Author Archives: Night
I Diss Rock And Roll Music
I probably heard it when I was a kid – my parents had at least one album on 8-track – but I first recall hearing “I Dig Rock And Roll Music” by folk trio Peter, Paul, and Mary when I was 19. I quickly realized it was a, uh, dig at rock music – which they considered lowest common denominator* – as it knocked folk music off the charts. The song referenced the Mamas & the Papas (even emulating their style to some degree), Donovan (with a mild takeoff of his psychedelia), and the Beatles (directly targeting their song “The Word“) while painting them as sellouts who concealed messages in their music that wouldn’t get played on the radio if stated openly.
It’s actually quite a catchy pop-rock song and a favorite of mine.
However, I don’t believe I ever saw or heard this until today…
Cass Elliot aka “Mama Cass” of the Mamas & the Papas teamed up with Sammy Davis Jr. to sing the song criticizing her. I have to wonder if the insertion of Aretha Franklin’s song “Respect” was a bit of firing back at PPM.
Diss tracks were around long before rap.
* For as much craptacular rock music was floating around in 1967, it got much worse afterward, hitting a bottomed-out nadir in the mid 70s.
What Kind Of Superman Are You?
It’s International Women’s Day and artist aleXsandro Palombo has done a series called “What Kind Of Man Are You?” featuring images of well-known cartoon characters in scenes of domestic violence.
Characters include Prince Charming and Snow White, The Flintstones, and The Simpsons, among others. I’m not sure what kind of statement he’s trying to make beyond the equivalent of flying a ribbon from your car antenna, but I think he missed the target here. This image, for example…
…isn’t particularly striking, pardon the pun, since we’ve seen Homer do worse to Bart almost since Day One. If anything, Marge is getting off easy (and I seem to recall Maggie launching an unprovoked attack at Homer at one point).
As for the superhero images, they’re pretty tame (seriously, after being hit by Superman, Wonder Woman shouldn’t even have a head anymore). Even the Super Friends cartoon, which looks to be the inspiration here, was more dynamic and energetic. But more importantly, he didn’t need to come up with some new image to show Superman committing domestic violence – there’s tons upon tons of source material in the actual comics.
In the end, Superman always wins [click to embiggen]
Those are way niftier ways of trying to murder the one you love, especially if you have super powers. Gotta put some style in your game. But I digress.
So it’s established that Supes was not very nice to his girlfriend. But domestic violence is not always one-sided. Often the woman is an aggressor as well. It’s not as well known because women are generally less likely to manage causing physical harm to the man, which is illuminated through the extreme situation of the Superman-Lois dynamic… what’s she gonna do to him without taking extreme measures?
Which she’s done. Repeatedly. It’s only fair to look at things from Superman’s side of the story and see how Lois has treated him.
Even Lex Luthor hath no fury like a Lois scorned
Superman isn’t the only one to be the victim of his girlfriend turning on him. Batman’s crazy cat lady squeeze dropped a hurt on him something fierce.
Pussy Riot!!!!
Another aspect of domestic violence that is not often mentioned is that there are times when the woman starts the fight, provoking him into retaliating or sometimes even forcing the man into defending himself. With his greater strength, he is more likely to visibly injure the woman.
Supes was just wanting to talk til he got bitch-slapped with a light pole. Amazons be crazy, yo
The unstated assumption here appears to be that those with power will abuse it unless shamed into restraining themselves. Delving into characters like these undermines the concept – comics and cartoons are loaded with Women Of Power. Aside from Superman, who is more powerful than Wonder Woman? In addition, unlike the caped Boy Scout, she was explicitly trained to fight and even kill. So should we expect a scene like this?
Steve Trevor and Wonder Woman engage in a little “super power exchange'”
It Sure Sounds Funny When You Say His Name Like That
Send me off to the morgue I’m ready to be buried away down in my bed
And I’m alone without the sun
Please just take oneAnd by the grace of god go I into the great unknown
Thing are gonna change in our favor
– For Squirrels, “Mighty K.C.”“ KC stands for Kurt Cobain. He’s dead. The song is by a band called For Squirrels. They’re dead, too.” – From here
I remember when I first heard the song “Mighty K.C.” It was September or October 1995 on the local alternative rock station. I didn’t know it was about Cobain’s death when I first heard it, but the lyrics did stand out, both morbid and hopeful at the same time.
The other thing I didn’t know was that two members of the band died in a traffic accident before the song was even released. They were traveling in a van that flipped over, killing founding members Jack Vigliatura and Bill White and tour manager Tim Bender. I heard a DJ explain this not long after the song hit the airwaves, casting an entirely different light on the verses.
The video sort of merged the original theme of the song with the death of the band members, showing home videos of the band projected onto the body of a Kurt Cobain lookalike. Rather clever, I suppose, as a tribute to both.
The band menbers were big R.E.M. fans, and you can hear it in this song. It almost resembles R.E.M.’s “Fall On Me” in places.
Nearing The Event Horizon
Population keeps on breeding
Nation bleeding, still more feeding economy-Ten Years After – “I’d Love To Change The World”
This Daily Caller piece calls for “de-growth” –
Environmentalists are pushing a new way to deal with global warming and overpopulation: the U.S. needs to “de-grow” its economy.
What is “de-growth”? It means forcing people to work less to make them more equal, consume fewer goods and use less electricity. Think of it like camping, but for the rest of your life.
…“There’s no such thing as sustainable growth, not in a country like the U.S.,” Worldwatch senior fellow Erik Assadourian told Sierra Magazine.
…De-growing the economy means working less and consuming fewer goods and electricity… “If we had a livable wage and could each work a 20-hour week,” Assadourian said, “we’d have time to choose more sustainable options that are also better for ourselves.”
…About a month ago, former Vice President Al Gore suggested that “fertility management” was crucial to fighting global warming and promoting development in poor countries.
The article covers quite a few pages from the Progressive textbook … shrinking the economy, reducing population, forced equality, mandated wages coupled with higher taxes, increased leisure time, and a simultaneous worship and fear of science. But all these are driven by one concern – a belief that everything is zero-sum consumption.
There’s no allowance for replenishment of goods and resources, or that more people might result in more production. Nothing that resembles, you know, work. It’s pure consumption. And they want to reduce the competition.
Binging Bad
This does not describe Allamagoosa or myself at all.
You know you do this. And often
Nope, not even the least little bit.
Red Days And Green Flowers
Uptown
It’s murder
Out in the street
So I’m talking to Allamagoosa while Pandora Radio is playing and this song comes on. “Oh, there’s a cheerful Valentine’s Day song… especially if you consider the massacre.”
Since she’s a fan of anime and many things Japanese, does that make her my Mandarin Plum?
Drink A Cheap@$$ 40 And Let The Hamster Wheel Spin
Kids Prefer Cheese (do hamsters like cheese?) finds a directing sign off the straight and narrow highway –
Does Early Sexual Experience Affect Later Drinking Behavior? In Hamsters.
Um,wait…in hamsters? Seriously. In hamsters.
Perhaps that can be the new tag line for scientists. You know how you are supposed to add “in bed” after a fortune cookie? So, your fortune cookie says “You will soon come into a lot of money” and you add, “in bed!” Hilarity.From now on, medical studies have to end with “in hamsters” to make sure we all understand just how tenuous the conclusions are.
There’s a metaphor in there somewhere but I’ll let someone else make it.
…in hamsters. How do they hold those red Solo cups in their little paws?
Social Fairness
Brent Parrish on The Inequality of Equality, and questioning the concept of “social justice.” It’s not too long, check it out.
Where most Social Justice types get hung up is confusing fairness for justice. What’s fair is not always necessarily just.
The hot trend among social justice crusaders nowadays is “income inequality.” This parallels another problem, which I believe is just as serious – Traffic Inequality. It’s not fair that Sunshine Mary and Donal Graeme, among others,¹ get more readers than I do.
Clearly, the answer is to redistribute readers. Enacting a Minimum Traffic law would transfer excess readers from high-traffic sites to writers like myself who fall under the Readership Poverty Line. Seriously, does Mary really need all of her (as of this writing) 1,378,008 hits, compared to my 9,923? That’s over one million more hits, and she only started writing about 3 weeks before I did (and if we consider that those numbers only track her current site, I’m actually about 8 months ahead). If she cared, she would distribute some of those hits to the rest of us.
Under the labor theory of value which many SJ crusaders seem to subscribe to, I should get the same amount of traffic as SSM, and more than Donal. So why should they get more traffic?
Readers – like most incomes – aren’t distributed, they are earned. Value isn’t determined by labor, but by the benefit one gains from the product. Other writers post material that readers place a higher value on, and so those readers are more likely to return. More people want to read about traditional sex roles or the definition of Game than about 3D printing firearms or Batman vs. Donkey Kong. One might even argue that they are better writers than I am.²
Those others also post on a more consistent schedule than I do, which attracts and keeps readers. They also promote their work more than I do. They’re the 8 PM show five nights a week and get paid accordingly, whereas I show up Saturday night and hang around the parking lot after hours entertaining a few friends and passersby with off-the-wall stories for tips and free sodas.
No one held a gun to anyone’s head and forced them to read SSM or Donal or whoever over me.³ Unfair as it might be, it’s not unjust. Trying to get readers from them by any means other than writing to suit the existing market – or finding a new one – would be coercion, which is both unfair and unjust.
¹ Waaayyy too many others. A pimp can’t catch a break these days.
² Stop smoking crack. Your mom would be so ashamed.
³ Okay, Donal might have. He’s tricky like that.
The Art Of Capitalism
Jesse Myerson posts at Salon Why You’re Wrong About Communism: 7 Huge Misconceptions About It (And Capitalism).
My favorite part is when he ends the piece with this claim –
…most of the greatest art under capitalism has always come from people who are oppressed and alienated (see: the blues, jazz, rock & roll, and hip-hop). Then, thanks to capitalism, it is homogenized, marketed, and milked for all its value by the “entrepreneurs” sitting at the top of the heap, stroking their satiated flanks in admiration of themselves for getting everyone beneath them to believe that we are free.
Cafe Hayek (where I found out about this) quickly and efficiently dismantles this claim –
Overlook the questionable claim that most great artists under capitalism were oppressed and alienated. (Were Lennon and McCartney, Berry Gordy, Duke Ellington, Leonard Bernstein, and Andy Warhol truly “oppressed and alienated”? How about Jackson Pollock? Thomas Hardy? Ernest Hemingway? Lawrence Olivier? Raymond Loewy?) Focus instead on the critical reality that, in fact, there are countless great artists, and Niagaras of profound art, produced under capitalism. The same cannot be said for communism.
The reason is simple. Capitalism supplies artists not only with abundant materials and media for producing and sharing their works, but also with the freedom and personal space for them to create. In stark contrast, communism necessarily prohibits would-be artists from pursuing their muses. All means of production under communism are owned by the state, and, hence, remain off-limits to artists whose individual plans do not mesh with the central plan.
I hadn’t seen Myerson’s piece when I did this post of my own earlier, but mine suggests a basic flaw in his claim – would a communist society permit a publishing house to print sympathetic stories about a character who fought for the enemy side in the biggest war it had ever seen?
He’s half right about great artists often being alienated and oppressed. But this isn’t political, it’s social alienation… sometimes actively rejected by peers, other times because of their own issues which have nothing to do with anyone else’s reaction to them. Artists are usually different from most people. If anything, capitalism helps them reach out and speak to other rare people like them.
There’s another way that capitalism has helped artists. In the 1950s, profits from their high-selling horror magazines allowed E.C. Comics to subsidize the science fiction books they wanted to do. Until Congress threatened to censor them, that is (shades of communism).
Aces High
The World War I Flying Ace vs. his greatest nemesis…. Enemy Ace???
The Ultimate Dogfight
Mashup image from here, this is the original cover (click to enlarge) –
Star-Spangled War Stories #139, July 1968
Enemy Ace was German World War I fighter pilot Rittmeister Hans Von Hammer, created by writer Robert Kanigher and legendary artist Joe Kubert. Known as “The Hammer Of Hell,” Enemy Ace appeared flying his signature Fokker Dr.I triplane in various DC Comics, primarily Star-Spangled War Stories. 
- Flying the Killer Skies
Enemy Ace was largely based on Manfred von Richthofen, better known as…. the Red Baron.
Credited with 80 kills, Richthofen was respected even by his enemies and given a full military funeral by the personnel of No. 3 Squadron Australian Flying Corps
The legend of the Red Baron was carried on by cartoonist Charles Schulz in his strip Peanuts, where Snoopy frequently hunted his opponent, and popularized to a level that if you’ve never seen Snoopy in a dogfight, you’ve been under a rock for decades.
I have to wonder if this was a left-handed shout out to Snoopy…
Sadness is losing a warm puppy
The Baron is still well known and loved today –
I live on this stuff
nightskyradio 