#webjunk

[eliashiebert]

Matt Seneca:

Maybe the biggest part of what makes superhero comics so unpalatable to the uninitiated (and vice versa) is how referential they are, how enamored every panel is not just with contributing to a larger construction, but with its consciousness of doing that. Part of this is simply good salesmanship, but I think it's more due to the fact that guys who make superhero comics really really love superhero comics. Like stoned stoners talking about getting stoned, they just can't resist bringing up that other time when, and the people who were there, and how much, and why.

[eliashiebert]

Put This On:

Never a follower of trends, but always updated on his look, Kramer also occasionally sported the collar-over-lapel thing that seems to have come back. Except, where some boldly and recklessly flip out both collar points, Kramer exercised a bit more moderation by flipping out just one. This, my friends, is the difference between fashion and style.

[eliashiebert]

RIP to a great illustrator who thought shoplifters should be murdered.

Perfect comment below TCJ's Steve Ditko obit. 

[eliashiebert]

Sumerian Proverbs

Via @drhingram via @JaredParker, Oxford University’s “Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature” has a trove of proverbs:

You should not cut the throat of that which has already had its throat cut.

"Though I still have bread left over, I will eat your bread!" Will this endear a man to the household of his friend?

You don't speak of that which you have found. You talk only about what you have lost.

Whatever it is that hurts you, don't talk to anyone about it.

Wealth is far away, poverty is close at hand.

He who possesses many things is constantly on guard.

Possessions make trust of crucial importance.

Barley flour, in the fields, is meat fat.

The lives of the poor do not survive their deaths.

In the city where there are no dogs, the fox is boss.

He who eats too much cannot sleep.

An unfaithful penis matches an unfaithful vagina.

To be sick is acceptable; to be pregnant is painful; but to be pregnant and sick is just too much.

Tell a lie and then tell the truth: it will be considered a lie.

May you find the response to an insult hurled at you in a dispute.

Putting unwashed hands to one's mouth is disgusting.

A heart which does not know accounting -- is that a wise heart?

In respect of both expenditures and capital goods, the anus is well supplied.

The dog understands "Take it!", but it does not understand "Put it down!"

What will the dog do about what the fox is doing?

Strength cannot keep pace with intelligence.

He who insults is insulted. He who sneers is sneered at.

He is fearful, like a man unacquainted with beer.

A fettered dog is quarrelsome.

A fox urinated into the Tigris. "I am causing the spring flood to rise," he said.

He who shaves his head gets more hair. And he who gathers the barley gains more and more grain.

The horse, after throwing off his rider, said: "Were my load to be like this forever, how weak I would become!"

A dog which is played with turns into a puppy.

Like a hyena, he will not eat it unless it stinks.

To be wealthy and demand more is an abomination to one's god.

A child without sin was never born by his mother. The idea was never conceived that there was anyone who was not a sinner. Such a situation never existed.

Earth is greater than heaven. Who can destroy it?

By following craftiness, one learns how to be crafty. By following wisdom, one learns how to be wise.

[eliashiebert]

Andy Capp vs Love & Rockets

[eliashiebert]

Caleb Luna:

I am tired of fighting my friends. I am tired of trying to convince them that I matter as much as their romantic interests and partners. In many ways, who we choose to love is also a decision of who we invest in, and who we distribute the resources necessary to keep one another alive—including care. I am tired of trying to get people who love me to see that I am worthy of love, care, investment and attention as much as their romantic partners. I am tired of trying to make those who love me see that I am worthy of care, time and attention as much as the whiteness and thinness they invest in through their partners. I am sick of reminding them of the simple fact that who we choose to love and, by extension, invest in is political.

Investing in people is also investing bodies and this does not exist outside out of historical priorities and possibilities. We can stop politicizing desire when we stop distributing our love and care based on it. When we stop using our desire as a rubric for who we are keeping alive—or at least making efforts to.

[ . . . ]

There have been various moments in my life when it is structured such that there will be no great upset in anyone’s life if I am not there. Some people would not have someone to text occasionally, but there do not appear to be gaps that couldn’t and wouldn’t be filled by others. No one’s daily, material life would be changed by my absence. This is to say: no one has invested in incorporating me into their life, in distributing their care, in any meaningful way such that my absence will create a gulf.

This construction of love actually terrifies me. While, as a subject who is both personally and culturally historically disregarded and uncared for, I have a desire to be cared for and prioritized, the expectation to do this to another horrifies me. Not in a sense of a restriction of love, but I do not want to feel obligated to reserve the love and care I have for a single person, because this not just loving and caring for one person, but doing so at the expense of loving and caring for everyone else. I do not believe that this is what love and romance has to be, but it feels apparent this is the way it is practiced–if not unintentionally or subconsciously. It feels difficult to not consider this a product of capitalist individualism that works to divide and conquer.

(Strongination in original; biggination mine.) 

[eliashiebert]

Danielle McGuire:

By the early 1950s, then, a history of sexual assaults on black women and of the use of the boycott as a powerful weapon for justice had laid the groundwork for what was to come. Given that history, it made sense that city buses served as the flashpoint for mass protest. Other than police officers, few were as guilty of committing acts of racist violence and sexual harassment of black women as Montgomery’s bus operators, who bullied and brutalized black passengers daily. Worse, bus drivers had police power. They carried blackjacks and guns, and they assaulted and sometimes even killed African Americans who refused to abide by the racial order of Jim Crow.

[ . . . ]

Rooted in the struggle to protect and defend black womanhood from racial and sexual violence, the Montgomery Bus Boycott is impossible to understand and situate in its proper historical context without understanding the stories and saying the names of Gertrude Perkins, Flossie Hardman, Recy Taylor, and all the black women who were mistreated in Montgomery.

[eliashiebert]

Jesse Thorn:

There is extensive research on gender identity and gender expression. Children with explicitly expressed gender non-conformity have extraordinarily stable gender identities. It is extraordinarily rare for children who clearly and explicitly express that their gender differs with that assigned at birth to reverse course. It is not a phase. Gender is expressed in all kinds of ways, and certainly there are boys who like to wear dresses and girls who like to play football and boys who say, “sometimes I feel like a girl” and vice-versa. Those feelings and experimentations are natural and to be expected and often transitory. Kids who say, “I am a girl” or “I am a boy” have clear, stable gender identities, no matter what age they are or what gender was assigned to them at birth.