Longman lives in nightmare shadows

Always right about to sup you from behind something when you least expect it.

Open publication - Free publishing - More longman

"I'm for, how do they say, soft misanthropy" - zizek

Doorbuster: Come on, you apes. Bust the door. You know you want to.

We find ourselves again here, at this ruthless time of year, when we like to throw a temp worker or two under the ceremonial killing blade to make sure the holiday shopping season gets kicked off with frothing, pumping blood lust throbbing in our veins.

New York Target Black Friday 2010:

Walmart Little Rock, AK Black Friday 2011 - waffle iron frenzy

Walmart Sacramento Black Friday 2010 - unruly crowd evacuated.

Madison Toys R Us Black Friday 2010 - Cutting, gun threat, arrest, no Christmas toy

Los Cerritos Mall Black Friday 2010 - Fight/gunshots/chair throwing in food court during "Midnight Madness"

And Long Island Walmart Black Friday 2008 - stampede, 1 employee dead. But why change a policy that works?

The only lesson the news media manages to extract from these stories that reliably come one after another every holiday season is that human nature is repulsive and we should tut-tut at those trashy people who behave like savages to save a few dollars. No tut-tuts for CEO's and marketing execs who design these inane events at 3am with their stupid bracelets that make the christmas-present-buying-hoards feel like they're in a circle pit at Warped Tour. If us simple monkeys are so predictable with our human nature, why engineer the same riot for us every single year? I think it's very clear. To get them pig faces at the expense of our dignity and well being.

Self-Retrospective: It's been long enough that I am also bewildered and amused

This old thing cracked me up, so I'll share with you. The last page reads: raison d'twat. It took me a couple minutes to figure that out. Do you know who these people are?

I think this is the second foldy book comic I made. It's to help the scientists in the future figure out why we walk that way. The lady says "Were you, like, injured in the war or something?"

This is terrifying because it is a true reoccurring nightmare that I really truly have every few years and it's bone chilling every time. I made this book for Matt for his bday a while back. This dream always involves the same plot twist -- whatever house I am living in has an extensive ancient labrynthian endless catacombs of rooms and my housemates and I have never explored beyond the portion that we rent and then we decide to just go for it because it's interesting and of course HP Lovecraft has been up to something in there. In this particular episode of this real true dream I had, there was a horrifying ghastly figure at the bottom of the staircase, but it was just Dain for some reason being extra creepy, so it had a happy ending for once. Two thumbs up, nightmare dream world.

I will be putting up more oldy-foldies as time permits. Stay tewned.

Stay focused

I've always been inspired by the notion of incremental change as a way that earth reality may become less terrifying in the future. I think Prof. Laura Nader presented that idea as a kind of cold comfort after spending the semester destroying everyone's dreams in her famous Controlling Processes course. There is a history of people plugging away at correcting great injustices through small strategic efforts, like maybe in a tiny way voting for the crappy marijuana prop. tomorrow that is expected to fail, just so California and America will understand that there is support for legalizing marijuana and maybe next time it will have a chance. But I'm concerned sometimes that if Team Destroy Injustices is organizing to win skirmishes in the struggle for incremental change, isn't there Team Hateful Right Wing A-Holes who struggles just as vigilantly and passionately, possibly exactly cancelling out our every victory? There's a hateful evil Christian right wing majority Judy rubbing her palms together evily in Utah. She's working so hard to keep the bus line out of her neighborhood and make sure that the war goes on forever, and communists don't get grants and to make sure no spliffs are ever spluffed by Good Judy. Such a hater.

More words about Prop 19: In the end, the courts will interpret the law, big business will find loopholes and other ways to exploit and shit on consumers, and there will be endless other externalities that few of us are clever enough to foresee. When it comes to big idea issues that we really want to move forward like gay rights and sticking a fork in the swollen prison industrial complex full of people who don't need to be there, we need to ignore the nitty gritty details in the wording and send a big clear message that will hopefully get us where we want to be someday: POT -- YES, GAY -- YES, etc. We'll probably end up with some shiny new bullshit, but the world will know we're ready for the big gay yes.

UPDATE: Here's someone else who is also concerned about troublemaker evil Judy:

I think Nader actually said that incremental change is more like when you're an accountant somewhere and you notice something unfair and you blow the whistle. Anyways... I got more things to say about pot laws and their fallout, but my neighbor is screaming in Portuguese and and the ice cream cart guy is dinging his bell and it's most likely too many convoluted words to put here. Should probably go read about government regulatory institutions or whatever.