1900

I don't really like drawing cars, so this is about all you're gonna get out of me. Actually, I don't like drawing machines of any kind except espresso machines. It's not just because I worked as a barista, before we even called ourselves that -- I mean, in the entirety of my life, I've spent way more hours in a car than behind an espresso machine. I think it's a level of interest. I also can draw computers, and have, but unless I'm getting paid, any drawing of a computer is going to be like this drawing of a car -- about the minimum that still gets the concept across. Compare to my drawing of an espresso machine as part of the Dr. Darkness & the Fabulous Demon Babe story. That's what I'm talking about. The espresso machine was drawn with love.

1940

I didn't think about it too much at the time (24-hour comic, no time to stop and think!) but this haunted car scenario is a revisitation of an idea that I was toying with for a while, of injecting a more Fortean element into Goth House. Previously, the only official stance on the subject was in "Goth house is not haunted" (in Collection 2: The Nameless Collection) and it was that the Goth House residents do not live in a world of supernatural occurrences. But I realized that wasn't quite true. They do not live in a world of unambiguous supernatural occurrences.

Also, I should point out -- right after this panel I went to eat dinner, and confessed that I was a bit stuck on what should happen next, because I had some time to kill before the next plot point. Remember when I thought doing this "realtime" was a really clever idea?

1950

So, as per the dinner break mentioned above, the wasp gag that plays out over the next few panels is Paul's idea. Thanks Paul!

1940

In Percival's imagination, Ophelia is even haughtier than usual. And she is always wearing a Morticia Addams dress, and Theda Bara eyeliner.

By the way, the picture of Theda Bara which you can see on the cover of the bio Vamp (which I have also had on a postcard since about 1988) is definitely a character design influence on Ophelia. I recommend the book, too. One interesting thing that emerged, in the excerpts from reviews of her films, is that people complaining that a sexy actress is "too fat" is not a new phenomenon at all. They were doing it in the 1920s. I'm not sure why, but I've read theories that it has to do with an instinctive attempt at female diminishment during periods when women are garnering additional political and social power. And I kind of buy that, because the phenomenon went away during the 50s (Marilyn Monroe), and then came back (people who now say Monroe was "too fat," in spite of the fact that she has become a permanent sex symbol). But, you know, I digress. A lot.

1950

I like this dream. I think it shows you what's really going on in Terra's head, in spite of her conscious "acceptance" of "we should see other people." And I was pleased with the image of right-wing commando plastic army men coming out of the wedding cake. It's the sort of thing that I would have put some visual effort into, had I not been doing a 24-hour comic, and it sort of found its way into another, later story in Owen's Nightmare.

Prozac Nation

"It just slid, like a turtleneck going over someone's head. ... It was just beautiful ... I just felt, like, everyone was overreacting. People were going on about it. That part really annoyed me.

But I think the real problem with it is that -- it's not a terrible movie, but it's no lost cinematic gem, either. Christina Ricci (who looks astonishingly like Wurtzel) is good in it -- she's pretty much always good, even in terrible movies -- and she does take off her shirt. So that's something. Otherwise, it's sort of dull and pointless.

I've never read the book so I didn't realize that Wurtzel had essentially rewritten The Bell Jar, and it has the same problem that film versions of the earlier book have -- there's not a lot of narrative, and what little there is, comes across as shallow and whiny when you remove the intensely emotional internal dialogue. (That's why Shakespeare used monologues.)

Yes, I know Prozac Nation is based on Wurtzel's life. The Bell Jar was based on Sylvia Plath's life. Talented young women from broken families win writing contests, go to nice schools, and get spectacularly depressed for no readily apparent reason.

The big difference is that Plath is very disengaged from her surroundings. Her depression makes her a blank slate that other people project things onto. In Prozac Nation, except for one scene where "Lizzie" has a classic writer's block/drug induced meltdown, most of the time she manifests her depression by treating other people really, really badly. I mean, I suppose we're supposed to see her cruelties as a sort of protection of a vulnerable...oh, heck, I don't know. And I really don't care. Which is a problem in a movie. It leaves me thinking that fiction about depressed people really needs to be funny, or Hamlet (although Hamlet is pretty funny, actually, if you stage it right). Because, you know, nobody wants to listen to you complaining unless you're funny.

In early November, the Pentagon confirmed the identity of one of four prisoners who escaped from a U.S. military jail in Afghanistan in July as suspected al-Qaida leader Omar al-Farouq, considered one of Osama Bin Laden's top lieutenants in Southeast Asia.(U.S. confirms break from military jail Suspected al-Qaida leader among escapees) This annoyed Indonesian officials, who captured him in 2002 before turning him over to U.S. authorities, and found out that he had escaped because he had appeared, gloating about his escape, in a video broadcast Oct. 18 on Dubai-based television station Al-Arabiya.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales described the apparent breakdown in communication as a "serious problem" and told CNN in an interview that it would be investigated.

So, it seems clear to me -- these guys broke out of our jail, and we knew Indonesia would be cranky about it, so we didn't tell them until forced to. We screwed up and, in trying to avoid consequences for the first screw up, screwed up again. There's really no good spin you can put on this. Or...is there?

Al-Farouq's escape 'staged': Ex-BIN chief

A.M. Hendropriyono, former State Intelligence Agency (BIN) director (and responsible for al-Farouq's transfer to U.S. custody), told The Jakarta Post on Friday that he had strong grounds to suspect a hidden agenda behind the escape of al-Farouq.

"Following his escape, al-Farouq appeared in an interview with an Arabian TV station brandishing an automatic rifle. It is impossible that a terrorist group would trust and give him a gun after three years in U.S. detention. It is possible that he was prepared by his users to conduct a special mission.

"Second, it is quite strange that Washington remained silent about al-Farouq's escape. It can be assumed that U.S. security authorities were informed of his escape from the prison in July, but until now, President George W. Bush has not explained it, at least not to the American public," he said.

Asked about the public outrage toward him for handing al-Farouq over to the U.S. three years ago, Hendropriyono said the Indonesian authorities had no legal basis to charge him for terrorism because the country had not enacted an applicable law.

Oh, I see. It was all part of our secret plan all along. Hands up everybody who is convinced.

Anyone? Anyone?

For the last time, reading in dim light does NOT give you myopia. At least, if the NIH can be believed: There is no way to prevent nearsightedness. Reading and watching television do not cause nearsightedness.

Now, some evidence suggests that maybe lots of close-up work (which includes almost all activities of modern humans, except driving) might increase incidence of myopia, and there is some evidence that young children who sleep in rooms that are too brightly lit might have an increased tendency toward myopia, but these are both kind of inconclusive and may not be true at all.

But you know, being told I'll "ruin my eyes" by reading in light that is too dim for the person TELLING me that to read comfortably has been one of my pet peeves for ages. Look, (fill in name of older relative here), if it's too dark for you to see, go ahead and turn on a light. I won't stop you. I won't even mind. But if it were too dark for me to read comfortably, I would already have turned on the light.

It's particularly strange when it's somebody I don't even know. I was sitting in the Co-op's cafe reading. I had been there a while, taking advantage of free refills on coffee. This old guy came up just to say "you'll ruin your eyes doing that." I was confused -- I thought he meant reading a book and wondered what the heck he was talking about. So I gave him a puzzled look. Then he started babbling about lumens, and I realized what he meant. I said that I hadn't noticed any eye fatigue. He said, "you're ruining your eyes even if you don't notice. It's like truckers falling asleep -- they don't think they're tired until their eyes start to close." I said, "I'll take it under advisement," meaning, "what are you anyway, a retired optometrist?" He left. I looked around, and wondered how bad your eyes had to be to think that the present light level was too dim to read in.

So, for the last time. I can see just fine. The fact that you can't is not my problem. I'm sorry your eyes are deteriorating with age, but then, so are mine. I get a lot of eye fatigue using computers. But you know, they're my eyes. I know when they're tired. Really.

Sure, I'll play along. Bill O'Reilly is possibly a terrorist sympathizer. This conclusion is based on the words out of his own mouth on his November 8 show, as follows:

Hey, you know, if you want to ban military recruiting, fine, but I'm not going to give you another nickel of federal money. You know, if I'm the president of the United States, I walk right into Union Square, I set up my little presidential podium, and I say, "Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you're not going to get another nickel in federal funds. Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead.

And if Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.

B.O. was critical of a ballot measure, passed by 60 percent of San Francisco voters, which strongly encourages public high schools and colleges to prohibit on-campus military recruiting. Now, local SF officials are already taking him to task, including San Francisco firefighters union president John Hanley:

"Who is this guy, O'Reilly?" said Hanley, who identified himself as both a third-generation San Franciscan and military veteran. "I've got guys fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm a veteran myself. What's he talking about?"

Coit Tower is a memorial to firefighters. Note to B.O.: Don't diss the firefighters These are the people who might save your life someday.

Anyway, as irresponsible and amoral as B.O.'s comments are, perhaps he is correct in his defense of them as merely, "What I said isn’t controversial. What I said needed to be said." Wait a minute. I was expecting him to defend his comments as merely over-the-top rhetoric, and instead he's acting like they're not over-the-top at all. Let's try again with this pathetic justification from a couple of days later:

And then I went on to do a satirical riff with a serious point. Why should the USA protect San Francisco from terrorists if they in the city are trying to undermine the military? We posted the entire monologue on billoreilly.com.

Predictably, some far-left Internet smear sites have launched a campaign to get me fired over my point of view. I believe they do this on a daily basis. This time, the theme is O'Reilly is encouraging terrorist attacks. Unbelievably stupid, but not unusual for these guttersnipes.

Phew, that's better. It was just a satirical riff. He doesn't really want terrorists to blow up American cities. And you're a guttersnipe if you say so!

All right, B.O., I'll believe you that you don't really, actually, literally want to encourage terrorists to attack America. And I'll accept that you aren't, deep down, really, truly, a terrorist sympathizer. But you are still a bully, a blowhard, a hypocrite, a coward, a liar, and generally speaking a person of low moral character.

Coffee good. Cola bad.

I was going to post this zeitgeist on Friday but there were problems with Blogger. So here it is, a little stale:

Actually, I don't know if Blogger is dead, but the last several times I have tried to update the old parlour, it has displayed the title of my would-be post, but nought else. There may be a simple fix to this, but, frankly, I don't want to waste time puzzling it out. The reason I was using Blogger at all was "ease of use." So, the instant I have to put any work into it, I might as well start directing that work toward my own little custom blog software project.