Blackmoor Vituperative

I am going to post a photo of a coffee mug every day in August, and talk a little bit about where we got it and why I like it.

I used to work for a company called SAIC. Unlike most of my former employers, SAIC is still around, although it’s no longer an employee-owned company, which I think is too bad. My projects supported something called the Partnership for Peace, which is sort of like NATO Junior. I have been fortunate to have been involved with some truly worthwhile projects during my career, but I think the Partnership for Peace was one of the most worthwhile.

I visited ETH Zurich twice for the PfP project. On the first trip, Susan went with me, and that’s when we got this coffee mug. Zurich is an old city with some interesting history, but it’s not really a tourist destination. I am really glad we were able to go, though. We went to a few museums, and we ate fondue at a small restaurant. We also took a bus trip up into the Alps, which was spectacular.

I am going to post a photo of a coffee mug every day in August, and talk a little bit about where we got it and why I like it.

I bought this mug at a thrift store in Portsmouth, VA, which is where we used to live. I don’t have a fun story or any special memories associated with this mug. Despite that, it’s one of my favorite coffee mugs. It’s solid, reliable, and attractive, and I don’t have to worry too much about accidentally breaking it.

I am drinking coffee out of it right now.

I am going to post a photo of a coffee mug every day in August, and talk a little bit about where we got it and why I like it.

We bought this mug at Disneyland in 2009. We were in California visiting my mother, who no longer lives there. (My mother has always been a restless soul.) As luck would have it, it was the 40th anniversary of the Haunted Mansion, so we were able to get some cool coffee mugs commemorating the event. This is one of them.

The Haunted Mansion itself was rather disappointing. It had been re-dressed in the style of A Nightmare Before Christmas, basically ruining the ride. The fantastic “dancing ghosts” scene was completely ruined. Ah, well. We still have our memories of the first time we went, which was when I lived out there in the late 1980s, and Susan came out to visit me. She had dyed-black hair back then. I was so thoroughly smitten.

Sadly, the printing on this mug is water-soluble: what you see in the photo is the result after the cup was washed by hand, once. I was standing at the sink, washing it gently, and the ink was wiping right off. Very disappointing. I stopped washing it, dried it carefully, and we’ve not used it since.

Still, it was a very nice trip, and I’m glad we went. This was before the TSA introduced their “sexual assault” screening procedures: back then, the TSA screening was merely pointless (which it still is, of course). It will probably be the last trip by airplane we take unless the TSA eliminates their sexual assaults on airplane passengers. Frankly, I think the TSA should simply be eliminated. It accomplishes nothing.

Not that I’m bitter or anything.

I am going to post a photo of a coffee mug every day in August, and talk a little bit about where we got it and why I like it.

I bought this genuine imported German beer stein at the 2006 Richmond Oktoberfest. I was working at Circuit City at the time, which was my first on-site job in Richmond. However, the writing was on the wall at Circuit City (they went out of business not long after I left), and I left after six months for a “dream job” with a much smaller company (which also went out of business).

I was invited to the Richmond Oktoberfest by a fellow named Quinn Ramsey. Sharp guy, very cheerful. I’ve no idea where he is now, but I am sure he’s doing well, wherever he is.

I am going to post a photo of a coffee mug every day in August, and talk a little bit about where we got it and why I like it.

This mug has a photo of Joel and the bots. That’s Crow T. Robot on the left, and Tom Servo on the right. I bought this mug back in the mid-1990s. This is actually the second mug I bought with Joel on it: I dropped the first one, and broke it. You can’t buy these anymore.

Joel, Crow, and Tom are characters from a show that ran in the 1990s called Mystery Science Theater 3000. Susan introduced me to the show, after reading about it in a magazine. I fell in love with it instantly. I have every episode (commercial versions where they are available; Digital Archive Project versions where commercial versions do not yet exist), and I watch them regularly, typically in bed as I am going to sleep. It’s gotten so that I find it more difficult to go to sleep without it playing.

This cup has faded over time. I wash it by hand, and rarely use it, but time is unkind of photo-printed ceramic cups. But as long as this cup lasts, Joel and the bots are immortal.

We have a lot of coffee cups. I generally get one as a souvenir from any trip we take. Not every trip (I didn’t get one in Mexico, but I did get a very nice wooden mask), but most trips.

I am going to post a photo of a coffee mug every day in August, and talk a little bit about where we got it and why I like it.

This mug is Goofy. It came from Disneyworld in 1995. That was the first major vacation Susan and I took together. I was working for DOD at the time, and we got discount tickets for amusement park tickets through the Morale, Welfare, and Recreation program. Three days at the Disney parks, and two at Universal Studios. We drove from Virginia to Florida (and back). That was before the TSA made airplane travel an exercise in sexual assault. We could have flown. We drove because it was cheaper than flying (back then — not sure if it still is), and so that we would have a car once we got there. That was the first trip that we listened to books on CD along the way. I remember James Spader reading a Dean Koontz book about a town with a coal fire underneath it.

Our cat Healthcliff had just died of renal failure, and we decided to put off getting another cat until we came back. That cat was Nikita, who is still with us (knock on wood).

I used this cup at work when I was at Joint Forces Command as a civilian contractor. I thought it helped to soften my image a bit and make me seem more approachable, which was the persona I wanted to project. I wanted people to know that I was friendly and willing to help them. And who’s friendlier or more helpful than Goofy?

Although comicbooks get a bad rap for gender inequity in certain circles, I believe that this is a reflection of how women are treated in the arts as a whole. While women have nearly reached parity with men in terms of civil rights and political power, women are treated in a very different manner than men when it comes to paintings, dance, fashion, literature, and practically every other endeavor we would place under the umbrella of “the arts”. I’ll give an example.

“So You Think You Can Dance” is a show produced and judged by mainstream choreographers and dancers. If you’ve never seen it, it features a competition for dancers using an “American Idol” type of model (although of a much higher quality). During tryouts, male dancers who aren’t “manly” in their movements, who are too “feminine”, are literally mocked and eliminated from the competition. At one point, a pair of male dancers auditioned together, and the reaction from the judges was almost comical dismay. One said something like, “It was just confusing. I didn’t know which of you was supposed to be the man.”

In the “group numbers” that open each show, it is not uncommon for all of the female contestants to be in their underwear, and for the male contestants to be wearing jeans and baggy T-shirts. You can put some of this disparity at the feet of it being a television show, but the fact remains that, across the board, regardless of their particular dance specialty, the dancers and choreographers who make this show possible perpetuate this perception of gender roles.

These are not TV executives, Bible Belt televangelists, or hypocritical Yankee politicians. Nor were they teen-age boys who grew up wanting to draw boobies for a living (which is the common accusation whenever the depiction of women in comicbooks comes up). These are respected, professional dancers and choreographers, who’ve worked for years to hone their craft.

So I think it’s more than a little unfair to single out superhero comicbooks when, in other forms of the arts, real men and women are being cast into gender roles every bit as fetishized as Power Girl’s peek-a-boo cleavage.

The weather here in Richmond has been spectacular lately. I was in awe of the sky the other evening as I drove home from a friend’s house, so I pulled over and took a few photos. I might go back and take out the power lines, some day.

I ran across this at Gary Corby’s web site. Very cool. I found this very helpful. I never know what typeface to use. I stay awake long nights, fretting over it.

I am at Mysticon, listening to a panel on costuming photography. One of the panelists is a photographer — an evil photographer. She went on and on about copyright, and how the people she photographs have the gall to think that they have some right to the photos of them.

Then she turned around and talked about having models sign releases, so that in case the photographer asks them to stand on a glass table, and the table collapses, cutting the model to ribbons, that the photographer won’t have any responsibility. That was her example: a real model really got cut up because a photographer had her stand on a glass table, which broke.

While I was typing this, she started in again on the copyright thing.

I don’t care if she is right or wrong about the letter of the law. It’s disgusting.