged in 1981 with four stripes, a wife, and two sons.  We returned to Corn Valley to cash in my GI Bill where I studied Physics and Mechanical Engineering at Beaver Tech.

In addition to my formal course work at the University I began pursuing my political education in earnest, attending meeting Sugar and Bud.  For the past twenty years they have remained trusted advisors and harsh critics.  I made my first run for the House in 1982 as an otherwise unemployed full-time student.  The party in Oregon didn’t manage to secure ballot status that year, so we had to run write-in.  I’m pretty sure we cracked double digits on that one.

In 1986 I was graduated from OSU with a pair of degrees and a fair amount of debt.  I worked where I could and let politics take a back seat to my other interests.  During this time Busy Body and I drifted from each other, gradually pushing each other away.  Eventually we stayed pushed.  In 1988, while playing Sherlock Holmes in a local amateur theatre production, I met Diva Dearest, who was working as a sound technician in the show.  We resonated both on a political and moral level, but, more important, we laughed a lot together.  We were married in 1989, and in 1991, our daughter, L’Historienne was born.  She is named after the cyber-hero of Robert Heinlein’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,” Supergirl (in the original Kryptonian), the woman who was responsible for coaxing Drama Queen to work on the show that brought us together, and the great villain from Doc Smith’s “Skylark” series – science fiction principles run strong through this family.   

By the time the political itch got strong enough to throw me back in to the fray, it was 1996.  This time the Oregon party was on the ballot, and so we did much better, receiving, for myself at least, just under 2%.

Neither disappointed nor discouraged, having witnessed a progression of going from “Liber-what?” to actually being recognized, printed in the newspaper, and acknowledged on the air, I was not to be denied.  I would run every chance I got.  Politics, and campaigning, I had learned, was just too much fun and too satisfying to ever sit it out again.  As steep as the odds appear, not trying is not acceptable.

Big talk, but life intervenes…  In December of 1996, just six weeks after the election that had so fired my enthusiasm, facing another grim wet Oregon Coast winter that was taking its toll on Drama Queen’s health, and listening to Bing Crosby singing “Mele Kalikimaka” on the stereo, we realized that you can be broke and in debt anywhere in America.  We’d always wanted to move to the tropics (or at least vacation.)  I had lived on Oahu as a boy when the Navy had stationed my step-father at Pearl, and the Air force had sent me to Okinawa for part of my tour.  I knew I was suited to the year-round barefoot scene.  My mother had since moved there after her retirement and had been coaxing us to visit for some time.  It took Bing, ultimately, to give us that final push.

We worked.  We saved.  I did double shifts. We had a huge garage sale.  We packed up, tossed out, and mailed off – a box at a time.  And when we stepped off the plane in Kona of August of 1997 we knew we’d made it home.  Within a year we’d purchased a house – a house mind you, a house in paradise.  No other place on Earth has been as good for us as the Big Island.

In 1998 Noreen Chun ran for the Congress as a Libertarian, leaving me off the hook.  Besides, bettah one local girl run than some pretentious malihini.  In 2000, Noreen elected not to run again, and I felt it was again time for me to step forward.

Third party candidates (unless they are gainfully retired) are still obliged to earn a living.  So, while working as an Audit Clerk at the Hilton Waikoloa Village (in whose employ I remain) I chanced to meet Wayne Ryker.  Here was another who was fond of an intellectual challenge and could see clearly to the center of an issue.  While working together we often argued politics.  I made no secret of my aspirations, and he made no secret of his doubts.  He, too, has become a trusted advisor and a harsh critic.  (I need them all.)  It was through him that I met our wondrous web spinner, Rhonni Samplas, whose gracious generosity and titanic talents have permitted me to inflict my clumsy prose on the suffering surfing audience.

We did respectably for a party that no one had heard of a generation ago, and for a candidate who was new to the area and still pushing down roots.  For the record, based on vote totals in partisan races in Hawaii, I was the most popular Libertarian of the season.  Polling only half the state and winning roughly 2.4% of the vote, I beat our party’s Presidential and Senate candidates, both running statewide, and in raw numbers (4468) every other independent party candidate in the state with the exception of Ralph Nader (whose “independent” credentials are questionable.)  I hope we can build on that.  With your help, and the valuable support of my extended political family (see below), we will.

Hawaii’s greatest burdens are crushing taxes, suffocating regulations, and the inflexible labor laws.  Hawaii is rich in resources and opportunities, but it goes nowhere if people are unwilling to invest their money, their sweat, or their dreams.  A business-friendly Hawaii, freed of artificial restraints, could become a real workers’ paradise – the Hong Kong of the Pacific.

I will bring to the Congress an understanding of the limits of federal authority.  These limitations are spelled out in the Constitution in concise English, and are clear to any reasonably educated person (with the obvious exception of judges, lawyers, Democrats, and Republicans.)  I promise neither pork nor special favors, but freedom and opportunity for all.

Make America Greigh Anon is…
Policy & Oratory:  Gene Greigh
Public Affairs:  Diva Dearest
Policy Analysts:  Wayne Ryker, Sugar, Bud
Inspiration:  L’Historienne, The Enumerator, Stargazer
Wicked Web Craft:  Rhonni Samplas

update 211110:  As noted elsewhere, this election also did not work out as well as I’d hoped, but I did manage to survive.  What did not survive includes my marriage to Diva Dearest, Diva Dearest herself and Wayne Ryker (both now deceased), my Hawaiian residency, regular contact with Rhonni Samplas, and the close confidences of Sugar and Bud. L’Historienne, The Enumerator, and Stargazer have all since taken their respective degrees, and they and Stargazer’s offspring remain consoling joys, even if my contact with them all is distant, fleeting, and intermittent.

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“My bad” way doesn’t cut it!

11 January 2018

If the matter is minor (getting jostled in a crowd), you might offer it as you would “oops” or “excuse me.” But be advised. “My bad” is not an apology.

Let’s put things in their proper camps. We excuse an error. We forgive an offense. Everybody makes mistakes, but as long as no obvious patterns emerge there’s no call for anyone to be taking any offense. Offenses are more personal, and we infer clear intent or egregious neglect if we’re taking offense. An offense calls for a more elaborate response.

A proper apology consists of four parts. You may call them the 4 Cs.
Confession: I did it. It was me. That’s my fault.
Commiseration: That stinks. How awful this is. I am so sorry.
Comprehension: I know what I did. I understand how that hurts.
Commitment: I’ll do better. I’ll try harder. I’ll be more attentive.

“My bad” or “Mea culpa” (Latin for “my bad“), both being possessive and acknowledging culpability, almost satisfy the first two criteria. However, they offer nothing to the other criteria, and aren’t even full sentences. Not “my bad” anyway. English calls for subjects and verbs, my and bad are both adjectives. I don’t know from foreign grammar, so “Mea culpa” might be an actual sentence. And it’s Latin, so extra points for falutin’ so highly! Still, it’s only halfway there. Assign it also to the Synonyms for “Oops” Column.

In addition to lacking much of the essence of an apology, its very brevity aggravates the offense. It suggests that it is a trivial matter, unworthy of basic courtesy. It’s the rhetorical equivalent of “It’s nothing, move on.”

It’s worse than no apology at all.

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Positive Feedback

19 May 2019

In Mechanical and Electrical Engineering (and probably other disciplines as well), a positive feedback loop can be disastrous.  For reference, see “Galloping Gert” and “Marching in Step” or just listen to the amp’s complaints when the microphone gets too close to the speaker. 

With public policy, the principle remains the same, but because the damage is distributed throughout the body politic, the catastrophe is harder to discern, but it is just as disastrous.  Witness the effects of prohibition, as it engenders increasing destruction:

Step 1:  Prohibit the possession, production, or importation of “X.”

Step 2:  Witness the free (“black”) market response to prohibition as resourceful entrepreneurs develop means to satisfy the surviving demand for “X” and the violence that emerges to protect the subsidized profits for providing “X.”

Step 3:  Point to the free (“black”) market and the emergent violence that accompanies its illegality as evidence of the inherent criminality of “X.”

Step 4:  Return to Step 1 but enhance the prohibition with additional sanctions.

Saturday Night Live’s skit about “Ex-Police” perfectly illustrates this loop: “Another marihuana-related death,” said the home invader (Dan Aykroyd) after he pummeled the hapless pothead (John Belushi) into paste.

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Sic Semper Shalom

5 November 2021

As an American atheist, the “Sharia Laws” with which I am most familiar (no wine or hard liquor to be sold on Sundays or fines for public nudity or prison for sodomites, for example) are mostly of the Judeo-Christian variety.  I am less concerned with Buddhist or Hindu or Muslim silliness, but because these faiths also energize literally billions, I take pains to familiarize myself with their mythology.  To that effect, I have been reading The Quran lately.  As literature, it doesn’t compare well with its competitors.  Ye Olde Testament and Edith Hamilton’s Greek Mythology are still tied for the best stories, but The New Improved Testament and The New World Testament are not far behind.  The Quran and The Bhagavad Gita are both very dry and tedious, but nevertheless interesting.  

But The Quran has its unique charms.  I get the impression that it was inspired (contrary to the pedophile Mohammed’s claim) because Leviticus just wasn’t harsh enough.  Chapter 8, verses 14 & 50 both prescribe death by fire for unbelievers, while chapter 9, verse 17 reiterates that we will be in the fire forever.  Like the other texts, it is not always explicit, so some Imams will interpret that as prescriptive – put them to death with fire – whereas others claim that it is merely predictive – they will burn in Hell (“What an evil destination.”)  Nevertheless, it is a gruesome and cruel notion, difficult to reconcile with the claim that “Islam is a religion of peace.”

Or maybe not so difficult.  After all, Joe Gill’s and Pat Boyette’s creation, The Peacemaker (now being portrayed on the screen by commie tool John Cena), was so committed to peace that he was “willing to FIGHT for it.”  And the motto of the Strategic Air Command, as I was reminded every morning when I reported to the Jet Shop, was “Peace is our Profession.”  Upon reflection, I guess it’s not such a stretch.  What’s more peaceful than a corpse?

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Dumping on Digits?

1 November 2021

The most popular and well known of an emerging class of “crypto-currencies,” BitCoin™ is a digital product without physical backing or central controlling authority beyond the parameters of its internal definition. It has been described as a “peer-to-peer” record of solutions to mathematical puzzles known as a “blockchain.”

It has been decried by its detractors as the ultimate fiat, insofar as it has no material backing, and lauded as the savior of civilization as a currency which cannot be inflated without limit, nor controlled by any bureaucracy. Like metals, crypto satisfies many of the necessary criteria of a serviceable currency — it is scarce, it is readily recognizable (to those familiar with it), it is easily divisible, and it is fungible. Even if it neither clinks like metals nor rustles like paper. And it seems to be dependent on modern tech to be recognized and manipulated, but that’s a small problem, as long as the ‘net stays up and electrons continue to race around circuitry.

But metals’ greatest fans remain leery of it, or of it’s smaller subdivision the Satoshi, while many of its boosters earnestly defend it against the criticisms of “goldbugs” and other obsolescent old relics like your genial host.

correspondent TC is particularly passionate, stating that “Relying on metals in the age of the internet is stupid. [Peter] Schiffian goldbugs are cultists worse than the covidiots.” Which invites the question, how am I “worse than the covidiots?” Was it my effort to destroy the economy, murder the elderly, or abuse children? Or simply to squirrel away some secure savings that would survive both regime changes AND power outages? So many crimes. Which did he catch me committing?

correspondent TC responds: “Its [sic] your intransigence in simultaneously raising gold to a holy status while denigrating crypto as funny money. Your comment about a power outage already tells me you don’t know anything about it.  Besides if we’re preparing for the end of the world, I have a box of bullets that’s worth more than all the gold in your safe.  People like Schiff have just raised the deception to an art form. The comparison to the ‘covidiots’ is the unwillingness to learn, grow, apply logic and reason.“

I appreciate TC‘s refining his definition of my allegedly “covidiotic” misbehavior or misapprehension, but he still raises more questions than he answers, as he goes on to advise me to “[d]o whatever you want with your wealth, just stop trying to tell me crypto is bullshit and gold is magic. They are at best on equal footing, and that’s being generous.”

TC seems to have mistaken my curiosity for an inability to compromise or to learn (“intransigence”), as well as inferring a mysticism (conferring a “holy status” onto the profane) that is antithetical to empiricism. In order for me to “stop” telling him that “crypto is bullshit and gold is magic” I would have to first START. Someone seems to have tapped a well of hostility within him, and he’s vomited it all over me. But I have a generous heart and am willing to leave such emotionalism behind.
Nevertheless, in the spirit of “transigence” I’m eager to learn new things, and generally grateful for correction. So I posed this question to him: Lacking electrical power (including batteries or photoelectric transformers), please explain how I might purchase or spend a Satoshi or two. Can a verifiable “block-chain” be expressed manually? I (mis?)understand that all digital products are ultimately sequences or matrices of ‘nits and noughts. Finally, I advised TC to be wary of assuming that I have (or anyone else has) neglected ANY of the four metals of freedom: gold, silver, copper, AND LEAD!

correspondent TC has so far declined to respond.

correspondent Otmia Unogsy, meanwhile, points out that “crypto currencies DO have a physical backing. The devices you use, mining equipment, computers. All essential physical things in an internet age.” By the same token, of course, F’eral Reserve “Dollars” also have a similar “physical backing.” Their value is supported by the “full faith and credit” of the united States’ military reputation, and their demonstrated ability to obliterate would-be competitors to petro-dollar hegemony. The important difference between “support” and “backing” is convertibility. Remove the support, and the value evaporates, whereas gold and silver retain their value irrespective of the fate of the backing authority. I have silver and gold coins that were issued by extinct governments, and they are still just as valuable as equivalent lumps of metal.

correspondent LR-L offers a few kind words, and adds that he is “a ‘diversify’ guy” himself “with an admitted bias toward the post-collapse value of boxes of lead denominated in grains per unit.” He concludes from my thoughts, and from the various responses that I provoked, that there exists a “need to do a Kickstarter for the Well of Hostility®, although what form that should take is proving a stubborn idea.” 

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Being an Ego Supremacist

27 July 2020

I have probably always been a Gene Supremacist, thinking that, in general, my opinion was more clear or coherent than any other.  Nevertheless, I readily acknowledge the vastness of my ignorance and welcome counsel. 

Conflation has never seduced me.  I recognized early on the great diversity around me, so bigotry was never an attraction.  I do recollect accepting the opinions of my family at an early age, but when I realized how irrational their racism was, I decided that I knew better.

Accusations of “white supremacy” are offensive on many levels, mainly as an insult to one’s intelligence.  Because I speak English, and I’ve seen a box of crayons, I know that there are no white or black people on Earth.  I am not unaware of popular fictions, but I maintain firmer standards.  If it’s untrue and it isn’t poetic or funny, it’s a lie.  And even if it is poetic, it might still be a lie (see Gettysburg Address).  On the other hand, as I diverge again, “negro” is fun, even as it literally means “black.”   Still, it’s a nice word; it’s warm and friendly.  Think of the muscles of your face as you pronounce it.  It starts with a smile and ends up in a look of astonishment and delight.  “Nigger” on the other hand, is just mean.  It starts with a sneer and ends with a growl.

The idea that “white supremacy” has any serious traction in a world where the observation that “There sure are a lot of Jewish Nobel Laureates, aren’t there?  And a lot of tall negros in the NBA!” can get you scorned, scolded, and verbally scalded, is ridiculous.  Many have lost jobs and other opportunities over less.  There are no visible rewards for “white supremacist” behavior, so the notion that it has any practical currency in running the world is utterly absurd. 

YES IT DID!  IT WAS THE WAVE OF THE PAST! 
And the LAW, thanks to Jim Crow Democrats. 
But for the most part, the past is past.

But nothing attracts a warrior like an unwinnable war.  In the fight for equality, no victory is possible because differences are what enrich our lives.  But the fight goes on, and as racial relations improve, the rhetoric is ramped up.  As enemies fade into the mist, the definition must be expanded to advance the front.  As I’d indicated elsewhere, “objective, rational linear thinking” and the recognition of causality and quantitative differences are not so much the hallmarks of civilization and hygiene and health and prosperity, but characteristics of “whiteness” or “white supremacy.”

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Portrait of the Fanboy as a Young Letterhack

Smallville Mailsack ( October 1970, Superboy vol1 #169)

No. 164 was a sheer delight, but I want to comment on when the Superboy stories take place. Correspondent GK seems to think it’s the ‘30s. But that’s ridiculous. Even if it was 1939, Superman would be 40 years old because I read in an earlier ish that Superboy is 15 years old. I’d bet the stories take place around 1955 or 1960.

Editor Boltinoff responds:
“Correspondent LG from Honolulu… echoes the sentiments of correspondents GH of Louisville Ky, LF of St Petersburg Beach Fl, PH of Toledo Oh, and ER of Unionville Ct, who figures Superman to be 47 and urges us to advance Superboy into the era of 1950-52 or he‘ll hold his breath until he turns green like Kryptonite. You can exhale now, ER, and breathe easier because we‘re moving into that era right now, as you‘ll note in… the very next issue.”

update 190124: So I am responsible for changing DC’s editorial policy and for correcting a major continuity glitch, effective “the very next issue!”  
When I showed this issue of Superboy off to my friends (and thug older brother) many couldn’t help but point out that the editorial response included the phrase “echoes the sentiments.” They insisted therefore that this meant that I had copied my comments from previously published letters. Certainly not, I replied. “Echoes the sentiments” alludes to the fact that numerous other fans were also picking up on the problems being created by Superboy’s lagging timeline, and that my letter was simply the best stated or most representative, and therefore the one they selected for publication.

Portrait of More to Come? ( September 1978, 1984 #3 )

setup 190131: King of the over-sized black and white horror fantasy anthology niche, Warren Publishing dipped its corporate toe into the burgeoning science fiction market with 1984. Styling his book “adult sci fi,“ editor Bill duBay generally presented scatology, gore, adolescent sex fantasies, and also some ripping good yarns and great art amid the inevitable dross, not all descriptions being necessarily exclusive.
Upon my receipt of the first issue, I opine scholarly…

Based on my vast experience with comics (or funnies if you wish), I predict that 1984 will serve up some excellent inspired material for the first few issues. An abbreviated period of literary and artistic stagnation will follow. If we’re lucky, there will be a feeble rally. But eventually, the magazine will succumb to sagging sales. We’ll see an early death and a reclassification to comic book legendry. And a few years from now we’ll all be saying, “Remember ‘78 when ‘84 was being published? Man, those were the days!”
Puh-leeeeeeeeeese! Prove me wrong!

update 190131: Neither Jim Warren nor his considerable fan base proved me wrong. I don’t get a great deal of satisfaction out of being right so often. I see the same patterns being repeated in comics, culture, and politics, and while there is a certain arch comfort to it all, it also makes me a little sad. Anyway, as I expected, 1984 (renamed 1994 as the eponymous year approached) managed to offer up some especially choice covers by Patrick Woodruffe, and several nice stories by the likes of Alex Nino, Richard Corben, and Wally Wood, among other luminaries, even as it presented an otherwise warm and steaming pile of gratuitous drivel.

Got Him By the Short and Curly ( February 1984, The SPiRiT #3 )

setup 190131: By the time that Will EiSNER had concluded his weekly involvement with new SPiRiT adventures, Denny Colt and company had already been reprinted in a variety of books, and would continue to be haphazardly re-presented until Kitchen Sink would launch its assiduously contiguous series in 1982. Theretofore, tracking the internal continuity of the adventures in and around Central City was usually challenging and often frustrating, but richly rewarding!

As attractive a package as the new SPiRiT comic is, it still leaves me dissatisfied. Originally, the Spirit appeared at the rate of once a week, or a page a day. The new bi-monthly effects a rate of .46 pages per day. This will just not do,
I confess, as dissatisfied as I might be, you’ve still got me by the short and curly. I’ve loved the Spirit since I saw Warren’s first edition. Before then I had been an avid comic book fan and had reconciled myself to my mother’s friendly ridicule. Finally, when I brought home that first Spirit she did an about face. “The Spirit!” she exclaimed. “Now that’s good! Much better than the crap you usually read. I thought he was gone for good.” Apparently she had grown up with Denny Colt and still had fond memories. Thanks, Mr Eisner, for finally shutting her up.
Keep turning a profit and keep printing The SPiRiT. We are few, granted, but we are weak, and will buy The SPiRiT in damn near any format.

update 190130: I guess I’d forgotten that my actual first exposure to the SPiRiT was in the pages of Jim Steranko’s excellent History of Comics, predating his Warren debut by a few years.
Go get yourself a copy after you’ve bought all of my stuff!

submitted but not printed ( April 1984, in re World’s Finest #304 )

World’s Finest 176, June 1968: A mediocre cover which served mainly to showcase the protagonists thereunder. A new seventeen-page story illustrated by that new Neal Adams fellow who’d lately been generating shockwaves through fandom with his treatment of the Spectre and Deadman and churning out a veritable flood of covers for the Superman line. So THIS is the much heralded “New Superman.” WF 176, just the second installment of a long and happy relationship? (*sigh*) Backing it up, a reprinting of six forgettable pages featuring the Martian Manhunter.
World’s Finest 304, April 1984: A cover stunning in its simple brutality, though just a little misleading. Supes gets no black eye inside, but Ed Hannigan‘s and Klaus Janssen‘s graphic license grabbed me by the throat and hasn’t let go yet. Up front: a cleaner, crisper reprinting (that new “mando” paper stock sure helps!) of the aforementioned seventeen pages, with corrected colors, no less! (And two new mistakes, also, but… ) Finishing the already satisfying package: a delightfully memorable five-page vignette which is more an exposition of the world’s fastest friendship than a story proper. It was a gentle, sensitive interlude. Even the “obligatory action” served mainly to display the distinct personalities of Kal and Bruce, as well as providing a soupcon of comic relief. Well done.
World’s Finest 176 and 304: Interesting bit of symmetry there.

“If I Wanted Cute” ( July 1984, DC Comics Presents #71 )

setup 190130: During its run through the Eighties, DCCP was a team-up book featuring Superman and a super guest star of the month. One December in 1983 I noticed the current issue had a more seasonal feature. The book at the time was edited by Julius Schwartz and Nelson Bridwell, though the letters’ column was handled by Bob Rozakis.

When I saw the cover of DCCP #67 I nearly recoiled in revulsion. I mean, Superman and Santa Claus? Really? Who do they think they’re kidding? Thinking it over, I considered that since Santa Claus is not an established character in the DC DisContinuum [or Degenerate Cosmos?], this would be your basic cute Superman Christmas story.
Still, I was disgusted; if I wanted cute, I’d read the A-Team.

Somehow I found the book in my hands and thought something like, “Well, how appropriate. If the Superdude is going to be teamed up with the Claus, what better adversary than The Terrible Toyman?” Perhaps it was only curiosity. After all, this was only a basic Superman story, as I reasoned above. Who did the folks at DC have in mind as the basic Superman artist these days? So I opened the book up to about the middle and…

Blinked! I looked more closely at the clean and simple blocking, the warm, smooth ink-line, and swore softly to myself. Could it be? Could it be? I looked at a few more pages, squinting this way and that, and… I knew. Great Rao, I knew! Just for the final confirmation I turned to the credits and…
Yes!! [Douglas! Clyde!] SWANDERSON!
Have you any idea how long I’ve waited for the ultimate art-team on Superman? I’d just about given up hope. I’d certainly given up Superman. Let me recant here and now. (And blush a little if Swanderson’s been seen prior to DCCP 67.) If Swanderson is back with Superman on a regular basis, then by golly, maybe I am too.
One final problem. Having purchased the [damned] thing, how do I sneak it into the house past my wife? I mean, really, Superman and Santa Claus? I’d never hear the end of it.

update 190130: Parts of this letter were reproduced from memory and re-inclusions are denoted by [bracketed italics]. Mr Rozakis was probably correct to clip the phrase “Degenerate Cosmos.” He, or many readers, might have inferred therefrom that I was some kind of fundy prude making a snide comment about the spandex clad buff bodies that are replete throughout super-heroic fantasy. I remember it so clearly because I knew it was actually a clever reference to plenary theory and quantum mechanics.

During late Pre-Crisis continuity Lethargy Lad was known as “College Boy”, and his and Early Riser’s finances were so tight, between tuition, rent, and groceries for the growing Lethargy League, that the Sacred Comic Book Budget took a serious hit. So serious a hit was it that a couple of rare contributions to special issues or annuals by Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson were actually missed. This is why, when I discovered their work again in late 1983, I thought that it might be their first teaming since their run on Superman and Action Comics had played out ten years earlier.
Since spinning off the young Lethargy League into their individual series, and returning to solo-star status, Lethargy Lad has managed to fill in a few more gaps in the “historical records.” Nevertheless, that comment about sneaking things past Busy Body was only partly a joke. Later she agreed that no one beat Curt and Murph in making Superman look like Superman, and we were both delighted when, just a month later, the Team Supreme returned for a follow-up tale in the pages of DCCP 68.

Corps Values ( September 1984, Green Lantern vol2 #180 )

setup 190128: “September” 1984 was a “Red Letter Month.” I’m no Mad Maple or Irene Vartanoff, so two submissions published in one month was pretty exciting for this eager letterhack. Given publishing schedules, these appeared more likely in June, and were probably written around March, though possibly weeks apart.
First up to Len Wein at the helm of DC’s Green Lantern:

“It was a beautiful kite.”
( * sigh * )
It was a beautiful story.

There is only one Gil Kane, alas, and I for one can’t get enough of his Green Lantern. I know he is not wedded to DC, nor to Green Lantern in particular, but try, try, wheedle-cajole-and-beg at least two GLC shorts out of him per year. As one of the primary creators of the Corps it is only fitting that he continues to help unfold this tapestry. Pursuant to “Final Duties,” high praise is due also to Len Wein for his elegantly understated narrative.

As a continuity fanatic, and as a self-designated unofficial Corps historian, I ask you to agree to the following assertions by not contradicting them, or to correct them by citing a reference to Green Lantern #X, Y, or Z, which may be missing from my library.
Kwo Varrikk is the same Green Lantern who first appeared in GL #11 and was identified only as the Green Lantern of Rojira (also homeworld to Rori Dag, the first Green Lantern.
Rojira, Minos III, Minos IV, Krodarr, Vrygoth, Elysium, and Balgus VI are all in space sector 1177, a number selected to commemorate GL #s 11 and 177, the hallmark issues of Kwo Varrikk’s career.

And now, Len and Gil, about the new Green Lantern of Sector 1177, what’s his story?

Wein responds: While we’d love to accommodate you, LG, we’re not entirely certain we can. Seems to us the Green Lantern of Rojira, while having the same bald head and skin color as Kwo Varrikk, also had his nose in the middle of his forehead above his eyes, which Varrikk decidedly does not. Of course, it would make life a whole lot simpler if Varrikk was indeed the GL of Rojira and we chalked up the nasal discrepancy to artistic license, but we’re not quite ready to take such a giant step by ourselves.
So we throw the floor open to you, dear readers. If anyone out there agrees that Kwo Varrikk is the ring-slinger of space-sector 1177, or disagrees, or has another opinion entirely, write and let us know.

Update 190128: I don’t recall any follow-up from fandom assembled over the issue of Kwo Varrikk’s provenance, but it was never renounced any more convincingly than Editor Wein’s charming shuffle-and-dodge. While I can’t claim it’s exactly canon, IT DID SEE PRINT. Then it was reiterated by Wein himself, albeit as weakly as he’d earlier challenged it. He also neglects “The First Green Lantern” from GL 67 which clearly depicts a Rojiran with Kwo Varrikk’s approximate physiognomy and coloration. The one long shot image from GL 11 was perhaps ambiguous. The alleged nostrils may well have been a deeply furrowed brow. Or maybe Varrikk had recently been in a fight, and due to the plasticity of Rojiran physiology, his face was deformed. This fanboy’s gonna go with that, at least in the timeline running through MY head.

“It’s been a fun life.” ( September 1984, LSH vol3 #2 )

setup 181114: Paul Levitz was a perfectly adequate editor in his own right, but I think it may have been DC’s policy that writers not edit their own work. I don’t know. At any rate the Legion at that time was edited by Karen Berger, to whom I addressed the following remarks. Nevertheless, Levitz himself handled the “Letters to the Editor” column because, well, I suspect because he liked to.
Herewith are my remarks from 1984 regarding Levitz’ and his collaborators’ super-heroic confabulation, The Legion of Super-Heroes, and in particular, their character, Dream Girl.

Brilliant. Just brilliant. I couldn’t have said it better myself. In LSH vol 2 number 310, Nura Nal coins her own best epitaph (and I hope she never needs it as such.)

Preparing for an action which, at best, will neatly suck Omen out of her universe and, at worst, kill her, her compatriots, and possibly all of Khundia, she succinctly sums up her existence and completely crystallizes her character.

“It’s been a fun life.”
Beautiful.

Not, “It’s been a useful life,” nor “…a productive life,” nor “…a meaningful life,” nor any other of the abundant clichés of individual subordination. “It’s been a fun life.” Nura knows. I know. Paul Levitz apparently knows.   (Whether or not he believes it himself.  Steve Ditko obviously knows — see AVENGiNG WORLD.) If human existence has any purpose at all, it is the pursuit of pleasure. Whether we derive pleasure from a job well done, from helping others, or from helping ourselves, fundamentally we’re in the game for number one. It’s the human thing, we must depend first on ourselves for our own happiness. Aside from contractual obligations, nobody owes us anything, and we owe nobody our lives. Not our church, not our party, not our race, nor tribe, nor “society,” and certainly not the state.

Thank you Nura. Thank you Paul. Keep up the good word.

Levitz responds:
“Whew! One of the best parts of writing the Legion is seeing what depths of character readers can analyze out of brief sentences. While we’d agree with your analysis (largely) with respect to Nura, LG, we’d hate to be accused of believing as our various characters do. — pl.”

update 181114: I don’t condemn Levitz’ hesitation to commit to radical individualism; Nura Nal and Steve Ditko and I represent the narrow end of that particular bell curve and I know how awkward it gets out here.

In spite of that, Paul Levitz remains a great personal hero of mine. In the mid to late 1970s he and Neal Adams led the charge to help Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster reclaim their interests in Superman. Going up for decades against the metastasizing goliath that had become Warner Communications, Siegel and Shuster had all but given up hope.

Adams gets a great deal of the credit for their eventual triumph, and he deserves it, but people often neglect this very impressive difference. At the time Neal Adams was a powerhouse in the industry. Just about every publisher in town was courting him and he was writing his own golden ticket. To speak of Adams as Adams himself might, “The son of a bitch carried some goddamned weight and the corporate suits dared not fuck with him.” If Warner held a grudge Adams could stroll across the street.

Paul Levitz, however, carried no such weight. He was admittedly a tyro writer and a rising star with an MBA on the way and Earth-Two’s Bat-Daughter in his portfolio, but still, he knew the history of DC AND Donenfeld’s toxic legacy. He knew what had happened to writers before him who had pushed too hard.
He pushed anyway.
For the Fathers of the Man of Steel, he couldn’t not push.

Paul Levitz and Neal Adams may disagree with me on matters of art or food or politics, but I still hold them both in the highest of esteem, both as artists, and as men.

update 201026, The Levitz Himself sets me straight: “Thanks for the kind words, but I had no role in getting Jerry and Joe their credits [in the] 1975 deal with Warner. That was due to Neal, Jerry Robinson and a number of others. I was honored to be their primary contact at DC from about 1981 on, and to play a role in improving their compensation in those years, and to have worked on the agreement that courts eventually ruled as a final one with the Siegel family, but I can’t take credit for anything on the 1975 deal.” (lifted from Levitz’ response to my posting some of the above onto the seriagraphic celebration cite, The 13th Dimension.)

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The Great Eddington Declaration

211022 -or-  *Ron Paul vs. Rudy Giulani (2007), an earlier draft

In the Deep Trek (“DS9”) mythos, Cardassia fights for territory and resources, the Federation fights to conserve the status quo, and the Maquis fight for freedom.

This edited communique between representatives of the Maquis, Mr Eddington, and the Federation, Captain Sisko, comes to us through mysterious media, but starting with Deep Trek® season 4 episode 22: “For the Cause”

The only reason I’ve contacted you now is to ask you to leave us alone and to remind you that if you keep sending replicators to Cardassia, you’re going to have a lot more to worry about than hijackings. 
Why is the Federation so obsessed with the Maquis?
  We never harmed you.  And yet we’re constantly arrested and charged with terrorism.  Starships chase us through the Badlands.  And our supporters are harassed and ridiculed.  Why?  Because we’ve left the Federation, and that’s the one thing you can’t accept.  Nobody leaves Paradise.  Everyone should want to be in the Federation, hell, you even want the Cardassians to join.  You’re only sending them replicators because one day they can take their rightful place on the Federation Council.  You know, in some ways, you’re even worse than the Borg.  At least they tell you about their plans for assimilation. 
You’re more insidious. 
You assimilate people, and they don’t even know it. 

Let’s parse this parable.  If the Maquis are the Maquis, does that make the Federation the Nazis?  Not quite, that would be way overstating it, but the Maquis are still too romantic not to reuse.  The Federation is the UN and they are as popular in the Badlands as the Blue Helmets are in Syria, and that’s close enough.  Speaking of the UN as the Federation (or as “The Feds” as was confessed in “A Piece of the Action”), “Between Planets,” a novel by Robert Heinlein, is ripe for adaptation into the Trek-verse, as it paints “The Federation” (a thinly disguised UN) in colors as similarly harsh as Eddington has since perceived.

{  * wherein Rudy demonstrates his lack of qualification to be President by confessing his ignorance of the long established foreign policy principle of “blowback” and defends his “authority” on the basis of personal injury (in a move that neo-klingons call “bitch-slapping Ron Paul.”)  The Borg killed Sisko’s wife, and Al Qaeda killed thousands of New Yorkers, which, instead of compromising their objectivity, transubstantiates their anguish into expertise.  }

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Renouncing the “American Way”

21 October 2021

Proclaiming their more broadly inclusive globalist sensibilities (and betraying their obvious allegiance to the Chinese market), DC® and WarnerCom® announce that the new Supermen® (father or current son) will no longer be standing for anything so patriarchal, racist, heteronormative, or cisbinarycentric as
“Truth, Justice, and the American Way.”

Because, according to some, “The American Way” has changed. Or even that “the world, the universe is bigger than just one country. Superman is there for everyone.” And so is the American Way. Indeed, that is probably the most appealing thing about them both. They are there for everyone who is ready to embrace them.

But “The American Way,” as an aspirational ideal, has not changed since (obviously flawed) Thomas Jefferson first penned the Declaration of Independence, and it had not changed by the time that (obviously flawed) other writers put those words into boxes and balloons surrounding Smallville’s Favorite Son®. What HAS changed is an understanding of the unique characters of American society, and how “The American Way” continues to inspire and energize freedom seeking peoples from across the globe.

correspondent BS objects, and points out that “the US is the biggest obstacle to freedom in the world!” Arguably. The occupation “federal” government of the united States may well be the greatest threat to liberty in the world, it is certainly the most heavily armed, but we must learn to distinguish between a state (the government, “a gang of thieves writ large”), the country (the land itself, “from sea to shining sea”), and the nation (the people, their language, and their culture). The F’eral Govt has been deaf to “The American Way” for most of its existence. And perhaps a majority of Americans have abandoned such concepts as fair play, due process, and the presumption of innocence. But The American Way endures, and it is a banner worth waving, and the
Metropolis Marvel® has always been a worthy champion.

update 211115 — On loving Truth, Justice, and the American Way, but explaining to FascBuch friends why I’m dropping Superman from my pull list.
I adore super-heroic fantasy, but I often bemoan the failures of education and insight exhibited by many of the commie writers in the trade. I had to stop following Superman recently when he despaired of “capitalists creating poverty.” I know, I know, it’s SUPPOSED to be childish fun, but even an atavistic fanboy has his limits.