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 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.

We’ll be seeing Jack The Giant Killer at Regal Virginia Center 20. Join us!

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.

Watched “I Am Number Four” with Susan last night instead of going out to see Green Lantern. It was much better than I expected. It’s the first movie-adaptation of a 1980s television show that I’ve seen that’s actually better than the show it was based on (“The Powers Of Matthew Star”).

I took a brief break from my awesome (but slightly behind schedule) project this morning, and had a conversation about the Kentucky Fried Chicken “Double Down“.

Me: I still say the Double Down is not a new thing. It’s just two perfectly ordinary things eaten simultaneously rather than sequentially. It’s as original and innovative as eating french fries two at a time.

At which point I wondered: Why do I feel the need to mock something someone else likes? Why do I even care? When did I became so negative? Was I always like this? And the thing is, I think I was. I recall thinking this exact thing before: that I don’t want to be bitter. I have resolved to be more upbeat.. how many times?

It would be easy to blame the rest of humanity. There’s no shortage of people who are vapid, grasping, immoral, or irrational (or all four — but I’m not naming names). There’s plenty of ammunition for someone looking to complain.

But complaining about stupidity and evil certainly doesn’t make me any happier. And it doesn’t accomplish much. Complaining about other people’s irrational beliefs is as likely to change their opinion as complaining about other people’s driving is likely to get them to use their turn signals. Sure, it’s fun to read about clowns mocking racists, but there are beliefs every bit as irrational and reprehensible as racism that are far more common, but mock those and you’ll have family members and treasured friends un-friending you on Facebook. So what’s the point? You can’t change anything. It’s like trying to convince the winter to turn to spring. If it happens, arguing and complaining won’t make it happen any faster: it just makes the winter less pleasant while you wait.

And hell, I belief all sorts of nutty things. Who am I to judge?

When I was younger, being cynical made me feel hip and edgy. Now it just makes me feel old. But it’s a hard habit to break.

Last RavenCon, there was some confusion about how guests are scheduled for panels. To help clear up any misunderstanding, I created this short animation on GoAnimate.

When I was a pre-teen in the mid-1970s (I must have been nine or ten), the textbook for my English class had some great short stories, such as Harrison Bergeron and Who Can Replace A Man? One of the poems in it that still sticks with me was called The Neuter Computer. “The Neuter Computer says ‘tick’ / The Neuter Computer says ‘click’ / …”.

I have looked for that poem since, but have never found it — or any mention of it, anywhere. Even the mighty Google shrugs its shoulders at my query. Am I the only one who remembers this poem?