"Yes sir! I have my pacifier, whistle and jester's hat, sir!"

Good news for all those under 30's who voted for Bush. When the new draft comes in, it won't be that big a lifestyle change from their usual night-time activities!

Via Defense Tech:

If it's good enough for ravers, it's good enough for G.I.s. That's the thinking, apparently, behind the Army's decision to test the animal tranquilizer Ketamine as away to soothe injured soldiers.

The drug – known in the clubs has "Special K" – has been reducing party-goers to gurgling blobs for more than a decade. This year, the Army has been running final, phase III Food and Drug Administration trials on a quarter-dose nasal inhaler of "K," to see if it can substitute for morphine.

The thing I'm really worried about here, of course, will not be the soldiers strung out on K while still armed with automatic rifles. No, the prospect of a new virulent strain of house music, a combination of Toby Keith samples and Christian Rock, that terrifies me.

True Geek Conversations #3892

Ross: But that's why some comic characters succeed over the long term, and some don't. Batman doesn't really resonate until you understand that every day he's struggling not to become the monsters he fights.
John: I was thinking Batman's admirable because it would be easier for Batman to kill the bad guys, and he doesn't.
Ross: Yes, morally --
John: No, literally from a scheduling standpoint.
Ross: (beat)
John: I mean if Batman kills people, he's the Punisher. They're essentially the same hero except for that one choice.
Ross: Riiight ....
John: Look at the books. Batman's working his ass off. He's always exhausted. He's out all night, every night. He barely gets home in the morning in time to pretend to be sleeping with supermodels.
Ross: But in the Punisher books --
John: Franks' brooding, doing monologues, cutting deals with Nick Fury, he seems to have nothing but time on his hands. Why?
Ross: The killing thing.
John: Exactly. Batman's fights take all night. He punches a guy, he punches another guy, the first guy's up and shooting, Batmans' ducking and having to hit the guy again, this eats up time.
The Punisher, I mean, how long's your average firefight? Fifteen seconds? Every book, no matter who's writing it, it's the same story. Frank shoots an informant in the kneecap, he firebombs a warehouse, then guns down the criminals as they run screaming from the flames -- maybe he pries a slug from his ribcage with some needlenose pliers, fine, but he's home before Letterman.
Ross: So you're saying the Punisher's a pussy.
John: No, but I'm saying he has no work ethic.

Now I'll have to have my limo driver shoot him.

Damn him. Mike over at Visible Monsters has called me out on his latest album, and, gangsta-like, defeated me with my own comedic device.

Top 10 Laurel & Hardy movies that could also be porn titles:

10.) Slipping Wives (1927)
9.) Bacon Grabbers (1929) or Their Purple Moment (1928) -- tie
8.) Early to Bed (1928)
7.) The Finishing Touch (1928)

See the rest here.

"... the other white meat."

New link -- the Reverend Tim McIntire in Boston. Tim's working out of my old writing partner Rick Jenkins' club The Comedy Studio in Harvard Square. Tim ran Geek Night, where they rolled a 20 sided die to determine who the next comic would be ... yes, they're that cool.

People going to see "alternative comedy" in LA don't really get a sense of what the term means elsewhere. Alternative comedy in LA tends to be Sarah Silverman in a tight shirt bitching about her latest sitcom role. Alternative comedy in Boston is Jonathan Katz working on his latest stuff, magic, sketch, head-to-head comedy battles in a quest for the "most offensive sentence. Ever." ... it's a great place. If you're in Boston, swing by the Studio.

Because he's twice as cool as you.

An e-mail asked me why Intel Dump is listed in two different categories in the Blogroll. Phil Carter (who just passed the bar in California, yay Phil) was in the 4th Infantry division when he was active duty. I first noticed him during the IraqWar, when he was invaluable for translating bullshit-to-English from the Centcom briefings and in-field quotes from officers.

Phil belongs in the "Politics" section because most of his writing conerns the military and law -- and these days, that's a political footbal. But he's in "Research" too because he's much more of a source to other sources for me. Read Intel Dump for a week and you'll wind up linking to Defense tech sites, civil rights sites, legal sites, international studies ... and always find some clear, concise discussion of very important issues you've probably never considered before. It's one of the few must-read's for me every day.

I'm naming mine Grimlock.

Seriously. Transformers. For real. But can they transform into ... my SELF ESTEEM?! Then what GOOD are they?

Who's Your Daddy, Broward County?

Via Daily Kos:

Florida's election supervisors, impressed by the success of early voting, proposed dramatic reforms Tuesday that would eliminate Election Day, replace it with an 11-day election season and do away with precincts.

The association of the state's 67 chief elections officials voted in concept at its annual winter meeting in Orlando to informally present the idea to the Legislature and to start rallying support for what its members concede would be a sea change in how Floridians vote.

An enormous amount of what passes for democracy in what is supposed to be the most advanced nation in the world is hopelessly mired in, at best, the 1800's. Electoral College? Check. Senate -- yes, I'm one of those guys who's not in love with the Senate, but before you get on my case about the genius of the Founding Fathers, please remember that you've only been able to directly elect your Senators since 1914. Up until then, political appointees, particularly corrupt cronyish political appointees. (Didn't know that, did you? No, no one ever does. It's very boring.)

Where was I? Next, punchcard voting. The 21st Century alternative is electronic voting, which in the US is a.) run by private companies with private software because the job's just too damn difficult for some open source nonsense, except in say, Australia, where it is open source code, and works just fine -- and b.) EV in the States is rife with technical difficulties. Apparently for these big-ass corporations like Diebold, it's a well-nigh insurmountable challenge to build an electronic screen device where selections are clear, the "transaction" is noted in both the computer and then on a printed-out vote "receipt" for a paper trail, and a less than .01% error rate industry wide. Madness.

Many young democracies, inspired by the US, have made the righ to vote a part of their basic Constitutional rights. 135 nations, to be exact.

The US, however, doesn't. No such right to vote. The decision of how votes are counted, what votes are counted, who qualifies to register to vote -- that all falls to local counties and state governments. Your fundamental right as a citizen is at the mercy of, well, whoever the hell happens to be hanging around your state capitol at the time. The local governments have to come up with the money, too. So in your state if, say, a big statue of the Ten Commandments for the Capitol Building is deemed more important than accurately counting votes, so be it. Sleep tight.

Although the current President has supported no less than seven Constitutional Amendments (the record!), don't expect to see this one pop up any time soon.

That's why this move on the part of the Florida election supervisors is so encouraging. Instead of trying to impose a system from the top down, they saw something which was popular, and they're going to try to expand on it. That kind of innovation works. Call it E-Bay Evolution.

It's also a reinforcement of a longstanding belief of mine, that what gets society to change is the same thing that motivates us as individuals: shame. Shame, and only shame.

There's no exciting electoral system advancement coming out of Montana. Why? Because nobody's going around saying "The last thing we need this year is another Montana." "We're on the look-out for Montana-like voting failures", etc. No. For the last four years, voting screw-ups = Florida. For the last four years, these guys have been going to the Election Supervisor Conventions and getting made fun of, not getting laid even at the Election Supervisor Fondue and Key Parties, that sort of thing. Four years as the prop comics of Election Supervising. That's shame, my friends, and they spent four years making sure it wasn't going to happen again. You can bet your ass that on November 2nd, a bunch of drunken Election Supervisors in Miami were standing on their couches screaming "Suck on it now, Ohio! SUCK IT!"

Now they're on a roll. Good for them.

Viral Video # 238901

Fooseball, by guys who are so good, they could use it as a super-villain power.

Top 10 John Wayne movies that could also be porn titles

10.) Men Without Women (1930)
9.) Rough Romance (1930)
8.) Seven Men from Now (1956)
7.) Girls Demand Excitement (1931)
6.) Maker of Men (1931) or Two Fisted Law (1932) -- tie
5.) Ride Him, Cowboy (1932)
4.) His Private Secretary (1933)
3.) The Star Packer (1934)
2.) Pals of the Saddle (1938)

And the winner is:

1.) Chisum (1970)

"It worked! I have two Shakey's Pizzas!"

The awful (or, for those of us with foreign passports and places to go, vaguely interesting in a car-crash-witness way) price the US will pay for indulging in its more theocratic instincts for another decade or so will not stop at Michael Powell's swollen neckline.

In 10 years, the US will be #4 or 5 in scientific prestige and advancements, and that's if we count by region, not even nation by nation. Currently, Brazil has a more progressive, aggressive, and advanced biogenetics program than the US. Brazil. Tin shacks. Death squads. Brazil, people.

Some stem cell stories to remind us of how, you know, useless the research is. Just like the President says.

South Korean woman walks again
Brazilian woman walks and talks again after brain hemorrhage
Well, I guess if you call curing the FRIKKIN' BLIND progress ...
No, I don't wet myself anymore, why?
Multiple Sclerosis, perhaps you've heard of it?
No, it's not a cure for cancer. you just live twice as long. Bah.
Maybe God wants this kid dead, ever think of that, Mister Science Guy?
But this technology could save Dick Cheney. That's gotta be worth something!

Jim Lee's House - Gelatometti

Spiffy comic artist Jim Lee has a blog up. He's doing a great job of not only showcasing cool work you won't see anywhere else, but he's quite good at stepping out the mechanics of what he does, what makes a good page, panel, figure, etc. A real nuts and bolts behind the scene feel. Take a look.

Laser eye surgery ... in the cockpit

Via Defense Tech:

I think we all winced when we read, back in September, about the Delta pilot who was hit in the eye by a laser while flying a 737. Or about the 20 year-old Los Alamos intern who was zapped during a July experiment.

Air Force researchers must not have liked what they read, either. That's presumably why they're looking to develop a contact lens that can protect against laser blasts

Defense Tech will join the sideboard soon. It's a one-stop shopping dream of high-tech military and law enforcement story ideas. I particularly like this and the article about Chicago's "gun listening posts."

Yes, simpleton, that's why it's called the "internets" .

Created over lunch hour, and already Trackbacks from Ellis' blog? And how the hell did HE know it was already up? My image of Warren has changed remarkably. I used to imagine him drunkenly scribbling in a tattered notebook huddled for hours in the dingy corner of a local pub. Now I know he sits in an Architect-from-Matrix-Reloaded-style chair, endlessly scanning for tickles at the edge of his photonic spiderweb and responding to such amyl nitrate egopoppers with frightening alacrity.

A few links already up, and so introductions are in order. Over at Atomeka Press, Ross Richie is on the cutting edge of indie comic publishing. Ross is a singular combination of meticulous business obsessive and true-blue comics fan, all somehow form-injected into the body of a Texas halfback. In partnership with Brit comic legends Garry Leach and Dave Elliot, Atomeka began by republishing the classic A1 anthology. Want to see work by Mignola, Gaiman, and Moore -- yes, frikkin' Alan Moore -- you haven't seen before? And now, besides bringing to light classic works not seen in years, Ross is luring in little no-names like Dave Johnson, Keith Giffen, and Mark Waid to do all-new exclusive material. Look for Atomeka's books. I've had the pleasure of reading the 1st issue of Dematteis and Giffen's new HERO SQUARED, and it's a hell of a nice piece of work.

The webcomics, Penny Arcade and Something Positive are the first up in that category. Both are there because they make me laugh out loud regularly.

Penny Arcade is about video and computer games, their idiosyncracies, and the hateful, hateful people who love them. Most of the time the jokes will mean nothing to you if you're not a regular gamer, but that's one of the exciting things about the Web. No more need to broadcast; you can play to your audience. They also help shatter the stereotypes of "slacker", antisocial gamers who sit in dark rooms cyber-gunning down cops and pimping the mean streets of San Andreas. Last year, their charity Child's Play raised $250,000 dollars -- yeah, a quarter of a million Yankee dollars, Sparky -- worth of cash and toys for sick kids in hospitals. Two videogaming guys with a webcomic did that. Any of you Moral Guardian Gamer Haters accomplished anything even close? I didn't think so. Shut up and pass the rocket launcher.

Oh, and Gabe's art style is disturbingly good. It's like haiku. Its simplicity accents its elegance.

At Something Positive, young Mr. Milholland has been writing and drawing the adventures of his alter-ego and circle of friends in Boston for about three years now. He updates close to every day -- plowing through the archive is both funny and shanks a complete afternoon. He's not politically correct -- he's magnificently offensive, actually. These are good,bad, drunken broken angry people who happen to have friendships the norms dream of having.

Milholland made a little bit of history this year, in one of my favorite 4thGenMedia(tm) anecdotes. Despite the fact that the poor bastard was slaving way at a miserable cubicle job 40 hours a week and still managing to update 16 times a month, some readers complained about copywriting errors. Milholland went off on a rant, basically saying "There's the PayPal button, you ungrateful jerks. Want me to spend more time on the strip? Buy me out of my day job."

And they did.

In just under a week his fans raised an equivalent amount to his yearly salary. Somewhat shocked, yet true to his word, Milholland gave notice. He now works full-time on S*P and another strip, along with learning the ropes of being a small, independent publisher. Neil Gaiman caught wind of this, told the story, and there was a brief flurry of attention around the incident.

Completely unintentionally, there's a theme to all today's new additions to the blogroll. Each of these sites represent people who are doing what they love, creatively, and making a living at it through unorthodox means. The "headquarters" of Atomeka Comics is an almost purely theoretical space, represented by Ross' e-mail in-box and Fed Ex receipts. The guys at PA and S*P make living off their web work. Now, they're not getting rich off it, but that's not the point.

Here in Hollywood, everyone's always looking to hit the big score, to maximize the payday. If a project is "merely" profitable, it often isn't pursued. That's not the way of 4thGenMedia(tm) -- or 4GM for short, I haven't decided yet. We now live in an age where, with determination and savvy, you can get access to your audience, present your little dramas, and in theory make a living doing it. Wherever, and whoever you are.

"Nobody gets rich, but everybody gets paid." That may well be the motto of the entertainment world over the next twenty years. Or, it should be.

Of course, Scott McCloud posited all this (the "micropayments" idea) in, oh, I forget which book, maybe Reinventing Comics. Guys like Gabe and Tycho and Scott Kurtz at PvP have been doing business like this for years now. I'm a chimp throwing a bone at their onyx obelisk of business savvy when I wander into this territory.

But I'm also suggesting that with new technologies, new video distribution systems, and new economic models (like the recently passed Jobs for Americans Bill tax breaks) that this system which has worked for a low-overhead industry like webcomics could become the model for successful television and film production.

Discuss, harass, and flame. But in doing so, please remember that right now, Joss Whedon is editing a major motion picture based on a TV show with almost non-existent ratings and ran only ten episodes.

Annoying my friends is not enough, I need strangers ...

Welcome to blog. This is more of a place where I can post research, joke fragments, story ideas, links to political essays -- little publishing bits and rants now that I don't really have time to do stand-up.

The idea of blog-as-research pit (he calls it a "newsmine") was originally suggested by filthily talented writer and occasional drinking companion Warren Ellis, who has his own little record of our world's ongoing yet molasses-paced apocalypse over at Die Puny Humans. (WARNING: That is not a work-safe site. It is barely a brain-safe site.) You will note he also references a monkey, but that is pure coincidence. His filthy monkey plans. My monkey is a monkey of action.

We'll talk movies & television (both as product and industry), conspiracy, politics, comics, gaming, blatant logrolling for friends, and general weirdness. There will be occasional updates for my family, to in some way convince them that I'm not negligent in my attentions, merely eccentric.

I've always felt, "the price of attention is entertainment." I'll try to be a fair value, but know that I'm fully aware very few of you are really paying all that much attention.