trochee

Apropos of my post earlier this week regarding the opportunities for moral reflection in videogames: WorldChanging's Regine DeBatty posts a summary of subversive videogames -- they subvert both the politics and form of videogames.

The main public for these games is neither teenagers nor kids, but adults. Moreover, the rules of these games are not the ones you would encounter in a commercial games: the aim is not to attract as many game addicts during as much time as possible; to captivate with an aesthetics as realist as possible or with the most original design; to attain as much identification to the hero as possible; to be the most competitive on the market; to satisfy the ego of the teenager that still lurks in each of us by killing what moves on the screen... the aim is not to win. The aim is to subvert and parody preconceived ethics and aesthetics; to generate reflection.

Worth a read.

The Fantagraphics blog points out the latest Tilting at Windmills, which discusses the monopoly-disaster that the comics industry is spiraling into. For those not familiar with the comic publishing world, there is exactly one major distributor (Diamond), which has been slowly squeezing out all the other distributors. Now that it is essentially a monopoly, its service starts to decline, which is actually threatening the comics retailer -- ultimately, the source of Diamond's business! Self-defeating in the usual short-term horizon way. argh.

I have to say that I’m very afraid that the only real solution would be for the Justice Department to reopen their investigation of Diamond (as I understand it, the matter was put into abeyance rather than formally closed), and to break Diamond into two or three competing companies. Otherwise I can’t see how it could even be possible for a new national advance order competitor to get started.

... Heck, checking right now, Diamond doesn’t have a single copy of Maus on hand, in any format. No need to stock the Pulitzer Prize winner, right?

... Diamond has effectively frozen out any chance that any new competitor could enter the market at this stage. Which means that there’s no market forces to encourage Diamond to address their pricing and stocking issues. But if you want to sell comics, you have to deal with Diamond, there’s no way around it.

Seems oddly similar to my experiences with Qwest today -- shoddy website, lousy customer service, but monopoly-driven incentives to the customer to go with their products, even when they're not ideal. Diamond Comics joins Qwest and Microsoft on my list of monopolies to go after when I become Attorney General.

Wow. Johanna Carlson points out that Strangers in Paradise will end on issue #90. Sad but also wonderful that Terry Moore isn't going on forever when he's tired.

From Lea's entry mentioned in my previous post, I discovered the blog of Colleen Doran (best known as creator of A Distant Soil. though that's ironically not listed in the Comic Book Database). In that blog I found a most marvelous post about her brother's pentagram police-work.

Before the trip, Bro dressed up in his best suit, put on some shades, and picked up a cheap pentagram ring from Spencer’s Gifts because it would look cool to Satan’s Appendage. While the other cops dressed in jeans and baseball caps, Bro’s duds had the desired effect, and Lefty trembled in fear, afraid he was facing one of Satan’s Own Enforcers. (From Colleen's blog)

77 year-old man held for attacking Duchamp's Fountain.

And, from the Not-Really-News Department, Pat Robertson remains a one-note idiot.

Look!.

Also, an right-on rant pointing out that Ged still isn't brown.

(whoops, this was supposed to go in emerald_citizen. Now it's cross-posted.)

yanked from tsenft and debunkingwhite: wespeakenglish.

aaaaaaaa. as tsenft said: "this is why they hate us."

I want to smack every single person on that community.

okay, it's starting to piss me off.

many have noted the difference in captioning between pictures of white people taking food from grocery stores in New Orleans [finding] and pictures of black people doing the same thing [looting].

In every dialog I've read, somebody jumps in to point out that the captions were written by different people, and some of them were from AP, and some were from AFP, or derail the conversation ("how brave the TV crews are"," "I contest the race of the participants", "It's all the media's fault", "perhaps it was an honest mistake").
The most offensive responses from defensive white folks run along the lines of "OMG how dare you [point out racism/write a letter]; it's talking about race that keeps racism alive", "unless Black folk explain why they [didn't leave town/stole beer] we can't call it racism" -- note that POC have to explain the actions of all POC in this one.

But none of these "explanations" [note scare quotes] hold water. [fuck off, I'm too irritated to find a better metaphor.]

Why the hell is there so much resistance from snotty whitefolk to the possibility that there is racism here? Lord knows, we don't have a race problem in this country and I don't know what people are thinking, casting aspersions like this. [/sarcasm] As these show, it doesn't matter who wrote them, it's still part of the institution. And it's not even accurate to attribute it to AP vs. AFP.

To repeat myself from a locked discussion: It can be institutionalized racism, without anybody ever having the thought "I dislike/don't trust/hate black people." That only the snarky bloggers noticed it, and it goes unnoticed and/or excused by white folks, is what makes it racism.

If the captions were reversed, us white folks would have noticed. AFP vs AP is a difference, but why do we need to stretch so far? This stuff is part of a culture-wide institutional assumption of guilt for POC [er, people-of-color] and assumption of innocence for white folks. Let's acknowledge it and stop fucking trying to explain it away.

I think I'm going to resubscribe to debunkingwhite.

( Cat and Girl: Outdoor activities )

I wish this activity really was outdoors.
and okay, Cat's motivation is not really my motivation. I'm already there.

_dkg_, among others, will appreciate this.

Thank you isolt for the link.